July 7, 2020 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] those facilities that we can quickly get those facilities outbreaks under control and you can see um based on the changing from the orange on the left to the blue on the right that we've been largely uh successful at doing that and that goes to both my staff but also to those long-term care facilities that have worked really really hard to make this happen you can see the two distinct spikes you'll see it better in our next graph which should be our five-day rolling average and you can see that the the outbreak that we had this outbreak i wanted to talk about a little bit more i think i touched on this last time but it's it's important to note again that the reason that we want to be really careful about this is because for every single positive case that we have that case investigation takes two hours and on average for each positive case there's four to five close contacts that we need to do follow-ups with and those close contact investigations can take anywhere from 30

[1:01] minutes to two hours so when you have a number of cases when you're getting close to 30 you're talking about a lot of case contacts and a lot of time and that's where it becomes difficult for our staff to be able to control an outbreak like that and quickly get it under control so it doesn't further spread we we had to rely on the colorado department of public health and environment and their staff to help control this outbreak and it's again the reason why we really want to pay attention to that social distancing masking washing our hands as we move forward our trajectory downward as you can see um was pretty steady and it would have likely continued to be steady downward we're seeing a few more cases that are not that are no longer associated with that outbreak but uh but we're we're still at a pretty low case count comparative to the overall disease time frame next slide

[2:02] this is the total number of tests per day and when i start talking about protect our neighbor one of the measurements is how many tests we can we have the ability to run in the day in boulder county and i i think i shared in previous meetings that our number of projected tests that we should be running are around 500 before 495 in our county we actually have the ability to run much more than that and we haven't had the need to do so one of the things that we've needed to do is make sure that we can test all of our symptomatic folks in the county which we can do and expand that testing to people who are in close contact with a positive and we have the ability to do that now in multiple places in the county we don't have the demand to do that so we're actually in a pretty good place in terms of boulder county and we certainly can run more than 500 tests per day uh you can see that just from the the two places in that graph where we were above

[3:01] 600 in one day and we know we have capacity in our community to run more if we need to part of the challenge right now is that there is a greater number of tests coming in at the state level and there is a delay on some of the testing that's coming from both the state and some of the private labs at this point and we definitely want to be able to have a handle on that as we move forward into these next months next slide and this is the percent positivity rate basically without going into a lot of the detail behind this what we want to be able to do and this is one of the measurements and protect our neighbor as well is we want to be below five percent positivity in boulder county for a five-day average and we've been able to maintain that for for quite some time here as you can see what that really means is that if we're below five percent that means we're testing enough people in our population to know that we're that we're identifying the majority of the

[4:00] positives that are out there so as long as we're below 5 we're in good shape and again as you can see here we have maintained below 5 next slide this is our total positives or probables in boulder county per municipality per 100 000 so it's a case rate and you can see that boulders at 497 we've seen a few we've seen the uptick in boulder here you know a lot of that again associated with the outbreak that occurred up on the hill and but we have been seeing more cases in boulder in general and then second highest as you can all see here is in longmont next slide uh this demonstrates what we are seeing in a national level as well so this is the total total boulder county residents who have tested positive for covid19 or or who are considered probable and it's

[5:00] and it breaks it out by not hospitalized hospitalized needing intensive care and deceased and what we're seeing in this graph is that again the majority of our cases in the 20 to 29 year olds that is the population that we're seeing a lot of new cases in across the nation associated with a higher mobility when we look at the mobility data there is less icu need and less hospitalization need in the younger population and once you hit the 50 to 59 year old bracket you start to go up in hospitalizations icu and um and deaths as we've as we all know and we've seen with this virus throughout this the progression of it next slide this is our cumulative hospitalization data across the denver metro county area again you've seen this multiple times it

[6:00] just illustrates we are staying flat across the the region in terms of hospitalizations this is where cd ph's update they expect that unless there's some kind of massive change um that we would continue to see flat numbers as we go into the summer and one thing that could drive a change just to make sure that i know you're you're all aware but people that are in that older age category so once you're into that 50 to 59 and above age category you start to look at hospitalizations and you can see greater numbers of hospitalizations so um what would change that is if we had a lot of people was with virus circulating out and about that weren't uh social distancing that weren't wearing masks that weren't paying attention to hygienic practices that could change these hospitalization occurs both this one and one that i'm going to show you next next slide this is our boulder county hospitalizations that are specific to

[7:01] coven 19. we've been on a pretty steady decline as of around the 1st of july we saw an uptick in hospitalizations associated with covid so we do want to keep an eye on that but it's still very low comparative um and our numbers have fluctuated between four and eight um as this last week has uh has been going by us and we're again we meet with our hospitals every single week we make sure that the data that we're seeing on these charts are in fact what they're seeing in the hospitals and we get qualitative information from them as well about what they're seeing uh what kind of things they are worried about so we're able to to really take these data and and put them onto the ground hospitals and make sure we're validating it next slide uh this is the state hospitalization data and um you can see here that there's a very slight tail up that blue uh the blue line is the one that represents the currently hospitalized

[8:02] for confirmed covid19 cases and what we want to do is make sure again that that blue line stays down and then it doesn't start to go up so you'll hear a lot of focus as you've already heard in these last couple weeks as well as moving into the rest of the summer is the importance again of social distancing masking we know masking makes a difference a lot more focus on that right now goldman sachs just published a study about effectiveness of masking and how it could help ensure that we don't lose control of the gdp so a lot more messaging coming around masking and you'll continue to see more of that as we move into the weeks ahead of us next slide this is a graph of the number of people who have um who have deceased in our county and the orange is associated with long-term care facilities um and the the blue are considered a

