April 7, 2020 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music] okay everybody from the council chambers [Music] we are good to go when you guys are ready to start we had a little technical problem here but we're good to go sam do you want to go ahead and start or do you want to confirm everybody's here first hey can you guys do me a favor and i know i don't know what's going on

[1:31] hey do you want me to take official role or just mark them all done okay council member brockett

[2:00] friend no i i am i am here i don't know if you guys can hear me i can't hear oh okay perfect yeah i'm trying to work i was just going to ask you guys to meet me thank you um joseph [Music] we're having kind of uh yeah the bridge is active in everything and all i need to do is young i see you mary we have a quorum thank you thank you so much thank you okay so i'm going to read this statement um if people could um silence and mute that'd be great

[3:00] so our city has been working closely with local state and federal officials to monitor and maintain community health and safety in response to the outbreak so i'm getting a lot of feedback could we all check that we are muted there we go that's better today we joined the city of denver and mayor hancock in addressing related and unsettling human rights concerns over 650 incidents of verbal harassment verbal shunning and physical assault against members of the asian american community have been reported in the last month throughout our nation we can assume that the actual number is much higher xenophobia all too often proliferates during times of great duress and history shows that boulder is not immune indeed we are hearing from non-asian non-white members of our community who

[4:00] are also experiencing increasing acts of bigotry and discrimination stigma and discrimination against certain groups of people may be the anxious result of a need to blame others as we struggle to cope with our fears blame however breeds a dangerous contagion of more fear and anger none of us are in complete control of our destiny and this epidemic highlights the uncertainty of our life's course this pandemic this virus with its indiscriminate power reminds us that our

[6:10] biases against a person's race color disability religion national origin sexual orientation or gender identity toward that end the city has launched a portal the racial equity webpage to collect information on these incidents as you learned them please report findings on this portal https bouldercolorado.gov racialequity or contact the city's office of human rights at 303-441-4197 we are committed to putting the full weight of our city government behind prosecuting all violations to our human rights ordinances within our jurisdiction this pandemic has revealed our mutual dependencies and our desperate need to work together we will pull through this but only with compassion concern for

[7:01] others and commitment to our mutual well-being boulder is no stranger to hard times we're a resilient community that not only bounces back but also bounces forward we are all in this together mary would you like to follow up sure so i will read a summary of the same statement in spanish

[9:47] is

[10:40] thank you mary so i think we're on to our consent agenda can you hear me so moved second

[11:00] any discussion okay if anyone does not approve the consent agenda speak up now okay hearing no objection um we'll have unanimous approval of the consent agenda sam can i say one word yes just to call out that the consent agenda includes an extension of our oil and gas moratorium which is a significant and important step so anyone who's listening at home just wanted to mention that thank you and do we need to do as amended with the updated end time you know i think so let me pull up my script so um so we did roll call and then so yeah we we need to have a motion to add 8 a and a b we have no motion so moved

[12:03] is there a second second any objection we need to amend the oil and gas uh moratorium you got a jet and a rada sheet today changing the end time from 12 59 pm to 11 59 pm there was a slight error in the original ordinance i assume you passed it as amended yes thank you that's december 31st of this year and then jane i think we're ready for a coveted update yes we are ready and the first part of the covet update is

[13:01] jeff zayak from boulder county public health jeff are you on the line i am on the line thank you so much take it away all right thank you thanks to council member council members thanks mayor and what i'll try to focus on this week is changes from last week so i'm not going through all of the same information over and over again and the first place that i wanted to start tonight was just with our updated numbers so this is as of today we have a total of 170 confirmed cases another 31 probable cases so total combined of positives and probable 201. the average age continues to be right around 50 years old it is 49 years old as of this reporting the total number of residents that are hospitalized are 51. the total number that are hospitalized under 60 are 17. the total number of people that have recovered are 97

[14:00] and we have 23 pending disease investigations at this point and unfortunately we have five people who have deceased from the disease i just wanted to add this week a little bit more data on what percentage of people are impacted by age from cases so one percent are in the zero to nine year age range 2.6 are in the 10 to 19 year old range 23.6 are 20 to 29 year olds uh 9.9 are 30 to 39 year olds uh 12 are 40 to 49 year olds 15.2 percent are 50 to 59 16.2 percent are 60 to 69. 70 or 9.4 percent are 70 to 79 years of age and 9.9 are 80 plus uh years old so again

[15:00] the the disease does not discriminate we know we have people who are at higher risk but we do see impacts across the age range with this disease the total total uh and i don't know if we can put those slides up this would be a good time and if not i'll just talk right through them let me know if they are if they are up the first slide is up i think okay great so it should be total uh coven 19 case count that's right um so you can see that boulder has 83 cases and i want to emphasize again here the importance because we have limited testing throughout the county i want people to understand that we shouldn't just take these case counts as exactly what's happening in our community we know that we have community transmission we have limited testing capacity still in the state of colorado although it is improving um and we're continuing to

[16:01] work on that i'll give a little a little snippet of an update on that towards the end and we need to assume that there is more people in the community positive than what we're seeing tested here so it's an important thing to just keep reminding people that we don't have comprehensive testing therefore we should be approaching all of these things like we have much more community-wide transmission than what we're seeing in these counts right here the next slide please so in this slide this is the denver metro covid 19 cases by county i'm not going to spend a ton of information here when we're talking about denver metro cases it is the the general metric denver metro counties that you're seeing highlighted on the rate which is adams arapaho boulder broomfield denver douglas and tri counties or i'm sorry jefferson counties and you can see that boulder is towards the lower proportion of that

[17:00] some of that is based obviously on the amount of people that need to that meet the testing criteria as well as population next slide please what we've been doing is looking at hospitalizations and the total number of people hospitalized and what you're going to see right away if you're paying close attention here is that these numbers are not going to match the numbers that i just gave you and that's because there is a lag time in identifying a hospitalized person through the state disease system being identified as covet positive so there is going to be a delay in that but what i wanted to really call your attention to here is that you'll see at the top of of each of these that we're starting to see a little bit of a plateau and there's as you've you've probably followed the national news there's all kinds of models about where we are at in the peak clearly we've gone through a peak process here and we're closely watching

[18:02] is this plateau that we're seeing on these hospitalizations going to continue or are we going to expect to see another peak and really the only way to know that for sure is to continue to watch our data so we'll continue to watch our data across the metro region and and follow if we think we actually have a plateau or not and i'll be able to report back on this next week when i come as well the other thing i would mention to you is we have something called syndromic surveillance where we have real-time data being reported from hospitals across the entire state at this point i believe and when we looked at the syndromic surveillance data it is also indicating a downward trend of covid like illnesses um so there there's two sources of data that we're seeing uh that is that is giving us a little bit of hope about potentially we've we've made a dent in with these orders in uh the amount of surge we're

[19:02] seeing in the hospitals uh more to come on that as we move into the next weeks um and i'd like to i want to talk here about we we are getting a lot of questions about why is it that we're hearing from experts one thing one week and then another thing the next week and i think i've mentioned this in previous council meetings but this is this is really difficult to predict as you've probably seen the best experts in the nation get changing information about this virus on a weekly basis these models um are are really evaluated multiple times you see when one day we think we're gonna see one thing and the next day we find out that we're seeing something different and it's really difficult to make these predictions so the best thing we can do is continue to look at the actual data that we have and evaluate that actual data versus trying to do too much projecting when we know there's so much variation

[20:00] the other thing that i wanted to do is just again remind all of us about the characteristics of why this virus is concerning to us and what we've seen change since i last talked to you again it can affect people across the age spectrum as you just heard we we've also we've also learned and know that people are spreading the disease when they're asymptomatic which makes it more difficult for the disease to be controlled we've learned in the last week that there is that the droplets can be spread further than were initially thought and that has been what's been driving the change in the mask recommendations that you saw both from the centers for disease control this last week as well as from the governor's office and what they've done is they've made recommendations that the general public now uses cotton or a cotton blend type mask or face covering and it's really important for people to hear that it is not we do

[21:00] not want people to go out and buy medical masks do not buy n95s do not buy surgical masks because it is going to continue to deplete those supplies from people in the healthcare system first responders who are with this disease every single day and we don't want to create shortages there if people want to that you can actually go to coloradomassproject.com i'm sorry it's coloradomaskproject.com and you can request a mask on that website there is a multitude of sites out there both from the colorado department of public health and environment as well as the centers for disease control that will instruct people if they want to make their own masks homemade how to do that what's important to note that can be confusing for people is the cotton masks that are intended to be put on the general public are to stop you from spreading the disease to someone else so i had talked about we know that we can asymptomatically so

[22:01] when we don't have symptoms we can spread the disease to somebody else and by putting on a mask it stops those droplets from being spread as easily and it can help prevent people from getting the disease and that is what we can't do is assume that that is going to solve the problem it is equally as important that we wash our hands that we make sure that we are not going out unless we absolutely have to i'll talk a little bit more about that in a second and if the outside of the mask is contaminated if we touch the outside of the mask and then touch our eyes our nose our mouth then we're just going to contaminate ourselves so these are considered single use items they should be washed and just because we're wearing a mask we have to be really cautious and thoughtful about when that mask is on our face not touching the front of that mask when we put it on or take it off doing that from the very sides um and then making sure that we're washing our hands

[23:01] um whenever that happens so i don't want that those masks to create a false sense of security we obviously need to take the virus very seriously as we've seen and at the same time i want to reinforce again that 80 percent of the people that contract this will have mild symptoms and they're going to do just fine 20 of the people that have contract this are gonna have more serious symptoms and we're still seeing uh fatality rates range between uh again one and five percent depending on which country you're looking at uh and the probably again the one of the most important things that we can do so based on those slides that you saw earlier on we we are we think we are beginning to see some successes associated with a stay home order it is really important that we continue through the end of april and the governor extended the state home orders to april 26th so if we need to make sure that we are

[24:01] really being diligent about not going out unless we absolutely need to if you are going to go out please do wear some if you don't have a mask a homemade mask or you can't get one online then you can wear a bandanna or something to cover your your mouth and your nose will work so please stay home as much as you can because that's going to make the biggest difference if we're not within the distance that that virus can spread then that virus can't transmit so staying home is really really important i want to continue to emphasize that i'm also going to mention that we've had some challenges in the last couple weeks with trails specifically my ask of people is that please try to exercise around your own neighborhoods if we can stay around our own neighborhoods we are going to take pressure off the trail system unfortunately we are seeing a lot of trail use in a lot of places

[25:00] or if you have to if you absolutely have to go to a trail if you're pulling up to a trail and you're seeing a parking lot full of cars please go to another trail and find another trail that is not so busy so we're asking people to make sure that they are paying attention to that because we are having we are having some issues in places as i had mentioned last week and i just want to highlight again when those orders are lifted we have to have a few things in place in order for us to continue to control the spread of the disease in colorado and those things are again testing we need to have enhanced testing so that we are able to test more people to determine where the disease is present and we are increasing testing it is happening we're continuing to focus on that at a at a statewide level with the color department of public health and environment and our metro folks that are listed on those slides are all actively involved in that we also have to have the workforce available to contain

[26:01] the virus so when we find people who are positive making sure that they are isolating and quarantining depending on the situation and that we are able to do those follow-up contact investigations again we're holding the surge down we want to be able to control the virus after those orders are lifted in order for us to not have another surge or spike and then the last thing is to have better surveillance and monitoring which the state has taken a strong lead in and is moving forward at the statewide level so again my plea to everybody is to please stick with this stick with the orders stay at home if at all possible if you have to go out make sure you're wearing a mask be very conscious about that mask as you're putting it off and on make sure you're washing your hands keep your hands away from your face and we'll continue to be able to move forward together here i'll stop there jeff thank you i have a question from

[27:01] rachel thanks sam thank you jeff for all that information my question is about your last point about um when the order would be lifted right now we're under um stay-at-home order until april 26th um so you know if we round around may 1st and you've just given us a list of i think four things that need to be in place and as we're looking at things like um possible trail closures and um some health and safety measures that we might look at tonight i'm wondering um is there an approximate estimate for when we would expect the orders to realistically be lifted or how long we will be um needing to social distance by six feet at places like trails and wear masks i understand april 26 is the official date right now but as we're sort of trying to visualize are we are we really in a two to three week crunch here and then may 1st i

[28:02] can't imagine everybody's running outside and mixing up together again so can you give us any information yeah absolutely thank you i appreciate that question so a couple things number one uh we are probably in a new normal for quite a while right the the thing that we don't know about this virus a hundred percent is if we have any immunity to it and how long that immunity lasts and that may take some time for us to actually understand there is some research right now that's happening um so just because we've had the virus doesn't mean we have long-term immunity to that virus and that is part of the challenges associated with this is we just can't assume that because we've had it the people can just go back um to doing their normal things we know that for in the long term what is going to help us the most is going to be a vaccine and i don't i can't predict probably any better than any of you can

[29:00] when we think we're going to have a vaccine in place but once we have that vaccine in place that will be helpful for us to really get back to what i would consider a new normal and and and that doesn't even factor in all of the economic losses that we've had that are going to take years and years and years for us to climb out of uh but from a public health standpoint once we have a vaccine we are probably getting closer to to where we were before or how we would operate with another virus or another disease i'm sorry disease that was in our community that does have a vaccine for it in the interim we are going to continue to need to social distance so i don't see those messages changing even with the things that we have in place that i mentioned with containment surveillance and testing those things are going to still have to to continue and we're going to have to be diligent about that and in terms of the orders themselves being lifted the governor's office is who we're following on this that we are meeting with as i think i mentioned the

[30:00] researchers at least in the previous meeting that are influencing and working with the governor's office to determine when it will be safe to actually lift those orders so we will be following the lead of the governor's office and participating in that and we will be sure that we're messaging that as as we learn new information i appreciate that and and just want to clarify that it i think i am hearing you say that it's um it's not just we need to hunker down for three weeks and then um social distancing is is lifted because i think we need to come up the plans that are sustainable if it's going to be a more long-term social distancing requirement so just want to make sure i'm following that and also want to say everybody who's listening the the graph that's being displayed right now very clearly shows that we are flattening the curve and i want to thank everyone for their part in that

[31:00] okay so jeff you have any feedback for rachel yes i just would add that i think your question was the the purpose of flattening the curve for us right now is to make sure that we are limiting the surge on our health care system that we are limiting the potential number of people obviously they could be impacted by this disease and if we don't lower it now and i i had talked last week about that are not of three so one person infects three people those three people in fact six people those six infect nine people the nine in fact 27 and so on and what we want to do by flattening the curve is get that curve low enough so that it's below one and ideally zero and then we control the spread of the vaccine after that by lifting the orders with containment testing surveillance monitoring those kinds of things so we are going to have to continue to to stay focused with this virus at least

[32:01] in my perspective until we have a vaccine in place great thank you jeff so i have juni and then mark and mary so jeannie yeah um thank you i think my question may be for jane or i'm not sure if it is for you jeff i noticed that in one of your slides that you did provide us on the numbers for boulder city and i think my question we talked about this the last time uh last week about whether that information is available to community members on the website so it is available i believe uh i i cannot can you i'm going to answer from we are working on um what we're doing right now is we're working on posting this information on the website it is not available on the website not all of these at this point the information about the number of cases is we will have rates associated with each

[33:00] of the municipalities and towns available on the website that will be available this week the the information from the metro denver partnership for health which is two of those slides is not on the website at this point the state website has pieces of this information but not all this information compiled the same way that this is yeah but i think what i was asking more i'm sorry for not being clear was that whether we had it on our own kobe website because i understand you know what's going on in other cities but i thought for our own community because again we see although you know rachel just mentioned all the the curve is flattening there are still a lot of people going out there and you know going on the trails and just walking around so i'm just thinking you know if community members had access to know okay there are so many cases in boulder then i need to be slightly more careful again you just talked about the surge so that's what i was thinking whether it's available on

[34:00] or on akovid website and if that would be possible sorry about that jane no no worries jeff um so jeff just provided us with a slide and we can put that slide on our website it is not currently there but we can put it on and then as the public health department develops information that maybe is updated and as jeff explained indicates the rate in each community we can link to that on our website but that as jeff said won't be for a few more days but this particular slide yes we can put it on our website thank you sure great and then i've got mark and then mary and adam mark jeff first thank you for that briefing it was it was very helpful my question is how are these numbers tracking against our resources in terms of available beds

