December 4, 2018 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[3:43] good evening everyone we're going to call to order the boulder city council meeting of december 4th 2018. lynette will you call the role council member brockett president carlisle here grono jones here marzelle here nagel here

[4:01] weaver here yades here young president mayor we have a quorum excellent we um just need to amend the agenda real quick and for once we're taking something off um the proposal is to remove item 6a which is the broadband discussion you know i have a motion to do so second any discussion all those in favor okay now we have a shooting chance of getting out before midnight do we do you wouldn't just say a quick word about about why about why or last minute change um sure why don't you do that sure i'd be happy to it's just that i think the staff was planning on presenting council with some options for how to move forward and i think the feedback they got from the agenda committee was that they could go out and put out an additional do an additional bid process for a design build option and that did not require council direction they'll get more information they'll come back to us in a few months and then we'll weigh in on next steps

[5:02] fair enough does that work for everybody okay so tonight before we get to open comment we have two um special things one is a declaration to honor someone in our community but um one of her friends is the laden traffic so we're going to start with the other which is to certify our elections so i'll turn it back over to you to lynette okay thank you so i i serve as the city's election designated election official to the county and for the certification of the election you all sit as the general canvassing and election board and i serve as the secretary so to begin could i have an emotion what you're hard to hear i am i sound very loud so to begin may i have a motion to adjourn as the boulder city council and reconvene as the general canvassing and election board for the city of boulder coordinated municipal election held on

[6:00] november 6 2018. so moved second all in favor great okay so i'm going to take roll now board member bracket still here carlisle here grano jones here where's l still here nagel here weaver here yates didn't leave young still present okay so now i'm gonna i'll give you the oath if you all just raise your right hand i'll read through and just you can say i do at the end we the undersigned do solemnly swear or affirm that we will perform the duties of the general canvassing and election board for the coordinated municipal election held in the city of boulder county of boulder state of colorado on the sixth day of november 2018 according to the law and to the best of my ability we do i do and i will pass that around

[7:00] for you to sign when i'm finished now we need a nomination for someone to serve as the chair of the board for this meeting and typically this is the mayor i nominate suzanne thank you do you want to do it susan i guess so by acclamation uh mayor jones will serve as the board chair so really all you do now is you turn it back over to me so as a secretary will you turn it over to me yes i'd like to turn it over to the secretary and as a secretary for the board i will present you with the following the documents that are in this folder here they were also in your packet they are they consist of the official statement of votes the official summary of votes the boulder county audit reconciliation report and certification and then there's my statement of election results and certification for the colorado department of affairs so in the interests of time i'm not going to read through all of our battle ballot measures and the results they're posted on the county website they're on our website and they're also on the screen

[8:01] for you here so the official results basically everything we put on the ballot passed it did yes so the official results and the historical information are available on the county website as well so now we need to open a public hearing is there anyone that would like to speak to this issue okay we'll close the public hearing so now unless council has any questions we can do the motion to approve so moved second well okay so i'll read it it's the motion to approve the election returns um and to adjourn from the general general canvassing and election board and to reconvene as the boulder city council that's what your emotion is so moved hey second okay all those in favor

[9:00] do you have your hand up yeah okay it is unanimous okay and i will pass the documents around for your review and signature and we're done thank you okay can just make a quick comment yeah so by my count the the 83 percent of active voters in boulder county voted in this election which is an extremely high number and just note that our congressional district of which boulder counties apart had the second highest voter turnout in the entire country so we have a lot to be created [Applause] somewhere in minnesota right yes we're in minnesota yeah but it's a real tribute to our community that people are so engaged um and consequently we have more influence that way because more people are voting on issues both in our community and across the state so kudos to our community okay with that we will go to our second announcement

[10:04] i would like to in i don't i don't think this is it okay i would like to invite up serene in any of your delegation you would like to bring with you okay all right i'll just say that we are a community that is filled with amazing community members who are doing outstanding things but every now and then somebody rises to the top and we have to pause and just celebrate their existence and what they've accomplished and what they're going to do in the world and serena is one of those people so we have a declaration i'm going to read there's some good details in here you've done a lot already in your young years so this is a declaration in honor of university of colorado boulder student serene singh the first cu boulder woman

[11:00] to receive a rhodes scholarship gives me shivers okay but there's more okay december 4th 2018 cu boulder student serene singh a senior majoring in political science and journalism is among 32 americans to receive the prestigious rhodes scholarship to study at oxford university in england starting next fall serene is the 20th cu boulder student the first cu boulder woman and among only a handful of sikh americans to claim the coveted scholarship the rhodes is the most prestigious and one of the most competitive academic scholarships in the world and is awarded to students demonstrating academic excellence great personal energy ambition for impact the ability to work

[12:00] with others the ability to achieve goals a commitment to making a strong difference for good in the world concern for the welfare of others and awareness of inequities that's a lot earlier this year serene was awarded the truman scholarship and named a marshall scholarship finalist she is also a member of the president's leadership class a bachelor scholar founder of the colorado bangra team founder of the national sikh youth program president of the sikh student association president of the political science honor society a nationally certified speech and debate coach for three p speech and serves as chief justice of the appellate court for the cu student government and now we know why she got the scholarship she holds the titles of america's junior miss and miss colorado teen and founded her own non-profit called the serenity project brave enough to fly

[13:00] to empower at-risk women through the skills she has gained in pageantry the non-profit works to expand notions of female power and beauty and to uplift women who have been marginalized or are at risk also part of serene's activities are work with michelle obama and the global girls alliance a program of the obama foundation that seeks to empower adolescent girls around the world through education at oxford she plans to pursue a double masters a double master's degree in criminology and criminal justice and evidence-based social intervention and policy evaluation in recognition of serene's award of a rhodes scholarship and yet outstanding efforts that led to this result we the members of the city council of the city of boulder honor and applaud her personal accomplishments and her commitment to improving the lives of others

[14:12] am i tearing up thank you all so much um i am at such a loss of words but i i'd be remiss if i didn't at least start by saying thank you to each and every single person that has helped made this possible um i was doing an interview right before this and there was a question about like how do you feel like wasn't it hard for you and i thought it looks as though it's one road scholar and one person's journey but i know that's not the case i know it took a city it took a state it took a family it took a lot of tears from a lot of people to bring me to this point and i want to thank every single person in this room for being here today to my cu boulder community to the cmci staff and

[15:00] administration to the college of arts and sciences thank you all for supporting me and to the provost to our dean and thank you to all of you all thank you especially to the mayor for taking the opportunity um to really recognize me and additionally every single council member for taking time i know this is a long meeting and i know that you don't have all the time in the world but thank you for making this such a special memory for me um to my family my mom has been the most supportive individual in this entire world i can't tell you how many times we facetimed that night and she was like yes serena i'm gonna sleep but you stay on facetime and i'll just like watch when you end the call and then in the morning she's like you slept at 4am i'm like yeah i slept at 4am but working on applications and my sister and she's also in the front row noreen traveled with me to salt lake city utah for the rhodes interviews while she was sick completely 100 sick and she offered to sleep in the bathtub because she didn't

[16:00] want to get she didn't want to get me sick before my rhodes interview so i have i have some really impressive incredible family members my father he's been involved in this whole process supporting me looking up every single detail my brother my project who both live in new york city and to all my best friends around the country that did all their special good luck charms right before the rose interviews to make sure that something good would happen the next day thank you to everyone i just want to bring everyone real quick back to a memory that i had before coming into cu boulder and making boulder city my home i was a high school senior trying to figure out where to go to school and i didn't know what would be the right choice for me my heart said um to stay home to keep it local and to be true to my roots i always have lived in colorado it's my home and but somehow my brain was telling me to go to california and i was so conflicted on what to do my mom and i visited a couple of schools in california and i came back to see you and i remember very clearly reading an article that said you know students at

[17:00] cu boulder are among the happiest in this entire world at any college campus and i said mom that's the type of community i want to be a part of and and it's not just cu boulder it's the people that live here and these incredible human beings and that have helped me gain this opportunity because if it wasn't for this positive energy i know i wouldn't be who i am and i wouldn't be standing here today so i i hope in my years at oxford i i make everyone proud and i serve you all well as best as i can and thank you again for this opportunity thank you all and uh we are already prouder than we could be thank you oh yes

[18:00] would you like to come up and say a few words [Laughter] yeah well this is a tough act to follow but anyway we couldn't be prouder of serene and uh the way she represents the values of cu boulder with joy compassion and humanity um i think it's noteworthy to point out that this year both serene and nikki vanden hever a rhodes scholar finalists and it's very rare to have two students from the same institution to be finalists so we're very proud of that and and these students exemplify the kinds of folks who are committed to really serving humanity innovating inside and outside the classroom and really you're the leaders of tomorrow so we're so proud of you and congratulations so i'm the dean of one of serene's colleges so she one one major was not enough but it's so delightful to have had a

[19:00] chance to talk with some of your faculty members and i just want to share some of their thoughts first of all what they say about serene is that she is an empathetic listener and that she's a gifted communicator and a quick study so there's nothing that she doesn't catch on to very quickly she also cares deeply and engages fully with everything she does whether that's working with her fellow students and faculty on projects or whether it's advocating for others and i think actually considering the wicked problems of the world and how you can solve them so we really admire you for that most of all she's a natural leader um it's delightful to see you do this and i have to say i think your leadership superpower is probably your independence of thought so keep thinking that way finally i just want to say serene is unique she has a cultural knowledge and awareness to work across boundaries of nation and identity and she's bicultural member of a minority religion who has code switched and operated fluidly and fluently so i have no doubt none of us in this room do that you'll be a success we're so proud to have you part of our

[20:00] community so congratulations and thanks again to the city of boulder for recognizing our student serene tonight [Applause] okay well now that we're all inspired let's get to [Music] work we are going to jump right into open comment and just as a reminder members of the public who are signed up are free to speak about anything except for the excel agreement which is the topic of our hearing coming up right after the consent agenda so with that um first up is leslie

[21:00] or did you mean to speak to another topic i cleared it with a city clerk and i think we're good to go because i'm really here to speak about excel's rate increase okay not about the condemnation i won't be here for that hearing so i just wanted to make sure the council and everyone knew something that essentially no one knows which is that excel's rates uh in the fourth quarter of this year for residential customers went up 9.6 and for transmission customers up i'm trying to find the clock up 17 so big transition transmission customers like uh ibm their rates went up about 120 000 a month so that is not something that we have seen in the boulder daily camera or anywhere else you can see this is docket 18l0626e if you find customer impact study exhibit 11 i'll leave copies with you before i go you too could know about excel's rate impact but the point of course is that did i go the wrong way oh now i'm in trouble point is that it's

[22:02] a it's a major black box i've been doing this a long time trying to figure this out is this is the spreadsheet you would have to figure out there's a lot of spreadsheets that lead into this and you'd have to go back and track it back and i've done a lot of this going back a couple years to see what's happened excel says oh well they're just the same rates as last year this time we had a big tax cut under the trump tax cut xl's rates went from tax rates went from 35 percent to 21 percent the commission forced them to pass that through to us so we had declining rates and now they've put the big wind farm into this the electric commodity adjustment and driven our rates back up so let's see if i get the right button this time well whatever it's a black box and there's no perfect government but the city of boulder's done a magnificent job oh that one thank you sorry about that i'm i'm a slow learner here i'm afraid

[23:01] but um it's a black box if we bring our decision making home it's not perfect but i really credit our city manager our city council our city staff you've been doing an amazing job of reaching out to the community and no system would be perfect but i think it'll be better so thank you so much thank you leslie leslie thank you and could you send us that powerpoint point yep i will send you the powerpoint and here's the paper copy of the the rating thank you paul alter followed by kathleen christensen good evening thank you mayor jones and members of city council for the opportunity to speak with you again about voices for children and court appointed special advocates or casas first i want to deeply thank the boulder city council for the human services collaborative ten thousand dollar grant just awarded to voices for children this will mean so much to so many kids

[24:02] i was going to talk in depth about our non-profit voices for children and tie into colorado gives day which of course is today instead i'm going to relate something that happened in the last few days dana walters our program director at voices for children send out an urgent request a young girl had been hospitalized because she had been terribly beaten by her parents an emergency court hearing took place it's anticipated the child will be moved from foster care here at boulder county to a relative in aurora a casa was needed immediately within 10 minutes five casas had volunteered knowing this would involve one and a half to two years of visits to aurora the casa was assigned and over this period the casa will build a relationship represent the child's voice in court and help rebuild the world

[25:01] if you are interested in learning more you're very welcome to join us at our casa 101 talk this thursday december 6 at 5 pm at our gun barrel office we hold these monthly and they're only an hour i'd also be pleased to arrange a time for us to meet at an open court session to witness a few of these cases thank you again for your generosity and the opportunity to speak thank you thank you for your service kathleen and then lynn siegel hi my name is kathleen christensen i live in boulder and i'm on the board of my homeowners association or hoa and i'm talking about the issue of people in permanently affordable units having difficulty paying hoa fees and you're going to hear later from someone who's hoa has not been well managed and has special assessments we have a

[26:01] well-managed hoa and we have avoided special assessments but the hoa fees necessarily have to keep going up so i wanted to let everybody know that this can be a problem even if hoas haven't gotten in trouble we have to increase our dues because insurance costs go up garbage construction maintenance roofs are a huge one coming up for us and also someone who's already you know the lower end of the income scale could run into all kinds of issues losing a job becoming unemployed or underemployed disabled ill old and their place hasn't appreciated like some of ours have so they can end up in kind of a bind if they had to sell that you know maybe they would have enough money from that to pay for rent for a year or two in boulder at current rates um and uh i feel like um maybe we're not the best people to deal with that on an hoa board um if we haven't we've had a neighbor in trouble and she's kind of dependent on five of us who may have

[27:02] varying amounts of compassion or understanding or knowledge about these kinds of issues and you know we have the power to have a lien placed on their place and you know they could end up in force closure so i would love to see the city have um have strategies in place not only to help people get into their homes but to stay in their homes um and to deal with rising hoa costs whether it's special assessments or regular fees and just a side issue if i understand that single people can only get into hoas meaning their their dues could go up as opposed to someone who just has a mortgage in a single family home so thank you very much thank you very much oh we have a question for you kathleen yeah oh right here thank you thank you for that oh you're welcome cute you're

[28:01] coming out tonight can you share with us at what rate your hoa fees have been going up um they're going up five percent this year they're going up from 286 to 300 this year the original suggestion was to go up to 340 to make sure to make absolutely sure we had enough money when we have to replace our roofs we decided that would not be sustainable for a lot of our residents so we didn't go up that high um but we we've gone up um i've lived in my place 20 years and i think their dues are twice as much as they were when i moved in um so several percent to 5 a year thank you for that thank you thanks lynn and after lynn we'll have elise reinhardt lynn siegel 538 do it yeah they've got property taxes too which is what the homeowner has so you got a tough situation now my airbnb guest before i came and she's paying the same by the way at my place as she would be in the community just so you know short term

[29:01] okay same price per night 30 night so um she's what elicited me is empathy i have to have empathy empathy for you people it was not serene that told me this it's empty empathy i just don't understand how the opportunity zone thing went through with jane jane could have said um we we don't have a council meeting tonight we aren't going to apply for an opportunity zone until you come to us giving us enough time for us to circulate it through our normal you know process of city council and public hearing and what have you that's important that's that's outstanding that that happened 2.5 miles iris to arapahoe 28th to 55th open to developers

[30:01] no capital gains or reduced capital gains cost you're doing this at the same time you have an hoa fee on your permanently affordable home ownership program that goes from 350 to 1250 in since 2014 that's unacceptable and then we've got 311 the subsidies the giveaways at 311 in a fire zone where people are going to be killed inevitably i had a photo to show you here tonight from historic boulder homes tour of how barren it was for trees back in 1898 and how because of the natural burn cycle we don't have that now we have a huge fire risk lives are going to be lost and costs are going to go up the insurance is going to go up for the hoa fees so it's a circular process you've got to stop it somewhere thanks elise and then darren o'connor

[31:02] hi my name is elise reinhard i am a physician and a mother of two i moved to boulder a year ago with my family with the intent of raising our kids here i'm speaking on the issue of large houses on large lots about a couple of months ago after looking for a house for our family we decided to purchase a lot that's about just shy of 12 000 square feet uh with plans to build it a house on it for my handicapped accessible sun you're from a handicapped sun fully handicapped accessible we're working with an architect to make this happen this means a ramp from the first floor to the second floor large bathroom open space pretty much making the house accessible so he can get anywhere in the house and be part of the family we are not looking to build a massive house we just want something that works for our family and i urge you to consider situations like ours when you're

[32:02] talking about restrictions and limitations on building of homes on large large lots i don't think it's fair for us to be penalized for building our family's home a home that will work for us um thank you any questions or comments well well maybe it's a comment but i guess a question my understanding is ramps um take up a lot of the square footage i guess that's the big thing that you're facing right yes so ada we are trying to go by ada standards so it's safe and it would be over 500 square feet in our home would be the ramp alone so it's a lot and he needs storage for equipment wheelchairs walkers we have very large and bulky equipment that we're needing to store in addition to probably a accessible van so there's a lot of considerations that we have in our circumstance

[33:01] hey thank you for sharing that darren and after darren harvey hein hey council darren o'connor 2800 columbia avenue we're heading up towards christmas that's one year since benjamin harvey died on our streets obeying the law and not using a blanket or any shelter and some on council and our homeless initiatives manager have said that we have enough shelter beds because no one has been turned away but i heard from our homeless initiatives manager last week that in fact when the path to home is full that indeed we turn people away so that has been a mistruth that's been shared and i want to share some of the voices of boulder's own homeless people as well as our executive director of the boulder

[34:01] shelter saying that we're no longer interested in getting people into shelter and the impact on them so i'll let you listen though do we take responsibility for everybody in every situation or do we take responsibility getting someone to the shelter is not really our ultimate goal

[35:01] these people are afraid of freezing to death they're reporting that people are dying out here and we know that that's true and we need more shelter it's the last thing i want to be fighting for but that's where we're at i hope that you will open severe weather shelter all winter long thank you thank you darren harvey is harvey here amy garon thank you oh good evening mayor jones and council thanks for giving me an opportunity to speak i'm amy garan and i live in the iris hollow condos they're at iris in folsom i moved to boulder 25 years ago and i've put down really deep roots here in 2014 i bought my condo through the city's permanently affordable housing program and i was thrilled because that was i'm a self-employed person that's the only opportunity i had to basically stay in the city i love

[36:01] but unfortunately the true cost of that home is precisely what's driving me out of boulder right now you might have seen the boulder weekly story a couple of weeks ago that hoa fees in my community are out of control right now i'm paying as much to my hoa every month as i'm paying to my mortgage and that's likely to continue for the next few years now the reason for this is all too common in hoa land it is shoddy construction plus lacks governance plus bad property management now that combo is extremely expensive especially over time iris hollow was built 20 years ago we're the canary in your coal mine what's unfolding at irish hollow is about to explode elsewhere around boulder soon you can get a jump on that now i joined the board of my hoa in 2017 and i tried to fix my community from within that didn't work i've also been talking to the city housing staff since 2017 and they've been really sympathetic that's great but so far housing has only been willing to