[9:02] non-long-term care facility so you can see that again we have a very low rate of death we want to keep it that way we don't we obviously don't want to lose any more people associated with this disease and as long as we're following that guidance we all can do this next slide this is the national data i wanted to highlight briefly so it's pretty clear here this is the united states we never really went into a sharp decline we went into a slight decline after from the start of this and then we went into an uptick where the number of cases that i saw reported on the news today were nearly 50 000 so we are definitely increasing in cases in the united states when we look at this next slide you can really see the illustration of some of the challenges that i think we face

[10:00] going forward if and i'm not going to go through all these but the ones to that that really have really significant increases if you look at florida uh if you look at california uh if you look at arizona that one's dramatic you can see that the uptick in cases that they have in those places alone are much much much higher than any time previous in this disease path so it's a pretty big challenge we don't want to see that happening across states because we know that people can travel from state to state and if you remember the early part when we started to see this disease in colorado we were starting to to spread the disease based on travel and we were able to get that under control but we had to do it through obviously really difficult and drastic measures like stay at home that none of us want to go back to so really making sure we're doing everything we can to control this around us is going to be really important on the very bottom graph there you'll see

[11:01] colorado about midway across a little bit more than midway across colorado has just a little tail on the end of it and and that's where we want to keep it we don't want that to increase i think the governor's done a great job of really thinking through what's the best progression forward and how do we take smart steps as we move forward without getting into something that we can't then control and the next slide next two slides we'll cover our protect our neighbors and this is really um what we just heard about from the governor's office and there's multiple requirements in order to move to this level um and basically the major differences between where we are now and this protect our neighbors is that all all sectors can go back to 50 percent um whereas now there's limitations and caps on certain sectors and there's also a threshold of a total of 500 people in one place and um

[12:01] and some other minor changes but those are the major changes between where we are now and where this threshold is and this threshold requires a series of different things it me there and with each of these three bullets that you see on here there's specific measurement levels that we have to track on a daily and weekly basis before we can actually move to this next level we have to apply to the state and demonstrate that we can meet these thresholds um and uh that we have a plan if we started to go backwards how we were what we were going to do if we do start to go backwards on these thresholds if you go to the next slide it requires a lot of approval which i think again is a smart thing because we are invested in this across our communities but it requires local elected leaders and commissioners mayors hospitals law enforcement and our emergency management folks as well as public health to approve the plan

[13:02] that would be the application to go to this next level and it as i noted it it talks about specific things like how we're going to assure we meet those guidelines how we're going to meet the metrics how will increase mass wearing in public settings uh they also included influenza vaccine uptake and there's been a lot of focus on this uh at the state level including some supportive legislation this year because when we we know when we get to the fall it's going to be a challenge especially for our hospitals as we start to have flu season in addition to covid and those things look a lot alike as we all know it's going to be challenging to try to separate the two of them so doing as much as we can to make sure that people are getting flu vaccine and taking that pressure off of our health care system before we get there is going to be critically important so all those things have to be

[14:00] included in that plan as we move forward and then the final message i have again is just we absolutely can do this we saw in terms of um the outbreak that we had here locally how quickly and easily something can happen and how quickly we can have those cases spread to a number of people and we want to avoid that at all costs because that threatens our economy it threatens our our society we all know that there is behavioral health mental health physical health impacts with not being able to be outside not being able to exercise to have to stay at home to not being able to socialize we can do this together but we have to work hard at it and we all know that and for all of you that have been watching this over the the last several months i can't tell you how much i appreciate the commitment you've made to making

[15:00] sure that our numbers are staying low we are definitely working [Music] with the university of colorado with city of boulder to to really make sure that as our students come back we're doing it in as safe a way as possible and i i can't underestimate or i can't overemphasize enough how much work has gone into to really making sure that we're doing everything we can to educate and support people make sure they understand how important this virus is it's still with us you know it's it's not going to be here forever we're going to be able to get through this there is hope at some point we will have a vaccine it will be available and things will be a little different than they are now but until we get there we all have to continue to really work together um and we can we can control this virus if we if we're diligent about it so i will stop there and see what questions you have with me very good thank you very much jeff as always your updates are super helpful to us

[16:00] i currently do not have any hands up um so i'll give a few more moments to see if anyone has any questions mary thank you jeff um i just have one quick question and it's with regards to an article that i read today regarding aerosols and i'm just wondering um what information we have regarding lingering aerosol in indoor air and um and how that relates to mask squaring uh there is definitely i i have also been hearing about the same thing but i haven't seen anything um that has been i haven't seen anything sent out yet from like the cdc or anybody like that i have heard that aerosols can remain in the air we we actually heard that a month and a half ago or so

[17:00] i think it was harvard that first did that study and they found that aerosols can can linger but there was not a lot of evidence on that being a primary source of spread so i have heard about it but i haven't seen the latest data i haven't seen the article today that you were mentioning so i'll be on the lookout for that as you all know we learn new information with this virus on a week-to-week basis so as we learn new information if it looks like we need to change strategies or do something different because of that the latest research in the latest science then we get together and we talk about what does that change need to look like how because the bottom line is we want to do the best we can to prevent the spread of the disease and to support people's safety and and our society and economy so um the the stuff that i know about associated with mass was a recent research study that was uh that was done from i think it was the university of florida and we actually have a link on that