[35:00] icu beds our reserves of ppe and respirators i can pull that up in a second unless dr vissers prefers to answer that question i could let you know similar to what i presented last week it's but i'll see if dr visters wants to answer that uh sure are you able to hear me yes yes okay we're doing well uh and uh i would echo all the things that jeff said at least our perception is that we seem to be flattening the curve um and we continue to revise and enhance our contingency plan and and that includes ppe and other resources ventilators beds personnel um we actually think we have um now the capacity if we really had to go up to 71 icu beds at boulder community health which is a dramatic

[36:00] increase and hopefully we never get close to that from what we have but um in terms of ppe and other things we're doing we're doing pretty well we've implemented a number of methods to conserve the use of it um we're sterilizing with ultraviolet light so people can reuse the n95s and uh and we're doing doing actually quite well i think compared to other uh organizations thanks for the question well thank you appreciate it okay and then i have uh mary so this question is for jeff thank you for the presentation and for making time for us on your weekly calendar um we really appreciate it my question has to do with the potential for extending the stay-at-home orders they're currently there until april 26th

[37:02] and um to what there's that possibility and that possibility will remain in place until we can get the proper containment surveillance and testing is that is that the um the way things would move yeah i think i would not want to try to get in front of the governor's office on this one nor do i know what the governor's exact thinking is on this but we like i said we are tracking these data we are also now uh among the metro directors along with the state talking about what does it actually look like to lift an order from our perspective so we will be having those discussions this week we as you can see we're tracking certain data right now but how the governor decides to lift those orders is not something i would speculate on i could just tell you that we're very engaged and that as we learn new

[38:00] information that can be shared with with everyone we will make sure we're bringing that back to you thank you jeff so i have adam next and then bob thanks jeff at the beginning of your presentation you were presenting a breakdown of age ranges and who had tested positive in those ranges where or what was the data set was that all of colorado or was that just boulder county that was just boulder county data okay and just to remind me was the highest range the range with the most amount of people who tested positive the 20 to 29 age range uh let me look hold on one second uh 20 yes that's correct 23.6 of the total is in the 20 to 29 year old age range all right thank you so much for that uh i appreciate it thanks

[39:02] and bob i actually don't have a question i just want to test my mic because it wasn't working on the other device can you hear me now if we can hear you great no questions ladies all the great questions have been asked and then do we want to move on to rob sure i think jeff did an excellent job covering things and i already highlighted that we feel pretty good about our contingency planning our personal protective equipment we continue to seek ventilators that are the ones that are ideally designed for critical care patients but we have a number of alternatives that we're able to bring online should we need to do so we have not had to do that so far the one other thing i would mention or emphasize is and i say this really to reinforce the

[40:00] idea uh or the importance of the stay at home and the social responsibility that we've seen within boulder we are i believe seeing the impact i i'm sure that the the curve has been flattened or at least slowed significantly and it has really given us that capacity and what i'm hoping is that we end up seeing a lot less patients and losing a lot less lives because of it so it's a thank you i believe it is working and um and also to emphasize the importance of continuing this um because we're not anywhere near out of the woods i think it's really too early to say definitively but certainly it feels like we're making a difference and an impact the other thing i did want to mention is sometimes we focus on this so much and and there's so much fear is to understand that we're still having to take care of and are there to take care of people with other medical needs and we are starting to be concerned about patients who are

[41:01] perhaps staying home or not seeking care that should be and and whether it be chronic diseases or acute flares or an acute illness but the last thing we want is people with chest pain stroke symptoms other potential life threats or even urgent potentially emergent things to stay away from the hospital we are managing the cove with patients very well but we still have significant capacity and we can manage the other patients safely and we have a way to uh route the non-colgate patients or non-suspected patients in a way that they are not at all exposed and i think it's i feel safer walking through my hospital than i do walking through a grocery store at least before we implemented the universal masking so i want to make sure that we don't lose in the message the importance of general health care and and some of the other things that are important to the overall well-being and health of our community

[42:03] um i i don't uh i don't think i have much more because i think jeff covered it well but i'll uh certainly um listen to some questions or take any questions thank you dr visitors any any questions so i'm not seeing any thank you both very much for your continued support of the city and your briefings they're very helpful and they keep us and our community updated i wanted to turn it over to chris meschuk he had wanted to switch something in the council chambers audio is going to cut out for about two seconds and then we're gonna have to redo the consent agenda vote because it's roll call okay sam we should be back up and running okay lynette do you want to do a roll call

[43:00] vote yes please um this is the consent agenda items b through g councilmember young yes brockett hi and do we want to say as amended as amended council member friend yes joseph aye nagle all right sweat lick yes wallach hi river yes yates yes it passes unanimously with the amendment to ordinance 8392. very good so jane just helped me out here are we going to open comment at this point no no we've still got the rest of the um update from the city staff and then the covid response that council

[44:01] was going to enter into and then open comment very good thank you great so um on to the next slide just this is a quick reminder for me about our guiding principles one we want to preserve the health care system we're in a state of emergency still and we will be for quite a while the stay-at-home orders are in effect and preserving the health care system is our primary goal we also are ensuring continuity of government so that we can deliver essential services to our community and we want to focus on equity at all times so that all community members are included so on to the next slide just a quick update on what our essential services are could you go back chris law enforcement which was both police and our open space rangers all of whom are engaged every single day and really important work in our community protecting us making sure the

[45:00] people are following the rules fire and rescue which is available day in and day out to help people that are experiencing symptoms water wastewater transportation and we have a city-wide coveted response team so i just want to keep that in front of the community that our real focus is on essential services and not on some of the other things that they may have seen and certainly um housing and human services is becoming quite an essential service for our community so the next thing that we're going to do is turn this over to yvette bowden who's going to start off talking about a legislative update and then on to the work that we're doing with the business community and she'll be followed by kurt fernharber who'll give us an update on the human services and homeless impact that we're having right now so of that thank you jane and good evening council next slide so with carl castillo's help and and my

[46:00] friends in human services and other departments we wanted to give the community an understanding of how some of these federal packages are coming through and why it's always not easy for us to give you a specific date or one application this slide depicts what is also what is true for cares but what is also true should there be a fourth package or any other federal legislation coming through at this time the federal government is approving relief and recovery packages they come through varied departments and divisions and agencies each one of those agencies or divisions has a different process for going through the applications they also have different criteria for those programs different uses for how the funds can be used and certainly different timelines for funding distribution we thought as a staff it'd be easier for the community to appreciate that they seem to be falling at least at this point into three buckets resources available for government

[47:00] resources available for people and then for business so for government we're seeing that at a state level in a relief package that i'll talk about in a second there's also funding through existing programs like hud and fema and you you're very familiar with those but it's coming through existing programs with that criteria and that reporting strategy for people which is where the emphasis has been in this immediate response stage it has been everything from sick leave and free testing and job protection for health care workers to extended unemployment the snap program funding increase uh filing deadline chain extension for your irs tax filings uh student loan requirement and then also the stimulus relief checks we heard about just recently finally in the area of businesses largely through the sba and through banks there are loans grants and you heard me last week talk a little bit about idle and idle advance

[48:01] and those programs as well as the express bridge loan there are incentives to retain workers through the payroll protection program that we talked about last week and that is prominently on the city's business resources web page payroll tax adjustments industry specific relief all still very much in the works next slide so last week council had a couple of questions and with carl's help we were able to kind of put together short answers first how much of the cares act funding is actually going to be coming to the city of boulder so the coronavirus relief fund is which a lot of people are referring to as karezak affords 2.2 billion dollars for colorado for what is called but not defined yet necessary expenditures related to covet this does not cover previously budgeted expenditures of the city or the state government

[49:00] much of it has directly been allocated to the largest counties largely based on population size and that accounts for already about 50 of that 2.2 billion dollars that does include denver and denver county it is unclear how much of that remainder is going to go to boulder and how it will be allocated and there are some conversations going on about that last week after the council meeting we got a couple of questions about what the city of boulder could do to perhaps influence allocation under cares or even looking forward toward a forced stimulus package first we're positioning around the need for of mid-size cities and dedicated funding that possibly could come direct which will expedite the process hopefully requesting flexibility of uses we know that there are gaps um in the first in this third stimulus package and so addressing things like lack of loss sales tax revenue opportunity delayed

[50:00] infrastructure projects which we'll talk about in a minute reimbursement of anything that the city should waive or delay including penalties for ladies to make doctor document and make the case for the coverage of those gaps in the community beyond the government of course and then suggesting extension for what is frankly becoming a longer recovery process as we all imagined so what can the city do also to start illustrating and documenting eligibility for any federal state programs our prior experience in the flood taught us about the importance of documentation so we need to be documenting direct covet related expenses related to staff and resource allocation tracking local jobs unemployment and economic impacts both short and long term and we're trying to cover some of that in the questionnaire that we launched last week and then codifying efforts around infrastructure projects that were delayed or canceled next slide

[51:05] so this is just a reminder slide we want to make sure that people are aware of the resources that are available largely through the city's webpage that is right there on the side for individuals and families which human services will cover in greater detail shortly there's safety related information on the web page needs assistance around food and health care and housing stability job listings and unemployment coverage information for businesses there's been a couple of additions of course we want to always have an area where we're providing information on safe and emergency order compliant operations of your business if you're still open we hope you are assistance for your impacted employees who we know you care about and then financial assistance which was the big call that we wanted to work on first eligibility amount and uses differ for programs so i'm going to remind everybody idle loans and grants we have

[52:02] added to the city's business webpage of video from the sbdc so thank you to the sbdc for showing people how to get through the application for the idle loan grant payroll protection program and loan processing we've added yesterday morning thank you again to the chamber and sbdc a lender list of local banks that people can look to to process ppp loan applications so that information has been posted and then express bridge loans next slide i wanted to pause for a minute here and tell everybody about what's going on with the boulder business response and recovery alliance all the wonderful organizations on the right hand side of this slide so on april 1st as we promised last week during the council meeting we issued a very short business impact questionnaire

[53:00] i can report today that we are over 1100 responses already at a response rate of just about 21 the close of the questionnaire is on april 10th we will extend that if we feel that any particular area is underrepresented but our partners are helping us do additional outreach there and we will be reporting the council during your meeting of april 28th as part of your larger conversation this week we'll be continuing to work on key messaging pushing um the information on how to apply for idle and idle advance coordinated outreach occurred last week to the lending institutions that resulted in the list on the web page there's great modeling being done particularly by the convention and visitors bureau around the anticipated recovery period duration and we look forward to working with the university on that as well reviewing gaps in available support we know that there is a lot of pain right now in the arts community

[54:00] certain non-profit organizations that are not otherwise eligible and contractors we'll be looking at providing input for stimulus package considerations and there's a very important bullet here on the last portion but i think i would like to turn it over to mayor weaver i think you've got a talking point for that i do and thank you vet so much for all the hard work you're doing you know it it is a tough time and you are really supporting our business community um i i i want to um before we move on to questions from my fellow council members i want to join with staff in acknowledging another significant outcome of the boulder business response and recovery alliance work earlier this evening the city joined with zao corporation and the caruso family and establishing a 250 000 challenge grant supporting boulder's local businesses the kova 19 small

[55:00] business relief fund is seated by 200 000 in city funding and a generous fifty thousand dollar gift from the caruso family in zao the fund was conceived by the boulder chamber and will be administered by the community foundation of baldur county with this gift the city exceeds half a million dollars in support of our local small business community a start in our efforts to support the local economy and the business and workers we call neighbors we should all be proud that this effort coincides with the human services impacts the city its volunteers and many non-profit partners are making to support individuals and families at times like this no amount of local state or federal support can be enough nevertheless we hope that the challenge grant gives encouragement to boulder's small businesses and motivates those of us who are able to get involved in our communities recovery so please expect more details in the

[56:00] news release and join me in thanking zeo the caruso family and our business response and recovery lands partners thank you all thank you sam and with that i'm available for any questions got it and i see aaron and then mary yeah thanks so much for that event and that's exciting news about the small business really fun thanks to everyone at the city and the chamber and the seo and crusade foundation really appreciate that it's a great supplement to our individual our rent relief that the city is individually for individuals that the city is working on as well but the question yvette i know that some of the the funding that has been designated so far that might go to the city or other municipalities as i understand it is would only be for expenses directly related to

[57:00] uh covert 19 response is that correct that is our understanding at this point but they have not um given we're expecting some guidance very soon about that so i guess then the second part of my question probably is the same answer which is would something like this small business relief fund that we're just putting together and we're spending money on uh qualify for that kind of reimbursable and i guess we're going to find out would probably we're going to find out but we're certainly making the case um both through the questionnaire and through this effort um that these were things that were not expected or budgeted and are directly related to covet so we'll be making that case that's great because that this could be an opportunity for us for the small businesses and also individuals that if we're able to tap federal funding by directly supporting individuals and small businesses in our community then that's a huge opportunity so i look forward to hearing more about how that will work out thank you thanks thank you aaron question from bob

[58:03] thanks sam thanks yvette if um so there's 250 000 um small business relief challenge grant is going to be administered by the community foundation i understand is that correct that is correct so if um members of the community want to um on a match the 250 000 has been provided by the city and zeo and um the caruso family how would they make matching contributions so we're asking everybody to contact the community foundation or the chamber with your interest in making a donation the application period for this is not been opened yet the city will be working with the community foundation and the chamber over the next week to put out that application again this is we recognize that right now there are businesses that are open the intent of this small

[59:00] opportunity is to move a little bit more swiftly than we could in other areas so people are out getting loans we hope and are out applying individual workers are out making use of the many resources my colleagues in human services will mentioned in just a moment but right now there are people trying to continue to serve the community and they're open and they're having unusual expenses and we wanted to be able to help them stay safe stay open and keep their employees this won't cover personnel gifts personnel expenses but it will do the non-recurring expenses that are specifically related to coven and the reason for that is we want to make sure that we're situating this grant to be able to link right back to any federal relief package this is what's needed fast it's what's needed most and it's the beginning so i thank you for that thanks a bit mary question yes thank you for that yvette and thank

[60:00] you to um the chamber and the caruso foundation very generous um my question is about um is is the criteria or what criteria will be getting looked at for the disbursement of those funds and will there be certain size businesses or types of business businesses that are prioritized over others what will that look like so we know that the funds are limited and the gifts will be up to 2 500 each the criteria will be put out by the community foundation in the chamber we hope by the end of this week but we are certainly planning by next monday the reason for that is we want to be able to get the application ready and be able to move relatively swiftly with that the sizes of businesses that are eligible are only between 2 and 50 employees so we are looking for

[61:00] those small business the smallest of businesses that are trying to operate stay open and be safe and so that's where we're going to start this is a beginning program and we hope that this is responsive especially as we continue to analyze the work coming out of the business impact questionnaire thank you vet thank you great thank you very much yvette that was extremely helpful um jane did we want to move on to human services yeah absolutely it's time for a curt fern haber to talk about what human services has been up to kurt uh good evening council uh kurt von howard director of housing human services so um before i start i wanted to highlight some of the staff at housing human services is you know i like to tell stories i'm not going to tell one tonight however i ask for people to tell me what they're doing and the individual impact their work is having on the

[62:01] community and it's pretty phenomenal that the individual work that uh city staff are having on direct individuals in our community whether it's dropping off a prepaid card at a senior's house so they can um you know order some sort of food or special thing from the store because they can't go out or helping someone you know uh in from getting evicted or getting their rent or or just different crisis and the individual efforts i just want to before i start i just want to highlight this the city staff and you'll see that in the presentation um coming through in different ways so the um the uh the next slide equitable access to the internet so that's a concern that we've heard from the community we've been working closely with the boulder valley school district who's actively working with households with students for

[63:01] low-cost internet options and they are deploying hot spots and households that cannot access the internet either the lack of income or lack of affordable options where they live so city city staff are taking a similar approach and collaborating with the school district and supporting them our department is working with the library and our innovation and technology departments so some of this is through areas that are covered in our city by comcast they have an internet essentials program with two free months of internet but we've also put in place 25 mobile hot spots that are our i.t department has assisted with and then the the library foundation through their emergency grant uh has a hundred hot spots that are available as well next slide so housing and human services family

[64:01] services so our family outreach uh coordinators within hhs are providing bilingual support to families at columbine creekside crestview university hill in whittier and they've contacted over 147 households in the last couple of weeks and referred these families to services and rent food helping them with job loss transportation access technology and and health their highest needs however have been and most consistent needs to bend rent food and technology and the the frs also works with a therapy team with mental health partners and they have been providing um through skype and zoom and over the phone counseling mental health counseling for individuals and households as well

[65:01] next slide so our hhs community mediation services and we had a few questions about that last week so they've responded to um 43 calls uh recently and just want to give you an overview of what those calls look like so there was 12 calls for tenants unable to pay rent um uh they helped eight tenants who were having to break their lease early and working with the landlords around that there was seven around health concerns uh we worked with five individuals who had concerns with their roommates and social distancing and [Music] also five for for lease extensions and other things as well in most cases they've been resolved through