[37:00] discuss potential long-term solutions my neighbors and i are already out of time but we're not out of ideas now last week we met with the top housing department officials to present some near-term release solutions for instance the city has been saying that they can't do much to help people in my position because they lack an ownership stake in the community so i propose that the city buy my condo and rent it back to me while i work to buy another home then that would give them an entree to interact directly with the board and the property manager and bring some of the resources of the city auditors inspectors etc to bear on it but to the best of my knowledge that would work within program rules i don't know what the city is going to do but the director of housing did say that council sets their priorities and amy i'd like you to take care of you know get them to help the existing homeowners thanks hey thank you for your emails too okay thank you

[38:02] kimberly hi my name is kim murphy i live at 2615 mapleton my family are middle class and very lucky to call boulder home by sheer virtue of timing having after a decade of slowly saved up a down payment and with the fortuity of a bank-owned foreclosure becoming available during the recession eight years ago we achieved a dream few in our position could today and purchased our first home we were accustomed to living in much smaller quarters than the 2000 square foot floor plan and sharing surplus space afforded my partner the ability to be an involved stay-at-home parent caring for our children during permitted construction of an accessory structure in early 2017 enforcement identified compliance issues with our property and we navigated a complex and arduous process eventually reaching resolution we received oau approval had a declaration of use recorded

[39:01] and the ostensible opportunity which being deemed one of the 230 such households in the city presents to support living in an expensive city a city wherein our property taxes have increased 279 percent over those eight years we built the accessory structure as a space for my partner to try to re-enter the workforce as a carpenter with an area for me as an office i'm a software developer for a non-profit we reached final approval january 17 2018 and at last had a complete and compliant property with the peace of mind that that affords i came today to say that i support and appreciate the changes being considered by council to less restrictively provide flexibility to accommodate working families living in the city thanks thank you megan and after megan we have asa hardman hi good evening my name is megan orango

[40:01] i live at 3195 pearl parkway and i'm here tonight to address you about the boulder shelter for the homeless uh so as darren said we're coming up on the year anniversary of benjamin harvey's completely preventable death he was a boulder resident who after going through coordinated entry and being referred to our shelter was turned away by shelter staff the reason is that nine months earlier he had tapped on a window after arriving one minute late for the male pickup time rather than showing empathy and respect for a fellow human being shelter staff declared him violent in air quotes and banned him first from services for a whole year so nine months later when he returned to the shelter they reminded him of his small mistake and sent him away and he died that night following the law without a blanket which would be allowed for a dog but is not allowed for a human being he froze to death some of you may also remember that a year ago there was a public outcry over benji's death and now we're back

[41:00] because the shelter that causes injustice has not had any consequences and a year later they haven't made any substantive changes to their policies or practices and we allies and advocates for people experiencing homelessness are hearing stories that people are still being objected to arbitrary and inconsistent rules that people are still being kicked out for minor offenses with no warning and that residents live in fear of misstepping around a cranky staff member lest they be tossed out on the cold streets there is an incredible power imbalance at play here one that has lethal consequences we have penned a letter to greg herms who's the executive director of the shelter demanding that changes be made and you'll be receiving a copy of this letter many organizations have already signed on and endorsed memphis and more than 150 citizens have signed as well i urge you to sign members of the community can find the letter by visiting our website boulderdsa.org the boulder shelter

[42:00] for the homeless and greg harms must be held accountable and i ask you to join us in leveraging your power and your privilege for those who have less thank you thank you megan asa good evening my name is acer i also live at 2615 mapleton haven't you i'm here to shine a light on the treatment of my family by the planning department following false allegations lodged at open comments on january 16th this year by a person who trespassed stalked and harassed us then found a sympathetic audience with certain members of city council what unfolded was a surprisingly successful act of wielding you and available city services as retaliation for frustration at permitted construction my partner kimberly who just spoke prior jumped through laborious hoops to achieve compliance she cashed out a pension from the navy to complete the work identified all 35 000 saved over nine years of her life as someone counselor directly aware being

[43:00] on the receiving end of enforcement's ayah can be very unsettling we completed a process only to have new conditions that mended into legal documents for months earlier and then tendered as conditions jeopardizing our approval and recorded permitted use i sat across from kirk moore's as he smirked while my wife broke down in tears at the prospect of all our effort work and savings being considered expendable collateral damage to the city's errantly executed and evolving processes we believe sunlight is the best disinfectant my comments are to illuminate the ease of systematic coordination with some staff who profess alternative facts and behave unethically ignoring due process and citizens rights there generally seems to be a willingness towards governments by ambush and to raise our vested property right in favor of covering up a systematic failure thank you for your time we have some questions for you please sir thank you and kimberly thank you um so did you get your permit and are you able to use your oau at this point

[44:00] hence who you talked to so i have a payment here and i can show you have a quoted permit with a city clerk signed by the city and ourselves on november last year when we completed this compliance process from that moment onwards we are effectively completely compliant on our adu make sure we separate these structures so everyone understands we're fully complying on our adu we complete our accessory structure on january 17th we didn't know the night before that our neighbor came up here and had a conversation three days later we received a notice of disposition amended on 19th of january with the date september 21st and a new line of information which ruins our ability to qualify as an adu i have both of these here if you'd like them too i don't need to say anything other than just we feel this subject obviously unfair to you yeah i guess i would like to know more about it and i want to make sure that everything is how it should be of course and um so we're here today if we can get those materials that would be very helpful okay and um

[45:01] thank you we'd have to follow up after this i appreciate it i don't know if we have contact information you could give that to the club we understand the process and appreciate the opportunity to be here and participate thank you for coming yeah yeah thank you cindy i'm just going to ask for the same thing that you forward the information of course that you have so that we're aware of it in this day and age with the digital tracking and the core requests that we have we understand everybody is here working on our behalf and everyone is open and there's nothing being held back we can share all the official documents that help you understand why we are believed we have achieved what we essentially set out to achieve okay so anybody else has anything else do you feel comfortable i think we'll follow up yeah and so just to be clear you right now are not well opened last week when enforcement officer came on the property and says due to our disposition and failure to finish the disposition the amended disposition our adu is illegal and not in compliance and therefore has kept an enforcement

[46:01] case open against us to monitor our property and the rights afforded to them with an open case we invited them to the property to come and inspect they came inspected that same day we asked them to come back and inspect the rest of the property the following day and never heard for two weeks from them we don't know we don't know why we're on the end of this type of treatment and we didn't want to get to the point to confront it this way but feel we need to stand up and present solid hard facts as opposed to just conversations back and forth and again appreciate the opportunity to do that yeah no thank you for bringing that thank you lord thank you um bob this bob once and then jamie morgan thank you i'm bob hunnis 4650 pleasant ridge road uh here to speak briefly on the proposed towing ordinance 8295 you've probably all received an email from me that had an estimate of signage

[47:00] changes and costs and so forth and i don't want to go into great detail but do want to thank mary young and tom carr because i know that this afternoon they were working on modifying this since i was seeing emails that were coming through so i know there's work going on in the background i think the key parts that struck me and this came from the perspective of i'm a building manager for a historic office building at 1319 spruce and when i started reading this ordinance and looking at the signage and what it did to our building and then looked at neighboring buildings and realized this had a huge impact on buildings throughout the whole community and i don't think that was really the intent but my survey indicates there might be 15 or 20 000 signs that need to get replaced and the impact of that economically is in excess of a million and a half dollars and i don't think that's really where council wanted to be going with this but i think it's important you recognize that i know there are changes uh in the works

[48:01] and i'm hoping that that will happen uh i think this whole thing started with a concern over a small handful of properties that apparently did have some towing issues over the years and those are probably legitimate concerns but certainly we need to be careful that we don't take a handful of properties and smear it over the whole community without giving some thought to what that means to the rest of the community yes thank you for your email on that i was very helpful jamie and then megan hello my name is jamie morgan the boulder shelter for the homeless needs to do as the city asked and commit to a process of binding arbitration between shelter staff and residents who are kicked out of the shelter especially during the harsh winter excuse me especially during the harsh winter

[49:00] months mediation is simply not enough without binding arbitration the shelter has no reason to follow through on the suggestions given by community mediation services this arrangement ensnares our neighbors experiencing homelessness in a powerless relationship with the shelter holding their very safety at the whims of shelter staff shelter rules are enforced arbitrarily and unpredictably with staff often operating on favoritism further mediation as toothless as it is is not even offered in some cases despite promises from executive director greg harms the boulder county democratic socialists of america have written an open letter addressed to greg harms that outlines in detail the issues with the shelter's current structuring along with three demands that will make the shelter better equipped to serve boulder residents so that no more of our neighbors are killed the late the letter has already been endorsed by several local organizations in over 150 individuals in the 24 hours since we shared it last night

[50:01] our demands are one binding third-party arbitration for resident grievances two all active suspensions be reevaluated by a third party and that suspended individuals referred to the shelter through coordinated entry be allowed back and three individual individuals who are currently or formerly homeless be given a place on the shelter's board of directors boulder will not sit idly by as our neighbors freeze on our streets when there are empty beds in the institution built to protect them benjamin harvey did not need to lose his life last christmas the very least we can do is reflect and learn from his suffering in his memory we must ensure that no one else has to suffer the same cruel fate our open letter is available to read and be signed on boulderdsa.org thank you so much and we've emailed a copy to counsel thank you megan

[51:00] i owe you a phone call hello good evening i'm megan fan steele i'm the government affairs coordinator for the boulder area rental housing association um first i just wanted to thank you for councils they're always willingness to listen and to work with all the different stakeholders holders because i know you have a really hard job and you have been seeing emails for me as well so i will try to be brief i just wanted to focus on a few things specific to the signage and of course do another thank you for the no more one hour rule because we're really appreciative of that and uh all the thoughts that have run around um one of the things on signage is that we have a lot of expenses and oftentimes towing companies do pay for our signage but in this situation it's our understanding because there would be so many that we would be burying that cost and with we have a lot of things coming off smart regs is almost here now we have dark skies um which is a year out and those types of things so we were

[52:00] trying to find ways that might make sense where not everyone had to take change signs that would help and one thing that we were really looking at is tying it to the number of toes that a property had and i know i saw something on hotline come through today that said if you had less than two toes a year then you wouldn't have to change any signage and so we would be requesting to up that number because when you think about it there's a big difference between non-consensual towing and predatory i mean if you're really predatory towing people are strolling for real you're being towed daily weekly a lot like a much more than two times a year we we were suggesting 24 times a year two times a month and you could even do it on a monthly basis um just to kind of up that number a little bit so we're not having a whole sale change in signage for folks that aren't really having an issue and then clearly if there's a change of ownership or any kind of you know change in the parking lot or those types of things we would change signs at that point as well so that was what we're just throwing out

[53:01] there you have any questions okay very helpful all right thank you maggie robert and after robert we have ellie skeira hello and um hello to all the council members some of which know me could you so i'm here to introduce about the large lot issue i've read all 92 pages of the output and i hope some of you at least read my communication in the neighbor's communication specifically about crestview east and the large lot issue i've been here for 48 years and there's been decades of hammering out the current regulation on how land is used

[54:01] how the north polar sub-community plan has evolved over 26 years so to make radical changes in that in land use and the matrix that goes into using land size of buildings where the buildings are what the neighborhood is all that stuff takes years to hammer out so why are we in an emergency situation where there's a possible moratorium or some rule by fiat that this is the way it's going to be so we have to take it slow and um uh fairly

[55:00] to landowners especially lando's and chris christophe i'm kind of dusty and dirty right now because i'm out there walking around we're trying to get it paved after all this delay and all of a sudden there could be a moratorium or a fiat of some kind that's the numbers are easy there's only six units involved with this and we have 30 you know 26 units scheduled for permanently affordable housing sir your time's up okay i hope you consider slowness thank you thank you ellie and then cindy angel hello my name is ellie shiera and i live at

[56:00] 1665 orchard avenue our city has reached its tipping point we can no longer not notice not see the absence of green spaces that surrounded a 2 000 square foot home that no longer exists we can no longer be blind to the loss of neighborhood character in part due to dispersion disproportionate mass and scale relative to that neighborhood we notice the loss of views both within neighborhoods and of the foothills we understand the environmental costs to our community when there are no solar requirements and fences loom tall and animals lose their habitats and heated swimming pools steaming in the middle of winter are green lighted to those who can afford such excesses when scraping of homes means dumpsters filled with mature trees and the walls and floors that house lives and loves

[57:01] and who of us has not experienced the increased traffic or the rude driver we know these tipping points we experience them every day as our city strives to be environmentally and economically inclusive we must change and grow and we as its citizens are the stewards of what progressive change might look like how to implement change is what council is being asked to consider the work of change takes time and commitment i fully believe each of you on council has the commitment to grapple with a large house issue time though is the breadth and space needed you can vote on adopting a pause or temporary ordinance on restricting permits over 35 3500 square feet and give staff the community and each council member time time that one elusive hour month or year that is wanted and needed

[58:00] for this large house issue time to sift ponder discover inquire digest discuss take in sleep on it time to challenge and choose implement and proceed forward thank you ellie one last sentence time to honor the process that change requires both individually and collectively as a community thank you thank you cindy and after cindy carrie christina good evening cindy angel with boulder area rental housing association president and small business owner here in boulder first appreciate and i'm gonna reiterate what megan already said to you you all removing the time commitment whether it's an hour five minutes that was a nightmare i was under the impression that commercial property was going to be exempted from any ordinance but based on what i read it hasn't been so i'm not prepared to talk on the

[59:00] commercial side other than to say if we put commercial property in with this it's a nightmare it is that there are so many pieces to that it's unbelievable i want to address the issues around the new signage surprise i have no idea how many towing signs are in boulder i didn't get to see bob's analysis but i'm betting north of ten thousand fifty percent or less of the cost of that sign is the cost of the sign you have to pay somebody to to take your old signs down put your new signs up additionally if we require the signs to be bilingual we are going to take what is currently a 12 by 18 sign and we're going to make it a 24 by 36 like that that is unwieldy and i would venture to say a major eyesore so think about signs that size all over boulder

[60:00] that's not a good option when we can go with universal towing site and let's see i'm hoping you eliminate the signage requirement obviously but if you don't please please look at the universal toe symbol and i also megan and i talked about this she has said it the purpose of this is predatory towing and i think we've lost sight of that we are looking at changes that are so far beyond predatory towing so and that's it you've heard it we have a question mr yates hey cindy thanks for coming out um you mentioned the very very beginning that um you didn't realize that the ordinance was going to apply to commercial other than the signage i'm going to park that for a second um what what about the ordinance is problematic for commercial problems separate from the sign it is a major cost so commercially my understanding is the puc requires a sign on everybody i'm sorry i'm sorry let me clarify my question okay aside

[61:01] from signs is there anything else in the ordinance now that the one hour rules out that adversely affects commercial properties no because i have to comply so it's just a signage it's decided thanks that was it yeah all right i think we're good thank you thank you carrie and kerry you're not speaking about the public hearing on excel which is coming up right next no and um and in fact though um i am to ask you whether i can speak about uh community choice segregation in california and how it relates to the stakeholder process for the tri-proceeding settlement um from a few years ago that boulder was a party and that has nothing to do with the muni carry on are we clear okay um i i wanted to uh as a lead-in i wanted to say that um there was a very interesting meeting a couple of weeks ago for the stakeholder meetings that i began attending about two years ago

[62:00] and the part that i'm the most interested in is future renewable programs that excel could someday create for the rest of its territory um and alice jackson came and listened for about 45 minutes while we spoke to her about the concerns about the lack of progress towards those type of programs um and i spoke a little bit about my concern of uh community choice aggregation if we were to implement it here and i spoke a little bit about this the last time i forget it was an open comment or some other um hearing but um the way the problem with the stranded costs in uh california and how it's working is a lot like an adjustable rate mortgage where the the fact that uh that we all wanted our utilities to to buy wind energy at seven cents a kilowatt hour 10 years ago now that's over market so the ccas have to help pay for the more expensive renewables that have

[63:00] already been built on the system and of course they want to pay the the less expensive rates well the puc is making it so that only a certain percentage will have to kind of phase in of the over market costs and therefore it's making it so that the stranded cost is kind of an unlimited unknown because it's kind of like an arm where you go into negative amortization and then you have it gets added to your principle so there will be interest that the utilities can charge on the stranded costs so i wanted to explain a little bit more of why that's so problematic some of the ccas are starting to say that they won't be able to beat the iou rates soon so that's part of my concern about that model and just wanted to explain and i'm hopeful that we're we might make progress soon with that stakeholder group thanks great thank you carrie young and then corwin will be last

[64:00] good evening my name is jan morzel i live at 2075 upland i'm speaking about the large lot large homes on large lot issue which i like to call actually small homes on large lots and i totally support you in moving forward on this i also would like you to consider moratorium buried on a back page of today's paper was a little statistic that the average rent on a bedroom one bedroom apartment boulder went up 50 percent over three years in our own neighborhood um we're not talking about mcmansions anymore i call them super sized houses so just a block away we have now a 7 200 square foot house being put on the market by a spec builder and so when other neighbors or developers in our neighborhood complain that they might be restricted that's sort of an example you can look at that is allowable there's an far i think on that lot of 5200 square feet and i guess 2000 square feet around the basement

[65:02] um last time i came here in october and i had to listen to like 15 different architects lament that they have to build smaller and i was sort of amazed and then dismayed that none of them considered ecological or sustainable arguments i think living on a small planet we should take our responsibility serious that we cannot afford to build super-sized houses anymore and nobody mentioned how easy it is to find you know books on building small in fact i don't think they're books that tell you how to build large um just it was kind of funny we we actually googled building large houses and the first thing that pops up is an article and i'm not making this up it says bigger isn't better how a large home can ruin your life now this was not put up by the tiny home organization of colorado but actually by realtor.com and it lists five reasons why it's

[66:00] actually bad for your health so just like in the movie super size me i suggest we do not allow any more unhealthy products like large houses thank you very much thank you corwin yes thank you for the time i've been here about five years trying to make a go of it and boulder for about three um it's very expensive for a man that works for a living unless i go back to oilfield and work on drilling rigs and then that's a ways out of town i like boulders a lot of smart people here i met a lot of them i just want to bring up some things about how housing options on arapahoe road there's a lot of one-story buildings that could easily be encapsulated in uh air-conditioned storage or climate storage and you put two or three stories over pretty pretty quickly and easily affordable i don't know if it's something that's possible but there is some air space that's available in the area providing for your height restrictions reduced carbon footprint on commercial buildings the most

[67:01] liability of any commercial building is the roof and replacing that roof is very expensive it costs huge amounts of money versus if if you could consider putting glass over the top a lot of your commercial buildings you will encapsulate it and you can reduce the carbon footprint in the long term uh the carbon footprint on high rises on the beach you build a cooling tower on top to cool the water to take the heat out of the building boulder is lucky enough to have a cooling tower just a few miles up the road and you can bring that water to boulder cool your buildings put it back in the creek or use wind and solar pump it back up to a reservoir mr ashby could tell you what would be involved in getting a a hole or a board drilled from some lake or reservoir up in the mountains to here and to recirculate the water and use it like they do on islands with wind power the next one is a rough neck theory on global warming i'm working on drilling rigs my life my dad's life and grandfather's life when