[18:01] or we won't might not be there yet but we'll have a link on our website to that and it talks about what different kinds of masks can reduce the spread of somebody who's coughing as an example and the latest research shows that there is definitely a difference between whether what type of cloth covering you have from a cloth covering from a bandana to all the way up to a mask and how those different things control the spread so that is worth looking at i'm happy to to send that directly to you if you'd rather have me distribute it to you but that is information that i think is useful and it again reaffirms that this disease can be can be supported in terms of control along with social distancing and masking and hand washing those things are all important tools in this toolbox and no matter what we do moving forward those three things are going to be critical for us thank you jeff great next i have mark wallach jeff that was a great presentation i

[19:01] want to thank you for that uh two very quick questions i assume we're long past the issue of the availability of ppe in our hospitals is that correct um all of our hospitals the last time i looked at at least two weeks which is one of the measurements that we have to also track um for going in to protect our neighbor and we still do we're still we're still tracking that on a weekly basis um but ppe uh there is more concerns with ppe because of the outbreaks that we're seeing in the not just the rest of the country um but in other in other nations as well so we're not out of the woods on ppe at this point we don't have currently a shortage in colorado but there is concerns that we may back be back in that place again if there is significant outbreaks like there is in florida and texas across all the united states so we don't want to get back to that and i hope we don't but there is some concern and there has been some conversation are we attempting to

[20:01] stockpile we their state has been having these conversations i can tell you that in boulder county we do have additional masks and we do have not just mass but ppe because gallons are a big shortage at one point so we do have some stockpile and we are trying to acquire additional stockpile as well okay and my second question is um erie and superior had very very low rates positivity rates and i'm wondering if there was anything that allows for that or that explains that i don't know the answer to it but i can ask our epidemiologists and they i'm sure they could point me to what we're seeing differently in different places so as an example we know that we in outside of um the university uh not university but the outbreak on the hill we know we've had a few small things in businesses so we've had a few small

[21:00] things in restaurants in different places but those specific outbreaks were nothing that could that we didn't expect or couldn't control based on just starting to open things up a little bit more than they were earlier but i don't know why the positivity rate is less specifically in those other towns but i can ask that question and try to get that information back to all of you thanks i'd be i'd just be curious to understand why that is so okay thanks great next up is juni can you hear me yes so i'm listening through my phone and then talking to you through my computer so please bear with me um so you just mentioned earlier uh universe that you're working with the university and i wanted to hear a little bit more what is what is it that you are working on and maybe i know the last time that you were here uh you spoke with us you

[22:02] mentioned the reporting system and i won i wanted to know how far we are in that process because you remember when you mentioned there would be an online system where um people can put in their information and then find out what what level of risk they are in and also i just wanted to hear a little bit more about the reporting and also what is a testing plan for cu because i understand the surrounding regions are quite far from you know our campus but we do have a campus right in the middle of our city so i think you know community members actually have been writing us a lot wondering what is our plan for august because students will be returning to school yeah so uh let me start with the monitoring first so this system that is the system we are planning to use is the state system and they're not going to make a decision until the middle of july they had to go out and do a larger

[23:00] procurement so we won't have access to that application until at least the middle of july at the earliest so we're still a few weeks away from that and what that will do is it'll help prov it allows us if somebody has symptoms to put their information into that the application and then to get referred to testing as well as get some follow-up so it automates the process of making contacts quickly with people up front and helps save on some of that contact um early contact uh information that's necessary to provide people who may be positive with a virus but we're still a couple weeks away from that unfortunately and i just heard that from the state health department today the second thing i heard you ask was what's the plan that we're working with cu on and um we are working with the city of boulder and with cu they the although i can't recite this plan i know there's 13

[24:01] it's a 13 point plan that cu is working on with students not just um there's not just outreach to the new students but there's outreach to students right now who are living up on uh near the hill in those areas they're working with landlords directly there is a plan for new students who are incoming to do some training and to provide as i understand it to provide they're called covid kits for the lack of a better word that includes a curriculum about the importance of the virus what to know about it masks some of those kinds of things and there's 13 different points that i've heard cu talk about that are included in that plan so i know they've been working really diligently along with folks at the city of boulder to really think through that plan in terms of the testing and i bet jane could probably add to that because that wasn't very comprehensive but there's a lot of work that's been happening

[25:00] and then the in terms of the testing with cu students there was conversation about potentially testing all cu students when they came in that was that's been a conversation at the state health department because with symptomatic so that would be testing asymptomatic students that would be coming in um to colorado and what some other universities has done maybe let me start there is they've had people test before they left their states so they weren't traveling if they were tested as positive as an example and we all know that even though you test positive today tomorrow i might come down with symptoms because i was just outside that incubation period so we can't give people the impression that because they test positive they can then go circulate with folks and and not worry about symptoms or maintaining social distancing or masking it's really important to continue to do that even if you have a positive test because you could be i mean even if you have a

