July 9, 2019 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[6:00] welcome everybody Boulder County Boulder well Boulder City Council studies session of July ninth 2019 welcome back from break everybody as you can tell it was a good break can't remember anything and we have two issues tonight and the first of which is dealing with climate change so I guess I'm handing it over to what well thank you Mary City Council tonight we're here to talk about climate change and as many of you have probably noticed there's a tremendous groundswell among the youth of our community and across the world actually and this community's blessed with some truly extraordinary young people so with us tonight and given the importance of this topic we wanted to open this with a group by the name of young women's voices for climate and to introduce that group is oznas great hello my name is

[7:03] Beth Ausmus I'm a professor of theatre and environmental studies at the University of Colorado and I've had the great pleasure of working for the last year with these young women who are Boulder City middle and high school students who are concerned with climate and have been meeting once a week to come and do these activities as we look to expand and our scope and our scale of our climate action I also ask that we look to expand our methods for engagement and who we engage so I hand you over to the capable hands of young women's voices for climate [Applause] five six seven valence of us have

[8:15] concerns on climate change in Boulder mine is educating children and young adults on how to recycle and what to recycle also providing opportunities for people to discuss their concerns about the future and letting people know that being sustainably conscious doesn't have to be boring making climate change solutions and engagement workshops accessible to the whole community climate change education could be taught better so youth understand the problem and could have the solutions girls education and Family Planning go hand-in-hand the program Genesis er educates girls whose sisters are teen mothers and need continued support and

[9:01] how the climate crisis affects people with disabilities in fall of last year we performed at CU in front of upwards of 150 people for Maria oye has lecture on youth and climate Maria said the actively involving adolescents while they are still relatively young is important regarding climate related issues since research reveals that pessimism about addressing climate change increases with age particularly from early to late adolescence we also sang our what's climate got to do with it song we also made these wonderful green dress we also made these wonderful green dresses I added a tree onto mine because my family owns a tree nursery and I just really like trees each of us shared our

[10:01] personal declarations mine with a poem of how even if adults are afraid of taking action I am NOT I know I can make a difference we worked in the organization called drawdown that focused on the top 100 solutions for reversing climate change we took the top three solutions refrigerates currents wind turbines and reducing food waste and made interactive skits that we performed at both rakia and National Park and the Seas Science Museum in both performances it was incredibly inspiring to see the young audience that we performed to interact and join us in finding ways to reverse climate change our second skit wind turbines is we're gonna do a song from that right now and if you guys have any more questions please refer to the pamphlets that we've handed out [Music]

[11:11] clean energy that may surprise once made I don't pollute air and power from me is free you need power and I make energy seems were meant to be and I get it when I'm too close to your very backyard the noise and decrease in property value can make our friendship hard [Music]

[12:00] [Applause] maybe we should have staff through our council packets like that much more accessible I want to see how that's going to come out in the post council memo thank you very much for that that was a tree and on in front of all of you there are some fliers about the work that they're doing and of the group that they belong to so I'd like to take a moment to introduce to my left Jonathan Cohen our senior sustainability policy advisor and Ratkin Karen our senior policy advisor for climate sustainability and resilience and myself I'm Steve Kat nak the director of the climate initiatives department and I'd also like to recognize that about half of the climate initiatives Department is also here and is looking very forward to

[13:02] this conversation with Council as you all know the climate initiatives Department was formed in November this past year and prior to that we had already begun discussions about the need to look at and update the city's climate commitment which was adopted in 2016 as we began those conversations what we've realized was in light of new science and in light of much of what had been happening a new approach to developing strategy and the activities and the actions that we should be taking as we move into the future became apparent to us in the development of how we should go about doing that so tonight what we wanted to discuss with all of you is really more that process and get your thoughts on how we should be approaching the development of new strategies to

[14:01] address what we know is a more urgent crisis and how best to go about doing that - I would like from that to turn it over to Bret for his presentation Thank You Steve again my name is Brett ken Karen I'm the senior policy advisor for climate resilience and sustainability here for the city it's my honor and my privilege to be here this evening representing so many people who are a part of this work not only the remarkable colleagues we have in climate initiatives there are many members of our other staff open spaces here to these this evening transportations here this evening and really we also represent many many people in our community who have been working on this for many years some of whom are sitting in the audience tonight as well so I want to acknowledge that really this is the culmination and the continuation of all of that work just to review for those who can't perhaps see the screen I'll just read the questions that we bring to council this evening first based on the current science and recent

[15:01] changes in context should the city expand accelerate or identify new climate action goals and if so does Council have specific recommendations for that second does council want to consider a climate emergency resolution as some in the community of call for third does the council agree with the climate action focus areas that we'll discuss this evening and are there any others or are there particular ones that council believes we should prioritize in addition to the list and part of what we will be discussing this evening as a strategy for moving is a process for developing a strategy moving forward and so we have a list of organizations and stakeholders we've started to reach out to and we'd like to know if council has other suggestions about those kinds of organizations or others also we're starting to work to develop specific and formal letters of intent and partnership agreements with these partners and we and we are interested in any feedback that the council has on that and finally we want to see if the council has any

[16:00] further requests for analysis of impacts from either the state legislative changes that we'll be talking about or some of the other city current climate action strategies and tactics so just to kind of recap very briefly what the ground we're going to cover it together this evening there are essentially three themes the first is how the context of climate action has really changed quite significantly just even in the last year both in terms of what we're learning from the climate science and also some remarkable achievements in our own state legislature second we want to review with you some insights we believe that we have learned from the work we've done over the past 15 or so years and how that should inform how we go forward based on these changes in context and finally to describe the process that we are proposing to work with our community and others to develop this updated climate strategy so let's talk a little bit about this changed context I want to just know from a personal level that I look back and it was almost six years to

[17:01] the day that I was here for my first presentation to council about our climate action effort our 2012 climate action plan had just expired we were starting to work on our next generation climate action plan and the thing I want to note about that time just six years ago is that we were still actively having a conversation not just in our society but even in our community about whether climate change was happening and whether we were gonna stop it so much has changed in just this period of time and that was completely affirmed and illustrated in the report that the UN panel of scientists the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in October of this past year and there were a number of findings there that have sort of set into stark relief how significant climate change has become first is that climate change is in fact not only happening but it's accelerating second we actually now know that instead of talking simply about how much emissions reduction percentages we

[18:01] should be achieving we literally should be thinking about this as a budget that there's only so much more carbon that we can release if we want to stay within a threshold of safety for our planet and that that threshold is probably something on the order of 10 - so or so years if we continue at our current rates this report also noted that the thing we've been focusing on almost exclusively emissions reduction is no longer going to be sufficient by itself to stabilize climate we now have to also initiate we capturing the carbon that we've released at very large scales and finally that our communities must now prepare for climate change because it is not only happening it will continue to happen and with greater intensity even as we work now to stabilize that situation the report that the panel released also did in a way affirm the approach that we developed and and that you as a council

[19:01] adopted three years ago in 2016 the the date of our last climate action plan in which we set out essentially three broad areas of action energy systems change was of course we've been working on for many years regenerating ecosystems and now especially how we work with these ecosystems to recapture carbon through sequestration and also how we change this consumption and waste oriented economy into a more circular one and that all of that we said in 2016 had to be done from the context of how addressed our community's well-being and equity issues what we now know is that there is a fifth element we have to also consider the resilience of our communities as we now face climate change so in 2016 we adopted what we felt was a very ambitious in fact one of the most ambitious climate action plans and sets of goals in the world we set up a reduction target of 80% mission reduction by 2050 that for our own allure in his organization we set a goal

[20:02] of 80 percent by 2030 we set a goal of achieving a hundred percent renewable electricity by 2030 a hundred megawatts of local generation by 2030 and to continue the remarkable work that our community has done around diversion of waste into 2025 yet despite those very ambitious goals that we set and that a number of other communities have set as well what we now know is that it's insufficient and I do want to note that unfortunately as sobering as the IPCC report is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change's report is it is actually somewhat muted in comparison to some of the science which now emerging there is a concept now in science and this is a quote from a peer-reviewed scientific report that's talking about a phenomena called hothouse earth in which we cross thresholds that there it's the possibility that we could cross thresholds which we cannot turn back

[21:02] from in terms of the warming of the climate and so I want to read this just because it's so important I think to hear these words incremental linear change to the present socio-economic systems are not enough to stabilize the Earth's system widespread rapid and fundamental transformations will be will likely be required to reduce the risk of crossing the threshold and locking in the hothouse earth pathway so we know that our current efforts are insufficient in part because global emissions continue to increase we also know unfortunately through recent analysis that even though cities have been a very important part of trying to lead this effort the scale of actions within even the most ambitious cities have not been achieving those objectives and we know that we're not seeing the spread of climate action into other cities there are 17,000 municipalities in the United States less than 5% of

[22:02] them are actually engaged in climate action and that number is not rapidly growing so we need to step back and say why is that and how do we change that so here are some of the things that we believe are at the root of why our strategies haven't worked to date one of the first of these is that we've been attempting to compel change at an individual level it's not that what we do isn't important it's just that by trying to make people change individually that's not going to change things at a systems level we actually need to figure out the ways that we change the conditions so that people don't have to do the thing that is difficult or complicated or expensive also that we've been taking the same approach with cities we've been hoping that each a city at a time could actually achieve these kinds of scales of action that's not happening we know that markets aren't driving this sufficiently and finally we now know that cities don't control all the factors that they need to accomplish these goals we control where our power source we don't

[23:00] control how the automobiles are designed we don't control many of the regional transportation and investments that are critical to this so what do we need we need to focus on changing systems and not people we need to start working with in zazz cities outside of our boundaries and especially in partnership with many others and we need to start creating progressive city policies so this has been sort of the bummer part of the presentation I promise it's gonna get a little better it almost always gets better when Jonathan speaks so that's part of the change context that we've been talking about it is difficult we are in a difficult situation but we are actually seeing some very promising change at systemic levels and that's what Jonathan is about to talk about thanks Bret maybe maybe we need another song okay so thanks mayor members of council Jonathan Cohen I'm the other senior sustainability policy adviser so my part of the presentation tonight is

[24:01] relatively short but Bret and I really thought it was important to highlight some of the recent policy efforts that really aims to support our climate work and I really also wanted to start where Bret started with a little bit of gratitude because there are so many in our community that are here in the audience tonight that are watching that maybe aren't even paying attention that have done such great work that have allowed us as a staff team as a department to be able to do this work and we're incredibly honored to do so so it's really important to know that this has always been about the community and and the work that they have done to get us to where we are so I want to talk just a bit about policy and say that we know that we need policies both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also to really prepare our communities for the impacts of climate change and sometimes the challenge isn't necessarily technical or even economic but rather a matter of acting the right policies and ensuring that they're properly designed and enforced which really requires a coordinated action across multiple sectors of government

[25:00] and levels of government and be clear when we talk about policy reform it's really not something that's terribly new to the city we've been working in the area of policy for quite a while but it really is just recently they'll be put a lot of it tension on the climate policy there we go so what I wanted to do is take you through just a real quick snapshot of the different areas of policy work that we do and give you some examples so starting kind of at the high level at the national level you know your policy adviser Cara Castillo I think does a really terrific job at keeping us very closely aligned with our delegates in d.c making sure that we have a seat at the table when necessary and connecting us to these federal policy issues one in particular issue that I wanted to raise Boulder is one of five cities and 15 states as part of a coalition still fighting the repeal of the clean power plan in fact we actually just sent letters today to Senators Bennett and Gardner and Congressman to Goose requesting their opposition to the ACE rule which is the administration's proposed replacement so we continue to

[26:02] be engaged and involved at the federal level dropping down of course to the state I did want to dis pause and say that while it's not necessarily policy reform Boulder San Miguel County in Boulder County are still involved in a lawsuit against exxon mobil and Suncor Energy seeking compensation for the costs of adapting to climate change impacts administrative actions are a relatively new area for us but we do in fact try to work very closely with the administration and just recently tried to work with poulos's administration on the road map to 100% renewable energy we're gonna continue to try to work to have a seat at the table and be a resource for the governor's office moving forward moving on to regulatory actions this has really been our sweet spot for many years we've spent quite a bit of time at regulatory agencies like the Air Quality Control Commission and of course the Public Utilities Commission and I won't go into detail about the proceedings that we've been involved in that we're currently