[66:00] light inter intervention with our cms team most landlords have been reasonable and eventually willing to work with tenants so the cms team is also working with a similar program that's up in in the city of longmont and we've also been working with the county so we've broken up the county into different sections so the the longmont team is taking certain uh geographic areas and we're taking other geographic areas so we're also supporting louisville superior gun barrel and nederland through our team we've also had regular communication with the cu off campus housing and bara and we're trying to align the sort of communication strategies and messages to landlords we've also updated the the cobit website um last week with all of these resources again as input from we got from what we received last tuesday

[67:01] next slide on on manufactured housing so as you're aware the governor's office has put out direction around foreclosures and evictions and that sort of thing um and and has encouraged um waiving of of uh of um fees until the end of april so our city staff has reached out to mobile home communities and park owners with information and conversations about how to work with their tenants as we share connections with resources in the community so all the market rate mobile home park owners in our city are waiving april late fees on rent and working with residents on payment plans for residents that have lost employment however residents will continue to receive notice of payments when they are behind um but this message is here for tenants

[68:01] who are having challenges to work with their their landlords now and work out solutions so we would encourage any tenants that are having these challenges to to really reach out to the landlords you know before it becomes a problem and really work on solutions with their rent throughout the month next slide so now we'll talk a little bit about the cares act and how it uh impacts some of our work and i'm going to focus on sort of two areas the first is the individuals and and local governments and specifically we'll be talking about the community development uh block grant funds so these are the various you know buckets that the cares act um sits in so next slide let's see so the um the individual payments and rent supports says the city and our in our

[69:02] government and and service agency partners extend resources to meet the needs of the communities it's critical for our community members to tap resources available to them as individuals and that's really where one of the biggest pots of money sits the cares act we'll be making one-time cash payments to individuals of twelve hundred dollars plus not five hundred dollars uh uh per child so payment dates are are are are not set but uh we're anticipating we'll start coming out the the end of april um also under the colorado's uh the the cares act um providing unemployment payments so colorado unemployment benefits are normally a maximum of of 618 uh per week that amount uh is is a formula based on wages but the cares act will pay an extra six hundred dollars a week uh for the next four months

[70:01] the cares act is also providing rental assistance protections to housing authorities to help renters safely remain in their homes and sort of a note from bhp boulder housing partners they're seeing about eight to ten percent um of their of their tenants who are anticipating challenges with meeting their rent obligations that's that's similar to what we've seen with some of the other owners of our affordable housing properties as well if residents have a loss of income due to covid their their income calculation is reduced and the voucher portion is increased to cover the gap through the cares act hud is providing the funds to fill this gap so there's those are the additional funds coming to housing authorities bhp is not currently issuing new vouchers and they actually don't have the authority to do that that

[71:00] authority to to add vouchers actually sits with hud and we get direction from hud around that the city boulder as you're aware has a as a voucher program for permanent support of housing or individuals that have previously been experiencing homelessness and we're continuing to work with our local voucher programs uh to assist homeless individuals into housing but housing exits are being hampered by the challenges of leasing with this this environment of of covet all of our other psh units and vouchers are at 100 capacity right now um and for anyone needing to maintain housing these supports would be critical for individuals to use these supports uh next slide so the um the cares act in local government so that runs through cdbg uh

[72:00] community community development block grants and our health and health our housing human services department within the city is the lead agency of the boulder and broomfield home consortium and we're an entitlement community that receives cdbg funds directly from hud cdbg funds are hud funds specific to serving low and moderate income individuals and families and so to ensure compliance the uh [Music] the um excuse me so the the the benefits to the cdbg um are are through um benefits to low-income persons um alignment with our five-year consolidated plan which i'll talk about just now and utilizing existing programs or organizations so the the the cdbg funds aren't necessarily

[73:01] easy funds to work with the same rules apply that normally apply so we'll really be looking at working with our local partners who have used those funds previously to implement some of that so annually the this i'm sorry next slide um so annually the city receives between seven and nine hundred thousand of um of these funds um through federal appropriations and we've got about 90 000 that was carry over from last year you'll see on the table and we have a press release going out either this evening or tomorrow morning indicating that we've been allocated 485 000 to the city of boulder through the cares act which will be available by the end of april so in june we'll receive our 2020

[74:02] allocation of which it's about 500 000 which can be allocated to support covet activities we also receive other cdbg funds of about 300 000 but those are for activities that are already designated in our in our city budget so by uh june the city will have received just over a million dollars of cdbg funds to use for this next slide so the consolidated plan every five years we we do a consolidated plan for hud we're currently in the process of completing our consolidated plan for the next five years but any cdbg funds must fall within our our current plan so to ease the access and expenditure of these dollars the funds

[75:00] need to meet the goals of our existing plan um so the goals of the of the existing plan are to preserve affordable housing reduce homelessness increase economic empowerment of individuals and then we have a rehab program as well as infrastructure improvements that support low-income residents so in this time of coven we'll be prioritizing three areas which are rental housing homelessness activities and economic developments so that is the um the end of my presentation and i'm happy to take any questions so kurt thank you so much for all you're doing you know it is an impressive response from your team and so you know i can't say enough about how much you're helping people in this

[76:00] time of need if you could go back two slides yeah so i just wanted to understand that you know there's two numbers there 485 thousand and 485 000. so what are those two and how do we get those and do those involve the county or just the city yeah so they all of these funds allocated here are just the city um and the let me go down to the the the third row where it says 20 20 485 000 coming to us in june so that was already part of our annual award um those are that's the amount of money that has not been allocated to a particular activity in our community for 2020 and so therefore it's open to be spent on

[77:00] on covet activities if you go to the the the middle uh row that 485 000 we we just received a letter yesterday from hud indicating that that's the amount that we'll be receiving through the cares act through our cdbg infrastructure and that will also support covid activities in our community i see so that's all city money so mary has a question yes i do thank you kurt and i too um immensely appreciate all of the work that you and your staff team and um the collaborators are doing it's we're just so lucky to have everyone in this town my first question has to do with one of the how you started out your presentation um commending the staff

[78:01] members that are going out and having one-on-one contact with residents and i've known them to do that since before coved so um i appreciate that very much i was interested in knowing if there's any way that council members could participate in that kind of um one-on-one service or or delivery of some sort so um that's my first question i have several others but um if you want to take that one that'd be great so um i don't know how to answer that question um i think i'm going to have to i would want to talk about that with my team to understand the best way to add value there and i'm actually really thankful for that question we we've had a lot of um [Music] and i'm also not sure if i i missed a

[79:02] couple of slides um [Music] there was i was anticipating two slides on our coveted recovery center as well i'm not sure if those were in there because i was looking at my notes that's another area to sort of volunteer um so there's areas to volunteer within the local organizations and i would encourage people who are wanting to volunteer to to work with sort of the the existing infrastructure that we have in those and that's the best way to do that so thank you for um if i could just interrupt for a second sam i noticed that there was two slides that i actually missed chris must have jumped ahead with me um if you would allow me to cover those as well please thank you um so there's there's two slides and i

[80:01] apologize for that the um [Music] so the covid recovery center um as as you all uh recall is a place for homeless individuals to go who are receiving or are having coveted symptoms um so the the slide says we currently have some 16 residents we had 17 today um it's having a significant impact on getting individuals out of the the homeless system some big impacts since we spoke a week ago one of the biggest impacts for me as an individual anyways is that we hired a crc manager and assistant manager those are existing staff that were appointed to those positions one from the county and the manager from from the city that's helped immensely in increase increasing our capacity through that organizational structure to support support those residents

[81:01] we've also partnered with clinica who's now providing support for providing prescriptions several the individuals that come to the crc have chronic conditions or mental health conditions and they're helping with ensuring that those prescriptions are maintained for individuals that are staying there the other thing that happened today for the first time is that we were able to transport four individuals from the crc to clinica to be tested for covid two individuals at the crc have been tested these are for additional um individuals to be tested this is a new development for us and it's going to help us provide a better service and help us understand the impact that we're having and provide better care mental health partners has also um um become more involved in the crc

[82:03] in in providing mental health services and um just they're they're figuring out how to provide these services in a better way in this covet environment and then you'll also remember there was there has been some community members that have um uh reached out recently with the concern about drinking water so we've ordered drinking water that will be given by bottles at both of our shelters every morning to individuals who leave the shelters i believe that order either came in this afternoon or is going out tomorrow morning um next slide um so again this is sort of the impact um one of the ways that we're doing this covid recovery center in such a cost-effective ways way is the volunteers and staff which are giving of their time to run this 24-hour

[83:02] service you can see since it started there's been 231 shifts and over 1500 hours of volunteer time a total of 53 community members have volunteered at the crc and that's been quite remarkable and last night last last tuesday you'll remember that i spoke about that we were increasing the capacity of the of the driving and so we've been able to collect individuals throughout a 24-hour period as they become highlighted with with with symptoms so i apologize for skipping over those two slides at the beginning kirk no problem and i just want to say thank you to all the community members who are volunteering their time it's incredible what our community is

[84:00] stepping up to and and thank you kurt and for all your staff work any questions so i had i had some more questions i don't have any about these two slides go ahead okay um so thank you for um for that kurt and um i appreciate that um the criteria of adding value i i yes i don't think that um it should be done and and create a further burden so um adding value is key and so mary could i ask you a favor could you turn your um video on we've had a request from people in the community that they'd like to see people okay sure so my next question has to do with the hot spots

[85:00] if somebody in the community is wanting a hot spot and they aren't excuse me connected with um with boulder valley school district how would they go about that uh very good question um so the first let me say that our brenda written our in our labor neighborhood liaison has been working very closely with neighborhoods that we've identified who have a need for a hot spot and crystal londor has been working very closely with the mobile home park communities identifying where those areas are as well in reaching or working very closely with those communities so i'd start by saying there's there's been a lot of outreach already with with those [Music] with those areas it started primarily through the school district as the

[86:00] priority for giving connections to children so i would ask individuals to reach out to our neighborhood liaison brenda rittenhauer and she's sort of coordinating that with with uh with crystal great thank you and um and is the are there qualifying requirements for that or just lack of access is that one of one of the the criteria yeah i mean we're we're looking for lack of access but we're primarily looking in communities and households of lower incomes okay thank you and then i was just wondering if you might say a little bit more about the mobile home owner lease amendment that was released last

[87:00] week and how that can help mobile home owners um are you [Music] which lease amendment are you referring to there was a lease amendment and i'd have to go back and look at my um my email and figure out it was the one it was released well crystal found out about it on um friday excuse me and um and then um herman translated it into spanish that same morning but i don't remember exactly what that was i believe it was the one regarding um the late fees um so i i will have to get back to you on that i don't i don't recall the details of that but we can put that on on hotline tomorrow as well that'd be great thank you um and i have um

[88:03] my final question also has to do with mobile home owners and what recourse now you mentioned that staff has been having conversations with the mobile home park owners and that they're cooperating and if people have still have are encountering issues with the park owners what is their recourse they should reach out to our community mediation team which is on our covid website and we have already been in conversations with all of the owners and management of the mobile home parks so we are um working to help find solutions with park owners but hopefully the um the park owners have have set an

[89:02] approach of willingness to work with uh with residents thank you very much kurt yep great anyone else with questions nope thank you kurt very very impressive work you're doing thank you okay jane yeah so the next thing on the agenda is what we were calling code 19 response and that was an opportunity for council members to ask other staff members about questions and concerns that they might have about other matters that are happening related to the pandemic so we're ready for your questions very good so i have a few items that are on my list you know one is trails and trail closures and should we think about that

[90:01] another is how we can encourage people to do social distancing another one is ego car share and another one would be the downtown bathroom and how should we deal with that so i'm going to open it up to other council members i just thought i'd put those out there because i've heard those from other council members mark sorry i was muted a couple of things it's advised that we wear masks when we go outside but because of the unavoidable presence of other people and and proximity of other people can we require the use of masks at grocery stores and would that make any sense yeah it makes sense i don't know the answer to that question tom can you help sure there's no requirement right now

[91:01] under the state law that you wear masks at grocery stores i suppose we could issue an order it would probably be advisory at best it's i'm not sure how we would enforce it mark and i'm generally not enthusiastic about creating something that would be that difficult to enforce well i have another comment that relates again to enforcement i know we have a predisposition to education as opposed to stronger methods of ensuring compliance with social distancing and such but i think we've all seen a couple of these videos of what's going on uh on the hill um you know parties on front lawns no regard for social distancing at all nobody wearing a mask and at some point i guess you have to ask the question is it time for us to be a little less educational and a little more prescriptive and the answer is no i'm going to

[92:00] suggest that the next time i'm pulled over for speeding on broadway i'm going to want an educational lecture as opposed to a ticket i just think we're getting to a point where people are doing things that are damaging to our population and jeopardizing the health of others and we may need to take a different look at it so mark first of all let me advise you not to go speeding on broadway in any circumstance um we have a long experience so there's a couple of issues with with enforcement as opposed to education first in my experience education works better for the vast majority of people you ask most police officers they'll tell you that as well um i have been more compliant i'll tell you when i've been stopped from speeding and the officer says look i'm not going to give you a ticket today just behave better than when i get a ticket so my personal experience is that we had an experience with the bear trash ordinance when we first enacted it uh we had an educational program

[93:01] and um council in a speech very similar to what you just said told us that we had to have strict enforcement and we objected but we went ahead and did it within six months people were screaming about the strict enforcement and we had a different council asking us why we were doing strict enforcement the police will tell you that it's much more effective to do education than enforcement the second point is right now we don't really have any jail capacity we don't have so writing tickets would probably undermine compliance if we give somebody a ticket that we can enforce we're not really sending any message at all and then the last thing the parties on the hill the police are doing what they can to cut those back under the state order the gathering's prohibition only applies outside of residences and residences is defined and i'm not sure you could bring a case to say that

[94:00] people can't gather in a front yard under the the language of the state public health order so i i'd be concerned about any strict enforcement i think the police do a remarkable job of convincing people to change their behavior and i think we've seen a high level of compliance in the city based on what the police are doing right now and yes there are always going to be except exceptions and the challenge is putting those in the context of the vest the high quality the high number of people who are actually complying with these requirements okay so mark if i could i'd like to let rachel jump in and then adam and then we'll keep going on this because i think this is going to be a theme for a bit so um rachel hi i think um you maybe skipped aaron i thought i want you to well i i just i'm sure you're going thematic so i actually have a lot of thoughts on the issues that you raised sam and in response to mark but i have a question are we basically just putting the issues out right now to see what we are going

[95:01] to talk about and what we want to ask staff about or are we having a discussion so i feel like we should have a discussion and so you know i put a few issues out and jane i think got those and so i think right now we're on um hill parties and so i think we should just go to town on hill parties i'll go with hill parties then um i i would like to see us do something if there are more tools that we have and i don't know if that could be adding back in order of our own that does perhaps limit outside gatherings or just are there any other things we can do because we are hearing a lot from people on the hill that there are frequent violators that are not being deterred the police come they talk to them they all smile and then the police go away and then the party resumes right away so for those sort of frequent flyer violators are there things that we could do to be more educational or

[96:03] get get better social distancing because i do i do imagine that it's very frustrating for the neighbors to maybe feel like they are in increased harm's way because the virus is spreading right and they're right in their on their block so could carry weinheimer our interim police chief jump in and explain what we are doing sure good evening council carry one hammer interim chief thanks carrie um first i'd like to add a little bit of context this discussion so in uh in march uh we handled an entire amount of 25 noise complaints which noise complaints are primarily the dispatch category that loud parties go into so far this month uh up through today we've handled over 60 and they're not all on the hill they're throughout the city so what i'm seeing is that with everyone home um people are becoming a bit stir crazy

[97:02] and noise complaints are going up and parties in general are happening throughout the city not just on the hill so it's not just about the hill second i've been in conversation today with doreen jokers the chief at cu and i believe jane has been in conversation with francis at cu we're trying to put together a virtual meeting with some of the university hill neighborhood association members our command staff that deal with students in the hill and cu's command staff that deals with their students and number one hear their their concerns directly and number two tell them what we can do and what we can't do part of what we're discussing and this is preliminary so i want to stress that is looking at the possibility of reporting student violators through the university student conduct office like we do with other violations so we're waiting to see if that's uh

