October 10, 2019 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music] [Applause]

[5:35] I think we are ready to begin Boulder City Councils the study session for October 10th 2019 we have two issues the first one the boulder police task force Oversight Committee and we are thrilled to hear from you I don't know if there's any more we want to say so other than we're gonna start with a huge thank you

[6:01] for all the effort we know has gone into this and anyhow it we look forward to tonight's conversation so good evening everyone as we begin we want to recognize that tonight we sit upon land within the territories of the Utes Cheyenne and he no no AE Arapaho people's further we acknowledged that 48 contemporary tribal nations are historically tied to the lands that make up the state of Colorado I would like to ask our taskforce colleagues to stand up and introduce themselves please Carlene Hoffman with the police department Sophia Pelecanos Michelle Simpson cu-boulder Christian Gardner would

[7:02] District Attorney's Office Mike Rafiq Shirley white Selassie at CIC I'm John Gifford I'm with the public defender's office James Hill Madeleine throng Woodley representing the n-double-a-cp is a life long lifetime member you're three presenters for this evening include myself Shaun rapist ilaqua I identify as black and queer I use they/them their pronouns I'm a local educator and social justice activist my name is Todd Conklin I'm currently a student at cu-boulder my name is Michele de neige I am a student at Metro in

[8:00] Denver and so thank you to all of our task force members and we greatly appreciate city council members for having us back to again tonight to bring forth our recommendations we would like to remind everyone of the of the words of community member mr. Atkinson there are instances like this where people don't come out alive I'm blessed that I got out alive and unharmed it definitely brings fear to my heart knowing that some people don't survive and from Tony Morrison I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe things of value seldom are our last

[9:01] visit to Council was on September 10th if you recall during our last update we reviewed how the task force was initiated who we are and our shared vision of an oversight model one that creates a system of transparency timeliness accountability trust justice and equity it is our desire to make communities of color safer and bolder build trust with police and reduce bias across the organization last time we went over the research in considerations that have led us to the recommendations we are bringing forward tonight we have met with other music municipalities that have police oversight models we have interviewed members of our own community current members of the professional standards review panel psrp and representatives of the National Association of civilian oversight of law enforcement also known as Nicole there has been at least one member of the boulder police department and/or union president each of our meetings

[10:00] demonstrating the necessity for collaboration and shared knowledge as Task Force members we have had many thought-provoking conversations we have wrestled with personal and logistical challenges while living into a growth mindset we came with a singular charge and we also had to take on more than that the world around us has held a mirror to the experience of people of color which can oftentimes be both so laboratory and unnecessarily tragic this conversation is about justice and now more than ever how important our work as a task force has been when we last came to council we were asked that with our upcoming recommendations we focus on three key components within the recommended model

[11:01] or models the majority of tonight's presentation will focus on our recommendations with an eye towards procedural improvements regarding complaints the role of analyzing trends and policy analysis and community outreach other questions that were asked by City Council of its house force were number one how does the work of the task force integrate with the city's ongoing race equity work its relationship with the government Alliance on race and equity and the city's equity instruments the answer to that question was answered in your memo number two what is a task force considering with regard to reach the future regional law enforcement outreach with the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Boulder County Sheriff's Department the task force was expressly analyzed asked to analyze an oversight model solely for the city of Boulder police we have been notified however of other jurisdictions that may be interested in

[12:02] learning more about what the city is doing number three would we be integrating metrics into our recommendations the task force assessed several metrics throughout its process to develop recommendations including five years of data on complaints against officers and the outcomes of those internal affairs investigations and quantifiable responses to our community interviews all of which can be found attached to the memo in addition data-driven improvements to policing in Boulder will be an important component of implementation while the scope of today of the task force work at this point does not define all of the important metrics that will be useful in the future our hope is that as the final model is refined and implemented city staff will leverage the future police data scientists as well as any new oversight staff to ensure robust reporting and analysis of metrics as we continued our work we identified two

[13:01] fundamental concerns we would like to solve one the boulder community lacking trust in the police department investigating themselves and to the fun down of foundational concerns with the current psrp including its role in oversight a lack of essential training and its demographic makeup last time we were here we review the common models of oversight which include investigation focused model civilian investigators conduct independent investigations of complaints against police officers they may replace or duplicate the police internal affairs process in this model the Investigative office may serve as an intake point for complaints against police officers conduct independent interviews of complainants officers and witnesses and is sometimes governed by a community board or Commission that may hold hearings issue subpoenas or make findings on investigations the review

[14:03] focused natl a community review board or commission may evaluate completed internal affairs investigations hear appeals hold public forums make recommendations for further investigation and/or conduct community outreach auditor monitor focused model one or more professional staff make up an office independent from the police department to focus on promoting large-scale systemic reform of law enforcement functions including ensuring internal investigation processes are thorough complete and fair evaluating police policies practices and training participating in and/or monitoring open internal affairs investigations and robust public reporting most of the communities do a hybrid of the three and depending on the needs of the community my colleague Todd will now introduce the first of the two recommended models

[15:00] Thank You Shawn Ray for that introduction I'd like to thank all members of council for being here tonight we're very excited to present these two models to all of you so we as a task force are going to be recommending two different models for consideration by Council we will review each model and we will answer questions after discussing each individual recommendation as seen in your memo the majority of this task force recommends a hybrid combination of a community oversight panel and an auditor monitor shifting to this model from the current process would involve hiring a full-time professional auditor monitor reporting to the city manager's office with a possible future recommendation to amend the Charter and have the position report directly to the City Council it would also require replacing the current psrp with a police oversight panel this panel would comprised of eleven community members and would be staffed by the auditor monitor and one liaison from the police department the auditor monitor and

[16:01] police liaison will be non-voting members of this panel both the auditor monitor and the oversight panel would not only review internal investigations and make recommendations they would also assess police outcomes broadly and recommend policy improvements and conduct community outreach and engagement for any police oversight model to work the community must have a role in this process and that brings me to the first part of this model which is the police oversight panel we believe that having a community panel is incredibly valuable to the police oversight process because it allows the community to have a direct voice in the affairs of their city thereby building trust between the oversight board and the community this panel will consist of 11 community members we believe that 11 is the appropriate number for this panel because it will help to ensure greater diversity among panel members candidates for this panel will be those who possess strong ties to Boulder by either living

[17:01] working or raising children in the city of Boulder the minimum age for this panel will be 18 at least 50% of panel members will be those who identify as a person of color notably African American Latin X or indigenous in addition the selection committee that selects the members for this police oversight panel will strive to include a person with a disability a person experiencing homelessness or having lived such experience it and identifying as LGBTQ plus and/or a person who has experienced incarceration these were thus these were similar qualifications that made up the candidate pool for this very taskforce and produced a very diverse result the initial panel that is selecting the first generation of police oversight panel members would be a selection committee made up of two PD oversight Task Force members and three community members that are associated with nonprofits with a demonstrated capacity

[18:01] to serve under-resourced communities within the city of Boulder we would like council to determine who these nonprofits would be future selection committees after that first generation will replace the PD oversight task force members with to continuing panel members who are not in consideration themselves and those two panel members who are replacing the PD oversight members would also be representatives from nonprofits in this model similar to the recruitment of the Task Force the city would expand recruitment and outreach to historically underrepresented and underserved communities the roles and responsibilities of this kelis Oversight Panel will be to review investigations and make recommendations regarding the disposition of the investigation and the level of discipline that should be sanctioned once the investigation has been completed this panel will also make recommendations regarding restorative justice practices to the Chief of Police

[19:00] this panel will also suggest policy improvements and innovations to the auditor monitor and the Chief of Police the second part of this monitor model is the auditor monitor we believe that the auditor monitor through taking in data analyzing that data and making recommendations to the police department can create long-term systemic change in policing in a proactive way the procedural they would also be reviewing reviewing investigations procedural improvements regarding complaints including levels of complaints and how to recruit for panel member members are as follows the auditor monitor will would be responsible for receiving all complaints generated from the public regardless of the initial submission source for an internal complaint the Internal Affairs sergeant will receive the complaint first and then notify the auditor monitor of all related processes complaints could be received online in person at the auditor monitors office

[20:01] which will be located away from the police department or future physical community drop boxes or by telephone the classification of the complaints will be further defined in partnership with the police department and Auditor monitor during implementation if this model is chosen investigative powers will stay with the internal investigative sergeant and the auditor monitor can monitor and then direct the investigations as it proceeds the auditor monitor will be present through all investigations regardless of complaint classification including interviews they would also have access to all information from the internal affairs sergeant and they may recommend best practices to redirect the ia sergeant through the course of an investigation the auditor monitor will also explain the disposition and discipline recommendations of the internal affairs sergeant to the oversight panel in detail the panel then delivers and

[21:00] explains their recommendations to the police chief all final discipline decisions are still left to the police chief we believe that this model through its proactive functions can deliver foundational and ongoing change for the city of Boulder in policing in order for any auditor monitor to be successful it is critical that they engage in robust public reporting in order to build trust between the community and this oversight model so but now I would now like to talk about the strengths of the Auditor monitor page 12 of the memo memo compares areas of strength for the Auditor monitor model with areas of concern the strengths of having an auditor monitor include that the auditor monitor is independent from what is a partner of the police department we believe that this will give us critical buy-in from both the community and the police department in order for the community to trust this board they need it to be independent but

[22:00] in order for the board to work it also needs to work well with the police department complaints from community members can be taken outside of the police department giving better community confidence in trust in this oversight model the auditor monitor will also work in a separate building from the police department in order to be more accessible to the community the Auditor monitor can also make disciplinary recommendations with a full understanding of repeat complaints and potential corrective actions they can also make policy recommendations after analyzing trends and data in order to proactively address issues regarding policing there are several strengths to the oversight panel in this model it increases community involvement and engagement and adds transparency to this oversight process due to the high cost of living in Boulder the recommended qualifications to have strong ties rather than require residency explicitly allows for greater

[23:02] diversity on this panel lowering the age requirement to 18 years of age at minimum includes all who can vote as well as traditional college students who are stakeholders in the boulder community this panel will include representatives from communities that have been historically impacted by systemic bias this model includes more community voices and is significantly more inclusive than the current model it also emphasizes the independence and role of the future Auditor monitor that would reduce the perception by some that the police department does not adequately investigate itself finally despite the concern regarding placing the responsibility of the Auditor monitor with one person a task force believes that the oversight panel's ability to contribute to their evaluation will add a layer of accountability to this process we will now take questions relating to the auditor monitor and police oversight panel model thanks for being here um

[24:06] maybe I miss this but with the auditor monitor have any experience our required experience as a first responder whether or not it's medic and police fire anything to give them a background to understand the police side I think that when we are recruiting for an auditor modder during implementation experience like that would be great as well in addition we'd want them to have experience doing investigations experience working with Police Department's we want them that experience relating to community outreach as well so I think that could be a plus for an auditor monitor yeah my question was similar and I was gonna ask what kind of criteria would you be looking for in the auditor monitor so that would be further defined during our implementation phase once we receive direction from counsel as to which model but we would want someone with strong investigative experience someone who can

[25:01] work well with police and also the community at the same time great thank you sue thank you for putting this together I think it's very well thought out so it sounds like a very promising system sue what role would the City Council play in all of this the the the one place I saw was in selecting nonprofits that would provide representatives can can you just describe that and any other role the City Council might have in this whole system so in this model the role that we have defined for City Council thus far is that City Council would select various nonprofits I believe we have it at three and then those nonprofits would send a representative to this selection committee and then they would then hold interviews for police oversight panel members and they would make those selections and they would then become members of the police oversight panel so as of now that is the role that we have set out for Council thanks for that and do you see so

[26:02] there's the oversight panel or are we imagining any kind of oversight of the oversight panel because a lot of our current structures the the City Council is kind of where the buck stops you know like if something in the city organization isn't quite working out we can step in in one way or the other dude are you seeing any kind of role of as some kind of oversight for either City Council or any other group of how this whole thing works out I think that in the system that we have designed so far I think that we've set it up so that the auditor monitor is sort of a check on that police oversight panel as well and that the police oversight panel is also a check on the auditor monitor so in that way they kind of balance each other out one of the things that you recommended is that the task force and the auditor monitor can make policy recommendations I guess one question is would you want those policy recommendations to be made

[27:01] to the City Council or I know that they go to the police chief but I guess that was one question I had about the role of City Council's if things need to be changed through ordinances or something the mechanism for y'all to you all sorry the new panel to speak directly to us is that envisioned so one of the key factors in order for any police oversight model to work is that everything has to be robustly public reporting reported so in that phase of public reporting I think it would be good for the panel to also report their policy recommendations to Council or for the oversight or for the auditor monitor to also do that I think that could potentially be included in the model once we receive direction to that as well I wanted to go back to the auditor monitor a little bit about your analysis I know you guys went back and looked at

[28:00] five years worth of complaints talk a little bit about the volume of work you think the auditor or monitor might might be engaged in in the course of I'm trying to get a grasp of is this a full-time position three-quarters position standby position and just try to get yeah or two positions maybe you know I don't know what it is so I'm sure you guys have kind of drilled into the volume I guess I'll say and you speak a little bit about the the nature of the task so those who were in favor of this model envisioned it as being a full-time position because in addition to reviewing all of the that come in and potentially being a part of those investigations we also expect them to be proactively analyzing data and then for crafting policy recommendations in conjunction with the police oversight panel and then on top of all of that holding public forums and educating the people of Boulder so we believe they will have a substantial work to do and that should be a full-time position in our opinion thank you may I also add that you you said

[29:02] something very interesting about maybe having two people I think that in addition to having an auditor monitor as a full-time position I'm having additional staff as support would be a wonderful wonderful opportunity as well I'm if if the job and so inclined thank you I'm Sean Murray I that was my concern is that this is like a huge position for one person and the last thing you want to do is burn out this person so I have a question about what is it that I ICL or that the group and in terms of council appointing them did you have a discussion about it get becoming really politicized or how did you address that so the ICL is part of the next model that will present so if it's alright could we answer that call right sit down can we answer that question the next

[30:01] section and can I just ask Sean Murray another question and that is in this assistant or the second person how do you see that person supporting the monitor I don't think that we've we've talked about that in depth and that's definitely something that we would like to explore more during implementation however just from the task force experience with the two staff members that we've had the benefit of working with there is a lot of additional responsibilities that can be passed on to a support staff in many ways so I think that that position itself could be quite robust but we haven't really talked about the details thank you and Jane we're talking about hiring news is like a data analyst position can you describe what that how that position is envisioned and how that might work with with this structure sure and I believe that the oversight taskforce was very knowledgeable about