[27:00] involved in what I would ask you to do is look to attachment B in your packet and I'm gonna reference that attachment a number of times because we packed a lot into that it lists the legislative bills it lists some of the regulatory actions that were currently involved in so I'll come back and reference that a number of times so finally the legislative actions which i think is really what a lot of people have been interested in in terms of what's happened the city and our coalition's particularly the Colorado coalition excuse me Colorado communities for climate action should be able to say that CC for CA we've been working hard to identify specific local and statewide policies that do two things first they create that necessary state backdrop but also those policies that allow our local jurisdictions to go further faster so there was a lot of attention of course on the General Assembly this year at the conclusion of this last session more than a dozen new climate and energy bills were signed into law and I would

[28:00] not expect you to read this long list again looking to attachment B what we tried to do is list the various climate and energy bills and their implications so you can get a snapshot of what they did and what it means to our local efforts here so that arguably makes this most recent session the most impactful yet in Colorado's efforts to address the climate crisis the bills of course cover array of issues from energy issues building codes efficiency standards electric vehicle infrastructure so there is a lot there one a particular that I really wanted to call attention to is House bill 1212 61 and this bill again got a lot of attention during the session and continues to be I think an important one going forward 1261 puts into statute strong short and long term goals for cutting climate pollution and requires the state to develop and implement regulations to achieve those mandates in a timely matter under the law Colorado will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all

[29:02] sectors not just electricity at least 26% and it's up on the screen by 2025 50 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050 but those are the goals the law directs the air quality control commission to develop the rules that ensure those targets are met it does leave retail electricity rulemaking to the Public Utilities Commission also I would just want to point out that the legislation doesn't include penalties or rigorous timelines and really no recourse if the state fails to meet those targets so the next big challenge for us as this and other important bills make their way through the rulemaking process we want to make sure that the intent behind the legislation is retained another just quick snapshot of another important bill is Senate bill 236 this was the Public Utilities Commission reauthorization or sunset bill among other things it requires investor-owned utilities like Xcel Energy Black Hills and now tri-state to reduce their carbon by 80 percent by

[30:01] 2030 and 100 percent by 2050 and it puts a cap on the expense that they can essentially charge back to ratepayers at 1.5 percent the third bullet point is important for the work that we're doing here around kind of localization the rules also include distribution system planning so our hope is is we can influence that rulemaking to ensure that it really creates opportunities for more local generation new technologies things like micro gritting on-site generation and storage etc it also does an important thing but it adds the cost of carbon social cost of carbon for few evaluating future energy projects so this will be a really important bill to keep an eye on as it works its way through the Public Utilities Commission so many highlights to that we that we could go through I'm not going to read through these I would just say that I think there are a number of things that really align with our local goals and

[31:00] targets and we really want to make sure that we harmonize what's happening to the state and it provides that backdrop to the work that we do here locally I do want to pause though and emphasize the point that in terms of what these various bills mean to our local Levitz decarbonizing our electricity supply is still our number one priority not only is it currently Arnim our highest or biggest sector of emissions a decarbonized electricity supply we know sets that stage for our ability to really think about decarbonizing other sectors we're going to talk about this transformational change in sectors like like mobility and transportation and in heating so we know that we needed to decarbonize our electricity supply and we're not shying away from now that is going to be our number one priority I would also stress that we know that climate and energy policies are really a mixture of numerous interdependent and involving any ball building parts so from our experience we know it's easy to commit to these targets the key now in this next frontier of climate change in climate action is really turning those pledges

[32:01] into reality with really laser focused and well-designed requirements so that means there's gonna be a lot more work to do and our staff and our coalition's are going to be very active in terms of next steps we're preparing for the various rulemaking efforts and making sure that we're ready to fully participate of course we'll keep council involved and up to date on the schedule of those rulemaking proceedings so you know what's coming and how you might get involved in those as well we're also already mobilizing to prepare for the next legislative session thankfully we have a new political social and economic environment that allows the General Assembly and our regulatory agencies to really keep pushing for new energy and climate policy and that creates the necessary foundation for long-term systemic changes and really helps to find the emerging role of cities that bread is gonna explore with you next so that's a part of this context change both in terms of climate change and in terms of our very significant steps in

[33:02] state policy what does this mean about what the role of Boulder and other cities is in the context of climate action now and we've been starting to talk about this notion of systems change we would suggest that there are really essentially two questions we have to start asking of any action that we're committing to as a city that's intended to to contribute to stabilizing climate first how does that action lead to some kind of systemic change not just for us but for others and then what system level actions actually scale and replicate it doesn't do a lot of good if we put a lot of effort into something that only works for Boulder but won't scale or replicate anywhere else if our objective is ultimately to help stabilize climate so what do we mean when we talk about systems change one of the simple ways we thought of to

[34:00] describe this is that essentially it's the context in which the right choice or the that need that we need to make to stabilize climate is either the easiest choice or the only choice because right now think about the context and we'll talk about this more in a moment around what a homeowner faces to do all the things that are necessary to improve their homes it's very often more complicated it's more difficult and it's more expensive so in that kind of a context if we keep expecting others to take those actions and they don't is it right to condemn them for not doing that or should we be saying instead how do we change the system so that we can all make that change together and then therefore how do we make changes that apply to everyone that work for everyone and finally how do we make sure that the costs of those steps that we need to take because we face the need to change a huge amount of infrastructure how do we make sure that those costs are equitably shared not only right now but even into the future for those who are

[35:00] going to benefit from the investments that we're making so what we know now is that the actions that we need to take need to be bigger than our organization bigger than our boundaries replicable and actionable soon so we could think about the role of cities as essentially two domains and we've been an absolute leader in really both of them but especially in this notion of how do we innovate how do we find those new things that we can do and I think we've been tremendous in whether it's developing community solar gardens or electrification or all these different things that we've done but now we need to think about how those apply not just within our boundary and meeting an emissions target with for Boulder but how do they actually spread elsewhere and that's where this notion of we need to enter into partnerships and collaborations that are pointed towards changing the rules not changing people changing the rules so that it applies to everyone it makes it possible for everyone and that also change the

[36:01] markets because of course as we know money drives so much of what weather this transformation happens or not so Jonathan and I are going to give you now tangible examples we've been talking kind of in an abstract sense let's let's talk about it in a very concrete sense I'm going to talk about it in the context of a particular program and Jonathan's going to talk about this systemic approach in the context of policy so in the context of a programmatic effort as Jonathan mentioned not only do we have to clean up our electricity source it has to come from renewable sources we then need to move almost everything we can into using electricity right that clean electricity this is what we call electrification Boulder isn't is it has been an early leader in this in fact you've some of you have seen this slide it was from three years two years ago when we were talking about this effort that Boulder launched in 2016 is one of the first cities in the West to do this to figure out how we could support our our residents in switching out their natural gas appliances to high-efficiency

[37:00] electric heat pumps and we did we initially did that analysis we started to demonstrate that it could be economically viable and then we did that thing that we just talked about we reached out to others we've talked to New York City who got very interested Washington DC Burlington Vermont Boston San Francisco and by developing that sort of critical mass of cities because you know Boulder doesn't carry a lot of weight out in the marketplace we were able to go to Mitsubishi and Dyken in LG and Panasonic and bring them together as an industry collaborative to say how do we work together as cities and as industry to create a market transformation here and so we worked over two years to develop a strategy to implement residential electrification and Boulder once again was one of the first out with this effort it wasn't in any way perfect because of course that's what boulders good at we helped innovate early so that others can follow but we launched the compass 365 program we work with Mitsubishi who actually put in a lot of marketing resources and financial

[38:01] incentives we work with the county through our energy smart program and we were very successful by the measures of such an effort we increased adoption by over 300% what that means though in the context of our current setting is we went from about 50 people getting heat pumps a year to maybe two or three hundred and we would know whether it's two or three hundred but as you probably know not everybody files a building permit for the things that they're doing out there we were very successful except we weren't it's accessible at the scales necessary to actually achieve the kind of change we need to make so let's think about what it takes to do that kind of a scale of change well let's actually think about this from the homeowners perspective to really do a lek trophic ation you should first of course as we always say start with efficiency that's not cheap but it's it's relatively modest in cost but they don't have to replace all my appliances that starts to get quite expensive and if we then actually want to make the source of our energy locally clean and we put solar on top of that we would be looking at each household in the community needing to

[39:00] spend somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty to fifty thousand dollars that's what we literally need for people to do to be able to achieve this objective now there are many benefits to this we shouldn't say this this is just an upfront cost I put in a heat pump in my own house I'm part of that sort of guinea pig cohort and it's fantastic I don't have the air quality issues that I had with my gas furnace there are many ways that have more control over the system but it was more expensive it was more complicated and so we're facing this situation for each household and then if you think about okay now let's think about this in the context of our climate strategy we need every household to do this in Boulder there's 18,000 households what does that literally mean in terms of the cost 18,000 households times $38,000 is over 600 million dollars now my colleagues didn't want me to actually put this number out because they thought you're just gonna scare everybody away then we're gonna prove that we can't do this I would actually say to you we've been here before we

[40:00] faced similar very expensive infrastructure change situations before in fact it was about a hundred years ago that we created regulated monopoly utilities to do exactly this to aggregate lots of money and deploy a lot of infrastructure to make it available to a lot of people and then spread that cost out over society and over time we know how to do this in fact my colleague Jonathan has been working on the vehicle to do it I was so intrigued I don't even wasn't even ready so I wanted to talk just just very quickly Brett talks about Boulder as this ignition system and I just want to give you a different example and a little bit different flavor as we swing back to the policy realm a couple of years ago we were really facing this issue of as we really really started to dig into this idea of how do we influence policy at the state level we recognized that a we were just one voice be we really needed

[41:01] to create some solidarity with other players in this space whether it be local jurisdictions or other partners and so I'm really proud of the fact that we really started to pull together a number of communities to build this coalition something Brett said earlier too I just want to emphasize we know that major climate drivers are controlled or managed at scales larger than cities so that underscores that importance of influencing or engaging with other cities and entities so a big part of our reality is that we have to balance that work inside and outside of our boundaries thankfully the work that we're doing locally is really part of a much bigger effort to fight climate change and much of it is done through these regional collaboratives so one in particular that I was just relating to Colorado communities for climate action or CC for SCA just as a reminder to council is a coalition of 28 now counties and municipalities across the state advocating for effective state climate policy and as you might imagine the membership spans western slope and Front Range small in rural towns major

[42:01] suburbs and much of our regional work looking forward is going to be done through this coalition you know it just as a personal note it really is gratifying we just had our annual retreat in Vail and the excitement and the interest in the coalition and recognizing the importance and the work that we've done and how we've really been able to get a seat at the table with policy makers has really been extraordinary this kind of regional kind of collaborative or climate collaborative is really getting a lot of tension outside of Boulder as well currently we're working with the Institute for sustainable communities who was funded by the Kresge Foundation to research this concept as governance paradigm or a regionalism as a governor's paradigm when it comes to climate so that's something that's quite unique we're looking at ways to both scale so how do we think about this organization and the way we uses coalition to scale up how do we look to ways to replicate whether it be in other states or another and other ways to kind of use this model moving forward also just as a note council will be getting an invitation relatively soon from Park

[43:01] City Utah they're actually convening a group later on this year of 20 or 30 cities we're moving in a really big way on this regional climate collaborative concept and they see Boulder is a leader in this so really using this vehicle of collaborative and coalition's to really drive home our message and amplify our message has really really been extraordinary just in two years so I would expect to see this organization grow and some of the model that we use to develop our policy agenda and really influence policy at the state level to really take off so I would say Bret would you want to talk about the next steps and developing the 2030 plan yes okay so we have a sense that we've learned some lessons we have a pretty good picture of the core areas of action that we need to take there are still some innovations that need to be developed there are there are a lot of innovations we have developed we need to

[44:00] figure out how to take to scale so this is the framework that we will talk about in a few minutes just that we want to get feedback do you think this is the right framework if we got it organized correctly but the next step is how do we bring the best and brightest as we always do in Boulder together both our community and organizations and other stakeholders who have been working on this and look for what those innovations are in each of these areas and how we take them to scale and I think one of the things that's really critical to understand about our suggestion here is that we need to you know way recognize that we are at the center of this we're a very significant and important part of it but for this to be successful we need to actually mobilize and catalyze action at all levels and in all sectors some of it which we will never touch or even maybe even ever know about and that our role is to help inspire and coordinate and facilitate and get some of this stuff moving out and so we've to reach out already to a variety of

