February 25, 2020 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:16] [Music] the [Music]

[1:00] minor item and so the major item is the um CU South um uh Land Management as well as South bter Creek flood mitigation and um Jane do you want to take it away sure thank you so much my role here is very simple I am introducing you to Joe tauchi our director of utilities who will start our presentation and then introduce the other presenters um so Joe okay um thank you Jane and good evening city council we're here to talk tonight about the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation project as well as the annexation of Cu South and I am joined here tonight by my two co-presenters we have uh Brandon Coleman on my left who is an engineering project manager in utilities engineering he's

[2:01] been leading all of the concept design work on the project and on my right I have Phil kler who is a senior planner in our planning department and he has been doing all of the heavy lifting on the annexation and coordinating with the university and I really want to acknowledge both of their efforts they have done a tremendous amount of work um in order for us to be able to have this conversation tonight Brandon has been working hard leading the the concept design working with our Consultants getting the report together getting the memo in this presentation together and similarly Phil has been doing the same on the annexation side so very thankful for their efforts and before I turn it over to them I wanted to set the stage for the conversation tonight at our at the council retreat in January uh we we talked about this project a little bit

[3:00] and I remember mentioning that um we have with the flood mitigation project one of the most complex uh projects that utilities has ever done and uh the annexation is probably the most complicated annexation the city's ever been faced with and in order for this to all work the two of them have to be done in in sync and side by side the good news for tonight is that we don't have to talk about every aspect of the complexities of of those two things and we have really tried to narrow in with our presentations and the information in our memo on on the things that will allow the project to move forward and so um a number of complexities involved one of them being land ownership and quite often with utilities projects we don't own the property that we're developing on whether it's flood mitigation or

[4:00] pipelines or or things like that and it's really important to us uh to maintain good working relationships with the property owners we frequently have impacts on open space Pro property and have had a a good working relationship with the open space board and staff similarly we work frequently with the university on things as well as the Department of Transportation and so this particular project with with all those things in mind has a lot of um competing objectives and in order for us to move it forward it's going to take hard work and compromise and I'm um really feeling good about the work that we've done leading up to tonight and I think we have a real opportunity with this study session to start taking steps forward I want to thank the staff um from other departments there are a number of people who are here here tonight to support the conversation and

[5:02] who have been really supporting this project for years now and it's been a heavy lift for them and so they're here if you have questions in other areas that the three of us can't answer and I also wanted to offer a special thank you and welcome to the University of Colorado uh Francis Draper and Derek Silva are here tonight and they have agreed to participate in the annexation uh part of the conversation and so we're we're really looking forward to the conversation tonight um as as far as our agenda if you want to flip to the next slide we've broken this into two parts Brandon will talk first about the concept design and we'll leave some space for questions or discussion and I imagine both presenters if you have questions while we're going feel free to interrupt or or ask as needed and then we'll switch gears and talk about the annex ation process and

[6:01] uh with Phil and the representatives from the University and at the end we'll talk about next steps and and we've put together some potential questions and feedback areas for city council so um with that I will turn it over to Brandon for the concept design uh good evening uh like Joe said I'm Brandon Coleman I'm a engineering project manager in the storm water flood utility for the city um I've been leading the efforts on this project and um just want to go over quickly what we're going to talk about tonight so really I think it's important there's a few new council members to get everybody up to speed on the project the project has a long history um South Boulder Creek is a pretty complex Watershed so um we're going to start with just general FL facts about South Boulder Creek then move into a history of the flood mitigation project then go over the current analysis and the results that we found found and then finally

[7:00] we'll talk about tradeoffs um uh associated with the project so South Boulder Creek uh is a 27 mile long uh Creek it the Watershed encompasses about 136 square miles and as you can see from this map uh only a small portion of it actually sits within the city of of Boulder um and the city limits here are shown on the black outline and it actually uh discharges into Boulder Creek on the east side of town so South Boulder Creek is similar to a lot of these Front Range drainages in the fact that the um upper areas of the Watershed are very Steep and very mountainous so that really defines a very tight flood plane and as you can see as you come into the lower watershed area um it discharges from the mountains and enters the Plains area and when it does that the flood blood plane will spread out and it becomes a little more

[8:02] unpredictable and it has much more variability and that's really where it enters the city so um that's what makes this project so complex uh the Watershed has a few key main features uh Gross Reservoir which serves as water supply for Denver water is located in the middle Watershed on this map um there's major roadway Crossings across South Boulder Creek particularly State Highway 93 and us36 um there's numerous irrigation diversions and also irrigated lands um adjacent to South Boulder Creek yes okay so just to get everybody um on the same page I think it's important we just cover a few terms that you guys are going to hear a lot tonight and everybody's on the same page this is a map of the property that we'll be talking about tonight but um I just wanted to get some general flood terms

[9:02] uh out there for everybody to understand so um when you hear flood plane what we're talking about is the area that we expect water to be covering during a flooding event um so in this example this is a 100-year flood plane for the property um a 100-year flood plane represents a one in 100 chance of flooding in any given year um and it's also the base regulatory flood plane for FEMA so the 500-year flood plane is a larger flood event um it's represented here you can see the boundaries usually extend a little bit further than the 100-year flood plane and it depends mainly on topography and uh the flow rates that you see of how that looks and uh it expands much larger than 100 year so the high Hazard Zone shown here in the pink shading is uh regulatory for the city of Boulder in particular and it's indicates the greatest risk to life safety so you can see we have high

[10:00] Hazard um around the property and what that is really defining that for the city is depths of 4 feet or greater and also a calculation of depth times velocity and that equates to a flood flow that could potentially sweep somebody off of their feet and lastly you'll hear a lot of discussion tonight about the levy um so there is a levy on the property uh a levy is just an embankment constructed to contain flows from any given water body in this case it's containing flows from South Boulder Creek and levies typically run in the direction of flow so South Boulder Creek I think it's important being in the storm water flood utility to point out that South Boulder Creek is just one of 16 major drainage ways across the city Boulder has um the highest flood flash flood flash flood risk um to life and safety in the state

[11:01] of Colorado and this map really represents all the drainage WS across the city and uh South Boulder Creek is on the very far right side and it's just one of the drainage ways and there's also approximately 25% of the structures in Boulder are located within the 100-year flood plane so South Boulder Creek does have a history of flooding um there have been three major flooding events uh that have happened in 193 8 there was a flood event and that was prior to the uh construction of Gross Reservoir it really impacted elado Springs area as you can see on the picture on the left in 1969 there was a major flood that actually overtopped 36 and um flowed in the area we'll be talking to commonly referred to as the West Valley overflow area and then again most recently in 2013 um there was a major flooding event that did over top us36 and flowed um in that same West Valley overflow area and

[12:01] um was pretty dramatic uh we've used this picture numerous times it's pretty Stark picture that this is in a neighborhood in Boulder um and really a primary driver for why we want to get this flood mitigation project done so like I said one of the primary drivers is really protecting life and safety for the residents in the city of Boulder um so you can see here the property that we're going to be discussing is outlined in red and the area of flooding that we're really trying to address is this West Valley overflow area so on the right of this oval you'll see South Boulder Creek uh proper and then what happens is uh us36 pushes the flood flows over into these neighborhoods into the West Valley area um highlighted in yellow here so this project has a long project history um it's tough to cover everything about the project history so I'm going to run through it pretty quickly and hit some some of the major

[13:00] Milestones uh so for our storm waterer flood utility typically for projects like this we follow a life cycle of where we first map and identify the flood risk next we come up with a mitigation plan to mitigate the hazards from those flood risks um third we do construction of those recommended measures and then lastly we remap the flood plane um to see what the benefits are of the project so flood plane mapping for this project started in 2003 and was accepted uh as regulatory for the city in 2008 and then accepted by FEMA in 2010 as Regulatory and in 2000 this was the mapping study that really identified and Quantified the flood risk associated with the West Valley overflow so from that mapping study we began the mitigation planning process commonly referred to as the master planning process um that was done from 2010 to 2015 and we looked at numerous

[14:00] Alternatives throughout the drainage and what we came up was with a recommended plan uh in 2015 that recommended three phases of flood mitigation for South Boulder Creek uh phase one is highlighted in red on the map on the right and that's the regional detention at us36 and that's what we're going to be talking about tonight so that's where this flood mitigation concept came from and it's important to note that it's only phase one of three phases to mitigate um flood risk in the South Boulder Creek drainage so we did identify that during the master plan process a significant amount of the flood mitigation project would be located on the CU South property which is currently owned by CU Boulder so the city the county and the university all began the process of identifying um property property guide guiding principles for the property um associated with the CU South site and this was really to guide an annexation

[15:01] of the property and also incorporate the flood mitigation goals and that was accepted by all parties in 2017 and that allowed us to begin the concept design um which is when we're doing the concept design we're taking that phase one and really looking for ways to improve cost estimates efficiencies in the project and um really look at the feasibility of the project so in 2019 we were directed to on the variant one configuration uh for a 500-year level flood protection so protecting against the 500-year flood we discussed and that's the current phase of the project we're in right now this map shows all the components of the project the blues the inundation area so the area that would be ponded during an event the brown is showing an embankment and flood wall to detain the flood waters the green showing an area of excavation to create the detention volume we're going to need and and the yellow is our Outlet structure under

[16:00] us36 that would be discharging back to South Boulder Creek so now we're coming to the current analysis um this analysis is related to the variant one 500-year configuration I just uh showed and in July we brought the issue to council that um the 500-year configuration actually inundates more of the property than was designated for flood mitigation uh this was a map presented by cu Boulder at that meeting uh that was in the interest of them working with the city to continue to look at ways to provide flood mitigation on the site and really what you're seeing the map's a little busy but the important things to point out are the red hatch lines are the area of inundation that's going to be impacted and then the green lines where the arrow is is where they um thought we would be able to offset those inundation impacts by potentially um using that land in that property and one of the key criteria was maintaining 129 acres of

[17:02] developable land and that was really because that was what was agreed to in the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan guiding principles so I I really like this slide I think it gives you a good overview of the project area and the area in general uh so this slide is actually looking to the South across the site you can see Table Mesa in the foreground and this is a rendering of what the project would look like out there and I'll point out some key features from here and I always like to point out from this vantage point that South Boulder Creek is quite a ways away from the property you can see it in the background there in the tree line it has a leader called out and what's happening is the flood waters are coming down South Boulder Creek and they're actually hitting us36 and starting to flow towards the Table Mesa area so um you will also hear a lot about the

[18:02] existing access road which is South Loop Drive and we're showing here highlighted in yellow um the proposed embankment to get that road over our embankment as part of the project next in brown here you'll see the actual embankment that would be on CU South property and as we go along us36 that would transition to a flood wall really to limit our impacts and then lastly this is really the concept of the project so flood waters would be flowing out of the screen towards us and the intention of the design is to capture those flood waters and then release them in a controlled manner back to South Boulder Creek so our current concept design analysis was really looking at ways to offset those inundation impacts and we looked at that in two ways mainly which was uh the land swap that I mentioned

[19:01] before so really um providing developable land that met the requirements of The Guiding principles and then also looking at reducing the level of flood protection to um reduce the amount of detention volume we needed and the inundation area associated with that detention volume so this is a layout of the project for the 100-year flood protection um and so the area of Phil is denoted in Orange So currently that is not in the flood plane but with the project being put in place that would now become part of the flood plane so that's why we've considered that area as part of the project because those would be changes to the flood plane generated by part of the project um and then you can see again in brown is the embankment and the flood wall the green is the area of excavation the blue is the area of inundation and lastly the yellow is our Outlet uh structure which would discharge de Channel which is another major drainage way in the city of Boulder and that ultimately reports

[20:01] back to South Boulder Creek so next we took the 500-year flood protection and considered a land swap um associated with the inundation impacts um what's really important to point out here is the area of Phil is quite a bit larger than the hundredy year and it's located in a different area and what's Happening Here is the area that we were proposing for a land swap would not be developable under the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan guiding principles so we had to include Phill above the 500-year flood elevation to make that land developable and when we do that you actually need to connect into High Ground which is on the left side of the screen so that's why this area of Phil is so much larger than the previous um slide for the 100-year flood protection so lastly we wanted to see if there was a midpoint and see what

[21:02] actually we could trade out um to get kind of the combination of these and see if we could reduce the storm event reduce our inundation impacts but also consider the land Swap and see if there was any um middle ground that would be good to find so we selected a 200-year flood event because we had existing hydrology um to support this and to be able to model this in the uh time that we've had and what we found was we still need a larger detention volume and inundation area but not as much as the 500-year flood and we were able to put fill in the detention area as you can see here and then also we were filled some of that other area in the lower fi that sorry I'm probably a little confusing here so what happened was there's fill next to the inundation area that we were able to use but we still need more more detention volume than the 100e and then to offset the inundation

[22:02] impacts associated with this we don't need as much fill as the 500 year but we still need a significant amount to be able to tie into High Ground so I'm I'd be happy to explain that further it's kind of a complicated uh concept so what we found from this is really that fill is a big differentiator for the different projects to be able to meet that land swap so the flood mitigation just the flood mitigation components the flood wall the outlet structure the excavation are relatively similar for all the projects we see that we need a bigger embankment and a taller flood wall for the higher level of flood protection But ultimately the infrastructure is relatively similar um for option one which is the 100 year we do need Earth fill associated with our changes to the flood plane so that's where that $10 million comes from but for option two and option three which are the 500 and 200e flood protection

[23:01] that area of filled to generate that land swap is significant and does have some significant costs associated with it so our costs range from 66 to 96 million um depending on what level of flood protection so for the levy I just want to be very clear that the levy and the land use the land uses for the site are connected Ed um it's really important to point that out because our guiding principles do talk a lot about the levy and what is allowable in area protected by Levy and the 500-year flood plane so this is the levy on the site the orange um and as you can see the lighter green is the oso area which is actually the flood plane that is being protected by Levy so to be able to generate any developable land in that area we would need to fill that essentially to meet the requirements in the Boulder Valley

[24:00] comprehensive plan guiding principles next uh the most one of the more important things that we found was really the hydraulic design criteria for the project was that we can't impact negatively impact any Downstream users um and to really manage that there's only two hydraulic control points that we have control of um one is the existing bridge over us36 which is managed by C do and that would be our first Downstream user and we don't want to impact that bridge so we want to maintain existing flow conditions at that bridge and this is just a picture of the bridge as it exists today and we really want to keep that criteria um the same for what is going under that bridge currently and really our only way to do that is to change the size of our outlet and our out outlet has some limiting features on it as

[25:00] well so our Outlet shown here I'm showing the downstream area because we can only discharge so much water out of our Outlet before we start negatively impacting the neighborhoods Downstream of V Channel and that's East Boulder Rec Center at the top of the screen um and also there's constructibility issues with the outlet we can't do five or six Outlets because there's just not space so when we say constructibility there's just a space limitation on how many Outlet structures we can actually put under us36 uh another really important consideration for the city is just the environmental impacts of the project um there's in the South Boulder Creek area here there is um very important habitat uh there's endangered and threatened species threatened and endangered species including the prebble's jump jumping mouse and the youth lady trust Orchid um it's some of the some prime grazing area for our open space

[26:01] department they use it um for agriculture and uh so part of the direction we got in July was really to reach out to the open space Board of Trustees and get their feedback on the flood wall as well so what's happened um since that conceptual design came out is our flood wall has to be located on the OS P property right next to the adjacent C dot right of way and this is direct impacts to open space and we did receive uh board feedback which is part of the memo packet and uh the most important piece of that feedback we found was that uh it would likely involve a disposal of this property from open space so uh this is estimated at 5 Acres it's a 90t offset uh long us36 that we would need for construction and ultimately for the FL wall to sit on Brandon that's question

[27:00] yeah previous slide what is that Notch there right below the bike path label um let me make sure I'm following here right here no um bike path where it says bike path underneath us yeah right there that little Notch there uh this may be I I'm not 100% sure but it's more than likely a discharge point um there's multiple drainages that come under us36 here already to address the local drainages so it's probably a change in the right of way to accommodate one of those drainages most likely so um project staff has tried to identify some differentiators and also trade-offs associated with going with each of these levels of flood protection you've probably heard a lot of them so far in the presentation um so in your

[28:01] packet there is a table that has more details on this this is a summary of that table but mainly what the project team found through this analysis was um number one project feasibility becomes more challenging with the higher level of flood protection that we select um number two is costs significantly increase to provide um flood mitigation above the 100-year flood level uh three the impacts associated with the project are also much larger above the 100 year and that's mainly related to that fill that we discussed previously and then um lower design flood events also gives us a little more flexibility with the hydraulic design criteria that I mentioned before so that may benefit us from a permeability a permit ability standpoint so when we're getting our permits so I have a quick question um on our flood sorry our our CU South tours

[29:00] that we took we learned that there are concerns with the 500-year and the South Boulder Creek Bridge at us36 um do you want to tell us about those now because doesn't that also have an impact on what we could or couldn't do as far as 500-year flood project yes and sure so um I think I I led some of those discussions during the tour and I think brand Brandon mentioned a few slides ago that uh the hydraulic design criteria and so in order to get SE dot approval on this project we need to keep the the flow conditions underneath the bridge um to existing conditions we can't make it any worse if if our if we built a flood wall and it would result in water levels being higher at the bridge or velocity increasing or or something like that it's going to be difficult for the uh Department of

[30:01] Transportation to give us a a RightWay permit for that so that is a a fundamental piece of our design criteria and what Brandon was saying is the two ways we have we have to pass water with this design is through the bridge or our Outlet works and there are physical limitations to just how much capacity we can build into the outlet works and so we were not able to with all of the modeling that we did we were not able to meet that criteria of maintaining existing conditions or better for the um SE do bridge so that one will be tricky for feasibility going forward okay and so that was only for the 500 that was for the 500 yeah great thank you Bob well question so um just to kind of put a underline that does that effectively mean Joe that um you never like to say anything's impossible but but 500 year would be

[31:00] improbable from an engineering standpoint forget about the cost but just from a engineering and C do standpoint it's it's it's not an option that's you're recommending or that's very likely to be available to us yeah I I couldn't guarantee that we would be able to get that one through the permitting process and when you combine that um hydraulic or engineering feasibility with all of the other tradeoffs on on the chart it may not be worth bringing that one forward okay thanks okay okay yep I'm sorry I was looking at the chart so you may have already answered it but is that the same analysis for 200 is that also unlikely or is it just the 500 it we it's easier to do with the 20000 so we can get closer but we still haven't been able to get those two flows to match at this point Brandon I might just ask you to speak a little more directly into the microphone

[32:00] for our viewers okay hopefully that hasn't been going the whole time that um okay all right um and lastly I I do just want to point out that we have been given direction to proceed with the preliminary design related to this variant one configuration and as you saw in the uh concept U layouts that all the flood components are relative ly similar so we are proceeding with that design where we've completed phase one of our geotechnical in investigations which is actually giving us information on the soils and the groundwater at the site um we're currently doing phase two of those geotechnical in investigations on the site and that's informing our groundwater modeling um which we've started for the site and we're also producing a hydraulic model that is essentially um updating all the existing conditions on the site so that way we'll be able to use that as we Pro proceed through the preliminary design so I just wanted to note that those activities are

[33:00] still ongoing um so just to follow up on that and thank you for it um does that mean that we're continuing to make progress towards one of these options uh at this point as we're doing the geot technical studies and we're doing the the flood analysis we what we learn doesn't foreclose anything yet it's just letting us move forward and this work would have to be done regardless of which option we went with that's that's correct okay thank you okay I do want to put a project timeline in here um as I said we are working on the uh preliminary design and there will be a point where we come back to Council in May and we're really looking for direction on what level of flood protection we're going to continue through that preliminary design and then from there um as Phil is going to talk about next is uh the annexation actually a Big Driver of the project because like Joe mentioned um typically we don't own

[34:02] the property where we're trying to do our project so the way we would get this property to be able to do this project is through that annexation process um so there's some unknowns there that's why we have t TBD right at the construction uh date is really we can't start construction until we have the property or the um approvals to be able to impact those properties and at what point would you be able to begin construction because there's the other federal agencies that are involved in permitting correct so we would need to make it through even if annexation magically happened we would still have whatever time it takes to get through the core of engineers fish and wildlife um State Dam engineer and whoever else is that right that's that's correct and typically for a project this complex it can take two or three years to to get those permits in place and all of the approvals that you need and we've been

[35:01] having some Advanced discussions with some of the agencies like the Department of Transportation to just make sure that we're comfortable there's a feasible path through those um but definitely we'll know more and one of the first things we would do moving into the preliminary design would be to really map out the the schedule for this in detail but we we need to know what the project is before we can really do that and you had talked I think previously correct me if I'm wrong that it was it about a 30% design level that you were able to start the conversations with the federal agencies that's correct okay yeah thank you how many agencies are involved in this and which do you regard as the most problematic in terms of getting approvals I don't know that I'd want to to say which ones the the most problematic but um they might be listening how many