[98:02] workable for cu but that's one idea we're looking at is that if we have students on the hill that are not complying the week instead of citing them criminally because as as tom had mentioned um i've spoken with him i've also spoken in depth with ken cuffin at the da's office we're not sure how enforceable it is to cite someone for gathering their own front law so we're looking at an alternative of possibly routing some of those through the office of student conduct which would have some different sanctions so that's kind of the quick quick update on parties on the hill great thank you um next to adam and then juni thanks so uh i appreciate that carrie thank you for the update um and i think that might be a strategy that might actually work as if you actually get the code of conduct involved

[99:01] i just wanted to point out that in the presentation on who's actually being affected most you know the demographic of 2029 was actually the highest by many percentage points so it's not just anecdotal like the evidence is bearing this out that that group of people in particular is clearly not social distancing the way that they should be and that we need to take more action in that regard so i just wanted to point out that also i wanted to add one thing i forgot um i've seen a draft of a letter i believe c is going to send out to their list of landlords who have student housing off campus it's about a three-page letter and it details all the things that we're concerned about about social distancing that house parties are not acceptable during this time all those things so i believe that cu is going to be seeing that communication out shortly as well got it thank you carrie so

[100:00] juni aaron bob it looks like you have decided to skip is that correct if anyone wants to speak up speak up now okay so i think there is a serious concern about gatherings more than 10 people right and i think the governor has given us clear directives about how unhealthful that is and so anything that the police can do to let people know that to educate them and to disperse any gatherings i think would be very helpful jane do you want to weigh in here i don't have anything more to add i did talk with francis draper today and i think cu is making a concerted effort to work with us with our police department with the landlords to make a difference on the hill so we will continue to work with them got it and i i you know heard what kerry said about it's happening all over the city and so you know i think we need to

[101:04] be letting people know that it's unhealthy for them to be gathering in large groups so yeah thank you anyone else want to weigh in on this okay um my next thing and jane do you tell me do you want to talk about trails i do yes you might so we have with us dan burke who's been working with the regional directors of open space in boulder county jefferson county just across the front range and he has a report on open space trails dan yeah thank you jane thank you council uh everyone hear me yes excellent uh dan burke director open space to mountain parks um i do have a couple of slides i would like to provide you with a quick update from uh chris at slide

[102:00] number 29 would be our first one um what i would like to do is just quickly focus on giving you a sense of of what we're seeing in terms of visitation and compliance out on our system since we last talked quickly recap a couple of actions that we've taken since the last week to put in place to address compliance related issues um to give you a little bit of status as jane said about the other open space agencies in the region and what they are experiencing and how they're thinking about addressing it further and additional steps that the department is considering to put in place if we don't see compliance and visitation trends uh improve from where we are at right now so in terms of visitation summary um i can tell you that um osmp is is still experiencing days in our system like this past sunday for example that resemble peak summertime numbers it is somewhat weather dependent we see a beautiful weekend day and our numbers

[103:00] spike but i can also say that in the past week that we've also seen days that are either back to normal or even below normal in terms of our daily visitation for this time of year um and what is different uh than in typical years is visitation remains very robust during the weekdays uh not just on weekends which is uh would be typical of what we would see at this time of year in which we would have very high numbers on the weekends and less on the weekdays we're seeing very robust numbers throughout the week it is also worth noting that we're experiencing these higher numbers during trail conditions that are often wet and muddy which raises some other more ecologically based concerns for us the reports from rangers and other field staff indicate that visitors seem to be more conscious and aware of the need for practice physical distancing than they were let's say a week or two ago however there remains a significant proportion of visitors who are still not putting this awareness

[104:00] into action it should be noted however that there are certain trails and trailheads in our system where visitation numbers are not high and we're distancing in other measures or more easily adhered to but bottom line is and overall and jeff uh zach iterated this earlier is more work needs to be done to increase compliance uh with distancing and this continues to be a high concern for the department so what are what are some steps that we're taking to address this i mentioned last week that we've closed all nature centers picnic shelters picnic areas and the like we've actually closed several areas on flagstaff um we're we're servicing and maintaining our trailhead areas on a daily basis now as opposed to just a couple of times a week which we normally would be doing we are leaving gates open on our open space system where there's no active agricultural um activities that are occurring and in order to help visitors prevent from touching

[105:01] gates that others may have had to touch in order to open and close we have continued to develop a lot of targeted public messaging and communication in fact over the past few days some of the things that we're doing and have done is that we have been able to identify and secure and now strategically deployed variable messaging boards those are the signs you see along the roadways there are four now out on our system and two more are going to be deployed in the next couple of days uh and those are messages aimed at social distancing and avoiding crowds and staying home we have updated our osmptrails.org web map to include information on osmp and other city trails that are six feet wide or more and information where visitors can go to find out use statistics for trails if they're looking for less visited less busy trails we have put those type of information now on our osnptrails.org web map

[106:01] so to assist people who are seeking to avoid crowded areas and we have placed 24 large signs out on our busiest trails emphasizing the need to practice distancing and other measures and about a dozen more of these uh a-frame signs if you will out on our trails are on their way at these busy sites um the other significant thing that we've done just the past couple of days is we have trained and we be and we've actually began deploying this weekend uniformed outreach and education staff at our busiest trails and trailheads to help get messaging out on how to safely and responsibly visit open space we're expecting that when these new crews are fully trained and deployed that we'll have about 150 to 250 additional staff hours out on the system to assist our rangers in getting the word out and to see if we can uh increase compliance levels and um and i should note and a big plug-in to our other another department

[107:00] our community vitality department we are currently having some of their staff collaborating with our rangers to help in managing parking issues we're very much aware of some of the crowded and congested areas in terms of parking in our neighborhoods near access points and in illegal spots next to trailheads and with the help of community vitality which started just a couple of days ago we are uh enforcing and uh especially the illegal parking areas and uh look forward to more partnership with community of vitality to help us in that regards so next slide i just want to put a jade mention that i'm in daily communications with our regional open space peers talk to our directors on a daily basis to see what they're seeing all all of these same systems are reporting high visitation levels at most of their trails and trail heads although it's not uniform throughout these systems

[108:01] and they're all right now just like we are identifying and talking about additional measures that they can put in place to increase compliance and possibly to help reduce visitation levels at certain sites on their systems all four agencies really continue to express the need to continue to work collaboratively on a daily basis and and to be consistent and how we're messaging things and also if we make any management management changes that we make sure we give each other a heads up because we know that any changes that one person or that one agency makes is going to affect another especially if we start talking about either partial or full closures of a system uh if that's not done in uniform or consistency what that will do is will we'll disperse people from one system and put them right on to another system thus exasperating the problem on a regional basis even though it may help with a very particular um site so those regional collaborations uh

[109:03] and communications will continue and i just want to mention that open space staff is also in close daily collaboration and consultation with our city's parks and rec staff for these very same reasons messaging uh and communications being uh a big point of where we are trying to be uniform in our approach next slide chris and this is our my final slide and i can then take questions so have we done enough and that's really hard to say at this point right now what we're seeing in terms of compliance is there is not enough compliance on our system at certain locations and but i would also say some of these enhanced measures have only been put in place for a couple of days now so it'd be interesting to see as the next couple of days go on whether or not we continue to see more compliance on our system but having said that were were in the midst of identifying uh

[110:00] additional measures that we could take and uh and put into our toolbox and i just wanted to do a daylight some of these that we are thinking about that could be put in place if we continue to see uh trends that are not going into the right in the right direction um first is still an educational approach but we can we can deploy much more direct targeted messaging at very specific locations that just don't talk about keep your distance but actually are messaging in order to discourage use at that particular location so we have uh come up with ways and locations where we might be able to employ this direct messaging there's also at very select high visitation trail heads there is the uh option of actually reducing capacity at select trail heads which will help reduce visitor numbers for some locations where we might try this we would need to work collaboratively with community vitality and perhaps others to enact and enforce temporary street parking restrictions

[111:01] because what might happen is if we if we restrict parking at a particular trailhead we just don't want those cars to go somewhere else in our system especially into our neighborhoods and exasperate access points that are in our neighborhoods so while we think this would have the effect of reducing visitation at certain of these high level sites we really would need to be cognizant that we're not just transferring a problem from one area to another but we do feel like there's some opportunities here to look at um reducing capacity at some of our trail heads which would then reduce numbers some of the more innovative uh type of actions that we're uh considering is weekend closures at targeted locations as many of you know we have muddy trail closures so if we have conditions that are not good we have a number of locations in which we actually do close when we have muddy trails and we could

[112:01] look at a similar type of program but that this would not be put in place for muddy trails it would be put in place uh and maybe in all weather seasons and but we could look at closing a select locations down on weekends where we tend to have that high spike and where those high visitation numbers uh happen and where distancing does become a concern so again we've looked at some of these areas where that might be effective and where we might want to give that a try but again we want to be careful that there wouldn't be any sort of unintended consequences in terms of putting those same people somewhere else on our system we could require dogs to always be on leash so in essence suspending our voice in sight program there's a number of different possible benefits from doing so from on the trail um dogs that are off leash can attract um and and sort of cause social distancing um

[113:01] issues and we also do know that our voice insight program does attract visitors from other systems where dogs off leash are not allowed so that could be something that we could look at as well going back to mark's point earlier for more of our problematic egregious behavior we could go beyond an educational type of approach and increase enforcement but our rangers would really want to make sure i emphasize that this would be for really those egregious behaviors because any time that we do have to move toward enforcement we do have the issue as tom alluded to with the courts we also have the time involved for a ranger to be involved in more of an enforcement action taking them away from more educational matters but there is that idea of more egregious behavior we might treat differently and finally we are looking at establishing one-way directional travel on some of our popular trails we've already identified two or three sites

[114:01] where we could actually give this a try in the next couple of days if we felt that worked well and we were getting compliance on those we have tier 2 and tier 3 sites in which we could give directional travel a go and the idea here is if everybody's moving in the same direction you wouldn't cross paths and to be more opportunity for social gas or for social distancing so i'll just sum it up i just implement uh say that implementing some of these actions that we have not yet taken will take additional collaboration they could take additional materials and infrastructure such as actually closing down certain parts of a trail head and there needs to be enhanced notifications so that we can and so some of these things we're not going to be able to put in place immediately but i did want to daylight some of these possible next steps we could take a uh we could take to make sure that council is comfortable with some of these actions if the department feels that it's time to put some or all of these actions um

[115:00] into place um so that sort of concludes a very brief update uh that i have what we're seeing over the last week and i'm more than happy to entertain any questions that you have we will have lots of questions but thank you so much for thinking through this you know open space is a gym and everyone appreciates it and right now we we need to make sure that that people appreciate it in the best way in the most helpful way so i've got rachel aaron juni and then mary so rachel thanks sam hi dan thank you rachel for that presentation i have a couple other um thoughts for things we could consider that i will email to you for your consideration um and while this slide's still up i i would just reiterate i have some concerns if we were to reduce parking capacity that that makes it so that the people who live closest to trail heads have the easiest access and and to me that's a an equity issue usually it's higher socioeconomic

[116:02] groups that can can afford to live there and so i would want to make sure that all boulder residents have equal access and so if we needed to reduce parking capacity i wonder if we could at least start with city residents could all park and or have access or options to park so that's one thing and then second i'm sure that you saw the email that came in from sierra club asking us to close our open space our trails today yes i did i wondered if you had i can intuit your reaction but if you had a specific reaction to that and then also i don't know if you were on the call earlier but i was asking sort of how long are we likely to be looking at these changes and social distancing and so i don't think it's a matter of we're going to be doing this for the next three weeks and then we're back to normal i think that whatever steps we are doing are going to

[117:01] have to be very sustainable and possibly last for months and so i want us to be mindful that i think if we were to do something very abrupt such as close all of our trails that that there would be physical and mental health ramifications and ripple effects for for people if they can't use them and so i'm very sensitive to not wanting to to take that away from people and you mentioned egregious behavior and i can imagine right now there are people who are intensely stressed out and might be not behaving as they normally would on trails or anywhere else because they've lost their job they don't know how they're going to pay for rent things like that like i think it's a very stressful time so i would still as much as we can not increase enforcement i'm going to be in favor of kind of being gentle with people right now and then last i just wanted to ask um i believe that we're supposed to be

[118:00] wearing masks when we're on trails i saw jane brad again had a nice twitter picture with a mask on outside so i think this is nice so i think that's the rule and i'm not seeing when i go out on bike rides and walks i'm not seeing a lot of masks being used so it applies to trails it's also broader but how can we increase compliance with masks yeah great thank you rachel um so our rangers and this is anecdotal information i received daily uh report log reports from our rangers and now our education and outreach staff are uh helping to uh increase our presence on the system and they're estimating that we're seeing about 25 to 30 percent um mass squaring if you will so yes we're not even at the majority um point at this point as far as people who are at least visiting open space wearing a mask so we have a ways to go

[119:00] uh on getting that message out i can tell you when the the guidance came out from the governor's office on friday that we actually had to pull our education and outreach staff off the system on saturday in order to for us to be able to make sure that they were able to get themselves massed up and uh and ready to go back out on sunday so from a staff perspective uh we have made those adjustments to make sure that masks are being worn out on the system but yes you're absolutely right we're only probably seeing about 30 compliance uh with masks and that could be part of that targeted messaging rather than broad-based messaging about you know take care of yourself and and social distance there may be need to be specific messaging about very specific subjects such as masks great anything else rachel well um i i didn't know if um dan wanted to

[120:02] speak at all to their request to fully close trails yes um so just like a couple of uh notes from that email that uh that we all received this is state parks are not closed um uh all all of the open space systems um including our our national forests our state parks and our open space systems are open a lot of those same entities have closed campgrounds and shelters and picnic areas but the systems themselves are open state parks included in that so there's a little bit of a an error in that in terms of whether or not we close down the system i would tell you that we have experience in doing that in 2013 with very mixed results but we have um have a a way that we could roll out a closure i

[121:02] would want to emphasize that it would be very very helpful from a regional perspective that all the open space agencies try to act in one and so i do have concerns of unilaterally closing our system i would i would tend to say that i would like to give these additional measures that have just been in place the last couple of days ago i would like to see if these any of these additional measures could have an effect but i would say that you know if we're looking at trends not going or compliance not coming into what our expectations would be that uh there's not many more tools in our toolbox that we can we can look at that would have um you know a big effect that wouldn't cause a ripple effect somewhere else so closure is something that on the sidelines we are putting together plans for how that would work and how that would be rolled out it couldn't be done overnight it would take a series of steps we have to give you an idea we

[122:01] have 254 access points onto our system so there's a number of ways we have a very poor system and so what we learned from 2013 is even if we did officially decide to close the system is we know we're going to have a lot of non-compliance with that and very little ways that we're going to be able to totally enforce that and i'd also say is it would need to be a rolling type of measure in which it would take a number of days to finally get to that point where what we could possibly do and to sort of put a closure in place would be done that would be a number of different steps involved but right now all the open space agencies including national forests including rocky flats remain open and i would say that it would be to our benefit to being be in line with what all the regional partners are doing however i really do think we need to move to some enhanced measures in order to get compliance uh

[123:01] where we needed to be great dan and aaron you're next and juni and then mary well um thanks so much for the stan for being here and for all that information your you're i think doing all the right things and presenting us all the right information thinking all the right thoughts i mean my my one thing before you got to it was going to ask about the one-way directional travel and your ahead of me there that seems like a good technique that for implementing for reducing social distance violations so anyway i think i think you're on the right track um and i support the direction you're going in um you know one one thing we could say on the educational side you know if you if we see how these latest tools work and they're not working as well as we would like um you know we could in our education like signage at trail points and things like that employ an old parenting technique of now don't don't make me take the system away from you

[124:00] you know like um if if you all don't start acting better we may have to close some or all spaces so you know that could be part of our messaging that we include at some point but i wouldn't say tomorrow but if you continue to see problems with the compliance thank you okay and then junior and mary [Music] juni could you turn your video on thank you i was muted for a little bit and didn't realize it yes i just want to say thank you very much for this presentation it's very thoughtful or forward-looking and that's exactly what i was thinking as well and i think yes we we have concerns when it comes to recreation preservation and my question to you because you mentioned you know possible closure and i'm thinking okay we are

[125:01] saying to people they can go out there get fresh air but at the same time conservation is something that is very important to all of us and i'm thinking um maybe one option would be to look at you know the areas where we have very fragile habitats and to put either some type of yellow tape in those areas so that you know community members do not have access to them and also you mentioned education and you know i i was thinking to myself as well i think some people are just i know it's some it's it may sound farfetched that some people may just not know what is six feet when it comes to the distance so i'm thinking when it comes to the signage on or on our trails can we have something that say for instance in florida i saw news recently that says you need to be one alligator's length away so what can we do when it comes to