[45:01] organizations and say are you in can you help us do you want to be a part of this and actually ask them to somewhat formally commit to this so we've drafted a letter of intent we haven't signed any of these but all of these partners have actually signed already their signature lines on these letter of intent saying we're in we want to help in various ways in various of these areas to start moving this agenda forward there are others that we are reaching out to or want to reach out to in all of these different sectors and as you can see we need to reach across all these sectors the public sector the private sector the nonprofit sector the academic and research communities so one thing that's missing on here are just normal people and so you need to get the people in there and you could do that through Sierra Club you could do that through neighbourhood organizations through H o ace and I know I used to be

[46:00] a eco cycle block leader and then a region leader and I think that on the ground block to block communication amongst neighbors really does make people change in their ways and I know you're saying we can't change people but I think we do need to still change people systems can't be the only thing and so I think there this is just a couple but I think you could add a whole lot more and get an army on the ground of people who want to do this not only in Boulder the beyond Boulder thank you and we're almost done by the way and no no thank you and your point is of course extremely important and I wanted to just note for you that in addition to all those organizations note in the lower right-hand corner that we actually are launching a place for people and neighborhood organizations and others to go and say I'm in I want to be a part of this too and we've already started to get those calls and so let me just a couple of things and I also want to show you how

[47:00] we're thinking about the places that we engage more of the community so but I do want to point out something because it has come up in conversations that I know folks have been having who are we inviting in terms of some of these institutional partners and in particular has come out and I've just circled it in red here as why are you talking to shell why would you consider an organization like shell like aren't they the enemy and why is business even perhaps a part of this process and I think most of us are many of us at least believe we have to have all parties in this game all resources in this game and I think we've barely clearly demonstrated to the in fact oil and gas industry that if you are going to take a proactive step we'll take you on in another way because we are in fact suing some of them too so I think we'll plan to work with them one way or the other so in terms of what are we proposing in terms of a process at least in terms of a time frame it's essentially four

[48:01] phases we're closing the first phase now that's tonight we're asking you to endorse going forward in this effort then we want to start bringing these different parties together and creating a process and plan what that engagement effort looks like we would be developing a information packet for you somewhere towards early fall that would outline what that process will look like and then launch it in earnest so there are a variety of different places that we're going to directly reach out into the community and invite that involvement there'll be some kind of a public launch event sometime in September then each of these different focus area groups is going to be asked to have different places of what they're engaging the community and involving the community there'll be a midpoint check-in somewhere in late fall and then we'll have a final kind of wrap-up of how or how that strategy is starting to come together early next year and then we'll take all that and that community feedback and engagement and bring that back to you somewhere around the end of the first quarter of next year so just about finished here I just want to note that in terms of that letter of intent

[49:01] that we're asking our partners to sign this is one of the core aspects of what we're saying we want you to join an effort whose objectives is to work across multiple sectors and create strategies that are rapidly replicated across the world so I'll just close with this that is Nathaniel it feels like we're standing in a desert that's my son Nathaniel standing on one of our open space properties April of 2018 that property was devastated by a windstorm in 2016 it lost the entire not only topsoil level it lost the a horizon it was nothing and then through the remarkable work of our colleagues in open space and mountain parks and innovative organizations like mad agriculture and the fine work of the folks at the Natural Resource Conservation Service and others we started and in the remarkable persistence and courage of Marcus McCauley and the Macaulay Farms who's a property adjacent to ours

[50:00] was being impacted by that we started to use some of the techniques that he'd developed and others that we've been experimenting with to start working on solar generation and carbon sequestration and that was just eight months later and what I'm trying to illustrate is that there is a remarkable capacity of resilience that is built into the land and it's built into us and it's built into our communities and we have to find a way to mobilize that and to work with that and to start bringing it forward so that we can address this challenge that we have so with that I'll take us now back to the questions that we brought here to you this evening and we're ready to have a conversation thank you so you have under your your um I don't know page 26 of your side's other potential partners and you have the public the private nonprofit and academic I would just put it out there

[51:01] in neighborhoods sorry or HOAs or something people make it its own heading okay thank you okay um maybe do you do you guys want to freeform it or tackle those questions in order water okay number one strategies so thank you this is great really well set up memo very clear and comprehensive so it was nice work I think the first question that I have is should realign our goals with the state goals so we are 80 percent reduction by 2050 this state is ninety percent by 2050 do I have that correct okay so it seems to me like one of the very first things would be to line ourselves up with the context that we're working in especially because that's a more ambitious goal than we have now as staff thought of this is there any

[52:02] major problem with that no I in fact we've done a little bit of analysis to determine what it would take and in fact it seemed like a logical place to go once that legislation had passed is to synchronize those two so okay got it can't just call it quit because not all of their goals are more ambitious than ours I think what you'd be saying is to ramp up where they are more ambitious but not touch them where we're more ambitious that's correct yeah I was specifically just talking about the 2050 goal you know where we're going to get to for that and most people agree there's anybody not agree with that I with the 90 percent by the 20 with the 90 percent okay I agree with Aaron also we don't want to backtrack on anything right it's not the intent of the governor it was just the particular goal I just figured we all agree so there you have okay great and then another I think big picture question is have circular materials economy and a

[53:02] question that came up for me thinking about that and that's a good thing you know I appreciate what that is that's like recycling and you're producing and so on but I think it's bigger than that so there's a whole financial systems piece to this right there's who we bank with there's who our insurance company is there's the entire kind of spectrum of the financial system that we interact with and you that's a leverage point for us right and both what we do specifically in Boulder and then how we advertise what it is we do so we've tried a couple times to talk about are we banking with the right people you know as Morgan Chase the right bank for us well they have all the services but they also fund pipelines so I would suggest as an idea that instead of circular materials economy it'd be circular systems economy because it's broader I think because I was trying to

[54:01] figure out in these five focus areas where would you put the financial and there's no easy place to fit it except if you make it circular systems economy then you're thinking about and if you look at your slide that has the three the triangle the other two have the word systems in them and so it seems to me that that would be something that encompasses like how do we think about all of those other pieces because you're talking about wanting a systemic approach right and so from a big picture standpoint I think we need to be thinking about the other pieces that we do business with and the transactions that we have so every leverage point possible the city should not only do its work but talk to CC for CA and talk to our legislators and I know it's important to thank people here at the high level staff of course you guys are doing great the community for all the support and the attention the suggestions and I want to thank in particular our state legislators the

[55:01] work that got done at the State House this year is historic is unbelievable and it was our state legislators locally and our governor a lot of that water so I'll stop there that's my big picture comments indeed Mary Lisa so I echo the gratitude that Sam just expressed and I have a question earlier in the presentation Brett you spoke about the legislation that was just passed in this past session and you mentioned that the creation of the rules for the legislation has no timeline can you talk a little bit about how typically that process works and can it be intentionally delayed can it go faster and how how are those two things

[56:02] pushed and pulled yeah thanks very so when I talked about the rulemaking maybe just unpack that a little bit it's it's really a question of volume there were so many bills this year that then have to go through a rulemaking process and each goes to its respective regulatory agency so some will go through the air quality control Commission some will go to the Public Utilities Commission so it's really getting those things scheduled I think the really important thing is that just as Sam mentioned I think our legislators had the foresight to really acknowledge that we wanted to make sure that that the urgency related to these bills was so incredible that they did make sure that there was a fiscal note associated with the bills so there is staff and money available and earmarked to get to get it done essentially and a process in a timeline some of the bills really I think are less aggressive in terms of how they move forward the great thing is is that we have great leadership at those

[57:00] regulatory agencies who are really pushing to make sure that it's done in a timely manner some of them are complex some of the bills in terms of the rules that are that are going to have to be created are complicated though what we know from meeting with for example John Putnam and will tour and some of these agency heads they this is their number one priority to make sure that they get the schedule put out that there is a process in place to get the rules enacted the Public Utilities Commission is a little bit different because essentially that bill the the PC reauthorization bill kind of plants the rules within their ongoing proceedings and so it's how they are going to do their work moving forward not a separate set of rules necessarily so I'm not terribly concerned I don't think that there is a general feeling that there is going to be a big delay I think there everyone's really watching to make sure this gets done in a timely manner is the way I would respond thank you Lisa and then Aaron so I read that memo

[58:02] and and I understand where you want to go but I do have some concerns and one of the concerns is I read something and I thought we actually had more compliance but of the 20,000 rental units we have in Boulder only 7,000 are compliant with our green regulations smart rakes yeah and so what's happening with the other 13,000 I get to my point is I'm hoping we don't like stop doing stuff that we have been doing and has been very successful and I would hope that comment in there was not to say we're not going to do anything more but that's a sense I got and that would be terrible given that we have 7,000

[59:01] homeowners who made their houses energy efficient and and paid for that and took the carrot and then now the later thing and I would be hoping that we are going to enforce those smart regs on the other 13,000 homes that aren't compliant and I'm really shocked that they're not compliant I'd love to answer that I'm Elizabeth facade go at the climate initiatives Department smart regs was an incredibly successful program for the city ninety-seven percent the 23,000 units were compliant by the December 31st 2018 deadline so what's with the number in this memo it's page 41 what it says is smart regs led to efficiency improve improved efficiency in more than 7,000 rental units now that might just be an air apology so

[60:02] the other ones are already compliant is that the thinking so a large percentage of the rental units we're compliant at the baseline inspection and then those 7,000 were the ones that got compliant through energy smart many of the other rental units could get compliant on their own they didn't have to go through energy smart but that was the number that we had that went through energy smart okay didn't come off yeah apologies for that so so I'm also kind of interested in as you guys will know I'll say the word demolitions and that we aren't doing anything about demolitions really I mean we've we're tracking them a little bit but at this point in time you can demolish your house if it's less than 50 years old and you don't need a review and there's no fee incurred for demolishing that house and and then it's the same thing

[61:04] so somebody scrapes a house in reasonable construction and so there should be a sliding scale I recognize not all houses are the same but when you scrape a house there should be a fee incurred on the especially since we don't have a landfill one of our biggest methane contributors to the atmosphere and we don't have we have net zero goals but when somebody builds a new big house we don't have any fee for the embodied energy used in building that new big house and all those materials so we should be talking about I mean these are things that I really hope we aren't trying to not change people's behavior because we kind of have to change people's behavior I think

[62:02] and so if we just are allowing ourselves to demolish either hospitals or demolish houses or demolish buildings that we say aren't significant and do it without a penalty we're really not contributing to the problem at least I'm sure that Kara is going to answer this question but I just want to make sure I clarify that when I say we don't change people I'm saying we don't we have to change the systems that people operate within and so I think we're actually in complete agreement our planning department and our building department we should be looking at fees when people are scraping houses or building new new houses with materials that are new because there's some bodied energy associated with those yeah and I guess I was just going to clarify also sorry Kara Mertz climate initiatives Department those issues will

[63:02] be addressed in the next update to our building codes to address the demolition to address fees for scraping and while I think council got an update about a month ago on those on the direction we're heading with the new building codes we're not going to be including embodied energy in that just yet because we are keeping that on the horizon just to see what the best practices are before we launch into that there's certain things around embodied energy that can't really be included in building code so we want to make sure that we're careful about that but they're definitely we're addressing some of the loopholes with demolition permits and fees associated with recycling around demo thank you and then continuing on an embodied energy there

[64:01] are building materials that are appropriate to use as building materials that are not so trees which are probably not so appropriate to use versus straw-bale in Adobe which is very useful and so there should be incentives in place where we encourage builders to use straw bale and Adobe we have those in our code we've had them since I think 97 and with those types of materials your heat is hardly anything and your air-conditioning is nothing and so we talked about the climate change and warming of the climate and the need for additional air conditioning which I would say is way too cold in here right now and always has been for a long time and and that we really don't need air conditioning we

[65:01] need to think in other ways in which we cooled the air that we live in so I'd like to see those kinds of thoughts and then food consumption that needs to be in there and the whole and and these young women brought brought that up good for you guys and you know really reducing our meat consumption and the methane associated with meat that needs I mean we can't just talk about it and and then my last concern would be and I think this is all great and I want to thank you guys for all the awesome work you do but my only concern is diverting our time from the Muni which is where we get the biggest bang for the buck in reducing our carbon reductions and