[36:01] agencies I'll settle for that so uh I don't know off the top of my head how what the number is but um the FEMA the state FEMA is for the flood protection part of it the state engineer is for the dam design and Dam safety component of it so those are two big engineering approvals there's the core of engineers The Fish and Wildlife service there's a city of Boulder Wetland permit um those are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head I think we the Department of Transportation as well sorry to forget that one um and we just uh we're on the verge of completing another very complex project in utilities right now and that's the Carter Lake Pipeline and all most of those entities that I just mentioned were involved in permitting as well as irrigation ditch companies the land

[37:01] owners have to approve all of this so I would say there's probably the most complexity associated with the the land use and the land owner agreements and does see that in the current design the seed that also have an approval they do we would need a RightWay permit from them anytime we like when we're building a pipeline that's going across us36 or some other Highway of theirs um we need a RightWay permit we quite frequently have those with utilities projects and there's a pretty standard process through that this is the most complicated in that regard as well in terms of what our ask of them but they're their Highway benefits from the flood project as well and keeping it from over topping they they recognize that and so in our re recent discussions the we acknowledge the complexity but they said let's find a solution to this thank

[38:04] you Joe do all three of these options um require an open space disposal process yes so that would be another process that would be added to all of that yep and in that land owner yep that's their approval and so oh that was one of the land owners that you were referring to and in that process there was the the open space Board of Trustees um made a had a finding that um it that flood mitigation was not um Charter use H but they can't decide whether or not there should be a disposal correct yeah that's probably a a question for Tom to answer that's right Mary and so that needs to come to Council yes so there's that their decision is is

[39:00] advisory only you make the final decision disposal is required in the interpretation of the charter okay so that would be another piece of the puzzle that needs would need to get put into the final schedule and and the Carter Lake pipeline that I just mentioned crossed a number of open space uh properties and and we were able to work through the details and and navigate that with our open space staff and the Board of Trustees and received a disposal for that so that comes up quite frequently in our utilities projects and and there is definitely a path through that I think on this particular project the open space Board of Trustees is really interested in in um the feedback they provided to Council in 2019 and I I believe as well in 2018 and having those questions answered um normally we would do that when a board has has feedback on

[40:00] a project so we would definitely be looking for guidance from Council tonight or your your blessing to pursue that got it Aaron yeah a couple quick follow-ups on that and and there were different impacts from these different options on that sensitive open space that might need to be disposed are you going to talk about that later um I we can actually talk about that now so one component of the or one feature of the flood mitigation design is the flood wall and um it it has to tie into the SE dot embankment at the bridge and so for the lower flood levels that can occur further to the west or likely can further to the West which would mean the flood wall could be shorter and near South Boulder Creek and that is uh that is the area that has the most sensitive habitat for open space property and so

[41:00] um it could potentially be a couple hundred feet shorter and so that would be an important distinction and that's one of the things that in Brandon's presentation when he said the lower flood levels there's some advantages to feasibility it's things like that do you have a can you quantify that in terms of a different impact on that sensitive ecological habitat well if the wall was uh terminated or ended ft further to the West it would be that much shorter and so the the 200 ft Say by 90 ft in in the width of the corridor that we would have to disturb for the project that could potentially be left undisturbed so substantial anyway maybe you don't have a percent at hand but it's a substantial lessening of impact yeah it could potentially be the I think Brandon showed the slide going with the flood wall going going all the way to the creek and mention five acres of impact so it could be 4.2 or something like

[42:05] that Rachel what did you just get more information yeah yeah that was I saw phone a friend happening there as as Joe's mentioned we've been working with open space very closely here so um one of the benefits of it's important habitat because it's riparian to open space um but the critical habitat for the preble's jumping mouse is actually from the center line of South Boulder Creek about 140 M either way so the further away we can move the flood wall from the creek the more likely we we'd be able to get out of that preble's habitat and that helps us um from a project standpoint as well as reducing our environmental impacts and I did I there was a number in the packet and I I did just find it I mean the the packet Quantified it as five acres of endangered species habitat impact for the 500 year and 0.9 Acres impact in the 100 year so is that Dan I see you back

[43:02] there is that so that's like an 80% reduction yeah it yeah and uh the the flood wall impacts are going to be similar aside from that shorter length what happens is is that fill associated with the oso um there's threatening and danger species all over the property and uh you ladies trusses Orchid are one of the species and those don't have have a defined um habitat location but they're they're managed on a plant by plant basis and the way you mitigate for those is by offsetting the acre so if you're impacting their habitat you would likely offset for the acreage great but that that fundamental of the kind of 80% reduction was what I was getting out of the packet anyway but so one one other follow-up question here and and in terms of the necessity for this um you have to have at least some of that impact from all these different variants although less from the 100 year but that's not dependent on what CU is doing right like

[44:01] if CU built nothing anywhere we would still need to put the flood wall up against um the highway right correct okay so I just wanted that that that's that sensitive habitat impact is independent of the land owners in you know actions right so Rachel and then mirb um so I have a lot of questions are we just asking essentially project timeline and then following up on these right now or is it fair game for all of them so the the goal we had set at the beginning at CAC was to go over the technical questions first to try and get through the flood design um kind of questions so going all technical questions pertaining to the flood while design or now go I don't know we are you done with you got through your timeline are you to questions yet yep so that that was my last next slide so then yes Rachel all right so um I just wanted jump out ahead so following up on Aaron's question that's true also the

[45:01] 0.9 Acres um table two on page 12 for endangered species habitat it's 0.9 Acres lost for the hundred-year mitigation and it's uh five acres lost for 500 but also for 200 right it's it's no better under 200 than 500 yes okay so then is in light of that is 200 or 500 year mitigation likely even permittable in your estimation it I would say at this stage in the project it would be more challenging um I if that's the goal of the project is what the agencies would consider um then we would obviously ask but it would be more challenging okay not that I want to encroach on those additional 4.1 Acres regardless but I'm I'm concerned separately whether it would be permittable if we chose two or 500 um so that's one um you you showed on the second to last

[46:02] slide maybe the exact the five acres along the bottom that would be needed of osbt land I was hoping for like an exact explanation of those Acres um and a number I know that there's some distinction between Acres that are temporarily um impacted and then permanently impacted so I wanted to get clarification on that can you speak to the the difference between the temporary construction easement and the and the permanent yes so um this 5 acres is estimated at that 90 ft from the SE dot right of way and that is a lot of that's for construction access because we'll um hopefully have some access in the seot right way but we are going to need access and there's a lot of groundwater infrastructure associated with the project so the constructibility of that um is requiring a lot of that access when we're done

[47:00] with the project a lot of the infrastructure will be underground and hopefully that 90 acres is only temporary and we can reduce the amount of impacts associated with that but it's 9 sorry yes thank you I guess I'm I'm still trying to to quantify like when we get to disposal how many acres need to be disposed of and this is our best estimate right now we would hope to be able to reduce this as we come up with the design details so once we know exactly um how much space we have in certain areas we would like to be able to reduce this but this is our best estimate um at this time okay um and then I think this is a question for Tom on on that issue when we look at um when we get to osbt um and Disposal osbt would be essentially disposing of land to the city and not to see you right so it's not really part part of the the CU South it's it's more what we need for flood mitigation so coming to the city yeah so

[48:01] the land is already owned by the city so the disposal means who's managing it and what it just technically takes it out from being open space land and to and it removes that restriction it's always city property it's managed by open station restricted by the charter and so a what a disposal does is it transfers the management to another and we've done this in the past for example we've transferred bike paths to transportation and I'm I'm curious how much was the and I have a followup on that but also how much to the Carter Lake Project how many acres were involved or what was that disposal Lake I don't remember the acreage um I wish my mind was that good but there was several properties that it uh I think four or five properties that it crossed and um the disposal involved open space providing an easement to Utilities in that case it was actually northern water who was managing the project but they they provided an easement so that once they once they do that easement for a utility use they no

[49:00] longer have the full use of the property as if it didn't have any okay that might be helpful down the line just to know what what that looked like since it's recent um and so then back to my question if it's it's not I guess this disposal seems like it's not really Tethered to the CU South um property development and so when we look at um what we might need to do to make open space whole and and sort of teeing this up for questions that we're going to ask boards um does that would that land even need to be related to see you South could it be anywhere in the city and how would open space it seems like they may have two separate roles here one is as a a property owner that needs to dispose of these couple of acres and then another as an Advisory board that maybe you know wants to talk about the burm or other things happening in the project so trying to figure out how that disposal um issue comes from this property owner because it's going to be a big one for us it's a big um hurdle so trying to

[50:03] figure out what what does that look like in terms of of those acres and and where osbt will weigh in on those versus the whole project so the the way that worked on the Carter Lake Pipeline and the way we went through that process with the open space staff and board is they they will make a recommendation to city council and they would often include um condition recommended conditions for the disposal so as it gets to the things like the burm and other areas that could be impacted those are the types of things that would come forward and they would recommend city of council if they were comfortable with a disposal they might recommend city council um approval of it with the following conditions kind of thing and I guess do that does does that have to be something

[51:01] that comes from CU South's property or can it be anywhere in the city that we are making OSB ho yeah just one distinction if it if it is a disposal situation the board will actually have to approve the disposal not just recommend the disposals just a clarification on that and if you can introduce yourself yes Dan Burke uh director of Open Space Mountain Parks um in regards to um if there's uh with disposal package and if the board approves a disposal and it goes to council if that's where we're headed uh with this uh the board may be looking at what possible um offsets to these uh that we would get and and it would be uh the first place that the board would typically look and where our staff would typically want to look at it is as close to the impact the original impact as possible so obviously looking at uh where some uh possible mitigated lands would be closer to the site uh that replicate some of what we're disturbing

[52:00] would be a logical place to look so uh it it it wouldn't be required that it be on CU South by any means but it certainly would be uh that's the proximity and that's where the continual habitat is and so that's a likely place and our board has already expressed that thanks and and is that like is there language in the charter that spells out um any Nexus between you know if you're forfeiting um 5 Acres disposing of that is it a a as it is with permitting and Regulatory Agencies sort of a you know one acre might equal three acres or something like that or is it I mean I assume there's some logical rational relationship between no uh there's a about a two paragraph description of how the disposal process is to work uh in 1995 the board did approve a uh what at that time was called an easement policy a dis disposing of lands for easements uh and that is uh the policy the process that

[53:02] we that the board has typically Ed to guide its mechanism of how it goes about uh making decisions on disposals but the charter itself does not lay out any specific uh criteria or ratios or anything else that goes with it but that 1995 um policy is has been what is typically have guided the open space Board of Trustees over the years okay okay and I have a quick follow on to that actually I'll just call on meby I'll come back to it Dan sure mirb and then Mary so I'm cqu on Erin's point so if CU were to not develop at all have you guys done any studies to find out if we could do anything that would preserve the the habitat the osmp lands is there any other options ways of doing this flood mitigation if again if there was no development by cu yeah go ahead okay um I guess um so as I

[54:02] stated previously in the project history we looked at a pretty extensive list of all types of Alternatives in the master planning process and then that's what really drove us to the regional detention at CU South and then at the regional detention at CU South um we found that we've also looked at concepts related to that and um we've still found this is the best concept moving forward and it does not this design is not reflected based on development of Cu South okay I just want the public to be able to yeah hear that and be so U Mary and then Bob so thinking back about when we were um when we gave the direction about looking at variant one 500y year was um a couple things one was that when you look at the cost difference differential

[55:02] between um 100500 it was like $6 million so it was like for another $6 million we can get um five protection for a 500-year flood and then um and then we thought well um let's look at something inter term which is what we looked at the 200 years so that's what we have before us now um but it's looking like um at least the 500 and and likely the 200 are not um very workable engineering wise so I'm wondering what other things could be done to and the whole purpose of that was to M mitigate for climate change so what other things could be done to help mitigate for climate change because the the 100 years also says that it's the least adaptable so there anything else that we might be able to do so the i i

[56:03] my understanding of the conversations of the higher level of flood protection are to kind of armor the city against the uncertainties of climate change and and what I will say about that is there there's not really a scientific or regulatory basis for selecting a 200 year or 300 year or a 500e flood as a as a good way of mitigating climate change it recognizing it does provide more storage but I will say um in my previous role as the water resources manager we did a lot of work studying future climate scenarios and what impacts they might have on the city's water supply and there are so many different scenarios that that's potentially something we could look at in the next phase of the work is is there some way we could correlate that but right now there's there's really no regulatory basis

[57:02] for accommodating climate change in a flood project we we would have to come up with something on our own as a city to do that so on Thursday when we were touring the site um as we were walking um from where the truck was in our way all the way to the bridge um Brandon was pointing out to me right here the flood wall would be this high at this at the 100 it would be this high at the 500 um and so we was Point as we went down Brandon was Point pointing that out to me and so what and oftentimes the Delta between the two was um I don't know 10 15 ft something like that is am I recalling correctly yeah I think the total height um ranges from about 8 to 10 um and it's pers ctive it's in relation to us36 so us36 is actually ramping up towards the creek and the

[58:01] flood wall maintains a constant elevation and then for the um for the 500 year it'd be upwards of 15t to 15 foot tall wall so it's really a nominal difference maybe five four to 5T there and um that's why you see the cost so similar for the flood mitigation components so the Delta then is about 5 ft on about so what I'm wondering is so the concern is with the 500 and the 200 is that it goes too close to the US 36 Bridge um is there something else that could be done on our own without any kind of regulatory um guidance to add a little bit of height to the 100 year which would detain more water but still could be terminated where we're talking about terminating it is that a feasible way to um provide more

[59:01] storage it we could definitely look at that and and you could make the the flood wall 6 in taller or something like that in the dam safety component um of Designing this project the when you design a Spillway you come up with What's called the probable maximum flood and your project between storage and the spillway has to accommodate that flood and so when you do those calculations let's say the flow rate that you came up with for your Spillway purely by the calculations let's say it was 5,000 cubic feet per second the state Engineers office recognizing climate change which is the state Engineers office is different from FEMA and the flood protection part of it but their new regulations as of the first of this year require you you to put a seven or 8% increase on that flow like a safety Factor recognizing climate

[60:01] change so that's the that's the example that we've seen so far in the regulatory World it doesn't really apply to the flood design but it will apply to our dam safety component of the design so we could look at something like that that would have a an allowance for it as we continue moving this project forward and that would still keep it within the the wall within the range of distance to not have an impact on the habitat yeah if it was if it was a nominal increase in the height of the wall uh it's all relative to the height of the wall the I think you mentioned the range is from 8 to 15 ft tall and so a 15t tall wall wall has to go all the way to the creek in order to have enough elevation to tie into the

[61:00] us36 embankment so if it was 8' 6 in I don't you know we haven't done a lot of analysis on that but we could look into that as we move this forward so I've got Bob Adam Rachel and myself on the stack thank you could you guys go to slide I want to follow up on points made by Aaron and Rachel slide 89 did you go through 89 slides no these are back pocket oh I know there's a slide 89 okay red ahead okay I think this is what Ain was referring to when you the bottom table in the middle threatened and endangered species a 9/10 of an acre on option one versus 5 acre on option two and three I think this is what you were referring to it was in our packet as well Aaron right and then getting back to Rachel's

[62:01] point on just on this slide before we go to another slide I I know that Joe you said with respect to the five acre options you don't know how many of those 5 Acres were temporarily disrupted because of construction versus permanently disrupted because of maybe an easement that would need to take take place for the location of the wall and maybe maintenance of the wall would that also apply to the 9/10 of an acre in other words is there that much less disruption there and then maybe a fraction of that 9/10 of an acre would be an easement for wall location and and maintenance I'm trying to remember the disposal we've done for past projects and I I think it was for the full um Disturbed area for the temporary construction okay so if if the question really is is there a difference between um permanent impact once a project is uh designed or what you would do for temporary construction I I think we've

[63:01] typically done the temporary but I'll defer to Dan if he yeah I don't know in EV every case but I think you're right in general and and in this case I um uh let's say uh I I believe it's 30 feet is what is estimated to be a permanent um type of easement or transfer over and then there's the rest is few years of temporary impact uh and what I understand from the conversation we had our board is because we're dealing with very uh Wetland type of things is digging that up and disturbing that gets to the point where that habitat as it was isover is really is gone for a long time recover no I think we all understand that okay but anyway in any event regardless of whether it's permanent or temporary let's just assume it's all permanent just for sake of discussion to eron's point um it looks like the option one would have a significantly less impact on PR an endanger species than the options two and three is that correct okay can I call Qui sure and then I got another

[64:01] slide I want to go to okay so I just did the back of the envelope math so that I would have some sense of what the numbers were so 5 Acres 218,000 Square ft what I heard was the wall would be a couple hundred feet shorter if we were to go with option one is that correct did I hear that correctly potentially subject to the C dot right away permitting process and so if that happens that's 18,000 ft that don't get Disturbed out of 218,000 square feet so it's a relatively small change you know the the dam length assuming that the 5 acres is for the larger Dam that's 2400 ft long okay 90 Acres the math just works out it's half a mile long and shortening something by 200 feet um that's a half mile to start with doesn't seem to me like it could have this large of an impact that we're seeing on this

[65:00] slide so I'm just curious you know is that 200 feet all about The prebles Mouse and the 0.9 acres is what you ladies dresses occupy in the remainder yeah I think the key part and I would invite the open space staff to correct me if I get this wrong is where that 200 ft occurs it's right next to the theek and where the critical habitat is yeah and so but the we've seen a map of the UT ladyes dresses and the prebles um jumping mouse before and my recollection is the ladies dresses were kind of all over the place I mean they were just everywhere in there um and so if you got a 2400 is it like a circle that gets drawn around the plant and then when you disturb the plant you just have to replace that Circle or something like it somewhere else is that how you're coming up with your 0.9 so it's important to point out here and

[66:00] it may be confusing the way this slides written is that um these are overall impacts um so there is a portion of this that is that strip along the us36 wall but what's jumping up those 5 acres is this large area of Phill and where it's located ah okay so I think that's that's really important to point out that these are overall and um like Dan and Joe have said the preble's jumping mouse in particular benefits quite a bit if we can shorten that wall I get it yeah get and that if we can shorten that wall enough that we would be outside of that habitat that would be great if we shorten it just a little bit that's that much less critical um federally designated habitat that we'd be impacting I see so maybe I misunderstood the slide I won't divert you from yours but at some point we'll go back to the slide that had the the rendering the picture of the the flood wall the dam because it said 5 acres in there and so

[67:00] it just seemed to me like that was G to be 5 Acres so we'll talk about that later Bob go ahead just if you could jump just to follow up on Rachel's point if you jump to slide 74 this this relates to the um I guess I'll call an exchange to the extent that there is a disposal of some critical habitat and there is a desire to replace that with other habitat and I get the fact that different species and different sensitivi so this is not an Apples to Apples but as I understand it from this Slide the the darker the color the closer it is to Brown the more critical habitat there is is that a correct interpretation of that slide this is a a suitability slide and um so it's a a combilation of things so wet lenss Open Water um and then types of vegetation you have and then that gives you a suitability rating and so the darker the uh color the higher the rating and it's not necessarily related to specific species got it but meaning the darker is

[68:00] less suitable for development and more suitable for preservation is that is it's more desirable from a environmental aspect so so to Rachel's Point again we're I don't want to mix apples and apples and I understand that you know we've got we've got different types of species in Flora and Faun so I'm not trying to do an equivalency here but it does um seem to that or it seem to me that we've got a lot of Darkness around the edges which I understand will be potentially impacted but then we've got this this little you know appendix sticking down here in the bottom which no one seems to really care a lot I don't think CU cares about it um and so that could be potentially land it's a sensitive habitat is potentially land that could be exchanged back to Rachel's point about exchanging um Acres that we it may be unavoidable for us to impact in exchange for maybe more Acres that no one really cares about other than than those of us who care about nature who want to protect um protect I I mean from a development standpoint there's less

[69:00] interest but from a preservation standpoint there may be greater interest and so there may be some exchanges that could happen here maybe even on a on a one forx basis in other words we could gain more Acres of of um of of critical habitat in other parts of of the of the land of cu's land which CU is not necessarily interested in developing is that a fair assumption yeah and and another good thing to point out about that area is that that could be potentially mitigation area so like Dan said is if we do have environmental impacts Elsewhere on the site we would want to go to the best chance we have for mitigation so if these areas are the most suitable um then that may be our best mitigation potential there for just impacts from the project not alone uh not only its environmental value so great thank you and then I've got Adam Rachel myself mark so I had a question about permeability um I assume that all of our analysis has

[70:00] been done without 129 Acres of developed land existing since it doesn't um so have we factored that in in any way what it what it would look like if that 129 acres is then developed and what impact that would have on Flow rates on um you know essentially what impact that would have to the flood waters I'm not sure I understand the question is it is your question related to groundwater yeah so you my best assumption is I'm not a hydrologist but if you cover land with concrete or asphalt it is no longer going to be able to absorb water so in a major flooding event if we have 129 Acres that are now covered that currently are not covered it would somewhat change the hydrology of the site it would and the The Fill um