[68:00] you take all the cooling from the ground 10 20 000 feet down that liquid gas and then you take all the oil out and you take out the water out all the heat rises it's going to come out and it's doing its thing on our oceans so coming here was hoping that someone would see this and decide to write a paper about it and i guess that's it thank you well thank you for sharing those ideas okay with that we are going to close open comment i am going to turn to staff did you have any comment um so a couple of residents spoke about a situation with their property and staff has been working with them and i know that you're interested in it so we'll be happy to also provide you with information on that situation thank you could we get more information about the homeless shelters as well are people being turned away are there enough shelters open you know it just

[69:01] seems like there's conflicting information yes thank you and now thanks for that jello is going to bring up the same thing and particularly with severe weather sheltering giving the danger to human health to make sure that no one's being turned away particularly with the severe weather shock right we'll we will provide an update on that thanks great sam i just want to provide a little bit of context there's a great homelessness services dashboard now that's well worth looking up on the website that tracks how much shelter is available and at which times of the year so that's one thing that i think community members who are concerned might take a look at another is for us to to realize we give i think about 120 000 a year to the shelter out of their 2.2 million dollar budget or so so we have struggled with this since i've been on council how do we influence shelter policy when we are giving it relatively little dollars and so i i

[70:00] want to work with the community to think through that because it is really important in this idea of mediation and doing you know binding arbitration is something that's of great interest to me and i would like to see if we can make progress on it so thanks to the community members for bringing that forward mary thank you sam for that and i would agree with that and support that the other thing that one of the gentlemen that spoke regarding to with respect to the shelter he made a suggestion about putting a either homeless or formerly homeless person on the on the board of directors and i would hope that the shelter gives it serious consideration as there that would be really good representation to have on the board as someone who has had the lived experiences that they are trying to wrestle with so i encourage that um to the director of the shelter lisa

[71:00] and and then i'm assuming that we'll continue a discussion on hoa feasts and look into how we can help remediate that so yeah absolutely thank you secretary yeah kurt's been working on this and we'll continue to follow up with council right and thank you for your email back today and i think the the part that we'll have to wrestle with is is whether there's options for providing relief or you know given this what do we do okay and then some of the other issues that we're raised towing and large houses we're going to get to just a minute anything else on open comment all right well thank you to all the people that came to speak to us on those matters and we have some work to do before we move on to our consent agenda we have some special guests in the crowd i understand we have the we belows from cub scout troop 371 in the crowd from south boulder maybe you gentlemen you can stand up

[72:10] um i understand they're with us to uh as part of their understanding of local government so hopefully we won't confuse that further let me just say not all the meetings are this exciting but thank you for coming okay and with that your consent agenda tonight is items a through q okay in a couple of these um we're going to work through a few things specifically let's just let's just tick through them well on the state and federal legislative agenda lisa thank you for adding that on about the rocky flats that was very helpful um let's see what else do we want to mention um and i think we also want to say thank you to david abelson who

[73:02] contributed a lot to that he's the manager of the stewardship council executive director executive director as well as carl castillo but it was a group effort and i think and also i want to thank david lucas of fish and wildlife service all of those people helped contribute comments and i think it has created a much clearer document in terms of exactly what the position of the city of boulder is with regard to rocky flats anything else on the legislative agenda okay just real quickly i wanted to thank tom um for composing a paragraph regarding criminal justice reform yep excellent yes um is there anything else i know we need to stop on towing and and on adus so i guess um

[74:00] [Music] i guess we was is there anything before we get to those last two i'm i'm going to send an email out on our consent agenda item a is about the marijuana advisory panel study session summary and i'm fine with just approving that but i'm going to send an email out to council tomorrow about additional thoughts on the direction i think maps should go and specifically i think they should probably have a few more meetings but i will wait till tomorrow and and send all of this out okay nearby it was just brought to my attention and i just wanted to make sure um in item 3c that i think there was some direction by council that had not do as much proactive work and i don't know that it was

[75:00] quite covered as clearly in the notes as maybe we would like it so just to know that that is actually there that we're not looking for proactive work but to be doing work that is either assigned by council or um follows our work plan well so that wasn't quite my understanding i thought we gave it more of a balanced direction on that one to say that hey you shouldn't all be pursuing doing nothing but pursuing your own tasks you should be focused on the council agenda but there would be opportunities with the end of your letter and also possibly with a mid-year letter for you to give us some additional ideas so i want to make sure that they preserve the flexibility to bring some some ideas to the table sure and i i i personally and fine fine with some of that again it was brought to my attention in an email so i i just didn't see i like the idea of some flexibility but i think we were well my intention was to curb some of what was going on and i don't know mary so i would just like to make a suggestion that we um table this for the

[76:02] moment and wait until we read through habb's letter to us and then um discuss that this at the retreat when we come to each of the boards and commissions letters that work yeah but meanwhile we're going to approve the minutes right okay all right so adus um somebody wanted to make one last suggestion um this is your opportunity you don't okay i do have a question uh you have a question okay so tom um on adus when when it gets to when we're talking about saturation what is our process if in a particular area that saturation has been achieved is there some kind of a a way to appeal i don't know i can i can check that unless there's somebody in the audience there's really smart people sitting in the audience right here who might be able to answer

[77:01] that question lisa good evening i think we should mention for the boy scouts that adus or accessory dwelling units sorry okay jay stugnis um housing and human services so if an applicant comes in and the saturation limit has been reached they're placed on a wait list and if a slot becomes available they're notified but there is not an opportunity to appeal it's basically a standard either you exceed it or you don't so if i could just go a little farther so let's say i have an illegal adu and um i personally or this is an opportunity to let the sun shine in and let people who have been having an illegal adu come forward and get it certified and what do we do in a case like that where you want that person to come forward but now their neighborhood is already

[78:00] saturated so help me through that process because we want people to be compliant yet that person may be having an illegal adu for financial purposes or whatever so how how can we work this through well you could increase the saturation limit but as we talked about during the process my sense is um there are very few properties currently in the city that are at the saturation limit there's more because we have included non-conforming structures right but you know this will become a bigger problem say in five or six years is my prediction um and i would say council should come back in a few years and see where we are at the saturation rate um and if we're turning people away or we're trying to legalize their units or not but i don't think it's going to be an immediate problem okay no that's good lisa can i just add one i'm sorry sam if you don't mind one

[79:01] little correction there's always a right to take us to court i think you'd lose in this case since it's pure math but i didn't want to let people know that you have because you always have a due process right to challenge anything the government does so there is an appeal right ultimately to court it just wouldn't be a very effective one since you've drafted the law there's a number unless we got the number wrong which is why you could go to court um there's really very little chance of winning such an appeal and then just one last question and it has to do with an appeal of let's say i'm willing to do affordable housing um but and i already have uh adu and it's illegal um but now my house is or my adu or oau is 815 square feet how do we deal with that so that's 15 feet over the right so 800 well there's still the opportunity for a variance process okay right you yeah and i just wanted to make sure that is

[80:00] still in there definitely thank you okay i saw jill and sam well and um you you brought it up but i just wanted to bring up non-conforming structures again before we move forward with this because there were a number of us who did not agree that they should contribute and at that council meeting we did say that we keep an eye on that we've heard from citizens already that it it's effectively shut down their their area so please do keep watching that because i think everyone agreed that you know if it was a real hindrance maybe they would reconsider we'll do that okay and then i had a question um i think there were three um adus proposed that couldn't go through because of saturation at the ten percent limit that were on a waiting list correct would those all be allowed at a 20 saturation two of the three um unfortunately the third one was because of non-conforming structures they're at um 19 they're 19 so they would not be eligible okay so that answers my question thank

[81:00] you okay so that's good for you to use okay toeing maybe i should turn this to you that you've proposed a few amendments to what's before us do you want tom to do that i'll just let tom go through it i presume it's in the presentation well there is a presentation because this is consent but i'm happy to describe the proposed amendments quickly if you'd like that's right okay so um yeah i will briefly just um go over what led up to those suggestions um megan we're looking at these right yes okay yes and i just real quickly yes that has the correction so um i spoke with um megan vancil as well as um read through the correspondence between mr hunnis and um tom regarding the the signs at um his sign count that he did in the in the downtown area and then uh

[82:02] megan's concern about the the size and quantity of signs we discussed megan and myself discussed perhaps doing number of creating a cutoff for who had to comply with the sign portion of the ordinance by cut off a number of units in a multi-family building and and then bob and i had a discussion about it but we didn't really know where that cut off should be for a number of units so i consulted again with megan and long story short um the recommendation changed to that of um those properties with less than x number of toes per whatever time period so in my mind the the per two per year is sort of placeholders um open for discussion among them

[83:00] okay um and you have a few other on signs what are you doing i'll let tom just go over and read quickly so mary asked me to draft let me just go back in in your packet there are two proposed amendments one that would require the towing company to return any personal property you may recall when the in the version passed on first reading or second reading we the council amended it to provide that any personal property used in the person's trade should be returned because we heard stories about somebody who couldn't who lost their job because whatever whatever they needed to do their job was in their car when it was towed and as i reflected on this it seemed to me that it didn't seem right that any personal property shouldn't be returned and then it just created a sort of um issue of proof of whether or not i need my laptop say or my phone for my job i mean i could argue i need both uh and somebody who perhaps didn't have didn't

[84:00] do that wouldn't be able to get their laptop back and the i guess the theory is and and so what i heard was that the towing companies did this before the administrative hearing in the puc and they basically parsed out what property should be returned it's almost like the property is being held hostage so that they get the payment and they have the car it doesn't seem like they should be able to keep other property so it just seemed to me that that was a reasonable extension of council's intent so i i included it on my own initiative in the packet the other one was a concern that was raised by boulder housing partners on singling out sustainable housing supported housing units for the the spanish and sci and symbol additions to the signs uh i asked her to to contact all of the others uh supported housing programs in the city and nobody else got back to us at all so i don't know that it's a huge problem but then that may be addressed by some of the

[85:00] other things that mary has suggested and one suggestion that she's made is in addition to limiting the application of the sign requirement to people who tow more frequently than twice a year and again that number is a placeholder is to just make everybody comply by feb by january of 2020. just make it simple don't uh don't single out particular people and go ahead and just make it uniform for everybody for january of 2020. that was one option another one was just a smaller tweak and that was to add new signs to the list of things that would have people who would have to comply by february of 2019. and the rationale was if somebody's replacing a sign anyway they should certainly put the spanish and symbol on it since they're paying for a new sign and so that mary and i just discussed this state and she raised the question of well what if somebody's not doing new construction but they're say renovating the outside of their building and replacing everything would they have to do it and i said no not under our language so we came up this idea of just requiring new signs so you have several

[86:01] options in front of you that you can just give us direction and i've drafted amendments uh the the ones i just discussed are in front of you on a piece of paper and the others are in the packet thank you tom so i had one quick question about the thinking um with putting spanish on as well as the international towing symbol would it be adequate if we did the international towing symbol um as a way to make it less expensive for people to do yeah i think so as long as it's clear that they need to what number they need to call sure yeah so i was going to make that suggestion as a way of making this more palatable to the folks who have to go put it up that if there's some way they can retrofit or just have an international towing symbol that goes next to or as part of the sign that's already there i was just considering eliminating any other language requirement so i should be clear there is no

[87:01] recognized international towing system that i could symbol that i could find um i know when i've traveled abroad there have been those towing symbols and they use them you know but for other things like yield signs and stop signs there are international recognized international symbols i looked and looked and couldn't find any the symbol that there is a symbol that seems to be universally used but i don't think it's adopted by any international authority or anything it's just it's a picture of a tote of a truck being towing a car that you see again when you travel abroad you see it all the time and that's what you mentioned here right yeah i just said a symbol depicting a truck towing a car because i didn't want any confusion i mean i think that that's good enough or you could use spanish if you prefer yeah right but but i i think there's also you know we want to make sure we're effective so that whatever is on the sign is clear to the person who's parking there but i think one of the speakers i think cindy brought up just the aesthetics and going from i think she said 18

[88:01] by 24 to 20 doubling it would increase by twice yeah so and that's an awful lot of material to be using so for me i'd like it to be small but obvious and international and i guess there's a discussion on the international towing symbol but the simpler the better i think okay aaron so regarding the the symbol i mean could we and put language in the ordinance such that um we leave it up to the city manager to uh determine rules for what that must look like so you could have a few options you could have a minimum size things like that right because we we don't want it to be you know half inch by half inch and we want so is that something that we could yes and for rule making okay so it sounds like we're getting a consensus there what about can i just say the but i i think you would want you would always want the the

[89:01] symbol for towing i mean you could also have spanish language but i would you would always want the symbol that way it'd be more uniform yeah is everybody agreeing with this yes all right so before we get on to the um the threshold for signage for residential i think i think what's being proposed though is there'd be no new signage required for commercial properties is that correct um you and i spoke about that yesterday and i did not ask tom to draft that um i i i forgot so i'll make it as a proposal then ever or not before 2020. um well ever i guess it would be let me just throw that out as a proposal and see if people can live with that oh hold it don't we have okay cindy yeah i would like to hear what bob is proposing i mean i don't know how much predatory towing happens in commercial zones but it seems like a a lot to be asking unless it's very very prevalent yeah that's where i was going cindy i uh my guess is this mostly happens in residential i think bob made a really

[90:00] great um analysis of the signage costs and commercial properties and my guess is that people who engage in commerce downtown or other commercial districts probably kind of get it and i think those are largely signed anyway so i'm less concerned about about requiring more signage in those places where there's probably adequate signage and there's probably not a whole lot of predatory training i do want to have a robust discussion about what the threshold is for the residential but i just want to divide the world into residential commercial and suggest that there's no new signage required for commercial all the other rules would apply to commercial that's why i asked cindy that question but the signage new signage requirement would not under my proposal aaron so i see we're going with that bob i wonder if we could leave in the requirement for new signage that when new signage is placed it does contain the towing symbol sure yes they're renovating the building they put a new sign up surely because that doesn't seem like an onerous thing at all and i think the universal symbol or whatever one we come up with would be helpful yeah no i think that's i agree with that approach

[91:01] does that work for folks okay so um let's talk about thresholds for residential areas it seems to me that i think the threshold should be a little bit higher but that we shouldn't just let folks that have a lot of towing off the hook until 2020. let me ask a question about my question about that it was in this interesting proposal that mary made about um that the threshold be i think was two toes a year maybe that's different number let me ask a question of tom if he knows tom do you know does the police department keep keep record of that the the one thing i was a little bit concerned about is if we if we made this the sign change requirement to a certain number of units we know exactly how many units there are there's a certain number of toes that's going to change from year to year and i don't know how closely we track that go ahead i'm sorry i did speak with chief testa before making that proposal and they do keep information on that and it could become easily accessible so

[92:01] that that's um that is completely possible and within the system already to some extent so and bob the way i drafted it the par the person who the property owner would have to demonstrate they would have the burden of proving that they only had a couple of toes so let's just kind of play this out um so if um there's telling that's happening in a particular property and we notice they don't have the updated signage we would go to them and say why don't you have the updated signage and they would have the burden of proof to show that they were below whatever threshold we established so i wrote it was as a defense to a violation offense to violation thanks okay great thanks so you're saying that you'd have to but what triggers them to who goes and says you know what it's time for you to signage there's too much towing happening here so it would be so we would say that the science with the signs if only if they got cited for an inadequate sign would they then be able to say no i've only had a couple of toes in the last year

[93:00] don't we need to be a little more proactive and and go and require it to happen where we see that predatory towing's happening that we say hey you need to go change your signs too many people are being confused well so that's that's an enforcement issue i know but i want to i wrote what the the the exclusion as a defense so if there's lots of towing going on there'd be no question they wouldn't be able to defend on that ground okay i just want to make sure it's obvious to them the trigger that when they cross a threshold that they need to go do something as opposed to we got you after the fact and you know what i'm saying but you're saying that you think that this is the best way to write an enforcement yes go ahead and ask a question then tom like how is enforcement going to work because if this is something that police officers are going to look at regularly then they might waste a lot of their time being like oh you don't have the sign up oh well let's look it up and they say we don't need to and then you go to another one oh you don't have to sign up if it's something that people

[94:01] are looking for regularly in enforcement it seems like this would cause a lot of sort of back and forth and yeah so i i i don't know how the police are going to enforce this or even what unit's going to enforce this or if it's a police at all so i can't really speak for them generally these things are complaint based and so if we have a problem in an area which i mean we've heard some commentary about this is a problem in only certain areas then we would i assume we would address that and if the signs weren't adequate we'd make them change it if it's a complaint based i think it would work out yeah i i mean i can't promise and well we we know we have some problem areas right now do we have to wait until we have so many toes in order to say hey you need to no that's not the way i wrote it so that they would the we could go out in an area where there's a problem and say you have to update your signs depending on what date you say that they have to be updated by well every night i would propose that that we take the known problem areas and

[95:02] be proactive there okay so that's i guess my question is just to make sure that in the towing ordinance it's clear that wherever there's a problem you're required to fix the signs okay so um yeah i believe we have bored them yes but it was nice having you it probably happened a while ago so anyhow are we authorized on this to go on the offense and say here here here and here you need to update sooner i would say yes that's the part i want to make sure okay okay so i i think i've heard consensus on most things do you you does it does council want an amendment that will exclude commercial properties from the new signage requirement forever except except when there's a there's a change to the structure or the the except when there's a requirement that the sign change anyway or the science in fact changing the new science for new signs

[96:00] would have to have a symbol on it for commercial properties right so i had three cases down and these were the suggestions of mr hannas let me find my um it would be in new construction chain at new construction change of ownership and um external remodel and external remodel so those would be the three cases of ownership yeah what's that change of ownership i think i don't know if that would be a trigger but the other two when there's construction going on or some kind of renovation it seems that that could be would be more equitable to have it included then that i'm fine with that instead of

[97:01] change of ownership so two conditions as opposed to three conditions the the two conditions being um new construction or external remodel i think change of ownership is a good trigger too i'll just put it out there i agree and you know the idea for many of these places is that they will be multi-family uh residential right and so change of ownership would be this is just commercial we're talking about this is just commercial that we're not gonna require okay okay i mean eventually you just want them to be on signs right so it's universal so it just seems to me that one of the things we talked about last time was people having having applications they could put on existing signs but if there isn't any change and so that's something if there's room on the existing signs yeah it's just so when commercial properties changing hands somebody's making a lot of money somebody can put up some more sense

[98:00] right so probably true so i guess if our goal is to have eventually have signs around the city that all have the sign then a change of ownership is a good good time to do that as well i'll just put it out there so i i agree suzanne yeah i don't care okay so so one more question uh how did you want to treat the implementation date did you want to move everything to 2020 uh or still keep subcategories at 20 at february 1st 2019. well the ones that we need to go on the offense with i would like to be able to do that sooner and you guys assure me that that can happen so where there's a problem we should have it actually now you need to think about it if we're effectively carving out commercial and we're going to go to mary's idea on the frequent towers why not have everything applied february 1. missouri reason for grandfathering seem like wait a minute well i mean so