[26:00] negative test because you could be positive a couple days later uh just as an example uh but the the reason that there is some challenges with testing everybody in state in addition to what i just said about traveling is that there's already as i mentioned earlier a backlog a bit at the state level for running those tests in a timely period both with our private labs as well as with the state lab and if we can't get those tests turned around quickly then we have people sitting who are potentially positive for multiple days and there's greater risk that they might go back and circulate with people in the community so we need a fast turnaround time and if we ran all the tests for cu as an example that would put a huge strain on the system uh so we want we we've been having conversations with the state who's going to have conversations with universities uh in this next week about how we might approach some of these things together hopefully that answered those questions

[27:03] okay good okay very good we got rachel next hi thanks so much jeff for being here and the presentation um i'm just wondering what is the easiest way to get testing right now if you are uninsured like i know some some counties have you know drive-through testing that's been pretty consistent and i don't think i've seen that in the city of boulder i'm not sure if we have it in the county but if you just want a really simple drive-through they don't even ask for your insurance card test is there a place to do that in the city of boulder i don't i don't know if there is in the city of boulder i'd have to look at our so we do have all those testing sites including the criteria for those testing sites i know we have at least two free sites one of those is uc health from longmont i know that clinica provides a sliding scale so if you can't pay then you can get the test and then i believe salud and longmont but there may be others and i would need to look at we again we

[28:01] have that information on our on our website and there if you click on the dot on the website it'll tell you what the criteria are for that specific testing site um thanks and i like i think the state has like a 211 chart or email or website i guess that you can click on and that one has has mislabeled some things in the county and in the city that are not actually available for free drive through testing so it seems like there's been some glitches in getting the information out to at least city of boulder residents so and rachel if you can shoot me an email and just if just put that if you could just give me any information you have i'll follow up okay thanks okay great any other questions i am seeing none so with that i think we're ready to go to open comment thank you jeff so much for being here and for the update it's greatly appreciated thank you and the thing we were going to do next is invite

[29:01] yvette bowden to talk about our restaurant reopening great well i've messed up everything tonight except for the i'm in the agenda so we'll try and get better from here on out welcome event hi um welcome back council and um i'm gonna quickly just review as promised um cross-departmental work along with our economic development partners as directed by council is the city's response to the needs of reopening restaurants and retailers next slide quickly as a reminder we met with you in may and you specifically suggested that we look at um looking things in response to reopening restaurants and retailers and it was initially focused on restaurants they had asked for this in the survey which you'll recall that we did in late march which was around the business impacts that they were experiencing and our goals were to

[30:02] specifically address those requests ease and affordability of pickup and delivery um expansion opportunities in light of what we all anticipated which came to fruition social distancing and service limitations including the ability um to address alcohol licensure and use of the right-of-way restaurant tours were looking for clear and speedy process with clarity on specific issues and they wanted some help in telling people that they were reopening in addition the city always considers community safety equity quality of life impacts and city incurred costs next flight so i shared with a timeline with you earlier in may to kind of say how might we do this and we were all expecting a press release from the governor's office the items in red show you that we did hit all of those dates if not beat those

[31:00] dates and it gives you an indication of we're right where we said we would be july back speaking with you to give you an update report next slide you also suggested and we implemented several street closure areas in addition to the regular right-of-way expansion opportunities so pearl street mall or pearl street was closed between 9th and 11th including a portion of 10th and the university hill event street was closed they have been activated since that time uh based on those applications and uh so far they are well received um we have not received additional requests for street closures under this program this way but we have been able to accommodate other types of expansions as the project was implemented next slide so what are the results to date and i'm showing you now some pictures from the

[32:00] actual pop-ups that have occurred in our community the last time i presented to you i showed you samples of what simple expansions might look like everything you see from here on out in this presentation are things that are actually occurring in boulder right now um so we implemented the program on time this slide said your memo that you received said we received 75 applications um this slide says 79 and now i can tell you we're at 81 as of this evening that includes a lot of restaurant parklets 65 but we know that we have several that we have approved i can tell you that we are currently at 81 approved applications this includes 68 temporary modification of the existing alcohol licensure and the remainder were for pickup and curbside delivery or retailers the program was expanded to include retail options within the past couple of weeks and it is just as simple a process

[33:01] as the other process but we are able to distinguish and i can have that in a summary report at the end of the program to tell you how many were retailers and how many were restaurant tours throughout the project we also added curbside enhancements which would allow for people to bump out their retail locations or to have additional pickup and delivery which don't involve necessarily a closure in early in this process we were all paying attention to how long we could uh how long it would take to review which is why we really encouraged simplicity in the expansion opportunities and i believe it was council member wallach who encouraged us to operate within that window of three to five days i can tell you that our average response time for parklets or expansions is two days we have not had any that i'm aware of with a full com with a completed expansion application that went longer

[34:00] than that it is six days for alcohol licensure modification and that's with a lot of assistance from the state as well and michonne's awesome team that's processing against those additional requirements to date staff has expended over 1200 hours of staff time on this project which is not included in the estimated cost of seventy four thousand dollars seventy five thousand dollars that is further defined in your memo next slide so i'm just giving you some happiness shots uh this is sort of uh pictures from around town of what some of the parklets look like we want to thank all of the restaurants and retailers who have been along this journey with us as well as our many partners in the boulder response and recovery alliance that are making this possible through education through outreach and coordination

[35:00] i also want to thank all of my colleagues in the other departments involved in this um that it really has taken many many departments um and lots of partner support to do it i'm also highlighting on here uh some of the outstanding work that's still going on from everything from what the convention and visitors bureau is doing to highlight dining safely and to promote responsible visitation in boulder so that people know what to expect and to tell people what's open in downtown boulder love the local has a specific dining website as well and the hill boulder is also promoting this for their businesses as well on the event street and in the university hill area so you see there some things around town some things on private property in uh parking lots some things on curbsides and in the right of way next slide so what have we learned um and i'm just going to fly through