[31:02] the data scientists and there's some information in your report about that as well so the plan right now is that that person would actually be hired by the innovation and technology department but that their assignment would be to work on police data one of the things that was brought up in Mary's questions and in your responses was making sure that the person that we hire is familiar with what's called algorithmic bias which is a big problem right now and has been forever I guess in computer work and I'll tell you that our innovation and technology department is very knowledgeable about this and did intend and does intend to have that be part of the qualifications of this individual so because the employee will be working for now a hundred percent on police data we think that that person is

[32:02] going to be a support on the data analysis for the auditor monitor if you go forward with that work and do you all have anything to add to that you say sounds like they would be able to support that work and in part most of land and we didn't include this answer but I would like to reiterate this particular point so the task force recognizes that the foundation of most police data is rooted in and the collection methodology is rooted in institutionalized racism and white supremacy so it is been part of data collection for a very long time we would like that data collection person to be able to undo some of that harm that has already implicitly ingrained and in that work and I think that an anti bias approach to that work would be quite significant I think it's

[33:00] a wonderful tailing between this particular role that is being created and this particular oversight model thank you and I am drawing out some answers that we're in the packet but I feel are worth elevating side and part of the conversation I guess I had another question which is and this was mentioned in the memo but I guess I just want to dwell on it which is a whole lot of the success of the Auditor monitor model depends on hiring a really good auditor monitor person and I guess given the in a few Minh and malleability I guess can you speak to that concern and how we would make sure that there's no checks and balances and supports because there isn't the perfect person out there I appreciate that concern and something that we've also talked about at length

[34:00] during during our meetings there may be a perfect perfect person out there we have to look for that person one of the resources that we have is Nicole so being able to connect with our the members of Nicole around the country there are maybe people who are doing this current work and other municipalities that would like to shift and work on a different municipality a different area similar problem site so I think that in in in that case somebody can be found we've talked about having that person hopefully be a person of color because that is essential work and then this is a person who would be closest to the actual lived experience so so yes I think it's quite possible and there are resources that are available to to us to do that search I have written college admissions know

[35:00] what it's like to do a search for a very prominent position and sometimes that takes time and we would prefer that it not be rushed that the person that we do find is somebody that we all feel very strongly can can do the work for the city of Boulder okay be honest ik about being able to find a perfect person I just meant people are generally not perfect and so having so much rest on one person as opposed to lots of people or the panel you know just provides more resiliency in the system city so I have some questions about some of the numbers but I would like to ask those after you finished with both models but in the I was wondering if you could say something and maybe I missed it that it was in here it's a really comprehensive report thank you for that but what did some of

[36:03] the Minority Report say in terms of choosing this model you said it was not unanimous so are there any would you share some of that with us can you repeat the question what what is what were the persons who did not agree with this particular model what were some of the what was some of the dissenting thoughts and and I thought it might have something to do with this very thing about finding that person and having so much reside in that one particular individual but I just wondered if you could share some of that with us I think there was a handful of things that came up as concerns one being perception working intimately with the police department and the investigation would inevitably create bonds and relationships and bias and I think that what I heard from the community members

[37:01] that I spoke to in this process that was really concerning that it was just too close and having it all on one person to say there was no bias like it just didn't feel good so that was one of the big ones and you said community members I wondered about the task force itself oh but where are his book specific answers as well as the task force you said that it was just because it wasn't unanimous great sure well I think that in our decision-making process and we're going to present the second of the two models for you to compare and we're leading with the strengths of those models I think that as we've talked about both models I think that even though there is as you were talking about there is the numbers and that may be a majority preferred one model over the other there is support of both models from the task force members and we're presenting you options because I

[38:00] was one of the opportunities that we had to present to you so I think getting into the nuts and bolts of concerns of a particular task force members probably isn't all that relevant because we're leading with our strengths and we think that both of these models are fairly robust and could serve the city very well so I'm just some preferred the other model is basically what you're saying sure okay and in terms of numbers what I was talking about was I think my pages may be different because this is printed out but the summary of the PD oversight task force information requests and the numbers of investigations that came in but I think rather I would ask about those at the end of the presentation okay but if I read the report correctly there was support was there not by the overall task force for some combination of of

[39:00] the two models so I think that there as I presented earlier there are many different models out there and communities to do choose to do a hybrid if the council so chooses after reviewing both of these models that you would like to pull one element from one to add to another I think that is really your purview again we are leading with our strengths and we feel very strongly that there are some amazing beautiful elements that would serve very well depending on which model you choose and we can borrow from the other one that we don't choose it's great thank you and the one you're presenting is a hi both of the ones you're presenting are hybrids so we can further hybrid here yeah in one comment I just wanted to make was that when we were designing this model we did not feel that it would all rest on the auditor monitor we felt that this police oversight panel was

[40:00] going to be institutionally strong enough in and of itself when it's reviewing investigations that it's also going to be quite a substantial position as well and when designing it we made sure actually that the auditor monitor would not just be the fulcrum point of the entire model all right we're now going to transition to our colleague Michelle Denis who will present the second model I'd like to take to take a moment to thank everyone again for being here after hundreds of hours of collaboration with my peers on this task force and hearing all the voices from community members that informed me through this process informed us through this process I just want to say thank you everyone I feel like one of the biggest strengths of the independent model having community outreach combined with the trust that will come from having an independent investigation of cases

[41:00] similar to the one that brought us here tonight is in the best interest of the United forward progress for the boulder Police Department and the people of Boulder so some of the strengths of the independent investigation model I mean independence is one for sure can you slide being able to analyze trends and policies sort of similar to what you heard previously and the emphasis on include improved community outreach bridging the gap between the police department and the community and the perceptions going both ways the police department leads on to the panel being able to inform decisions and educate on policy as well as complaints being external from the police department so if people are not comfortable going to the police department to make a complaint having that safe space that they can go make a complaint some

[42:01] sorries on their own page here so reduction of the department members on the panel we believe that while representation is important that this is a community centric model and it's important to have the majority of the members be members of the community building trust through that community voice as well as having the informed voice of the police representative last year some of the when I'm like where's the panel site oh pardon me so I guess the recruitment would be very similar to what you heard before with the different like I don't want to be redundant but the recruitment of the panel was very similar to what you heard in the panel

[43:00] we we only said nine members we like the odd number and the for the size of the city to have adequate representation we felt that nine was adequate and then I have some information on the investigative group that I was had in mind for the sake of that transparency and that independence there's a group in California that's investigated more than four hundred officer involved shootings they've been doing this for 15 years they're trusted nationally as well as in timeliness which was a concern and having an investigative model so they've worked in conjunction with police departments all over the country and okay ready for questions Erin okay thank you for that a couple of questions for you so why 9 on this one and 11 on the

[44:01] other option I don't feel like this model is necessarily set on 9 it could be 11 it was just the number we came up with okay and so where would the opportunity come to recommend improvements to policies or procedures with this model is that part of this model it's really a community board and the liaison would be able to bring those to Council I've also spoken with Jonah goose about doing some bigger legislation to that effect okay so they would have a similar kind of role in bringing those forward as in the alternate model correct way okay so the biggest distinguishing characteristic is just around the investigation correct but there otherwise there's a lot of similarities that a good summary okay I think the independent community liaison would have a little bit more of a community building role so instead of

[45:01] shadowing investigations they are researching trainings that are effective in similar communities they are creating activities to engage the police department with the community and really just creating more of a sense of knowledge like knowing who you're policing and who's protecting you and in terms of the staffing questions we asked earlier about support presumably more support if you're doing independent investigations did you guys talk about that at all more support for the investigation well I'm not just staffing but is it similar staffing levels with either model or I was just wondering if you're acting investigations whether you would need more staffing in that model well the investigation would be an external body so the the oír group that I was referring to has their own staff so they would then be contracted to come in that would not be a full-time staff to position so all of this contracted so none of that okay correct it's completely independent

[46:00] and our there are their local groups similar to the one that you were talking about that we would be able to call on for that I'm not positive this is the one I spoke to because they have the greatest reputation nationally and have had successful interstate relationships like Portland Oregon King County Washington so they've done work and been able to demonstrate a timely manner I'm sure there is more than one group and through employed implementation I think would be beneficial to have more than one to reach out to as well Cindy you look like you had a question so I just need clarification on the second model it has an independent contractor to do the investigations and it has a community liaison person to help educate I suppose both community and police this person would be sort of heading up the board to

[47:00] the community panel so they would communicate there really there's a flowchart I believe in your attachments that kind of demonstrates what they would do but as well as heading up the community board their job would be creating I mean they have like coffee with a cop and kickball leagues and stuff like that and really just making it feel like more of a connected community and I suppose just more broadly speaking in terms of the panel that you talked about you said you didn't think that because of the cost of living in Boulder that people on the panel necessarily needed to live in the city of Boulder yeah that's that's true of both owners to that I mean what do you word are there any numbers to how many persons would be outside of the city have you talked about those kinds of things or is it just open or is it within boulder county or could it be a Arvada or aurora or by demonstrating strong ties but we were looking at is then the amount of city employees that can't afford to live here the amount of

[48:01] people who bring their kids to school here you know there's so many members that I mean Boulder is expensive and I don't think that that's representative of people that are stakeholders in the community so we didn't put a number on it but they would have some specific steak correct element right it's not like they just went shopping at Whole Foods once they have to like be able to demonstrate ties that's funny so in looking at the numbers just regarding I'm looking this is on page 70 of my particular packet and I was interested in the investigations that were done this is we're talking about the police department investigations between 2014 and 2018 this was the executive summary of PD oversight task force information request that specific page and then there were pages following that outlined whether they were class 1

[49:01] or class 2 investigations is this one of the attachments yes it is okay it's attachment G no it's not it must be attachment age but it doesn't say that age yes we 566 for the yeah 168 so I was wondering about those numbers and whether or not you thought they had been underreported over-reported if you did any comparisons to other cities for example the there were 19 total class 1 investigations between 2014 and 2018 and then internally that those comprised 58 percent and I'm assuming I don't know if anyone from the police department or if you could tell me the I mean I'm assuming internal investigations mean that those complaints happen within the

[50:00] police department about that person I don't know that much about the police department in terms of their own internal workings so what I think this is saying is that there were 19 total class 1 investigations and internal 58% means that someone inside the department complained against a colleague yes that's what it is and the external means a member of the community complained against a police employee yes so of those there were it says bias alleged we're 11% which as I counted were two persons right two complaints and I guess and in terms of the final outcomes I mean how did you when you looked at these how did you find these were these so this yeah this information

[51:02] was provided to the task force members and we did the summary analysis for you so in terms of in terms of the allegations of bias we found that universally and not just in the city of Boulder but certainly in other municipalities as well that many people would not feel comfortable claiming bias for fear of their lives retaliation so to answer your question directly I think they have been underreported and I think that many of the task force members share that particular opinion which is the reason why the task force was convened to look at these sorts of trends and expose what the data says is a pervasive problem in the city of Boulder as far as the final outcomes are concerned the outcomes and those the names sustained not sustained exonerated unfounded are designated by the city of

[52:03] Boulder Police Department and so it is the chief of police who makes the final disposition on the particular matter so again I can't speak for the city of Boulder police but the task force felt in many cases without knowing the actual details of those particular complaints that you know a sustained percentage of 56 percent is actually fairly fairly strong however we did question the other dispositions as to whether or not they were for the complainant again without knowing the details of those particular complaints and so what anecdotally you heard any number of things where people would be afraid to come forward which happens of course across the board and any number of things certainly anecdotally but also from personal experience they're members of the task force who have direct relations to the police who have been incarcerated who

[53:02] have had unpleasant interactions with and so from lived experience I think we could also claim that yes there there is a fear in some cases for some people a certainly a person of color where you may not put that forward for fear of retaliation or whatever I think additionally that was mentioned in the Hillard Hines report there was a mention of people being recommended not to file a complaint I don't know if you remember reading that part but it was definitely in there in that report as well so I was not on the council when that report came in and I have not read it and one of the questions I have is it keeps being referred to but it never says what it was that it did recommend and since this is a study session and it's for the record in terms of giving more information rather than less I think I mean I do what did it was say there's 20 recommendations what do you recommendations well it was well 12 there were 12 actual recommendations all

[54:00] of which have been accomplished by the police department yeah so so how it all started is that there was an article in u.s. USA Today I think comparing the number of arrests and distinguishing between those arrests of African Americans versus whites and and comparing it with a demographic data in the city and it said that African Americans were arrested at a rate five times higher than the actual demographic data would have predicted for the city as a result of that we hired Hillard Hinds and an investigator to investigate this and find out how accurate it was and then in addition maybe in particular to talk

[55:01] with the police department find out about all of their techniques and policies and procedures and provide recommendations for how the police department could improve and they gave us 12 different recommendations and the police department was then charged with carrying all of them out which they did but apparently there's still some oversight that the community feels would be helpful right I mean absolutely that's true that particularly as the oversee task forces indicated the Professional Standards review panel which Hillard Hinds had had spoken about one of the things that that was identified is that the persons on the panel 50% of them are police representatives 50% are community representatives the community representatives were not diverse and I

[56:03] think the panel pointed out the fact that the way that we were seeking applicants was not clearly not effective in getting a much more diverse population I think I read that that had that pedo was started in 1993 and hadn't changed much since then but so the Hillard Hinds didn't have any effect on that panel either so what they did is they had recommended that we have a community engagement panel and so even though we haven't really talked about that group very much following the the report the police chief convened a panel of people that is more diverse than the professional standards Review Board to be his liaison with the community and so that panel has been operating for I think three years now and they meet bimonthly with police chief and with the deputies whoever is there they have some training

[57:00] obligations that they go through and they have been learning about the police department and providing community input but it it has it's not an oversight panel by any stretch of the imagination it is a panel that learns about the police department and gives feedback based on community sentiment of these 12 people which is one of the things that Hillary report said is you're not collecting good enough data to tell whether or not you actually have a bias and so a bunch of the recommendation or I should say but several had to do with you need to collect finer grained data and things like that and so a lot of the effort went into providing better police stop data which is now provoking a lot of very useful discussions about okay now what do we need to fix so I'll just offer that as in reporting to fix everything but to set us up to

[58:01] better address things and so I'm assuming the task force you all interviewed with your group interviewed with that community group as well to see what they were and weren't doing no we actually haven't met with them at all during during our discussions we did as the memo indicates we did meet with the psrp both the community member side and the police department side four out of six members from each it's a 12 person group four people from each side actually came and one of the things that we wanted to put a finer point on is that not only was the the psrp community side board not diverse they were all white and highly educated so lived experience of the people that they're actually looking to to oversee in terms of police interaction the lived experience was and wasn't there and that's something that the task force feels would be better served in both of

[59:03] the models that we presented tonight by having a very diverse oversight board or panel just like the taskforce was convened to represent and be more reflective of the community thank you you for that yeah because I think the engagement panel is function is so different from what we're talking about here that it probably wasn't relevant to go delve into well I was just trying to figure out if it had been set up what I was doing I mean we have all of these you know committees and what are they doing are they doing any good if not why do we have them I think the fact that we don't know speaks a lot to that it's so in the flow of tonight's presentation you have more to present to us we have some concluding remarks and then we have the quite open to make sure we don't we keep on your track no no we're