[99:00] we've effectively carved out commercials except for where there's a big change right so that should that should have an immediate effective day right if a building sells next march why not yeah yeah and then on the residential side you know with under mary's proposal where there there's there's two types of residential buildings those that do a lot of telling in those that don't so those that do a lot of towing should have to put up signs right away right don't we all agree with that and those who don't do towing then we don't really just it's no but eventually they too need to come i see what you're saying is you want that too yeah eventually it should be universal you see this the tow truck sign and eventually it could be universal via the new construction remodel or change of ownership same same rules as commercial so in other words that what you're proposing is as of february 1st 2019 that places that have a substantial numbers of toes would be required to put them into place by that date every and i'm talking residential here every other residential property would be required

[100:01] to do so at the time of those one of those three triggers right correct and my point is is i'm not sure that we need to defer the effective days of those three triggers to 2020 when i make it 2019. but basically you don't as long as you're until you're getting a lot of tone you never have to come to compliance unless you do an upgrade or change of ownership upgrade change of ownership a lot of italian you could go for several years without yeah that's okay is that all right so could i make one small suggestion i would push the date back from february 1st 2019 if you're going to have the city manager draft rules there's like a 60-day requirement for notice for rules so and we're in december already so if if you want us to design a symbol and produce rules i would say march 1st or april 1st at the earliest for implementation for that works for me that worked for you so which which date are you picking april first would be my first yeah apple first that was a softball that was it was

[101:01] did you want more time you want more tests okay so do you're going to make these changes uh i made them i just want to read them to you if you give me a second i know this is not a negotiation but would you mind if we called megan up again because i what i don't want to do is i pass this on second i just want to ask her a real quick question second reading and then get another letter from them saying you missed something really really big let's we got to pick up the pace here so megan could you come up real quick this is this is a this is a non-verbal answer thumbs up or thumbs down okay are we good um i think so i the only thing that was not discussed was the the two per year versus if that's going to change but everything else was wonderful okay okay so we just need to figure out the threshold

[102:01] for when you have a problem yes yeah here's not very many when you think about predatory versing not good right that's just smiling aren't we kind of basing enough of complaint well yeah yeah and we already know some places we want to fix so propose something more than two in any given month as opposed to two per year um well that means that that you it because if you if you say um two per month and you you make it 24 in a year then you could have 24 toes in a month but if you leave it to more than two in any given month then so we say that if there has been at least one month in the last year in which two or more toes was performed you does that really separate the wheat from the chaff

[103:01] well i mean the places where we know we have problems what's the rate of towing that do we have any sense no it was definitely more than 24 in a year i will say that i just wonder if it would be easier to measure them on an annual basis rather than on a monthly basis um i just wonder if we should pick a number like five or eight or ten and do it for a year yeah and whatever it seems it's feeling to me like whatever number we pick is sort of arbitrary it is well it's true but that's what laws are we but based on our best guess i don't want to be in the paper again what i meant is you have to pick numbers if you're going to have measurable thresholds so in that sense um and as always we will we i've already

[104:00] got assignments to bring this back to you it'll come back next year if we've made a massive mistake we can correct it so as you say if you pick a number do you want me to say five in a 12-month period yeah i like that i like that okay so let me read to you what i've drafted based on what i've heard and then you can just adopt it as a motion and we can be done on the next reading if that's okay okay all right so this this is from section seven seven five b one um provide clear notice on this is an imposition of an obligation on the property owner provide clear notice on signs of pavement markings meeting the requirements of paragraph 7614 v3 brc 1981 that unauthorized vehicles will be towed away at the owner's expense including the name and telephone number of each towing company authorized to remove any vehicle provided however that after april 1 2019 the sign shall include a symbol depicting a tow truck towing a car is set forth in regulations adopted by the city manager and the requirements of subsection a above shall not apply to commercial non-regional

[105:00] properties except for except after external remodels change of ownership or on new construction the requirement see the requirements subsection national apply to residential properties unless there are more than five toes in a 12-month period and or there's an external remodel change of ownership or new construction seems right okay it just seems what if they're legitimate reasons to tow in five days but having adequate signage is not this huge it's a good thing right having the adequate signage is good but i would also think it would be helpful just in terms of thinking forward to have those numbers from chief testa mary said that there are numbers of toes that they they register them they what happens is when when the tow company tows the car they call the police and the police makes a note of that

[106:00] so that would just be helpful well somebody can do a little homework before the next council meeting and if we have to change it and adopt it by emergency we can do that okay okay erin we didn't talk about this but but i would like to see it so that all property has to be returned to council agree with that oh yeah yeah yeah so i'm happy to go ahead and then move the consent agenda as amended with tom's amendments that he read out for the towing ordinance which is item three n as well as adopting the amendment in our packet that says that all personal property must be returned second um do we need to speak to this well i'd just like to thank mary for bringing this forward i really appreciate it this is clearly a very big issue for the people it happens too and hopefully we can get a little closer to reasonable regulations and defend people who are vulnerable here thank you and thanks also bob stepped up a lot on this one

[107:01] too appreciate it and for the productive engagement of barha and other community members yeah and tom for working with us yeah this is good team ball okay shall we vote yep it's a roll call vote we'll start with council member nagel hi weaver hi yates aye young yes brockett hi carlyle aye grano aye jones aye mr yes the motion passes unanimously okay your next item is your call-up check-in you have three before you tonight a used review for 2920 baseline a site in use review for 2920 diagonal highway and an amendment to a site review for 5100 reservoir road we just passed the ada ordinance

[108:01] oh great we're going to pause for a moment um we did just pass the adu measure on sixth reading and we wanted to call that out good yeah i just wanted to say thanks to staff and thanks to council for having worked this to the point that we could have a a unified vote on it and that it's something that we really want to try in the community to liberalize those rules and we will be watching them and we'll return to it in a year or so just to see how the program's working out we just did we just did what did you say that's all right we voted roll call okay so we just want to shout it out the 80 using we were doubling saturation i mean it's a big deal and it was a lot of work and we worked really hard on it and you know it increased the ability to say do a detached adu in the rh sorry the rl zones so that

[109:01] was also new a special shout out to jaysegnet for all the hard week he's done over the last year and a half or two years on this yep and and also the community and um this is significant and i really hope we get more adus and oau's and i think it'll be great for the community and i'm really looking forward to it and thank you not without airbnb excuse me um and i do want to call out what jill said which is that we'll be monitoring this and seeing if we need to make tweaks later on so okay with that we're going to our call-ups do you want to read them again just read the first one uh the use review for 2920 baseline did you want to talk about them both together yeah okay go ahead do them all site and use review for 2990 diagonal highway and an amendment to a site review for 1500 reservoir road okay lisa okay so i'm not interested in

[110:00] calling any of these up but i do want to say that when i first saw the two first call-ups on on baseline and diagonal one is to demolish the existing mcdonald's and reconstruct the new mcdonald's and the other one is to demolish a gas station and reconstruct a or construct as starbucks my what popped out at me is that both of them had drive-throughs and so i i wrote um charles and thank you charles for just answering my questions but i i am concerned that of the number of drive-throughs that we're allowing and um i don't know how big of an issue it is but it seems to go counter to our goals of reducing carbon emissions and so um i just wanted to make that comment and i'll probably write something about that

[111:01] later but this is a healthy community we don't need the inching forward in our cars in order to go in and get food but cindy so lisa when you write up that piece on carbon emissions maybe you'd also include this blinky light right out here on canyon which backs up cars clear past 9th street during okay so that's just just a suggestion i'm not interested in that because i like blinky lights and i think pedestrians rule so in terms of call ups any other comments on on these three okay i think as you noted we're not big fans of drive-throughs but we have much bigger fish to fry okay and we're going to tonight and we're going to tonight okay your public hearing tonight is second reading of ordinance 8302 authorizing the acquisition of property interest

[112:00] used or owned by public service company doing business as excel energy [Applause] so we have a presentation tonight from the director for climate initiatives steve katnak and he will then be turning it over to kathy haddock who will explain the ordinance before you in a powerpoint steve you want to go first good evening council steve kapnak the director of climate initiatives i just have the privilege of kicking this off as you all know that we are working forward with refining and defining a lot of the costs and the associated information for an informed vote in 2020

[113:02] and this is one of the key milestones in moving forward to identify what it will cost to either purchase or acquire the assets of excel energy so with that i'll turn it over to kathy thank you that was quick yes it was it's just a huge milestone and we're very very pleased to be here i am delighted to be here tonight um the last time we did this was august 20th of 2013 when condemnation was first approved for these assets and a lot of stuff has changed since then so i will go through where we are and then talk about where we've been and where we're going both in the context of municipalization and in the context of i'm sorry in the context of condemnation

[114:00] and and then also the whole municipalization where we are right now is we know what the separation plan is to create two different systems from what we have that's something we didn't have in 2013 that is huge and the puc has determined that what excel will be left with is at least as safe effective and reliable as a system as it has now so that takes a huge part out of what potentially could have been part of the condemnation and the decision has already been made we also know how costs are going to be allocated for all of the construction post if the go no go vote passes and there is actual separation construction to separate the two what the existing system is it too all of that will be paid by the city of boulder and we just did the agreement for that with excel and that was filed with the pac on october 26th we also know all the assets that the

[115:00] city will need to acquire and what excel will need to retain this is to the best that we can know now before we start doing all the field work and before the engineers get there most of the records that we had were schematic rather than as built so we presume we know our facilities are and excel presumes it knows where its facilities are but there will be some changes as we go forward but for the most part to the tune of over 104 000 different pieces of equipment and 1700 easements we know what it is that we need to acquire i'm sorry kathy can you speak into the microphone communications has let me know that they can't hear you i'm sorry thank you it was none sorry thanks so we are at a major pivot point from the past work has kind of been how do we municipalize and now we're going to how much will it cost to do it because we

[116:02] know basically how we're going to do it okay so where we have been is we filed actually filed the common condemnation in 2014 last time based on the best engineering we had at the time the puc then said that we couldn't require excel to take power for its customers that was wheeled over excel facilities so we had to do a different separation plan the city filed the current separation plan and that was what was approved that i just talked about before the the advantages of knowing that through the ph puc is that we know that excel will have a safe effective and reliable system at the end which is a huge component of determining whether we are taking to the extent that we are potentially damaging excel um by taking its facilities since the puc has said they are left with a hole that damage is

[117:00] minimal if anything it also specifies that transfer possession of the property can't happen until after all the construction happens to separate the system so in the process we'll have the go no go vote after we know all the costs if that passes there will be all the construction for separation that will happen which we estimate about three years and then there will be a cut over date which is when all the engineers do their magic flipping switches and everything so that the systems are actually operating completely independently that's the first time that boulder will take possession the condemnation law says boulder pays for the property when the um the when we actually get possession so that helps clarify that issue because that was confusing for that three-year period before this ruling it also requires excel to work with the city to design and construct what is necessary for this separation

[118:00] and put the issue of assets what the puc calls inside the substations basically they're talking about inside the fence where the the power is stepped down from transmission levels to distribution levels all that is determined by through the cells oh process we have been through that and have final reports on most of the substations and just met with them today talking about the next step for agreements so that they can do the detailed design for all of those facilities too okay so what ordinance this ordinance does is it allows acquisition it does not require condemnation but it allows it if we need it if negotiations have to fail or they have to be futile in order for condemnation to be filed but because condemnation is filed does not mean you can't continue to negotiate after that time and that can be confusing to some people you kind of have to have a failure point by all the condemnation action and then the parties

[119:02] could settle the case any time after that filing until the trial time the um the other thing with this part is because we file condemnation does not mean we are committed to buy the property there is still the opportunity to make the decision and all of the agreements and the puc ruling made it clear that there's going to be this no go go no go vote and so that we are getting the purchase price either through agreement or by condemnation but we are not committing to purchase it until we start construction the the describes the necessary assets that we need to operate the city system that's both inside and outside of substations we also don't want to strand facilities there may be some things out there that neither of us need for our

[120:01] respective systems a lot of the smart grid equipment is part of that and the problem with electrical systems and steve poke me or jump in here if i say this wrong is if you don't maintain them that stuff can start to fall off and swing around and and interfere with other facilities and become a danger so things that nobody will be using we want to acquire so that we can get rid of them if they need to be got rid of essentially the this the ordinance only describes the facilities that are necessary for boulder system we're not acquiring extra stuff we have done the best that we can to identify what that is now but the puc approval of the transfer of assets and the transfer of asset list itself recognizes that there are several pieces of there that may be over inclusive and other places under inclusive so there may be things added and taken away it's we're not acquiring just the list of

[121:01] assets that the puc approved are what we determine is necessary is a whole different communication yes what the ordinance doesn't do is it doesn't allow us to acquire any of excel's business and this has been something that goes with the going concern issue but when you acquire a business you get the goodwill you get the benefits of the advertising you get all of their proprietary stuff you get their operations manual all the things that they put a lot of money into investing to give we are not getting those things and excel made it very clear through the puc process that we would have to pay extra for those so we are not acquiring those things we can settle the case after the condemnation is filed and the public attachment which i just looked at again today it's almost impossible to read that spreadsheet of a hundred and four thousand assets when you put an eight and a half by eleven gets very small but that is we gave an example for the

[122:01] public part because of the critical energy infrastructure information law this is part of homeland security act that we really don't want draw maps for terrorists to decide to figure out how to sabotage water systems electric systems or anything else so all of these things are available and if council wants to see any more detail they can but we want to be really careful in what we make public so that the public can be completely informed but we're not crossing the line by providing information that would cross the ceii threshold the um the other thing is that will change is that the puc refers to inside and outside of substations in its order and that's not really the way the electric people refer to the assets and everything is divided up by ferc accounts and that's how utilities take

[123:00] accounting of all their facilities and so all the property list for the facilities we're going to acquire those are divided up in the ferc accounts that are defined by ferc federal energy regulatory commission and so that's the lingo we'll be using now rather than inside and outside substations um oh i'm sorry just i did notice it says the bottom line list of assets allows for addition and substations it should say substitution so the next steps that we have are just in the condemnation action that if you approve this ordinance we are ready to file a notice of intent to acquire to excel we are required to identify the assets to the extent necessary that they can do their own appraisal we think all of the work a lot of which they've cooperated with in the past couple months allows us to do that um then we have to do good faith negotiations and try to reach a price

[124:00] with excel excel has made several indications and statements and stuff that this is going to condemnation that negotiations won't be successful but we still are going to try and see whether there's any way we can we can get to anything if we end up having to file condemnation there's kind of a three-month period generally where the city's authority to condemn is challenged and if we survive that burden there are several legal issues is it for a public purpose is it necessary and did we do good faith negotiations once we get beyond that the burden switches to it's all about valuation and it's excel's burden to prove that they are entitled to more than what our offer is the um during that time there's i just wondered if there was a timeline on that ladder piece that you just said yes we anticipate that the whole process or take 12 to 13 months is is what we're

[125:00] looking at so if you look at three months for the kind of preliminary thing and this is pretty rough then you have uh nine to ten months for getting to trial we have one more question yeah just um at the top you said that there's um some numbers are thrown back and forth there's some negotiations are those numbers from us and from excel public information or is that kind of behind the scenes and are you talking about the numbers of appraisals yeah we we don't have those yet no no when you have them will the community know what excel's number is and what our number is when we get to that point yes when the appraisals are filed in court they will absolutely know we're trying to figure out what will become public much before that probably the appraisals themselves wouldn't but numbers probably will be great thanks and the reason why i put in the motions in lemonade part this is another place where condemnation litigation is very different from other litigation this is where we

[126:01] make motions and argue about what the jury is going to hear when they determine the value so if there's a dispute about things like going concern it likely will be resolved as part of the motion in lemonade process if there's other disputed issues about evidence that can come in or can't come in that's a pretty intense process in a condemnation case to get those decisions made because the jury or the commission can only hear issues about valuation there can't still be legal issues up in the air by the time it gets to them and that's a very broad statement in a con in any litigation legal issues are always up in the air but you're generally trying to resolve everything before you go to the fact finder can i ask a wonky question are there interlocutory appeals here in other words if there are disagreements on the law issue before you get the fact issue do those go up on appeal and are decided by a court of appeals or does

[127:00] the whole process happen and then appeals are taken after the facts have been determined it can go either way there are several points in a condemnation case where interlocutory appeals have been recognized and that's an appeal before the whole case is over with that so that would be common if there was a dispute about the three-month process in our authority to condemn that if one or the other side is well if if we're unhappy with it that means probably that the case was dismissed so we might appeal if excel is unhappy with it they may ask the court and probably we'd ask to go to the supreme court on this because we're already at the supreme court or have been to the supreme court i'm part of this and then it's up to the court to take it they don't have to take it and then we have a valuation hearing and then we have the number it is during the discovery emotions in lemonade that will actually get excel's appraisal so we'll know their number i'm not sure if we know it much before that

[128:03] so common questions we get is how do we know if we're talking about all this amendment to what facilities we're going to acquire what land we're going to acquire and all that kind of stuff how do we do it well the condemnation law recognizes that as you go more into this that there are there is more known as you go through discovery and the assets may need to be added or subtracted so it's liberally allowed in condemnation action and excel called us today and wanted to they were concerned that our memo had been too specific or um basically stated that we are optimistic yes that we have that we absolutely know all of the facilities that we're going to acquire and so i really want to be clear there's going to be a lot of work going on particularly as we go through detailed design and do the field work and stuff there will be amendments and the list of assets recognizes that

[129:02] everybody knows that so that's not really a question to anybody and i don't if anything conveyed that we know absolutely today exactly what switch we are acquiring in every circumstance i didn't mean to convey that and that's not right the other thing that they were concerned about is that there's a lot of work to do on the substations process with excel's vote process they have given us system impact studies for all of the substations those have more detail than they normally provide in systems impact studies including how all the facilities will be divided up inside the fence so we are much farther along than we would be in normal cases so we have enough to go ahead and do appraisals for those the other thing that's interesting is when you're appraising property because you think of property in boulder is all

[130:01] high or all valuable or whatever and that electrical systems are very expensive or whatever but there's two things that are different about appraising the electric property because an investor looks at what they can make off of property when they're going to buy it that's part of how you determine the value of property you have to consider the fact this is regulated monopoly and they cannot make as much profit as they want they are limited to the profit that they can make by the puc so there is that factor that makes things difficult well i shouldn't say difficult but just adds a whole other dimension to how we do the appraisals wait kathy does that mean it's a governor on the system it means or it just makes it more complicated i'm not sure what you're saying it's a governor on the system because what we have to pay the fair market value is to find what a willing buyer would pay and a willing

[131:00] seller would sell for if neither was under any constraints and they both wanted to go forward so you know that's hard that's prediction that's appraisers you know doing intelligent guessing or you know whatever they're trying to make their best guess based on the record one of the things that you do there's three different approaches to doing that and one is the income approach to value and that's when an investor would look like okay if i buy this stuff how much can i make off of it over the next 10 years 20 years or whatever and if you're going to make a profit of 50 so you're going to pay a whole lot different price than if you're only going to make a profit of 10 that help yeah yeah but you made it sound like it was complicated and not a benefit and it sounds like it's a benefit because it limits yeah i think it's a benefit it's just an extra layer and yes and there is a recognition we have the two appraisers that we have that are doing facilities appraisal have the separate designation for utility appraising and i believe what is there