[71:01] definitely the amounts that we're talking about would um change the ability of of rainwater to percolate into the ground so that would be a component of it I don't know how much of a a contributor that would be um during a flood and I don't believe we've we've looked at that but Brandon can correct me if I'm wrong yeah and just from a very general story warm water um component uh when you develop sites um you're you're required to maintain the existing runoff from the site so uh typically what you see in a lot of developments is detention ponds and things like that on the site itself to be able to maintain those historic flows from the site so we haven't considered that because we're not doing the um site design or layout of the property um we would expect some impacts but hopefully those can be mitigated on the property with relation to whatever development happens okay can I call you go first

[72:00] Mary Aron so kind of related to that um how would Phil impact not that Phil f um impact the um the groundwater because there'll be different levels of fill in the 500e flood plane for making the part of the parcel um the ability to develop it I hate the word developable so I was trying to avoid it but um so what what impact might that have to the groundwater and um how would that impact the whole um groundwater um mechanism for for keeping it flowing under the dam because there'll be some sort of a a passageway right below

[73:03] ground so how how would the groundwater be impacted by that fill I think just in in responding to Adam's question the most obvious impact would be um if you're if you're putting fill down and you're compacting it it may not infiltrate water at the same rate that the existing ground had because we're at a conceptual design level we we I'm not aware that we have studied those impacts in detail and um we would probably do so as part of a final design if you chose one of the options that had um huge impacts from Phil and will there be um Wells to monitor that in that area to provide some insight into that uh so we haven't uh specifically focused on the field because this is the

[74:00] first time we've considered fill um in that area so for the 200 and the 500 this is the first time we've considered those large areas of Phill but there would be Wells throughout the site to manage uh to monitor groundwater and make sure we're maintaining the existing conditions um and the groundwater conveyance system under the flood wall th those are where we could see the biggest impacts to groundwater because those are actually designed to cut off groundwater so our system um would need to be designed to maintain existing conditions on either side of that so um yes there would be groundwater monitoring so Aaron I've got you on the Clee I just want to clarify from your answer to Adam's question which is that uh that let's say that CU does develop 129 Acres that they would be legally required at the by the time they finish development uh for there to be no additional uh um runoff impacts uh and they would have to impact any changes to the permeability in the site with detention and other facilities on that

[75:01] site that's correct right so there wouldn't be an additional runoff impact because they'd have to mitigate it correct thanks Rachel okay I have a series of questions um but first because I didn't say it earlier that was a great presentation thank you both for all your work um my question's on table five on page 16 I don't think you need to pull it up but it's talking about the different footprints that the 100 2005e options would have and it says the footprint for 100 years is 64 Acres that's 10 acres of embankment 19 excavation 34 fill uh my question C has offered 80 acres to do whatever we need with is that those 80 acres and does that mean we have 16 left in that if we do 100 Year I'll let Brandon answer that question I'm sorry I just need to follow along with you here table five on page 16 uh the estimated project footprint for 100-year option says 64 Acres 64

[76:03] Acres total yes and so see you and my understanding is from sometime in the past you said 80 acres do what you want with it for flood mitigation Andre whatever with the rest so what would does that mean we have 16 left over ACR yes and um I'm just going to go back to the maps so as part of the conceptual analysis we did we looked at ways to optimize the project and one of those ways of optimizing the project was rather than using all of those acres for detention and having to convey vely underneath our facility we pulled the embankment back and allowed vely channel to remain open um and so that's why we're not using those additional Acres so um so is there any thought to what we would do with those 16 Acres that's sounds good to me that we've got 16 floating around yeah that was something that that um kind of changed a little bit Phil CL lowed the city's planning department um and that was that was um one of the changes in the University's

[77:01] annexation application resubmittal last month which was um committing to 80 acres for um the flood mitigation project um or to 80 acres for that project or to be used for open space mitigations relating to the project okay so that's possibly 16 Acres that we have to play with for mitigation awesome um okay so that's question one two um I had asked at our earlier February meeting um if we do 100 rather than 500 what benefits or what protections do we get um at the 100 year in terms of maybe flesh flooding mitigation or I think maybe there's a a sense of like I hear 100 versus 500 and that's 400 more and I don't think it's like a a that the units work quite like that so I think even in the event of a 500-year flood the 100-year protection still gives us a lot and so I don't know if there was an answer from our last session on that and then maybe to T might be fill up while

[78:01] you're looking at that I'd also asked about the um on an equity issue Who's In Harm's Way and so that will be my next question is what do we find out there Rachel I looked up the disposal at Carter Lake it's a little bit less than 12 acres 11814 so and that was a disposal of about 12 acres yeah but it was for nonexclusive Perpetual easements so it wasn't for building a wall it was an easement for an underground pipeline yep is that related to flood mitigation no it was it's a water pipeline water supply pipeline thank you all right and I believe that most of the osmp lands that those were conservation easement lands that we held and not fee lands so so there were some fee lands Dan uh yeah but the joint County up the northern one was a joint County inity was the imla IM IML and IBM Monarch they said the the agenda memo just says that there's also treating the conservation eement lands differently

[79:00] y thank you it's really not Apples to Apples but you asked the question thank you so uh back to the flood protection so um as I stated earlier in the presentation um the 500 year and the 100 year um there's probabilities of happen of those happening in any given year so the level of flood protection we go above the 100 year is actually protecting people at um less risk I would say um from a statistical standpoint um from a flood and during a 500e flood we haven't Quantified it yet because we want to wait till we figure out what the design of the facility would be but um you would see a benefit for the 500-year flood um with a 100-year facility we just haven't Quantified that yet because we've I would imagine we' still detained a lot of the water that causes the catastrophic flooding in the event of a 500 year by by holding it back for the 100y year level correct yes there would be benefit

[80:00] okay all right so my next question was the one for Phil on on Who's In Harm's Way so pretty recently before this meeting we did get some mapping completed that we can share with Council electronically we wanted to review it a little bit more but it does include critical facilities um we even have jobs numbers city um uh City structures as well well as um some other facilities that we we thought would be of interest with your questions on on February 4th and we can share that with you um tonight or tomorrow early um that's great and I I had just independently kind of randomly learned that I think of the people that we have placed um in Supportive Housing with vouchers there's something like 65 who are outside of the um Lee Hill Complex and about a third of them or a quarter of them are living um in the nest properties it's right across from C South so that's just one piece of the the puzzle that I got is that there

[81:01] are um a large number of people that we are exiting from homelessness who are kind of on the front lines of of um that potential disaster okay uh next question just wanted to clarify in the levy my understanding is that the current Levy that's in place did not contribute to flooding outcomes in 2013 didn't make that worse can anybody can confirm or deny that yes uh it it only affects the property adjacent to the levy which is the CU South property so it did limit the flooding on the CU South property itself but it didn't negatively impact Downstream users and um that's been something we've seen in the modeling consistent all the way back from the 2003 hydraulic study okay um so is there any particular engineering and I know there's separate Environmental concerns but is there any engineering reason to keep that Levy in place does it help uh it it doesn't affect the

[82:00] flood mitigation design we have it right now so with or without the levy um the flood mitigation design as proposed would still function and and does anybody know the cost diff cost differential if we keep the levy in place versus take it out so the levy removal can be done numerous ways um so you don't have to remove the whole Levy you can breach certain sections of of it you can um remove the whole Levy if you would like to use the fill we haven't considered that in our cost estimate yet because um we don't know what that Levy removal would look like okay that's all I got for now thank you so can I just so the the cost estimates you have don't include any money for removing the levy yes nor any possible savings from yes or any savings from being able to use that material if we were able to use that material so it's um still on CU BT ERS property so it is their material yeah okay great I'm going to go and then

[83:00] we've got Mark and Bob on the stack um so one thing I want to ask you Dan was about there was some previous disposal done due to the widening of us36 right we got rid of some fairly sensitive habitat in a disposal to accommodate that and can you talk about how successful the the reestablishment was cuz I know there was compensating acreage and that there was an attempt made to bring back whatever species were impacted by the widening of 36 so how did that work out yeah if I'm going to invite Don Deo who actually was one of the leads in in that um restoration up up here comment on that D Deo Open Space Mountain Parks um you're right we did work with C do um when we disposed of land for uh believe it was the phase one US 36 improvements and we um uh worked with

[84:00] SED do and the Regulatory Agencies to to try to mitigate the impacts to mostly um ladies trust's Orchid habitat cot purchased a property North just north of the East Boulder rec center and um we worked with them to develop a mitigation plan that involved grading regrading the property um we actually transplanted this was kind of a novel idea and something that hadn't been tried before we transplanted um large like I think there were about four by eight sod mats um of of um soil that contained um a variety of wetland plants including latest tr's Orchid we placed them in a hydrologically what we thought was a hydrologically suitable area on the mitigation site um to the north of the rec center and um we had Fairly good success um recreating uh the wetlands that were associated with the latest dresses Orchid but we never saw any

[85:01] recruitment of the actual Orchid itself um in including uh there they a a species that kind of um flowers some years they can go three or four years even longer without flowering then for some reason conditions are just right in flowers we've been monitoring that since that time and haven't seen any sparin these um you late Tresses Orchid growing in those areas I see and about how far was the distance that those sod mats were transported I mean from the the site of the expansion to the site near the rec center how far away was that that's maybe um a mile to a mile and a half okay yeah and so I just wanted to have that context um about how sensitive it can be with this particular species as far as resetting it in a location that's far away um have you had experience successfully um doing this kind of

[86:00] mitigation work with the Utes ladies Tresses orchids no this that was the first attempt we had made to actually transplant the species and I as as far as I know it it hasn't been it hadn't been tried before so see okay um and then with that in mind if there's going to be disturbance of habitat of that particular species what would you think of as a way to mitigate the loss of that habitat that's that's the big question um we've I I think we um we tried our darnis we I I think we we did a pretty good job um replicating the soils that was you know they're aluvial soils in a flood plane the hydrology was um suitable based on some groundwater monitoring and um if any if any uh transplant process would have would have been successful you know we

[87:00] feel pretty confident that that would have done it as far as um mitigating any impacts from this project um I think we you know we could try again we could look at um maybe expanding the um the area that we mitigate um there might be a way to um instead of using instead of uh transplanting sod there might be another way of transplanting um uh individual clumps rather than big sod mats um we just we just really don't know at this point there's no kind of Next Step that we're really confident would mitigate for the impacts to the the Orchid okay and in the area we had a nice map up before of the the habitat in the area if if these mut lady stresses do not come back the wall and the disturbance gets rid of them are there other locations nearby where there are

[88:01] um I mean if you just go down to South Boulder Creek are they more there or where do you find them on the property uh we find them all up and down the South Boulder Creek corridor from um our Burke 2 property which uh AB buts the golf course farther north all the way down all the way down to um uh about Highway 93 so all along the South Boulder Creek flood plane um we find them scattered this it's interesting that they kind of bunch up for some reason right up against the highway the H hydrology must just be ideal um but we find them kind of scattered around we um just south of the darkest um rectangle that you see up there um is is open space property and that was a formal gravel mine site also that we purchased in the mid90s and um it was reclaimed by the gravel Mining Company by um basically

[89:00] filling in the gravel pits with the wash Vines from the processing the gravel processing and um spany uh you ladies dress's Orchid came back there just voluntarily so that was encouraging to see that without much kind of um direct effort to to transplant them or reced them or anything like that they they came back on their own there got it one thing that we had received on Council I think we were doing the comp plan update was a map that was a little different than this that had some some circled areas so of course everything along South Boulder Creek um Wetlands is really excellent habitat and then there was um a bubble kind of in the middle of the levy area that called out potentially good habitat if restored it was something along those lines and it was just in what's actually a pretty light yellow area right now and that ended up becoming Oso I think partly

[90:02] because of that conversation and the discussion so have you given any thought to if we do um breach the levy what will happen with the now drier lands on the inside well we we think there's the potential for them to be um hydrologically restored right now this the um it's hard to point out the um sure um just inside the leaby you'll see a almost a parallel real thin brown line so that's a Brandon's following it there that's that's a drainage ditch that um conveys what would potentially be groundwater filling the site um it conveys it through the site and into those Northern ponds so we think that if we um well breaching the levy will largely help with habitat connectivity not necessarily we don't think any way

[91:01] groundwater conductivity but um we think we could restore the hydrology using a combination of um uh cutting off those drainage ditches and also potentially using um some Dry Creek to water rights to kind of hydrate the site so there's a there's a high potential I would say for that area um inside the levy that lighter yellow area y right in there to be restored to a fairly high quality habitat great thank you I just wanted to check that nothing had really changed from that time nearby you have yeah so kind of in the same line of thinking with the Tresses if you guys were to go well the construction was to go in and start um destroying the prebles habitat would would you be doing it a specific time a year where I mean I don't know how their nests are that's not my expertise but I mean would you be I mean would they run

[92:00] away would you be crushing them would you be destroying their nests with babies in them what how is that going to work well so the fish and wildlife service would require that the any construction activities occur at a time when they're um uh not actively hibernating okay so they would have potentially or theoretically opportunities to move out of the area so they um I can't remember the exact dates but there's a a window um where where if it's occupied habitat and Fish and Wildlife service gives clearance to do construction or other activities that would impact the habitat they only allow it during a certain time of the year so that includes like they don't have babies and I don't know if they hibernate and breed at the same time okay okay great and I just have one last um question to verify I believe believe Joe when we've talked about how much detention volume you get in a 500e versus a 100e detention scheme it's

[93:00] something like 1.85 times as much so if you have X amount in a 100-year scheme you go to a 500e detention so your Dam gets higher and your area gets bigger it's something on the order of 1.85 times the volume is that sound right one 1.6 I'm hearing 1. six okay so I guess then kind of what that means to Rachel's question about a 100-year um detention system during a 500-year flood is we will detain something like 2third of the water correct okay and so that's the level that we can expect is that it's a third is bad a 500-year flood is a um yeah oneir as bad as it would have been without the 100-year system in place I was just trying to put some numbers on that okay Mark and then Bob question on a slightly different subject um cost estimates

[94:00] um uh table five has cost estimates for the 100 year at 66 and for the 500 year at 93 but these are what you call class 4 estimates of project costs which are quote appropriate for use to use for comparing Alternatives but do not typically provide reliable budgetary estimates and I understand you can't have a reliable budgetary estimate at the moment because we're too preliminary my question is do you have a sense of the potential Delta between this class 4 estimate and what it might actually cost and if it's 66 are we looking at possibly 75 or 175 I doubt that any of these numbers would change our commitment to providing uh flood mitigation but they may have consequences for the fiscal health of the city and will have other impacts that we're going to have to deal with so Douglas Sullivan is our principal engineer in utilities and

[95:00] and he's done a lot of work kind of explaining the cost estimating scenari so I I will turn it over to him I will say um I've seen a lot of cost estimates in in my time at the city and and sometimes they're really rough crude numbers and and when the real project costs come out it's like yeah we were we way off on that we were way low I I think we've tried to to be as realistic as we can and um I I feel good about the costs that are in the table but I'll turn it over to Douglas to explain the estimating okay thanks Joe Douglas Sullivan principal engineer for utilities so the class 4 is one of a number of designations the association for American cost aing estimating Engineers has five and five is the most rough four is the second rough and the way it works is the five is more of a Wag the assoc the level four is conceptual the level

[96:01] three is preliminary design the level four excuse me two is final design and and the final one is Bid documents so there is a healthy range that is understood and expected that's associated with all of those the class 4 has a -30 and plus 50% range so let's use a round number like a $10 million project you could remove 3 million and say seven on the low end and you would say 15 on the high end for most people that's sort of an extraordinary range but it's a reminder of what is known and what is not known at that time so it is very typical when you go through the design process to revise your cost estimates at the 30 6090 but I would remind city council that even in the best of circumstances it's difficult to take into the bidding climate even when you have final documents we've had bids that have come in low but with 100% bid documents we have been off by 20 and 50% before and that's our Consulting Engineers best estimate so it is

[97:00] conceivable that this could be a $100 million project when we get down to the bid stage at this point it is okay I'm sorry to hear that but thank you yeah and there's one other thing to keep in mind and that's that we're not bidding the project right now in the Capital Improvements program when we put numbers into our CIP we use a 4% escalating fact Factor going forward so if you were to multiply that three or four or five years out there would be a natural escalation associated with both labor and the cost of materials as well and since these estimates were produced on in 2018 so we're already two years behind uh the latest numbers are 2019 2020 so these are present day estimates what you're looking at on the chart today okay thank you okay I've got Bob and then Mary Mark that Mark that was a perfect teup because I exactly where I was going could you put up slide 26 please so we can continue to build on what Mark started to talk about your opening act you bet I thanks Mark I'll I'll reciprocate next

[98:01] time so these are the numbers that Mark was referring to and we we I think we Now understand that there's a plus or minus pretty healthy um percentage here but just focusing on these numbers I I remember very um clearly um sitting up where these good people are sitting up in the audience in August of 2015 when we approved option D um the price teag I think thing was $22 million so here here we are four and a half years later it many multiples of $22 million but setting that aside um the money is going to have to come from someplace yeah correct um and I suspect we'll issue bonds and um those bonds will be paid for by uh storm water revenues is that a fair assumption correct some sort of water utility revenue is probably storm water right can you give us an idea I mean we're kind of throwing these numbers around somewhat cavarly U they're really really big numbers can you give us an idea on a per million dollar basis or per $10 million basis what the effect is on

[99:01] storm water rates for um let's say average homeowner I mean are we talking you know per million how many how many cents or how many dollars per month per homeowner are we talking about and if you don't know those numbers right now that's fine but I think it'd be really helpful because I don't really know the difference between 66 and 96 I mean I know it's 30 million but I don't know what that means to our residents and it would be helpful to understand are we talking a few cents per month per homeowner are we talking many dollars per month per homeowner for that $30 million Delta so I think we've done some of those calculations and what I recall that we put in the memo is the range that you see up there would result in um potential rate increases of 50 to 70% on the storm water fund and what I recall and Douglas correct me if I'm wrong we kind of looked at what impacts that might have to the average residential rate payer and it I'm I'm remembering 10

[100:00] 12 $15 per month kind of thing yeah the current storm water monthly rate for a residential customer is about $17 a month so so this would increase that by 50 to 75% correct and and typically would that be phased in over I know this project won't start for a few years but that would be phased in over a period of time or would people see a big 50% jump in their bills it could be either we we have some ability to navigate that in our in our sixe CIP as we're sort of spacing out projects okay so just I'm going to do a really quick math here you indicated that that these these numbers are 12 to uh what was what was the range you gave us for this this these numbers for class 4 it's considered negative 30% no no no these what the what the impact the average homeowner is between 66 and 96 so if you were to take $30 million for example theal the Delta the Delta

[101:01] okay the general rule of thumb we use for The Debt Service associated with a $30 million bond is about 10% so that would be $3 million a year for Debt Service right a 1% increase in the storm water utility is somewhere between $1,000 to 120 so you could safely say that Delta would be approximately 30% now the rates have been very good lately so the actual rates have been closer to 8% but from since the project would be a number of years out we would estimate The Debt Service closer to 10% okay that's that's fine for now um we're doing some realtime math here but if you guys could send us a follow-up email or memo and just maybe break these 66 96 93 down into what it really would be for an average homeowner on their storm water bill over the course of the bond which is presumably a 20 or 30-year bond is is that a fair assumption 20 is typical okay it would just be nice to know that you know so if you take the Baseline what what people are paying now and then how much more would be people be paying for all of the options for yeah or or

[102:02] pick the high and the low 66 96 just so we can understand what that Delta means we may make a decision for reasons other than economics but it would just be nice to know what that is yeah we can get that back to you great thanks can I just clarify um and just when we're speaking about percent increases to the storm water fee that of course is just one component of someone's water bill right and so just so people who are maybe watching can understand like about what percent of your overall water bill is the storm water fee yeah so the there are three components as you said Aaron there is a water component which is for the drinking water there's a component for the waste water and there's a component for the storm water in general averages I recall the water is around $35 a month the waste water is around 30 and then 17 so if that's 65 plus you know give or take another 20 the average is somewhere between 80 and 85 a month okay so that ju Just to be clear that and you can give us those numbers as well but just so people know it's not that the entire bill would go up by 50 to 70% but just the storm Mar no that

[103:02] component so the 50% for example right now on $17 would be $8.50 so if we're saying it's around 85 it might go to 92 if it was 92 it would go to 100 so it's more like a 7% increase in your overall Bill something we get us the numbers yeah good Barry so along the same lines um the memo actually says that the storm water and flood management utility rates would go up so it by 50 to 70% so is it both or just one so that's just the complete name Mary for the utility there is the water than the Wastewater when we bond for either water or Wastewater those are bonds together the storm water and flood management utility is just one it has a long name cuz we differentiate between sort of the local drainage component and the major drainage way is really the flood component but it's one utility

[104:00] okay got it thank you for that clarification um and then also the the increase that we're talking about is that for the um flood mitigation piece only or Does it include the Phill and the CU South impacts as well so what Bob is asking us for is to come back with some numbers for the high and the low so we would come back and and remind you what the rate is for the existing residential customer and then we would estimate what it would be for the low end at the 66 million and then what the impact to a monthly rate would be on the 96 as well and so what I'm asking is is it um for the 66 million or is it in column one is it for the 41 million or it's for the full 66 million and I and what Bob's asking is it the 66 million the high low being 66 and 93 and what I'm asking is um are we would the rates