[66:00] moving forward with complete intent to continue on our municipal ization path and that you guys don't get into too many smaller projects that that diverts your focus and just to speak a little bit to the muni the fight continues as you well know we're certainly moving forward with all of the activities associated with developing those costs to inform a vote be it 2020 2021 and I really don't see this as detracting I really see it as complementing how do we go about really leveraging one of the really advantageous things we'll be doing through the process of updating our strategy has to do with that community engagement well that gives us opportunity to talk as well about where we are with the Muni and what's

[67:00] happening and ensure that we're reaching a broader audience so I really see I see it as giving us the ability to complement one another great and then me and then well well circle back and Cindy okay sue thank you for this so that you know the initial part of your presentation was an important wake-up call I mean it's all things we know about already but I appreciate you calling it forward and of course we can't solve this in our city alone so I really appreciate you looking at the system's approach to figure out how we can come up with solutions that are exportable and replicable so I look forward to seeing what you come up with I you know you think about maybe modules like if we develop different sets of strategies that one community might be better suited to one set another community might be better suited another one but if we are able along to with partners to say hey we've tried this here other cities have tried it as well they work really well and you could take

[68:00] this piece but hey this other piece may may not be the best one for you don't take that part anyway it's a way that we can play a larger role in solving the problem so I'm very enthusiastic I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with in the next few months I wanted to jump in with a few thoughts and I'm so glad we're having this conversation and I appreciate that both city staff and our voters and a lot of the organizations and our city continue to make this a priority because I do think it is in number one a priority and I what I see us doing here is basically adaptive management or trying stuff we're seeing how it works we're evaluating it we're taking a look at how the context is changing how we are actively changing the context and then reflecting on how we should do things next and I think that's a very important conversation so I'm glad we're doing it and I'm I think in general what you've laid out makes a lot of sense I

[69:00] do feel like we're at a historic moment we're at the state legislature where a lot of frankly a lot of Boulder in Boulder County legislators are playing lead roles we've got a governor from Boulder we've got congressman Nagi's on the select climate committee and playing a leadership role to really leverage all the great thinking and the big brains we have in in our city and anyhow so I do feel like that the time is now and you guys are obviously reflecting that in general the three the triangle with equity and resilience in the middle I think makes a lot of sense I think you raised a good point about banking and other ways we have leverage that we should also be taking their consideration I do appreciate the equity piece which I know a lot of people were part of and of course resilience is is key right we already know it's upon us all the impacts I guess I will say that

[70:03] the carbon sequestration piece which is kind of the hope hopeful piece of this is how do we use natural systems to really draw down atmospheric carbon I think is one of the frontiers and I feel as people are just trying to figure that out out there and I'll just I'll mention this there's a several interim committees that are preparing for the next legislative session one of Amazon's are waste and I for my day job I'm gonna go testify for them tomorrow but one of the issues is how do we help address organics management in the carbon sequestration piece and how do we scale it rapidly and how do we take advantage of what's in the existing egg you know the USDA and the Natural Resource Conservation Service and how do we make use of that apparatus to propel Carbon Farming forward and I think how

[71:03] do I says the fields wide open to help you get that figured out so I guess I would underscore that our hope is that that the pilots the studies the beginnings of that framework will happen next legislative session but there's a lot of unknowns to figure out so I guess I just want to highlight that I don't know if I'm supposed to say this but I'm gonna say it I was on a call with Congressman yesterday with mayor's from the twenty as a second CD and he did announce that the first field hearing for the Select climate committee for you know the Congressional selected climate committee is going to be in Boulder and so yay and I know that staff has been talking a lot to them about that and the dates and all that will be announced soon but one of the things that the congressman stressed is it's because Colorado cities have stepped up

[72:01] and really committed to trying to figure out the path 100 percent renewable energy that he was able to bring the first field hearing to Colorado and what win okay I'll tell you what he said in the July 31st August first timerange timeframe but anyhow I guess to me that also points to the work of CC for CA because it's not enough and yet it's a beginning and it's building momentum and it's a real opportunity and he in as much asked know he asked all the folks on the phone from across the second CD keeping for the city solutions so that we can ripple them out nationally so anyhow I think this is the right work to be doing and I think we all have a unique window to really accelerate these efforts so I guess those are my big-picture thoughts yeah just a quick

[73:04] Bob and I were in Washington for the National League of Cities we get to sit with congressman and the goose for about 20 minutes and what he wanted to talk about was his environmental action policies and he has like five of them that he's looking at rolling out and DC and so we're very lucky to have him and he is very interested in working with the cities on the ground about solutions and so it's great who's he he told us when we were there that this hearing might happen in Colorado first and then we heard it wasn't and so it's good to hear that it will be there'll be a lot of fun and maybe maybe the press can confirm with him but that's what he announced um okay I have Cindy I'm gonna get everybody who hasn't talked yet and then I'll circle back to Mary well I'm not sure how high level mine are at this point but you're a hard act to follow

[74:02] here zan but it's great to hear it's very good news about everything that our congressman is doing to try and move this forward because it is as you say this is an historic moment with the new knowledge that we have about how rapidly all of this is coming down I agree with Lisa about keeping our focus on the Muni since that's the biggest thing but these others I think can help in the meantime and help engage people as Steve did say I thought about the banking this is something we talked about as a council last year and it didn't go anywhere but if we wanted to make a strong statement this is something that we could take up and actually move on Sam made reference to that and I would like to see us do something that way I think it would really again move us forward in a big way I know there was some reticence and staffs part but this is important and it's a place where we could move and and

[75:02] make a difference I don't know if CC 4a is all second CD or not are there all of those communities to see some collaboration with Eastern and northeastern Colorado southeastern Colorado where they've had all kinds of issues throughout the years the century and it would also help politically I think to move out of this Front Range sort of view that we've had and we seem to have the bubble and so those are those are basically the things that I would like to see moving forward and the carbon sequestration I'm very very it's it is encouraging I talked to Brad about and some people have seen the biggest little farm which was one of the happy notes about what can happen to ecosystems when there is some effort put into it and as a city I

[76:01] would like to see us really move forward with that on our open space lands where we have the ability to do that on the irrigated AG lands that have been disturbed and that's a place where we could put any possible new monies that we make it so thank you very much for the work thanks for the songs it's it's encouraging to have this upbeat approach to what is really a dire situation thank you could I just say very quickly that kind of building also on what you said Xan the AG context might be one of the best opportunities we have to work across political lines around climate and so I think this next legislative session is actually gonna be very important as a way to try to build that coalition effort around those issues a little bit of what I was hoping to say but first thank you to staff and thank you to the community thanks to the young women that was fantastic and part of what makes

[77:02] this job really fun so I think the biggest thing besides I mean just the fantastic job and I mean I absolutely love this idea I think it's really out-of-the-box thinking that's gonna push us forward with what's needed is that you know kind of going off on foot Cindy and even Lisa said a little bit as I think we are so fortunate that we've taxed ourselves to have this open space and we have thousands of acres of Ag land and if sequestration is proving to be such a viable option we have a huge opportunity to take advantage of it and so not only can we work from the side of trying to reduce what we do but now we can impact it from another side and what's so wonderful about it is that it can be worked with the natural barriers that already exist so as much as we can move that forward I say go run so thank you so much underline something

[78:00] that Erin said a few minutes back I think the most important word that I heard tonight was replicable you know leadership is fine but if if no one follows you you're not a leader right and I think your your broader focus on systems is absolutely right because we have to be looking at systems not individual parts of this and we have to do in a way that as aaron indicated other cities other states other countries can can do what we're doing innovation where wealthy community we have the opportunity to be innovative if we have the opportunity to experiment with things but yeah we have to be very thoughtful about those things and ensure that whatever it is that we're trying to do is not just feel-good not just something that makes us happy that we're contributing I think I did the math boulders less than one thousandth of 1% of the population of the earth right we can do all sorts of stuff here and be all sorts of zeros and hundred percents and all that other kind of stuff but

[79:00] Mumbai is still polluting right and so we have to do something that people in in whether it's in Loveland we're in Cleveland or Mumbai can look at and say you know that's pretty cool and that's pretty effective and that's pretty economic and that's really impactful and so I would just encourage us as we spend the next few months coming up with these ideas to make sure that they're replicable around the country and around the world Mary did you have something else on the big picture yeah because okay well then go you look so a couple of days ago we received an interesting paper it was called leverage points places to intervene in the system and I was fortunate enough to be in one of those places where it seems like we really live in a bubble in El Paso Texas where

[80:02] people have several large trucks in their group in their driveways and drive everywhere and it's really really behind but anyway I had the opportunity because it's so hot to read through the paper and it goes through all of the places to intervene in a system and what we talked about and have been talking about are some of those things that are lower on this place to intervene in a system the top place to intervene in a system the number one place is transcending paradigms and so along those lines we have page it's slide number 19 where it talks about the characteristics of systems change and in terms of the big picture

[81:01] getting back to that what seems like the right thing to do as we move forward and take it all of these ideas that were just brought up tonight and run them through this lens of the right choice is the only choice is the easy choice all of those things it's bigger than our organization it's bigger than our boundaries it's replicable and it's soon so I do think that when you run things through this lens of systems change and these characteristics you're you're doing that top level intervention so so that's what I would ask is that we run all of our actions or ideas through this lens of the system's changed characteristics I also I I guess I have some follow-up question to my own

[82:02] earlier question that Jonathan answered which was the the rulemaking and the timeline and you said that it's going to happen soon and what as soon is that a year two years well again it depends on which rule and which bill you're talking about but some are already underway many have deadlines the middle of next year and so I guess I would just revisit my response and to say that I think we feel that sense of urgency also and so while I mentioned that there are a number of organizations you're really gonna be pushing we're gonna be right there pushing as well to ensure that the timelines are our ones that meet the urgency of the situation so right now we are trying to work through our coalition's to ensure that we're keeping the pressure on to make sure that those schedules get released that they are done soon and that we understand the the timelines that we see an end to the rulemaking process as well so we're really looking at another year for the entire package to go through the process

[83:00] is that SB 236 the one that's got the 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2050 is that one of the ones that's top top that would be told 61 so again remember that the one you just reference the PC reauthorization bill so that really looks at how those new rules are applied to the utilities as they bring their their resource plans to the Commission and so that's where those will be applied and that's that's where that lens shows up the others in terms of 1261 there is a whole new rulemaking that's going to take place at the air quality control commission and so that's what we are eager to see we want to see that timeline and that process laid out and again we want to see that soon okay so so we really don't know but we'll see that that's right yeah they are not released I guess I would like like us to be kind of kept abreast of what those schedules look like because I think that falls under the the implications in the systems change of soon and and and then play that up

[84:03] against our ideas that we have and see how those timelines line up or don't line up because we only have what ten years so so I think we have to be very cognizant of what we're doing in the city and how it lines up with that urgency in in in the whole situation that we're in I also had a question about the the model that was used for estimate and this is this is along the lines of right now that we have time to kind of look at our municipal utility and kind of ask some questions about it and so one of the questions I would have is when was the last time that the model was revised and does it make sense to revise it with what we know now so

[85:03] that's that's a question and and then ask ourselves other questions so that we have the latest and best information as we go towards the vote the public vote next year and I think it's we need to do our due diligence to make sure that we have the best available information and the most current information and that we make sure that municipal utility is the right is the right way to go and again run it through the system change this this lens of the characteristics I think we have to keep doing that and keep reminding ourselves to do that and then whether you like them to respond to the model of course yes please what our intent is will have several milestones

[86:02] that we each year mid fourth quarter of this year with some engineering estimates that we'll have and other costs associated with municipal ization that we'll be able to update and those will start plugging those into our financial forecast tool and our intent is but at the end of the year to be able to provide a revised model with the new information that we have and then again we'll take that out to the public and as you know we're moving forward with condemnation and anticipate 12 months hopefully to develop that cost associated with the purchase of the facilities and then thank you for that I also have a question about to try and better understand you know the the gap

[87:01] between our 100 percent by 2030 for electricity and the 80 percent so I would like to understand that gap what does that mean in terms of tons of carbon and and how does that compare to what can be done with carbon sequestration because it's really that's something that we have to do we have to do the carbon sequestration now that's we have no choice so how does that gap line up against the actual numbers so so yeah so what what's the difference in tons of carbon so certainly what the state has done and where we presume Xcel Energy and the other large investor owned utilities will be moving to achieve these new goals is really laudable it's really fantastic what is