[132:01] only 14 or 16 in the country or something like that and we have two of them and the other thing is we are valuing the land separate from the facilities the facilities are being evaluated by a national firm and the land is being valued by somebody local next um so where we are going with municipalization is it's you know going concern was there anything to say about then um senior i was just curious did you say as much as you want about it but but i guess what i should say as i said a little bit before about we're not buying the business there's a lot of things about the business we are not going to get so when people talk about going concern and compare it to a normal if we were buying a business that's comparing apples and oranges if you look at what an investor would pay because a potential profit that they're going to make after under a regulated monopoly that is already part of the income approach so you don't need

[133:01] to account for it separately as a separate going concern award and i should have backed up and said going concern is the thought process that if you are taking a business away from somebody you should not only pay them for the equipment and land you're buying but you should pay them for the loss of the business that they have built up and put a lot of investment in it's not an issue since we're not buying that and then so that's the only thing i had to say unless you have questions um the common questions no the where we are going with the like we talked about the condemnation process we think will take about 12 months at the same time all this is going on the existing cost agreement provides for the detailed design drawings by excel and the city excel will be doing what will be part of their system the city is doing what will be part of it the cost agreement has that coming in by october of 2019

[134:01] on a 12-month schedule the condemnation trial will be probably january february of 2020 and of course any predictions are probably going to be different than anything we predict but this is the best that we've got now the cost agreement also requires that the bids be back from those detailed design drawings by may 1st of 2020. so everything that we're doing for this is to get as many hard numbers or the best numbers that we can get by second quarter of 2020 so that the voters can make a go no go decision based on real numbers and that's all i have unless you have questions questions we were kind of asking as we went i just have one question um

[135:01] because we saw a settlement proposal from excel not too long ago does that give you any guidance as to what to expect there asked to be not really i mean all information is good and all information is helpful but in those and in anything else we've gotten from excel we have not gotten the basis for any numbers like this is a depreciating system this is a very old system so what you're going to pay for would be different than paying for the same thing that was comparatively new and didn't have to be replaced soon and and while we've received uh numbers from them there's we haven't seen anything close to an appraisal or something that would say how they got to those numbers man something sam you may remember i think their their calculation the value was based on the the bullish percentage of that system as a whole so like three percent of the value of their whole system and one of these kathy was saying is that there are a lot of newer towns in the state of colorado who have real new

[136:01] equipment and um so three percent across the board is not a fair valuation and so having professional appraisers do it is going to be a much more realistic number the other thing is excel has told us through the poc proceeding that they have not made any major capital investments in boulder since we started this and we know that there are new substations going up in thornton and other places that have not been that so their overall car cost is skewed towards newer companies so um what we're doing now is actually having people on the ground look at it and value these things as they would be valued by professional appraisers and yeah and i that's a great point and following up on that you know a percentage of what we are of their whole system is not an accepted uh appraisal method that is recognized by the courts there's three and that's not one of them and i would just make one more reminder when we saw that settlement offer it seemed like there were two ways in which excel was asking for going concern one is 1.8 times the value

[137:00] of the system and the other was uh 20 of the revenues for 10 years right and that received some commentary from folks who said that's double dipping right so i just thought i would remind us that that was a subject of discussion so thanks kathy for that update and i have a question regarding the good faith negotiations at what point and who determines that the negotiations have become futile i am so glad you asked that because i should have covered that before good faith negotiations for condemnation purposes are conducted by an expert so we're not sending steve out to go do it not that you're not an expert in a lot of things but we have somebody that is a negotiator that knows how to do it with condemnation or within the condemnation rules and that's the person that will be working with us and letting us know where we're going and so that we can make the

[138:00] determination about whether they're futile or not and what we're looking for is what the courts recognize as an impasse or being and is there is there any way that excel could extend it in order to extend our schedule i think that they will do that um that is a common tactic i think you know the call today that we don't know enough to even do an appraisal when our appraisals are almost done is you know kind of another differences of opinion that we're going to have so it would not surprise me at all that there's a lot of case law about that because that's a common tactic and condemnation is hard because government taking somebody else's land is not a concept that everybody likes and so it's value you know you're you're trying to balance interests but the balance is if if the city says this is necessary and that this is for a public purpose the courts don't allow

[139:02] the landowner to basically be a veto power over what the city has decided the city needs and so that expert that is conducting the good faith negotiations can they say well this is futile because they have um done these or performed these tactics by this kind of frequency and therefore that you know is there that is there any kind of um i guess um not an objective criteria that can determine when things break down it's not what i would say is objective is set down in a book if you do this this and this it you cross the line if you don't have that that and that you don't cross the line but the cases have been pretty clear like like there's a case that says seven days and no answer is enough good faith negotiations you know there's

[140:00] other times where that probably wouldn't be enough it's going to be very uh fact-based to the particular circumstances but what we'd be doing is trying to line it up with other cases and this is not an area where we've got a clear path of what is and what isn't okay thank you so let's go back to what sam was pointing out about um settlement um kathy and tom create if i'm wrong while the information that we received from excel um in the settlement discussions we had a year and a half ago two years ago um are interesting and informational um those excel is not bound by that and in fact those settlement offers are not even admissible in court is that right they can start with a whole new set of numbers and we can't go back and say well back in 2017 you gave us this number and we want to hold that hold you against hold that against you is that right bob i don't think so but we're never going to say something's not admissible in court in public i understand that but i'll just make a statement i think the colorado rules procedures say that settlement discussions that would be a position

[141:00] somebody would take but yeah thanks appreciate your lawyers anybody else you know and i guess i will say in following up to that the condemnation law really wants good evidence the only kind of out of left field evidence that is allowed is a property owner is allowed to give their opinion of value but otherwise the condemnation court requires all the appraisers to be qualified to have checked with the owners and buyers sellers of every property they don't kind of allow willy-nilly evidence in okay so shall we turn to public hearing how many people do we have signed up 12. okay let's get started um each person if you can start with your name and address you'll have three minutes don't have to use it and first up is nathan

[142:00] nice job good evening my name is nathan rohra and i live at 3355 apache road um thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight and for taking time to hear my thoughts regarding the steps boulder should take regarding climate change so i'm here tonight to urge you to prioritize municipalization in order to make a stronger effort to address climate change as i'm sure you're aware the u.n projects that we have around 12 years until we're unable to reverse the drastic effects of climate change we're already seeing the catastrophic effects as we're quickly approaching this deadline um just in the past month california has endured some of the most deadly wildfires in its history and because of this um a lot of my cousins in southern california had to evacuate and when i went back to visit northern california for this past thanksgiving holiday i had to bring back as many n95 masks as i could because they were all sold out in my hometown um

[143:00] unfortunately the effects of climate change are only getting worse and they will continue to spread across more areas until we could take action so with municipalization boulder will continue making steps in the right direction towards addressing the devastating effects of climate change democratizing our energy will ultimately give us the ability to meet the rising demand for renewable energy and to make a strong effort to address climate change on the local level this effort is what young people like me want and support we have made this clear through the ballot box time and time again we want to have a future where we could have the ability to live healthier lives and where the negative effects of climate change don't uproot our livelihood municipalization is the best way to achieve this climate change transcends county state and international borders the action we take now can change the outcome of our future boulder has already been a great model to other communities and we could continue to do so with municipalization

[144:03] so i want to conclude by thanking you for moving forward with municipalization and that i ask you to continue to do so thank you for your time and your consideration thank you adriana did i say that right adriana hello my name is ajanna lowry i live at 85 south 38th street thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts here tonight i am here today to show my strong support for boulder's plan to municipalization it's a scary time to be a young person i often wonder what kind of world my children will live in i question what other sacrifices my generation will have to make in order to account for the actions of those before us but ultimately i'm not afraid i'm eager hopeful and ready to change the paradigm in which we've been living i'm a senior in the environmental studies department at cu i have thought about climate change from just about

[145:00] every angle ecologically socially ethically in politics and economics and what i can say is there's no blueprint management strategy that will solve this problem because like nature's systems the factors in managing climate change are multifaceted and interdependent a few weeks ago we saw one of the most important elections of our lifetime boulder was a part of the district that ranked second in the nation for voter turnout why does this matter because clearly the constituents in the city are informed and care to be involved in what happens in their community with the presidential administration vehemently denying climate science it is imperative that local governments take the initiative in ensuring a livable world for future generations it is no longer a viable argument to say that we cannot invest in renewable energy because of economic impacts the most recent climate change report climate report claims that the effects of climate change will cost billions of dollars outweighing the cost of mitigation if we do not continue to invest in

[146:00] infrastructure which supports adaptive action and longevity our community will suffer boulder's plan for municipalization offers out an opportunity to be a leader in the glitter global community toward a decentralized energy system where local economies are incentivized to be innovative and stakeholders are able to participate in their local governance by shifting energy consumption toward renewables we show our commitment to clean air clean water and economic resilience in seeking environmental sustainability and energy independence we are promoting social equity and justice this is why i want to thank the city council and their supporters for their work on the path toward municipalization and urge you to continue representing the values of your constituents and for being unafraid to lead the way thank you thank you patrick my name is patrick murphy i live in boulder when it comes to the muni it is hard to be led by you

[147:00] or should i say bled by you here is a systematic muni hypothesis rejection a long list that rejects the hypothesis of muni success you should only need one of these to end the muni but i've got a list perhaps i'll read it twice we're going to find out here's the list the longer it goes the worse it gets try not to unhear this separation costs or originally estimated to be 10 million are now around 110 million taking millions from the general fund with no certainty of repayment from muni profits 30 percent increase in rates after 18 months as revealed by a cash flow analysis that had to be acquired by legal action outdated and inaccurate engineering and cost analysis as a basis to form a muni and a current court case because of that ignoring the fact that new renewables

[148:02] like the rush creek wind farm have already increased stranded costs and a failure to even include stranded costs in recent cost analysis the muni schedule was supposed to be complete last year they but maybe may extend to 2029 just to pay stranded costs while excel will be at 80 percent renewables by 2030 failure to include about 300 million ongoing concern costs as part of condemnation on the flimsy basis it has never been done in colorado even though it can occur in colorado and has occurred nationally original intent to take five thousand seven hundred gun barrel customers and facilities outside of the city ten million dollars and more in lost undergrounding trying to claim that shared polls don't decrease safety and reliability and thinking excel could be forced to share

[149:00] polls when there was no reason for them to do so costly legal missteps at the district court level and at the ferc numerous costly missteps at the puc failure to get a significant majority of voters to support anything other than limitations on the muni effort rejection of the conversion of all streetlights to leds for some bizarre reason while the towns around us have already accepted them boulder's early plans assumed no requirement to sit to submit separation to the puc assumed acquiring a 30-mile transmission loop without ferc approval assumed forcing excel to serve its customers over city-owned facilities assumed forcing excel to design build and test boulder side of the system assumed forcing excel to finance boulder separation be paid after completion the list is longer thank you patrick

[150:00] kerry and then evan i'm carrie chris janer i live in berthed which i neglected to say earlier and i'm a landlord in boulder um as some people in the room probably don't know i actually worked to keep our options open on i i donated marketing materials in 2010 to help boulder keep it its options open to not pursue another franchise agreement with excel and within a year i started to see all the problems that unfortunately i think have largely come true with a tremendous amount of uncertainty as we go forward including appeals as mr yates as councilmember yates has just barely touched on and you know at that time i embarked on a very difficult personal and advocacy lonely path and i sort of picked my

[151:00] horse in the race for lack of a better term i've always wanted boulder to reach its goals that's why i've stayed engaged in um in this process um but i have to say that you know i'm going to focus a little bit on what happened today with excel's announcement reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2030 is to me the most pivotal and amazing statistic i also heard from someone at excel today that and i hadn't seen this public publicly anywhere else but on saturday for the entire day colorado was served by 63 renewables that day and the modeling is just showing that we're just continually going in that direction i want to read now what jared polish said at the announcement today with with mr falk and others he said when i launched my campaign back in 2017 we had a bold agenda for our state to get 100 renewable by 2040.

[152:02] uh excel energy is exciting announcement today along with the strong chemicals communities like pueblo summit county fort collins denver and others across the state have embraced shows that we are leading the way forward right here in colorado by committing to a renewable and clean energy future and what makes this all the more interesting is that it's really a commitment to all eight states the the communities they serve in all eight states and you know i will say that um you know i could have just beat my head against the wall and trying to get you all to see that this could be a long and lengthy process and it might eventually lead to a path a path to nowhere but you know i'm really glad that i chose the path to try to advocate directly to excel um at great personal and and you know other costs to me just um because of the effort but um i'm really really proud of xcel energy and um they are making a difference and i do believe that they will be a model for other utilities

[153:00] because they're the first utility to make this kind of commitment um in the nation so thanks for your time thank you carrie evan and then brad my name is evan freiresh i live at 745 arapahoe boulder colorado although i'm a relatively recent resident of the city i've only lived here a year and a half i've been living in boulder county since 1978 and i'm a lifelong environmentalist and so this has been an issue that's been of concern for me for many many years i remember 30 years ago fighting excel regarding the fort saint very nuclear plant basically from my experience excel basically will promote what they make the most money at and now that we see that they are promoting more of a of a climate-friendly agenda it's not because of that it's because they recognize beginning to

[154:00] recognize what we've known all along that the alternative path is really the path to the future the city has got a divorce on its hand and as a divorce or a lawyer in my professional life i can recognize a lot of what is being talked about in relation to litigation and we need to stay tough because it's not going to be an easy process one of the things that i was thinking about today is when our citizens get to vote next on the muni donald trump is going to be up for reelection and i have a feeling our folks are going to come to the polls in big numbers we are david and excel is goliath they they they have a net income of 5 billion a year a gross income of about 11 billion dollars a year and that's the simple math and um so are they going to delay probably they

[155:00] don't want our citizens voting on this when basically they get to vote on kicking out donald trump and um but you know what we've been talking about this for a long time i think i had my first conversation in this building with will tor when my kid was 10 he's 28 now so whatever whenever the municipalization happens we know that the future will be much better for the planet for everybody here in this city because we'll be in charge thank you very much and continue your efforts and i support the resolution thank you evan brad yeah i'm brad siegel i i live at 4315 grinnell avenue boulder first thing i wanted to thank council and staff for all the hard work on this it's been a long process a lot of people

[156:01] have worked really hard everyone's worked hard thank you very much a couple of points just in response to some earlier comments i i'd like folks to remember that one of the reasons why excel is doing all this stuff is because of the efforts we've taken to push them and if people don't realize that it's always coincidental that excel comes up with some new plan every time we're ready to make a decision they got some new thing that comes up all of a sudden and every time we've had an election they've always come up with some new plan for renewables that's good we're helping push this organization that is affecting our state and eight others and this is the big deal we are doing something patrick murphy and and kerry are very uh sincere in their concerns but they're missing something and some of the opponents of this are forgetting how much we've accomplished this has not been wasted money a couple of things here this is a smart thing to do moving ahead with this that's obvious i think we have a chance to check out

[157:02] if we want to rent or we want to buy it's like anybody who's buying a house you always want to find out which is better sometimes it's better to rent maybe we'll end up renting from excel after this is all over so what that's fine with me let's find out what the costs are the other point is the voters told us to do this and i tell you something a lot more a lot more people than we saw in that election really want us to follow through on this i know it because i was out in the field every time i asked somebody about this issue of do you want to get fooled by the landlord they said i don't want to get fooled i want to know what the numbers are let's move toward getting a condemnation number and then find out if this thing's going to work it doesn't force us to do anything and it opens up opportunities so i would say keep this process going and thanks so much for all the hard work thank you brad heidi paul and then bob

[158:06] hi i'm paul coleman 3555 silver plume court in boulder i want to say thank you for getting us to this point thank you guys this is it's wonderful you've done a great job stay strong i i know it's it's hard i'm in it for global warming um i'm not for global warming but to do something about it um we need action on all levels including the city of boulder the uh the future is in distributed generation we solar and wind work better when they're spread out the wind's not always blowing the same everywhere the clouds go over panels you're better off having generations spread out excel wants to have it all they want to have it in in their property

[159:00] they want to have all the eggs in their basket and we need to have some of our own eggs in our own basket and so that's that's their game plan um the puc is really where the rubber meets the road for excel and they put out this press release today probably one check the puc website there's nothing filed their last filing was yesterday it's a qft qf tariff which is qualified facilities and they put in a request to the puc to lower the payment they make to qualified facilities producing energy and capacity so they're proposed yesterday to reduce the payment to qualify facilities between 2.9 and 17.9 percent depending on the type of renewable resource it was

[160:01] so that's where excel's at and kerry quoted part of this press release i'm going to quote a different part the last sentence by ben falk our goals are ambitious and achieving them requires a long runway we're starting the conversation today to make sure we can achieve this groundbreaking transition well those of us who've been around for a while know what having a conversation with excel is like it doesn't always go well so anyway i hope you uh vote for the um the resolution and stay strong thank you thank you paul bob morehouse and then duncan gilchrist good evening um nice to see you all i'm so enthusiastic about the muni that i've lost my voice

[161:01] so i will be brief i would like to make two points one um climate change is clearly the biggest issue to face all of us perhaps ever and this is about climate change this is about renewables but i think it's about a lot more than that it's about cities taking the lead and helping solve this problem and it's really about a city like boulder owning up to its responsibility taking responsibility for what we're doing and we need to have ownership in this situation to do that properly i think that uh having a municipal utility will allow us to uh allow a lot of flourishing of innovation of interconnection of flexibility we're going to be facing an electric future and i think having our own muni will be

[162:02] a big benefit in allowing us to do that the second point i want to make is we have a generational opportunity you know we're all the benefit beneficiaries of of the open space around us of the downtown mall the height limits that a previous generation gave us and i think we need to seize this opportunity so that 10 20 30 years from now people will look back and thank us for giving them the control that we need for our own future so my praise to all of you for getting us where we are and i say let's keep going thank you thank you bob duncan and then steve whitaker how's it going council uh my name is duncan gilchrist and i live in boulder um i'm at i live on mapleton avenue um first of all i just want to thank you all for listening to all of us tonight

[163:02] and um just want to reflect that i appreciate the temperament with which you guys constantly deal with all these different um thoughts and concerns from the people of boulder i think it's uh you guys seem to consistently deal with people's things uh with good temperament i'll just say that um so yeah i want to support the city in moving forward um with determining the costs of acquiring the system from excel and also say i'm on the board of clean energy action by the way and um this past month i had the opportunity to go to new orleans and attend the sierra club's national building a carbon-free grid conference and i just want to really quickly share a couple of realizations that i had at the conference that relate to municipalization um the first is that there are multiple paths we can obviously take to get to a 100 renewable energy future we all share the vision of 100 renewables but whereas some paths prioritize just getting to you know quite like integrating as much renewables into the our electricity mix as possible by whatever means possible other paths