[105:01] go up based on the total at the bottom or is it just for the flood mitigation it would be for the total the total project cost we would have to bond for that amount the total project cost thank you Rachel for the um Earth fill line 10 million to 34 million is that um only required in the event that the burm is taken out answer uh not in our opinion so I I think you'll hear a presentation later but the Boulder Valley uh guiding principles essentially it the area protected by Levy and the 500-year flood plane have the same requirements so we would need fill in both of those scenarios to elevate an area protected by a levy or an area protected by 500-year flood plane um and then in the case of the uh 100-year that would be located in the inundation area and the others would be actually located in

[106:01] areas that we would want to switch from an Oso land designation which has its own requirements to a pub land designation and that's where that fill um increases pretty significantly so CU has indicated that um if we left the burm in place that we would have a a good cost savings because we would need less fill you're dis agreeing with that um I I think it's open for discussion at this point um we we feel that the guiding principles are pretty clear that there can not be any developable or not any academic offices or structures that see you would want to build on the property in an area protected by a levy or in an 500-year flood plane which is what is we're talking about land okay so maybe when CU comes up later we can clarify that with them but if if it's a if it really is a cost that's only associated with the burm I would question and and that has implications on open space and and usefulness and restoration why that benefit would go on

[107:01] our utility bill rather than maybe be being paid for by open space funds if it's not really related to the flood mitigation project why would that again that only assumes that cuse accurate but if taking the burm out adds uh cost and the benefit is restoration of open space it's confusing to me why that would end up on anybody's utility bill and if I I'm sorry go ahead mind if I go first this time here um and just with respect to Rachel's questions I I think hers would apply to the 2500 Year events in the 100y year the Phill area is just where there's actual inundation right so I think it would be in that case it probably was isn't a question but for 200 500 year it's an excellent question is it fair and so to clarify we did all of the the modeling work that um Brandon LED with the assumption that the levy was removed and um we felt like that was we

[108:00] did that because that was consistent with the The Guiding principles and we tried to stick to that we would not disagree with the university that there could be some implications to fill costs um if the levy were to remain in place and that's something that there would be tradeoffs environment cost and um we haven't evaluated that in in this round of the work that we're doing anyone else I I just wanted to follow up on um Rachel's question about why would um the utilities Bill include that cost and I guess my question is why would the utilities Bill include The Fill cost so that's if it includes that cost why would it includ include the other cost just putting that out there we don't have to answer it but it's I guess it's sort of rhetorical well and so just the way we've thought about this in terms of

[109:01] that question has been in pretty broad strokes and typically if a project that we do uh requires environmental mitigation or costs associated with a a land owner to get an agreement to do the project the the utilities fund would would pay for those so that the project could go forward there's probably some analysis that could be done on that question um that that we have not done yet so in other words that's that's a point of negotiation I don't know that it's a point of a point of negotiation it's it's almost a legal analysis of what utilities would pay for I suppose it could potentially be a a point of negotiation or negotia with ourselves of what funds are are paying for it Adam quick question about Phil in general is what's the breakdown of cost of fill is most of it the fill itself or

[110:01] is it transportation is it do you have any I'm just wondering for yeah so CU imagine someone donates a bunch of their dirt from their backyard and all you know 50,000 homes so there are uh so to answer that question we've assumed all the fil needs to be imported to the site um there are a few sources of fill on the site not in the quantities that we're talking about so the levy contains about 60,000 cubic yards we're talking um for the 500 upwards of 1.3 million cubic yards um our excavation is not going to generate that volume of material so um if there is we're not aware of any sources that are that close that could provide that volume of fil dirt so that's why it's assumed to be imported and I think um I'll have to check but we've in assumed it's been imported at least 50 miles um and so we don't really know the transportation cost versus The Fill cost itself uh they're broken out in the back

[111:01] um so we we do have a more detailed estimate and it's broken out for the flood mitigation components and then the Earth fill and we've also made some um different assumptions for the Earth fill since it's not as um variable as the flood mitigation we've reduced some of those contingencies um it's a little a little more known of what a cubic yard of dirt would cost and where it would be coming from got it thank you any other questions okay so here's a process question um we can have a discussion now about the technical stuff we've heard and then move on into speaking about annexation or we can wait until we've fleshed out the annexation issue with questions and then we can have a more holistic discussion so I would ask for any input as to how we want to do that R chel and Bob wasting for number one okay that is to go go first on this yeah

[112:01] I agree with Rachel and so let me turn that back into a question to staff I mean I think um you're you're looking to get out of this room with some sort of indication from us I think you're looking for us to narrow this down to either one or two options so that we can do our our our reviews with our boards and commissions do some Community engagement and so that you can come back for a final decision from us in May and so I think you're hoping that we would send you a signal on these options right that's correct I guess I'm I'm I'm with Rachel as long as it's all kind of fresh her mind because I'm not sure that anything that we're going to talk about an annexation really affects these things we we could revisit if I'm wrong but I I think we have lots of numbers and lots of engineering analysis and I would agree with Rachel let's just see if we can pin this down now I'm okay with that anyone else have objections makes total sense to me to decouple these cool um then let's begin

[113:01] who would like to kick us off with the discussion of what we've just heard Rachel why not um uh 2500 years don't seem viable so I would take them off the table I think it would be helpful to have engagement from boards on the question of the um Levy that's in place and whether that's a um a cost that we want to take on associated with and also it would be helpful for me if we um drill down on some additional questions to obbt and Community engagement but I would I don't see how it does US much good to engage the community on do you want 100 versus 500 if 500 is not permittable and it's got this um hugely negative impact on the environment and it and we're getting really good flood protection that is standard so I think think it would be great if we could give staff direction to go forth with 100 and and and that we start on community engagement there for all the reasons that Rachel just St I agree that 100 Year makes most

[114:01] sense plus it is the most economically viable in addition to the environmental uh sustainability and the fact that it just from an engineering standpoint makes the most sense Mark and then Aaron yeah I would third that um I don't think that I think Rachel is correct there's not much point in talking about uh possible solutions that we can't bring into reality um uh the 100 year looks like it's permittable uh it provides benefits it's more cost effective and uh I think that's the one we should be talking about uh at the moment yeah I'm sorry I I'll agree with that I think Rachel summed up pretty well I mean we've always hoped to be able to do 500 a year for a small marginal cost but when we hear about the potential lack of permability and the in higher impacts to sensitive open space areas I think looks like 100e is the way to go and of course we really need as we all know to settle in on an option that we can then move to the next stage of

[115:00] design uh so that we can get something constructed as soon as possible anyone else Mary so I agree with what's been said um I would like to pursue um analyzing that 8% additional for um climate mitigation anyone else want to weigh in so I guess I will um back when we made the initial decision on cost estimates that were years old the 500 year made a lot of sense because it was a very small Delta compared to the 100 year so that's why we ended up there because we could protect a lot more people over time and mitigate against climate change and do so at a premum prum that didn't seem particularly High I think we went from the high 30s to the mid-40s and so it was just something that seemed like best practice at the time

[116:01] um I'll be happy to support moving forward with the 100 year because I do want to see a project get done and it sounds like there's a lot more flexibility with the 100 year and that's great but I will point out that a bunch of the costs that we're basing our Delta on are based around estima ability to to build and so we don't need to go there for the guidance that we're giving on the technical but when we have our next conversation I'll be pointing out that there is a linkage at coupling as Mary said between development landowner interest and the options that we have before us to move forward with so in order to move forward I'm going to support the 100-year um selection but I will do so noting that our our hands are being constrained somewhat by the land owner on the site anybody else is that clear for staff oh Adam sorry yeah just one more piece to add to that I think

[117:00] there were 16 drainageways in Boulder this is one and I assume there's plenty of flood mitigation to address on the 15 others besides this one as well correct so we're not we're not like done with flood mitigation after this project okay so it's probably worth having some money to address the other ones as well there are uh utility staff will be returning to council for a study session on April 14th to provide an overview of the storm and flood utility and it will cover all aspects not just the major drainage way elements but everything else at that time perfect I mean that's a very good point um when it was a smaller Delta it didn't seem like as big of an impact but now that the Delta's got really large that's a really important point anyone else all right very good part one done by 8 o' Good Start thank you all it was a really good presentation thank you great

[118:16] information I guess just one more bit as your backing up we will be having just a reminder we'll be having a um Su South process subcommittee meeting earlier than expected we'll do it on Thursday to work on questions for engagement with boards and commissions and the public and so on correct so just for everyone who might not have known that um so if the members of the public or other members of council have questions like Rachel mentioned the the burm as something that we might want to ask about if people have other points about the more technical components of what we're doing please forward them to us

[119:00] and we can make sure that staff hears about them good evening welcome to part two of your study session um Phil kler the city's planning department um what I'd like to do is to provide um process committee suggested um spending just a couple of minutes on some of the background and some of the annexation processes that we have talked that Council has talked about in the past um primarily for the benefit of some of the newer council members that hav haven't seen it yet then the two other pieces I was going to get into briefly would be the community benefits question um particularly as it relates to CU South and annexations in general as well as questions around the planning reserve a few considerations around that um that was a topic that was brought up on at the February 4th meeting questions around process and so we issued a memo um yesterday that you may or may not have seen and so we'll we'll we'll give you some of the highlights of that and then turn it over to CU Boulder they have a presentation that they'd like to to to um they'd like to also address

[120:01] Council um I I would say from a planning department perspective it would be helpful to leave this discussion with uh you know a pretty solid understanding about council's expectations in terms of planning and land use analysis leading up to that may decision on the flood mitigation project up to this point we've really been looking at itar as what are the land use and other planning implications as a result of the different flood mitigation options um I think now as we were writing the memo just so you know kind of what we were thinking was um kind of in the middle of that that's when the the university resubmitted an annexation application that talked a bit about future housing that we'll get into today um and then so we kind of switch gears a little bit and I think that information has since evolved as well um also with questions around the planning Reserve we just want to make sure that we're on the same page as Council and so um I would just say that that would probably be our Our Hope for for this particular part of the study session so with that um so as you know the site was a gravel mining operation for many years until the

[121:01] university purchased it in 1996 um the university did submit an application to the city of Boulder for annexation in February of 2019 um that is still an active application and was amended last month in January um there are no current plans for Annex for for development on the site currently um but the university has indicated some near-term um um uh goals for the site which would be annexation and furnishment of of City Utilities as needed um the creation of some low Ina impact recreational athletic fields um enhancing some of the trail system as well as the uh tennis courts on the site as well um a master plan for the site would still be several years down the road I can pause for questions I see possibly so um annexations in general are a legislative process to amend the boundary of a city um and land in Boulder can be considered for annexation if it complies with the

[122:01] state annexation statutes as well as the policies of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan um the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan does also include a local framework the Area 1 two and three map when making decisions on annexation and this is one of the important considerations um because this particular map has resulted in what we now know as a strong Community Edge a compact Community with and a urban rural distinction that really separates the Boulder Valley from a lot of our Pure cities um and it's comprised of three different areas area one shown on the top left is generally within the city of Boulder and that's the area that is urbanized that we provide a full Suite of urban services to area two are areas adjacent to the city shown in Gray on the top right um that are eligible for annexation and now areas one and two combined are what we call our service area so when we're looking at um a plan for our utilities through a master planning process and so on we'll look at those two areas combined because at some point

[123:02] in the future we would anticipate serving them with Urban Services area three um is actually separated into two different um um sort of um categories um the bottom left would be the area three Rural Preservation that is the area in the county not eligible for annexation that the city and county have worked together for many decades to ensure um a rural um character and uses and then there's the area 3 planning reserve and that was uh brought up a couple of we couple of weeks ago that's about 500 acres in North Boulder that is basically on reserve for do for doing detailed planning um to accommodate uses Community interests that can't otherwise be provided and accommodated in areas one and two and as you know see South at just over 300 acres um is the largest undeveloped site um in area 2 eligible for annexation um it's really would be a portion of the city's Southwest um um

[124:00] Urban Edge as you're leaving town let's see so after purchasing the site in 1996 the university did approach the city several times with interest in looking at the land uses on the site really to accommodate a long-term need for the University of of future development um we deferred those conversations until a plan for flood mitigation was completed in 2015 that was when the plan was completed and so in 2016 we approached the university and began the discussion of examining the land uses on the site as part of the major update to the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan it was a pretty in-depth public process and one of the things that we heard throughout that was um a need for greater certainty about what might happen on the site and so with that we developed um something unique The Guiding principles um and Incorporated that into a chapter of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and

[125:00] that is intended to guide future annexation agreements or multiple agreements between the city and the university for use of the site um and with that it took a map-based approach looking at different areas of the site and what we' what we would anticipate happening in those particular areas one of those sites as Brandon mentioned is 65 acres of land designated as Parks Urban other and that's where that was that initial preferred option option D concept that was the footprint generally of of that option um and where what we would anticipate there being um primarily flood mitigation um as well as the um recreational activities where appropriate and so in areas that are perhaps less ecologically sensitive as well as conserving and restoring areas with higher ecological value we also um preserved 118 ACR of land designated as open space other um and that is land in the in the comprehensive plan in the Boulder Valley that um was designated prior to 1981 that the city and county have had an interest in preserving in

[126:00] some form um and so that actually broke it out into two different distinctions one being the area outside the levy adjacent to City open space being a bit more sensitive and to minimize disturbance in that area and then at looking at the area inside the levy as potentially um opening up to some some Li very limited uses and restoration compensatory mitigation um and then finally the 139 Acres that was remaining was um um designated public in the comprehensive plan and that's what you would consider as like the development tract for the for the site um that's where the university would would would seek to develop it's it's predominantly housing um and then some small scale academic facilities small scale being relative to the buildings out on the East Campus really this was one of the pieces that we discussed with Council a little while ago and I won't read this and don't expect everyone to read this but we wanted to show this you talked actually in this room a bit about this annexation

[127:01] purpose statement and the thing that stuck out at me at the time was that there was a special emphasis given to engaging City boards as well as city council during public meetings um in the spirit of transparency and so this is a purpose statement for the annexation that Council has talked about this can be amended really at any time it's not an official official document um and then the last piece on the background before going into the other two topics would be um the schedule that we've talked about in the past and so Council has recognized that this is a high priority project um and has indicated that a desire to have a more enhanced public process with the annexation what we are we are in that kind of Grade box area talking about flood flood mitigation options and potential land use implications are our approach to this so far has been to support our colleagues in planning's approach to in choosing uh flood mitigation option in that may time frame um because once that option is

[128:00] chosen a lot of the other pieces are able to be resolved so Transportation we'll know how much land is in play for open space and so on the concept that Council was interested in pursuing would be for the University and the city to negotiate a preferred path forward um and bring that to City boards and so this would be following the May decision we would then bring that input to the city council study session have an engagement window and present a path forward for the annexation not necessarily all of the legal documents but a path forward um for a public hearing with Council once we got that direction it's at that point we would have the final public hearings um for annexation of the land that middle row is the row that's extra in the annexation process that we've talked about in the past again this is something that we've worked with a process Committee in the past to look at Council as well this can be amended really at any time by action um you know from

[129:02] Council just on the on that middle so where are we right now we're in that gray box right yes so the city board's input would be coming between now and may but you're saying that would also be after May so are you saying we would get engagement right now from boards and the public and then have our May decision and then also get more input and steady session and engagement I can see how that's confusing you know I was thinking the gray box is May um and then really once if we have a flood mitigation option in place and we're able to conduct Transportation studies negotiate open space conveyance all of those other issues we would then be able to ideally have a path forward for annexation that would say this is how all the puzzle pieces fit together and that's what we would bring through that middle line and and what would the timing look like because there's separate engagement right now coming up between now and May and board's input so that's a separate there's kind of like a middle middle row maybe right between between I guess before the gray

[130:01] y so then that's May and then when is the city boards when is the study session Community engagement what what do you visualize for that timeline this has been hard to plan uh with the annexation um I would say it would be ideal I would personally as the case manager for the annexation application prefer that most of that happen in 2020 um and we move into 2021 but again depending on what the direction we get in May kind of will will you know influence that but at least a month for each of those steps Le month or two so just following up you talked about a host of things Transportation studies you talked about um open space transfer agreements whatever those are going to look like and the um actual formal legal annexation documents how long do you anticipate those will take to produce the transportation study we've already basically have have talked about

[131:00] what the scope of of that would look like and so that as well as some of the other we've been trying to work on some of these components to at least prime the pump to be ready to have discussions with the university um as soon as possible but um probably a quarter 3 months to do the transportation analysis and we have representatives from a transportation department here that can correct me we'd also would be negotiating the open space conveyance um um negotiating the development restrictions that we can get into in a little bit if you'd like um and then a suite of other potential issues but overall that's at least a half probably a half year to get through that um and and then start bringing it through boards into a council study session okay so you said transportation study open space conveyance development restrictions and then are there others um so here's a list of of some of the the high points and some of these will be easier than others and so two two big

[132:01] things happened in the first quarter of 2019 um the university submitted their application and that was at staff's request um framed around the guiding principles um that was also the time where we move forward with the um variant one 500e option and so we responded to that um in March of last year through the lens of there's um some um a couple of issues that we need to resolve relating to inundation of the public land which um was talked about earlier today um and so with that we did we've been focusing on that for the last six months with our colleagues in utilities but yes the term sheet that's included right now in the application is 30 some odd pages long um and it includes a lot of different things many of which which I think we can we can um come to an agreement on we pulled out the top six issues and that's those are those there land for recreation development open space a concept of a uh payment in Le of taxes um transportation

[133:02] analysis and then a potential joint Public Safety facility that would house um um city fire personnel and and University public safety personnel on the site those are the six things that we pulled out as probably needing the most work I can keep going and and wrap up so um and again this was the area that of inundation that we were talking about which which may not need further discussion this [Applause] evening and with that um we did um proposed at least starting to explore a few different options um really to address the land inundated by the flood mitigation project those options didn't really we can get into these details but given the time I I'll move forward um we didn't see the three as a viable necessarily a viable path forward um and so we didn't pursue them more since um since that submitt last year um and then leading into 2019 we

[134:02] heard from the University that there may be some questions around future housing on the site um that was formalized in January uh last month um particularly around whether or not the design of the flood mediation project would impact their ability to provide student housing and faculty housing um and as such the university has more comments on that that they'll be getting into in just a moment um what we did want to talk about was particularly the annexation policy um in Boulder we have an annexation policy in the comprehensive plan one of one of the bullets of it is basically it says we will only Annex area 2 properties with significant development potential if it provides a unique opportunity um and uniquely benefits the community some of those benefits include um permanently affordable housing but it also includes things like um environmental preservation um on public uses such as flood mitigation and so we um wanted to at least remind Council some of the other things that are still on the table in terms of a community benefits package whether that

[135:00] be housing flood mitigation Land Development limitations such as Building height neighborhood compatibility view view shed protection and so on and then we come to the planning Reserve so in on February 4 there was some questions from Council around process steps to move forward with the planning Reserve we we provided um we took a a dive into that and we we summarized the process as well as some of the key issues that we were able to um unravel over the last week and a half or so relating to that topic um just a few facts about the planning Reserve um it's really an interim classification um for a council to decide whether or not this land should be put into Area 3 Rural Preservation or whether or not it should be incorporated into the service area area and be an urbanized area of the city the city of Boulder owns the total acreage is just under 500 Acres the city of Boulder owns um parcel a was purchased by the housing division at roughly 30 Acres um and then

[136:02] um 190 Acres within the planning Reserve were purchased with funds from the 0.25 sales and use tax and bonding measure approved by the voters in uh 1995 um and there's really the memo described um the three steps um of the process that we would have to go through and really it's the um um can we do it can we provide services and that's a baseline Urban Services study that's looking at um uh inventory of all the services that we could provide and these are the process steps outlined in the memo and then there's the what so what's the unmet need that can't be accommodated in areas one and two that we would like to accommodate at the planning Reserve that is an unmet need study um and then after that is completed um council could then decide whether or not we move forward with a service area expansion plan and that's really the how so we've identified we can serve the area what's the you what's

[137:02] the unmet need that's the what and then the service area expansion plan which is roughly equivalent to an area plan process would determine how we do that with development phasing land use infrastructure plans and so on the memo when we started to chart that out a bit more um with a potential option of extending the current midterm update that put us out until about about 2022 um and again this is something we have not done before so there's not really precedent for it and to just show our thinking we included that month by Monon estimate in the in the memo just just to show you those are very much approximate um and so wanted to say that as well um a couple of key issues we identified would be the timing of development plans and so that service area expansion plan we we would probably need land use and infrastructure plans to move forward with that that's not something the university will have for quite some time there's some um issues around disposal um with parks and and Recreation uses on the land um there's

[138:01] our established process so these steps really need to happen in a midterm or a major update it's a comprehensive plan and so what we could do is extend a midterm update of the comprehensive plan or approach the county about amending our IGA as well and then there's the known so again we don't know what we don't know and there's studies that could ear unearth things that we don't necessarily anticipate right now um and it could add different factors into the mix um um particularly as you're talking about Parks land and so that concludes my presentation what we could do is to break for questions if anyone if any council members have any or we can um um segway into um university Representatives they also wanted to address Council this evening I propos we do University representatives and then have our questions and discussion okay go ahead Phil could you go back to slide 29 59 sorry so Joe um so I think Phil did a