[88:00] going to happen and it does take us significantly forward on the single one of the components of why we're moving forward with Mena civilization and that's a decarbonisation path contributes or what the state has done will take us part of most of the way there what it doesn't do is add local control and that ability to really decentralized our system as jonathan noted the Public Utilities Commission will be going through some rulemaking having to do with distribution systems and distribution modeling which is basically what the municipal utility is is a distribution system and will participate in that rulemaking with the intent of trying to provide the level of freedom that the community wants in its ability to participate in the electric system and to move forward with things

[89:00] like micro grids and to really contribute to things like resiliency we don't know what the end result of that rulemaking will be of course the other is that local control which there's that component of what we do on the system but a part of that is also the revenues and our ability to reinvest the revenues from a municipal utility back into the system if the community decides undergrounding of the distribution system is their highest priority the city has the freedom to make those choices all of that won't go away or won't change as we move forward and as the state moves forward on this new legislation but ultimately it really comes down to a community conversation what how valuable is that and those other aspects how valuable is that to the rest to the community that we achieve those and that's part of our intent as we go out and we talk to the community but also as we go to a vote

[90:01] the community will be telling us how important this is to us and with respect to the revenues you mentioned the revenues will that be included that will be part of the revised model is that yeah okay yeah we will continue to update those as things change everything from you know interest rates can certainly affect what we project as revenues to we've done initial request for pricing on power supply we will be doing another request more formal request from power supply all of those effect of cost and the revenues and how utility will operate and then I had sorry Suzanne but this is a comment and this is something I noticed in in the memo where you have just transition or equity and resilience

[91:00] in the middle of the diagram I think I thought that was a great way to look at it and then the other three items around the perimeter but in the slide on the timeline it's shown as a separate line item and not an overarching item that you pay attention to and I think I think instead of being its own line item it actually needs to be in everything else and not something that is thought about secondarily it needs to be the driving thing as its shown in the diagram so that was just something I noticed in the way that the schedule was placed and and I will say that's certainly our intent and all of our conversations have been about how critical and how central to every aspect of what we do that that needs to be so our intent was make sure

[92:00] it's in the middle I think we great limited by graphic that's good to know and I think that's all I have and you know just to I do want to understand the the carbon sequestration numbers and how that compares to well you know what can we do and how that scalability of that particular action can benefit and I was intrigued by the fact that Jonathan said that that's our opportunity to work with coalition's across party coalition's and I think that that's that would be great to understand just how much can be accomplished with with that working in those cross-party coalition's Sam and then we're gonna we have a few specific questions we need to address just on the mini issue in particular there's the

[93:03] just transition piece that runs through everything and there's a resilience piece that runs through everything and one of the key things about having local controlled electric utility would be the community can tell us how much resilience they want in their electric system because there won't be a profit margin in any cash flows so anything that we have that we want to put in reserve for resilience will be able to put into undergrounding another more complicated one is it's not in a private utilities best interest to enable Mike microgrids or self generation which can on the day-to-day basis cut into the revenue stream when an emergency comes becomes the backup power system for a neighborhood or for a building that's a credit critical system so I think that resilience piece is a lens that we need

[94:00] to look at the Muni through particularly in light that the memo calls out that resilience is going to be a requirement you know it is going to happen that we're going to need these things more and more frequently and so some of the pieces that we've looked at in the past about the Muni I think may get rebalanced with what's coming in climate change and I think the ability not only to underground and have the general distribution system be more robust is important but also enabling end-users and nodes to be more robust because we don't care if a profit gets cut in two because really all we need is to make sure that we can maintain the distribution system as the community wants it so I think that resilience running through everything is something that we're going to need to use to analyze the the Muni as we learn more about the costs okay let's come back to the climate emergency resolution at the end can you put up the four or five and six four and

[95:01] five Lisa mentioned some other organizations and stakeholders namely the public and neighborhoods were there others and also the folks have issues or thoughts on the letters of intent and participation agreements so yes I did in that same email that we got from Chris Hoffman he had some suggestions that I thought were really good ones and see if I can find him here there were like 14 suggestions that if we can go back and look at that email were he listed things like understand each other's goals and priorities and

[96:00] each other's core processes and on and on with the final one be mutual trust so I think those were really excellent points to include in some sort of a letter of intent Erin so I was just giving the thumbs up that you're on the right track but since you called on me what we do I just have to give a shadow we have such amazingly talented and smart people in this town many of whom are in the room and passionate so in addition to the organizations that you're working with just one to the shadow to lisas idea as well as to make sure that we are engaging those individuals in our community that may not be part of a different organization but still have a lot of great ideas and energy to bring to the effort she asked a question in the past we've had tech teams we've had various working groups can you give us an overview of how that would is that a part of this it's probably in one of your graphs I think it's a mix of that and others yeah so

[97:00] and I think we're not trying to say exactly what it looks like yet until we get everybody together and start design that process we didn't want to go too far into this until we had this sense that we were included oh great mirror by was also giving a thumbs-up okay so I think generally speaking these are more broad groups to look at I mean for carbon sequestration you want to talk to the farmers right and for fruit localization and for different kinds of food issues we want to talk to the local farming community for understanding like emerging technologies I think you want to talk to the local entrepreneurial community and broader not just local experts who know what's going on broadly I would use carbon sequestration as an example I'm not quite sure what bucket it fits in because if it's carbon farming it fits in the ecosystems focus area but what if it's air capture right

[98:01] so there's various air capture technologies and development all over the world right now and those are approaches which could be quite interesting there's the biofuels biochar that whole bucket and that fits in I'm not sure we're in here and so I think there are whole bunch of technologies that are going to be potentially applicable to the carbon sequestration for example because that's probably the most important one and least defined one that you need to think about what buckets those fit in and if they don't fit in a bucket you need to define a bucket and so that the technology component of this and understanding it and being part of early adopters and Taking Chances we need to figure out and so that partnership has to be with both the entrepreneurial community but also those organizations that index exists that universities who track that stuff who understand you know kind of what's emerging and what's being viable and

[99:02] what's not being viable and so we're talking about partnerships I think we need to think about those kinds of partnerships and that's not a specific organization it's just classes of folks one thing I just want to note is I really appreciate Chris's comments too and I also want to suggest that we're not trying to set the city up as central to everything and to be the convening committee that's going to manage this whole process that's going to be impossible and so what we want to do is try to figure out where we can best fit where we have the most leverage and we can offer the most and where we need to get out of the way and what we need to call attention to other people that are doing things so I don't think we're gonna try to create the perfect constellation of a balanced representation of all interest because we're not going to be at the center of everything but hopefully I will add hopefully we can make the appropriate connections and help those people get together to achieve something right and I would just underscore the city has

[100:00] done some great work I think of things like the bolder energy challenge where we convened bright minds to pitch ideas and pilot things and we gave some seed money and that kind of thing I think creates ripples and others can take that on and maybe the tech community can step up and help assure that but those sorts of things I also think about on the materials management circular economy stuff that getting the private sector jazz to step up to the plate on some of that I think it will be key and I think you know yes so city doesn't need to do everything that they can certainly help catalyze I like that word just my comment about the eco cycle block leader debt that was fundamental I think in changing we're not exactly where we'd like to be in waste diversion but I can't stress how important it was to

[101:00] have people talking with each other and what came with it also was the eco cycle times and in the eco cycle times was you know different ways in which you could reduce or you know things like that and I'm not thinking the city can or should be the center of all at this but somehow there should be a bulletin board or something where maybe people could contribute to a climate plan times or something like that so I mean you have young people behind you I mean they seem to have a lot of energy and a lot of desire to want to help and I think they can and I totally believe in engaging people in their early adolescence to make them want to change the world and we get them too late it's too late so I can't say enough thank you to this young

[102:00] group and you may be young but you're very mature sure I think again I really appreciate your comments I also want to note I think you might know about this but we actually partnered and helped eco cycle design the backyard Carbon Farming initiative that now has over 200 households that are actually engaging in real science so I totally agree with you and there are things that people can do and it's really exciting to see people move out around that at this moment for not having started my presentation this evening by thanking those young people as well because that's a part of the context change that we are seeing young people are stepping forward is one of the most important climate actors in this cotton in this context and I hope we can also engage it's their world it's not ours anymore number six changes in analysis I guess I want to echo what Mary said about keeping you all ready said you're gonna keep us updated on the rulemaking but I think that's key because the rule

[103:01] makings don't go well or if they're not implemented we fail to achieve what could be an amazing step forward I also think well it's relevant to the questions Mary asked about as we proceed with municipal ization and what is the gap that remains how deal is that what are the numbers behind it the rule makings will will clarify those numbers and so I think that's key fodder key thought our key input into this larger community conversation that we're going to have over the next year and a half about both this plan and also municipal ization so that will just be really important to monitor anything else on six I said something I'm three but they're minor things one thing I want to say kind of colloquy to Lisa is it's not just the residential it's the business community the business community is responsible for and I'm part of that

[104:00] community 70% of our missions in the city that are based on electricity and so it's something that we need to pay close attention to and I look on page 29 of our packet and I think I understand this but I want to double check under buildings there's reduction in commercial and industrial electricity and it's minus 2% so that says to me that we're going the wrong way in our commercial and industrial emissions and so I think we need to pay close attention to that because it is the lion's share and we need to engage business leaders and tied them into the community in the same way that Lisa you're describing with Vika cycle I just don't want to lose sight of that that's the only kind of sector that is more or less flat and there's a declining at the moment so I just wanted to flag that and the last thing I want to point out and I should have mentioned this earlier around financial considerations is Pera

[105:02] we have a real hook into Peres and it's what is the retirement funding for many of our employees and so I think we need to be really active and make sure that Peres is investing in a way that is climate friendly so thank you just one real quick thing that just reminded me in reading through that that leveraging paper which was adding new information to inform people and there was the example about how there was a suburban development that was built and everything all the houses were identical identical except for some had their electricity meter in a highly visible place and some of them had it in the basement and as it turned out the people that had it in a highly visible place used a lot less electricity so so

[106:01] a potential thing that we could do is thinking about the commercial emissions is put up somewhere in the city in a highly visible place emissions emissions levels right now and you know I don't know new information that is really visible and and a daily reminder those things are amazing how they can motivate people so okay number two climate emergency resolution this was a it was a suggestion from the community did you have thoughts on that and then this council have input sorry so the thoughts we did just put together a quick slide just so there was clear understanding of

[107:01] what emergency declaration is and I'll just read this top part and just give you some statistics about what's going on in the world so as you may know you have the opportunity to declare a climate emergency it's really a resolution passed by a government body and puts the government on record and support of emergency action to reverse global warming so we have in fact passed a number of similar resolutions in the past related to under two and other climate related issues so it's not that unusual that we would do something like this particularly when you look at there are 740 jurisdictions and 16 countries that have declared a climate emergency I think the question would be whether council wants to look at any binding actions or non-binding actions I do have a template that a lot of the communities have used as a guide and let me just give you a map - I think it would not be terribly difficult because most resolutions set up a process to develop an action plan which turns out we work on that one and then we would report back to Council on a regular periodic

[108:01] basis in terms of our progress so here's a bit of a map you can see you were a little sparse in the middle part of the US so Canada is really crushing it up there so I whether this influences any decision that you make I just wanted to give you a sense of what's going on out there and there are a number of cities that are doing this and and they vary again in terms of what they include in a resolution whether it is just this template saying somewhere it's about climate change and we're going to do our part versus things that are really binding and very specific to the actions in our own jurisdiction so what I would suggest is if this is something council is interested in doing certainly and give that direction to or feedback to staff we can prepare something and bring it back during a regular business meeting for your consideration it strikes me I mean you're gonna have a whole you could either do this at the beginning of the end and it seems like there's going to be a launch event in September that may be in concert with

[109:00] that that that would be timely if this council wanted to do something since this plan will be finished in another council I would like that and when this person you know sent us the email and then I communicate it with them back and forth and then he sent different attachments of what other communities and it's just a resolution so it's not like an ordinance and that we have to have one or two readings and a huge public hearing it just as a statement and I think it clearly states where this community is and I don't think it would take a lot of time from our agenda and in an effort to populate the center of that would it make sense to encourage all the communities in CC for CA to do similar things Mary it's a great idea we've talked about it and are having a conversation about whether that's a