[164:00] prioritize and more just transition focusing on regenerating economic and political power within communities acknowledging climate change as an opportunity to also work at some problems of justice that we experience in this country i think municipalization is a perfect example of a solution that would be a model for a just transition for communities across the united states which would be a second realization i'll share um i had the opportunity to meet a fellow at the sierra club's building and carbon free conference who is from highlands park michigan um a small town that experiences extreme energy poverty um dte energy removed a thousand street lights from highlands park and out of an effort to cut costs my this fellow jackson i met he started a nonprofit with a bunch of other people in highlands park um in order to build pool community funds to actually restore lights in their community that were solar-powered lights so they're in the process of continuing to raise funds and replace the streetlights with solar-powered streetlights um this is kind of another

[165:00] example of energy democracy where citizens are binding together pooling their economic power and integrating more renewables into the way that we power our cities i had a conversation with him and i told him i was from boulder and he was immediately his perked up and he was like oh i've been paying attention to your municipalization process and we're very interested in kind of seeing how boulder's municipalization effort is actually could be it could be a leverage point um for you know excel integrating more renewables into their electricity mix so i just want to reflect that people across the country are watching um it's all echo brad's point that this is doing this has ripple effects way beyond just our city um and as we hear all the folks at the national level talk about potentially creating a new green deal um again municipalization is a kind of example of a solution that would regenerate economic and political power within our community so i just i applaud you guys for your leadership so far and um yeah thanks thank you oh we got a question thank you for that duncan of course um and i just wanted to bring to your

[166:01] attention in case you're not already aware of it that there is a just transition collaborative up on the campus yeah i've met a couple of those folks that are pretty great thank you steve good evening my name is steve whitaker i live at 1820 hawthorne avenue here in boulder and i've i'm here to speak in in support of authorizing condemnation of excel property in support of our municipalization project i've lived here since 1973 and when i first arrived here i was just astounded at the foresight that people who had gone before me had created in this in this town and in our in our environmental area from the blue line to the idea of buying property outside the city in support of maintaining open space to reduced growth rates

[167:02] in order to maintain our our superior living environment here to the pearl street mall there's a continuous line of foresight and progressive thinking and i think that the municipalization project is just another point on that line and i support the idea that we would condemn excel's property in pursuit of that objective to municipalize um you know there are a number of things that i look forward to in having a a municipal utility that we own and control we'll be able to increase the use of pv without the restrictions that currently exist with excel we'll be able to create microgrids to improve our sustainability and our resilience we'll be able to share pv power amongst nearby property owners we'll be able to

[168:02] create rates that rate structures that encourage the use of electric vehicles we'll be able to create financing programs that encourage the residential and commercial use of renewable energy systems and will be able to acquire electric power through a competitive process with our own electric utility here in boulder we can be an innovation center for energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy to reduce the production of greenhouse gases thank you thank you and then conor may thank you council um i'm here to urge you to move forward with the condemnation and i'm aware of excel's press release today promising more carbon free energy but um

[169:02] the caveat is that that could include nuclear or carbon capture and storage which would be incredibly expensive and i i i view this release today as another kind of clumsy last ditch effort to make a big statement about what we're doing here tonight um for the past 15 years excel has attacked distributed solar and the penalties include special fees for solar owners who were singled out residential demand charges attempts to get rid of net metering and countless attempts to squash this um small solar business somebody left their phone here i think small solar businesses in our state um 14 years ago excel called our renewable portfolio standard a billion dollar mistake and ironically i think that comanche 3 their coal plant that they built a few years ago at the same time is really the billion dollar mistake now the company is trying to make us pay

[170:00] for retiring these coal plants so i just want to wrap this up in one very simple idea monopoly corporations are not beholden to their customers they are beholden to their shareholders if we stay with excel they will continue to sabotage distributed energy and the really important thing is distributed energy is essential for us to get to a renewable energy future it's a technical reason distributed energy also though challenges their utility legacy utility business models and it will make the legacy grid obsolete by 2035 according to navigant research in this report which i can make available to anyone if they're interested in reading it and i have a quick quote from that electric utilities today think that think that consolidation of legacy operations is their strongest bet for growth would do well to remember what has happened to the regulated monopoly telephone business over the past 20 years and what happened is they went out of business

[171:01] excel continues to cling on to its legacy business model and in so doing it will not be able to adapt to the diverse demands of renewable energy technology this is why we need to part ways and this is why this offer of 80 renewable energy is not all that it's cooked up to be because it is going to be centralized utility owned renewable energy and that is going to create a big problem so that's thank you thank you lily connor and is this the left oh and then lin hi my name is conor may i live at 3180 wright avenue i mean i just wanted to echo what others here have said thanking council for their leadership and determination in carrying this project forward i think most of my best points have already been made you know duncan's point that this is about more than just climate change it's also about climate and economic justice and having cities really take the lead in controlling our destiny as opposed to these very large companies um i'd also like to underscore

[172:01] lily's point that excel's announcement today is not for 80 renewable generation by 2030 but only for 80 carbon reduction which is a non-binding um that's laudable but is non-binding falls short of boulder's own goals and also could saddle the rate payers of the state with extremely high research and development costs in order to try and make that happen i also just wanted to mention that i started school again this semester i'm back to grad school and being in that environment with a lot of people from out of state and out of the community during the election cycle i heard a lot of complaints about how they feel that not only their federal government but their government at the state and local level is deadlocked unresponsive unwilling to tackle difficult challenges with innovative solutions particularly when it comes to climate change and it just uh gave me a warm fuzzy feeling that i live from somewhere i live somewhere where i don't have to worry about that and you know where you guys have really shown a lot of initiative in stepping up even though the

[173:00] economic and political barriers can be hard and the challenges and risks associated with it are admittedly great so thank you and i urge you to move forward with this process thank you connor lynn lynn seagull builder yeah i just wish this could have been done many many years ago um um big is old you know distributive is is the way and i still hear in a lot of the circles about more wind and wind is generally meaning transmission and the cost that excel just caused us to go up today was transmission related transmissions old school no this reminds me of enchanted mesa and i

[174:02] sent you all the story about ken myrice and how he felt that his property his 115 acres that he bought in 1952 for 12 000 bucks was worth 850 000 bucks in 1962 and guess what it wasn't it was worth 120 and that was 10 000 more than the city of boulder could afford that the city of boulder rose to the occasion door-to-door and they bought the land and that's why we have enchanted mesa the space between skunk creek and car and chautauqua we can do the same thing with our municipal electorate thank you lynn okay with that we are going to close the public comment um thank you all i am going to turn to council is there

[175:00] any more questions before we jump in i was just going to offer to put a motion on the table and then we could discuss if we wanted to move things along so i moved that we adopt ordinance 8302 authorizing the acquisition of property interest user owned by public service company of colorado doing business as excel energy for the electric distribution facilities to serve the city by negotiation and purchase or through the power of imminent domain and sending forth related details second we're enthusiastic yes we are it's okay you can give you we can so i'll speak to this um so this is as people have talked about this is a step in the process right and we have long long wanted to know what our cost structure was going to be and the biggest looming uncertainty was what the cost of the system was going to be and so we have gone out to the voters four times now and we've always received

[176:01] approval to continue forward and the last time that they approved it they knew what the timeline would be how much it would cost and that the upside would be that we'd have a number that we could then vote on and every individual voter could make a decision for themselves about the trade-off between democratization decarbonization and decentralization and every one of those is important i believe we've long said this and it's all about changing our energy system and i believe that the way we will most likely have a just transition is if the city is managing the the electricity system and the energy system in town so with that i mean i'm really appreciate staff the memo was quite good it was very clear about what i think our legal strategy and risks could be but also what the potential upsides could be so i appreciate all of the the young people telling us what our responsibility is

[177:00] here and it is to do multiple things at the same time which includes decarbonization but is not just the carbonization so with that i'll close and i appreciate hearing for the rest of him well i'll just jump in that was very well said i'll just remark that um this isn't something we do lightly i think this is what we do with great deliberation and intention and is following through with the direction we got from our voters and as was well pointed out we're going to go find out the number and then we're going to go to the voters and say is this worth the cost so i think this is an important step i'll also mention um this is an anti-xl this is pro the people's utility and i will i'll note that about a month ago when i met alice jackson um the new is she the vp for colorado or the head of colorado for example um she said

[178:00] and i thanked her for saying this she said and boulder can take credit for moving excel to getting greener and i appreciate their gestures and their movement that direction and i applaud them for that with the caveats noted about what their announcement today means i do think it's fun how they come on the day that we're making decisions so we'll take credit for that too but no i think it's really important that we recognize the multiple reasons we would do this and i think we can be proud that we are part of moving the whole system moving the whole state greener and that this is part of that as well part of that discussion and i am proud to do the people's bidding and follow through with this ordinance today seem good i was just going to say i don't know if there's anything to add well said sam and zan thank you

[179:00] and i just concur with what you have said and i'm sure our vote will show some agreement there and i would just like to recognize staff and especially kathy haddock on her many long long nights and weekends and working on this thank you kathy yes indeed and our new hand on the helm steve others i know bob wants to say something but well i'm excited to move forward and um we've all been waiting for this and this is that the logical next step and um i'm looking forward to understanding what the numbers are and moving forward and it is a lot more than climate change and it's a responsibility to the future and a responsibility to future generations and um i will also say thank you to everybody who has been part

[180:00] of this discussion pro and against it has helped shape the discussion and we couldn't do what we do without it being a two-way street so we need the people and hopefully we do do your bidding and we do well represent you so i'm very excited it gives me goosebumps so be quick i'll just agree with generally with what's been said you know climate change is the challenge of our time and so i'm looking forward to taking these next steps and figuring out all the information and the numbers and putting it forward to the voters in 2020 okay mr bob oh wait i'm sorry jill no no i've posted on hotline okay yes you did i can count to eight but please indulge me for a couple minutes um i'm gonna vote against this condemnation lawsuit because i do not

[181:01] believe that it's the right course of action for our community at this time when the municipalization endeavor began more than eight years ago it was promoted as a way for boulder to lead the nation and the world to a carbon-free future the idea was that if boulder could take control of the power distribution network within our city we could accelerate the adoption of renewable energy generation and that other cities would follow our lead the promise was great and many in our community supported it however in the intervening eight years two things happened first excel energy and other generators of electricity significantly increased their use of renewable resources they've done this in large part because the cost of solar and wind generation has become competitive with the traditional carbon sources of coal and gas the progress has been tremendous and the vision of one hundred percent renewable energy is more realistic now than ever

[182:00] second boulder's dream that other cities in colorado would follow our lead and rise up to seize the the utilities assets has actually never really materialized so far not a single other city has emulated us if no one follows you are not a leader we have checked in with the voters in boulder several times during this winding and litigious path towards municipalization in each instance the vote has been close with slightly more than half of the voters supporting exploration of municipalization and nearly half asking us to stop in the last vote in november 2017 we asked the voters whether to continue the tax that pays the lawyers and the engineers in the fight against excel by a margin of 52-48 the boulder voters approved the tax tonight council is being asked by city staff whether we should file a condemnation lawsuit against excel some residents have said that city

[183:00] council has no discretion in tonight's vote that we must vote for the lawsuit in order to respect what they say was a mandate delivered by the voters last year i respectfully disagree i don't think that tonight's vote is a rubber stamp instead i think that each one of us on city council must decide whether filing a lawsuit at this time is the right thing to do i don't think it is for two reasons first the question that the community voted on last year was whether to extend the tax so that city staff can continue to explore the muni but filing an eminent domain lawsuit goes far beyond exploring it is doing second several important events have occurred since last municipalization vote in november 2017. in august of this year the state public utilities commission approved excel's plan to increase the use of renewables for electricity generation to 55 percent by 2026.

[184:01] last month we elected a progressive state legislature and governor who will undoubtedly support laws that will make it easier for every community including boulder to achieve its goal of 100 renewables finally this afternoon governor elect polis and denver mayor michael hancock announced that xl has offered a new plan that will reduce co2 emissions by 80 below 2005 levels and that could achieve zero carbon electricity by 2050 if technology can be developed to support it given these recent and very positive developments since the last community vote i don't think that the time is right for the city of boulder to file an eminent domain lawsuit against excel instead we should work with our peer cities our new legislature our new governor and with a public utility which has found its way to embrace renewables tonight we face a fork in the road

[185:00] one path leads to continued multi-million dollar litigation with no foreseeable increase in renewable energy the other path leads to a green future a path that our peer cities in colorado are following without us so tonight i will vote against lawsuits lawyers and lengthy delays and in doing so i will be voting for coalition cooperation and collaboration taking us to immediate and meaningful carbon reduction finally regardless of the outcome of tonight's vote which i can predict i want to be clear that i share the determination of my city council colleagues to move us towards a sustainable energy future as quickly as possible while we disagree on whether municipalization is the right path i believe that we do share a common vision of a green safe and healthy planet thanks for listening okay i have one final yeah um this is

[186:02] brief um thanks bob for saying that i want to compliment excel for taking the step that they did today um you know everybody who's been working on state renewable energy policy can take some credit for that because it's been a long haul from the days when we first had to pass the rps at 10 percent and had to pass it by a vote of the people to today when excel's saying that that's the way the river lies and that's where they need to go so i will compliment them for doing this because not every city in colorado will do what boulder's doing i do believe there's one other that's seriously considering but we shall see where that goes but the point is that there will always remain a large population of people in colorado served by excel at least for the foreseeable future and so the more green they go the better off we all are so i will thank them for that cindy i just sort of like to tag along a little bit on what sam said bob said if no one follows you're not a

[187:02] leader and i would say that excel's been doing a pretty good job of following here just thought i'd throw that out okay and there you have it that's pretty impressive since the the announcement today was actually for all eight states in their region not just for colorado so we must be doing a really good job we're really pushing them they're going there well there's other communities i think yeah the movement to get to 100 is happening around the country and the deal is you need more than an announcement you actually have to get there so ready i think we're ready to vote okay we'll start with council member weaver hi yates with respect no young yes brockett i carlisle i

[188:01] i like the high percentage out you know enthusiastically yes the motion passes eight to one great okay thank you [Music] okay under matters from there and members of council we have your three call up items no action on those and then we have the discussion of large homes and lots large homes okay we can think of it as one issue left yeah suzanne i have to yeah right okay well make sure that you get you censored very well

[189:13] so we have our good friend carl geiler here along with andrew collins to talk about large lots okay if folks in the audience can tell their story walking good evening council members tonight we're going to talk about the large home and lots code amendment project the reason we're here tonight is council requested that staff return with a proposed phased option and additional data that would help council inform whether or not a moratorium or interim development regulation should be passed on this project which would be a more immediate restriction on homes that would be placed before the anticipated

[190:01] completion of the project that we had anticipated would be in the next fall in 2019 so we've broken the presentation into two parts basically we feel that we've gotten a pretty concrete direction from council on the regulatory and incentive options on this project but we felt that we should follow up from the september 25th and october 16th meetings with the updated why and purpose statements and the preliminary goals based on council's discussion as well as bringing some updated data and case studies for the council to review so that'll be the first part the primary focus tonight is really to be related to the next step so the project timeline and the process options so in this we're asking more clarity about whether there would be an interim development uh regulation or moratorium or whether the project should continue on the original timeline that

[191:00] we had discussed before whether it should be a phase timeline so we'll go into some detail about the aspects of that so real quick we're going to be covering the background of the project planning board just met to talk about this on november 15th we're going to talk a little bit about their feedback we have updates to the why and purpose statements and preliminary goals and scope we have the original data as well as additional data that we've received since the october 16th meeting and we have some case studies that are also included within the packet and then the second part will really focus on the revised project timeline related to community engagement ultimately ordinance preparation and getting some feedback from the council on the process options and we'll have the questions in at the end of each segment so there's two segments in this presentation so again really quick council is familiar with the compatible development project that was adopted in 2009 into 2010

[192:02] related to house size much of the concern was related to homes in the newlands area that was where a lot of large homes were causing some concern that led to far regulations i think over time we've seen more smaller sized homes being replaced by larger homes in the city despite these regulations going into place and i think some of those concerns have shifted to other parts of the city as well including like north boulder so this concern was raised at the retreat last january we've since had the study session on september 25th we got a lot of good direction from our council we talked again on october 16th where council considered a possible moratorium on large homes or large lots um there was no action taken on that night but this is where council had requested that we come back

[193:00] tonight to talk about the process options moving forward and again as i mentioned on november 15th planning board discussed the project so really quick just talking about the the planning board feedback planning board was generally in support of the why and purpose statements and the scope and goals of the project many of the suggestions that the board made echoed what we heard from council as far as looking at creative infill options looking at perhaps some fee or tax type things that might deter large homes so i felt like the board was was much on the same page as council the board was generally supportive of looking at a phased approach having some sort of interim regulation that would go into play and then a later phase as long as there was um there was good community engagement as part of that process the board did express some concern about doing an immediate moratorium or interim

[194:00] development regulation and that's conveyed in the in the memo so there's additional comments that we've also provided within the packet so with that i'm going to turn it over to andrew collins to take over the next segment uh great thanks carl uh so based on council's feedback at the september 25th study session we have updated the why statement is shown here on the screen this is also in your your packet on page 465. the statements have been updated to include the city's energy conservation goals the existing housing jobs and balance and the unofficial use of land that comes with a single large home on a lot versus multiple smaller homes hey andrew can you just use the mic a little more yeah let's hold it here um moving on to the updated purpose statement we've also been updated that uh likewise and specifically to include uh a statement in the positive that the

[195:00] goals for more small houses and for creative and fill solutions as directed by council also out of that meeting we have developed the preliminary goals for the project as shown here and also on page 466 in your packet which are to consider creative solutions to potentially allow infill redevelopment of large lots provided that it is in a context-sensitive manner two to consider a hard cap on floor area for single-family development three to study incentives and disincentives for preserving existing housing stock and creative infill solutions are also affordable uh four to analyze potential strategies in phasing for adjusting the size form and bulk standards of the land use code and then five to consider updates to the city's energy conservation code to accelerate those standards in the 2019 year so finally we've also updated the project scope as shown here on the

[196:00] screen which reflects the same comments we reviewed with the y and purpose statements so this includes incentives and disincentives as well as creative and fill standards as well so moving to the zoning scope originally we were looking at the re in our zoning districts in september which was predominantly found in north boulder and also parts of south east boulder around the martins anchor subdivision coming out of that meeting we are proposing to also include the rl and rmx1 zoning districts and these do align with our residential zones that are governed by the far regs now under section 982 in the land use code so moving on to the data as requested by council in the october meeting we have compiled new media and square footage figures for residential construction and demolition since 2001 to 2017.