[139:02] good job in the memo of of kind of giving us the detail on why I'm sorry no I have a question I'm just raising my hand okay okay all right great so slide 59 I think summarizes what you put in Greater detail fill in nothing yeah that one um so if we did the super accelerated kind of deviated from our process and um kept the midterm update open the hypothetically we could get to an annexation decision by 2022 if we didn't um we could get to an annexation decision by 2027 and you laid out in the memo all the steps to get there so we don't have to go into those but this is a question really For You Joe at what point in time is there a point of convergence for you where it matters whether CU is building at CU south or not I mean it sounds like right now it doesn't matter because you're planning you're doing flood design work and it kind of doesn't matter if they're building on that little Western bit or not and we've kind of narrowed in on 100

[140:02] years so you kind of know what the fill potential is um or fill needs are are at what what point in time if you continue a pace do you think it's going to matter to you whether CU Builds on CU south or does something different from an engineering stand point so when we were talking uh earlier about the the challenges of the project and we went through all the permitting agencies and I mentioned the land use components of it probably the the biggest one for the flood mitigation to proceed and going back to my initial remarks we don't own the property and so we need an agreement and the the CU has offered to donate 80 acres for our use which we appreciate But ultimately the annexation piece has to get settled for us to to move forward and later on when we get to the end of the presentation um talking about engagement and process going forward I I want to

[141:02] talk to you about building in some checkpoints to answer that very question because there's we continue to move forward with this annexation and and land use thing looming over the project and there's just uncertainty associated with that so possibly a conversation for the process subcommittee of can we build in checkpoints where at specific milestones we all check in and say are we making progress on the annexation should we keep going with the flood design or do we is it all coming together so I'm not answering your question when so I'm going to try it again when yeah well I I get the fact that we need the land owners consent yeah to to to do to actually move dirt so I get I get that and and so just just um bear with me assuming that the land owner is not saying no landowner is saying well yes subject to some conditions what I'm really trying to get into is is when let's say the land owner said yes no

[142:00] matter what regardless of whether they built there or not they were said you know what you guys can do this what we haven't we the landowner haven't decided is where we going to build on the western portion this 129 acres in the western portion we've been talking about we haven't decided that yet but don't worry about that because that's our decision at what point in time will their decision about building or not building on those 129 Acres affect your engineering assuming you have landowner approval I'm trying to think about how to answer that so we can proceed right now without delay and a lot of the the costs associated with providing the 129 acres are really indep completely independent from um our flood design there is some connection to environmental tradeoffs the levy being there or not are we doing the fill or not and those topics are going to be of

[143:01] real interest to the open space staff and board and so getting some certainty before we do a disposal there would be good but we can really proceed with our flood design I believe with without delay now and when so I'm just going to try one more time because I I'm also interested in this when because you described a permitting process that we have to go through with the feds um which includes FEMA and the Fish and Wildlife service so there's an intersection with the open space comment that you made and with the core of engineers and so can you start those permitting processes be without knowing what CU will do most of them yes some of the environmental ones where the fill would affect impacts and and area we would need certainty on those components of it

[144:00] before I believe before those environmental permits could go forward so that would include what's going to happen with the levy presumably as well as what your fill is going to be like yeah and so when would you anticipate being able to make those applications that particular environmental application yeah I'm trying to remember Brandon's timeline slide of of when we're um when we're starting the the permitting process what what year was that a year from May a year from now mhm so a year from now if we didn't have a resolution on land owner issues we could run into a a place where we're causing delay yeah okay thank you thanks for helping me answer that question you're

[145:01] welcome so I have Mary mirbi and Rachel on the stack towards the end of the presentation you said that we could do one of two things we could extend um the midterm update or we could amend the IGA could you talk a little bit about the pluses and minuses of doing one or the other sure and and so Council can authorize staff to do that first step the Baseline Urban Services study really anytime um and that was actually talked about I believe pretty recently of maybe 2021 and or 2022 and then we'd be going into the 2025 major update of the comp plan and and look at the entire planning res serve um that can be done really at any time so it's those next steps around the next two two studies um that we would that would need to take place particularly the service area expansion plan during one of those two updates and so right now we saw it as well we'd have

[146:03] to wait until 2025 to do that and so that really pushes it out then a couple more years to 27 another option once we left the February 4th meeting was we are in a midterm up rate right now and so we're at the beginning of it so technically speaking we could council could choose to extend that midterm update um to Encompass these things though it would probably hold up everything else that would be approved in that midterm update and so that's that's a negative um we would also you know want to make sure that we're bringing the C Boulder County along with us um and we're Consulting with them um in this process because they will have an approval role at the end of this at the end of that process as well if does that start to answer yeah that gave me a um a minus on the extending the midterm um I didn't hear anything about the renegotiating

[147:01] the IGA oh so you could approach the county again about amending the IGA that says you can only do it in a midterm or major update you know you could make the IGA which implements the comp plan say anything you would like to but however I would you know talking to others who were were managing the process last time to amend the IGA it took several years and so it was a pretty pretty big lift I think during the last Amendment um and so I think that's a I don't think that's a option to move expeditiously okay thank you so towards the end of your presentation you were talking about again what it would take um to use that planning Reserve in one of the items you talked about was um that parks and wreck would have to vote to would it be dispose of or give us the land um but because also around the I mean from the

[148:00] packet you know I read about the charter issues and that because it was voted in with the the tax we'd have just have to follow along with the charter rules so between the board and the charter I mean is this going to be a really difficult process if we if that was the route that was chosen to go and use that land as a swap we've looked at this so far as kind of the ven diagram of like the city and CU and seedot and others kind of trying to meet in the middle and that definitely throws some more bubbles into the V diagram of trying to T and so I don't see a scenario where it makes it easier um and so it would yeah it would require majority vote by the um um Parks and Rec advisory um board um as well as a recommendation I Planning Commission Council action to do the disposal but there would be other questions that would then come into play around the city's long-term interest in Parks and Recreation uses particularly like are we now is that now something that we need to reexamine on CU South if we're

[149:00] swapping the land is that going to be a region and so these there will be a lot of offshoot conversations that will probably happen from that okay yeah all right thank you so my my first question kind of d tales with marabis um when I know we're not I think I might drop dead by saying these two words Hogan pancost I don't know will I be struck or not I was in the room when when that was uh decided and and I think there was talk of the zombie has been killed because we turned it into parks and reck land so I do wonder how steep is the ask for disposal of parks land because it sounded when when Hogan pancost was decided that that was a a like high bar and we weren't going to overcome that pretty easily if anybody ever wanted to do something different different there so that's my first question and then second um Bob said something about so 2022 we're you know we're at are done with annexation and I just wanted to clarify I read that as we're just getting to the start of where we could

[150:01] and back it up 2022 seems very ambitious to me for this plan so I don't I I I'm I'm suspicious of whether we can really do this on this expedited basis like I've got a lot of people who are who who are reaching out to me today when they realized this was on the table like that live in North Boulder and and are Furious that we would be looking at FASTT tracking this so I can't imagine we're able to minimize public input and we've got an extra body so it's going to be I think five body review if we count parks and wrecks so um even if we get to that 2022 ambitious date that's just starting the annexation discussion right that's where we are now as CU South we're there in 2022 yeah I'd love to comment so the first piece and we have members of Parks and Recreation here at as well but I think the easy answer to that is that it um it would be a high bar um it's been in the Parks and W master plan as a long-term strategic holding for them um and um for their long-term needs um and they can

[151:01] elaborate on that if if they would like to the second piece being that yeah there's other things that are not included in here that still would need to take place um and so that would be um the anex negotiating the annexation agreement that would be the the annexation process itself andc you that's just when they would start looking at the property right is 2022 so and just tying that together like I think I heard Joe say a year is when we need a decision and if we're looking at 2022 the early CU is going to look at it and then we're adding an extra body of review and 2022 is probably optimistic I just want to make sure we're all dealing in in the world of reality here that's also how I read the the materials that that the university um would present this evening um yes yes one else just a quick question about the area itself plan Reserve is there any critical habitat for any thing there

[152:03] there's a lot of prairie dogs um and um but it was largely so the planning Reserve was chosen in the90s after a comprehensive analysis of all that area three land they were getting some development proposals in to develop some of it and so this was chosen as really the only spot in Area 3 that was suitable for development and one of those reasons was um it was high and dry it was um there were fewer natural um and environmental constraints as other areas of of Area 3 so apologies if this just got asked I had to step out for a minute so I no in the 2022 time frame it included the Baseline Urban Services study being done in 2020 and adopted in q1 2021 is that what I'm seeing in the memo yep and and I want to emphasize those are rough pretty rough estimates what we did was we tried to outline all the steps and estimate just how many months that would take and just to give

[153:00] a ballpark right but just my understanding was at our Retreat that we just did we specifically didn't put um the Baseline Urban Services study on the 2020 work plan so I was just confused that that timeline was assuming it was done in 2020 but we had just decided not to yep Council can do it any time I think the other the previous conversation was are we looking at the entire planning reserve and I think this analysis was are we looking at specific land to um to do the a negotiated land swap with the university and so you can look at the whole planning Reserve or just a portion of it and so this anticipates just a portion got it although um my understanding is we would have to do more than just the city-owned land right because there's that one six contiguity so you'd have to include at least some other land we would have to include yeah there's a property adjacent that we would have to or some property that we would have to approach to include thanks Rachel it looks like maybe the parks and wreck person I'm sorry I don't know your

[154:02] name I feel bad about that Jeff I'm told I could shed some light on that other question so the related to the timing of the parks and rec Advisory Board uh disposal process or how that works how steep of a hill that is to climb because we right now we don't have parks and wrecks needing to weigh in or dispose if we just stay at CU South and don't look at a land swap so we're adding a new layer to this issue and I'm wondering how how big of a layer it is yeah so I'm Jeff Haley the planning design engagement manager for parks and W um so in terms of the process overall as Phil mentioned uh the parks and wreck Advisory Board would have to vote in favor of the disposal um disposition of the property then that would go to planning board and then ultimately Council um you know it similar as Phil mentioned that there's not a lot of information as to what the intended use of the property was and and other than just a reserve of property for us to use for future parks and W needs um there was a lot of information about U ball

[155:00] fields and indoor Recreation facilities even cultural programs and that sort of thing so I think in terms of our Parks and Rec board to really understand the the property and to dispose of that um they'd want to understand are those needs not being met um or could they be met in other places throughout the city um to really be comfortable in disposing of the property or if there was a consideration of a land swap is there another place that that could be such as the the cuu South property that those amenities could be located on those um within those lands as well and would would there be if we if you just gave us the land and disposed of it um I think it would be I don't know 160 Acres we're looking at roughly um would we owe with the the city owe money for that or would there be an expectation as with open space disposal that you'd be made whole with other land or or things like that yeah I I think with the 0.25 C sales tax that was used for the intended use was

[156:00] Parks and Recreation purposes there would probably be U reimbursement of some kind for the the funding that was used to purchase the property um and perhaps David gear could speak more to that but the other thing would be just the land swap as well as understanding if that like for like goes into account you know we we would have to research all that but the the funding that was used initially through the bond or the 0.25 Cent sales tax and ultimately the bond was for the parks and W purposes mark would if if the CU South property and I'm not suggesting we would go this direction but if we did a land swap for the planning Reserve property would you not in effect be made whole or substantially whole with the property we're acquiring at CU South if we made it available for Parks generally yes um and that's when I went back and read through all the memos um and information of when this property when the planning Reserve was purchased

[157:01] um at the end of the day it's just acreage that the the parks department has set aside to for future needs so um in terms of working with our Advisory Board and others as long as we could demonstrate here are the needs that we feel the community has now for parks and wreck purposes and that those could be identified and um improved upon the CU property um that could be made whole so to speak okay um so whether it's at the planning Reserve CU South at the end of the day if there's ball fields wck facilities pools there's even talk of another Golf Course back in the in the 90s so wherever that falls would be kind of the intention I think okay thanks um Aaron and then Bob and than Rachel but I mean isn't there a major geographical component though I mean if you're if you're reserving land for a future Park in North Boulder swapping out for lands in South Boulder park lands that are basically as far away as you can get and

[158:01] still be on the city Edge seems like you're taking you're shifting things away from people who live up at that North Edge of Town shifting amenities away from them right so it's not a one and of course it'd be great for people near the newfields but you know you'd have to do an analysis wouldn't you where that need is in the town true we'd want to look at the uh just kind of the regional context of Transportation access location that sort of thing in the initial um discussions back in the 90s when this process was going forward the intention was more of just having a large expanse of contiguous acreage to have a like a city park um type of classification so um certainly we would look we would want to look at proximity to Future residential areas perhaps The Gun Barrel community and other Northern parts of the city and the region and how that would come into effect um but in terms of just having property of where these types of facilities could be built um you know we could consider the CU

[159:01] South property just for in terms of what those needs would be um so Bobs and then Rachel Jee I remember back in 2009 when I was in the Parks port and you were in the parks department we had lots of discussions about what we could do with this 160 Acres Way Out uh at the edge of town and um back then 11 years ago we didn't have anywhere close to any money to develop it and I assume that now 11 years later in 2020 we don't have any money close to doing anything with it right there's no immediate plans or immediate funds to do anything with that is that right that's correct as a matter of fact we've have we have other Parks priorities that are actually R in Q andr in our CIP that we would probably develop first before we developed this so if we had another 10 or $20 million this is probably not where it would go it would go to Valmont or some of our other um Parks needs as that fair assumption yes that's correct So within our six-year CIP Area 3 is nowhere within that it's not mentioned within

[160:01] our current capital investment strategy uh really the only mention Area 3 has within any of our planning documents is within our master plan as a vision level category of funding if and when ultimate dollars were realized to just even a conceptual planning process of what might go there so that's a sore subject don't go there yeah Rachel to Bob's point though it would it would stay Green Space up north if North if we didn't put cuu South there that land would never be developed for housing it's parks and and green space and so I think we're going to get major Community objection to losing that land up north um but also if I'm following correctly now we are and I'm not sure why we're looking at a land swap in the first place so as this conversation goes forward maybe that'll be apparent to me but we're now talking about doing a land swap kind of to to maybe preserve it for open space and then we're going to give another land swap for parks and wrecks and add another body of review that's not necessarily going to proove I don't

[161:00] understand why we'd be looking at two land swaps at this point in the 11th Hour of this project okay shall we do we have more questions um if not then maybe we should have cu come and I have questions for parks but I'll wait till after we've heard from CU you go I'm G dve that you just press down okay cool well hi everybody thank you for inviting us to come today and asking us to present so I'm Francis straper and this is Derek Silva representing the

[162:01] University of Colorado Boulder today mic I can is that a little better okay so um we wanted to go through a fairly quick presentation with you all and then um I think give you some opportunity to ask us some questions and on all of these various topics that you've been covering so far so what we're going to talk about is just what has been the recent process the annexation Community benefits very similar to what Phil showed you so that won't take long what were the annexation requirements that we stated previously why 129 Acres a little bit that has been covered but we'll address that further and then recent updates um what we see is some of the issues some of the circulating misconceptions we think are out there and then just a quick conclusion so recent process first of all I think we should give ourselves a high five as a team um you know we we

[163:01] are working together I think to um achieve a higher common goal we want to address safety in the community and the county the city and the university with Community input all did a pretty fabulous job of doing that through the B Valley comprehensive planning process over 2 years and that was a major achievement so I think we could give ourselves a round of high fives on that um we all came to the table in the spirit of compromise to achieve flood control while balancing there are many Community priorities as we all know um with the obligation that the university has to meet its Mission and the city to provide life and safety so I think it it's been a good convergence there and I have to say the staff put in some extraordinary dedication time and energy to consider the many Alternatives that came at them over the years for flood control at the request of council and the community as a whole so all of those I think are something that has really

[164:00] moved the process along and I think this Council and immediately prior Council can take a lot of personal credit for that so just to talk a little about um annexation Community benefits just to re I think Phil covered a lot of this 80 acres and we did communicate to the city last year that it no longer relied on the use of those acres for actual flood mitigation but that we would provide that 80 to be used however you saw fit so I think that really addresses um I think something that Rachel brought up if in that um 100 year that you are leaning towards you use I think it was 64 acres is that correct Phil um that leaves you 16 to use towards that open space um mitigation and I might point out that that that rectangle at the bottom of the um outline of our property is a ferally designated Wetland immediately adjacent to open space so that might be a great

[165:02] place to start um future housing um would be designed to be Compact and clustered Village style we're not subject to the city's height limit but we agreed to comply with that in this space um we are going to work to um protect and complement the views um we would prioritize housing for faculty staff and upper division students and we'll talk about our update no large sports venues provide connections to Trails and welcome the community to continue walk run cross country ski um seek opportunities to protect the scenic and natural value make the recreational Fields available to Community Partners create a multimodal hub which we'd have to work on with the city depending on how the development works out and then provide a 60-day review for the city on any future site development up from 45 so I'll turn this over to Derek to talk about what our requirements were

[166:00] initially uh thank you Council um so these are our key annexation requirements as they appear in our application the first is 129 acres for potential future development uh the second is the ability to connect to City Utilities and that's what results from annexation and we want to note here that um we will cover our own infrastructure cost including utilities rows multi-use paths Etc uh and there's a couple of exceptions to that but generally uh the utilities exist at the boundaries of the site and we will be responsible for the cost for connecting to those and uh bringing those utilities to our development locations uh the city will cover the increased cost due to deplacement of access roads Warehouse tennis court Etc by the flood structure and those are incremental costs that are determined by the displacement of those structures and the road by the flood mitigation structure if the city removes the levy the remove that removal shall not

[167:00] increase the FEMA 100e or 500-year flood plane on the property and then an additional 30 acres for recreation fields which can be located in the detention or Oso areas as well from so the 129 Acres um there's been question about why 129 Acres that we've heard asked throughout this process and this resulted from the negotiated outcome between CU Boulder and the four voting bodies of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan uh the 129 acres is the area designated as public and was identified for future development for CU Boulder in the bbcp and then that entire 129 Acres exists outside of the 500-year flood plane so that's that is an relatively unregulated flood plane here in Boulder as most of you know uh save critical facilities and this 129 Acres represents less than 50% of the 308 Acres composing the property and our ability to develop

[168:01] this uh this minority area of the site is going to allow us to continue to meet our mission as a state's Flagship research institution so where we are in the where we are in the discussions recently with the city is we've come back and had some discussions about what would it take for the University to recommit to housing it's its predominant use um of the area to be developed on the property because as Phil showed you we updated that annexation application to say we would have to pause and consider depending on how the development of the flood mitigation actually shaped up to see if it was an appropriate place for housing um and then the second question was whether the university would consider swapping sea Boulder South property for City owned land in that planning Reserve Area 3 you were just discussing so as far as housing goes We believe We we've talked to a number of people at the University in our leadership that we can continue to

[169:00] commit that that is the predominant use of the site for housing if the city can agree to allow multiple entries into the property so in other words we don't have a community that's been developed behind the dam with one single access road coming over the dam um but if we create multiple entries then we think we've got a more open neighborhood and we're thinking Highway 93 is a easy one and then maybe there are some adjacent neighborhood things so nothing is a predominantly used and I think that was a lot of the concern of the local communities we don't want a stream of traffic flowing through our neighborhood but if there are three or four entrances and exits from that property now it's much more accessible um into the rest of the community okay so now we're getting into the the swap for city land which is a continuation of where fail left off and the discussion left off before we came up so we have concerns about the proposal and it's likely it to create substantial delays in the flood

[170:00] mitigation project and as far as we know it doesn't produce any benefits for the flood mitigation and it seems like it's responsible to community pressures regarding any development of Cu South and we just cannot recommend this course of action then the reasons are multiple but primarily the reason is that there's so much uncertainty as to what can occur in this process even getting to the to the to the to the point where we can get it to go from area three to area two is uncertain and then beyond that our feasibility studies on the site are not guaranteed to produce an outcome where we think the site is feasible for a trade due to the fact that the city's property north of Boulder is not eligible today for annexation and sign ific level of resources and time required we would only agree to begin evaluation the feasibility of a land swap if and when the city can complete that shift from Area 3 to area two making it eligible for annexation and agree that annexation of the property would occur concurrent with any swap of

[171:01] Cu Southland and here's some issues this is going back to the CU South site uh so with the cost for fill there are higher costs as we've already seen and this feels like a a repetition of the discussion we already had earlier um so I'll kind of mow through this one but really we all know that with 200 and 500 there's additional fill to create the 129 developable Acres uh and that's if the levy is removed if the Lev is not removed those costs drop by millions of dollars um the trade-offs are as has been discussed earlier is there's less OPP opportunity to do Reclamation in Oso um but an opportunity that could exist for keeping the levy is that there's more opportunity for the community to continue enjoy walking running walking their dogs cross country skiing Etc on the levy um so some of the circulating misconceptions we wanted to address is and I think those have been brought up