[60:01] completely on track thank you for for recognizing that now we feel completely comfortable if you have more questions at this point before we continue that's that's perfectly fine you hey Matt we have a council member who's got the flu here do you want to say anything before you go or I'll let you at least tell people while you're leaving if you want I'm just heading home so I don't get any more second um I I think I'll just probably put out an email at some point here so but thank you guys for the work and all your time and energy that you've spent doing this well thank you very much for being here and then not feeling a hundred percent I certainly appreciate that get better okay so depending on the outcomes of this study session the task

[61:01] force working with the city staff were directed to bring forward policy changes for council consideration before the end of October the tentative schedule is October 15th first reading of recommended improvements and October 29th second reading of recommended improvements the task force wants to point out that the work being asked takes most communities 18 months to two years for successful implementation the current timeline leaves a little time between the study session tonight and the currently scheduled first reading on October 15th given the level of detail required to consider and the complexity of implementation the Task Force recommends that the council adopt an ordinance that broadly codify as councils preferred oversight model selected here tonight we also recommend that members of the current task force who wish to continue serving to work in partnership with the staff from the city manager's office and Police Department to finalize implementation details and

[62:01] bring back any additional and more detailed future ordinance changes so we've presented you with a summary of our task force's work and we've recommended to oversight by options we implore you members of City Council to think of the voices of the community and the historical precedent set by the boulder United against racism declaration we would like to close with the words of James Baldwin we can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist racism and implicit bias

[63:00] in Boulder is an historical and immutable fact not just within the police department but pervasive throughout the area we would like to call in members of the boulder police departments to be supportive of this work moving forward we have a unique opportunity for greater collaboration and for the improved support and lifting up of our community members of color and a move towards collective liberation we are tired and weary of fighting every day for our lives to exist we are tired and weary of fighting every day for our lives to exist but tonight we are here to heal

[64:05] Michelle Danai will now present our questions for counsel would you like them all at once or one at a time does counsel support enacting one of the two models for police oversight as recommended by the police oversight task force and described in the memo yeah this is probably a process question that relates to this because we only have five days to the first reading which you observed and I think the public hearings can be on the second reading site we're thinking so is there one way one way we could do this could be to pass an ordinance that contemplates both models on first reading I'd really like to hear from the community I guess is where I'm going with this before we make any final decisions and then and then second reading we can pick one of the two I

[65:01] mean is that is that an option or an alternate that council members tonight can I point out I know we have yeah well what left to my mind and I should maybe rest with that question a little bit more but is that we had asked you guys have made a recommendation on one other two and I guess that's the part I want to sit with is we're leaning heavily on on the panel to bring us for the task force to bring us forth a recommendation what's the idea that we would give it great weight and so I guess I want to make sure we do that and then the public can reflect on that whether or not that works but I guess I'm not sure if and this is kind of you guys gave us kind of both but with the recommendation and I guess I want to explore that because if you're if you have a strong recommendation I think that's very telling and maybe we should say hey public this is what we heard from our task force of experts and maybe we

[66:03] should go with it versus hey they said either's fine what do you think so I guess that matters to me yeah I'm also wondering there's a hybrid between those two in other words we could express our preference tonight so I'm not I don't want to shy away from that I'm I'm just wondering if we want to keep a little flexibility because who knows some of you guys even had different differences of opinion that we may hear from from the public and they may change our minds or they may may not and we can certainly express our strong preference I guess I just wouldn't want to foreclose one of the two options until we hear from our public hearing here for the broad public that's the only thing I'm recommending okay look McKinley drill in a little bit more I mean it because I feel like the preference expressed in the packet and the memo was a little stronger for the first choice then you all have presented tonight so because we're coming reading the packet my impression was I think we we have a favorite here and tonight you presented them as two kind of equal

[67:01] alternatives do you want to speak to that a little bit more I think one of the beautiful things about collaboration is the difference of opinion so while there was a majority there was also people that felt very strongly that if there was not independence then it was kind of moved for some of the members so yeah that's why we have two recommendations but but and you guys wanted us to decide as opposed to you guys just present I hear what you're saying I'm just saying but basically you're passing the choice to us which is fine but I just want to make sure we're giving the weight that you want us to give your recommendation and by saying either you we want to make sure we're receiving it as intended again wouldn't answer the question I think that we

[68:00] during many task force meetings wrestled with that same sort of idea that was it the wishes of City Council to only receive one recommendation based upon the research that we had done I'm over the many months that we were together or did Council want to have options so that you got to choose we've presented you with two options and two councilmember Yeates I agree that a hybridization even of these two models as I as I stated before is perfectly fine if council so chooses however we've taken many hours to develop robust options for you as we've been receiving feedback from the council members who are not here tonight there seems to be a leaning towards one model the or the other and and as we did in the task

[69:03] force meetings we you know we talked about that very openly very frankly and presented you with two although there may be strongly leanings of the task force members for one model or the other I know that's a very roundabout answer that doesn't really get to the crux of your question however you know we would have to talk as a task force if you were asking us right now to present one model to you and which one is preferred that is a collective decision that can be made by the three of us okay I just wanted to make sure that regardless of whether we choose one the other or some combination you all would feel honored by that choice or not dis heard make sure we're hearing you correctly I think the reason we went with two is to represent all the voices if we only win with when we felt that some of the members of the task force would effectively be silenced hey I I just

[70:01] have to say I'm so impressed with how you guys have all functioned with each other and having having worked in bodies I always call it in the sandbox and you always have to come up with something that is for the greater good so I really appreciate how much you've looked into the issues how objectively you've looked at those issues and how you've respected everybody in the group so I wanted to ask and this is more procedural issue if we could have the public hearing at the first reading or is there some because today is Thursday that we couldn't have I mean we release our packet to the public tomorrow would there be you and I'm not on CAC so I don't know how it's totally scheduled right now would there be an opportunity to hear from the public so that you know

[71:03] on the first reading so that at the second reading if there was a path we were going down that maybe was something that the task force thought did not honor your work you could have that opportunity to come back to us I mean I definitely after putting all of this work in I certainly want to make sure we pick up all if not most of it so so CIC has scheduled second reading of the budget which is a public hearing as well as community benefit use tables and Opportunity Zones for public hearings that so can can I just ask in your task force meetings did the public come to your meetings or were those so and and can you describe the engagement and and how many people generally came so so yes

[72:02] all of the meetings were open to the public they were very readily advertised on the city government website and the the turnout certainly for the first few meetings was very strong we interpreted that in many in many ways that yes there is a groundswell of community support and also a sense of urgency I mean we're talking about timelines right now and I think our collective worry is that if we you know obviously open to the public and get public input that's wonderful however if we miss the opportunity for implementation to create an ordinance able to talk about that in the future I think it's really important so at my recollection is that our first set of meetings 10 to 15 community members

[73:04] around there showed up at the first few we met for the first two hours and 45 minutes as a group so that we could talk about the task in front of us and we had 15 minutes for public comment at the end so during that first meeting every person that was present as part of the community actually did take the mic and speak up the collective feeling as those people did speak and voiced their concerns was that we the task force members were empowered by the authenticity by the vulnerability of these community members and that that is what drove us every single meeting every week - sometimes forego our own personal lives because the charge is to support them and what they want so we've had plenty of community involvement most

[74:02] definitely so in terms of process I think this is one person's opinion that we should try to wrestle with a recommendation from us see if we get someplace that we're like hey this is pretty good let's move this forward and it doesn't keep the public perfect from saying nope you got it wrong you should go the other way but I think it's also we need to do our work which is this is what we're hearing this is what we think here's our here's our hybrid or we take a or B okay so maybe we have some time allotted tonight to do that does that work and then yeah so with that in mind I guess their strengths of both models there's some things I think we should just talk

[75:03] about the things that we like about them and whichever one or both or elements if we want to weave something some parts of both okay so anybody want to jump in or you want me to keep talking okay I like the investigator I think is really important particularly over time I like the idea of the community liaison working between the community and the police department very much because the objective here is to strengthen the police department in the right ways and so and that's also with the public Oversight Panel nine members it seems is seems like a good again I take your I

[76:00] know you go back and forth with that but getting everyone together I did read your getting everyone together at the same time on the same page could might be difficult with a larger group so just for starters that's kind of where I am thank you all yeah I guess I actually I should also mention that at CAC we talked about that one of the elements of this working which I think you guys have pointed out is that it partner with the police department that it be a productive relationship as opposed to but one where it's being resisted and to that end that it might be useful to hear from representatives of the police department about these two models so at some point this evening I'm just

[77:01] remembering that we had said hey we should hear from a few folks if that feels right and this is the time we can do that now or we can do it after we've cheated on it Allah it's like you all don't want to weigh in now that you just we've started the wing we started weighing in I just wanted to I forgot there's that other element and whenever we want to throw that in there and maybe after we weigh in and discuss what our thoughts are would be helpful then to here altogether or okay does any what do you want to talk a little bit uh yeah good well yes I can Wayne as well so I mean I think the you all have put together two extremely functional models I feel like either one could be successful so I'd say on the one hand I don't feel extremely strongly because I think they're both strong models but I do say that I am in the second model I'm attracted by the independence that's

[78:00] involved there but at the same time I feel like the auditor monitor system by having somebody who is full-time internal there might be more opportunities for systemic change I feel like the having one an individual who is working on this constantly in collaboration with the panel and and and the the data scientist might be able to put together recommendations that were more fully thought-out and and and and wide-reaching then if we only have the external independent auditor so I'm torn could I just follow up on this question I mean it's just okay but we're gonna hear from other people so we can do that I just didn't want mine to be thinking that it was just that one person I mean I included other aspects to go along with it like here and I could go either

[79:07] way I think these were both great models and it's hard to pick I was like you guys had a hard time picking between the two as well I think I probably have a slight bias for the independent investigator as well I worry a little bit about you know comment was made earlier this evening about about placing all of this was one colonel person right and we may be very happy with that decision or we may ultimately not be happy with that decision and if this is an internal thing first there's a there may be a perception of the community of lack of Independence it's number one and number two is if if there ends up being issues with that particular person then we kind of have that person and then and then the city manager or see council are then in a very difficult position of like okay well this is not working out so well and we're now we're talking about a person and their livelihood and their job and they're here and there and I think with independent one we have some

[80:00] flexibility and if we are using somebody and it's not working out or we're not happy with that we can move on to another and another and now that we have that flexibility to try out different things you can't really do that so much with an employee you kind of make an immoral commitment to that person and I think with an independent investigator we can we can find in our first few go-rounds who or multiple people that we find are meeting our community values and we can kind of change it without you know if they're effectively contracted so I like the independence and I like the flexibility I guess is the word I'll use and being able to find things because would be a horrible situation if we we were with the Auditor model which is very appealing to me because we have a dedicated person as Aaron said and then that person himself or herself became a lightning rod right about people were unhappy with that person's decision and and now we have we've just shifted the problem from one place to another and I worry a little about that so I do

[81:02] like the idea of flexibility one other thing about the independent investigator and then I'll stop talking is we could go down that path initially and find somebody that we really like a lot and then ultimately say to that person you know there's some advantages to us from as Aaron mentioned continuity and whatnot would you mind coming in house so to speak and so it's kind of a free look that could be weeks it could be months it could be years we may settle on something that we really like we may decide for economic reasons or just because we want that person's mind share a hundred percent we bring that person in and I think that gives us the to both worlds potentially so that's where I'm at so the one thing that I really like about both models is what you reinforced which is that the oversight panel that was that's what we're calling them he's a major player either way and I guess I have faith in a

[82:04] diverse well chosen body of folks to bet things thoroughly and especially given what you've demonstrated here about making you care very much about the minority opinion that is laudable especially in this day and age where so you know the role the oversight panel and kind of as the holder of the space and the conversation and makes me feel like okay either could work because that's the important element and in that diverse group of opinions there's more of a chance of getting it right and thinking things very thoroughly so I like that and while generally smaller bodies are more efficient I'm not a sure efficiency is the goal here so I think the 11 person panel actually gives more chance to get more voices and perspectives so I guess I would I would

[83:00] say that that makes sense regarding the the attention which I think you guys just Illustrated well between having somebody whose job it is to think about the trends and how this is working and that's the strength of the auditor part what if we had the outside investigation independent investigation as a tool that the panel or the auditor could say you know what this incident or this I think it's mostly incidents right that we're talking about this complaint is big enough we'd like to you know be able have them have the ability to contract it out to somebody what's expertise or more independence than us if we do that in terms of doing the hybrid so that we have the of having an audit or monitor that's really paying attention to our community and but the tool of having an outside

[84:01] perspective that really is independent for the big-ticket stuff or something really controversial I don't know if I'll just throw that out there is some like a good idea I think you got a unanimous nod from the task force on that okay so I'll just throw that out there is is food for all right I don't know if that helps with some of the stuff we're talking so I like both and that doesn't help but I like where this discussion is going and I think Bob's comment about maybe starting with an independent and seeing who that auditor monitor might be with the idea of going into auditor monitor I think it's important to have somebody who has that

[85:00] steady kind of continued look at trends and things like that so I don't know I guess if I were gonna make a decision tonight I would start with the independent investigator with the and as you pointed out Suzanne the Oversight Panel has a place a significant role in either model and I agree with you I like the 11 members because you do get a broader group of individuals weighing in but I thought would Bob recommend it instead of having to hire fire and see if we find somebody if that person fits we could start with a independent investigator that might eventually go into the auditor monitor position and in some extreme cases we get an outside

[86:00] independent investigator of if necessary you know if the group the oversight and auditor monitor things like this is a little bit beyond our our capacity and we need more work more investigation on this so yeah okay so that is one of the questions is which way would you start I was skeptical though you didn't make a compelling case that with the right amount of time you we could find somebody that maybe he's not perfect but close so okay whoa yep I just have a question and I also which is the data person would be there in any case right in the in the tektite II Department or wherever I mean I'm assuming that that's part of the information that the community group gets for support if there is no indicator and in either case yes and I

[87:04] just can't let it go by those who think that 11 persons would be great on this task force maybe we should add another two to counsel so efficiency is part of our mission really okay do us have anything you want to say maybe otherwise that maybe we would hear from representatives of the department so um the word independence has popped up a lot and so we want to make it very clear that both models offer independence the way that you're debating it is very different however my personal interpretation is that by talking about independence having somebody completely outside of the city that is appealing for whatever reason however with the Auditor monitor model you do have an

[88:00] independent person who's independent of the police who's going to be completely I'm objective at least that is the hope so we just want to make sure that that point is very clear that one model is not more independent than the other it's the the nuances that works talking about one thing that I've that I find really interesting is the hybrid of the hybrid which is having both an auditor monitor and a panel and an independent investigator you know as we mean Aden I think that is an interesting way to take that and again the urgency from the community is that we would like to have someone you know in the capacity to build community healing and I think that that element is very very important that both models can offer but just to keep