[126:00] signage to show people what six feet look like and i do like the idea of the one directional because i was thinking to myself something similar to just two people on a trail no more than two people at a time so maybe a signage does show the distance between what six feet distance look like and also again reminding people to wear the mask thank you juni i like that idea the one alligator's length um one black bear width um i have a couple of um questions regarding a couple of emails that we received a couple today on one of them and then another one that we received earlier today we received a couple about or offering help um through the public lands coalition and i was wondering um

[127:02] if um how you might give consideration to that offer um yes i i should mention that uh the more direct and targeted messaging that is sort of a sub bullet point on there that i that i didn't message or that i didn't um discuss was the opportunity to collaborate with our partner recreational based organizations to target messaging to their members whether it could be boulder mountain bike alliance could be the boulder climbing community uh there's a number of different groups uh that coalition i built i believe represents seven different recreational groups and we already our staff is already in contact with them so i'm very much expecting that um that collaboration of working uh getting messaging out to member groups is something that we'll be able to act on real soon excellent thank you and the other one is a question to my

[128:00] my colleagues we received a an email saying where's the twitter photos of all council members wearing masks so i sent my little selfie to patrick this afternoon so if others are so inclined i think it would be a great thing to do and that's all i have thank you mary i've got adam next and then nearby well i'll just mention that some of us have already tweeted out pictures of ourselves with mass so i think i think it's a great idea yeah i just want to say i'm very supportive of everything on the additional actions under consideration here i think that's forward-looking and you have my vote for yes dan on implementing any of those thank you adam i think that was you

[129:01] here bye oh i i didn't need this i didn't need to speak i was just saying a mountain lion's distance apart okay and then bob says my math pick will be in my newsletter tomorrow and i'll make my comment um dan thank you for all of this i would say one-way directional travel seems to me to be you know very simple to implement it doesn't cost a lot of money and it would help people and not pass by each other so great thank you sam okay if we're ready to move on to the next subject we had some questions over the weekend about pearl street and the bathrooms and so we've got several staff members on board to be able to talk about that i'm not exactly sure who said they would go first but maybe i could have carrie weinheimer talk about what we're seeing

[130:00] on the mall and then i believe ally is going to address the bathroom situation so carrie hello again um so there was some question about vandalism on the mall and if we're seeing that and in fact we don't seem to be seeing increased vandalism on the mall i want to start off by saying that for whatever reason in january crime began to tick up dramatically compared to last year and quarter to date we are first quarter this year we're up about nine percent total over last year which is concerning i don't have an answer for that and vandalism is up about 40 but looking at the crime maps the last three weeks since the uh shutdown or lockdown went into effect none of those vandalisms are on the mall there were some earlier in the month but nothing since um i believe i went back to the 16th of march when the city shut down and then the following orders from that point on

[131:01] so there is an increased amount of um our homeless folks hanging out on the mall and officers have been busy contacting them but we're not seeing vandalism uh we're seeing some trespasses and some other things that we normally see on the mall but not vandalism so i'm not sure if it was a vet or alley that was going to talk more about the bathrooms allie's going to talk about the bathrooms i want to just jump in here and add that it's a dynamic situation we know our police department is very busy and um across the city and ali can speak more to this and necessarily not necessarily out in the mall itself um there are sometimes incidents and you know i think even possibly won this evening so um you know it's a dynamic situation not necessarily unique to the mall we're coordinating with downtown boulder

[132:01] partnership and and chip and his team and also um we've added a little bit of extra funding we repurposed some funding and community vitality to uh add some additional private security coverage on the mall in university hill and with that i'll turn it over to ali thanks about that i think that was a perfect way to start that piece this is one of those situations where several departments are working closely together to try and address something um allie rhodes director of parks and recreation so the restrooms on pearl street i'll just share are regularly an issue not just in this situation and it seems to be we know that in public spaces that positive use drives out negative use and right now unfortunately um i guess fortunately people are staying at home and complying in the areas on the downtown mall and while that certainly has impacts on economics it's um people doing the right thing and resulting in not the opportunity to drive out that negative use and so those restrooms we we believe anything we do will be a band-aid fixed

[133:01] the real long-term forward-thinking solution will be when we can address an infrastructure strange with that restroom and so a vet and chip and i are coordinating we actually had money allocated this year to do some studying to consider updates to the mall and we are going to explore repurposing that money to get designs that might do permanent changes to those restrooms that would mitigate some of the negative behavior that we see on the regular basis so short term the band-aid fix could be to explore some portable restrooms we did that earlier this year when those restrooms were vandalized we provided portables as a short-term solution that's something we could do it might mitigate the ability for some of the illegal behavior we see due to this being a public space that is indoor and not monitored there's a cost for that i there's a rough estimate on your slide there it would be about five thousand dollars a month for three portable restrooms a hand washing station and daily cleaning the current restrooms are visited twice a

[134:00] day by our custodial contractor that so that would be a decrease in server service but it's the best we could do one of the vendors would only be able to do weekday service and so we would we would be paying more for the weekend service i will note that we uh contacted our team six vendors two of which were not interested due to a history of vandalism and then i just have to share that there is a concern with any restroom in a public space where there's not any ability to monitor we have had issues with individuals um having some kind of a medical emergency or a drug overdose and a restroom in an affordable restroom you you cannot access someone and we have had a history um one case in the last 10 years that we know of where someone did pass away in a portable restroom and no one no one can see that so that's that's the biggest concern with this this being a solution but um as you can see if that's council's interest it certainly might be the interest for downtown we can make it happen

[135:01] so any questions from council okay i'm not seeing any so you know i guess my comment would be um maybe it's a question um how would it be any different if there were portable restrooms than what's there right now sure so what's there right now with the restroom stalls one they can't be locked from the inside we have keys pd has keys so you can access the facility whereas a portable restroom can be locked from the inside and you can't access it additionally in the restrooms the stalls aren't floor to ceiling and so you could see if someone were passed out and laying on the floor you would see that there was an emergency and you needed to call for help i see thank you so i had a couple council members raised this question with me bob i think you were one rachel another do you have any comments sure i'll jump in um so it sounds like is it your recommendation that we

[136:02] not moved to portals at this time and and continue to monitor the situation i think so carrie and yvette and i were able to speak yesterday i i was um i included them all in my i'm i'm out in the community a lot right now monitoring behavior and seeing what's happening i know that pd has stepped up enforcement as a vet mentioned they are partnering with dbp to provide additional security the situation certainly is fluid and what i might see at 11 o'clock in the morning it does not represent the conditions at four o'clock but it does seem to have been better in the last few days so i think yes that and i would love for a vet or carry to chime in separately i think our recommendation would be because the portables bring in their own set of of issues that it again would be just a band-aid fix that we continue to monitor it and if if we can't control it with you know pd's patrols and the work of the private secures that we that we could try portables just just for something different because one benefit that um isn't listed on the screen is that you wouldn't have portables you wouldn't

[137:00] put them all together we could spread them out along the mall and it might you know provide or detract from it being a gathering place so right now yes knowing that we could you know pull the trigger and make it happen within a couple of days i think our recommendation would be to continue to monitor okay great thanks ellie appreciate it um yeah i'll speak to it too i think that my um thought or concerns were a little bit broader than just the pearl street restroom issue i'm understanding that there's some concern that we've got all these businesses that are shuttered and at least one attempted break-in that i'm aware of so do we need to be discussing um public safety measures or um i guess it's probably a question for kerry like are there more things that we can be considering in implementing that would help make sure that pearl street is not

[138:00] vandalized damaged and harmed so that at the end of whenever the state home order is lifted we are best ready to hit the ground running yeah i think it's very helpful that we've partnered to have some private security because that's extra eyes and ears that can be on the mall and it's extra visibility that will help be a deterrent we've also been spending some time with plainclothes officers in the hiller mall area patrolling and trying to set up and prevent burglaries because we're concerned about vacant spaces both homes apartments and businesses throughout the city and we know from our experience with the university population that we tend to get hit with burglaries at spring break and we kind of have an extended spring break going on now for some people so um it's definitely um in our action plan to look at doing more patrol and more um surveillance of those both downtown businesses and the hill and university area

[139:01] thanks and then um i think the other thought i had when when this issue was raised to me is it sounded like the the 13th street bathroom was serving as sort of a congregation draw and people were hanging out there and so then i just wondered about social distancing and health and safety for people who are congregating and i think that question also goes to people who might be hanging out at the municipal building or elsewhere yeah i mean i think we have to realize that folks who don't have shelter um they still have a community and they and they tend to hang out together and it's for some it is their household and you're right the bath that bathroom has always been a gathering point for for people and over the years we've looked at different options um i think ali's point is well made that i think if we went with porta potties we're probably trading one set of problems for another um with maybe some upside but also some

[140:01] additional downside are we like offering masks to people maybe who don't have an easy way to get them or other education and resources still on the phone i have heard mention wendy schwartz is leading our community services that element of the response team and i know that's an element that that team has discussed and is kurt still on um i am still on but i don't have an answer for that i will go ahead and admit like i'm not crafty it's been a little tricky for me too and i've got you know i've got fabric and a needle and thread and i i've struggled with the mask why don't we follow up with wendy on that and get back to you i know um there are many people in our community who are making masks and who are crafty and and if that's a need maybe we can connect some of those folks with this as a need so we can follow up on that

[141:00] thanks bob did you have a question i i do i i i didn't understand calling me so i just was waiting um yeah i just want to um be clear and i hope hopefully council agrees with this that while um i think we're hearing your recommendation ally and also that of the chief about kind of a wait and see on the wall restrooms i don't want you to feel like you need to wait until next tuesday or the tuesday afternoon can you hear me yeah to get our permission to make a change so while i think we need to respect your recommendations if later this week or early next week you see conditions not improving and your recommendation changes i i hope you feel empowered to close the restrooms put up porta-potties or anything else you think might be appropriate to reduce the problems we're seeing

[142:01] thank you for clarifying that i and if council supports the approach of waiting that's exactly what we would do is that if it indicates that the efforts of pd and the private security are not addressing this issue then we'll try the portables and see if you know again to kerry's point while it it might be different issues they might be better issues than these ones so thanks great so i've got mark with a question and then a nearby agreed with bob this is a question for the chief um carrie apparently there were three or four home break-ins or attempted break-ins um in the chautauqua in the lower shittakewood neighborhood in the last few days is in your view is that something of an operation or are you seeing an increase across the board of that type of crime yeah so i'll go back to what i started off with and that is for whatever reason all the way back to january we saw an increase in a lot of property crime

[143:00] including burglary actually we were up considerably in january it's it's tailed off some but we're still up first quarter this year over the last quarter of of last year by about i believe around 50 in terms of burglaries some of that i think is the displacement of some of our homeless folks also i think oh i know we're dealing with a series of burglars who are breaking into garages so that gets counted as a burglary because they're breaking into a structure to steal something and we've also seen with some vacant businesses we've had a few people who are breaking in not so much to to steel and ransack but really to break in and live so i think it's a combination of things and certainly there is this displacement we're dealing with now does have an effect i don't think it's a huge driver because whatever's going on this year started in january is there any particular approach you're taking to deal with it

[144:04] uh yes there are some things i really don't want to say in a public meeting fine about what we're doing i appreciate it okay thank you okay yes hi i just had a question about the pearl street mall bathroom and from my understanding we're not moving forward with it but my question with that was what was the objective and who were we targeting to provide the bathrooms for was it the homeless population or is it just people who find their way on the pearl street mall yeah that's a really good question junie so the pearl street restrooms the the general intention is to because i mean we all have heard right pearl street is the heart of boulder it's a highly trafficked public space and the public restrooms in normal times are intended to relieve the load on private

[145:01] businesses for serving a public use and so generally that's the intent of the restrooms and then during this event you've seen many conversations where public restrooms in the parks are providing a much needed opportunity for those who are unhoused to wash their hands or obtain drinking water okay thank you okay any other questions on the downtown or bathrooms okay thank you ali thank you carrie much appreciated um james what's next so the next thing that you mentioned was ego car share and we do not have a presentation for that they wrote in asking for special consideration for city funding i believe i don't know if bill cowan has any comments about that but we don't have a

[146:01] presentation prepared on that one uh good evening city council bill cowan um i apologize in advance um i would turn on my camera uh but unfortunately i don't have a camera on this computer so i hope to rectify that soon but not currently the only thing that i can say about ego car share is that transportation and mobility certainly agrees that they [Music] our integral part of our mobility program and part of our being successful in meeting our transportation master plan goals but we are obviously very concerned about what the financial implications of covid19 is going to mean for the transportation division

[147:00] department whose funding comes so significantly from sales and use tax and so it would be challenging to provide transportation funding with that in mind got it um i see aaron and then rachel [Music] so jane is is ego car share would they be one of the businesses that might qualify for the small business rent relief fund that we just said um i don't know the answer to that i don't know how many employees they have and whether or not they have specific covet related expenses that aren't already covered by the federal government so they would have to work through the small business center or through our community vitality department to determine whether or not

[148:00] they qualify for any of the other relief okay but this this is a program that helps at least some small businesses so they might qualify so yeah worth having them explore that avenue they should they should explore every opportunity and there's plenty of information on the website as the event already discussed for them to listen to videos and figure out how to make that happen right well this fund is a brand new thing as of a few hours ago right right the new the new fund might well apply to them as well and we will not have specific information on that until about a week from now got it thank you rachel um would you like to ask your question about streets sure hi bill thanks for being here and for that uh information i just wanted to clarify we had asked um i had asked for follow-up and possible closures of streets some select streets for pedestrian and cyclist social distancing use and it sounds like we're going to get an update next week

[149:00] rather than tonight on that is that correct um yes so the um the intent behind the email that i sent today was to provide information about um how the city of denver developed their program which i'll thank you for pointing us in that direction because it was an absolutely fascinating conversation that i had with those folks they've put together an amazing program how they how they put together their program why they put together that program and really how um different from a context standpoint the city of boulder is from denver in terms of this issue the what they're experiencing with their density and the lack of recreational space compared to our situation which is

[150:01] almost the opposite you know i think they probably needed to do the things that they did with what they were experiencing we certainly they created a road map essentially for how you should go about evaluating those situations and we want to take advantage of that and follow it and we think we should be able to do that pretty quickly and and see whether there are any streets in the city system that have the kind of issues that um that they've raised i to be frank i think that is unlikely but certainly if that is the case we will want to respond to that so um yes we will do that and then we will respond back to council and we hope to do that at the next council prior to the next council meeting all right i thank you for beginning the research and continuing with it and i look forward to the final update

[151:00] thanks aaron yeah thank you for that bill and for reaching out to denver i really appreciate you doing that and just to throw in the point that um well i think it sounds like they provided a great template for how to evaluate the possibility of success of a program like this is that you know we could um look at it a little bit differently in boulder just with the point being that we were just hearing about how our open space system is being heavily used if we had some more in-town options to get um outside and still be socially distant that might help with that issue so um just to encourage us to think you know it tailored a little bit to our current situation and not just the exact metrics that denver use okay any other thoughts great jane so i believe that those are all the issues that have been brought up in the last week um so i think we may be ready to go on

[152:01] to open comment if you feel that way sam yeah no i do i would just say that um we'll put a plug in for social distancing so as the governor says you know the the further away we can stay we need to stay close to each other with phone calls and with video chats and so on but we need to be very careful about transmitting this disease so i would just put in one more plug for remaining safe and six feet away okay so i think we have one more so aaron has one and then adam and then rachel yeah i just wanted to come back to what uh mark was saying earlier about uh masks and grocery stores and um and i understand that the issues about increased enforcement but i wonder if we might uh see if we can work with some of the like grocery stores and pharmacies uh to add some educational signage uh to

[153:00] help get the word out about the need for masks and social distancing so just put that out there to city staff i know you all are working super hard but that that might be one area where we could help remind everybody as they walk in a grocery store or pharmacy about what we're recommending okay and then i've got adam and rachel yeah we already touched on this last week but i still just wanted to mention that i have some concerns about construction crews and construction sites um and proper social distancing being implemented at those places and i realized we have plans in place and we're trying to implement them but i just want to point that out that that's still a concern of mine at least great and one of mine you know i think that the chamber was bringing forward some best practices jane do you have an update on that i don't okay if you could look into that and maybe next week we could hear about it um and so then rachel

[154:01] you have a question about broadband i'll jump in here rachel contacted me via email recently to ask what's going on with our broadband system and i have asked our i.t department to prepare a memo but since you're bringing it up to today i will tell you sort of a big overview which is that we have started working on the broadband system it's going to take two years for it to be built the first segment is going to be in north boulder and i believe that we are close to starting on that particular segment but it's going to be two years before it gets built out and so her question was kind of in the context of can we provide broadband to our more vulnerable populations and of course we've already addressed that tonight with the hot spot conversation that we had and then rachel's second question was in a phone call with me today wanting to know if um our new