[172:00] previously that the university is forcing the city into huge cost to maintain that 129 Acres so we view this as a choice the city has to take the lovey down for more restoration opportunities and pay more for that fill maintain the levy which the university would do at its cost and drop the cost significantly um and then this issue that you seem to have already resolved um at a 100-year there's very I would say no additional fill I think we could talk with that about that with Brandon but there's limited fill in that case um and then this issue that the levy on the property caused more flooding in 2013 and I think Rachel already addressed that with staff one of the other issues is the city um should just condemn the property and I think the key issues here are the city has a willing partner in the University with land not only offered at market rate but actually for free um and that we are well on the path to finding a

[173:02] solution that helps both governmental entities achieve their missions so I think we're pretty far along in this annexation process we have a very comprehensive application in front of the city the staff has already respond to responded to us some of the issues that Phil put up as the top six we've already responded to um so we're moving right along and I think Phil addressed that we have many areas that are green and we have come to agreement or we're close to agreement so there are really some of these large issues and we're ready to rock and roll um on this um the other thing that often comes up is the property floods it's not suitable for any development um and as we noted that the public area is fully out of the flood zone that public area and that's why it was designated as the development area in the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan most of the area marked as Oso is in the 500-year flood plane um so it wasn't affected in 2013 and that is with inside the

[174:03] levy yes so to conclude we re remain committed to bringing this project to a successful conclusion I think both sides have put a lot of work into achieving and and and end where we could solve this on this this one site without having to go to another site um so we look forward to continuing to work with you guys to try and solve this problem and get flood mitigation to our community first of all thanks to both of you for coming tonight and for that presentation it's very helpful um just a question um you one of the on one of your slides you mentioned that um you you'd like to have access either the to the west or to the Southwest I guess um into Highway 93 I think you had mentioned to us at one point in time that you actually CU is actually holding an easement um from the edge of your property to 93 which is like probably a really really short distance but it doesn't quite get to 93 but you have a some sort of RightWay a right to build a

[175:00] road is that right correct correct and have you talked to the Department of Transportation about their um interest or appetite and letting access go on Highway 93 we have not yet okay thanks I think until we agreed with you because there are um some Boulder Valley comprehensive plan mentions of Highway 93 which really more had to do with a bypass than it did with a general entrance but I think we should still have a clarifying conversation with the city before we do that would you like to comment Phil yeah and during the comprehensive plan we did commission a very highlevel perimeter access study that looked at points of access and I identified three on the North side and and one potentially on the South Side the Colorado 93 else questions for see you mark you spoke about uncertainty in the process when discussing the the land swap I want to suggest that a lot of the uncertainty in these processes have come

[176:02] frankly from CU on January 16th I'm sorry on on February 4th you had of 2019 you submitted an annexation agreement in which you committed to provide housing you amended that um earlier this year I believe it was January 16th where you made the housing a very iffy proposition um on February 18th of this year um you submitted a small proposal in which housing was back on the uh back on the table although with with a new ask for Access um in terms of a land swap uh I remember I believe you testified once that it was uh not something you wanted to consider uh then you butress that with at least two

[177:02] written statements in which you didn't want to consider a land Swap and in the most recent submission you said you're prepared to consider it that was February 18th and now it's February 2 5th and you really want to take that off the table again um my question is is this simply The Proposal dour or is this the one that you really really mean and how are we to judge the difference um my head is spinning as if I was Linda Blair and The Exorcist um I have no idea what it is you're actually committing to and that distresses me and one last point um I am very appreciative of the things that you are doing in terms of the community benefit of this project but you always seem to uh fail to list the benefit that is being conferred on CU by the simple Act of annexation we are

[178:01] taking 129 Acres which have no immediate value and not by my estimate but by your estimate the day after annexation occurs we have granted you value in between 100 29 million and $258 million because that's how you value the vacant land so this this is a process that is that is in which both sides are giving great value for what we're trying to achieve and it's not a one-way process and I wish you would recognize that a little more thank you and just to respond to that since it wasn't exactly a question is um we would agree that there have been back and forth and that's true through in any negotiation as you are well aware from your background um so I think we've been steadily at the table um and as I said we're well on the way I think to a good agreement so um you know these happens as you know Mark in negotiations and I'm not I don't think

[179:01] the university has not been consistently at the table well you know I I believe we have a symbiotic relationship not an adversarial one and and I have not seen enough of that symbiosis I have not seen enough of that symbiosis in some aspects of this process and that's simply my opinion of it Aon well um so anyway thanks for being here tonight and for that presentation and um so I was uh encouraged to see in this latest submitt of yours and renewed openness to housing um because I I was a little worried about that in that period from before so glad to hear that there's some some room there and so i' understand your points about multiple access points so um and so I wonder is so if we I know we didn't want to create a bypass between 93 and 36 right but seems reasonable that there could be an access point you know to the north to Table Mesa and also an access point to 93 as long as it's not like a major road that

[180:00] goes through at 40 m an hour right maybe there's a gate in the middle or little windy things or speed bumps or whatever the one thing I wanted to uh check in on was you mentioned the access point to the west and I do want to be sensitive to um residents in that area who probably don't want a huge amount of traffic coming through their their local streets would you be open to having that access point being primarily uh like a bike pad kind of a thing with maybe an emergency access or something like you know or a few speed bumps so it's not like a super easy and great way to get through like so that you still have permeability into the neighborhood and particularly ways for for people not in cars to get through there but not a kind of major traffic flow I think we can consider that okay yeah great thanks Rachel I thank you too for that presentation and um I would say from the vantage point of somebody who's been living In Harm's Way uh for five years and working with city council and CU um

[181:00] for many of those years trying to get this project moving forward I've always found CU to be a very willing and um valued partner who I felt was was really trying to um help me get out of Harm's Way and So for anybody who's feeling like the head is spinning cuz CU changed their mind over the last month um it believe me when I say it's much worse when we do things like look at Upstream for a year or or Sidetrack into delays that are are much longer than the month that CU took to consider housing coming off the table was going to be a really bad thing and and and possibly keep those of us In Harm's Way um for In Harm's Way for a lot longer so thank you for reversing course on that my question is um what do you see as the timeline if we were to look at this land swap that I understand you're not um in favor of in terms of when uh you would in terms of a year and a date to the extent that you're able to guesstimate that and I

[182:01] haven't um gone through this before but my my understanding is that four plus so I think it's really five body review is has never been done quickly but what do you see as the quickest date that you could possibly you know send out whoever you need to look at that land I don't know that we know I think Phil has given you as good an estimation as you can get and the difficulties that you face getting it moved from a planning Reserve three to two which is really the Crux of the issue it is not currently eligible to be annexed and that is going to be the tough nut to crack and Mary and Adam and juny um and is to that to that point um it's it seems like that if we were to move the planning Reserve into area 2 so that takes however long it takes we get all five bodies to approve it it seems

[183:00] like at that point we'd be more or less with the University where we were before the 2015 comp plan right CU because we have those guiding principles but they're we wouldn't apply the same guiding principles to the planning Reserve right so right and and still needing to evaluate the land itself we're very familiar with you South so so before where we were at the beginning of 2015 because you would need to do your own analysis and then we would have to kind of start negotiations from scratch at that point is that is that fair to say I think it's fair we could probably borrow from some of what we've already created but it is a different property yeah thanks okay I have Mary Adam and juny so Francis and Derek thanks for coming out tonight um I just wanted to understand um your master planning process um when that will be done what

[184:01] the product will be in terms of how it informs what would happen at CU South and then how much more time after that there would be more more certainty about what um what kind of Zoning for example you would need um so if if you could help me out with that I'd appreciate it uh sure uh so the master plan process so our master plan is a 10year legislative requirement so every 10 years we do a master plan 2021 is the next one so we'll begin that process this year and much like the comprehensive plan depending on how things go uh it may it could be 2022 when it's done but we certainly aim to get it done within that time frame of 2021 and that Master Plan really takes a look at all of our land Holdings or all of our campuses and and takes a really high level view of what could be developed on there not from the perspective of any specific

[185:01] developments but just more ideation especially on a track like CU South um so that's not really going to establish anything firm for CU South but it will there will be certain say high level principles about what we envision development over that say 10 year and Beyond period and Beyond um and then that could be changed in another 10 years so the first part of your question is I think the master plan timing and what it would be so that's the answer to that the second part so that would be end of 2021 is that what you said that's what that's what we aim for so the the date on it is 2021 so the second part for any development on the site we just don't know and that the master plan will inform some of that because that will also show where we plan to develop Elsewhere on our campus or other campuses and so coming out of that plan we it's not going to give us any indication of a timeline for developing on CU South that that will arise more organically especially now that we've recommitted to housing uh it's that's

[186:01] going to be there'll be a lot of public engagement um some of that will be driven from our housing master plan uh which will also feed into the general master plan but right now there's just no way we can answer a pafic timeline it could be 2027 it could be 2030 we just don't know thank you for that and then oh sorry I have a second question um for Phil and I just wanted clarification on um I hear that um looking at Upstream Solutions have caused delay I hear that um pulling housing off the table has caused delay um in reality has any of have any of these examinations um caused delay on the the design of the dam I think we've we've tried to work on things that aren't necessarily

[187:00] contingent on the flood mitigation project while this latest analysis was taking place um and we've made a little bit of of progress on those things but there are components as I mentioned earlier that we we will need to kind of be on a holding pattern until the flood mitigation footprint is a set is is a set parameter to work around um and so I it's a tough question to answer um but there may have been I don't know if I have a great answer for you on that yeah yeah so yeah so um maybe that was a better question for Joe um I'm not sure but he's not here anymore um oh there he is I am I'm still here so I was looking for you back there it is not uncommon for a project

[188:00] with this level of complexity a project with this level of complexity to take years and years I mentioned the Carter Lake pipeline uh there's another project project that we did the the Lakewood pipeline Lakewood pipeline took 16 years to get approval millions of dollars of analysis um The Carter Lake pipeline we started working on that in 2003 and it's just getting constructed finally now and so there's these complex projects just take a lot of time have we gone back and forth on design Alternatives that UL ultimately were deemed infeasible yes that's happened as as part of this I will say from what I've seen in in 2019 up until now and the work that Brandon has been doing with the concept analysis and continuing as we speak today we are

[189:01] moving forward without delay okay thank you for that clarification appreciate it um that's all I have Adam since I have you to here and this is one of my first opportunities to take a bite at the CU South Apple um I want to ask a slightly philosophical question since this is somewhat of a negotiation is any statement that you provide us since we've had a lot of different statements recently cu's official position on the matter or is it you Derek and francis's the project manager positions on it since project managers can change in a process I've seen it plenty of times in business uh had refer you to the annexation application that's our statement on the matter okay uh juny thank you for this presentation I thought it was really great but I wanted to also go back to something that Mark

[190:01] said earlier although I don't necessarily agree with everything that he said but I think he did make a good point and I think from my understanding even being here with you today I from what I'm hearing is cu is very flexible and in that flexibility leads to inflexibility in a way right meaning that for instance I've heard you mentioned well we don't want we don't we don't think that The Preserve is a good idea but we're willing to look at it so there's we're hearing many different things in here so we want to hear firm yes or no is it a viable option because if it is it's going to be a longer term process and I think now the next question for me to you would be would it be possible to decouple this process and I think Mary mentioned that earlier would it be possible to allow the flood mitigation to go forward since

[191:01] see you want to we're just not sure exactly I don't know where you stand just from our conversation tonight and I'm sure a lot of community members have the same challenge that I'm having here tonight so um I think we're trying to be very clear but also be responsive when we're asked directly so we actually were asked a year ago by the city would we consider swapping we said to our understanding and no acreage was presented no Maps no information we said to our understanding the city has some property we don't know how much in an area that is not eligible for annexation therefore it is not comparable property at this time we have since been asked what if we could make it eligible would you consider it then so I would say there's as much switching on the city Side as cu's side and as Joe said this is a complicated process negotiations go back and forth and to expect a partner to take one position and never have it change or be responsive to your request is not um

[192:03] logical but I would say that we are trying to be responsive what we are telling you is what we know of that Reserve it's a tough go and if you can move it from Area 3 to area two then we will look at it and I think we're being fairly clear on that point can I follow up I just wanted to follow up because I think part of where I stand is that and I think we all everyone here in this room and everyone in this community wants flood mitigation because it's about protecting lives we agree is it possible to move forward with flood mitigation while see you and the rest of the city and the rest of us are still discussing ing whether this particular land is viable I understand with the 129 acres in CU South and the comparability of area three is it possible to move forward and what would that look like I don't know if that's more question for City staff so it's almost like how can

[193:01] we separate these two so that we can move forward the university has stated as its position over a year ago and it has not changed and this has been confirmed with our Senior Management and region that no we cannot split the property needs to be done as one package yeah I would also like to add um juny in response to your question about us um having different positions we we actually have one position on the land Swap and that's that we think it's a very low probability we don't think it's a good idea but to be flexible we're we've been responsive to the city council's request to it to to to have that flexibility and so that's what we're trying to do I think we can do that and have we can be skeptical of the of of whether that can ever get done while still being flexible and allowing it to move forward we just have to have certain conditions for instance we we just cannot spend our time evaluating a piece of land that isn't even inex in

[194:00] exible it's not even in the realm of possibility and there's a I think there's a huge um there's a hurdle to get to even that point and if you can get to that point then we're willing to take a fair look at it so any more questions for CU you go ahead Mark I want to Circle back to something juny said if if if this council is prepared to commit to uh an annexation of either the CU South property or the planning Reserve property even at your discretion since you're not in a hurry to build tomorrow why can't we decouple those two processes since in order to build the flood mitigation project we need about 5 Acres um we are prepared to do so through an annexation process that will give you what you need for a campus whether it's here or there if your interest is

[195:00] similar to ours in terms of accelerating um flood mitigation and not holding it Hostage to an ultimate resolution of of where your campus is located why can't you do that well I would why won't you do that is really the question I would be very curious Mark about what commitments and assurances you can give us that would let us know that we can Bank on that until we get annexation until we have an agreement I don't know how we can Bank on any commitment prior to we could have an agreement that says we agreed that you will be you will have one or the other property as your campus I don't think that you are able to commit at a legal level that would satisfy the university so we have had conversations with our legal council about this so it's not just der and me sitting here making this stuff up um but it would be a difficult process um and you have you have to get from Area 3 to area 2 that's quite a challenge for you

[196:01] with as as Rachel points out five bodies involved in that um and then we have to go through the annexation process in the meantime CU needs to evaluate property for comparability which is part of our requirement under our annexation as originally filed but if if the property if the processes were decoupled you would have ample time to do that analysis since you have no immediate plans to build we stated we are not interested in decoupling the process I understand I'm asking I'm asking why that isal because we don't think there's the motivation in the community to Annex a property for CU in the future okay so we need to keep them together all right so this is you're just using it as leverage then I understand as you are on on the city's part but yes I I understand Rachel so as a person In Harm's Way again just as I used to feel out there I would say what I'm feeling at this table is that it's not CU you holding anybody hostage if if

[197:02] we move down this very non-compromising Road it's going to be city council um holding community members hostage and being unprotected so I that to be very clear that that CU has a duty to a state taxpayer and um I I can't imagine that it would be uh within their anywhere in their best interest to um give us 64 acres of land with nothing in exchange how can I if I live in peblo or at Littleton or anywhere else in Colorado think that that is an okay use of my tax money I think that the same way that we believe sedat when they say something when we believe osbt when they say something we've got to believe CU when they say something they are a community partner they are not the villain here and I think we need to be um respectful and and Savvy enough to appreciate that they do have a a business interest I don't think that they're holding us hostage but I think we have to be

[198:00] reasonable negotiators as well and the land swap that we're talking about in the north of town requires the county to weigh in from two different boards it requires our planning board to weigh in it requires people that we don't even know who are going to be elected next year to weigh in who are going to be appointed next month to weigh in there are so many unknowns there's no way that I can as an attorney imagine that CU can can remotely accept a a promise of a theoretical possible Area 3 gift so that I think we're asking too much on and if we're serious if it's okay I'll just say that we've clearly moved into discussion and debate out of questions so if we can I think all these sides need to be uh talked about does anyone have any more questions for CU while we have them if that's okay because I I would I have more questions as well for our Park staff so if it's possible we get it's okay but I think the people before me also were not asking questions so I feel

[199:01] a little bit disrespected on that not just you but I I you know went from Mark to you and I'm like okay I apologize if I disrespected you yeah I'm just trying to get us to question questions if we have them and then we'll move on and then I will give you the floor as soon as we come back for debate to start with may I put a final Capstone on that I would may I put a final Capstone on that discussion sure I think the point is yes we serve the state and we have a mission within the state constitution we must meet and adhere to while working to be good Community Partners and we're striving to do that but to ask us to completely abandon our mission is not reasonable okay thank you for being here um and stay and enjoy our discussion okay you have a question great it's probably a joint question both for CU and for Phil I um I I don't think for form of a question we're not as being asked to decide anything here tonight with respect to annexation this is more of an update we appreciate your um U

[200:02] presentation we understand I think a little bit better where you're at right now you've been clear on that tonight um but we're not being asked to decide we made a decision of the night with Joe and Joe's happy that he can go home with a decision but we're not you're not neither neither the city staff nor CU is asking us to make a decision with respect to annexation is that correct this is just a discussion but we're not deciding anything tonight yeah initially when we were thinking about the study session it was initially focused on flood mitigation and then the housing question came into play and that's what we wanted to tee up for Council that's been that's changed since and so it's it's resolved a little bit so we can continue this discussion in par with all the great work that Joe's doing great thanks great um so thank you for being here much appreciate it uh anyone else have questions for staff before we launch in discussions I had some for parks that I held back a little bit anyone else have questions so Rachel

[201:01] well Parks is coming up if you'd like to complete your thought I'm sorry I interrupted well I I wish that my memory worked as well to to have held on to that but um I I guess I do have a a question that's maybe for CU um maybe for staff and maybe for discussion but um if we were to move forward with the variant one 100 plan that's on the table and annexation for CU South could we get to a point where we Annex that because that is what we have in our power to do now and then get some sort of a a tentative request for CU to say before we put a a shovel in the dirt if you have annexed CU North potentially by then we will give we will promise to give a a good faith effort to review that land because if it's not going to work for CU if they review it now I don't know why it would work for them if they review it in two years if and when we have annexation done so Is it feasible that we could Annex CU South I'm going to ask people

[202:02] over here to to be a little bit quieter because I'm having trouble hearing myself um is it possible that we could Annex and then do Annex on the other side uh what I'm calling SE North into the City and then swap that I would say that we couldn't give any Assurance on that um it would be I don't know what kind of assurance we could give to to look at it in the future especially if we've got our land annexed and just to be direct I think if we have our land Annex our Focus will be on the annexed land and um unless there was some some value that we saw in the future to actually cons consider that swap I can't see where we could give an assurance on that anyone else so my questions for Parks were really about um kind of how that Park came in and so we have the 0.25 tax that that came into place and

[203:02] my recollection or at least the read was that we annexed sorry not annexed we we bought that Parkland because it was an opportunity you know the 190 whatever Acres up there it was really inexpensive at the time and then wasn't it after that that we bought Valmont Park yeah so again Jeff Haley parks and wck um I'd have to go back and research all the the timeline and the history of when the parcels were acquired uh basically for my recollection what I can put together is in '95 there was some discussion about needing to acquire more Parkland for a variety of purposes there was a whole selection team um that was looking at Park sites across the community um and so as part of that yes Valmont City Park those Parcels were acquired the area 3 Parcels were Acquired and some others as well um that was actually back when um parks and wck and Mountain Parks were all one thing before the Open Space Mountain Park so there was a variety of Acquisitions

[204:01] during that time um Valmont was included in that okay and it seems like since that time no effort's gone into the area 3 but valmont's been developed and there's other phases that are intended to come at Valmont is that right that's correct and that's fairly geographically close um as as a big Regional Park um to uh the land in the planning Reserve correct at Park zones that's correct and so the um our current master plan has different classifications of Parkland neighborhood parks Community parks and then the highest is the regional parks or city parks so that includes Valmont City Park um the boulder Reservoir is a regional park and then this area 3 Parcels would be considered that same classific um classification in terms of a large 100 to 300 acre area that has a variety of amenities um and yeah Valmont is more centrally located um you know it

[205:01] was scheduled for development earlier on um it's closer into the city's core um we do have concept plans for that Park um and I did want to just go back earlier as we were talking about as our funding identified or what that process would be with our Advisory board our master plan does reference area three um basically it sets aside land just like it did when it was originally acquired for future Park needs so we look at a variety of things like benchmarking levels of service how do we provide amenities to the community um we do calculate that acreage to be needed um to meet our certain levels of service so right now our current master plan identifies a goal of 2030 to have about 8 acres per P per thousand population of that classification and area three is one of those ways that we'll be able to reach that so that identifies some needs um for Area 3 in terms of just acreage