[36:01] these and welcome your questions at the end of the presentation um obviously we have had to balance a lot of regulatory requirements with appreciating what we wanted to be that simple applicant experience um a key to this has been keeping the parklets simple um if and as we went down a road for example of more complicated structures in the right of way we do anticipate that that would be a complication we know that seasonal street closure is desired by many members of the community for many reasons and we have learned and and reiterated in the memo to you um that we have to consider safety the floodplain access points balance interest because not everyone has always agreed in what they wanted on their block face city incurred expense and revenue abatement and frankly the creation of a great place to visit which has to be at this time safe

[37:03] always safe community engagement and partner organizations have contributed to this i mentioned before the convention of visitors bureau downtown boulder and the hill the chamber the latino chamber sbbc everyone has been involved in this to help people understand how to do it how to get the information to convert applications to spanish and to get the information out to the visiting public there are some issues and discoveries that we will want to continue to look at for the rest of this program one is what role might arts and culture further play and what have we learned about how they played in the implementation of this and thank you to matt schezansky and david farnham and their team for their efforts in this area food trucks were invited to participate but did not have to process these applications so we don't have great information and how they've participated

[38:02] along the road here but it's certainly something we can do outreach to find out we want to understand the fiscal impacts but they aren't discoverable yet so how many businesses um what did that do for them you know were they able to get more people what has the visitation rate been like has that varied if you were not in a densely populated area of restaurants and then what happens when we look at other closure purposes when we're no longer in a covet environment whether that be construction special events walks runs and races and other things that make the community so great next slide so um with your permission um and your support uh the close of the pro the application window is approaching on july 17th uh right now we're scheduled to return pearl street's bus route um and remove the temporary closure infrastructure in

[39:00] october and we would do and we would continue to work on the experience evaluation and data capture as well as our ongoing work with the alliance collaborative efforts and with that i'll end and take any questions you have thank you very good thank you vet very much um council members if you have questions now's a good time i've got bob and then mark thanks for that presentation and i think um you know one of the lessons that i think we all learn as a community is is how quickly we can move when we really need to right um we were as you as you all remember we were in a pretty desperate situation in mid to late may where businesses were literally going under and we needed to figure out how to take advantage of the governor's opening reopening of the restaurants uh in retail stores so that they could get back to business get their employees back to work um generate sales generate sales tax

[40:00] but also do that in a safe way and i really appreciate the the work of so many staff members in planning and economic vitality and licensing and so many other departments police and fire who had to come together um and really in a cross-disciplinary and collaborative way figure out how to get this done and literally in a matter of days and then turn these applications in you know 48 hours that's fantastic and so i think not only should we complement staff um for all the fantastic and hard work that they did in the late spring and continuing to today and making this successful but i think it's also worth an opportunity for us maybe in the fall to do a deep dive a debrief to evaluate what other regulatory barriers that do we put up as a city to all sorts of endeavors in our community um and figure out use this as an example to cut through some of the red tape um it's okay to make mistakes it's okay to um not let the perfect be

[41:00] the enemy of the good and i think i'd like us as city staff and city council as the uh hopefully the coronavirus experience fades and we get a vaccine and we get life back to normal i hope we can use this particular experience as a case study for how the city can act nimbly and quickly and cut through uh regulatory hurdles and eliminate regulatory barriers to business and community building so i um i compliment staff but i also want to use this as an opportunity for us to learn on how we can make the city a better partner to our community going forward thanks thank you so then i have mark and mary and rachel mark oh mark dropped off mark do you have a comment yes i do um first i want to second bob's comments uh to you with that and your staff i think the job that you did under difficult circumstances and in short

[42:00] order absolutely first rate it's really quite astonishing it is very easy for us to um say at the council level that we'd like you to move quickly and and do the impossible um but it was up to you to do it and i think you have met every reasonable expectation that we could have had in this program i think it is just fabulous um i do have a couple of short questions um one are we tracking um data with respect to uh restaurant closures either temporarily or permanently um so that we know what we're seeing out there and by the same token do we have any data that is looking at um possible eviction proceedings against restaurants to see what the magnitude of that might look like as the courts begin to open up and my last question is um any thoughts of extending that application deadline do

[43:01] we think we're going to be leaving anybody out of the parade by cutting it off on on july 17 thanks for your questions and for your feedback i'll pass it along to everybody who's been working on this in terms of i will in terms of the tracking on closures um we do not typically track this kind of thing i will tell you that as part of our economic vitality function obviously we're on high alert um and so one of the things that i've been working on with cheryl patel's team and particularly joel wagner is looking for things that are surrendered licensees or things like that which will be an indicator of whether or not um and you know our partners are so so great at knowing what's happening on the ground um we are not hearing that at this time one of the things we'll also be looking at is sales tax revenue generation right um and so i would imagine that we'll have that toward the end but in a