[110:00] tactic that the various communities are want to consider so that sound right to people okay yeah all right anything else that you wanted to hear from us on thank you for all this work thank you all for the great feedback and let us now let's talk about consumption

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[114:05] [Music] [Music] council members please come back

[115:18] [Music] [Music] okay we are gonna move on to our next topic which involves retail study Thank

[116:01] You Council for the opportunity to be with you this evening I'm Yvette Bowden I'm the director of community vitality for purposes of this conversation we're here to follow up on an earlier conversation and I'm gonna turn it right over to Sarah we Vincent who's been the project lead for this important effort before I do on behalf of the community vitality team and the project team I just want to thank all of our colleagues across the city several of whom are in the audience tonight from other departments who were part of our internal team on this we would also like to thank our many partners in the community partner organizations like the chamber the downtown Boulder partnership the small business development council so many others that were helpful in helping us do the outreach earlier and we really also want to extend thanks to the many people who filled out survey instruments that gave us the ability to give you this comprehensive document this evening Sarah thank you all for the

[117:02] opportunity to present the final report of the citywide retail study citywide regional project study phase in the interest of time anyone interested in reviewing the entirety of the report may refer to the council agenda packet and we also will post it to the city's project page tomorrow along with this presentation tonight we will be focusing on the key findings and next steps towards crafting a citywide retail strategy the strategy phase is intended to provide counsel with actionable recommendations by the end of the year as a quick recap the citywide retail project arose out of to retail related goals and the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan these were to maintain affordable commercial space and also to promote a vibrant retail base overall almost a year ago City Council provided direction for the study requesting that it reinforced Boulder core values such as sustainability environmental stewardship creating a sense of place and promoting Boulder as

[118:00] a welcoming inclusive and diverse community it should be noted that these considerations are not typical of local retail studies which puts Boulder at the forefront of integrating retail planning into broader nationwide efforts to look at issues of affordability and inclusivity the citywide retail study also builds on the findings of the more finite downtown retail vibrancy study that was completed in 2018 the final report provides information ranging from how boulders retail sector performs overall to how its performance compares to neighboring communities in pure communities nationwide with the added exploration of what support small businesses need to sustain themselves in Boulder tonight's presentation will focus on key findings from the study and how these might be addressed in the citywide retail strategy which key findings included boulders retail inventory and sales are strong and competitive boulders sales tax revenues

[119:00] both benefit from and are reliant on spending by non-residents for example workers and visitors sales tax revenues are relatively flat signaling a need to be proactive and seek opportunities to better serve our shoppers including a look at more inclusive goods and reducing retail deserts and to be ready for changes in consumer behavior we also found in the responses to the shopper survey that residents are calling for access to more affordable goods and retailers are calling for more City support and options for affordable space the framework will consolidate the key findings from the report into two sets of objectives the strategy will provide additional exploration for these findings for staff to provide actionable recommendations to counsel the first set of objectives focus on the findings related to boulders retail inventory being sufficient but needing to address declining sales in certain areas unmet needs in the community and opportunities to enhance our position in the face of

[120:01] growing competition and I will go into more detail on each of these objectives in the following slides respondents to the shopper survey were asked for their levels of satisfaction with bolder retail by price selection and availability satisfaction with price was the most notable with all respondents indicating some level of dissatisfaction which is shown in blue there this finding was greater among lower-income residents and reinforced by longer format comments provided in the report with a few of them mentioned here as well many of which included calls for goods that serve a broader diversity of customers and more affordable prices the study also looked at the weather the location of existing bolder retail was accessible to residents and workers the map at left shows the location of residential density relative to the ten primary concentrations of retail in the

[121:01] city well the map at right shows the location specifically of grocery stores and pharmacies these two types of retail uses are typically considered as important elements of a fifteen-minute neighborhood or a 3/4 mile radius from someone's home large printed maps with the locations of bolder retail activity are available on boards in the room for anybody who would like a closer look the study also found that a significant portion of boulders population resides outside these nodes looking at areas with the highest density population there was only one that the Vista Village neighborhood east of foothills and north of Valmont that did not have walkable access to groceries similarly looking at the location of pharmacies citywide each node had a pharmacy other than the North Boulder annex area or nobo which we'll go into later as with resident access to groceries and pharmacy uses it is expected that

[122:00] Boulder workers would have convenient access to dining out options and in fact cafes and fine dining were the two only the two only retail categories in which Boulder workers expressed a preference for spending in Boulder rather than elsewhere the map at left shows areas with high concentrations of employment in bold and the map at right shows the locations of cafes restaurants and bars the study found that all retail nodes in Boulder were well served by dining options but that three areas with high concentrations of employment fell outside those areas these were the bull D count at Boulder County office areas at iris and Broadway the northeast corner of the Boulder industrial area north of Arapaho and the southwest area of Gunbarrel the study also looked at boulders overall retail performance both by retail industry category and by geographic area within the city large

[123:01] maps with the sales tax areas are also available in the room for anyone interested in looking getting a closer look these are the areas that are tracked by our finance department in their monthly revenue reports the study found that two of the top performing sales tax areas are experiencing gradual declines that are reinforced in the most recent year to year to date figures first food stores as among the it's the third highest grossing sales tax industry category however sales have dropped off considerably in the past year and unfortunately that red circle dropped a little bit when I converted to PDF but that's where the food sales are going I know you can do some benchmarking later on but I don't think this isn't your benchmarking do we have fun benchmarking or comparative information with respect to food stores in the region in other words there are grocery dollars going outside the region or people just not buying groceries anymore yeah we can make a no there's probably a number almost seems I get direct correlation between where she

[124:01] sailed to clients and out out deep down lourdes people seem to be wanting to go out to eat and just head of buying stuff in the grocery stores but just wondering if we were losing dollars to our neighboring communities if you guys know we do not currently have that level of detail in our benchmarking but we can make a note for the strategy and i just have a question you have this north broadway annex and i know you're getting talked about it but you're not including the hillside shops and that's kind of odd because that has multiple dining options it has a significant grocery store it has coffee shops I think that's included in a different it has a liquor store yet this was specifically looking at pharmacy so we have the pharmacy Oh in that okay I'm sorry so anyway and I noted on your map and in your documentation you don't include any of those the hillside shops and it's a significant shopping area I just have at

[125:01] least who wears their pharmacy you're thinking about in Lucky's well I don't know if you can go get right so this is specifically looking at could you pick up a prescription anywhere within that node and I think what we found you go to pharmaco down by ideal right so this is all looking at that walkable designs of three-quarters of a mile and so when we were pulling out specific findings we were trying to see where we weren't meeting that and walkable yeah that's great feedback and we can take a little yeah I mean because a long time ago we'll come back to Noble so yes so first food stores sales have dropped off considerably in the past year second sales tax revenues from the 29th Street

[126:01] area are not remaining flat or moderately increasing as was the case with the other top three performing geographic areas and was seeing us like decline it was worth noting the additional finding that sales tax growth rates are not keeping pace with inflation in fact the increase in sales tax over the past four years follows closely with the collection of out-of-state sales tax largely impacted by the evolution of online sales tax remittances it is not yet known how evolving regulations regarding online sales tax will impact consumer behavior so it is recommended that the city continued to monitor this issue we mentioned earlier that Boulder retail performs well compared to its neighboring communities the chart at right shows that Boulder has a higher pull factor in a number of retail industry categories which are circled in red the pull factor indicates that Boulder sales in these areas exceed the

[127:01] spending of the potential of its own households interestingly Boulder did not have a higher pull factor in two categories cited by Boulder shoppers as not meeting their needs namely department stores in apparel those are shown in the orange squares below where Broomfield exceeds the pull factor there the finding also corresponds to retailer survey responses in which current retailers indicate that Boulder residents are critical to the success of their business with the draw of Boulder to non-resident customers such as Boulder workers and visitors from neighboring communities and elsewhere was almost equally important to their survival the study produced an interesting finding related to the impact of large plate retail spaces boulders position as already as having the highest vacancy rate above its neighbors is in part because the current Macy space and 29th Street is already listed as vacant in the coast our real estate database if the Macy space

[128:00] remains filled boulders vacancy rate drops to three point nine percent which is more in line with its neighbors other than Louisville which also currently has several large plate vacancies boulders Macy's changed to housing how would that affect the retail vacancy would be eliminated it would be lower right so this is our inventory retail space and the vacancy rate for just those spaces if it converted to any other space other than retail it would have a similar effect we do want to point out that this is just a study and it happens to point this out because it's currently directed yeah this is not something that's definitely it's a point in time correct and so it's really just an indication if you look at the Louisville rates being so much higher of the impact of these large spaces and so if that space remains occupied our

[129:00] absorption rate also goes down to about zero which means that our current retail supply is meeting current demand when looking at builders retail performance relative to pure communities nationwide these were communities with high university related populations and other characteristics similar to Boulder it was notable that four out of the five of these communities had no new retail construction starts planned the strategy offers an opportunity to look at how Boulder can better utilize its existing retail space to meet the needs of its residents and workers and to remain competitive regionally the map at right shows the location of existing vacancies the strategy could include looking at where new types of food stores could be located what types of retail could boost sales in the twenty ninth Street area and where additional retail could be located to address retail deserts and possibly provide affordable commercial opportunities for smaller businesses sorry can I ask you a question there as because in there and in a few other

[130:00] places in our packet it talks about looking for opportunities for certain kinds of retail but what latitude do we have is a government to set that right I mean we can optimize from work retail space in general but how would we try to get a food store in a particular area or any other kind of retail specific retail use if it was an interest that came out in this strategy and the subsequent work or as directed by Council there are communities that develop pull programs to actually pitch and market their locations to certain types of businesses they're trying to attract this would be part of a larger conversation one that we feel we need a little bit more digging in particular neighborhoods and I think ties intensively to the walkability question of what's happening in particular neighborhoods as they evolve so we think we need to do a little bit more homework on that there are some cities that have particular programs to pull in certain types of community serving things and they

[131:00] typically do that as they're evolving neighborhoods to say we want to make sure that this is going to be walkable and has these kinds of things in it and then they'll have a group like ours and community vitality be working with those types of businesses to see if there's interest in a formation so that's like a marketing kind of a thing but yes we wouldn't really have regulatory tools would we be more of it I think that we encouraging and marketing kind of most of the time they are a combination of marketing and particular types of incentive programs that you could consider and they really differ there across the board depending on the type of community you have thank you how close are you to being done okay can we just hang on because just obviously we're gonna generate a lot of discussion okay in terms of oh maybe I'm

[132:09] furthering promoting small business sustainability is a key driver of the citywide retail project the findings of the retail studies suggests that this could be approached in two ways first and directly responding to the challenges cited by existing retailers and retailers that have closed within the past two years and second by continuing to build on city efforts to maintain affordable commercial in ways that dovetail with the findings of the study the study found that retailers generally are very happy to be located in Boulder as was mentioned earlier they appreciate its natural beauty a well educated and affluent customer base and the mix of customer types it was noted in the survey responses however that a majority of retailers feel that it is becoming more difficult to do business in Boulder the retailer survey and exit interviews with recently closed retailers provided some insight on how

[133:00] the city could help reverse this impression some of the challenges cited may be a perception that are not that it is not actually the maybe a perception well it is not actually worse than Boulder than a neighboring communities such as taxes and rents the suggested framework for the strategy would include a look however and how the city can support employee retention through access improvements and existing efforts to provide workforce housing you could also look at supplemental parking and access improvements help with navigating city processes and opportunities to create more affordable commercial space we will go into more detail on these last two items in the following slides in terms of navigating city processes and the cost of doing business in Boulder it was mentioned that average Boulder rents are in line with our neighbors as our sales tax rates and the higher Boulder sales tax amounts to an additional five cents on a ten dollar purchase the consultant looked at possible other possible cost factors such as permitting fees and

[134:01] other requirements the strategy would include partnering with our colleagues and other city departments to explore whether there are opportunities to streamline boulders permitting process and fee structures to improve the retailer customer experience the final way in which retailers said that Boulder could help them to sustain their business was to provide more opportunities for affordable space this was one of the comprehensive plan goals that helped drive the retail study and efforts are already underway to pilot affordable commercial programs such as the spaces being created at 30th and Pearl as well as conversations about affordable commercial being a possible community benefit the city has discussed looking at district own spaces in the downtown area as a possible approach to providing affordable space and to reconfiguring or sharing existing spaces possibly with incentives to create opportunities for smaller or shared retail concepts the strategy would look at these and other best practices nationwide to determine if there are