[89:02] that in mind imagine as you're thinking about that I to that end in the auditor you talked more about the liaison II as liaison thank you in the second model more than you did the first but that notion of community building and outreach and you talked about football with police no coffee with the police officers in under the one but is that a thing that you involve you envision with both of those models that function the auditor monitor model would also have that it would be the auditor monitor would be coordinating that and also the police oversight panel those community members on it would be coordinating that as well okay so that's an element in either because I think that's really nice too okay let me just say one more thing before I think we're gonna invite up some members of the police there you are is we're focused on this aspect but I

[90:02] just want to remind the public and everybody that we're doing other work with the government Alliance on race and equity it's not just the police department that it has to do this work but it's the larger community it's the community leaders to all of us and so even though tonight we're focused on the police department we also recognize that the systemic nature of this issue doesn't nobody is off the hook I just wanted to say that you both raised your hands what good thanks for saying that same because I was gonna say something very similar but just to add to that and this is work for all of us to do these problems they're deep they're systemic and the racism kind of built into the structure of our society is something that we all have to work on and I was to call it that we've had multiple instances recently of the police being called on people of color just by community members for doing nothing and

[91:01] if my understands the police behaved extremely well when that happened but it's just shows that there the these these problems are all throughout our community and our society and we we all kind of work on it so today the focus is on on the police but we have continuing work to do you know to both those comments I just wanted to bring up since they're not here tonight Sam Weaver and Mary Young's request to see the human relations commission play a role in this and so I just wanted to run that by you guys and what were your thoughts on that well I can will hey why don't we hear from the police and then the whole selection there was a lot they had a lot of questions about the selection right right and then let's dive into that because I think that those are important details but they are probably details okay who do we have here yep and there's

[92:08] a couple of Tears over there we have four four well anyhow you all introduce yourselves and let us know what you have to say good evening carry wine hammer interim police chief I'm Kurt Johnson I'm deputy chief of police I also attended the task force meetings as a resource for them we have another chair over there okay my name is Ron Gossage I'm the acting deputy chief of operations and I'm the union president for the police department okay um we'd love to hear your thoughts however you want to do that not sure where to begin but I'll dive in first of all thanks to the task force for all their work and I want to reiterate what was said earlier and that is that they have done a lot of work in a very

[93:01] compressed timeframe and that most municipalities or agencies take 18 months to two years to implement this and to no fault of their own I'm not sure they had a chance to fully delve into the current system and how it works I think that's important to note success is in the details and there are a lot of details with either one of these models that need to be fully worked out for it to be successful having said that I'll cut to the chase I have I think the other monitor model is the next iteration of what we have now we've had the psrp for 26 years every good thing has a life cycle and I think the the psrp has done great benefit to the Department of Community well it's clearly time for a change flowing to the auditor monitor model I think is has the fewest details to work out to make it work well I know that

[94:04] independent investigation sounds very good and I have to stress that there is nothing we take more seriously than the investigation of misconduct every police executive team takes that should take that is the most serious charge there is because at the end of day the integrity of the police department you our most concern so I want everyone to understand that we have a long history of doing really good investigations in the department you know the Hillard Hinds report was mentioned earlier there's a line in there where they indicated that our internal investigators were very efficient and very thorough and they had no knocks on our investigations we are always willing to show our good work to the public when it comes to internal investigations I just think there are many barriers to overcome with independence one of them

[95:00] might be contractual and Mark can speak to that but as it stands now we have an in-house sergeant who's dedicated to internal investigations if I go into work Monday morning and there's a serious complaint he can begin working immediately on that complaint he works with the full authority of the Chief of Police and that means anyone that comes into his office it's the same as that they came into my office he can order them to cooperate with investigation if they don't then they will face discipline up to including termination for not participating investigation going with an independent investigator who may be a contractor contractor from another state presents a lot of a lot of those issues to overcome what what authority do they have whose authority to lead do they work under the other important issue in these internal investigations is there's a relationship that develops between the chief and their investigator and both Ron and

[96:02] Curtis were ia sergeants in their former lives chief Beckner was chief testa was and there's a there's a dynamic that takes place with internal investigations where the the chief and the I investigator develop a relationship and he is literally just outside my door and as these things develop sometimes what's can seem like a very minor complaint can quickly developed into something very serious and employment decisions have to be made are we going to put this person on leave or not likewise an investigation can seem very serious at the beginning and we're very concerned and within a few hours or a day of investigation we realize this is not what it first seemed and we can relieve some stress from that employee I'm really concerned that that relationship won't exist with an independent outside investigator I think the auditor modder model offers a very good compromise where we can take the

[97:01] internal investigation that we do and that we are well-known for doing well and allow the auditor to shadow to review and to publicize that investigation when it's complete and there are models that California uses it quite a bit where they have a contracted auditor monitor who comes in on a similar semi-permanent basis to review so it's not a full-time staff position someone you know can be miles away literally hundreds of miles away who reviews all cases for the you know six month period a year period they issue a report after after reviewing all those cases with recommendations for improvement so having said that I think those are the concerns that I have about an independent investigator I think the Auditor model auditor monitor it's hard to say she's a dry

[98:00] mouth I think it offers a lot of promise it offers the next level of transparency for our community we are concerned about issues of bias and unbiased policing is going to be the theme of our 2020 training cycle so that clue is on the forefront of our minds and I'm confident that going to an auditor monitor review panel system can help provide us with some better ways to address those issues as we go forward I said a lot so I'll take a break the is good question yeah so you feel that a contractual auditor monitor would be someone with whom you could build the kind of relationship that you wouldn't have quite the same as someone who was full-time but it would be different than having a different person what you don't want is a different person coming in each time it's not building on what is here and

[99:00] what is seen yeah I think I think I'm following her question short answers yes I'm throwing that is another option to having a full-time staffed auditor monitor that you could have a contractual relationship with a firm that does this it has the professionalism that to do that I don't know that there are those firms currently in Colorado because I think Denver may be the only entity that uses an auditor monitor within Colorado but clearly other states have had that model for some time they have professional firms that that's what they do you mentioned California Palo Alto is a good example if you want to do some research on that so just just to be clear you're you call out a contracting auditor monitor as an alternative to an outside investigator or are you recommending that instead of an internal auditor monitor so my recommendation if you're asking would be to go with the panel auditor monitor model an option to

[100:02] the to a full time city employed auditor monitor could be a contractual relationship with a firm that specializes in that capacity some wanted to make sure I was hearing you yeah okay and do you have do you have a preference for that person being contractual or in-house I don't I think I think one way to start out is to of course we want to go down this road slowly and and again success is in the details and work those details out so just thinking about this really fresh at this moment we could start with a contractual relationship with a firm that specializes in that see what the workload is and then build from there and if there is a need if after a year or true two we discover that yes that there is a need for a full-time in city employed Auditor monitor we could move to that and I also think there's

[101:02] there's a lot of benefit for us and for the community to have a heart monitor who also sees and processes complaints at the same time that our internal investigator does we could always be accused of taking a complaint doing nothing with it if the auditor monitor has the same complaint then there will be a reconciliation at the end of the day to know that each and every complaint has been looked into well okay get mark Bobby Union president thank you for giving me a few minutes tonight it's extremely important importance of the fact we're throughout this entire process of visited with the task force I've taken my own personal time to make rounds to departments of similar type of models that we're proposing here today I also know that we've we've had a long history of it's been documented and detailed today of 25 plus years of

[102:01] having a process in place that's been reviewed and looked over time and time again along with reviews such as the FBI and and and that we all we always get rave reviews on how we handle ourselves in our processes and our accountability and even meeting the Department of Justice standards we I take pause in some of the change that's in front of us depending on what that change may may look and in confidence of my membership that we've had discussions about the possible changes that are in front of us but also that some of those changes could give us you know pause and again in the confidence of the over all of those making those decisions I when looking at both models really the short answer on the first one the auditor monitor model is you know it's the Union and my membership and I can speak on

[103:01] behalf we feel that it lends a greater transparency and ability for recommending the body on all levels there's a greater flow of information one of the things I learned in in this auditor modern model is things that you've all mentioned this evening as far as who's at person made oh well it's someone that both the police department and the community can trust someone that's in the middle and the thick of it all but representing the community but also able to have the experiences and understand the processes of the police department so you know for us the auditor monitor process is going to be the one that we feel that better fits kind of where we're at and where we need to get to and and understanding what the community needs are here in Boulder and we reference to the an investigative model it gives us pause and the reason for that it gives us pauses it conflicts in the processes that we have place in our collective bargaining agreement our contract our contract that is in place

[104:04] involving things such as due process things that involved the investigative steps the recommending bodies if we have an outside source that is is coming to that may be someone that has a lot of experience you earlier spoke of timeliness but from my understanding is that timeliness would be a inhibitor or it wouldn't happen is easily the flow you know you're having dual investigations you're having things that would the members would you know where the union would support the members and things of arbitration or in decisions of discipline so all that would have to be we're kind of butts up against a contract whereas with the first model based on what's presented for us today it doesn't have a give us great pause so from the boulder Police Officers Association we would not support the

[105:00] investigative model I also know that this task force I've met done great great bunch of people and then five months has done the work as they mentioned that can take up to 18 months so they brought giving you a lot of information they've outlined a lot of great detail but we also know that there's a lot of detail that we don't know there's a lot of things that have two questions that have to be answered things that have to be kind of just worked through so you know we want to have an opportunity from the Union standpoint of the boulder police department to have a bigger participation and trying to work some of those things out and you know and whether it's life experiences or like I said I visited a police agency and sharing those experiences and understanding that what are some of those things that do work and how does it work and in time it you know it'll work based on you know the examples that are brought forth so there's a lot of a lot of unknowns out there as well so again we support the iron water model

[106:00] but give great pause the investigative model thank you yes there's had a couple of quick thoughts as well as we were sitting here um if the auditor monitor were to be designate to be the shadow investigator in other words to basically shadow the internal investigation all the way through obviously then you would be looking at hiring a staff person because they need to be available 40 hours a week it wouldn't be fair to the the community wouldn't be fair the employee for these things to drag out we we have a very good reputation of closing most these cases within 60 days which is considered a best practice I would not want to see that time double or triple that wouldn't be fair the employee wouldn't be fair the community wouldn't be fair to the complainant so what tasks you assigned to the Auditor monitor would dictate whether you could start with a contractual relationship or not also I want to clarify something I heard early on there was a comment made about taking the ia sergeant's

[107:01] recommendations for discipline and disposition it was made in the earlier part of the presentation oh yeah that's about taking Shaw maybe can help me out when you were saying that about taking the ia sergeant's recommendations and having the auditor monitor take those to the panel so I just want to be clear that the RI investigator does not make any recommendation they are purely a fact-finder so I just want to make sure that's that's clear they're only a fact-finder they do not make any recommendation as to disposition or discipline and that's something else I'm cause me some kind of concern when I read through the models that the ICL would not only investigate but would also make recommendations for disposition and discipline in my opinion an investigator should be an investigator they should only be a finder of fact they should not be making

[108:01] recommendations and as RI sergeant will tell you that makes their job a little bit easier because they only have to gather facts they don't have to to land on a disposition and they don't have to make a recommendation for discipline and just to finish that they find the facts they hand them to the chief to make the recommendation is that how that works currently so currently the IE sergeant completes the investigation yeah that entire file then is sent to the chain of command so if it's an officer it would go to the officer sergeant the commander the deputy chief of the division then it goes to the psrp they review it they make a recommendation and all those recommendations then come to the chief for the final disposition everybody's making recommendations yes the chain yes the SRP does not make recommendations for discipline the chain of command sergeant commander deputy chief do make recommendations on both disposition and discipline in the independent model the

[109:06] investigation would not include a recommendation it would also be just fact-finding to then present to the board and the chief to then work out what's next okay any question yeah that was useful yeah thank you so I had the pleasure of attending all those ask force meetings on Thursday nights and and watching this group work and I guess there are a couple things that I want would remind you to keep in mind repeated themes that I heard and you know the police department members who attended these meetings especially myself and Carlene and Pam who served on the task force really looked at this as a group of community members who want to help the police department do better job and we recognize that and one

[110:00] of the themes that was repeatedly mentioned was access for filing complaints because it's clear people can be uncomfortable coming to the police department and having to make a complaint in our building and we've done some work previously I'm trying to expand that you know making it available to city manager's office or through the HRC or other city facilities but an auditor monitor model gives an external place for people to go to file a complaint and and we think I think there's value in that for the task force because it gives a safe space away from the police department someone not connected to the police department that they can file a complaint with and we want to hear the complaints we want to be able to investigate them and address them and if if complaints are being underreported because of the discomfort currently then we want to make sure that there's access for people to file a complaint I also know that the task force worked when they were here a month ago one of

[111:03] the mayor's parting comments was making sure that there was collaboration with the police department that has existed and I think part of that understanding that our current internal affairs sergeant is really just a fact-finder that person is a fact-finder that is not only a previous criminal investigator but is trained in personnel investigations knows our internal policies and procedures and what what is acceptable and not acceptable in our organization also has historical context for how we deal with complaints in our organization and that is critically important to doing a good investigation as well as understanding sometimes a case can become a criminal case I can have both an administrative life and a criminal life and understanding the procedures in the law that can get in the way with ordering employees to provide information and how that may or may not be able to be used against them in a criminal investigation is critically

[112:01] important and that involves some dancing and working with the District Attorney's Office and Christian Gardner would from the DA's office was at the panel and that was part of the discussion and I I guess what I'm trying to tell you is having served in that role as a previous internal affairs investigator that work is reviewed by a lot of people it's reviewed by first-line supervisors commanders deputy chiefs at the time it was reviewed by the Professional Standards review panel part of their specific charge was to make sure that investigation was fair thorough and complete and it's ultimately reviewed by the chief of police so that person is hand-selected trained and works with all of that in mind knowing that their work product is going to be scrutinized at multiple levels both inside the organization and with some community component and we recognize that would continue if there is a may be a change to the psrp that's more of a broader community panel of different makeup but that drives their work so they strive to do the most professional fact-finding they can because they know it's going to

[113:00] be reviewed so many times and I think that's important because we believe in our ability to investigate and provide a product that allows others to make a decision on if I could just close with a couple thoughts so in trying to help prepare our members for this transition DC Johnson's been going to briefings talking about where we're at where we're headed what this process is and it's interesting note that some of the old-timers who were here in 1993 when we went to the Professional Standards review panel talked about their experience and we were here at the time as well it was a time of consternation it was a time of worry but it it's lasted for 26 years and it was successful because they were involved and it took some of the fear out of it by being involved so while I it's critically important that whatever number of panel members we land on it's