[44:02] more immediate space it's really happening by word of mouth people getting in contact with myself and staff and partners to chat through what they are experiencing and it really is across the gamut i was on the phone with one restaurant tour last night so um who's not closing but is interested in exploring some other things um and our partners are doing a great job in that in terms of eviction proceedings i just want to remind council of the work that the chamber did early on with the commercial real estate industry um who from what we're told anyway have been holding to that uh thought nobody wants vacancies and we've all been trying to work with tenants including the city um these are difficult times though as as those commercial property owners and the city itself has expenses to cover so i can tell you that it's being watched um i'm not hearing outcries yet but i

[45:00] also know that businesses are making hard decisions well before those decisions um and so it's really a decision not necessarily about eviction and more about whether or not they can afford to continue as the pandemic kind of you know the recovery time i won't even call this a recovery time for restaurant and real retailers right now i will call it um an exploration of what they're going to do to see if they can make it and so particularly the sbdc has been working and the chamber has been working on helping people re-navigate and re-situate their business models what kind of staff can you afford what kind of space can you be in and we'll be looking at that and and have been looking at that not only locally but with our county colleagues and um i don't know if anybody's listening from denver but i have really appreciated the conversations that i've been able to have with my peers in other cities as

[46:00] well because it really is going to be a phenomenon that affects the entire state your last question was about the deadline and i don't really think of it as a deadline we've been thinking about it more like what would it take for us to execute and um and so we don't think we're leaving anybody out um there has not been a rush we did have some recent applications and we think that you know as a mixture of retailers and some people who are just starting to reopen um but you know i think that you know one of the things that we wanted to continue to do is listen to the community um and so we haven't heard a request for that yet um but we're always learning and certainly would act accordingly if we saw that thank you and terrific job thanks thank you great and then we have mary and rachel mary oh thank you yvette and i want to echo

[47:02] um bob's and mark's praises of your and um your staffs and all as well as all of their staff's work totally phenomenal so thank you um my question is has to do with if anyone who applied and received the go-ahead to open did not for whatever reason end up going through with it we're not aware of that um we are aware of some people who opened closed and opened again um and or are completely you know kind of continuously refining what their needs are uh and so we've tried to be thoughtful around that i am not aware of people um with few exceptions that decided that completed an application were awarded an applicant you know that

[48:01] were approved for their permit and then decided not to move forward and by the way the commercial the private property owners have been ex they love the sample letter and there have been no problems with people getting approval from their private property owners that i'm aware of so i mean everything that we could do to move out of the way has been done we are not aware of people deciding that they did not want to go through with that application thank you sure great and then rachel and juni rachel okay hi bet thanks um this has been a great program i've enjoyed uh several uh outdoor parklets and street closure spots so i think you guys did a phenomenal job um so my i've got one data question when you know we we got some pushback i think for closing on um east pearl because retail was concerned

[49:02] about it so i'm wondering if we're collecting data on um i guess revenue or sales tax collected in on blocks where the street was completely closed versus parklets and also are we collecting data on um the retail that we're on that are on those blocks like did it help or hurt those retailers so great questions and we do anticipate that we'll be able to get information on that as the sales tax is reported and collected um we do not have that information today um and as you know to accommodate the openings and expansions on the east side we did not close but we rerouted the butt bus and that has bode well with the restaurant tours on that side and the retailers alike so we're hearing only anecdotal feedback at this point but i can certainly seek to

[50:01] get you some of that information in a final summary report you know after the program closes awesome thanks um and i understood that you don't have the data yet so i should have specified that and then um also i know that we must have talked about this in april or may but why did we choose um september 30th 30th or october 1st as the time when we would revert because if we're still gonna have cobia it's still gonna be pretty warm ish right well one of the things is the crystal ball right so just as our county friends have described and we've been benchmarking across cities and there's a benchmark report attached to your memo that kind of shows you how long most of the programs were most of our competitors were going with a fixed 120 days and we didn't know what else would happen we were also thinking about some of the safety issues with a turn of the weather and frankly a return of any on-street

[51:01] revenue we wanted to think about that and the return of the student population and hopefully workforce because we weren't sure whether people were going to be coming back to their offices all of these things are economic indicators that we want to keep our eye on and we're not sure yet whether or not businesses have an interest of going further than that as weather turns and it gets windy or rainy i know i was out there one day when it started to come down and and we weren't sure what was happening with all the umbrellas and napkins and things like that but we just want to remain flexible and listening at this time and we certainly would do that but could get pushed out to say november 1st if there were interest and indicators that that would help i would like to work with our partners and discover whether or not there's interest i also don't want to negatively impact um what's going on with some of the private

[52:01] properties um and so i just wanted to you know be thoughtful about that as well okay thanks hey junie hi yvette um i just have a quick question and i just wanted to echo everything that was said i had the opportunity to go actually on pearl street a couple of weekends ago and i had dinner outside and i have to say it was fabulous and i loved it the experience made me feel as if i had traveled to europe although i was right here in boulder so that was greatly appreciated i think my question is similar to the question asked by mark because you mentioned that outside of pearl in the hill other restaurants are not taking um advantage of the opportunity we just haven't seen as

[53:00] many in a concentrated area sorry we just haven't seen as many in a concentrated area so you don't have them as densely populated but they're out there okay okay perfect that was my question because i was wondering as well you know why and also do do we regulate indoor crowding and boulder so it's especially right now right so it's really we're following the county's guidance and i think you just heard about that and at this point there are interior service um limitations um and as long as that stays in place they can only have a certain a certain amount of seating inside um for service we've been following along with the county and really trying to follow that health related lead i do know that there are several restaurants that are preparing