[206:01] um at the same time we've done some athletic studies where we know that we'll need approximately nine ball fields in the future um around 2030 to meet current Demand with population at Etc so all those things all those aspects go into effect of how that area 3 has been set aside and what that really means to our department I see and so when you went through that 8 acres per thousand people calculation where do we sit now I believe it's about 7 7.1 we can look at the the needs assessment 7.1 that's been developed or that's within the city like how does it um roughly 200 Acres of Area 3 land play into that that calculation so there's no yeah so that that whole classification of Parkland which includes Valmont the boulder Reservoir Area 3 um I'd have to look through my notes um in fact Allison might have that table thank you our director Allison

[207:00] rhods thank you um yeah so for for City and Regional Parks um we have a total acreage of 700 um about 74 of those acres are developed um yeah and so the current level of service about 7.3 acres per thousand population okay so 200 and that's developed acres per population that's right I see okay that's all I had I was just curious if you had any opinion about how the Parks Board might look at a swap so it would just theoretically if we had 16 6 acres in the northern section and we swapped with CU South in some way and that would leave some amount 30 acres for a park still in that Northern site that would be near CU how do you think the Parks Board or your staff would look at the opportunities at see you

[208:01] South you know in fact so we've heard a lot about master planning and and different approaches this evening we're currently in the process of kicking off our department Master Plan update um so our last plan was done in 2014 adopted by Council um I would believe that our staff as well as our board would want to look at updating that needs assessment and what would go into that is again like I said benchmarking comparisons with all the types of facilities um as we discussed a minute ago proximity analysis um how close are parks to the neighborhoods to Future development um how that aligns with the different areas of town um within the community so I can't really say at this point like how that would go um I think all that information would need to be gathered um as a lot of folks have talked about just the process and the timeline and these Vin diagrams of how this all overlaps so i''d want to see um if we were to add those amenities in the southern part of

[209:00] town would that really be meeting the intention and the need throughout the community um but I I can't really say for sure right now how the The Advisory Board would respond to that we'd have to look at the data and and see how that all um kind of checks out got it and is your next master plan due in 2024 is it a 10e cycle no so this next update will be complete in 2021 so 2021 okay yeah it's it's an update to the current plan that was that was done in 2014 so over the next year and a half we'll complete that okay that's all I had anyone else thank you so if we want to move to discussion Rachel again I'll give you the floor first if you want to leave me just off I appreciate that um I will say that I I live a Stones Throw from CU South and I will be the first in line to love it if that becomes 160 acre Park um I think that most of my uh neighbors to the north will not like it and I don't

[210:00] honestly see any benefit on the table to looking at this swap um we've established that it doesn't help the flood mitigation process at all it's um I think pretty poor governance because we are adding to our workload we're asking staff to pursue two different annexation opportunities that you know kind of streamlined for no reason I think what it does is um answers some Community requests to not let CU be developed CU South people don't want it developed I don't think people north of town are going to want CU North developed either I don't see um any benefit I don't understand how land swap got here it was brought up previously it's now been recycled when this happens on this project it's usually um sort of buying a little bit of time anytime we get close to like nailing it down we move the goalpost so if we're moving the goalposts it better be for a super good necessary reason CU is not building in the 500-year blood plane we have a a

[211:02] workable plan so my question and and I have some sub questions that I will get to is why are we looking at this what is in it for um Boulder again I'm psyched if that part comes to me but I I don't see it as a community benefit and I don't know why we're even talking about this yeah I mean I agree with what what Rachel has said just say I'd say on the positive side I mean I I feel like we're making real progress like I feel like we're getting close you know so I'm coming in this meeting in one sense I think is is exciting and encouraging because I think we we heard a consensus from Council on the 100-year um approach for flood mitigation that feels accomplishable um we've got CU at the table they're willing to look at housing sounds like the asks around around that are manageable so it it feels like we're getting close and we have something that within you know a manageable period of time would allow us to move forward with flood mitigation um which of course our

[212:00] community is so desperately waiting for so I I would just I would really hate us to see us add in an a very large level of uncertainty with this pursuit of the planning Reserve which would um take multiple years have the uncertainty of a five body review all of whom would need to approve this by a majority and after that years of working getting through all five bodies would kind of start us back to where we were you know five years ago with CU so it it seems inevitable that in even the best case scenarios it would produce very large delays for the flood mitigation project so I just love for us to to take this opportunity that's getting close and move forward and get the flood mitigation done who wants to go next the the issue um in terms of the annexation is not let's get it done

[213:00] let's get it done it's well it is but we don't know what we would be annexing and that's that's that's the the the Crux um at least for me is we don't know what we would be annexing and Derek said that by 2021 the master plan will be done it'll be high level and it won't be until 2027 that there would be any definitive plans as to exactly what they would want [Music] um I don't think it would be responsible as um as someone who has fiduciary duty to the city not the university um to and it would be very irresponsible to Annex we don't know what we're annexing I mean and just basically um rough sketches that maybe are outlined a little bit at the master plan

[214:00] level I I would feel really really uncomfortable with that and that's why um I would like to see us find a way as collaborating Partners as members of the same Community um because ultimately the university and the city are members of the same community and we're protecting the same people and that's what our concern should be is to provide this safety for um folks and I would like us to find a way forward that considers the fact that we need to move forward with the flood mitigation that we understand that we can't do an annexation without knowing what we're annexing we just we just can't I I I I just that would be irresponsible so um I remember a few years back when we were talking about um the P Ponderosa mobile home park that had been badly damaged in the 2013 flood

[215:03] and staff came to council and um and Council said um no displacement and staff had said well it's really hard to not displace anyone when some people that live there may not be documented and Council said no displacement or No Deal on annexation staff came back with a plan for no displacement so I guess the challenge that I would put out there is um for Council to say and for the University let's work together let's work together as collaborating partners as members of the same Community who are concerned with the safety of residents living in the West Valley and let's find a way forward that considers the needs of the community

[216:01] first because that's where all these vent diagrams line up is in the safety of the community and then considers um the needs of the university and considers the needs of the city in terms of knowing what we're annexing I mean that's my problem is I don't know what we'd be annexing so I it would just not fly with me so um so I would challenge us to find a way forward whether it's in incremental M or igas I don't know I mean that's for the lawyers to figure out out um but that's my concern is and I put that challenge out there let's find a way forward where we can get the flood mitigation and and find a way forward with annexation in a manner that um allows the city to know what we're annexing I have a cqu

[217:01] question I thought that the comp planner guiding principles already allowed that we weren't going to know what we were annexing and that we were going to be moving forward and Annex and that people at this table probably signed on to that agreement um that that there was going to be some ambiguity in the annexation agreement so I don't know why I mean talk about you know head spinning like why would we be questioning that today I don't I I thought that was how it was set up I mean would you like a response we can um I believe that what we did was we did the land use designation so that I don't think we're moving very far on so we changed the land use map and we put in place additional protections for if it was annexed um that there would be some limitations that they would agree to in the annexation agreement but I don't think there was a commitment to Annex um because we weren't sure the flood was going to work that's exactly it yeah it's meant to guide these conversations and I think it's been

[218:01] serving that purpose we looked at it really as a more of a performance-based standard and limitations to development and so certain height limits and other things as well as the per performance standards being an example of uh Transportation standards so like setting a trip budget for the site in terms of what is our capacity on the surrounding roadway and what can it handle and working into our standards that way can I can I continue that cqu though I mean I agree we did not commit to annexation in The Guiding principles but I think the guiding principles laid out a a path that the the next steps would consist of figuring out the details of flood mitigation and working on an annexation with CU that followed those guiding principles it in no way said that we were going to figure out exactly exactly the shape of the buildings that would go on that site I mean I think we when we all when we were working on this a few years ago were knew that that conversation that that when we got to annexation that we would

[219:00] not have a map of exactly what buildings were where Adam so I'm going to just provide an slightly alternative you as someone who lives in the area affected by um this I live on the corner of Foothills and Baseline in a subground level unit I'm extremely aware of our flooding issues and I still think it's okay to take some time to understand the holistic view of everything to to question the environmental impacts to make sure that you know um we do make you know check out the area or the um expansion area in the north just as an option sure maybe it doesn't happen but it's worth having the conversations to me simply because it takes a little bit of hubris as a human to say I am the most important at all points my protection despite the fact that I know I live in a flood area

[220:02] um it it's got to be about me right now and I think the community does need to understand that to some degree that a long time ago Boulder was established in 16 drainage areas like okay and we live with that fact today um and we're going to continue to live with that fact for the future of our community uh however long that ends up being so um I'm okay with taking a little bit of time on these things simply because yes life and safety is the absolute most important thing that we provide but this isn't the only flood zone this this isn't the only area and it's not like people don't have the option if they want to to leave the area because of the flood zone so I'm going to cqu on that I'm going to cqu on that and say point to the people that we as as a city have put into Harm's Way since the flood who are

[221:02] recently um given vouchers to be um given housing who were formerly homeless they don't even know they're in the flood zone like we are putting the most vulnerable people right there and this is not hubris talking and this has been a very patient trip down a long road that started in 2003 so to act that the Last 5 Years wasn't enough time to look at options to act that the last time that we talked about a land swap wasn't a good enough option and to to think that it's um the same thing to be and you know you're you're a bit of water way versus flash flooding where your kids's going to die if they sleep in the basement is is a really different equation So It's upsetting to me that it would be considered hubristic if that's the right word for my neighbors to um be concerned about their safety that is this has been a long discussion this is not Rapid or speedy this is not the first time the planning Reserve has come

[222:01] up so you know if we want to look at it we're going to look at it and I I sense there's going to be a majority will to look at that but it is a delay and it is saying that people's lives aren't that important so I've got juny and then Bob and then Mark I just wanted to add that this is a very very difficult conversation and I can see there a lot of us are really emotional and it's really upsetting even to me as well although I don't live in see South because it is about protecting people's lives but at the same time we have to understand the reality is from what I'm from what I've heard is that that CU is not looking at this option it's not viable even if we were to decide to go down that path it's not a viable option they don't want it so I think delaying is just not good for anybody it's not good for us it's not good for them so I think again taking the time but on to pursue that option

[223:02] but on Whose time when is the next flood we don't know so I think we have to consider the lives of the people living in that area and then when we were talking about the park um the planning reserve and I was thinking gosh and we talk about Equity so much here on this Council since I've been on it and it's so inspiring but at the same time we're we're saying let's just Swip the land you know and then these people may not have a park and I think it goes back to what Aaron said people in the north deserve a park as well if it's possible right so at the end of the day I'm just not sure I feel like we're talking past each other we've been doing that all night and I think we need to find a solution and that solution is flood mitigation and I think we have to do since we cannot just usurp and just take over the land we have to work with CU and that is cu South

[224:00] annexation and I to me from what I'm hearing in this room that's the most viable option and we have to do it to protect people's lives and we cannot just take forever and take or time to get that done because we don't know when is the next flood thanks Bob and then Mark so keep keeping your options open does not always involve delay oftentimes you have several paths ahead of you and um you can keep those options open without slowing things down and I think we've um I agree with Aaron that we made great progress tonight we've given Joe and his team the direction that they needed and so that engineering work is continuing unabated and this is a discussion we will undoubtedly have um again in the coming weeks and months but the good news is is um regardless of how often we have this discussion and what the ultimate outcome of it is um Joe's team has got the direction they want and they're going to proceed forward and that's the critical path right that the discussion tonight is not going to change what Joe does at some point in time it could change what Joe does but it's not going to change tomorrow or the next day or the next day so this is a

[225:01] discussion we can continue um so I I think keeping options op is is almost always a good thing if it doesn't cause delay and we haven't heard that it will cause delay to keep options open so to that end I actually have two questions of Staff or two requests of Staff um one um with respect to CU South um it would be helpful I mean CU was very clear tonight that um housing's back on the table but if and only if they could get access to the west or Southwest including Highway 93 so I'd like to know if that's a problem because um we um made the mistake a few years ago of assuming things of the Department of Transportation and and we um had a very un unpleasant surprise and we had to make some pretty big shifts and so let's kind of bottom that out sooner rather than later and so I would suggest that um our city staff and CU um approach do can especially since you has

[226:00] a apparently he's been a RightWay 293 let's find out if that's a problem because if the Department of Transportation says no way no how um I guess the question would then be is see you taking housing back off the table and that would be an important thing for us to know so let's just find that out sooner rather than later and if Council some of us in Council have relationships with the Department of Transportation so if we can facilitate we don't get in your way but if we can facilitate those conversations it would be it be nice to know the answer that within weeks not months um the second request um for information you don't have to answer this now Phil and Chris M check I don't think it's in the room but one of things I was not thrilled with when we decided back in December to authorize the um what's it called the Baseline Services Urban I can never remember the name of it the Baseline Urban Services study yeah something like that yeah you know what I'm talking about that um you guys

[227:00] said hey can we do it and we said sure that sounds great keeps our options open and then you said okay we'll start it in 2021 I'm like oh well okay why that and um so I'd appreciate if you guys could come back and explain um why and again I'm not necessarily advocating for land swap with but I just like to understand is there a good really good reason why we wouldn't do that this year as opposed to waiting a year or two to do that and maybe you guys were simply backing into 2025 knowing that the earliest there could be a change in the area three planning Reserve was 2025 so you weren't in a big rush but um would there be things on the planning staff's plate that would be displaced if you had to start that do you want to answer that question now or do you want to come back later with looks like Jim is able to answer it yeah I think it's a matter of priorities and you'd have to take some things off in order to start the plan but understand what those are yeah yeah and and you were correct about backing

[228:00] in the 2025 we that was kind of the normal process we um I can't I can't sit here tonight and oh excuse me Jim uh comprehensive planning manager in the planning department um I can't sit here tonight and tell you exactly this would be displaced this would be delayed and so forth I can tell you um that conducting a baseline Urban Services study is a significant body of work within which with which we and the planning department would have a significant role but because of the way a baseline Urban Services is uh described in the comp plan it invokes the work of virtually every city Department um police fire Library Water waste water storm water transportation and so forth um and so we haven't scoped what it would look like um to do that we would and and I can tell you it's not on anyone's work plan right now knowing what we do know not having scoped it but knowing what we do

[229:00] know um I think I'm safe and saying it would be a significant body of work and if you told us to to to start that now as opposed to when we talked about at the retreat I think I'm safe in saying it would displace current work we would have to have a conversation with you around what gets to place what gets put on hold what gets the schedule gets changed and so forth okay well that's fine um I'm not asking to do that um unless there's a majority in Council would ask you to do that when I say do that that is do the reporting of what it would display it's not do the work I mean you're going to do the work eventually you've already committed to do the work next year and my my question would be what would it displace if you did the work six or 12 months sooner than you had otherwise planned to do this massive body of work so was just a timing question um but we we'll see if other council members are interested in that information if they're not don't don't fuss yourself with it if you hear a couple other two two three other people that say they'd be interested in what it would displace maybe you guys could just put together a quick memo and say this is what it would entail to to

[230:02] accelerate work you're all what you going to do thanks Mark yeah I want to go back to a question you rais Bob about whether the housing goes back off the table if there's a problem with getting the access off of 93 um if there is no housing in this transaction which is is a one of the guiding principles um I'm not sure I would support this annexation I mean it's it's the it's the raise on Detra of of this transaction and if it is an onag again off again kind of proposition um that's really not very satisfactory to me as we as we move forward on a more General basis I I I the issue of looking at the alternatives to me is is to get to the best solution um provided we don't have undue delay and I'm I'm perfectly prepared to take a look at other uh opportunities that may be

[231:00] better for the city of Boulder and may be better for the University it's an unresolved issue but I I would be more than happy to to take a look at it um and just one comment where where I have to differ with my colleague Rachel it's always being described as what we are doing to put people in Harm's Way and my comment to that is it is the tethering of um annexation to flood mitigation which is a business decision that that CU is entitled to make but to me that is what uh creates the the greatest possibility for delay and roadblock in this transaction and the unwillingness to decouple those um again that's your business decision to make um but I think that the onus for delay Falls more upon CU than than this Council in terms of being dilatory in

[232:01] its process we're spending millions of dollars on engineering uh we are spending an a huge amount of staff time uh I don't think it is appropriate to say that we are not moving forward with all the dispatch that we can muster and tonight we've made a very critical decision uh along those lines Rachel so I um I haven't gotten a real satisfactory question from fellow council members so I'm going to ask staff um what they might see as any benefit to this land swap or pros and cons um because again I'm I'm it it feels like it just sort of dropped out out and so we're going to look at it and I don't I'm not clear on what the benefits are that we're looking at so if any staff could weigh in on that I would be grateful I have to think but um and just to add like I think that we are not the experts as Council people so we rely on you and sometimes I think we um insert our voices over expert opinions and I'm

[233:02] I want to be mindful of of not doing that the the benefit could be that land in the planning Reserve may have fewer environmental constraints than that of Cu South relating to flood ples steep slopes uh wetlands and other environmental constraints so there may be fewer out there um that would be one potential benefit um another potential benefit is if the Parks and Recreation longrange planning did decide that it that was a net gain to do some type of land swap then that could be a benefit but I don't know if as as you heard that that would be the case a downside would be the unknowns for us um of getting down the line um a couple of years and having something not work out um a couple of years down the line with the planning Reserve could be a significant risk um and in my again inexpert just Minds ey I would think it sounds like we're

[234:01] going to have to like slaughter a lot of prairie dogs and so that's going to be a huge issue whenever we bring prairie dogs in um we're going to be um po potentially um asking a lot of people and potentially couples who who one half works at CU and the other half Works in Denver to cut through the heart of Denver and a transportation um way that is not nearly as convenient to the RTD at um CU North might be so I guess have we at what point would we look at like it I'm understanding cu's not committal on this but I I don't know that why the city want wants to look at it either and then Aaron had it follow I I think we'd be seeking direction from Council about whether to look at it right I mean I I think we might we might look to our fow council members for to to to advocate for that but I just one one issue that hasn't been brought up yet with this um possibility is the transportation issues and so I guess when I think about well what are the

[235:00] potential downsides you know the the this planning Reserve parcel has literally zero transit to the site whereas C has I think 10 or so bus lines that run right there it's one of our most Transit Rich area of town areas of town so is part of what I try to wrap my head around a possible benefit to C North is um is that it's further away from the University and and has no Transit options and so how many vehicle miles traveled would we be adding to the community and isn't that contradictory to our climate goals so it seems like a real negative in that sense as as well I'm going to say that the land swap idea isn't as big a priority for me as it is to find a way that we can um Annex get to a point where we know what

[236:00] we're annexing at annexation that's really what it comes down to for me so you want to say something else yep go for it yeah I pretty much agree with Mary like I do want to find the fastest solution when it comes to actually solving the problem at this point it's just um we can we can you know pick apart every single thing like vehicle miles traveled all we want like if CU didn't develop the land at all that would probably be the best carbon thing that we have I mean there you know we can go down that road forever but um at the end of the day I agree with Mary it's our job to find the fastest path forward and the one that's actually going to help people joury I just have a question I don't fully understand what you mean Mary by you don't understand or you don't know what you're annexing and so I just need

[237:02] a little bit more clarity sure thank um so it's been the city's policy that upon anation and correct me if I'm wrong b um Tom that um upon annexation we try to extract um 40 to 50% affordable housing that's our biggest um Community benefit that we get from annexation the other thing that we typically do with annexation and I've never seen one that doesn't do this is annex with a site plan um and a site plan is what lays out where the buildings are what type of building you've got the zoning planned out um so by not knowing what we're annexing you just don't know what you're going to get you don't even know if you're going to get the housing um so

[238:02] that concerns me and I would like to like I said find a way where we get to a point maybe it's not a full um site plan maybe it's something you know that resembles more like a concept plan um and maybe we get to that point in steps in increments of um igas intergovernmental agreements I I don't know like I said that's for the attorneys to figure out but what we need to do here is be able to move on the flood mitigation and you know really the way I look at it it's not the city that's standing in the way of the annexation it's the university's master planning process um in the sense that it won't be done until the end of 2021 and then you won't know they won't know what they want until 2027 so that's how I see it and

[239:04] um like I said we can come to the table and figure something out and I believe we could um or we can continue to have these fruitless arguments um so I'm I'm willing to give on the the planning Reserve I I'm not I don't want to bark up that tree if it means um barking up a wrong tree and that's that's kind of what it's sounding like um to me based on everything I've heard tonight is that um we just don't know there's there's just so many unknowns in terms of you get all the way down to um whether or not it will Annex and then you do have a 4body review at the end of that so I'm not so sure that that's a great

[240:00] idea but what I do want to know is what are we annexing when we Annex you have more jie yes I just is there anyone who can answer that question to to a satisfactory Manner and then my next question is my understanding is when it comes to CU South the community benefit is not just housing but it's also the flood mitigation Maybe I'm Wrong so can someone clarify thank you so I I I'll I'm not sure I can do it satisfact but I'll try to answer the question as what best I can about annexation this is a particularly complicated issue um usually when we do an annexation we're doing a few houses and or we're doing a vacant land and as Mary says there's a site plan so Council when they approve the annexation agreement has a pretty good idea about what's going to happen on the property because either it's it's built already and has limited development potential or you have a site plan that says this is how we're going to develop it um The Challenge here is