[114:02] critically important that the community involved in selecting them and that certain interest groups be involved in selecting them I think it's also critical that the some PD employees be involved in selecting them because that will lend credibility and their eyes make it a better chance of success so I think that's critically important um okay so that's interesting can you say another expand upon that a person be on the panel or what did you mean by that so I guess a recommendation would be however many people will be on the selection panel that you add two police officers to be on that panel as well so the combination of the community members those selected task force members who want to stay on and PD employees who make those recommendations to select the panel members for the review panel it's

[115:03] a part of the selection of who gets selected to be on that I just want to make one quick comment both models do sorry both models do have a non-voting member police liaison on both panels is actually serving on the panel that this was about the selection committee not for the selection committee but on the police oversight panel itself which I assume you would find useful as well questions well just I'm not thank you all for that that's very helpful I appreciate your your input that's extremely important just from a process perspective I'd I'm I'm just thinking that the how the panel gets selected is one of the kind of more kind of complicated touchy issues I don't know if that's something that we

[116:00] would be setting settling this month or that might be something that gets done in the next phase in 2020 is that kind of what we're thinking that that's a next phase decision and I think our hope is that there are a lot of details that need to be worked out and I think we're comfortable collaborating with members of the task force you know the understanding there are some who feel are probably exhausted from the process they've already been through in five months and may not have the time or energy to continue but I think there are others are willing to continue and I think if there are a lot of those little process details that we need to to be able to sit down and work together so that they work well both for the task force interest and for the police departments interest you know I think our hope for tonight is to have the general framework of this is the direction we want to go knowing that there are lots of pieces of an ordinance that we'll have to get filled in later and allowed time for us

[117:04] to collaborate and work together to fill in the details whether it's you know 9 or 11 whether it's how they're picked I think there's probably room for some discussion and and thoughts and sharing of information and more research on how other communities do it because we haven't had time and certainly the task force hasn't had time to dive into every nut and bolt but I think all of us recognize that all of those nuttin nuts and bolts are what really makes it successful or not yeah thanks for those thoughts is that the test was that your thinking as well that this is a next phase decision rather than at this month decision well I think that in both of the models that we've presented I think we were fairly clear in how we would want the selection process to proceed however to CJ's point I think as long as

[118:01] we do not let a month or two or three go by before we make those decisions that is really of the utmost importance one of the things that i shared personally in the task force is that i used to be i used to work in college admissions and one of the things that is really important is that every person that comes to the table should be respected for their views that if the mission itself is in front of everyone that everybody is going to come to the table to respect that mission so the hope is that the collaborative process continues we have to have the support of the police department or else this is not going to work so I think that yes as we move forward plenty of details let me need to iron out however as long as we can move forward quickly we would we want that thank you do you think we might want to give art and put in to that process like

[119:02] we're gonna get to Sam and Mary both had some thoughts about who should help select so I I think we should provide him but even if we don't if we don't make that decision next month yeah and I agree this in thoughts on that will be helpful of course we do have a public hearing and then crossing at your present so if we're not if we're not including that in the ordinance we could also offer thoughts on that on the 29th correct so just a process question then that that so let's say we passed an ordinance this month and we lay the framework but but as you all indicated there's still a fair amount of work to do and we can express our views on that but you guys have heard all the hard work that would mean that the task force would would probably stay organized as a task force and would help us flush out these detail this is a question over the

[120:01] next however long it takes short period of time hopefully I mean is that what we're thinking or or does the task force disband and like we somehow figured out do we have a subset I would say it was probably the collective feeling you know please no we're we're doing this voluntarily every Thursday for you know the next several months but by the same token we're gonna need some more help after October is over and I'm just asking who's gonna provide so so yes so we obviously made that discussion I think in both presentations if that detail escaped that some subset of us would choose to stay we've spoken to each other individually as to whether or not we would continue and I think that really depends on lots of different factors but in order for this to work in terms of implementation it is important and we all recognize that that's of us will remain to go forward with

[121:02] implementation and it's just hammering out the details of how that will look and what sort of bandwidth we have on personal and professional levels and embedded in that answer that a healthy subset or a sufficient subset maybe I'll put it that way our game to help through that process is that accurate okay that's helpful okay anything else from you all not that you have to leave but I guess we're gonna talk amongst ourselves now if there's not anything else okay great thank you so much that was very help yeah and the task force would also like to thank the members who've spoken from the police department as well yes okay lettuce lettuce II was trying to answer some of these questions I do think I guess I'm gonna begin where we

[122:00] left off which is I think it would be useful if we put up a proposal for kind of the the framework of a model and I guess I'll just put out there that I think what kind of what I said before that I think maybe the auditor monitor some potential tweaks is the best framework I think for moving forward so that is a straw person yep I'm so for you guys one of the things that I think the chief said was that it may be difficult to find if we go the otter monitor monitor route it may be difficult for us to find somebody right away maybe it's not full-time right away so maybe it's a contracted position that moves into a full-time in permanent employed position and maybe the first person doesn't work out and so we're contract so that's a little bit less sensitive what's your reaction to that

[123:02] kind of phased in approach where we contract with somebody initially we figure out if it's really full time that was the right person ultimately leading to a permanent position as you recommended my initial concern would that particular phrasing and model is that if you were to contract an auditor monitor they would probably app be out of state there isn't one in state that I know of so if you do so convincing them to move to Colorado and settle here if they work well with us feels like a stretch not impossible by any means the imagination but it doesn't feel as smooth as if you were imagining this person being contracted from within color okay thoughts on what we want should we Lisa do you want to represent

[124:01] salmon marries us this seems like it well that was about the selection stuff did they was it only about that that you were going to say or more generally they both human resource relations commission should be involved in some scale and I don't know you guys said I don't think I've had an opportunity to or oh okay so if you could so when we were designing these models we did not consider the human relations commission as part of that selection committee but if counsel so desires during the implementation phase we can include that if we receive that direction well no I mean I can bring up Mary's what students and and Sam's are pretty much and a reflecting of that I think they both were more interested in the auditor monitor model

[125:02] right they asked a lot of they got a lot of details I was gonna say yes and we and we did very thoroughly respond to each of the questions from both council members we haven't seen I at least I haven't seen the responses to council member Weaver's because he just sent those out this afternoon so I mean I think that questions for mary's were very well answered and alleviated any concern I had any additional questions but would you like us to speak to councilmember Weaver's input so he said I would like to proceed o-hisa they dealt a lot with should the

[126:00] panel report to the council or the city manager that's they spent a lot of questions on that correct well okay let's just answer a few questions your your response and going back and forth maybe you can just reiterate your response on that as opposed to us wading through her and that had also to do with my question about politicizing the process so it'd be good to you can even just read the answer I just it's easier than us trying to find it you tell me what question you're so here's the answer I could just it's concerning placing the auditor monitor under the direction of City Council has this was a concern has a potential to politicize police policies please address and so you guys response was the task force has discussed this

[127:01] possibility but feels the advantage of direct community representation outweighs concerns of politics in addition the police chief would still maintain the final decision-making authority regarding the outcomes of internal investigations which means political interference in any single case would be mitigated that's b-but so right now it would be under the city manager right and it would take a charter change to change it to the City Council right so it feels to me like maybe an easy-out is hey let's start with it under the city manager and see how she rolls and if we need to make a change down the road it would take a vote of the people anyhow so we don't have to decide that now right and it seems also that there's still additional work at least some subset of your group needs to complete and so that could be

[128:03] we're it's not like we're going to turn the key right away I mean we're gonna get the ordinance passed but I think there's still some details to work out it's probably worth saying just at home with Suzanne said it as far as the Charter change that requires a vote of the people and that would be a November election and obviously we've already missed the vote for this year so just we're not dusting that in the rug would that's something we literally can't do for about 12 months we can start talking about it next year but we won't be able to heat it up for a while so not to say that we're not interested is we just legally can't do that quite yet and that's why we we did recommend the ordinance so that we can conclude that part of the business tonight and then move into as many details as possible for implementation and we did we did talk about that and with with some I'm a member when people it's part of the city okay so that that feels right to leave that under the city

[129:00] manager now okay do we should we figure out the model first okay so I put my thing out there that I think we should try the am the auditor monitor model I'd go for the bigger panel oversight test panel and we could consider tweak or not with this at the outside tool or contract with an outside investigator slash review as needed as a tool in the toolbox I know there's a difference between an outside investigator and outside review but that might be anyhow a detail to think about but as something as a tool not as the primary framework what do y'all think I agree I agree I think that the police chief made a compelling argument for

[130:01] that particular model and it seemed you're accepted by the was the first thing put forth by the task force okay bringing in an independent person if needed I think should still be part of the flexibility of it it could be decided on by the task force okay so I think we've answered number one in terms of tweak we gave you a fuzzy idea about how you might have this outside as a tool if needed what might that look like um I think we want to weigh in on the selection piece so let's talk a little bit about the selection piece knowing that we may not decide that but just to flesh that out yeah they're very strong feelings about about what you recommend as far as the selection of the selection of the panel goes other than to say that I do I would like to see some

[131:02] involvement of the human relations somehow you guys can come back with some recommendations maybe you know one or two of their designee assists on the selection group or whatever it is but but it it provides effectively an indirect input from us because we remember we appoint the Human Relations Commission you know and they're obviously people that we've identified and trust on the chair of the Human Relations Commission happens to be in the room right now and so it just it's just one more one more connection to council and also to the community because they're obviously serving the community in their response to the community so you guys work out that detail I don't have a strong recommendation other than if we can figure out how to get the HRC as part of the selection group and yeah I think that makes some sense unless there's a reason why you wouldn't is there a reason why you wouldn't I would say we're happy to meet with them and discuss what that would look like moving forward okay that work for everybody I

[132:00] guess the other thing is if I miss something I'm sorry you wanted us to recommend nonprofits but did you guys have a recommendation cuz I mean we can make recommendations the reason we didn't pick specific nonprofits is because if they were to then die out who would who would decide who's next so we just worded it to say that they have a history of serving underrepresented groups in Boulder so so but was your idea that we would name specific ones or that every I think I think again in the spirit of collaboration many of us on the task force have strong ties to certain nonprofit groups and and so being able to leverage our experience with these particular entities is great as Michelle just stated the importance for us is that the acuity nonprofits involved actually are serving underrepresented populations in a significant way and hopefully with

[133:02] longevity as well one group of course that we would love to and I think is part primordial to this discussion is having the n-double-a-cp have furs involved so as far as selection is concerned we would hope that the council would have sufficient knowledge to be able to propose a set of nonprofits each go around but we could certainly yeah we can certainly at this point that was my question is it would be a list that is continually updated mostly pick them for all time and I thought no please leverage our experience for me we can we can help out with that yes because so in other words it would be more than three total that would make recommendations but maybe rotate something like that something like that definitely the rotation of that I think is really important you have significant institutions like the n-double-a-cp you have out Boulder County you have families of color as a group they serve

[134:02] parts of populations even with intersectionality so being able to have another group that serves the homeless population at one point is very important um and so the rotating basis is is quite part of that model so that makes a lot of sense so I didn't understand that before that's and so that I guess that would be I liked that idea and it would just need to be refined in terms of the details of how that would function and of course the nonprofit's would have to be willing and they'd have to each have their own internal selection process and you know cuz it it's a little bit of a task to take on right and you'd you probably have some requirements around how they nominate someone so anywhere there's their details in there and I've probably missed it but how often are we needing to have this prize how often are we nominating people appointing people such that we'd have to did we figure that out yes so we also talked about the

[135:01] staggering that's a very important so right now because RP in and of itself is not necessarily it's staggered somewhat but for the selection process we thought that a two-year selection and appointment would be great some people would stay on for four years and so we would start cycling through every two years every three years I'm depending and and it would it would you have a taskforce member as well be part of that continuation and there again there are people that are willing to serve in that capacity and Witney be just an observation we we have we have a lot of boards and commissions and this is very different from one of our partner commissions I don't want to overstate the analogy but typically those commitments are five years and one of the advantages of having a longer period i get the staggering man so for the first few years is obviously gonna be some shorter terms for some people but well the advantages of having people make a five-year commitment is that they you know it takes a year to usually understand the job and develop the

[136:01] relationships and kind of get it and so forth would you folks assuming that staggered and we just set up the board year and a half ago the housing advisory board and we ended that one-year term into your sermons four-year term so we phased in would you be opposed to a five-year term you mentioned two years four years but would five years is there a reason not to have a longer term would have some continuity and institutional knowledge so you not necessarily nationwide you'll see memberships anywhere from six months to I think 10 years so that's definitely flexible through implementation okay or at least three years I just feel like you get it be long enough especially yeah if we want people to be looking or we want the panel to look at trends and things it's not like there's that many and well I guess there's not that many class one investigations there probably are a lot of other complaints but anyhow in order to feel like you're doing something meaningful right I just think for anybody it'll take a little bit of time to come up to speed and so the more

[137:01] experience you can have over time and that can be shared you know that might work everybody should be in it most definitely having a collective legacy whether it be imbued in one particular person or a set of peoples is very important we agree so without putting anybody in the spot um at least chief mentioned the idea of having some officers somebody from the police department or somebody's serve have you guys discussed that again or maybe that's not something you have to respond to tonight but I my initial response was that there would be a remarkable perception from the community if we had the police officers picking these people we want to make sure that the department is involved that's a huge part of what we've talked

[138:00] about this entire time but as far as having specific officers pick out the board members I feel like that initially sounds problematic to me okay can I just keep pushing and what about non voting participation input but not selection in the selection I'm just just trying to figure out as we look I feel like this is an implementation discussion like I don't think it's okay so we don't spot I just said it agreed it's an implementation but I think there's pretty strong consensus against the test and within the task force that we wouldn't want that influence or that selection from the police department to satisfy the needs for trust within the community okay so that's probably the one little point of disagreement so okay I was just gonna ask even if they were there and non-voting but just made comments on maybe the qualities or

[139:03] different people I'm just again I think I think I would just reinforce what Sofia just said that that having a police department member selecting people who are then going to oversee the police department is a conundrum it's pop is problematic and even having somebody as a non-voting member just the observation the presence of that person and that particular influence on the rest of the selection committee is problematic it's it's it's another thing that we're trying to dismantle okay well that's useful no I guess the one thing that not one but as I think about this Erin mentioned earlier kind of beginning a meeting that normally the kind of the buck stops with us so something goes wrong we get blamed and that's fine we need to fix stuff that's that's our job and so normally we

[140:04] we have some role and going okay good or whoa shouldn't we think more about X Y or Z and I'm not saying we should have it but in I think as you something to think about is it sounds like the city minute you're the panel would decide and the panel nobody gets nobody from the city staff or the council would would be giving any blessings and maybe that's okay but I'll just I just want to you'll to consider that then we're not responsible and that usually there's a reason the buck stops here because the we get elected and the people can all dis accountable so I'll just throw that out there is just as I've moved on from the police to just the role of anybody associated with the city to think about since we want to we have to own this okay good yeah just