[54:01] um for greater capacity inside and being hopeful in that vein but we we just are waiting for county and state direction there thank you okay well i see no more hands up if that's everything we've got on this subject thank you very much of that i won't repeat everything that all the other council members have said but this is a very impressive program that you've headed up so thank you very much thank you thanks everybody and thank you sarah for flipping slides appreciate you bye okay so debbie and jane i think we're on the open comment but um hopefully third time's a charm is that right yes we are very good so for open comment we'll have two minutes first speaker and i have the first three speakers as abigail bradshaw carlos alvarez

[55:03] and chelsea castillano so we'll start with abigail i will need just one moment mayor to cue up the time clock if you could give me one second on the other computer you bet yes tonight sarah is doing double duty for us um both running the presentation computer as well as hosting the zoom meeting for us two minutes a piece yep and then for the public hearings it will be three minutes a piece but there's enough for open comment it's two minutes [Music] okay i won't actually start the clock until we have the person ready to speak so if you wanted to start with the list of names that would be wonderful great i've done the first three and abigail is our first speaker abigail

[56:01] bradshaw okay abigail you should be able to unmute yourself and speak yep can you we can okay great hi console um my name is abby and i'm a boulder resident i'm here to voice my support for defunding and abolishing the boulder police department as has been discussed many times the 2019 budget for the boulder police department was over 37 million dollars the approved 2020 budget adds over two million dollars um to that i would specifically like to draw your attention to the 360 thousand dollar bomb truck listed in the budget which will also have 24 000 dollars per year of upkeep costs it's fascinating to me that the boulder police department needs to purchase a new armored bomb truck when the department cannot even tell us how often the old one was used could maris harold give any justification for needing the equipment additionally in future plans the police department hopes it will build an addition to their police station costing 25 to 30 million dollars by new bomb robots that will cost up to 635 000 and buy two new bomb suits at 35 000 each in a city with rampant inequality and

[57:01] segregated housing it's astonishing that city council majority believes the solution to our problems is increasing funding to a militarized police force that includes violent officers like waylon lolata as lupita montoya said in last night's planning meeting everyone in boulder is looking out for themselves and their houses we have no community i've witnessed and experienced the violence and military style tactics used by police forces against their communities across the u.s and in colorado the covert racism in boulder lives in the form of denying housing opportunities to those who can't meet the ever-rising income levels and funding the militarized police who target non-white residents and residents experiencing homelessness boulder is a community which is only welcome to a select few and changing that must be a priority council i urge you to not take the route of some aurora city council members and filtering emails and silencing conversations about the police department wealthy homeowners may be able to donate more money to campaigns and influence more opinions but they are not the only residents and community members of boulder the terms of mayor weaver and council members nagel sweat like wallach and young are up in 2021 we

[58:01] demand changes to reduce inequality and discrimination otherwise we'll gladly work to replace you with more progressive and inclusive council members defund and abolish the police thank you abigail carlos alvarez chelsea castillano and claudia team carlos is next uh thank you council carlos you just muted yourself someone needed you sorry um my name is carlos i come with two hats i'm a boulder resident and the owner of boulder transport a company that i started here from nothing and is that is now the primary private transportation provider here in the city and as the uh i do communication strategy for protect democracy which is a national group you may have seen the feature in time magazine in this week's time about our work to combat uh rising authoritarianism in the united states um i i will split my comments into two the first deals

[59:01] with uh some of the actions by council with relation to petitions and signature gathering uh early in the process we identified a problem with the signature gathering processes and the demands of council and of the state frankly that that be done in person we've seen uh problems added to that recently with uh petitioners receiving uh incorrect information from the city and having to sort of hope that council puts their petitions on the ballot uh even though they did exactly what they were told to do my comment uh as somebody who works on issues of democracy all the time is that we are we don't want to become the problem we're trying to address in my work obviously i'm constantly dealing with trump and bar and states like oklahoma that have systemic issues and i just want to warn the council about having colorado and boulder specifically become

[60:00] an enemy of the efforts to protect our democracy by not by by creating such walls to petitioners that they can't get their petitions on the ballot i understand council doesn't agree with the petitions but you can't use coronavirus as a pocket veto for issues you disagree with that would be wrong and then secondly as a minority business owner in this town i would also ask why boulder doesn't have a minority certification process for minority for contracting in in city and and county contracts it's amazing to me that denver uh values minority businesses but boulder ignores that completely thank you thank you carlos chelsea castellano claudia team and darren o'connor chelsea great can you hear me yes okay my name is chelsea castellano an organizer with bedrooms are for people a ballot initiative that would make it legal for one person to live in each

[61:00] bedroom of a home i want to share with you why our team of more than 50 volunteers has been able to overcome every extreme obstacle thrown our way it's not because we are well funded we're not or because we're professional campaigners we're not it is because our ballot measure addresses an urgent issue that the community is demanding we fix don't take it from me take it from the 5 000 plus boulder voters who have already signed our petition and from the emergency family assistance association effa better boulder bolder progressives united campus workers colorado the boulder county democratic party all have decided to formally support our initiative being on the ballot because they know our community will be better once this archaic and discriminatory law is overturned that's why we have been risking our lives to bring about this change to fight for the single mother we met who wants to rent out her spare bedrooms to help pay her mortgage for the young couple we met with a newborn who are going to live in an over-occupied home