[135:00] additional ways to provide affordability the next steps would include updating the framework based on council's feedback this evening depending on the priority objectives staff will convene an interdepartmental team to evaluate the resources needed to complete the strategy as with the study phase the strategy would include a rigorous Community Engagement plan bringing in the expertise of our nonprofit economic vitality partners as well as retailers community organizations and members of the public as part of the survey responses we had over 300 members the public offered to participate in follow-up focus groups lastly the intention is to provide counsel with actionable recommendations by the end of the year the questions we're asking counsel are whether you wish to add or remove any of the objectives from the strategy if there are any priority objectives that you want the strategy to focus on and lastly if Council agrees with the proposed set of next steps and

[136:01] at the end thank you for this opportunity we also summarized objectives last two slides okay so there's stuff we want to talk about and we also want to give feedback on objectives so there is some hands up to things to add I'm not sure where they exactly fit in so I'll just say them going back to Aaron's question I guess about how do we how do we help those retail deserts so we have in our town I think there's actually three parts of it you touched a little bit on setups but I think the regulatory is a big part of it and as we work on our use tables this is an opportunity for us to look at what our use tables say about what's permitted and if we have if we don't permit retail in certain places this is a wonderful opportunity for us to remove those regulatory barriers but the third

[137:00] and this is the toughest one over incentives and regulatory is in some places it's just plain old infrastructure I can tell you that I can walk one mile any direction from my house and not be able to spend money at all groceries drugs liquor neighborhoods in the north side there's neighborhoods in the north side and then south you saw the the desert there and and it's not just a matter of the zoning doesn't work or people don't think there's enough folks there to have the incentive to open a shop there's physically no place to open a shop and so I think we need to be looking at corners I'm a big fan of bodegas you know where you can we're on every corner or every major intersection there's an opportunity to to spend money and I think so for example using north older Broadway iris if that ever comes into our control that would be a wonderful

[138:01] place for us to eliminate a commercial desert in that part of town and I think there's other commercial deserts where I think we need to be looking at actually physically changing uses from what they are right now and is more than just incentive as more than just regulatory as actual infrastructure we so the Christmas checks of the world I mean you're sharing this information with them as part of the youth table discussion I presume you know yes and we've had a member of the planning department jim robertson has been involved in this project from the from the beginning so yes as well as we're participating in several of the ongoing planning projects including these bolder plan and several of the other efforts thank you so that's a nice segue into my second point which is you mentioned you know it's interesting and surprising that our our our rental rates are

[139:00] relatively comparable to peer to peer things instead so well I'm all in favor of experimenting with affordable commercial I know we're gonna start the 30th and pearl that doesn't seem to be a genuine barrier to to reach diversity of retail on nor do our sales tax well they're on the little on the high side we're not off the scale I think you hit the nail on the head but only only part of the nail it's not just the fees that we impose to get people started up it's the regulatory burdens I don't think there's a week that's gone by in my three and a half years on council that I haven't had somebody call me up and say you know how hard it is to start a business and Boulder and it's not just the check the editor right it's all the hoops they've got to go through in the fact that they've got to go from Department the department the Department and they don't talk to each other that I have to fill out the same form with five different people and and I don't know why you all aren't you guys one city and the answer is no we're a bunch of departments and I think that's the number one streamlining that we need doing suicide the fees because folks can

[140:02] bake that into their their pricing but if we make it really really hard for people to start a business here they're going to go someplace else and that's exactly what's happening sentiment and this week I've heard from probably six different people who have you know filled me it sounds like I'm talking the same person but I know I'm talking to different people and just how hard it is not only for businesses but for any kind of permitting whether it's a residential whether you're just fixing your house or whatever and I can't say loud enough we somehow have to collapse that so it's not such a burdensome process it shouldn't be so hard and people waiting three four weeks and then somebody goes

[141:00] on vacation and doesn't turn it over to somebody else that really needs to get fixed I I wanted to kind of follow up on Aaron's question where he was saying is there any way we can incent certain types of retail and one of the big holes that I know Bob is interested and I think a lot of us are interested in is the diagonal plaza and what might happen there and I know there's tons of complications there was multiple ownerships but we should really figure that out and because that could have a lot of benefit for the communities on either side of 28th or 30th and could be a really central place and could also be retail and other things and it's lost a lot of its former retail so things like music

[142:00] GART brothers or dicks or something big retail was there and then Albertsons and Olive Sports Authority you know Sports Authority those things and out I already mentioned hillside shops so that should be in your list and then I think oh and the whole thing about non-resident shoppers and some who shop in some who don't I was thinking about again my my own personal experience where most of my career I didn't work in the city of Boulder in fact I commuted and I never shopped in the community that I worked in and I found that a really odd thing that you're depending on people who don't live here to shop here and I guess my

[143:00] experience was I'm at work I need to work and I need to get home as fast as possible so shopping was never part of that equation and shopping would be left to a non-work day and I'm so I don't know I really am kind of amazed that that when if your key findings was how dependent we are on non-resident shoppers and it really didn't make a lot of sense to me so not all shoppers are the same I appreciate the inquiry and we do need to dig a little deeper the fact is that as a per capita amount of spen the revenue generated we are reliant upon it one thing to consider that we'll need to continue to look at in the future as well is as we as a community continue to age and or have young students and both of those groups have fixed incomes or less disposable income let's say we'll

[144:00] need to pay even greater attention on our reliance over time the retail industry is clearly shifting this was acknowledged by the consultant that helped us and frankly in the space and I think profoundly from the people that filled out the survey across all categories and from the retailers and so while it may be surprising it is nonetheless of the sales tax realized and I was curious and I didn't see it distinguished so much but on the non-resident shoppers how many of those are non-resident workers versus people who are coming to Boulder for the Boulder experience to go shopping you know as tourists or as people coming up for the day from Denver there's some detail on that which is in the retailer response that they break down there they're critical customers mm-hmm and so they break that down by people coming in

[145:02] from nearby areas versus workers through zip codes or they are we did there is a capability in the raw survey data to distinguish between a visitor versus somebody who is a commuter worker and the behaviors are different mm-hmm so in a place where you have high workforce density that might be daytime purchases of lunch if it's nearby or even an immediate after work whereas your visitor is really concentrating on the core in your downtown and on 29th Street so it is a different type of sales behavior something we intend to look at and none of which should be looked at as the only thing that we want to rely on because in this area diversification is key I think one of the things that we just really want to keep an eye on with all of our partners are what is keeping our businesses afloat and all of these people employed as well as how to also

[146:01] serve the needs of residents who are purchasing groceries here and going to the pharmacy and things like that a follow-up question mm-hmm one time long long time ago Bob I can told me that back to the envelope if I understood him correctly that he estimated that somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of our sales tax was paid by people who don't live here and that was a whole spectrum it could be that the commuter I think that just bought a cup of coffee or lunch it could be the person who comes up from Denver or Arvada to walk a Pearl Street Mall on a Sunday afternoon or it could be you know visitors and three or four nights here from out of town do you guys have any idea whether that 40 to 50% is directionally accurate if you don't know now is that something you could capture I would say that that's where that term the pull factor comes in so Brendan cropping across all retail right so there's the overall pull factor of 1.5 which would indicate that we exceed what

[147:00] our own residents can purchase by a factor of 50 percent okay so that would mean that would make a third then I'm doing the math right so it is that my math 30 and 40% of all sales tax to be by people to live here okay thanks and you I'm wondering if there are any if there are any times where that shift becomes apparent because that did not used to be the case and just what it what it would have been in terms of trending that would have caused that I'm not sure Bobby's made that statement to Bob just where he's sort of pulling that from so to speak you've heard of Bob I think it was Ralph guidance not scientific this is probably a little bit more scientific but but it sounds like it was he was directionally correct and we could include a look at historic trends and and the reason I say that is

[148:02] because in some of the desirable places to shop the places that are now long gone also they well they were just all local right and people did there was more diversity in the shopping ability I guess is whatever Thank You Aaron then Sam well I'll start by echoing some my colleagues things in Bob but what you said about the the difficulty of getting permits I think is spot-on I've certainly heard that many times as well from the people who are really challenged to navigate the system and so that just that stood out to me as something that if we could I don't know if we have a someone who's an ombudsman or or somebody in each department that's tasked with knowing who to coordinate with in other departments but it seems like a kind of a low-hanging fruit particularly for the smaller businesses right I mean you assume that somebody like a Macy's is gonna have the staff

[149:01] people to figure it all out without too much trouble but if you're just trying to start a 1,500 square foot clothing store or something it's probably gonna be very tough to figure that stuff out so I'd love to see us figure out ways that we can make that process easier for people and and maybe for smaller businesses we could look at you know a different path you know maybe if you're under a certain threshold you get the quick and easy path you know if you're over a certain threshold you have to do the full thing or maybe you can waive a couple fees first businesses under a certain size or something like that I mean we're talking about I'm trying to encourage businesses that sell more affordable goods right which i think is an important goal and so one way to make that more doable is to offer services to them or maybe to make it less expensive I don't know how you'd quantify that but we took we're working on an affordable commercial space program which would be about the rents that were charged but

[150:00] helping out with the fees might be another way to look at something like that and I when I was reading through the the freeform comments on the surveys the the interest in more affordable codes came through over and over and over again and and I feel like maybe some of the gaps there are in of midsize stores you know like you think about like Bed Bath and Beyond for example that we do have here in town but there are a number of like no there's no sporting goods store of a certain size right and and so we have a few of those spaces in town like diagonal Plaza has some empty ones but I know you talked about optimizing existing retail spaces that seems like one of those opportunities you know if we could maybe attract a handful of stores that sold goods that were a little bit more affordable in broad categories by helping people to reconfigure spaces it seems like that could be handy I also echo what I was saying about where retail is located the idea of the corner

[151:00] shop which our zoning doesn't allow in most places you think about the what's now that alpine cafe used to be Delilah's you know store up on the hill which is just the super functional thing in the middle of the neighborhood and you can't do in almost any part of the city so that's one of those things to look at I'd agreed like Broadway and iris would be a great place to have a mixed-use node eventually if we can get there tying into the the use table discussion one of your desert areas was food for people who work in the business parks and so I'll put in another plug I've plugged a couple times in our current use table project allow for small restaurants in those industrial areas I'll use this opportunity to put in another plug and as some planning staff has pushed back on that a little bit but it seems like these recommendations point us in in that in that very direction I think that would be handy and another thing you noted that rents

[152:03] are roughly comparable for retail spaces here and in peer communities around the county which I see is the case but the the the analysis punted on the property tax question and what I've heard from from some business owners small business owners in particular is that the the triple net the insurance common aromanians and tax fees can actually get so high that they're comparable to the rent amounts so I feel like those triple net fees are a huge part of what's making it tough to afford commercial space here in Boulder so I'd really like to see an effort to capture some of those numbers like I get that there are special taxing districts in a lot of different places but you could normalize for that a little bit you could pick out a few representative properties in Boulder and a few representative properties in Longmont Lafayette Broomfield and if you know they happen to be in some special taxing district you could just you know level that out so I'd like to learn more about that

[153:02] because we are we're dealing with texting questions on a regular basis here and in Boulder and having a good sense of how those compared to neighboring communities would be helpful so that would be my one ask as part of that um but I feel like in general your you're absolutely on the right track and we've got a lot of good stuff going here and so I look forward to seeing the final strategy and implementing some of this stuff occasionally the plans get finished and then not necessarily implemented a whole lot hopefully this is one that we will keep working on thank you very good thank you guys you will not hear many of us has conformed much more data because it was tons of data packed in here anticipated the questions that you would get the highest level it basically says that retail is pretty healthy in Boulder you know but we have a high poll factor which means