[241:02] is multi-leveled because uh this is your one chance to look at this property uh because see is a state agency they don't generally comply with our restrictions so because you you have to approve annexation any any restrictions that you want to put on this property have to be in the annexation agreement and so as I understand what Mary is saying and forgive me if I've got it wrong is usually you'd have great detail about what would happen on a property before you agreed to an annexation um here we'd have to write an incredibly detailed Annex ation agreement with the restrictions that Council wanted down to say the number of units the style of buildings the size of buildings the placement um to for Council to get the level that it would normally have in an annexation agreement and then you overlay the fact that we're dealing with a state agency um so normally so even if we don't have all that detail we have

[242:00] base zoning requirements that you you do an initial zoning so you do single family zoning you they can only build so many things under our code well that doesn't constrain cu the code doesn't so you'd have to have all of that in the annexation agreement so as I hear what Mary's saying she wants to hear how we work together to get those kind of restrictions in an agreement that Council felt comfortable approving that protected the community in the way you want to see it protected in the long range for the development of this property and could I jump in on that yeah because I mean I think and Francis you may want to say I saw you raise your hand but if I can just say something first that I mean it's an excellent point and i' I have always imagined that that we would draw there'd be a process line from The Guiding principles which lay out kind of you know the amount of housing the type of housing a maximum height limit and things like that and that when you get to the annexation agreement we can codify those things and and potentially add some additional layers of specificity and this would be

[243:02] part of the negotiation process right that that if we signal that we're willing to sit down in the table and work these things out then I think we can try to come to some level of understanding that that that Bridges the gap between the guiding principles and the exact details they in the annexation agreements I I think you know may not be easy but I think we have the ability to sit down and try to work these things out is it so I think I'm gonna jump Rachel do you want to say something Francis was speak okay so I know this is a vexing problem that we don't have a site plan for you and that is because the city asked the university to bring forward an annexation application now because there was a strong interest in getting the flood mitigation done so we complied with that and in the for body process that we went through for the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan we did a lot of the um guiding principles to address

[244:02] some of these issues that Tom was talking about so height limitations that we would comply with we normally wouldn't be subject to um those kinds of things and I think Aaron raised a good point what we've been doing with staff is trying to refine some of those elements in the annexation agreement as we go as so that we have a reasonably defined box in which we would develop those plans later down the road um and part of the problem is and I just like to correct we've never said there would be no housing on the site what we've said is with the dam across the front of the property we need to take under evaluation whether housing behind the dam was still a good idea could we produce a product back there that our faculty staff and upper division students would find attractive um with one Road in one road out and there I think there is a possibility for solving that so I think we're very much at the table about that it won't be what you're used to because you asked us to come

[245:01] forward early in this process and there are many benefits that we're bringing um as Aaron pointed out that are different from a normal annexation or as Tom pointed out this isn't two or three houses we are not a developer looking to make a quick profit and get out of Dodge we live in Dodge so we intend to stay here and finalize this process with you all okay so I think I'll jump in with a few thoughts here um at this point so it sounds to me like this is an especially complex annexation agreement for all the reasons that Tom just said and we understand so so it is not clear to me that we will stay on the timeline that we hope to be on I hope we are but some of the concerns raised by Mary and um others and I've shared them because we have heard a changing story from CU over time and that's to that's fine I'm not being super critical of that but at one point we had a bubble diagram that included the 1100 homes sorry the 1100

[246:02] dwelling units as well as a million square feet of classroom space which we and said no that's really not what we're thinking and so we worked in order to get the guiding principles as good as we could get them but there's still nothing like a full-blown annexation document that's going to have a lot more restrictions other things that I think I heard are the transport you know study we we don't yet understand what we're buying into for transportation load and so on at that site and part of it we're never going to know because we may know 1100 dwelling units but what else is going to go there you know it is totally unclear what is going to show up there and therefore we won't have transportation done we won't have necessarily um the understanding of the the green space that we typically know we typically have rules pretty much on

[247:00] on how much open space there is for people who are living in a project and so on so this is the most blind Annex that we've ever done in the middle of the most complex flood mitigation project we've ever done so it's not to me to be expected that we can count on anything to move quickly except for our engineering and that can move up to the point where we hit the regulatory process and when we hit the regulatory process if you don't think there's uncertainty in that I don't think we've ever been through anything this complex and so whether it's the core whether it's environmental issues we want to reopen up whether we take the levy down we will be constraining our ability to relocate species and rehabilitate land so I I think this is just an issue where if we are expecting certainty in anything but the Engineering Process and even that is going to have uncertainty at the regulatory phase we are fooling ourselves and so one of the reasons for

[248:01] the land swap is it does exactly decouple these two complex atly intertwined things on one piece of land that reminds me nothing more than a huge huge Hogan pancost um because it's wet land it's a former gravel mine it's got slumping soils on the side of it it's got a flood mitigation project going in which has even caused CU some consternation about whether the housing that they put there will be attractive it's got It's got a half Mish Road that's going to connect over the the burm and down into where people are living and so to me this this is a per what I'm willing to listen to is what Bob had said about options I really interested in keeping options open because if there was an option that decoupled this effectively that was

[249:00] agreeable to the land owner and agreeable to the community then we would we would make the job much easier we would eliminate some costs so one of the things we haven't talked a lot about are there are costs to being able to preserve the 129 Acres as we do our our flood mitigation process um and those would come out in the wash so we do a land Swap and we do equivalent value we save some money um maybe we open up the possibility of doing slightly different flood mitigation if we can extend the 100 to be something else but I don't understand why we need to shut this part down now why we need to make a decision which says we're committing to this blind annexation when we don't know we don't know exactly what we can get and what we can't get into the annexation agreement which I think is a really important thing I am aware that there are people In Harm's Way Downstream two

[250:01] of them sitting on this Council um others in the room and that is really important and I'm glad we moved the some decisions forward so that we are reducing uncertainty so we know how we will move the engineering forward but we're going to bump into other roadblocks I'm sorry to tell all of us in this room the regulatory processes Joe do they always go smoothly right so I guess I don't understand why we wouldn't begin exploring the the CU North as it's being called because anything we do for that Urban Services study is going to benefit in the long run whether we end up with park there there's a land as as Aaron mentioned to the South there's a a partiel of land that is very eager to come in and if we would need to consider both the uh the area three and that at

[251:02] the same time then we could get potentially multiple pieces of housing if if ever came to be that CU wanted it we'd have cu's contribution to housing there and I know that the developer that owns that partial to the South that would get tied in with this is very interested in housing um I don't think that the transportation system there is developed enough um yet but it can be the interconnections that would connect um CU North whatever Area 3 into the the 20 6 Street Corridor for biking um busing I assume that buses would routinely run wherever this is located that these pieces of housing would have um buses that transported them to the CU main campus so you know we take a look at at what the transportation distance is it's really not that much different in one case taking a

[252:02] car um from CU South the tennis courts to the main campus at the engineering center 2.7 miles doing it from the um Area 3 planning Reserve 3.2 miles doing it by bicycle it's 3 miles from the tennis courts to um the campus and it's 3.6 miles from the planning Reserve to campus so these are small differences the one thing that I do agree is right now the bus service is different but that's something that I think CU would want to be part of in any case because that's going to be probably part of what we're going to need to get into the annexation agreement so this in no way is saying that I think annexation discussions need to shut down we need to continue this is my opinion not direction from Council but we need to continue having those so we can resolve these issues but at the same time I

[253:00] don't see that we need to shut our option down for potential looking at this Northern land what's the benefit Rachel asks this good question what's the benefit the land at CU South has been desired by this community for a very long time because it is such high quality habitat in some parts and it was a gravel pit that never got reclaimed properly and people love to go out there and recreate so there would certainly be some benefits to the community of being able to make that permanently um an amenity that they have rather than just temporarily an amenity they have have I do appreciate cu's contribution to have it be permeable and I believe that that would probably be the case just as all the rest of the the university campuses so at the end of the day I don't know if we'll have five people who want to consider moving the urban Services study up forward um but it didn't sound to me like anytime inside of a year whether we

[254:01] had the annexation agreement completed or not was going to slow down our engineering team starting their permitting so correct me if I'm wrong I believe you said about a year for the environmental permitting yeah I think that's correct okay so anyhow I will leave it there and I think what we need to do now is to the best of our abilities make sure that staff heard what we said because this is a study session and there are no votes it was pretty clear to me we had consensus on the 100-year um flood plan and moving forward with that um I also heard some things I wasn't so clear about about what issues we should carry forward to the boards and the commissions so I will open it up I didn't say this before but I don't think we should revisit the issue with the levy or the burm I think we leave ourselves much more open it doesn't really impact our flood design team and

[255:00] it it leaves open the possibility for better environmental values there I'm certainly no worse um so how do people feel about the burm should we ask people this question in our community or are we done I I think one group that I would like to hear from on the burm um is um the open space board because there is a habitat impact and I would would value hearing from open space about whether they have an opinion on that there may be countervailing um uh uh factors from engineering from CU from unfill from Finance but I I'd love to hear what open space says about whether have an opinion about whether the BM just not now necessarily Tom no thank you for your earnestness Tom but we're we're we're just teing up questions to send to our boards and commissions over the next um two or three months I'm sorry you may not be on on the board at that time that happens Tom but you can weigh in as a private individual um but I think I think that's one question that I would like our at least that board to weigh in on in the

[256:01] time comes okay and so we'll take that to the process committee do other people agree with that I mean that's fine think that with the 100-year plan you don't need to make a decision on the BM anytime soon so some input is good but I don't think we need to figure this out right now and if I could just respond I think the time we would need to have it somewhat figured out is when we go in for our environmental permitting because then we'll know whether we have more options inside or not Rachel your last Point um thanks to avoid delay though we do need to continue moving forth with CU South annexation discussions because otherwise we don't line up in a year maybe where the rubber meets the road so in terms of what staff's hearing I'm I am assuming that that's true for now that we are moving forward full steam ahead with that that's what I heard um I didn't hear anybody arguing that we didn't want to do at least parallel paths

[257:01] [Music] um yeah and and I I agree with that that we should as you know I we should move uh Full Speed Ahead with that the one one thing I want to keep in mind here is um strain on the planning department so Jim thanks for um uh talking about the workload I you know we had a meeting with Chris meschuk the other day and talking about the you know the some of the reorganizations that the planning department is working through and improving morale improving processes so whatever options you bring back to us I just want to make sure that um you take things off the table to the extent that we're giving you additional things to do that we're not um overstraining the plane Department because I know you guys are doing really good work over there we will uh yes we will do that um I would I would like to get clear feedback from the council tonight as to whether you want us to at least take the step of identifying what what approximately is this what would be the resources required to initiate uh the Baseline

[258:01] Urban Services study not to mention all of the steps that would follow on the heels of that um and uh get back to you with um sort of our estimate on that and our proposal as to if you directed us to move forward with that how we would respond in terms of adjusting other parts of our work plan um I don't want to get six months down the road and have you ask me how you coming on that Baseline Urban Services study and I say I we haven't begun it yet and so I would like direction from you as to whether you would at least like to us to engage in that sort of scoping study and the tied to uh a proposal to you or or a recommendation to you as to how we would adjust our work plan uh if we were to proceed with that can I ask a question following up on that the the kickoff for that was planned for 2021 correct and so this would more or less be a moving it up earlier and either moving some things completely off or further down the line is that correct

[259:01] that is correct okay yeah and especially um it would affect our work planning if if we were at the same time proceeding if in other words I'll I'll just be literal if if if Phil was continued to be deployed working on the annexation aspects associated with CU South while we then had to pull other resources to look at the work associated with the Baseline Urban Services study that would definitely have an impact on the resources we can apply to other apply to other work priorities of course um so remind me I'm sure you told us earlier tonight you think the annexation is about a year out oh um so we have a few mics that are remaining um um when we were looking at the

[260:01] process we were looking at a May decision on the flood mitigation and at that point we didn't know if there would be land use changes which would be subsequence to that and so we were thinking in the summer all of that would be buttoned up the next steps would be a transportation analysis the consultant suggested about 3 months for that um you know we're um almost ready to begin talks with um open space and other those other um considerations um and then we need to develop um further refine some of those de development par parameters um and so I don't have a firm I would say six at least six months to a year probably yeah I yeah I guess I have the floor I got another one actually I did want to say something I figured you did if you went all the way up there to get a mic well I

[261:01] just wanted to replenish our supply I'd hate to go home um well so so I I thanks for that um Phil and Jim I and I I'm I personally am a supporter of doing the urban Services study I think it's a good thing for us to do in general um and and so I guess the the direction that that I would give is that I I just don't want to um disrupt the planning department you know I think that that part of what we heard from the Tipton report is that there's been uh inconsistent direction from Council and City staff is unable to kind of finish projects that they start work on something and we switch them to something else and it's very frustrating it's bad for morale and such like that so I mean if there's room to move the urban Services study you know sometime into 2020 I I'm personally I'm fine with that in and of itself I just don't want to do it in such a way that it's disruptive to the department and you know takes people off of projects that

[262:00] they're near getting done and would like to finish and and and help with the community with so well and I completely agree um so I guess the question would be how much of your time and how disruptive is it if we ask you to tell us what it could look like to to move that forward I think it would take uh well let me back up um I assume you would want uh in order to look at the the the feasibility from a staff perspective of moving forward sooner than 2021 of the Baseline Urban Services study because that invokes um the deployment of resources other than the planning department I wouldn't want to get back to you with a planning department only response only to then find out that oh from the police perspective so I think it would take us a several weeks probably maybe probably

[263:02] say minimum four weeks because we're going to have to reach out across the city organization to come back to you with a comprehensive answer of we think we could kick it off here and here it was how it would affect planning Department's work plan but also the work plans of other departments that's going to take several weeks so I think um you know I would say probably minimum four weeks by the time we coordinated all that got back to you and provided a response on behalf of the planning department but also tried to give you coordinated response on behalf of all of our brethren in the other departments thank you Mark and then Mary couple things I I'm going to speak loudly because no here mine still oh no just a few quick things um I agree with Rachel's comment that we should be continuing the conversation about the annexation agreement uh with all due speed I also agree with the comment that we need to try to

[264:01] build in as much specificity as possible so that we're not doing this blindly and we know what it is that we're annexing and lastly I agree with Sam's analysis to provide as much flexibility and possibility for Alternatives that we can um and so I would be supportive of having you at least scope out what it would be uh what it would take to produce the study um and let us know what has to get bumped and what can't get done as a result um but I think that's the it's an opportunity we should be taking it's work that eventually will get done anyway um and I understand understand that we're accelerating it um and we will have to live with those things that that can't get done as a consequence and you need to tell us what those things are now I have the floor so I agree with what Mark just said and um one of the things that Aaron said with respect to um

[265:03] finding um a set of specificity that Bridges between the The Guiding principles and an annexation agreement would be something that we would probably need more guiding principles on um but that's but I'm not kidding I mean it's it's just it's just I I do think we need to bridge that Gap um and then I agree about the the keeping our options open I'm I'm not so sure that moving by the time staff goes and sees how much they can move up the Baseline Urban Services study the bus um they'll come back and it'll be well we can start in November I mean that doesn't make any

[266:00] sense let's just not do that that's what I'm thinking it's let's just not do that and keep it where it is there is the the gating issue about whether or not um CU can put housing or is willing to put housing in the CU South based on whether or not there's access from 93 and whether or not C dot would buy into that so that's kind of an action item for CU but let's continue moving forward with the annexation conversation knowing that we need to bridge that gap between the guiding principles and a level of specificity that we can all agree that we feel comfortable with um and find out whether or not C dot is willing to allow a road from 93 into um the see South property conserve

[267:02] that I'll try anyone else want to speak on this m sry so I think overall I'm in the same boat as Mary um and Sam we're keeping our options open but I in order to be responsible I'd need a much more um narrowed down level of specificity so I think I was pretty clear that to have that thank you for that AC I would not move that forward to this year in case I needed to say that clearly so I think I think it's pretty clear the majority does not want to move it up so I don't think you need to go do an evaluation to let us know and we'll just plan is that kicking off I guess one thing that I would like to hear back on maybe others would too is that kicking off right away in 2021 or is it later in 2021 and the idea of keeping the comp

[268:01] plan update open had been so that we could potentially move that along I'm uh I don't know that I can tell you I I apologize but I don't know that I can tell you tonight that when we said 2021 was that like January 1st 21 or 2021 or was that July 1st I'm happy to get back to you with a more refined answer on that I would really like to take a closer look at our work plan um before I give you a give all of you a firm answer to like what did we mean exactly when we said 2021 for Baseline Urban Services it'll what it all do is we'll go back and take a more closer look a finer grain look at our work plan and get back to you as soon as we can with a with a response on that no need to extend the comp plan update just for the Baseline Services

[269:00] study so that could be done anytime okay great so I think I've heard direction from Council not to start it early but we can continue having the conversation and then to work with um making sure that we're continuing to make progress on the C South annexation agreement a little more granularity I think I heard from multiple council members and I think what that might mean philli is we might need to check in on like what some of the details are at other study sessions because it's going to be important what's in there is going to be important enough to council um that I think we'll at least want to monitor it to see what's in there anyone else have anything they want to say is there anything I didn't capture right one of them was easy one of them we're going to talk at the process committee about what we're going to take out the boards the only other thing from the process subcommittee last week was um we

[270:00] wanted to respond to osbt um written STI ation or requests or discussions and I don't think we necessarily did that tonight so I think that um we sort of owe it to obbt to have a discussion about what they have have asked us to look at or proposed about CU South and I don't know where that falls but I think we need to do that let's take it up Thursday just as an agenda item and make sure that we come back to council with that okay if everyone's good I think we'll close this so we made a firm decision got some kind of weaker guidance and then we have one one more subject tonight and this is from this is short this will be super short this is from Bob so Bob you want to talk about yeah so next um Wednesday and Thursday evening we're interviewing our various applicants for the boards and commissions and uh in the past our um sometimes in the past our our questions are are somewhat spontaneous and it's basically whoever raises their hand and and um sometimes the questions

[271:00] are really outstanding and sometimes are less than entirely outstanding and so I I guess in my in my perfect world I would like um you know a council member to pick a couple of boards and and be responsible for I don't care who asks the questions I just want them to be thoughtful and intentional um in my perfect world we would all be take a board or two and and we would prepare the questions in advance and Rachel does too and Aon does too and so on and so forth um if folks think that's too formal and structured um we can kind of default back to our like quer raises her hand first gets to ask the question remember when that question is asked that question must be asked of each and every applicant um that's our Rule and so I guess um if if you guys don't like the idea of assigning boards and preparing questions in advance the minimum I would ask is that if you have a really burning question make sure it's a really thoughtful intent intentional one because we really only get about two questions out per board and so it's not like we all get to ask a question it's literally two maybe

[272:01] three of people are really functional so it's really disappointing if we ask two questions are not good questions and then they go away and then we're forced to ask those same two not good questions of all the other applicants as they come in the door and then we um and then we don't have a whole lot to go on we making our decisions so I'll leave it to you guys whether you want to formalize it and and assign boards and commissions maybe we could do it based on the letters we read at the at the um before the retreat or at least commit to into ask good intentional questions um is there a working mic Mary I say we stick to the way we do it um and we think about what we might want to ask I I for one will probably wait until just before the questions come up if even if I'm a signed board so I would imagine that others are in the same boat um because things come up and you never really have it's like oh my God I

[273:01] haven't done this and then you do it an hour before so do it while you're eating dinner JY so I'm new to this whole process so I don't fully know what it work how it works so I'm learning between now and then so ass signing would not be ideal for me um can I prepare a question and send it to all of you and then you can decide which questions should be asked that might be something that we may consider but I would not want to be assigned you know to do something that I'm you know that I need to take a few cues maybe probably on the day of from a lot of you so Bob I like the idea I I we do have a bunch of new people what if we um Express an intention for next year to really explore that idea like a few weeks in advance um uh so that and and

[274:02] if we CU I think it's it would be worth doing where where we had a little bit of notice and maybe we but we mix up the questions so it's not one person one board but we get de Vu um I think we've had this discussion each each year for the last two or three years and every year we say well yeah it's a good idea how we do it next year so I'm I'm fine waiting till next year next year we'll have the same discussion we'll we'll do it again I actually do like jinny's idea which is an alternative which is we all just send a bunch of questions and on anything we care about and then we can all look at the questions and pick a couple of them I don't know exactly process-wise how do we do that so uh I'm fine either way I just my only request is that our questions be thoughtful intentional if you're going to raise your hand and ask one of the two questions we're going to get for that board make sure it's a really good one I don't think we can do that real easily because you'd have to put it out there everybody you know what the questions would be ahead of time and so um just think about it while you're showering or eating dinner I don't know walking the dog well I mean Bob is

[275:01] flagging a really good point because it does happen from time to time we get a dog of a question that even the person who asked it it's like you know that wasn't so good so yeah if you can be intentional about it but the other truth about this um process is that it's really hard for people to prepare for 120 interviews you know we we are going to have two nights of a little less than 60 people each night and so sometimes even if we had the best of intentions to get questions in beforehand you look around and no nobody send a question in or nobody raises their hand and then somebody has to to take care of it so next year next year thank you all we're [Music]

[276:03] Jed Live from Paris of Vine [Music] cat