[155:03] police chief was actually going to come to boulder and the answer is yes her first day is april 20th got it thank you very much um and then i will read what yvette said we can look into that with the chamber i think that's relative to the best practices for construction yes yvette okay she said that's right okay open comment so i don't know exactly who is um handling this is it lynette is it sarah is it you sarah huntley will be handling open comment and she should be jumping on the line momentarily

[156:16] we can hear you so bob bob has a suggestion for a five-minute break i think that's a great suggestion so why don't we get back on at like 8 50. sorry 8 45. i'm so sorry seems like we're having a significant delay

[157:03] yes i can hear you terrific i'll come back on when you're ready for the after the break okay so 8 45 did you hear me okay okay

[158:44] okay

[159:13] okay [Music] sarah yes can you hear me

[160:00] i can hear you how many do we have we have um five people actually on the line i'm going to tell you that i'm sorry to say we're having some real technical issues connecting the broadnet system is working but connecting into our system for audio is a little bit problematic so we're going to do our best to turn folks on one at a time and hopefully be able to make our way through them but we may have a delay in audio we may not have good audio at all we're going to give it a try this is a new world we're in okay okay sounds fine do we want to patch somebody in now just to do a test yes let me get to that list and let's give it a try we're trying to patch you in um

[161:10] [Music] so sarah if we want to cut around this if you want to have them call my cell phone i would be happy to take them one at a time and just put it on the speakers i'm not sure [Music]

[162:08] he was muted on his phone it sounds like we might be able to get another chance to start speaking mr mcgrew can you speak yes i did i'm communicating it now

[163:22] testing testing one two three that came through sarah can you jump on the phone and with the screener and just tell them when to go i think the issue is the loop back to broadnet so it seems like there's a substantial delay for the video um [Music] i'm communicating right now for the individuals who have been approved on call to call the cell phone that sam's provided

[164:13] so this is will mcgrew i'm just going to read my prepared statement um because i think it will play with a time delay so i'm will grew and i live in the city of boulder i am a member of the no eviction without representation electoral committee which is seeking to place a ballot initiative on the november 2020 ballot to guarantee legal representation for tenants facing eviction and boulder given the impossibility of circulating petitions under the current conditions i was glad to hear that the city council has announced an intent to place valid initiatives on the coming ballots provided that they are able to demonstrate quote unquote community support however i've been troubled by council's lack of clarity about what such community support would consist of i think there are several reasonable

[165:01] methods i have heard that new york announced that ballot initiatives that have already collected one-third of signatures will be placed on the ballot and something like that seems like a very reasonable solution to me another option would be to circulate online petitions and place on the ballot any initiatives that accumulate signatures above some predetermined threshold in my opinion such a solution must fulfill two requirements first and most important it must respect the need for social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus secondly the solution should be decided upon soon and communicated clearly to the campaign so they can plan for how to demonstrate quote unquote community support i hope the council elects to clarify what community support consists of in the near future thank you for all of your efforts and these uncertainties uh this is will mcgrew thank you mr mcgrew i apologize for the

[166:00] delay that's happening our next speaker up is um rui orango you can unmute yourself rory and start speaking you should be live now [Music] all right hey good evening everyone my name is rui rango i'm a resident uh here in boulder i'm also the campaign manager for the no evasion without representation power campaign will just talked about it's sometimes referred to as newer so so basically

[167:00] i will sort of echo a lot of what will was saying i think a clear definition of what um community support needs means would really help not only our belt initiative but all the other belt initiatives that are sort of like um flapping in the breeze right now to give you a point of reference you know our ballot campaign has gathered more than 2 000 signatures through our volunteer petitioner efforts we've received the endorsements of eight separate organizations influential here in boulder and most of the council members should have received a couple weeks ago a letter of support from the interfaith community here in our city that included no less than seven congregations signing on and 18 individual leaders of faith so if that happens not to qualify for community support i would just urge the council to as quickly as is possible please define what that community support means one last thing i will

[168:01] mention is that although council may have until september to decide whether or not to place the initiative on the ballot we do not have that long our signatures are due to the city clerk on june 5th thank you thank you our next speaker will be patrick murphy i'm queuing him up now patrick you should be live mr murphy can you hear us my name is patrick murphy i live in boulder this is the continuation of the 24

[169:02] articles of the muni naughty list article 22. so we got stuck with no vote or exit ramp on immuni for three years 2018 2019-2020 that's highlighting the d democratization of the muni monopoly article 23 there was no item in the 2019 muni project schedule for dealing with ferc stranded cost the ridiculous boulder response regarding this stated the ferc process was part of two other processes that were scheduled to be completed by december 2019. is this not ludicrous article 24 october 2019 the condemnation process has only been partially approved and facilities inside substations still need to be resolved this will either add to the condemnation cost or the separation cost this will add to the true cost this concludes the 24 articles of the

[170:00] muni naughty list will i be here next christmas with the third edition of the muni naughty list how long will that list be what will we discover in 2021 how fast we can reduce carbon with plan b or how insane the cost for plan a failure to critically review is wasting time and money lost time and lost money are forever lost and the muni let real carbon reduction begin now not five years from now concluded or should i say commenced the muni is running out of money again you need to put the muni to the test on the 2020 ballot or once again rate the now depleted general fund or put the end the muni initiative on the ballot time for plan b thank you

[171:02] thank you mr murphy um we're queuing up the next crawler it is megan orongo and megan you should be live if you're on mute please unmute yourself megan orongo can you hear us you're on live for open comment please uh hello i hope you all can hear me my name is megan rango i too am an organizer with the no eviction without representation ballot initiative and i thank you all for all of your efforts that you are undertaking to help prevent the spread of the virus in our community and also to address the

[172:01] urgent housing needs of our most vulnerable neighbors i won't take up too much time echoing what my colleagues have already said which is that we think it is more important than ever to ensure that no edition of that representation makes it on the ballot in 2020 with so many people facing housing security wage loss and all kinds of economic uh turmoil we think that it's really important that people have the right to an access to justice in housing court so i will simply reiterate that we are working hard uh we care deeply about uh making sure that our neighbors are safe in house and we hope that you will join us in supporting newer and uh letting us know exactly what community support looks like so that we can continue our organizing efforts because we are still working even though

[173:00] we made the call before the shelter in place order was ever issued to color canvassers and to pause our signature gathering effort so thank you again for your consideration thank you all for your time and effort and we look forward to being in touch thank you very much okay our next speaker is jen bannon jen i'm turning you on live now please unmute yourself and speak [Music]

[174:00] [Music] um there's a big bad echo so my name is jennifer banyan i am a state and national expert in food assistance and um all basic human needs i've been a director in multiple locations and most recently wrote the colorado blueprint and hunger which has been endorsed by both governor hickenlooper and polis as well as all the state agencies and a multi-sector um collaborations being implemented all across the state i've been really listening and intensively to what there's amazing work i do want to point out one of the areas that i think has been um just grossly overlooked not just um during this this crisis that's sort of ongoing um so you know generally the city and our community has been putting their full attention on homelessness without a larger lens of hunger and its impact on health well-being and the financial benefits of addressing hunger

[175:01] before the pandemic there were only 623 point in time homeless individuals in boulder county at that same time period there are 35 000 food insecure residents in the county so one in nine overall and one in eight children in our community is hungry now we have one of the strongest non-profit sectors in in the country but we have not been framing the issue of hunger and we haven't been looking at how we could put significantly more investments into the community through organizations like community food chair and community food rescue who can then distribute it out to the nonprofit partners who are serving folks on the ground i also want to say that i have no contracts with anyone in uh in boulder county but i do know how uh to fix hunger um in boulder county as i said 35 000 of hungry individuals we have one of the lowest snap enrollments in the state only three and ten eligible

[176:00] individuals are enrolled in staff so thirty percent while the state average is sixty percent the national average is seventy five percent um because of low enrollment and this is again before the pandemic we're losing 22.4 million dollars a year in local grocery sales because of low snap enrollment and 46 million in economic development per year we're also losing about 45 million a year in health care costs directly attributed to food insecurity so there's a lot of things that other cities are doing in this pandemic and what we know is going to happen in the upcoming recession so a lot of cities are diverting sugary beverage tax money to direct purchase of healthy food only instead of programs increasing community-based application and assistance in snap we're one of the only counties in the state big ten counties without community-based snap enrollment in nonprofit organizations like effa and clinica and different folks who can really

[177:00] reach the hard to reach populations other cities are using deep end money and planning money to address the current hunger crisis and you know i would encourage us to be to look at any additional community services block grant additionally i just found out today the city of grand junction just allocated half a million dollars for food and shelter and a lot of that is going to go to food so what i'm asking is for more attention from the city council policy and human services folks to really look at how do we impact the hunger crisis that was happening before this pandemic and then what we are going to see which is doubling up tripling of caseloads and need in the community and and how we can be really proactive as you've um with other really important issues that are very possibly um to the city and have a huge huge ugly land is to have a study session on what the city can do and really

[178:02] so thank you very much for your comments um so sarah that is five speakers do we have any others we do have one more sam i'm going to be putting um amanda mercado on the line oh and i'm sorry one other open comment approved speaker just called in so we have two more i'm going to put amanda marcato on the line and then our last speaker will be sammy lawrence thank you amanda you should be live amanda you're live up for open comment please

[179:03] you may be on mute amanda please check your phone okay amanda i'm going to skip you and come back from the after the next caller in hopes that we can achieve your resolve your audio issues so sami lawrence sammy you should be live on the phone you can be heard now for open comment please [Music]

[180:06] hello county council members this is sammy leon lawrence iv here i am actually speaking today in regards to you know what i've been speaking to you about for the past year just for notes i've already let a couple of people know such as y'all had justice the what is it for life of me the disability coordinator for the courthouse there's a lot of people i've been talking to lately and getting awareness to the issues that have come into place with my case and you know as i speak these words my heart aches as i'm caught in between different dividing emotions each emotion fighting amongst themselves as if it was an experience of an inside out movie-like experience and yes that's the disney movie

[181:01] and as i was saying i'm caught between these many different emotions anger kind of like a charmander a fiery pokemon that is dragon like but my anger comes as well with the type of sadness sadness of being left out in the rain as i have been by city council and many other people in regards to my disabilities this pain this hurt is something i've been carrying for too long now and it's time it stops i've been fearful of living in this city for i have been vilified and persecuted and i will no longer tolerate it because i am disgusted by how my medical conditions have been unknowingly or knowingly pushed aside or ignored but i find joy

[182:01] because now i will be able to speak free and spread my wings as a charizard leaving this injustice and i ask you all as an fdr type person with a big stick please help me and please support thank you thank you okay we're going to try again with our one last person who's approved for open comment this evening it's amanda mercado amanda i'm bringing you live please make sure your phone is not muted feel free to speak shhh amanda you are live

[183:13] okay we appear to be having some difficulty bringing this last caller on the line i will follow up with her and see if we can get her comments submitted to counsel via email i apologize for the technical difficulties thank you sarah okay jane hi i don't really have any follow-up i do think that one speaker the one speaker talking about food insecurity is not fully aware of all the work that we already do honestly we don't have time in this period to provide you a memo about all the work that we do on food insecurity but if you'd like to receive something like that later in the year we can do that

[184:01] great thank you tom so i don't have anything sam got it and then um one comment from bob yates is that um we will be taking up the petition ballot initiatives next week um so the the um eviction folks and potentially the immunity folks will be heard next week okay are we ready for public hearings yep okay your first your only public hearing is second reading of ordinance 8389 designating 2440 kohler drive as an individual landmark all right um good evening council marcy cameron historic preservation planner it's good to see you all um let's see

[185:01] too fast okay so um the hearing tonight is quasi judicial so i will go through um that procedure your response has been registered we'll start by council stating any ex parte communications that would be conversations you've had about 2440 caller or any site visits you may have made then i'll give a staff presentation followed by an owner's presentation which this evening is a pre-recorded comments from the landmarks board hearing the public hearing is then open for public comment and then following that the public hearing is closed council discusses and a motion requires an affirmative vote of at least five council members to pass a motion great thank you marcy anyone have any ex parte communications to reveal hearing none i think that's zero

[186:01] all right thank you so your options tonight are to either approve modify or disapprove the designation and your criteria for review is found in 911 and 911 2 of the boulder revised code and that asks in balance with the boulder valley comprehensive plan will the designation protect enhance and perpetuate a building in sight reminiscent of past eras events in persons important in local state or national history or will it provide a significant example of past architectural styles and will the landmark foundry maintain an appropriate setting for the building and site the location of the subject property at 2440 kohler drive is located on the south side of kohler in south boulder um just west of where kohler drive and stanford avenue merge and that's in the um the highland uh subdivision which was planted in 1952

[187:02] after the boulder turnpike was dedicated your balance has been registered for the background of this application the properties owner submitted a landmark design designation application back in october and in february the landmarks board voted unanimously to recommend designation so going through the criteria for designation i'll start with architectural significance the house was designed by g norman wells and it was built in 1967. wells was a local architect who worked both independently and for several larger firms when he first came to boulder he worked for the firm of heinzmann and kim digg before establishing his own private practice in the later years of his career he worked for the rocky flats facilities management and he lived in colorado until he passed away in 2017.

[188:01] the building is also architecturally significant as a unique example of the modern prairie design from the post-war period it was inspired by the architecture of frank lloyd wright the owners who owned the building today commissioned the house and they were inspired by their time in college in madison wisconsin where they were familiar with frank lloyd wright's designs and later they went to california and toured new mid-century homes and brought back ideas when they designed their own home in 1980 the house was featured in a daily camera article and it highlighted the quality of construction detailing elements of the house's design such as the carefully chosen orange tone brick which was laid with an intricate interlacing pattern at all corners and the use of glass which emphasizes the visual the visual flow of spaces in terms of its historic significance the property is associated with don and

[189:01] alice mcdonald dawn worked at the nist boulder labs as a physicist specializing in cryo electronics for just over 30 years in the 70s he served as the chairman of plan boulder working alongside other activists to help protect boulder scenic views and open spaces presently he's involved with the nobel plaza project whose goal is to create public art installation that will commemorate boulder's own nobel laureates alice mcdonald advocated for the equal treatment of men and women in public school education during this feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s a campaign that was spurred by the absence of female authors in her high school daughter's mandatory reading materials she also served as a member of boulder's library commission for seven years from 1979 until 1986 during which she and four other women raised 13 million dollars in funds the money she helped raise went towards

[190:00] the construction of the boulder public library and a plaque with her name on it can be found in the atrium of the building these slides are getting ahead of me and then in terms of its modern architectural movement the property is located in the highland park edition and subdivisions like these were developed out of the need for affordable housing and quick development due to the influx of returning servicemen as well as the mass of students flocking to the university of colorado the house at 244 kohler is unique in the neighborhood because it was designed by an architect and influenced by the national trends that the mcdonald's brought from their experiences living in madison and california and then in terms of environmental significance it's integrated into its landscape all right the proposed landmark boundary follows

[191:00] the property lines which is what the owners have proposed and his best practices and so um with that staff and the landmarks board recommend designation of the property to be known as the mcdonald residence and that's typically where my um presentation would end but if this goes forward it will be boulder's 200th landmark and so i just wanted to take a minute or two it's actually two slides to go through um kind of a highlights of the program so the program was established in 1974 and over the last 46 years the city has recognized 10 historic districts and nearly 200 landmarks for a total of 1400 properties while this may sound like a lot it accounts for less than four percent of properties in boulder though that percentage is small these landmarks are some of the most iconic and are the fabric of the community in these times where we're all in new

[192:01] territory they also provide stability and for me hope and also resilience one that stands out is the boulder county courthouse which burned down in 1929 in the midst of the great depression rather than looking to the past civic leaders of the day chose to chose to rebuild in the art deco style which was very modern and forward thinking landmarks are also the buildings we pass every day they shape our lives and are the backdrop of our memories of boulder they stand witness to these historic events and will continue to stand for future generations there are also tangible links to our past and tell the stories of those who came before us hannah barker in the center feels particularly relevant today as an educator a businesswoman and community leader and she passed away during the influenza epidemic of 1918.