[154:01] that we're getting sales taxes from folks who are spending money here who don't live here and you know there's a relatively high static satisfaction level even from the retailers which I thought was good and I also think that when you break apart the out-of-town folks into commuter workers and tourists or visitors that those two obviously have different needs and that the needs of the workers aren't rocket science I mean I work out in Flatirons Park there's 40,000 people who work out there most of whom in commute maybe two-thirds and the needs out there what Aaron said there needs to be restaurants convenience stores and you know things that workers will use workers are not going shopping like Lisa said for clothes or shoes or Sporting Goods that's something they do in the weekends wherever they they live and so when we think about the needs of workers we we

[155:01] should really just concentrate on this service needs and I think the way I would look at that angle of a reason staff hesitates to do you either housing or services in industrial parks is because of the concentration you would get and the conflict of uses right some of the industrial areas have you know the stinky uses like coffee roasting you know it's great we're all like coffee but it can be not where you'd want to eat lunch necessarily so I think a constant concentration limit might be a way to approach that and stuff that you do allow that as a use particularly a restaurants that would serve workers because also in Flatiron Business Park there's not a lot of places to eat there's the upslope and those those which is there which are always well occupied and then if you go over to Conestoga and you go look at where snarfs is that's packed you know

[156:01] because great great food but it's very full and very congested and then you look across the way and you think there's got to be opportunity in community plaza there to redevelop and somebody much like diagonal but to develop in some way that serves that whole area which has a lot of workers and it's not gonna probably be a big tourist draw so you can look at that location as kind of potentially a very good service location for the employment centers out there so that was one of my thoughts because your your strategy topic area I'm on page 52 talked about you know optimizing for what the employment centers need I think that's pretty obvious what they need and then the one other thing that I thought I'd bring up is thank you for the Spanish language shopping responses I hadn't seen that Marian when I was talking to

[157:00] you earlier this afternoon there and I hadn't quite gotten to that but as far as wanting to be a welcoming community I think that's one of the things that we lack is what folks who are telling us in Spanish that they need and that's you know both more shopping areas that serve the kinds of food that they like to make as well as lower cost retail and so I don't know what to say about that except that it's a clear request from a community that we want to be welcoming to and what I would want to focus on is is a lot of that you know I think a lot of the retail businesses here have it dialed in pretty well they're doing fairly well and I think this is one segment you know we have Geographic deserts and I think this is a type of retail surface desert so but thanks and good work Mary we got a long

[158:00] line so um thanks them for that because I was something I was gonna bring up I really appreciated those comments and I think it's important to note that a lot of the folks that are because I hear this all the time it's I'm going I'm driving 45 minutes to go to Northland North Longmont to the Walmart and and these are folks that are working two three jobs that have less time that are having to drive to find some of the things that they need so I guess what we need to do is again put the equity lens on this and focus on those things that will serve people with lesser means you know we talk a lot about restaurants and coffee shops but that's not what some of these folks are looking for they're actually looking for practical stuff

[159:00] like tortillas you know I mean so it's it's it's an important thing to keep keep our eyes on and and figure out how we can perhaps work with the existing to markets there's two two fruit that he has there's one in North Boulder in Aaron's neighborhood and there's another one right at 30th and Belmont and to work with those folks and perhaps find out from them what it is they need because often times they are sparsely stocked so so what find out more from them thank you colloquy you know if there's we've been talking about affordable businesses and things like that so if there's an opportunity for somebody to start a

[160:01] small store a small retails at space and and they don't have the wherewithal totally to do that and we do have the small business group and I know they do a pretty good they do a great job but I would like to see how we can a lot of times people aren't even aware of it so how do we put people who might need something like that would like to do something for their community in terms of retail or materials yet don't have a path forward on how to do that so I think that would be really cool to do that I was well I would you know I was just gonna add to that maybe one of the paths forward is to revisit the the food truck ordinance and allow food carts I know that we talked about food carts and never went back and revisited that that

[161:03] was left off the food truck ordinance so you mean non-motorized yeah the push cart yeah push carts was the item that was left off that ordinance for later revisiting and I don't think we ever have so those are alternatives to having a brick-and-mortar I know that brick-and-mortar folks feel competition from that but especially in some of these retail deserts yeah if I could just finish I was just gonna say something about Sam and irons comment I'm gonna put you in the line and the queue on are you gonna you you were colloquy on on tortillas right nice right as long as you're still on the same topic otherwise no I like tortillas I was just kidding to say say that the thing about these desert

[162:01] seas of industrial deserts and having smaller retail like restaurants and services is so people don't have to drive so much and we're trying we just had the climate plan and we're talking about the retail plan and so we should try to figure out how to reduce the amount of transportation needed okay I'm gonna go a little bit more on the small business side and being a from a small business myself I will say that it is the administrative work that drowns you and we've been dealing with that with this unfortunate new tax that our legislature put through that we now have to charge tax from every other state or county city it's insane something like that will destroy a business and it's killing us so if you're starting a small business and

[163:00] have very little human power to do so and you're having to jump from city to city department it's gonna kill you and so I'm wondering if you guys can if you've thought about pairing with either like the chamber or the Small Business Association where maybe they can have liaisons to departments within our staff staff members that are part of the departments and they can all work together and have like a point person that a a small business owner can go work with a small business association and they can help walk them through because I think a lot of that is um volunteers that do that and so maybe that would be a way where they could get some guidance and maybe I don't know if you know chamber if you pay your dues and stuff could also have a point person there to help them walk through these because again a lot of people might have a specialty in a small business but administrative or technology may not be

[164:03] had and so some guidance from people could really help because I think having been here my entire life watching our small businesses go away and be replaced by chains has just been incredibly sad I think it's been one of the biggest contributing factors to losing the amazing feel that this town once had and I think if we could really promote bringing in some really unique quote-unquote mom-and-pop shops again I would love to see that and there's so many innovative people you can just go onto Etsy and see the innovation that exists there and so if you could help support those people to bring that to a brick-and-mortar you'd be serving your constituents here rather than online and having the taxes go online so I'd love to see that and then we're gonna jump back over I mean well we'll pull the small business side and the innovation of I had a friend from high school who started a food truck and she was really successful with it and another friend of mine who was a graphic designer designed it and so if we could figure out our regulations to

[165:00] bringing it in to some of the deserts especially the park over on Arapaho I mean again yeah we're talking about the cars and these 15-minute walkable neighborhoods well the same thing applies to lunch hour and lunch hour and Boulder sucks I mean let's just be honest I don't go out I try to stay as far away from it I mean you know so if people are having things that are brought right to their really close or walkable within a block to their workplaces you're gonna decrease your carbon emissions you're going to decrease the traffic even a decrease that frustration you're going to increase you know the experience that we have in Boulder hopefully and support small culinary efforts so even almost like the coops that we're starting to see pop up if we can do things like that so I'd love to see some of that start going in our business sectors so that's my pitch for small business see Cindy your mic sorry talking to my

[166:01] paper here I agree with what everyone said about the permitting process I and this has been this is decades old specifically with planning and so whatever part business needs to have to go through in that and I was thinking maybe we could get someone like Chris Hoffman who just who contributed I think to the climate discussion who does organizational development correct we just put it set him loose in the planning department and and see if that can't be of some help because there is got to be some reason why this has been so difficult decade after decade after decade and I'm not exaggerating with that and it really is daunting and it's just it's it's another method of torture in this community it really is and I empathize with what meerabai is saying yeah this is so at any rate that's one of the top things and it's not business

[167:01] necessarily it's not retail study but it's the process people have to go through in order to be able to do whatever in the community one of the the saturation levels in the industrial I think Sam had just mentioned that or Aaron had about having just a limit if we're going to have food places so that as we're doing with the ad use that there is some limitation placed and one of the questions I have and I wonder if you did any sort of research on it is how many people do work to these so-called 15-minute neighbor walk to these 15-minute neighborhoods places because a lot of them have parking and I know the place Lisa's place it's called the Hill Center hillside shops hillside shops the parking lot there's just jammed it's mostly busy all the time so and people do stop when they're going back and

[168:00] forth from one end to the other but part of the part that would be as how many people in the neighborhood actually access that without an automobile yeah if that could be measured it would be helpful I think because this may be just a name that we're giving that doesn't really apply and basically that's it I think the the numbers the information you gave us was just pretty outstanding so much of it yeah thanks Suzanne so thank you Cindy and all of the council members that have mentioned concerns with permitting in the planning and development services area so what I want you to know is that we are well aware of this issue and let me just remind you that when we had the first adjustment to base in May the council was good enough to allow us to hire some fixed trim positions we recommending some others that will extend so that by the end of 2020

[169:03] [Music] development services department and planning director Christmas check and public works director Maryanne Wiedemann we hope to make significant progress in this area we know that it's an issue we're trying really hard to make progress and make it be lasting progress because when Cindy said this has been going on for decades I think you're 100% right and we do try to make changes and tweak some and things get better and then they don't always stay better so we're really really trying on this this is not something that can change overnight and that's why I'm telling you that we're targeting the end of 2022 by then have made significant progress on improvements Jean may I make just one suggestion just right with that is to be sure and include users in the process to

[170:02] people who've been through the process and where they get hung up so that they can actually actually give some real feedback and the Planning Department knows thank you for the where that is I mean just real quickly just thanks for that Cindy I agree I'll just know that you know a few years ago David Driscoll I had a group that was working on process improvements at the Planning Department and actually came under some pretty harsh criticism for members of council because it was perceived as working with users but who were also developers or building people building things so I would ask us to be receptive because the council has not always been receptive to similar efforts in the past Thank You Aaron I really appreciate that just a question for changing you mentioned planning but I assume that when we using plenty of shorthand to mean all permitting tax applications

[171:03] anything that a small business has to do to get started in this town or is it limited just to development services at the same time the folks in the finance department are working on improving our sales tax process through a new system that we've purchased and we're trying to put things online that sort of thing but that again is going to be I hope in 2020 there's two initiatives or I would hope those initiatives are coordinated so that and hey maybe it could be in a hub say where people came to one place to get their city services but like if the pavilion yeah and hop in on this real quick I think

[172:02] one-stop shopping right so people people go to a website start your business and here's what you have to do or they go to a website building permit here's what you have to do because I know we've talked about this for social services right trying to have one spot where people can figure out all the different forms that they need to fill out so anyway that's just a thought yeah I will say in 1986 it was great the planning was and permitting and I walked right through even though it was a unique building and we had a lot fewer regulations then I'm pretty sure yes we are we've met the enemy and it is us since we make all these people have to jump I think you guys have said it all very well and I will not repeat it the only thing I would say is I do we mentioned food trucks in passing but I guess they devote chunks of parking lots

[173:04] to food truck parks and I and they don't have to be as permanent as they are there but I just I think when I think about food to lunch the worker lunch issue I think for gosh sakes if we could allow food truck parks in the parts of town where there aren't restaurants that would be an elegant it doesn't have to be a permanent solution but it could be an ongoing solution that rules are very restrictive with regard to food trucks right okay so that's what I'm saying is it's time for us to change that one look at Ray Beck and how well that works and if we could do it much smaller scale for the lunchtime crowd but I just I think we don't have to make this as difficult as we make it especially in some of these places where we both work so Mary's comment on the Pushcart there's that too but I mean we know there's a

[174:00] card or a truck what every Saturday they used to have swap meets and the parking lots would turn into food trucks cards just all kind people would bring all kinds of stuff there and it was quite a festival okay you wake up supers market for food trucks yeah yes yes I agree that the that ordinance needs to be revisited as well as amending it with the Pushcart correct I think especially in areas of town where existing businesses don't need to go be threatened okay so I guess in general what you're hearing from us on your questions about objectives is you're headed the right direction and there's some things that I think counsel underscored is they're particularly interested in addressing and it's fun to watch the pendulum swing and issues to come around again but streamlining is certainly one of

[175:00] them I don't know final words yes no well I just wanted to add put in another plug for the food truck food pod and push cart thing push it like you actually get some some of that bodega feel there are people who sometimes sell things on the street like not too far from my neighborhood which I know is illegal but it's a great fun thing when it happens so it happens you know it happens so we might as well and no but it addresses both ends business opportunities and fills a need so it does right and and what who can be mango on a stick with some lime juice right but I'll just say thank you so much is an amazing packet amazing memo and amazing work and thank you so much and one to give a shout out as well to sharon king head of the Small Business Development Center who's done an incredible work here as well I noticed that she like went out and found the people for the eggs it interviews it it

[176:01] would took a lot of work and those that are not forgiving us that time yeah alright well thank you so much thank you and with that we are adjourned - Parris I felt like that [Music]