[141:02] concept of what what kind of oversight would there be of the panel right you wanted to be immune from pressure to do certain things but if community if many community members felt that they were going in a problematic direction how would we deal with that situation I guess that's my question do you have a sense of like so so again not pressure but let's say there's a broad consensus among people of color in the community that the panel is not functioning right what do we do I think that we've wrestled with that question at length and it's a tough one because to your point and to your point it's it can be sticky and problematic and I think that that's realistically something we're just gonna have to iron out moving forward yep because Aaron's analogy if there's if the community is unhappy with the panel and of course they're gonna

[142:02] complain to us because complaints and if we haven't been involved in that and have no control ring like that our response not to be you know petulant bothers widgets we say we can't do anything about it you know it's they are self-perpetuating bored there is a selection committee talk to them and you don't want us to say that you want us to you want us to be involved in care and be be invested and bridge that divide whatever it is between community members and in the panel and I get the the risk of Pluto's Asian so I don't pick they take that point lightly somehow we muddle through in a point like 22 boards and commissions every every every year and and I'm not saying that's not political it's sometimes it doesn't become political but just really seriously think about how you want us to be accountable to the community and to the panel and be involved somehow I don't know what that is I know if it's a member or two on council on the selection committee or some sort of final you know blessing on what the

[143:00] selection committee recommends or something so we have ownership of it so that we then when we are helped to account by the community and we will be we can at least say yeah you know it was my choice and I'm going to stand by it as opposed to saying well wash our hands of it because we had nothing to do with it if I may I think in your question you have your answer we we want City Council to to be accountable to this entire process we were convened by the city manager we are presenting to you and so yes I think our collective hope is that that would actually occur there was a thought that I had him and I forgotten now around accountability and if there was any sort of community dissent as to how the panel was operating in the auditor monitor model in particular the auditor monitor is the person who oversees the over oversight panel so that person would be imbued with the

[144:02] with the knowledge with the community input to be able to disband you know remove a member if necessary you know obviously these things would be ironed out an implementation however that is one thing that I think that we've that we've talked about the checks and balances are there already further for that sort of scenario that you proposed so I suppose that further argues in favor of having the auditor monitor ultimately report to Council because that that that then creates the linkage that we've been kind of struggling with here we won't be able to do that right away because of the charter necessity but then then we do have council auditor monitor and then the panel okay thanks that's helpful okay we didn't think about it again it sounds like you have but as we get to the details about okay and this is the part about designing public policy I don't always like is you design something that's awesome and then you go

[145:00] okay what if we screw up this part what's the checks and balance what if the auditor monitor hmm it isn't doing what we had in mind what's that check the balance and then you have to design it for the thing that Michael wrong so that'll be an implementation thing but to think about yeah what's the how could it be awesome but also what if it starts to go off the rails how do you self correct how do you correct okay so in terms of process yep so I was just gonna bring up a point that was made by Sam Weber type that hasn't been brought up and it was his comment number five and it says whether the auditor monitor reports the council or the city manager the suggestion has been that the Oversight Panel evaluates the auditor monitors performance so he and I are on the subcommittee which evaluates our three executive employees performances and so he just pointed out

[146:02] that the review standards and criteria will need to be established fairly quickly and so I don't I don't want to keep adding to your work but that would be something that you would need to look at and give a recommendation it it's I've been on the executive committee for I think seven years and it's taken a long time to just develop that and it's been somewhat iterative so you have to kind of allow for that flexibility where oh that didn't work so well or we could improve on this part so we as a task force discussed that very question just before this presentation and we decided that since it needs to be done so quickly that will be one of the first things we do during that implementation phase okay thank you okay I I just want

[147:02] to be the third person up here to register my hope particularly given the presentation that we heard from the police department that there be someone on this selection committee who could be non-voting if that's the compromise there it seems that there's been someone from the police department on your task force this whole time and there's been some trust extended there and I would hope that the trust would be extended both ways in terms of moving forward I just thought I'd throw that out there and yeah I very much understood the points that you were making about the the problematic nature of that I wonder if there's some opportunity for input from the police department that isn't sitting on the selection panel like I

[148:02] think about how like our board send us an annual letter you know about how they feel like they're part of the city is working and feedback on how it could work a little differently and you know what what if there was some opportunity like that like a check-in with the police department how are things going you know how do you what do you feel like is working well and and less well that could be a opportunity for feedback but that wouldn't be about selecting the people that are overseeing them and any thoughts there definitely I think that the task force itself the way that we have been structured not only having one or two police members on the task force itself as voting members but we have had liaisons the three people that spoke to you tonight have all checked in with us provided wonderful expertise unprovided insight so I think that that again going back to my original answer on behalf of

[149:00] the task force that we feel really strongly that a police person should not be part of the selection committee but we are completely open to the collaboration and and collective knowledge that we would receive from them if there's anything that they they would want to put out for us so you might think about how to institutionalize that in the good sense of the word four years from you know so that when we're all we're not around everybody will know what we meant by this collaboration and give it some shape I was just gonna comment and build on Cindy and Erin's comment that I think you've said all of you have said multiple times that there's you know hope that you build trust on both sides and I think it has to also come from the police department I mean right now it's didn't change pretty radically right and that that's for the good I think but I

[150:00] think it's important to maintain their voices in the process somehow and taking their comments you know whether it be a voting member or not a voting member or just being able to wait weigh in because I think you definitely want the police department weighing in with you guys and feeling good how this whole process moves forward and I think there's the three members who spoke I think there's I know there's a sincerity in their comments that they too want to make this move forward and the chief comment commented that while the last 26 years have worked or not worked it's time for change and so it's very clear to me that they all are embracing that change and so I would just ask that you guys

[151:03] consider some function in there for for their voices so that they can be considered so that they can also trust the process okay so in terms of number three then this is basically us saying okay do a broad ordinance there'll be a first reading I think we already I hope we've convinced ourselves nothing else can be fit into next Tuesday's meeting and also note I'm gonna be out of town so I hope we're not doing it then and then so we'll do a broad ordinance we'll have a a public hearing and it seems to me that there's lots of details there's been lots of questions there's lots of good answers we're adding more stuff that I hope somebody is a list of things and

[152:01] then maybe a little prioritisation of and here's what the task force will bite off or whoever the sufficient subset that's going to stick with it for no pay I understand that would probably be useful so that we walk away with here's next steps here's the flow of how this would work okay does that work for everybody in the general process whoever's drafting this broad ordinance feel like they have what they need okay excellent so is this where we stopped it thank you for just just a suggestion - CAC for the public hearing on the 29th I think rather than having I mean anybody from the task force is welcome to come and speak at the public hearing and I

[153:00] hope some of you do but it might be nice to have a five ish minute presentation or some sort of presentation maybe consolidate because not everyone who's watching you know who cares about this is necessarily watching tonight and so I think it bears reap resin tation doesn't be a long one as long as you did tonight which was great but maybe a shorter presentation as part of the public absolutely okay I just want to make sure that yeah you'll want to tell people hey we want to all of this process but then I think you'll want to focus on and here's what's coming out of the end and why do we think this is a good thing and then people will be giving weighing in on the public hearing on bail what they think of that okay well then I guess this is the part where we thank you again I I don't know if I speak for everybody I think I do that this process has turned out well it's totally exceeded my expectations on what a how could it could be and how it

[154:03] feels very a model for respect and inclusion and good process although I know I get it has come at the expense of a lot of people's time so and we understand that we spend some time on stuff so we we totally value what you have given us and I guess we also recognize that I guess we're not there yet but we've made some huge progress and that some of you are willing to keep going is hugely helpful kind of essential actually to the success of this so but we can't thank you enough for that yeah this is one of the more functional bodies I think I witnessed in many years extraordinary and the last thing that we want to say as a task forces we want to thank our wonderful facilitator Carolyn love we wouldn't be here without her

[155:05] is that good all right thank you [Music]

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[161:02] could come back Lisa [Music] [Music] [Applause]

[162:09] so here we go with the study session update on the municipal ization and other climate initiatives let me introduce our director of climate initiative Steve Kat nack who is desperately looking for the PowerPoint great well good evening mayor and councilmembers we're happy to be here and happy to provide update we don't get a opportunity to do this very often and in particular we're also happy to provide a update to the community so our in context tonight what we wanted to cover is some general concept basically what our goals are and also to hopefully begin the conversation Dancer why municipal I mean if municipal ization

[163:03] and you're gonna have to hear me trip over that word all evening and also what is the local powers place in our climate strategy is we move forward with that so we wanted to provide a little bit of history on what we've done some of our current efforts tom is going to provide us with update from the PUC today and then we'll discuss news next steps so certainly as we look at our goals and our targets one of the basic initiatives that really kicked off the city's desire to form its own electric utility was the idea of moving more rapidly to a clean electric supply and we certainly in talking about doing that one to recognize the great work that Elle has done I mean they have set some

[164:00] admirable goals and are going to be doing great things if they can actually meet those requirements but along with that value there are other components of the of a local electric utility that we have really been working to communicate to the community because it's not just about the power supply which it really did allow us and would allow us to get 200% faster even with the goals that Excel is trying to fulfill but it really comes down to that local control and local control gives the community the opportunity to weigh in on the actions that the local electric utility takes and some examples of that are large and some are small a good small example is as you drive through cities such as Longmont or for Collins you'll notice

[165:01] all the artwork on the transformer and the switchgear boxes well that that's actually a community driven initiative that saves the utility money graffiti artists won't go tagged somebody else's artwork so the city's the Utilities Commission local artists go out and paint those boxes and there are some amazing pieces of artwork so as I Drive around Boulder and I looking at those boxes here with the tagging on them and with all that I see a whole bunch of blank canvases and just an opportunity to do something small but important in the community but we talk about the bigger things that local control can provide to us it's things like your neighbor has great solar access and you don't so why can't we create an opportunity for the neighbor with great solar access to provide that to both

[166:00] themselves and to their neighbors you can't do that we can't do that today we don't have any right to set those rules and would not allow you to do that even bigger microgrids the ability to designate portions of town where micro-grid in a emergency situation well could really help the community stay functional during an emergency I mean if you look today what's going on in Northern California 800,000 customers with a forced outage I just was reading an article this evening talking about they're having to set up charging centers PG&E is setting up charging centers for people's cell phone none of the street lights are working none of the signal lights are working and if we have the opportunity for during a crisis whatever the reason of an outage to set up community centers

[167:02] and ensure they're powered again that's not anything the city can do today so that level of local control goes from the very small type projects and elements to the really big things the other value that we don't talk a lot about is the value of the revenues and electric utility brings to the city and those revenues as we look at our financial model today and certainly that will change really provide us an opportunity to help fulfill the other components of our climate action plan and that really has to do with the fact that we recognize electricity and cleaning our electricity supply address is about half our missions well the other half come from transportation and come from heating our buildings industrial processes those need to be changed through electrification more

[168:00] electric vehicles electric transportation moving our houses to electric heat all of which takes an investment and can be very expensive but the revenues from an electric utility can help incentivize those changes can help supply and supplement those changes and help the community move quicker certainly I am astounded by the fact that we're talking about increasing sales of electricity after 30 years of trying to convince our communities to use less and all of a sudden the trend is we want people to use more in the right way of clean electricity so as we move forward it's those values that we know it's really important that we start communicating those to the community and ensuring that they understand it's not just the value of being able to get to clean our electric supply quicker it's the values that the community has

[169:01] that we can support those other values this slide also shows what some of our goals are related to local generation and emissions we've gone over those before but again the utility can establish rules and operating procedures that really help it help the community make these transitions keeps us on track absolutely I think it keeps us on track could you just give us like one minute Steve on on that chart you have on the right as far as the local generation can you explain to me at least why we can't move I think we're at 53 right now 53 minutes into IBM facility or a little over 50 right a little bit a little so we'd be what prevents us I got your

[170:00] point about sharing between neighbors I get the rules on that but prevents us from going from fifty to a hundred to one seventy-five what about our current situation prevents that from happening certainly the people can put on solar panels on their roof and that certainly will help us do that there are limits to the Excel programs that help buy down the cost of those solar panels those are typically capped and also when we look at things like solar Gardens community solar guard the excel only allocates through their selection X number of megawatts of solar Gardens in Colorado in any given year and for a number of years we have been in trying to get allotted part of that capacity in order to do a solar garden to supply the Boulder housing partners

[171:02] projects this year we're actually moving forward with just developing our own solar project with the energy input independent EOF fund which is the marijuana money that goes into that but because here's Mike no grab you said with the county as well the current project that Steve's talking about is not what they think they're doing something also are doing things with their energy impact offset fund yeah well isn't everybody limited to doing 120 percent of their usage so you have a big field doesn't mean you can build you can't do the micro grid for your neighborhood you can just do it for your own usage and things like that I mean we're regulatory limited now another example is a warehouse that may have lots of roof space but no

[172:02] electrical load so they can put a few panels up there to meet their electrical load instead of really taking full advantage of the warehouse roof space so the reason why I BM was able to do so much is because they both have a lot of land they could be a lot of solar but also they have a lot of need right so that they weren't exceeding that hundred and twenty percent because okay they were also awarded that level through the solar rewards program got it okay that's that's nation I believe the entire states a lot and for for that large category okay thank you it's something that we should get changed one way or the other yes so certainly we have gone through and we've taken a look and as we move towards forming the electric utility we went out and we did request for indicative pricing for power supply

[173:01] and our goal was to see if those kind of prices were available to load the size of boulders and we were very pleased to see that they were and the bids we received would bring us to 90 percent renewables 89 percent renewables in the community by 2024 moving to a hundred percent by 2030 which is really fantastic and the price is considerably lower than those prices what we would have to pay if we were purchasing from Xcel this is just yes or no question have you if we if we if we moved over that quickly to capture a hundred percent have you done it back the envelope on what that might then result in on the stranded cloth side of things in other words if we weren't purchasing from Xcel because we wanted to get to that place fast or have you done a calculation about what that would mean for stranded costs it's not well we have

[174:05] certainly had a lot of discussions around stranded cost stranded cost is calculated utilizing a really simple formula that is extremely difficult to identify what those actual costs are so we'll come back to that and keep going otherwise we're gonna get off this yeah okay so as we look at our move forward into the climate action mobilization plan really what we wanted to demonstrate with this is that the city is not sitting idle on addressing other climate issues and looking for other opportunities to reduce emissions the local power initiative is really only a small piece of the work that we're doing and we are just about published if it isn't already out our most recent in