[193:02] or emma mcveigh who's on the right whose husband was a charter member of the allen chapel of the african methodist church and his children were part of colorado's musical history their daughter hazel played the piano in george morrison's band genevieve graduated from cu school of music and kenneth conducted an orchestra in denver so my last slide is to highlight a project that we've been working on it's a story map of the first 25 landmarks in the city it's something that you can explore the buildings and their stories from the safety of your own home and it's available at boulder colorado.gov historic preservation so with that i'm happy to answer any questions so i'm going to speak up here and say thank you marcy that was super meaningful and super helpful

[194:00] and other council members yeah marcy thank you very much and happy 200th landmark after the vote [Music] [Music] sorry yes i'm here um marcy can you describe in a little greater detail what characterizes the modern prairie style architecturally happy too also maybe i'll start by saying that architectural historians create the boxes to then put the styles into so the modern prairie style inspired by frank lloyd wright is um kind of illustrated through the long horizontal forms the connection of inside to outside and the use of natural materials so i think it's a it's a very related to

[195:02] wright's prairie style but a little bit later than his um than his own houses okay thank you so much says thank you what a great presentation congratulations on 200 hopefully we'll have many more in the future any other council questions do we have a presentation from the applicant we do fingers crossed [Music] and there's a little bit of quiet at the beginning so i think it's working

[196:07] marcy if you can hit cancel control i'm going to try and take the mouse back and fix that oh i think it's played do you want me to keep going i need to unmute it so if you can pass the control back oh stop

[197:19] maybe not well marcy this may not be behaving for us this time we can get that video file sent out to the council okay do you want to try plan b which is

[198:02] playing it from my desktop or shall we move on if you want to present it from your desktop right now go for it let's give it a try

[199:32] okay sounds like we're having technical difficulties um so it's the owner don mcdonald talking about um kohler drive not being paved when they first purchased the property and how they picked the site and then came back six or seven years later so we'll get that out to you all in a different format very good thank you marcy so

[200:00] council members do you have any comments or questions so do we have people for public comment jane we do not have anybody on the line for public comment okay so i would be happy to entertain the motion so moved who was the motion made by nearby thank you thank you okay so we have a motion and a second to adopt ordinance 8389 designating the property at 2440 kohler drive to be known as the mcdonald residence as an individual landmark under the city of boulder historic preservation ordinance would anyone like to speak to the motion sam i can just say a few words if you'd

[201:00] like yeah please um and sorry my camera is all hidden for purposes of hacking because i'm on it for online so i will not be visible um i just wanted to thank the boards and staff for the wonderful work on this it's quite a jewel especially love the portion about the frank lloyd wright having family grow up in that neighborhood in chicago i have a partiality to it but um i think that the work that our boards and staff do on the preservation around our community is incredibly important to preserve our history and i think that this will add a rich jewel to that history and so i'm very excited to bring it into um into the folds of this very special group thank you nearby it was the second all right well hearing no other speakers

[202:02] i would um take a vote on this um anyone who is opposed to this sam this is a roll call vote okay with council member brockett friend yes joseph nagel aye swetlick yes wallach weaver yes yates yes young yes the motion passes unanimously your next item is a citywide retail strategy update and this is being presented by sarah wiebenson sarah are you on the line yes

[203:02] can you hear me yes we try to get closer thanks sarah and i think yvette is going to start things off sure council we appreciate you this late evening and at this very busy and unusual time sarah and i have just six slides for you on a very important topic especially now with all that's going on so we wanted to start by recognizing the numerous city departments community members partners who have contributed to this strategy including our colleagues from other departments much has changed since this project began in 2018 and and we have included information in both your packet and in the presentation on what the city is doing to provide immediate support for businesses and particularly our retailers and small businesses due to the coronavirus emergency next slide

[204:01] there's a slight delay okay um so the city is pursuing a response that recognizes a wide array of community needs we're working closely with partners to identify economic impacts that connect organizations and individuals to what they need and you've heard me over the last couple weeks talk about many of these things but as they relate to retail three types of needs those for the business owners the employees and of course for the community online resources in place already to connect business owners and impacted employees to rapidly developing local state and federal assistance programs you know that we're doing a business survey that we'll talk about on the 18th and ongoing outreach to businesses across all industries and our community organizations in identifying opportunities to match needs and resources once again there's our

[205:00] favorite web page to provide those resources and with that i will turn it over to sarah to go through the content of what we know will be a changing strategy sarah sarah if it's moving slowly you may want to turn the presentation back over to chris to move slides yeah let me just there we go chris i'll hand it back to you just so there's no more delays okay you can go ahead and start whenever you're ready okay um so next slide please

[206:02] just very quickly thank you for this opportunity we're going to just run through a little bit of background and get to the recommendations the retail project originated in 2018 in response to a slowdown in the growth of retail sales tax revenue that year our current recovery efforts must now respond to a much more significant economic downturn therefore we anticipate modifying the strategy with council's input to address current needs the retail project is now at the end of its second phase the development of a strategy to respond to council's feedback from the retail study presentation last summer the strategy development analysis included both internal and external outreach to assess existing programs and policies identifying what efforts are already underway in the 2020 work plan items to address these strategy goals and discovering any remaining gaps the result was six primary strategy recommendations that will continue to

[207:00] evolve as the recovery needs become clear next slide additional detail on the strategy components are posted on the citywide retail project web page which is shown at the top of the slide very quickly the components include first continuing to improve the customer experience for small businesses building on recent improvements made by the planning and development services and finance departments second building on existing programs that reduce small business costs such as rebates to assist with purchasing energy efficient equipment and expanding the availability of smaller more affordable retail spaces third the strategy includes the creation of an online one-stop shop for business information as was suggested by council next slide please the remaining strategy components align with existing departmental work plans to expand walkable retail access throughout

[208:01] the city to advance efforts to make boulder more affordable and inclusive and to continue to monitor our retail base including revisiting key benchmarks of the retail project in another five years given current circumstances five years from now will present a valuable opportunity to measure our recovery efforts using the data that was collected in 2019 for the retail study as a baseline next slide so you know a year of work and a completely new day we are very sensitive to the needs of all of the retail entities in a industry that was already massively changing i cannot say enough about sarah's work on this project as project manager and all the input of community members and we know that many that these strategies we believe are still the

[209:00] right things to do they just need to be morphed to fit into what we are experiencing now and what probably will continue to experience for some time so with that we'll open it for questions that council might have so questions aaron well i'll just say um sarah thanks for that and also that and and of course this um strategy is more timely than ever but i think it's all those are all initiatives that will assist us in this our small businesses and retail establishments in this very difficult time so um you know i think it's it's just important that we keep on so i know you understand that so thank you for the work you're doing now in the work you'll be continuing to do thank you thank you aaron others

[210:01] you know i wouldn't take the lack of commentary to be a lack of interest um you know we're all trying to wrap our heads around what's going to happen over the next two to four months and so anything you can help us understand about you know how we can get our retail businesses back on their feet will be super meaningful to us so i i'm afraid that we're all kind of stunned at the moment because we're not quite sure what what we need to to do but i think you know bringing forward the business relief um that as being put forward at the federal level so that and sarah to the extent that you can help our small businesses um figure out how they can get through the next few months would be super helpful and i have a question from mark

[211:02] once again i was muted i'm sorry um on the 28th i guess when we're discussing this in our financial situation in greater detail will you be tailoring your recommendations more specifically to where we are today um for instance the development of east boulder is something that's going to take quite a while no matter how we approach it and seems to me to be less critical right now than strategies for as sam said getting businesses back on their feet getting people employed um and pushing whatever money we get from the feds in the state out the door to the proper recipients um so will you be sort of tailoring your final recommendations more along those lines i think with the community's um

[212:01] continuing input and council direction of course what i would say is you know we do have about a little under 1200 responses so far and we look at the data every day and you know sarah is part of our team and jennifer pensino is leading that effort and as we have been looking at the responses come in i think that we can anticipate several new things happening in our retail space and we'll be working with our colleagues to look at that i'm imagining that there will be some degree of vacancy things that don't return but in the work that we do economic stability is critical in this sector and otherwise we are probably going to see some anomalies that result from the restaurant industry as different than other retailers we will definitely be looking at people who want to reconsider spaces or sizes of their staff

[213:00] and as those things change we may find more opportunity than we think to be a partner with our local retailers um sarah's done an excellent job and the rest of the team is right alongside her in trying to be creative and thoughtful and we look forward to summarizing that memo for you ahead of the 28th but yes yvette that was precisely what i had in mind and i thank you and sarah for the work that you're doing thank you all right and thank you to all the retailers and community members that helped us get this far we appreciate your time yes thank you all and mayor young says agree with sam i assume about you know the thanks to you yvette and sarah for all the work you're doing it cannot be an easy time to be doing these kind of studies so anyone else any other council members thank you so much for the work you've done thank you thanks

[214:01] your next item is recommendations from the engagement committee good evening mayor members of council this is sarah huntley engagement manager for the city of boulder it's a pleasure to speak to you again this evening i have met recently with bob yates and rachel friend to follow up on the discussion that came up at the last council meeting about making more online availability for council and community members to connect perhaps outside of these more formal meetings and that engagement subcommittee has come up with a proposal that we wanted to bring to the rest of council this evening essentially we are proposing to do between now and the end of may two online essentially q a sessions we would utilize a platform other than

[215:01] the platform we were trying this evening and we would probably queue up each of the sessions with about 10 or 15 minutes of some expert presentation from a community member on a topic that's relevant to what individuals are experiencing with kobit 19 in our community and then have a time where council members could hear from community members specifically in the form of questions they have that we would be able to answer the idea is that similar to chats we would try to have at least two council members sign up to be the sort of interactors with our community members other council members would be welcome to join the call if they would like to but we would make sure that the two council members who were in the primary role of communicating with the community had good staff support in terms of the information that you might want to be sharing back to residents and business owners who are calling in we thought we would try to do one of these

[216:00] starting next week since you don't have a period of open comment and then trying to repeat a cycle where it was every week where there's not open comment so that people are continuing to have the ability to speak with you we thought we would do the first one in english and then we have had some conversations about doing a second one as a spanish first call-in chat and really trying to get the word out to community members who speak spanish through many of our community connectors and other organizations that support that population in boulder i don't know bob and rachel if you wanted to um provide a little bit more information to your fellow council members otherwise i'm happy to take questions sure just a little bit of uh uh to build on that um sir i think you mentioned at the beginning um two of these as a pilot i think we talked about actually about four of these as a pilot so as you mentioned they would be in weeks when we don't have open comments so the second and the fourth weeks of the month um for the next two

[217:00] months so between now and memorial day we have four of them one in one spanish language first the other three in english the other thing we talked about is perhaps making them somewhat thematic so we would pick some themes not the questions would be limited to those themes but the idea is is to try to direct people you know one of them might be for small business one might be for residents that are having difficulty with their rent and other bills but but one may be at health the idea is that to have themes presented so that the questions would be could be oriented around that and also so that we could have the staff subject matter experts on the um on the chat so that to the extent council members couldn't ask the specific questions we could have the right people available to us that is correct what i said was two in april but you are right bob we talked about doing two additional ones in may i will add a few things as well um the concept for the first 15 minutes would be sort of similar to what the

[218:00] council apparently used to do with something called i think science tuesdays do i have that word right i don't know anyhow we used to invite um experts to have a little more time to share with us about things we might not be super familiar with in the community so i think that's as i said last week it's this is sort of a hard time for us to communicate and it might be a good time to listen assuming we can overcome the technical barriers and sam and i have had some success with the south boulder creek subcommittee on i think that's just zoom and it's worked pretty seamlessly or close to so i think there's probably a way to get some good community engagement at a time where we can't those of us who do often meet with community members really can't do that and also i would encourage especially since we're going to have hopefully some really good expert information provided that i would hope that a lot of council members

[219:01] would attend these meetings and not just two so that people are really being heard and we're taking advantage of this opportunity thanks well i'll just weigh in i think this is a great idea rachel and bob and you know i think that we should have as many council members as we can uh it would beg the question of what we need to do as far as meeting no discos but i think that should be a small problem i have a question from aaron yeah well thanks for bringing this forward um sounds like a great idea uh and my just question did we do you all thought about when this would happen like a day a good time we spoke about trying to do them during the day for some sessions

[220:01] and perhaps one evening session in the event that that would be more convenient for community members and we talked about the potential the first one being as soon as the 16th or the 17th pending approval by council but other than that we did not get more specific on the day one thing that might be helpful for me to know from council members is if there's a desire to have it at a fixed day every other week and time or if you would like us to experiment with days and times to see when works best for community members i understand scheduling can be really challenging for council as well as the community here a little bit later and and i had one more question just um would all of council want to weigh in on who's presenting for those first 15 minutes like bob and i had some thoughts but they're kind of just our thoughts do you mind if i say a little more since i just asked that question um

[221:00] just in terms just to speaking to times i mean the uh you know we found with other forms of engagement that there are times that work better for some people in times that work better for others so um you know you might mix it up in terms of when you offer it to get different groups but also we could tailor it like if one was about individuals trying to make their rent that might be an evening thing um and if one were about how small businesses were trying to make their rent that might be a during the day thing when people were more at work so just things to think about and uh rachel to your question i don't know that we want to have a committee of nine deciding who presents but i'm interested in your and bob's thoughts yeah the um i'll respond to both of those aaron first of all i agree with you that we should mix up the times in days rather than trying to have a set time that may also make it easier for some

[222:00] council members to participate in some as rachel mentioned i think you know at a minimum want at least two council members to be committed and i think uh sarah's gonna if this gets approved tonight sir will circulate some sort of doodle poll or something like that to find out who would like to um to sign up for the first four of this pilot over the next two months um with respect to um topics um we do have john tayer at the chamber on standby for the end of next week to do one on small business support so we talked about that earlier this evening and this new fund that we've created uh so we felt that that might be a time to wanted john's john to have to do that to talk a little bit more about not only the support the city will be providing directly through that fund which we stood up uh over the next few days but also generally on the cares act and how they can apply for things um rachel you had an idea on another presentation do you want to mention that one sure um sort of moving into the health and safety aspect i had previously been approached by casa court appointed special

[223:00] advocates which is a group in boulder provides a lot of supports for at-risk kids and some additional wrap-around services for juveniles and homelessness and things like that so i thought they might be a good one and then also i think sarah had highlighted the possibility of doing one that was specifically targeted to kids um so you know sort of children could call and ask ask questions um and i don't know who the guest speaker would be for that one but i thought that was a fantastic idea we got to get jeff and page for that one in some songs we've also talked about seeing if somebody from one of the organizations that really supports our spanish-speaking community members could be the presenter for the spanish session so we'll be doing some outreach if council is in fact interested in moving in this direction great and i have a question from mary

[224:02] thank you rachel and bob and sarah um so i have a question for sarah and um when would it be possible to um leverage um channels that are already in existence so for example what i'm thinking is um kg and you had excuse me has a um a radio program on sunday afternoons um called pasa lavos and i'm wondering if we could leverage that that already has a listenership in spanish and a call-in program to um target that particular community that's an interesting idea um we were anticipating using the zoom platform but of course then we'd have to get people to come to us the idea of using an existing kgnu call-in program is an interesting one

[225:00] i'd be more than happy to speak with them to see if they'd be willing to partner with us at a minimum perhaps they would at least be willing to publicize the zoom session for people to call in on but i would be more than happy to reach out to them and see if they would be interested in collaborating yeah i think that would be um you know if if if it's a channel that that could work i think that'd be um good to leverage that particular did you say it's on sunday afternoons it is sunday afternoons i believe it's at four three or four something like that okay so we would obviously need some council member participation but i'd be happy to reach out to kgnu it's a great idea thank you any other council comments very good thank you rachel thank you bob for bringing this forward um i think you know it will take a little time uh as we

[226:00] figure out what the community needs to hear about the most but i think starting with small business support and rent support would be two things that i think are going to be really important thank you very much okay your next your next item is um appointment of the remaining board and commission okay and i think you have a slideshow for us right correct so we can start with the beverage licensing authority and then michael christie was appointed to a board last week so you have one candidate here so i'll move that we appoint matt califano

[227:02] second any objection super i mean next uh next is the boulder junction access district travel demand management okay and we appointed tom kutzman right correct please [Music] so i think it's obvious that we should appoint jennifer shriver yes definitely yes to the five-year term and i think we would leave the three-year term open for further applications yes yes was she a resident i know there was some

[228:01] restrictions on the seats just wanted to verify debbie are you on i'm looking right now thank you yes she is she is a resident perfect one down one to go next

[229:07] board of zoning adjustment so could you answer how long has david shaffer been on give me a second let me look that up

[230:30] huh okay

[231:06] so he's been on the board since march of 2018 according to our website sorry sam you were muted i i would um nominate him for a five-year term so bob has a comment that he may have served a term before that