[197:01] the blue bar on this chart represents the median square footage of new home size and the gray bar the median demolition size for each year so in general you can see that since 2006 the trend has been uh between five thousand to six thousand square feet for new home sizes demolition size since 2006 those homes median square footage has been around 1200 to 2000 square feet as a point of reference in 2017 the median home square footage was just about 56 hundred square feet in 2004 it was just over 4 200 square feet and and how many houses are you talking about here um to have that date i have to pull it again um it's in the hundreds and the hundreds of lots per year uh total overall i added all your numbers from the chart

[198:00] you gave us that was from 2000 that equaled 369. so if you divide it by 19 which has been 19 years it's about 20 you know 19.5 to 20 homes a year okay that's good yes i wanted to note one thing with on this slide so this data was compiled with our information resources team using the certificate of occupancy data as well as demolition permit data the 2018 year data is incomplete that won't be available until 2009 or 2019 they tell us and then data before 2004 also was not consistently entered into the permit system so that data is not the most accurate so for comparison sake 2004 to 2017 is the most accurate and reliable range that we are you looking at this chart displays a median size of the replacement homes versus the demolished home size so pops versus scrapes the yellow bar is the new home

[199:01] replacement size median square footage and the gray bar is the demolition medium square footage size of that the original property in that same lot so this is a comparison of a home that was demolished on a given lot compared to a new house built on those same lots what the median figures are across the different zoning districts on the horizontal x-axis so you can see the re rr zones excuse me had the largest new home size and rv district alone is roughly four times the size of the homes they've replaced since 2001. this is also in part those districts rer zones have the largest minimum lot sizes so they're far regs do allow today a larger home size as well i just want to make sure we're um i'm clear when you're looking at square footage that's total including basement is that correct or is this all above ground

[200:01] it's whatever the uh permit person entered into the permit system um so it should be any kind of habitable space that will count towards square footage under our regulations generally when something is entered into the the system it's going to be what our zoning counts is floor area so if a basement is mostly below grade it would not be included in that figure but if it's exposed in any way certain portion portions of that would be included okay great and then um same thing for when you have the draft of um like an ordinance that would limit it or you taught you're you're talking about the way your your system programs it's a habitable okay thank you you might just follow in the first so in other words these numbers would be the numbers that would count towards the far limits for comparable development but you said two different things i just want to make it habitable or above ground above ground well above ground i mean habitable

[201:00] it can include parts of basements if they're exposed we're really looking at massing above the zoning code is all about what is going to be visual above the ground yeah so finished basements completely blue it would not be included in this right and so these numbers uh also include the garage typically right that's right and so you can knock them down by 500 square feet or whatever but you might be knocking them back up by 2000 square feet if they have a fully buried garage i mean a basement sorry and and we okay and i have the same question so the rl1 is also really high right and um how many houses or dwellings in the rl1 as opposed to the rr1 and the re for example do you you mean per year or or per year is joe figured it out basically yes sure he's pull up are all one um

[202:02] that chart was most of them i mean it was over 250 but that's since 2000 yeah obviously that's the largest zoning district in the city and geographically we do have those charts too in the presentation we can find them and pull them up if you if you want to see those numbers exactly um this chart is a little complicated we'll uh help simplify it in a few seconds yeah if you just bear with us so this displays a median new home size per year by zone so along the horizontal axis is the years and different colored bars correspond to the different zooming districts so for instance the rv

[203:01] zone is the yellow bar and you can see along the axis how the yellow bar might change over time to see that trend there are also small numbers at the bottom of each column which tells you the number of new homes that were constructed within that year for that zone so to help simplify a little bit and one other note too if you don't see a certain colored bar in that year that means that no new homes were constructed in that zone that year so looking at the rl1 zoning district as an example you can see the overall trend line from 2004 to 2017. its median square footage peaked at about 6 000 square feet in 2010 with a noticeable drop and then has stabilized in the 5 000 square foot range most recently when we combined the re residential estate and the residential rural zones to get more data points to create that trend line you can see also has a

[204:00] similar drop in around 2010 and the median square footage overall and then a more recent increase an uptick in its median square footage size when combined and in 2017 that number at the very end there along the orange line is just over seven thousands median square foot for both the re and rr zones combined when we combine all the districts together it follows very closely the rl1 district again based upon the number of new constructions that's happened in that zoning district it is the largest zone that's residential in boulder so here we have a map of showing the density and locations of demolition permits and new certificate of occupancies or new construction from 2000 2000 to present so on the left hand side in green is demolition right hand side of the screen is the new cos you can see

[205:00] their distribution is predominantly in north boulder as well as in the newlands area and then whittier north of spruce street as well as some portions um just to the uh west of the university hill area and these questions yeah it's going to say these areas do correspond with the proposed zoning scope so the rl ones uh the res and our zoning districts i just wanted to know some of those are new subdivisions that came online some of them are new this includes right green fields uh development not just um scrapes and rebuilds correct at palo park yep parkway the very north edge of town holiday ridge uh so this brings us to the uh case studies a brief overview uh staff has reviewed 13 communities single family development regulations that have provided insight into potential tools to regulate home size character and compatibility for instance second story coverage or second story floor area limits as seen

[206:00] in some communities such as the city of san rafael also there were far overlay districts we've seen in some communities there are also some potential creative residential infill tools we've seen such as the city of portland oregon's residential info project which is slated for consideration by their council coming up in january of 2019 so as proposed they are proposing um far bonuses for duplexes triplexes adus on a given lot coupled with far reduction for single family use on those same lots so in essence a far incentive for doing multiple smaller units on a lot also looking at these communities in terms of their far allowances based on lots lot sizes so for smaller lots of 7 000 square feet and less boulder generally allows a higher far than other peer communities but of lots of greater than 7 000 square feet our current regulations are in line

[207:00] with or more restrictive than the communities we've looked at and then another none of the communities we've seen have a current hard cap on floor area it's also a ratio or sliding scale like our current regulations have as well so that brings us to our first check-in on the questions so we want to hear feedback from council on the revised goals purpose and scope as well as any questions on the updated data and case studies before we jump into the options in phasing okay let's start with the first one they want our feedback and that because we can ask questions all night this i know can you throw up the updated y and purpose statements is that easy to get back to um do folks have feedback yeah um i um i don't

[208:00] really think it's that accurate to you know say that housing prices have gone up because there's big homes so in the last one year there's been 62 homes under 3 500 square feet sell for over 2 million dollars okay 62 homes under 3 500 square feet sell for over 202 million dollars in one year so i just think that if we're thinking of like the newspaper headline and its council limits large homes in order to you know tackle affordability it's just not true like so that i i guess i have an issue there i like the i like it conceptually i just don't think it's true but for the purposes of this do you think it's part of it though or how would you edit it because yeah i feel like it's part of the think that the big homes themselves are what's

[209:01] making our city unaffordable um yeah i mean it's it's demand it's it's it's it's land um you know if some would argue if you buy into the idea that expensive homes filter out you know people that that those sort of uber wealthy folks that you know um buy up there and then it actually leaves more modest homes for other people i don't know but the point is when you've got that many homes selling over two million that are that small we're really we just can't pretend to blame big houses on high price high prices on big houses right but let me just say one thing is are we blaming it or there's a correlation it's one of the factors obviously we know that size by adus right we just did adus or are cheaper relative um due to their size well that was one of the things that was based on so i guess i'm not sure i'm not disagreeing

[210:00] necessarily that there's many other factors afoot but sure that larger houses are more expensive than smaller ones are is in general but but even the smaller ones are so high i guess i guess it um there's so there's so many other things that we could do to add affordability in the city um i mean like if if our adults for example could just because we just passed it didn't have saturation limits like every other place in the in the country and we didn't have non-conforming contributing and we did some of portland stuff like stimulating them we would have if if if we tracked with portland quadruple the adus that would be another 500 affordable units in our city as opposed to if out of the 20 that are happening here a year choose to sort of like you know wait and split their lot maybe i don't know out of the 20 a few take that option we're talking about like a few a

[211:00] year um instead of just building at our limit as opposed to like just one thing with adus that we get at a hundred occupancy limits i mean okay you know there's a million okay because we may end up doing something we're looking at lots of we just looked at what we're going to look at it's a pretty big swath of the city and we could be adding the whole the thing that said is more smaller rather than few larger i like the more smaller okay how would you give us edits if you want to change it because we could argue philosophy all night um not to push you but just i'm just saying i i don't believe that la it says large homes and then contribute to the high cost of housing i i don't think that the data show that that's what we're seeing in the market small homes also sell for inordinate prices in the city and that's just the fact so i think the key word here is

[212:00] exacerbate right so i think you know getting back to zan's thought about this is not singling this out as the only cause or the main cause it's just saying that that can't help right is the way i read that statement and i guess i think the stuff about the energy conservation goals is pretty accurate um so yep lisa so i guess since i see it and um i appreciate your comments jill i guess i would though disagree because what we're seeing are lots with houses many which are in good condition that are selling for six hundred thousand dollars speculators are coming in and scraping those and selling them for 3.45 5.45 so how that's not exacerbating the problem is i i don't understand and but with regard to this comment this

[213:01] updated why statement i would say it is exacerbating the high cost of housing because fewer and fewer people can afford a 3.45 or a 5.45 house i would also if i could just finish i would also say that um the large homes do not align with the city's energy conservation goals and when you take down these houses especially houses that are perfectly good and try to say well those houses weren't energy efficient it's not like those houses could not have been made energy efficient and there's a lot of embodied energy that went in to creating the original house and there's a hell of a lot of embodied energy that goes into creating a 7200 square foot house so neither of those are in alignment with our city's energy

[214:00] conservation goals or policies and they do consume greater amounts of energy and in operation and construction and they do generate a lot of traffic just that one home generates a lot of workers at the house so i think the why statement is good and and i would also say the large homes are completely inconsistent with the existing character of the neighborhoods when you come in with a 7 200 square foot house and most of the houses around there are anywhere from 1500 to less than 3 000 that's a huge change in the character of the neighborhood so i think you guys got it right on the target okay so so here's the thing if you want to propose a specific edit

[215:00] i'm all ears let's get on with the solutions that's what we should spend our time i just i've already said it i i think that that's actually it's false to say exacerbated because we're not talking about 600 versus 3 million because people are going to take the old 600 and they're going to put that down and they're going to build to the limit that we say and if 3 500 square foot homes sell for 2 million and above in those zones which they do 35 and under that's still an inconceivable price for anybody this isn't six if we want to just stop all construction period and every old home has to be preserved we might save the six hundred thousand dollar but that's not what we're proposing here we're talking about the difference between a cap at 3 500 and a cap wherever it is presently that doesn't move the needle much yeah okay yeah well actually i i haven't heard the specific words but jill i i mean i agree with your philosophical point but i think to qualify for exacerbate we just have to say that like

[216:00] a 6 000 square foot home would be more expensive than a 3 500 square foot home and if it is then you've exacerbated the high cost of housing i think that would be true there's no way that the 3 500 square foot home is affordable in any way but the 6 000 square foot home is is more expensive okay and and your point is well taken as we look at solutions that just if all we do is focus on the house size we will not have done very exactly right and i think that's the thing i assume that's your point that that's the point yeah sure yeah a very important point and i think that's yeah i think that's it i would just like to add some one of the things lisa mentioned was spec speculations back houses so it seems to me that's a big part of the issue in terms of what is happening or what isn't with this land so um and driving costs so where would that go in there i mean because that is a huge part of it and it looks

[217:00] to me as though that's something that we would want to look at in terms of if we can legally regulatory look at it regulatory i think i think i get this point cindy i think what i struggle with on spec houses is is a definitional question in other words if somebody hires an architect to build a house it's not a spec house right because they're going to move into it they're going to be living there right and then the other end of the spectrum is is the house is built they have no idea what they're going to do with it they just build it because they want to make a profit and then it sits on the market for six months or a year or whatever that's truly a spec house and then there's probably a lot of stuff in between like you know they start to build it and then a buyer comes along or you know they put the plans together and the buyer comes along in other words at what point at what point time does it is it no longer a spec house and that's why i kind of struggled a little bit i know what your point is but i just talked a little about the definition of a spec the other thing with the spec houses is that oftentimes they're not built to the same green standards that someone will put in if they're going to be living in it i think we're going to tackle that okay great okay so these are good points

[218:00] to keep with us as we move forward towards so what do we want to do about it um so i guess if nobody's going to i kind of just want to get on to what we're going to do and not spend too much time on the word smithing so i don't want to cut short but does anybody have any proposed if not let's go to the next question okay which is no oh just all of them okay good good i was fine with that although this is gonna we're done with the first part and let's go on three okay at the scope and the goals and wine and purple statements are really kind of resting the same yeah themes and concepts so okay um so and i think that we're gonna define what we're going to do and no matter what okay so updated date data and case studies um are there questions that are necessary to answer to that will determine our where we head can i just ask a question sorry about the goals can we go to that list yes yeah you're right we should look at the goals

[219:00] yeah okay great okay good in the um in the consider updates the city's energy conservation could and the the way that we've talked about that i remember about that was about ratcheting down the square footage at which net zero would be required do we have on our potential to-do list a mandatory solar panel is one of the possibilities that we're looking at i mean i get that you kind of have to to get to net zero but it's different from having a requirement that's not i'm not sure if we get that as a specific strategy i think we're looking at that with um kristin wicca or sustainability um employees here she can speak more to that but we're looking at all options on the table so okay i just want to make sure that's one of the menu of things that we might look at we can certainly include that yep so right now those are our goals preliminary goals um do those basically cover the landscape

[220:01] are we going to talk about these sort of individually well you're going to talk to us about what's possible in what time frame yes that's the second half the presentation is going to be the options the phasing and the different strategies these are kind of broad high-level goals coming out of the study session we had in september so we'll okay so i missed i was out of town for that one so i'm sorry to be dragging here but if we're going to talk about these like for example then they're philosophical things as well as just hard dollar things considering a hard cap on floor area for single-family residential development for example would that be as of now or does it mean as of next year and for people who've already built bought or for everything we do there's always going to be so we were considering initially the hard cap on floor area as a potentially first phase of the project occurring in the near term the next three to six months if that's something council wanted to

[221:00] pursue it could also be part of the longer um combined phase one and two approach where we look at all these things as one strategy and take it through to an adoption process on a more advanced timeline as well but in terms of if you're already built and constructed you would be grandfathered in with your current far standards if you came in with a new development permit with a new construction proposal or new addition if you were to pass far standards that were uh amended the land use code those would be applied to those those new construction projects so bob just a minor word smithing an item's number one i agree with all the philosophical points up there and i think this is a great set of goals one two and five say consider so we're going to kind of debate what we should do and three and four just say study and analyze and i think we're gonna i mean we are going to study and analyze but then we're also going to consider incentives and distance centers we're going to consider potential strategies so i just changed the first word in those two to consider well you could just say study in

[222:00] licenses consider the following five things yeah that'd be perfect okay so i think we want to go ahead and get to your next part and we reserve the right to come back and prioritize her okay [Music] and honestly i don't know the difference between study and analyze but hey okay so moving on to the next part uh this is the original timeline that we had proposed to council on september 25th uh our proposal was to do the project all at once and and with the goal of trying to complete it by the fall um obviously you know this is an estimation there's there's a number of factors that play into these projects that are complicated that could push it out but we thought we could accomplish everything that council was talking about in that timeline so if we were to follow that original timeline we're

[223:01] basically in that first period right now we had anticipated having a check-in with council in december so here we are so the next phase would be basically going out to the community and getting feedback on all of the different options that were discussed so we're already targeting late january to do some outreach have a community outreach event and then look at some neighborhood meetings and stakeholder groups to discuss all the options and then start digging deeper into the options and then checking in with council in some time in the spring to talk about uh draft options for ordinances and then after getting feedback then moving into the the code amendment drafting phase and then bringing code changes before the the council by the end of summer into the fall so that was our original timeline so councils requested that we look at a phased timeline and and that

[224:00] comes out of the concern of perhaps there needs to be some sort of quicker fix or interim option that should be considered so we've we've put this revised timeline together our estimation is that with a phased approach it would add basically two to three months to the process and the reason we say that is because with each phase of bringing code changes through it there's an adoption phase and that's having to go to planning board and getting their recommendation and going back and forth and then bringing it to council and refining things through the ordinance and that does add some time and so in this phased approach we'd be looking at bringing the first phase would basically be three to six months bringing code changes before the council in the late late spring early summer we're thinking for the first phase and then trying to complete the project by the end of the year with the more complicated phase so

[225:01] you can see it kind of breaks up the way we were looking at it through one continuous project into two parts so there'd be a community outreach part on the first phase that would focus on on that piece and then uh another community outreach phase for the second phase which i'll talk about um in the next couple slides so our goals would remain the same limit house size bulk and massing looking at changes to the energy conservation code looking at the different options for creative infill and incentivizing preservation of existing homes so with doing the phased option we would have to bring things back to the council quicker so it does impact other code changes so we wanted to make it clear that there would be some trade-offs that we would probably need to put resources to this project so we're anticipating that there would be delays on other code changes like community benefit which we've estimated would be about a

[226:00] four-month delay and then the other two projects that we consider delaying is the urban open space and design standards projects which we'd have to push out for about six to seven months by doing it into the phased approach we are intending to bring the youth standards project keeping that on on its current track we feel like there's good momentum with that project with the planning board subcommittee we're going to also be sending an information packet to the council on that project later this week but what i'm going to talk about now is just kind of the particulars of each of the phases so phase 0 is what we're calling any uh inter immediate code changes so this is if council wanted to move forward with a moratorium or an interim development regulation we're calling that phase zero something that could be done before the end of the year so i'll talk about that phase one would be looking mostly at mass in bulk like a like a cap perhaps a permanent change to the zones

[227:00] as well as the energy code conservation piece of accelerating the net zero requirements which we'd be looking at uh basically a 3000 square foot lot would have to become net zero by next year as part of that first phase and then phase two really goes into the more complicated piece which is the the creative infill so the duplexes the triplexes the adus the tiny homes that's going to have a lot more regulatory changes that would be necessary if we move forward with that um so i'll talk about that in a little bit more detail so before you go too far along i want to be clear make sure i'm understanding what you're talking about this is all everything you're talking about right now is for the phased approach the push off of the community benefits staff and whatnot do you guys still stand by your timeline that is until september october if we don't do a phased approach yeah i mean we're basically saying that if council was open to the project being completed

[228:02] in the original timeline we could stick to that so everything you're telling us right now is is only if we if we move to a phased approach we stick with the original plan we talked about in september none of this applies that's right okay thanks wait a minute so if we go fast we do more this year i think so i mean if if we can consolidate it into one adoption process and consolidate the community engagement we feel that we can complete it in a quicker timeline than if it were to be phased could you would you speak more about the community engagement will you do actual real surveys are you just gonna is it just who shows up we're still trying to formulate what the what the outreach is going to be i think statistically valid is what i mean to say surveys excuse me i mean we're going to try to get the word out as best we can and try to engage specific neighborhoods on changes where we haven't formulated the exact

[229:00] community engagement that we would do i mean part of it depends on the council direction tonight because we're going to have to update the community engagement plan based on whether it's one chunk or two chunks well yep thank you thank you so sorry to jump off of that i mean when we're talking about upzoning neighborhoods and low density areas i mean that's where i would specifically say i'd like to see statistically valid surveys going in so if you're doing open houses hoping you know people from those areas show up that's one thing but i think it's going to be extremely important if you're going to be changing the neighborhoods that the people in the neighborhoods know what's going on so that's right so yeah i mean a robust public engagement is important and and i would love to see a statistically valid survey i will note that the comp plan survey which was statistically valid touched on some of these questions so we do have some data to rely on on