[175:00] taury and the city has achieved 18% production which is a two percent additional reduction from where we were last year which that should be applauded and this light is just a product from our CMAP initiative that we kicked off and it's really demonstrating what that last slide showed that if you look there on the central right hand side where it says energy systems changing our energy supplies just one of the areas and one of the strategies that we'll be employing as we move forward with addressing climate and addressing emissions did also want to talk about a little bit of the history and this is just a summary of the votes that the community has taken since 2010 and since then there have been multiple votes where fundamentally the community has

[176:02] supported a continued drive to municipal ization and all of this is really moving us forward as we look to unless you want to read that more to identify the cost of standing up the utility well we're working towards is a community decision on whether to move forward either with a vote in 2020 or 20 21 depending on how quickly we can get moving with some of the legal processes but what we want to present to the voters in 2020 or 20 21 is really the key costs associated with standing up the utility we want to be able to confidently tell them whether the utility is financially viable thing to do or not if we do run into financial

[177:01] analysis it indicates to us that this is not a viable program to be pursuing certainly we'll be having that conversation as well the areas that we're really focused on as you have heard before is the engineering we have hired two engineering groups one to do the distribution work another to do the substation work that are actively working on the city's construction that will be doing to separate the utilities Excel has done exactly the same thing they have a distribution engineer on board and they are about to kick off with a substation engineer and I do want to comment that the engineers are all getting along great both excels engineers are engineers they're coordinating the designs together to ensure that everything's going to work is we designed our separation plan and it is really nice to see how well they're getting along on

[178:00] the other side the attorneys not some parts and pieces we're continuing with the financial analysis CIL get you on here to my right has been working diligently and as we get updated cost we'll be updating that financial forecast tool that we have online we're also preparing the RFP for release for standing up the utilities we have previously done a request for qualifications and identified a handful of firms out there that really can operate a utility they do the different functions will be going out for a formal request for proposals in order to get a price for them doing that and the reason we're doing that is it would be almost impossible to just stand up at utility

[179:00] fundamentally overnight to have our own line crews to have our own billing systems and outage systems and SCADA systems so the idea would be to bring on these companies that that's what they do in over a period of time transition to a city workforce that runs and operates the utilities we are actively moving forward with community communication engagement and really trying to communicate where we are so that the community understands we've been doing quarterly updates and certainly a lot of conversations with different groups around the community to ensure that we're getting the word out and of course there's legal action taking place Don's gonna give you an update about today I'll be brief the the short is the Commission today closed the case involving the city of Boulder that we have completed all the conditions that the Commission imposed on us they went

[180:01] through who spent about a half an hour going through the three conditions that they didn't posed in their September 2017 order they said they're all completed slow down you want me to go fast don't you everybody listening on TV back in July of 2015 the boulder district court said that we had to go to the Public Utilities Commission and have them approve the separation of the assets from Xcel before we could go to condemnation so in in in 2015 we filed our first application we went through various legal maneuvering it took two years to get to our final application in July of 2017 we had a trial an eight-day trial in late July early August of 2017 the Commission in September of 2017 issued an order that said we had three conditions to comply with we spent a year negotiating with Xcel on those Commission those conditions in October of 2018 we filed what we thought was the

[181:00] final compliance in January of 2019 Excel filed and withdrew from our joint agreement saying that they objected now to our private things and then we spent the last ten months or so negotiating with Xcel trying to figure out why they objected mostly I think baselessly so today the Commission said that we had met all of those conditions in September they issue an order the conditions related to assets outside of substations in September they issued an order relating to assets inside the substations and so today they they don't usually do this they took the step of saying this case is closed we are done and so that Li that removes the last barrier from the Commission on what what on ours proceeding to condemnation of the assets this was a major accomplishment Deb Kalish and Kathy haddock Deb Kalish and Kathy haddock should be here but I told them because of the snow they should just go

[182:01] home they were down in the commission and so they deserve a lot of credit for all of the work they handled the trial the eight-day trial themselves so with the support of Hallinan hardened the guys there what this means is that we are completely free to condemn the assets outside of the substations the the order in September said that the with respect to the assets inside the substations we had to reach agreement through a process under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission we have as as Steve said the engineers have worked out with excels engineers all of the conditions for separating under under our proposal the city will build new substations and and have distribution assets in three of excels current substations Excel is insisting that we have to have an Operations agreement and we're trying to work through that if we cannot get through that agreement we may have to go to FERC to ask them to bless what we've done but we're hoping we can get to that agreement or working on it we have to decide whether we just go for condemnation of assets in outside of the substations or whether we try to get the

[183:01] whole thing done and go for that what we filed previously yes it's both inside and outside the substations remember substations are incredibly important but the list of assets outside the substation is a hundred and forty thousand lines long the list of assets inside the statisticians is a couple of hundred lines long so we have final approval on the vast majority of the assets and we are proceeding and Steve will show you some pretty exciting diagrams I think on where what we're looking at in terms of but I was very worried that we were gonna have more producing proceedings we have no more PUC proceedings we are absolutely done with them and they are seem to be happy to be done with us as well and I you know the I want to say the Commission one we brought to their attention we tried to negotiate this and go to Excel without go with to the Commission without any disputes with Excel when we brought this this to the Commission I think in August they actually move very quickly to get this done for us so there are a lot of people who are critical the commissioners did

[184:00] and so I think that although I'm not happy with their decisions once they heard about the delays they got this done in about a month and a half the PUC PUC did yes so well the PUC is listening thank you so very much are we gonna write a resolution and of gratitude what's wrong a party you should write them a thank-you note that's my report on the like so you mentioned a decision has to be made about whether to go for inside or outside yes what is the timing you're gonna give it you're gonna try to work out an agreement that doesn't work then we have to make that decision so we've been in the process of working through the FERC process for assets inside of the substations for about six or seven months now and we are well along in that process the thing that that is holding us up right now is what's called an Operations agreement so the engineers

[185:00] have decided who gets which assets how they're divided where things are who how it functions and it should be clear we're not talking about doing any colocation in any substation the only colocation will be the the very thing that's necessary I said what a substation does is it connects the transmission systems of the distribution system Excel will have all the transmission assets the only asset distribution assets will be boulders in the stations that we are sharing with them so there's no coal okay so the the last step is to have an agreement on how you operate between one who can go and where who can touch what these it's called a operation agreement we actually do this now because we have a little mini substation up at Boulder hydro through which through which we sell electricity to Excel and we have an operation agreement so this should not be rocket science but we're working this last piece with Excel dealing with Excel was not the easiest thing in the world and so we're I have faith that we can

[186:00] get it that way if we cannot the thing about transmission is that it's it's regulated on a non-discriminatory basis by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and what that means is it's kind of like the Internet you can't say you can't be on my system and they're very strictly regulated to treat everybody the same and so while we can get all sorts of things they can't treat us different than any other customer and so well we're trying to work through how we do this and we've got meetings committee scheduled with them next week and Steve has been working with the engineers now I think for six or seven months so we're getting there that's that's one way to do it the other way is if we reach an impasse our FERC lawyer has advised that there's a process we can go through which should not be very difficult basically the complaint saying they're discriminating against us you have to let us do this the other thing is that it's almost to the extent of silliness at this point because for the three substations we're talking about and I can't identify them because of security

[187:00] reasons but for the three that we're talking about if we were to build one we probably would have difficult getting it approved because we'd have to explain why we weren't using the one that's right next to it because it would just be silly so we are to that level of absurdity but we will continue to work through this again we've we passed a major milestone today we're still moving forward now Steve was talking about twenty twenty twenty or twenty twenty-one I think twenty twenty is looking very unlikely right now I mean I think we should I was trying to get condemnation started by May we actually filed in July because we thought that was our last opportunity that was dismissed I think that we will probably advise the new council to prepare for an election in 2021 but we're going to do that obviously when the new council seated no disrespect of course to the current council but they're the ones gonna have to live with that decision so Lisa I know I'm looking at you but I just wanted to be clear that's that's that's been sort of in the background

[188:00] all along we have been working really hard to make 2020 I just don't think it's possible to get a condemnation done in time too adequately inform the voters of what the the costs will be other questions thank you great and that religious brings us to what's next and we will continue working on developing these costs associated with standing up the utility acquiring all of the assets and how much it's going to cost to separate the system along with a series of other costs that we recognize and we typically identify those as high impact or high risk variables and those are things that we know are out there that we don't know the cost of them yet things like strand it cost which you were asking about another potential cost is going concern which is the value of lost business that would be determined

[189:02] in condemnation court but you know Tom can certainly address the lack of precedence in Colorado for awarding those going concerns but that's a value that will come out of condemnation and could be high and could impact the viability of moving forward with forming the utility the other things are things like interest rates if interest rates go up too high then it certainly could create a situation where we just can't afford to do this but all of these are the cost that we're working to identify prior to going to a vote maybe it submitted in one of the things that's on the slide there but last I remember is our back the envelope estimate of the separation costs we're in the zip code of 110 million dollars I guess the question is well number one is that so

[190:00] kind of you're working number and secondly will that be refined at some point in time but you know what's the process I guess we're refunding that and getting more detail around that so the from our engineers near here the end of November we should have 90 percent designs done and we will receive a 90% estimate from our distribution engineers of substation maybe a little bit longer because of the process tom was talking about Excel has committed to having engineering cost to us for separation by May 1st of next year so at that point we should have a much better number and then we will be going out for bit if it's 2020 is when the vote would be we would go out for bid immediately if it's gonna be 2021 we won't do that to later in 2020 some of the question on the stand up costs I think the last I heard was 30 million

[191:01] nerdy you're gonna do an RFP it sounds like relatively soon so that that's a cost you'll be able to bottom out even sooner maybe again if we're moving towards the 2020 vote yes if not then we're gonna delay it right so the prices are fresh okay thank you do you want to answer the question on stranded costs oh I'm sorry yes on well I'll let you begin so so Bob you asked about stranding cost and I want us to go back a little bit because people talk about stranded costs and they include a lot of things that are not really stranded cost the stranded cost was a deal that the FERC made with the transmission providers years ago in an order that basically said if someone departs your system you have to let them use your system but the quid-pro-quo was that wasn't for that was yeah they have to pay for any generation that you acquired in to anticipation of serving their load so 0.1 stranded costs is only generation

[192:01] costs and you only owe stranded costs if you're a departing customer and you continue to use the transmission system you can also reduce your strata costs by continuing to buy power from the prior provider because obviously you're not stranding that asset you can pay strata costs in one of two ways you can make a lump sum payment or you can pay it as part of your transmission cost over the period going forward the anticipated period of your using it so when people talk about a huge number it's not a huge number like you have to pay to acquire the assets it's a huge number that's spread over the utility bills for a period of time we have looked at stranded costs in several different ways one of the ways the analysis we've had to do is is the benefit of buying power from Excel justified to reduce the stranded cost obligation on the back end

[193:00] and right now with the lower cost of renewables that we got in a request for indicative pricing it looks like it's probably more financially feasible to pay out stranded costs if we have to then continuing on the Excel system and again yellow probably knows these numbers a lot better than I do do you yes she can give more details but in a broad picture it's looking like not only we better off because we'll have more renewables and Steve talked about how exciting it is to get to near 100 percent so quickly but also we save more money by paying the stranded costs over time as part of our transmission bill and building that because as you know the biggest thing cost for any utility is the power costs and so a small reduction in that can eat up a lot of stranded costs and of course we will negotiate what those stranded costs are and may have to have a FERC ruling but we don't have to have that at any time including before we start operating so we Excel could file for it we could file for it and the FERC could rule at any

[194:01] time but again we have the option of paying it out of the transmission bills over say 20 years and I did want to comment I've talked about it's a very simple formula and that's the formula for calculating stranded cost but it's the identification of those values that gets very difficult things like the competitive market value which is how much can Excel sell any energy we free out onto the market the length of the obligation the multiplier here well in our mind we notified Excel that we were leaving the system as soon as the community voted not to renew their franchise Excel is going to recognize that we didn't know if I am till after the go no-go vote so that's going to be a contentious point of the revenue stream estimate so it's a simple formula that the variables are very difficult to pin down so yes we've

[195:02] done calculations and they might end up owing us money I'm being facetious on that and it is it is a high risk variable that our strategy will be to really identify worst case by pinning down these numbers as we move forward and Yael does have additional information on that and I went I just wanted to add one important point which is one of the things that it said he says here is that Excel does have a duty to mitigate that straining cost claim by trying to resell that capacity to another customer so that's that's just a really important point as well and we track very closely all their electric resource plans and there were noble energy plans we have Matt Lehrman on our staff who's actively intervening in testimony and really tracking those numbers and doing these calculations so that's a moving target depending on what their capacity is what the need will be at the time that we depart the system as

[196:00] well we're certainly aware we've identified it as a risk but it is it's not prudent for us to just come up with a number that is sunbae Stahn anything you know I get everything that sometimes that easy explained to us before so I think we all understand how this works and I get the fact that it could change from month to month or year to year depending upon that I just because there's a lot of excitement about the indicative pricing and so I guess they're gonna make a cost-benefit analysis which is to say well there's an economic cost-benefit analysis and there's a social cost benefit analysis which is getting green which is what our overall goal here is right so we're gonna weigh those in I guess what we may all do them whether it's a big fat check up front or overtime I get that I guess finally just a procedural question we're talking about you know this go no-go vote in 20 or 20 or maybe more likely 2021 and we want to try to give community as much information as possible do we anticipate whatever that vote is to try to have an

[197:00] of what if any firm assess strata cost there might be is that our goal or is our goal to kind of say well community we may not know that information give us the gonna go we'll figure that out later what our intent would be to would be to identify the absolute worst call worst case and to ensure that we are taking a very conservative approach yet so question uh so you said that the straining costs are due for things that go over the transmission lines so is it the is it the case that if we were to build additional like solar resources within the city that we would no longer be required to pay strand costs for the power that we were no longer buying from the transmission system yeah that's I've missed that wrinkle before this and she said I know we can only build so much solar in a few years but that but to the extent that we're able to we could actually reduce I just wanted to bob said the go no-go is about our getting

[198:01] green but I I just really want to underline what Steve said earlier about this it's the resilience as well the resiliency within the community with what's happening with California right now is unbelievable really the numbers alone and the ability to to try new things to try new Knick technologies I mean we are so limited I'm so jealous of what Longmont and four columns are setting themselves up for they're really preparing for the future and we are stuck in the slow lane so there is also that aspect we're really just here to answer your questions and have a good conversation oh yeah so we were missing a council member at least one tonight and I told him I would Channel for him so this is I'm Steve I'm Sam Weaver

[199:04] channeling and so he wanted to say start off with this whole context about what's happening out in California Pacific Gas and Electric and that it's cut off power to that yesterday and today and you said 800,000 customers and so it means electrical meters which affects millions of human beings think of those who depend on electric wheelchairs oxygen systems how sites and communication devices and now have no source of convenient electricity monopolies for-profit electricity suppliers have three constituencies their stake holders their ratepayers not necessarily willing customers and the regulator's municipal electricity providers as well as Rural Electric associations are also typically distribution monopolies with one crucial difference the management practices of