[232:10] and bob also nominated elizabeth [Music] so um i just if i can speak here i just looked up david schaefer's application in which he says i am currently on the board of zoning adjustments and have been for the past seven years okay all right yeah he also sent us an email apologizing for missing the interview and he says in his email to us my name is david shafer i've been on boza board since 2013. got it so do you want to speak to elizabeth bob uh sure i mean elizabeth's uh a strong member of the community she's um uh been active in um organizing the community around his

[233:00] shoes um she's sharp she's well liked and well known and i think that she will take a balanced view to the issues that come before boza got it and i withdraw my nomination of david shafer he's been on seven years i so just say that david schafer is a super super great guy he's an architect in town and i think he's been a good member of boza um but he does say in his um application or in his email to us which is dated march 13th that if if we felt that there was other candidates that were qualified that he would not press his um application got it so anyone object to elizabeth prentice no if and if i can just say a word i just want to thank david shaffer for his service um that seven years is a long time to do that so i appreciate that but um i i was impressed by

[234:02] elizabeth's interview i noted that she was a fan of accessory dueling units which i was glad to hear so i'm also a fan of those so i'm happy to support her good okay so i would say it's elizabeth apprentice by acclimation anyone object great next environmental advisory board so bob nominates susan rachel nominates jason unger and nearby seconds i assume susan

[235:04] bob you want to speak i'm going to yield to a mirror by let her speak to susan nearby yep so i just again i wasn't at the interviews but um i think that susan has been a long time resident she's run for council a few times um and though not successful i think that she's going to be as has been and has shown herself as a strong community member i know that she does have a farming background but i think that her it gives her a well-rounded knowledge for this board and so um i look forward to hopefully having her on and i think she'll bring some bright ideas and uh good leadership to this board got it rachel

[236:05] um so i thought susan had a fantastic interview and application and i enjoyed getting to know her on the campaign trail and i think would also do a fine job on this board however at the end of her interview she said she thought that we should appoint jason unger who was the only other person who applied for the board because she wanted to see us give more opportunities to young new residents in boulder and so i reached out to her afterwards and asked if that was sincere and she said that it was so i am he also had a applied for several boards and was a quality candidate and well-rounded applicant so i would um follow susan's lead and appoint jason and therefore nominate him

[237:00] great so adam yeah i just wanted to say um since jason did apply for parks and rec as well i do plan on voting for him there so i think he'd have support on a different board as well um just want to throw that out there uh to my other council colleagues got it so i would suggest if it's okay that we do parks and rec first and see how that turns out um and then come back to this one would people be amenable to that if you are not please speak up thank you let's go to parks and rec okay so bob nominates tara

[238:01] mark nominates jason unger okay so there are two spots for parks and rec um i only see one um bob so i see one resident to a five year term let me look parks and rec point two yeah no i see two five-year terms in my hand out so lynette or debbie can you clarify do we have two [Music] on that debbie

[239:03] yeah let me take a look sam okay i think we have two i think bob's right and they're two five-year terms according to the parks and rec advisory board um web page the term of valerie yates no relation ends on march in march 2020 and the term of jennifer kevorick also ends march 2020. also no relation also no religion thank you very nice people can so can i move us forward to uh maybe uh appoint both jason and tara to five-year terms i think i thought they were both excellent applicants i think we do very well by them i'm good for that i am as well any objection

[240:00] great which will take us back to eab which i think leaves us with sue peterson for eaby yep [Music] in the objection okay who's next housing advisory board great so we have two seats here one five year and one two year term [Music] so mary nominates daniel teodoro bob seconds third from nearby so i'm willing to go ahead and and say so we have a five and a two year term so

[241:02] is there anyone who objects to um daniel teodoro for the five year term i see juni nominated charlotte pitts so i have three for daniel right now i'm gonna vote for daniel as well is there anyone that would not like daniel to get the five-year term okay so i got a fifth from rachel so we're good daniel teodoro is going to get the five-year term some nominations for the two-year term okay so i've got karina nominated i've got harold witkin nominated i've got two for charlotte pitts [Music] i've got one for two for livovich

[242:04] okay so it looks like we have a one to talk about here um let's see nearby you nominated karina i'm just gonna go down the list here yeah sam um i just i think that karina will bring she's a renter um and of latino descent and she's newer to colorado she also got really involved in running for council and i think that she gave it a really great effort and is really looking to be involved in the community more so i think that having another renter on the board would be great and i think it's just wonderful to see how she has inserted herself into the community so thoroughly and will bring some really good perspectives that may be missing from this board thank you mark you have um harold wicken howard

[243:02] howard i think one of the things that the board may lack or could certainly use more of is practical experience in actually building housing it's a housing advisory board and it would be good to have someone there who knows the ins and outs of development the economics of development and has shown the ability to actually produce housing i know howard fairly well i've actually seen some of what he builds in denver and it's what we would call market rate affordable housing condominiums for under 300 000 and that sort of thing and having practical experience and producing that when housing affordability is our greatest need in boulder is i think a valuable uh set of skills that we do not have on that board

[244:00] thank you mark mary um charlotte pitts i believe juni nominated her first mary you welcome to speak on it well i um i actually had the opportunity to speak over the phone with charlotte and um she actually works in the adu business and she brings the perspective also from living in affordable housing and as well as a fairly newcomer to boulder who became involved with um with plan boulder and

[245:02] and soon after um left the board and um but she has continued to um be very interested in housing and has come and spoken before council and so i think she would make a good addition thank you juni i don't have very much to add except that i thought she hid it out of the park when it when she interviewed i thought she gave the best answer when it comes to question one and question two and the fact that she talked about stakeholder research so i thought to me when i was listening to her she was very thoughtful and thorough in the way she answered her question and most of her responses were very thought provoking meaning she took time to really answer the question and she also talked about best practices and also community outreach which is

[246:01] something that is important to all of us on city council thank you adam jennifer levivich sure uh i'm gonna quick follow up on mark's comment just since i know a little bit more about the board having served there we do have two people with development experience on the board already one which we just reappointed for a five-year term so i don't think that is lacking on the board i will just say that much i got to meet with jennifer and you know i was really impressed she has uh lived experience with homelessness she um knows more about housing at every level than any person i have met outside of the city government and um i think she would bring a really really interesting perspective that being said i really really appreciated charlotte's perspective too and i'd be willing to support her and i really appreciated

[247:02] christopher coming out and talking and i think he's a perfect example of why we might want an ex officio position for college students or grad students on our boards especially these important ones that affects students a lot got it thank you adam rachel i'm going to echo a lot of what adam just said i am first met jen livovich after she spoke at the memorial service in last december for the people who passed away who had been unhoused in boulder and she spoke so eloquently and from the heart and and i learned as she was talking and then she came to my office hours not too long after that and she is so intelligent and and knows the issues facing the boulder community in terms of

[248:00] homelessness and affordable housing and rental housing and just has this really really wide vast array of knowledge that i was taking notes in my office hours of you know she was sort of educating me so her lived experience i think is is unparalleled and gives us a pretty unparalleled chance to appoint someone to this board at a time in our our societal existence where housing and homelessness and affordability could not be more crucial so i think that she is is going to be be an incredible asset to us i as an example she and i are friends at this point and when the bathrooms issue came up on 13th street i called her to ask her for some information and expertise based on her back past experience and i just i don't think we have other people that are like her and i think it would be a shame if we

[249:00] passed up this opportunity to appoint her to this board thank you great and i'm going to slot aaron in because he wanted to comment after rachel and then bob oh i just met some time after rachel if bob was ahead of me bob please go ahead yeah bob well i had um seconded mark mark's um uh nomination for howard witkin for all the reasons that mark ellicott he said but i'm i'm with um with adam that rachel pitts was a close second from for me and i could also get behind her so i i will probably end up voting for for um for charlotte great aaron yeah well this is a tough one for me because i think we have some really excellent candidates and i would be uh thrilled to put either uh charlotte pitts or jennifer livovich on the board you know charlotte impressed me with her professional experience and the uh her

[250:01] experience living in affordable housing and then some of the sharp perspectives that she brought to housing issues i've been extremely impressed by that from her i am going to vote on this round for jennifer livovich i think she has a unique combination of experiences and knowledge that's really different from anything i've seen before and i think the city organization could really benefit from uh if people as folks have mentioned her lived experience of homelessness but also um she has educated herself to an extraordinary degree on the current system of services for housing and affordable housing and homeless transitional housing and also human services support for folks where i've i've learned a lot of things from her about details that i wasn't familiar with um and so she's also working on getting her degree right now um so i've i've been just really impressed by her so i'm gonna i'm gonna vote for her on this round got it

[251:00] so i have three nominees i have jennifer livovich i have charlotte pitts and i have um howard watkin witkin sorry um anyone else i've missed okay you missed karina too oh karina thank you yep okay so lynette what do we do here if you want to vote one by one you would start from the bottom got it so let's let's do howard wicken please weigh in then charlotte pitts and jennifer levovich then karina joka thank you so do you want to have people vote yeah in order to purchase everybody yeah just vote so rachel am i understanding you're

[252:01] voting for karina no you're voting for jennifer okay so we've got one for two all right juni for pitts so we have one for whitkin we have one for karina we have two for jennifer we have one three three for jennifer yep and three for charlotte and i'm going to vote for charlotte as well so that means that we are going to have a runoff between jennifer and charlotte correct no i thought charlotte has four if you vote for charlotte she has four one so i yeah i see bob mary and you and me so that's four and so four is not a majority and you need five votes it's

[253:02] not a plurality it's uh you need five total votes for somebody to appoint them right so so i think we have a runoff between jennifer and charlotte is that correct that's right the the the bottom vote getters drop out and there were one vote each for wicked in in um and karina so they both drop out and the remaining we re vote on yep so we're voting right now we're going to do a revote for jennifer or charlotte shhh so i've i have five for charlotte pitts right now so i think that's going to take the day

[254:01] so charlotte pitts gets a two-year term okay your next board is human relations commission can i make a comment please before we move on to the next board yeah i just wanted to um encourage jennifer i i was very impressed with jennifer as well and um she has since her interview um has sent us quite a few emails and she had a lot of support from the community i think that her skills and what she would bring to our community would likely it seems to me like her skills and knowledge would fit a whole lot better with the human relations commission so i would really encourage jennifer to um apply to the human relations commission um and yeah and thank you for um applying to this board i like i said i was really impressed

[255:01] thank you mary okay nominees okay so i have jean hilaire from aaron and bob anyone else i'm going to nominate fred smith i thought he did a great job in his interview okay so it's time to vote i think we have two nominees jean-hilaire and fred smith so go ahead and vote can can we say something sure please just i was i was really impressed with jealousy lair's application and his

[256:00] interview and his connections to haiti and a great speech about the problems that folks people of color and minorities have in the community also people experiencing mental illness so um i think he'd bring a great perspective would be really helpful for the city on the hrc thank you aaron okay so i have one vote two vote three vote four vote five okay so we have a majority for jean heller thank you all next one is the library commission

[257:08] okay so i'm gonna nominate scott steinbrechter and then we have a nomination for bonita [Music] it seems like that's who we're going to have for nominees so um bob would you like to speak for bonita sure bonita has gosh probably three decades of service in our community her list of uh community involvements is super super long um i had opportunities in addition to her interview an opportunity to speak with her i think she's taken a very balanced approach to the library district question which we may not get to this year and also a very balanced approach to how we can find ways to

[258:00] fund the library if the district doesn't happen so i just think that she she knows this community inside and out she knows people in this community she's passionate about the library and i think that she's going to be the type of creative person that we need on the library commission to figure out um the funny challenges we'll have got it and i agree about benita and she has been like a staple of our community for a long time and so i appreciate her work i thought scott steinbrecker you know he's worked with the lafayette library board he knows a ton about finances and i think that's what he would bring to this board at a time when you know as we look forward finances are going to be critical so anyway that's that's my um plug for scott let's vote please please vote for bonita or scott i think i'm sorry mark yep

[259:00] yeah um i think both of these candidates are very very strong i was particularly impressed however with scott's uh strong background in the library system and his experience in capital planning and expenditures and that's why i'm going to support him got it okay bonita or scott yeah and i'll i'll just say while we're voting just that bonita's many many years of civic involvement and professional experience in running cities i think would be a huge asset to the to the library commission thank you aaron so i have one two three four four scott i have one two three for bonita so i think we're missing one but i'm gonna vote for scott so that'll be five

[260:05] okay your next board is you can see and we have two applicants for two spots right that's that's correct so how long are the two two terms a five year in a four year [Music] mayor just one more one more thought um one requires to be a resident and one is a requirement of being an owner and we have one resident and one owner that okay got it and let's see so which one is owner and which one is resident as far as the time so um the five-year term is for a

[261:01] resident and the four-year term for the property owner got it who's the property owner quinn um so he he lives in ukmc um i don't know does he own a property there believe so i believe that's what i found out let me just i can double check that by property does that mean commercial property i mean he owes a house there right i thought it was commercial property bob and that's why i thought gwyneth i thought gwyneth was a property representative if she is a representative she did not submit her letter so she she works in marketing for the sink right

[262:04] that i'm not sure of so so that's the notes i took is that she works in marketing for the sink so i think she would be a property representative and i know andrew is a resident up there okay it's it's in her application that that she's um the brand ambassador for the sink so i think you're right that she would be the property representative owner so if that's a five year term we will put gwened for the five year term and andrew for the four year term i think it's the other way i think the owner is the property the commercial owner owner's a four-year got it okay any objections good to have andrew on the city board

[263:01] right there is one commission left the arts commission okay looking for nominations okay we have a nomination for georgia schmidt and one for christopher carruth so aaron do you want to speak to georgia i was really impressed by her interview she's a dancer she's uh it sounds like she had a really impressive impact on the art scene in encinitas california where she lived for a number of years and um you know she i think could bring great perspective she's looking for more cultural diversity and dance and for artists in

[264:01] town in general um so i think she'd be a fantastic addition to the board and then just while i have the floor i just want to give a shout out to um jessie friedman for all the years of work that she's done on the jaipur literature festival and what a great impact that has had on town so i wanted to thank her for applying as well great and then we've got two nominations for christopher carruth let's start with bob sure first of all i think for all the reasons aaron said georgia would be great and so i think we'll be lucky to get her or christopher the reason i'm supporting christopher is he's a cu professor which we don't get cu folks very often on boards and i want to encourage that um whether they're students or professors um we have a little bit of a challenge on this board um in the the balance on funding for arts organizations and artists and i thought that he in his interview christopher provided a really good balanced answer and i think he

[265:01] understands the issues and will tackle them fairly and equitably so that's why i particularly liked his responses to our questions [Music] got it and then juni now aaron and so juni do you want to speak to georgia i think the only thing i could add is the fact that i thought her energy was great she talked about cultural diversity when in the dancing culture and she also talked about that she she was the member of arts cenitas and she created the first art festival so this is someone with a lot of experience and she wants to be more involved in community and she also talked about analyzing where we where the greatest needs are and also looking at the type of projects that are being requested so i just think that she had the best and most holistic answer out of all the candidates

[266:00] although everyone was great and impressive and she also talked again about community engagement because as we know that there is a disparity when it comes to art so i think having someone who can really looked into community engagement is very important so that we can reach the populations in our community that we think that is most marginalized thank you anyone else want to speak to you their candidate yeah real quickly i just wanted to um say one more thing about georgia that really sold me was that you ask the public where they want the art and so and i agree that we had some great candidates and um but i think i will be supporting georgia very good let's vote georgia or

[267:10] christopher so i have five now so georgia it is and mark voted for christopher i'm gonna vote for georgia okay lynnette is that all our boards that is awesome so jane do we have any other agenda items oh so mary wants a comment yeah i just have a quick comment um this is a board that will have a ballot question um on the ballot this fall asking for two more board members so um anybody who applied apply again because

[268:01] we're going to be filling two more seats on that board next year in addition to whatever seat is up for appointment so there'll likely be three spots on this board next year thank you mary so we need a motion to ratify the appointments and a motion to suspend the rules to not take public testimony i'll move that we approve these appointments and also separately i will move that we suspend the rules to not take in order to not take public testimony given the extraordinary times the show of hands anyone object i'll take that as unanimous thank you okay jane anything else i think that's near the

[269:02] end but i see this left-hand water district request i don't know about the left-hand water district request i thought we were done so that's an information item it's not part of the agenda okay great i think we are done okay thank you all very much um for for showing up and doing the work in this difficult time um i'm glad that we got our boarding commission's appointments done thank you to staff for all the work you've been doing i know how hard you've been you've been working so i appreciate it thank you huge huge thank you to staff yeah they're doing great super see you next week take care bye everybody

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