[230:01] related matters on this one little detail carl you said that the the you would think about a 3 000 square foot lot being net zero you meant a 3 000 square foot home did you not correct yeah i apologize okay yeah i caught that i was like we're only going down can i make a process suggestion yeah i don't know where council members are here on this thing um i'll just declare right now where i'm at i i'd rather do this all together and one a lot of this phasing really kind of makes me nervous one thing that really makes me nervous is in the phase approach we spill into beyond the next election which means that we're going to have new potentially at least one new person on this guy and so we're going to have to do some i mean that's going to cost us something right we're going to have to start again with that new person or those new people i i just um i'd rather go faster harder get it get it done as dan says and so i'm just throwing that out there right now i'm not want to interrupt the pro but if everyone's nodding their heads saying that i don't know if you have to spend a whole lot of time tonight talking about the pros and cons of phase approach if people are kind of like want to stick with the original

[231:01] plan i'm just throwing that out there for discussion that uh i would agree with that i think we should we're next if people are agreement then we should go into a little more depth on each one of these and we may need to prioritize because this is a robust thing but that we do it all at once do people generally agree with that i like the phased approach but it goes past the next election i mean that's that's what that means yeah yeah um well it's not just we're going to lose lisa people are going to get reelected in the middle of it it was yeah so okay i mean i could say at least go ahead yes i could be persuaded i just thought that the phased approach was very well thought out and um it addresses

[232:00] the concerns at hand in a short a near term that basically i think addresses the concerns of the of of everybody that has come before us so far so i thought that piece of it was really good um and i thought leaving the complicated stuff that actually um involves a lot more work till the last was also a good idea because it's building on the work that's done prior and i also think that yeah it bleeds out of out into the next council but what is it one or two meetings no it's just normally you have to start over because you have new people that want to go wait a minute or i ran on this platform and yeah and okay so lisa and then sam so um i will say you know when when i met with staff and um and when i read

[233:01] this originally i thought the phased approach was the way to go but um i also i guess didn't realize that this would bleed out into the next council and um i would like to get this done this year and i think where we have the time loss is when we take it two times to planning board and then to council and so i think if we can just do regular updates which i'm sure we'll get and we can go to the community outreach meetings and you know get involved in the survey i think it's cleaner to get it done by i would get it done no later than october i don't want to kill staff i think well i'll make my comments about this demo later but i think this is a great memo and um i think staff's done a great job and i have full confidence that they

[234:01] could get this done by october and it doesn't become an election battle and so lisa what i hear you saying is that to kind of take a second look at the phased approach and seeing how we might be able to combine some of those things and still accomplish the same things in a little bit lesser time right without doing some things twice without yeah having to go to planning board and council twice just go once sam i think my concern is on the community benefits project i would like to see this council get that done um and you know i really appreciate that staff is keeping the use code project moving in parallel with this because i think that's maybe the highest priority thing from my standpoint but i would like to have some space to try and finish off the community benefit project before this council's gone for all the same reasons that we just said we're up to speed on it we know what it looks like so by doing a single phase

[235:01] where you're only going to planning board and council once for adoption leaves the space for that that would be my preference okay so let us tensively say that that's what we're going to we want to do let's go into these in more depth and i think those some may rise to the top and maybe something will fall off or whatever so it's a little more clear what we're trying to fit into this time frame okay we just do that okay so there's two big questions as part of this segment of the presentation and i believe you've you're moving in the direction of answering one of those related to the phase the next question is um irrespective of the phases um is there any interest on the council to move forward on any kind of interim development regulation um because basically if we were to do that we would need some specifications that are shown on this slide before we move forward if if it's something the council wanted to do would

[236:00] be something that we could bring back at the december 18th meeting but we would need clarification about how long it should be in effect what the square footage limitation should be um if there's any the scope of the zones that's that's the other important question we want to ask will i will throw out there that if we go with a timeline that gets us that keeps us moving forward i kind of feel like that might be good enough because we heard from a lot of people that moratorium would be very disruptive whereas if we can get on with the work and engage the community in how we want to see the world on a you know pretty good timeline that that would be the best use of our time that's my sense from there yep great with the little reluctance you okay no i'm i'm fine i just um

[237:01] just the aggression of the spec developers yeah maybe we should just put them more time no i was just joking just two guess it's too soon okay so let me let me ask this question of staff um if there were i the the proposal for phase zero says to limit the issuance one option would be to limit the issuance of building permits for single-family homes to four thousand square feet and the four thousand square feet is where i have a question is um how did you develop that level of square footage as far as what is quantified in it yeah well yeah how did you identify that that number well i mean originally when we talked on october 16th the proposal was for a 3 500 square foot home and i think through that conversation it was clarified that that does not include the garage

[238:00] i think there was a comments that the garage should be included and that would push it up to about four thousand well yeah so i will say that i think we still need to answer some of these questions you know even if we don't go forward with the moratorium there's still for the whole project do we want to just r and re do we want it alright i think that might be next right but it's a different question about a moratorium versus the project as a whole so absolutely yeah right so okay well so i'm not sure are we i mean given all that we have going on in other issues well i do think that the the without some sort of interim development regulation i i think that from for from my viewpoint the moratorium is not an acceptable um way to go in terms of the feedback that we got but perhaps an interim

[239:01] regulation would address a lot of the concerns in terms of the aggressive speculative development for example today i heard of a a speculative developer who hears about divorces that happen and goes and knocks on people's doors i mean seriously so there's that kind of aggression going on out on out there and um and so for that reason i do think that we could use something that is um addresses the aggression by by those particular if there was some easy way to do it i just worry about spending our time figuring out the interim as opposed to getting on with the rule we want to end up with i think that's the time crunch for me so i mean the number of homes that we're talking about is relatively small i believe right we kind of last time we discussed this if it's a standard year it would be like a dozen homes and so if we get it done

[240:01] in eight months it's maybe eight homes or something so i mean i'm sorry and a bunch of those would already be grandfathered in well right some of them already have demolition permits on them which is really sad okay so this will of council is interim or i would like to see us spend our time on crafting the regulations because i think even even a simple interim regulation moratorium would take a lot of time we saw from that from the last hearing we'd get a whole bunch of people okay can we can you live with us not doing an interim i can count okay fair enough you and bob man there's a lot of counting going on i learned how to count from bob okay so why don't we start answering the other question okay so if we move into this process and the

[241:01] complexity widens and it does impact other code changes can we come back to council to look at maybe like a maybe a smaller delay on community benefit if need be keeping this as the number one priority yeah and the way i look at it is if we are successful at these new regulations the community benefit that will come out of this is far greater than what we would get just by um looking at our community benefits so that helps and i think when we do check-ins we'll keep you apprised as the as both projects move forward good okay but mostly we hope we can do everything and then on a reasonable time frame okay so what's so the next slides were focusing on the aspects of each phase does the council want to talk about that well yeah i mean basically which

[242:00] i mean i i talked about this already so if we were to do the phased approach the it would phase one would be we're not doing we're not doing phased okay then i can skip over these oh well okay let's i think we're at the end of the presentation okay but things like there were some things like do we want to tackle all four zones i guess you think we answered that last time right yeah i think a lot of the regulatory options are pretty clear about what we need to look at um and we'll okay yeah i'm happy hey the paper said we weren't getting that until after midnight so we have two hours to discuss stuff oh yeah so oh i think we'd devastate shea if we left it really i think she'd be very upset um well so there's no other questions you have of us on this well so isn't there like an existential one of do we want to do the rl one zone you know it's like is it rr and re or do we add rl1 that's what he said he thought he already told him yeah let's do all of it yeah i thought we said that last time

[243:00] i mean based on the study session we have all those zones on the table i think we'll kind of move down into more definitive options for each um to get feedback on okay the reason i was bringing it up is rl1 still has a range of lot sizes right so the house size that you can build in the rl1 zone is dependent on the lot i didn't know if we were really after large homes so we would pick the larger lots in the rl1 or if we just wanted to do it all by zone district but i guess we can look at that later yeah and i think just coming back to our goal of i think and this will find out what the appetite is more smaller so it's both smaller and more as opposed to fewer at large and and i guess that's the thing i want to just test with people is if we just make them smaller without making more of them like allowing duplexes or something we haven't really solved you know much and i just want to make sure that we are all

[244:01] in agreement that it's both more and smaller mm-hmm and yeah and and i'm okay with smaller but i'm not it depends on how many more i do not think we can build our way out of our affordability issues and so so that's an that's an issue right there it's a philosophic discussion but it's also going to be data driven when we see what the price of land is in this community and in the rl1 zones when i first moved into the block that i live in probably there wasn't a house there's seven houses there now there used to be eight one is scraped completely there wasn't a house there over 900 square feet now they are into the 35 4 4 500. so but if they fit in

[245:03] which they do it's not a big deal and they're green so so how do we get how do we let me rephrase this not whether do you do you support more smaller do you support having the community discussion about more and smaller that's the question because that's what we're embarking on we're not it doesn't we recognize that people will be along the spectrum and so will we i guess that's the part i want to clarify if we do something like that so we did pass it was called the danish plan some many years ago which talked about the amount of growth that the community would allow rather than and so if we can approach this on some statistically valid survey rather than this is what i think or this is what my experience is even though anecdotally after 50 years in the community i have seen a few things here and paid attention to them so but i think we're up against but but it will also be opinionated what feels okay

[246:00] to people yeah well so in a statistically valid survey that'll be people will talk about that right nearby and then we'll get jill in here i'm just tagging on so yes if a community discussion and a statistically valid survey for the people in the zones that we just we decide or the community decides is what i would like to see i want to see the people directly impacted or affected is where i want to see so if they call for more and that's what they want fine but if they don't then i would like to respect that as well i'm going to go a different direction and just say that smaller but same doesn't move the needle on affordable housing much more smaller is great but also we really really really need more smaller and more flexibility within it if we're talking about these zones i really would ask that as we're looking at allowing more homes on lots that we allow more people in homes we only allow three unrelated people right now portland maine a college town allows 16.

[247:01] austin texas a college town allows six seattle washington a college town at laws eight portland oregon a college channel has six san francisco a college town allows 10. you could go on and on non-college towns where it gets higher or no limit we have 60 000 renters if even one percent of them added a person to their dwelling because of that that's 600 new people with a place i'm going to go back to adus we need more flexibility on those even though i know we just passed it but i just think that the direction is more smaller more and more flexibility in them suzanne before we end the conversation yeah um i wanted to circle back on something earlier today chris mastjek and i were talking about the game plan for 2019 and i personally have a little bit of trepidation about whether or not we'll be able to do both this and

[248:00] stick with the exact same phasing or timeline for community benefit and i i know that sam's relying on that a little bit and just mentioned that it's important to him so i sort of wanted to ask chris to get up and confirm or deny i guess whether or not we can really stay on exactly the same time frame yeah and uh chris chuck and i appreciate carl's optimism and and ambition i am a little worried about if we try and do all of the work related to large homes and lots you know a single phase to make sure that we get that done by early fall we are going to need to slow down the other code change projects when we were here in september talking about all the different code change projects community benefit um and then urban open space as well as the comprehensive design standards where things that we add in the queue for 2019 we're going to need to slow those projects down by about four to six months in order to get all of this work done

[249:00] related to large lots and homes with the current staffing that we have these guys are doing great work and and producing great materials but we want to make sure that they have the right amount of time to do that so i think from a work plan standpoint that's probably the the most manageable so how you mentioned their time i think that there's three times right there's what the public can deal with there's our time just like getting through these meetings and then there's your time and we can augment staff time with consultants if we need to sometimes depending on the project whether that's appropriate i guess that's my question is is the limiting factor can we hire some more people to help us or is that not the limiting factor we anticipate hiring some consultants to help us with some of this code work it probably is not enough to supplement accelerating the timeline what i would suggest is if it's possible

[250:02] is based on doing all of this in one phase for us to look at moving forward with those other projects may need to slow down if things start going smoother and faster than we were anticipating related to this project then we can pick that work back up but have that right now move closer to the back burner so that this work can stay on track okay i think we might need to think about that so so as bob and i are sitting here looking at the kind of uh agenda that we adopted at the retreat last time you know the bullet points i don't see the urban open space on there what is that project uh it's on the land use code change list it's listed as usable open space that's the current title and the code nice we called it urban open space because there's some confusion about related to you know open space around the city i see so that's that's the way that um say open space is regulated as open space per dwelling within

[251:00] development projects okay thank you but but that's not the one that would where we change it and get more smaller units right it isn't or is it would be it's how you calculate um that particular project was not aimed at changing density although i know there were comments made as part of the community benefit project that we look at that mm-hmm but that but the urban it's more about the definition of open space rather than changing the the density by the design and what qualifies as open space the quality right and which i'd love to get to but that feels less important to me than these other things and we've been i think when was that um thistle did the project um that was the former fire training place and that's i think was 2008 maybe 2009 when we really started talking about what we were getting and what we weren't getting and we started talking about open space and how we calculate it so it's been kind of

[252:00] a top priority but not for like 10 years and i think it's been a back burner priority for a long time okay well so so that one's not going to happen probably um but how are people feeling about sliding these other two can make a suggestion yeah i'm actually gonna um suggest that we just very briefly talk about item eight f on our agenda because that was actually what we thought mary and i were gonna talk about so if i can just jump the queue here a little bit later in the week like tomorrow or thursday you're going to be receiving from lynette an email with some homework for the retreat and it's going to remind us of our 14 priorities that we established for ourselves some of which we've done back at the last retreat and it's going to ask you that by december 21 to kind of more or less recorded them you know what what things are are your priorities what things if you want to add something to the list god bless you but but also it's your heart bless your heart yes yeah not god bless you god flesh your heart yeah um but but but

[253:01] really kind of communicate to each other through hotline by the 21st what we want you know what's most important so if if sam feels that community benefits most important he's going to put that high up on his list and maybe mobile home parks is less important to him i don't know what what so what the idea is is for us all to exchange through hotline are priorities either the original 14 or if you want to add something or you want to take something off that way the city staff and jane will have all that the benefit of that thinking so that when we come back on january 8th when we have a pre-retreat study session jane then can feed back to us this is what i heard you say these are the things that seem to be higher priorities and we'll move them forward these are lower priorities to make time for the higher priorities so um can i make a semantical adjustment which is higher priority for us to deal with in the coming year yeah i'm sorry that this is all about between now and the end of this country we think it's an important time yeah not between now and this this council yeah because some of these suggestions moving forward from the heart could be things

[254:00] that are actually could just be done by the council just like that boom name one thing we can do like that uh we can stand up well that's that's what jane's gonna tell us on the eighth in other words we'll give the priorities jane has an idea of what's a big project wants a smaller project right and if she hears our priorities then she's gonna say here's what i heard this is what i can slot in because these are smaller these are big things if something's really big and really low priority guess what it's going to go to the next council okay and so really this falls into that and it may be we have to shave some of this and i guess that's my senses you know what some stuff that we propose can be really controversial and some stuff is more doable and less controversial and we'll just have to decide you said if it gets easier and smoother like that never happens um so anyway we just have to prioritize which is so important so i think there are some things in this project that could be done pretty quickly like the energy code changes i mean the staff proposed skipping the 2019 increment right so boom right there

[255:00] you make the change and it's done and it just doesn't seem to me like that has the same kind of process considerations as say observing an infill that's going to require a bigger conversation and so in my opinion the more zones that we extend it to the more complicated that conversation becomes just as a comment that we can think about going forward if we were to focus on rr and re from perspective it might be smoother right then if we throw in rl or rl1 lots above 7 500 feet or whatever so i think choices we make as a council are going to really influence whether it gets smoother or not for staff yeah true can can i just note the uh just uh the open space master plan is one of the things they're really hoping to get that done with this council that's another thing that we're really hoping to get done this next year it's on the list one of the 14. yep okay um i feel like we're leaving this pretty not totally defined

[256:00] but we are going to have to prioritize we know we are and and maybe this is good enough you've answered our questions okay so you didn't ask garden of questions then so i just i just want to say something um you know this well we did bring this up at the retreat and this was on our work program i have to say um reading this memo is probably the best memo i've ever read and it is so complete and the data is so well presented and we don't get this too i mean we don't get this as often as i would like and it just it was just outstanding piece of work and um i i read it and then i'd have to go back and read some more and i really enjoyed you know looking at what you presented and how you presented it and i think you did it in a very objective way and a very clear and easy

[257:02] to read so i just want to say thank you and if we have more memos like that i'll be continuing to read council packets after i leave whoa and i want to i want to agree with that it really really was a an excellent memo it was it was i particularly liked all the graphs and the way the material was presented and it was all based on well researched data which was very very helpful and the case studies were great so thank you um we're going to end this conversation we have another item before us before we go your mayor pro tem election [Music] so um before we do that can we thank the outgoing of course yes i guess

[258:00] let us do a little toast to erin i'll just say this it's been a real real pleasure um working with you going to monday meetings every week i'll just say you're calm demeanor you're thoughtful the the level of brainpower you bring to things um in your insightful way to that you waltz in with a solution in the middle of a conversation you know as we're wrestling with how to put it together it's just been great yeah thank you very much thank you so much that's very sweet all right thank you it's been a great honor uh being mayor pro tem this last year and i've enjoyed it a lot too not showing up here at 8 am on monday morning so much but but i have enjoyed it a lot so i'll miss it i'll just say to my successor with great power comes great responsibility you know don't don't don't let it get to your head [Laughter] and don't squander it right yeah

[259:01] and so with that i am very proud um so your rules say public hearing first and nominations oh before the nomination yeah at the conclusion of public testimony council will consider nominations so we don't make a nomination well we already have one nomination okay expression do we have any public that wants to speak to this no you're only public okay so then we're closing the public hearing so i am very happy and proud to um nominate sam weaver for um the mayor pro tem position and i have great confidence he will fill the big shoes left by aaron size 13. size 13. won't quite film and and that he will continue in the same diligence diligences aaron and um that you'll do a great job and sorry about

[260:01] monday morning yeah me too i'll second that do we need a second we don't we don't okay um yeah well by acclimation um but yes i i look forward to working with you i look forward to it too and i commit to you know council that to me this is just a functional job it's really about scheduling in our work so that we get to it in a timely fashion and you know there won't be any political maneuvering on scheduling it will all be about how we get our work done not taking bribes is what you say yeah i know i know you'll do a great job sam thanks for taking it over and and and let me just say thanks to our mayor um for doing such a great job the last three years and for another year i was a pleasure to work with you this year's anne and it's great to have the steady hand on the tiller and look forward to having you and sam working together on it thanks everyone do we is it by acclimation we have to

[261:00] buy acclimation all right um any process debriefing tonight ended too early i learned a lesson when you knock things off the calendar or the agenda knock broadband off right but i thought that the memo for the um excel item that we considered tonight was also quite good i mean it had like everything i was looking to find out in the memo i was able to find in there yeah so i mean this packet was phenomenal the materials so good way to go big thank you to seth yep and we got things done okay let's all go home early thank you we're on time [Music] live from paris office

[262:03] [Music] and look for a plan of action to fight climate change it's time