[200:00] these Muni and Rea systems are directly decided democratically at the local ballot box the voters can determine the power procurement practices and planning of their local distribution system which is crucial to the three DS that Boulder is pursuing decarbonisation decentralization and democratization the management practice is a vertically integrated form profit monopoly electric utilities are negotiated with state legislatures and public utilities Commission's which is a much less direct less transparent and less effective control system than local control municipal electric systems have rates that are typically fifteen percent lower than investor owned utilities like Excel because shareholder profits is not in the picture that extra margin can be invested by municipal systems and under grounding of wires which I've tried to

[201:01] get Excel to do for over ten years micro grids and other community serving resilience measures many have died tragically in PG&E territory due to their poor investment as evidenced by their current bankruptcy and current intentional power outages to prevent more loss of life and liability the Hobson's choice that PG&E making with the loss of life being lesson cutting power to a majority of California counties or in starting fires with our poorly maintained poles and wires should not be in boulders futures and PG&E doesn't want to do the right thing which is provide for their customers like Fort Collins with eight times better reliability than Boulder or long with four times better reliability than Boulder we can choose to join with more resilient and reliable communities with local control of their power systems as

[202:01] our staff has done a great job to the perennial critics of our Muni efforts I will quote staff over the past several years Boulder and City taxpayers have invested valuable resources to strengthening an energy code codes begin climate friendly transportation initiatives work with local and regional partners to advocate for regulatory changes and many other initiatives as a result the city's most recent greenhouse gas inventory for 2018 indicated that the city had achieved an 18% reduction in greenhouse emissions which is what Steve pointed out and this is fantastic progress and thanks to the boulder community for supporting it excels resource electric resource plan as currently filed calls for a 45% fossil fuel supply in 2027 yet its state requirements will be 80 percent emissions reductions from a 2005

[203:02] baseline by 2030 a few questions how does Xcel plan to bridge this huge divide between 2027 and 2030 what will be the tax payer the rate payer impact of shutting down Comanche 3 which they should have never built before 2069 is that part of the plan between 2027 and 2030 if not how on earth will the 80% emissions reduction be achieved and it would be good for the people of Pueblo why on earth is a and everybody else I honor this excel in the face of this legislation trying to acquire ownership of 400 megawatts of natural gas fossil methane generation given that even with modest leakage rates fossil methane is more deadly to our planet than burning coal why would we be perpetuating either

[204:00] what is the city perspective on this acquisition how are we choose pursuing our position if we are forced to remain with Excel or the voters of polder chose to do so is there a pathway to require that boulders share of the electricity generation is done with no carbon emissions given that carbon free electricity generating technologies are now cheaper than coal how can we enable more local input into an excels energy mix how can Boulder participate with reviewing and commenting on the current state and future plans for our city distribution system why did Excel not work on a path toward a local input mechanism in the 2017 settlement negotiations I think we all know good staff once again explain our options for about stranded cost okay they've done that perennial Muni critics claim that we do not understand this process so a few sentences which I

[205:02] appreciate about what the risks and opportunities are around strand costs would be great it's clear that the largest cost will be determined in condemnation court but those bringing up fear uncertainty doubt issues continue to harp on stranded assets issues please speak a bit about this finally one of the persistent critics of our clean electricity works speaks of carbon offsets are often given that there is deep skepticism about these mechanisms what is the city position on carbon offsets recs other remote actions so that's that Sam and I pretty much did Oh everything he says and the whole carbon offsets seems like just putting off the inevitable so

[206:00] well maybe can you speak to the carbon offsets and nights and send you this yeah we were asleep at so the carbon offsets the wind source program is actually selling the recs which are different than carbon offsets carbon offsets are really you're buying the reduction of an emission a rec is you're flying into a renewable energy credit the wind farms that are sold as part of wind source were built in 2007 and 2008 2006 and 2007 so really a few buy into wind source today you're not buying any additional reduction in emissions you're really just buying into something that already exists out there in the world and so

[207:01] you're not creating new renewable resources out there you're just investing in that I did also want to point this out in relation to Sam's other question this is a slide that map prepared that shows the anticipated retirement dates for excels resources now this is under their current electric resource plan not accelerated retirements in order to meet their 2030 goal the so in order to meet that 2030 goal they're going to have to shift or accelerate those retirements which are costs that they are asking we continue to pay the profit we continue to pay off these plants that wouldn't be running and actually possibly accelerate the payment of those plants so it is interesting we don't know currently what they're scheduled early

[208:01] retirement would be for these plants and order to meet that goal but we do know what their current plan is for those retirements and and as they file as we file as they file their plans we'll be able to do a better analysis of what's happening there what's the right axis the rightmost their numbers on the that side that aren't labeled no no the left side is megawatts the right side has different numbers that aren't labeled on gotcha so it's a cumulative amount thank you Oh as long as we're channeling councilmembers on here I'm Mary centered a hotline post as well I'm not going to read Mary's hotline posting it was shorter than what it was still a good one I'd like to recommend Mary asked a lot of really really good kind of philosophical questions and I think not

[209:01] tonight obviously but um it's probably worthy you know and I think we had some of these discussions we started so many discussions at the really really great study session we had on July 9th one of the best study sessions that I've been to and I'd like to recommend to the Future Council which might include no one here well I don't know it's up to somebody else that early on and the new council that some of the questions I think Mary posed and that you'd some of you folks the staff posed in July be teed up for a probably a deep dive study session sometime in the first quarter works I think those are you know as the lawyers do the lawyer thing I think it's a good time for us to maybe take a pause now that we're outside the PUC and kind of reflect on some of the questions that Mary asked that's my recommendation I absolutely agree and it's a conversation we need to continue to have as we move through this process and we need to keep checking in to ensure this makes sense

[210:02] yeah great thanks well the folks have other thoughts I have a few things I'd weigh in with but good it's not such a thought is just a preview you you have a revised version of the of the table from the the memo with regards to financials I have some questions which I'm not gonna ask tonight about use of the general fund reserves I think what I'll do is I'll reserve reserve no pun intended those questions for Jane if you don't mind the budget session we're gonna have next week would that be a good time to ask questions about the reserve and the use of the reserve I know other council members are gonna want to have a discussion with staff about the general fund reserves for other reasons and maybe that would be a good time for me to ask some questions about the use of the general fund reserves for municipal ization yes that would be fine Steve you know our god added to the list I won't be here on the 15th my my

[211:05] experts as long as someone from climate initiatives is there to help Katie that would be helpful thank you okay well I want to say thank you I think this is very helpful and I think it's an important conversation to continue to have with the public because after all we are following the path that our voters sent us on and I am very heartened by today's actions of the PUC again I'm I want to send a a heartfelt thank you to the PUC for giving us clarity and a path forward that we have been seeking for a long time it's no surprise that this process has been long

[212:00] and expensive and we knew that Excel was going to try to make it so and they have been successful in doing that but it feels like we're making some real progress here and keeping faith with the path of the voters I'll also note I already mentioned before that I look around at what long months doing and for Collins doing and kudos to them but they were about ready to surge ahead of us and and and we will no longer be leaders in this space given how we are I already said it's stuck in the slow lane given the regulatory restrictions we are under and so I think it's useful to be reminded of all that would be possible if we had our own municipal ization it's our own municipal utility not at any cost but at considerable cost it's still worth wild and we're on the path to find out that number and that's I think

[213:00] really important that we do they'll do that I I do have opinions about when I would hope the vote is of the people and I put me in the column of people that think we should move as fast as possible the we know that given the urgency of climate that we really don't have time to waste and I will be doing whatever I can in my remaining six weeks but also as a citizen after that to help see if we can't move through the remaining process to get back to the people with that number and I guess I'll just note that we have a lot of other ambitions in this city like around broadband and the fate of these two efforts are intertwined and our could be greatly there's a there's a great synergy there which Longmont is demonstrating right now in terms of the cheapness of what

[214:00] they're able to provide and also the reliability and it's it's sort of a a forecast of where we could also go and I know that they are now a leader Elmo nationally on that front and we could be too if if we had our own utility Municipal Utility so I also want to note that there was some concern that if we went our own way and obviously we're not there yet but that we would quit helping out down the state legislature to try to change the world and I'm very proud of the effort that city staff put in to what was a larger effort by many nonprofits by many smart people around the state by many legislators including those in our delegation to actually do some pivotal climate legislation and we revamping the PCs structures and

[215:01] procedures this last session and I think it was important that we were part of that I think that will help but not only Boulder but the rest of the state moved forward and I think we're gonna be talking in a few weeks at the legislative committee about what's what are the next steps in terms of moving that ball forward and we will continue to play ball at the state level and that's important as well and I'll note finally that all that work however will be for not long won't say we for naught but if we're going to realize the the fruit of those Labor's we actually have to make sure all the rule makings that it would implement that legislation work out we need to be down there participating in them and I'll just say just because you make a pledge doesn't mean you're gonna meet the pledge and all those Wow I'll give a shout-out to Excel for making some strong pledges that is great but now they have to meet

[216:01] them there's still a gap between what they've pledged and what our ambitions are and it's Ana meaningful gap which is another reason why we need to keep pursuing the municipal utility path but anyhow I'll just say that it continues to be on all hands on deck to pursue both of these paths and try to get as far as we can both as a community but also as a state and as a country and I'm glad that we're participating in that and then finally it's already my little soapbox the launch of our what's CMAP stand for our community the climate mobilization action plan our new action plan for climate there are hundreds of people there it was one of the more heartening open houses I've been a part of in my entire time on council and there's just so much excitement there's so many great ideas there's we have so many engaged in smart

[217:00] people in this community and anyhow I feel hopeful when I look at all the energy in our community around these issues and we're doing the right thing we are on the right path and it's important that we that we continue so so thank you thank you Tom and the lawyer end of things as well yeah I'm much heartened by today and Suzanne thank you for those remarks and encouragement and I just really want to double underline that as bob was saying calling for asking for philosophical study session and the next term that this is at the will of the voters that we're doing what we're doing right now and so I'm so totally hopeful that we're going to be able to carry this forward in a very very successful way and I agree there are many many people in the community who are really excited about seeing this

[218:01] all move forward and and taking some grasp of our own part in changing what's happening with our climate then certainly we'd like to thank all of you that have been a big part of this the outgoing Council members you've been wonderful to work with and we appreciate it you also have to remember all the combined system us has been out there and I mean it's been a real collaborative process I think and people have untold thousands of hours not just for one year but have done that repeatedly for years I mean we're going on since 2010 when we said okay we're going to cut our franchise these people stood up and they together and they have helped move us forward through not one not two but how

[219:04] many five five elections nest at least probably ten items so I mean it this is one of the things that make me the most proud to be part of the boulder community and to be honored to get to represent it for a few more weeks and I really thank everybody who's put so much effort our staff our council members both past staff and it's just it's just great and it's very exciting and I I would just say with regard to the vote I'm going to take our attorney's advice and I think it's very important that we not move it too fast and that you know it's going to be twenty twenty or twenty twenty-one I personally preferred twenty twenty-one but for other reasons but I

[220:02] think everything you said Suzanne really puts a underline on all of our efforts and I would agree that we need to be in control of our own destiny and the fact that we are so regulatorily limited in terms of what our options are that is unacceptable and the fact that we could really do something significant for our residents in in making them feel a little bit more confident about the future and climate change and that's what it's all about and I think this PG&E incident just underscores you know our need to continue on this course to be independent and resilient and be in control of our own local destiny onward

[221:01] excellent well thank you so much thank you all righty we are adjourned oh we had a scheduling thing yes we didn't what will Steve Steve Sam sent a scheduling thing but what it was about community and used tables right opportunity zone scheduling and he just basically and I agree with them he had opportunity zone used tables and community benefits and that council has made a lot of progress in community benefit and that he's hopeful and so am i since I'm leaving that we can convince this on October 15th and I think as it's

[222:00] scheduled right now we will and that we would also be able to complete used tables it was Rangel phase he made it very clear in completing the phase one of the used tables updates that this council should be the ones who get it done but for him and for me to support such a method measure to update the use tables and lift the opportunity zone moratorium that we want to see any development permits in the opportunity zone required to attest formally and legally whether they have financial backers in an opportunity zone fund and I brought tonight I got a flyer from my local realtor about all the pleasures that one can have in investing in opportunity zone how much money you can make out of this and tax breaks no

[223:03] and I wouldn't do it I he will leave it to the next counsel to pursue the economic analyses for whether they wanted to increase levels of Community Benefit for these projects and receiving tax credit benefits we also had spoken about making sure that we establish an overlay zone on all the housing zones within the opportunity zone so that no demolitions of housing happen until after the opportunity zone ceases which is 2027 so okay okay so in turn thank you for that just for those of you not on CAC I guess just a couple things about scheduling and that is I'm not gonna be there next Tuesday I'm going to eco mobility conference overseas I invited any of y'all to come

[224:03] and got no takers just saying but I will be out on Tuesday I will send you my email how I feel about things the one thing that I asked and at least those on CAC concurred is if it's going to come down to my vote about whether to move forward or not that you all will hold over and will vote at the next meeting but I think we're coming together on most of these things so that we can move forward if for some reason we have to go to a third reading we are going to hold all of you do we do this already about to have a but okay so we have if we have to have a meeting in early November just to finish to tie a bull on these things then we'll do so but ideally you all will get across the finish line on the 15th Mary's also flying back that night and

[225:02] thinks she can get to the meeting by 9:30 so I know it's just crazy but so do I have faith that you all can tie a bow on it on the 15th but if you can't then we'll do it subsequently and get er done can I just ask so that we're gonna be down to councilmembers for much of the meeting that's a super full meeting with like difficult stuff like did not come up with a meeting in October that you wanted to have I've said there were some times in later October that worked but there there were no dates where everybody was available I'm just not sure it's gonna work out next okay well if it's not gonna work out you all will continue it and we will we'll take it up at the next meeting are you trying to put it it's just try and see how far right we'll try to get as far as we can and then the next meeting is two weeks later on the 29th we can pass items that night whether by emergency or

[226:03] maybe they won't need an emergency one of the reasons that we had a hard time finding dates is that there needs to be two weeks or 10 days some amount of time between readings and that is what made it more difficult right so if it's so if we go to the 29th we will still have to wait 10 days which is November 8th to do a final reading so that's an important detail but think about it this way with fewer council members you are gonna have less talking and just note on the 15th you have several public hearings like the budget to get through and so there's reason to think that Mary will get there in time for the more meaty oh these will do what we can I understand we knew it was gonna be crazy coming down the

[227:00] homestretch because of our ambitious agenda but the cool thing about all this is and when you reflect at all that we are getting done and will have gotten done it's a good body of work so we are close to the end and we'll have a lot to be proud of it's just gonna be a few more late nights okay in Paris yes and on that