[62:01] because that is how they can afford to live here we hope you join us to give equal housing opportunities for all boulderights we hope you join us in fighting for those who have chosen to serve as a nurse or teacher or artist or non-profit worker or grad student working to combat climate change we hope you join us in fighting for the freedom to choose who we can live with in our own homes and we hope you join us in unraveling these discriminatory housing laws that have worsened the inequities boulder faces today we are on the right side of history beside fighting for liberty and justice for all as our elected representatives we hope you join us but at the very least we hope you respect our community's right to direct democracy and refer our measure to the 2020 ballot thank you chelsea i have a question i just have a clarification if i may um so chelsea thank you for that you mentioned that you spoke to a single mother um that would like to rent out her rooms

[63:02] if you could communicate with her and let her know that she can have up to two borders so she could rent to um if she's got two extra bedrooms she can rent to two borders so she should not be limited in that right now she yes and she knows that and she is trying to also put in an adu so that she can have an adu in her basement and um two borders in her main house so that would make her occupied um okay well thank you i just yeah i didn't get that from your comment but um thank you [Music] great next up claudia team darren o'connor and david proud iii claudia hi good evening members of council my name is claudia hansen thiem i am speaking tonight on behalf of boulder progressives a grassroots organization committed to protecting human rights and advancing social and environmental justice at the local level

[64:00] we wanted to share with you and the community our decision to support the bedrooms are for people initiative to reform housing occupancy limits in boulder we support this measure for so many reasons first because it removes family and relationship status from occupancy regulations and in doing so it opens up more housing options to people who are not part of traditional heteronormative families second because it recognizes that sharing homes is a common affordability strategy for young adults and working class people and we want these members of our community to have access to housing in all boulder neighborhoods third because it legalizes many informal home sharing arrangements already occurring in our community it increases housing security for many of our vulnerable neighbors and finally because it makes more efficient use of boulder's existing housing stock which both reduces our environmental impacts and stretches our increasingly precious affordable housing dollars all of these things support boulder progressives goals of achieving secure and affordable housing for all members of our community and of creating more

[65:01] integrated and environmentally sustainable neighborhoods in boulder we appreciate the efforts of dozens of volunteers to gather signatures for bedrooms are for people and we share their conviction that this reform belongs in the city charter housing rights should not be subject to easy withdrawal or reversal and while we're talking housing tonight we'd also like to congratulate the organizers of the no evictions without representation campaign which was certified eligible for the november ballot yesterday we're excited about both measures and we're looking forward to a robust and long overdue campaign for housing justice this fall thank you thank you claudia next we have darren o'connor david proud the third and eric budd darren hi this is darren o'connor i'm a long time attorney i'm an attorney a long time resident of boulder i speak tonight asking each of you to give serious consideration to the joint recommendations of the human relations

[66:00] commission and housing advisory board regarding homeless policies in boulder at their joint meeting members of these two bodies rightfully challenged the veracity of the data and conclusions about homelessness that city staff provided to them one member went so far as to say staff's documents respectfully should be thrown in the trash the hrc and hab recommendations call for among other things more bathrooms an increase in shelter beds safe parking sanctioned camps and inclusion of people with lived experience of homelessness in oversight of homeless policy moving forward our entire community deserves the benefits of city council adopting these recommendations after community members challenged the city for lack of restrooms and hand washing stations during the covet pandemic city staff shared that many bathrooms are publicly available an important one near the former shelter off 30th street the bathrooms at mapleton ball fields we were told would open in april

[67:01] today i saw for myself that that bathroom is closed and despite scorching temperatures the drinking fountain is turned off lack of accessible bathrooms clean water and hand washing stations continues to be an issue just as the pandemic and need for publicly available sanitation does in 2016 before the new homelessness strategy for boulder was implemented 350 shelter beds were available in boulder today that number is 110 a decrease of 69 percent the strategy is apparently taken away and they will leave concurrently homelessness has increased for the annual point in time count clearly the strategy is not working i urge city council to adopt the recommendations of hrc and hab which recognize the need to treat our unhoused neighbors with dignity thank you thank you darren next up we have david proud the third eric budd and evan rabbits so according to our moderator we don't see

[68:01] david here david here if not um we'll move on to eric budd and if david prowl joins the meeting we will let him slot in at the end so eric budd you're up thank you council my name is eric budd with bedrooms r for people and we are working to reform boulder's discriminatory occupancy limits you can join over five thousand boulder residents by signing our petition please visit bedrooms.com the united campus workers of colorado local 799 has endorsed bedrooms are for people as a as a campaign to improve housing options for the university's diverse workforce that includes part-time and full-time university staff faculty graduate and undergraduate laborers the mission of the united campus workers of colorado is to champion and defend the interests and well-being of all university labor as well as to build and

[69:02] sustain social and economic justice in our workplaces and in our communities the university of colorado is a central part of boulder's community and vibrance each year that passes new faculty and graduate students have a more difficult time living in boulder and planting roots in boulder in addition to the lack of housing options boulder's policy of housing discrimination hurts family formation without the ability to establish stable affordable community housing few people have options to start to even start a family in boulder boulder's laws have clear-cut examples of housing discrimination the bedrooms are for people measure helps prevent that discrimination and that's why we need the change in the city's charter both the city council and our team know that we must do more than only relax occupancy rules to tackle boulder's numerous housing challenges please help us by passing bedrooms are for people this november as we continue

[70:01] to make boulder a more welcoming and open to all people thank you thank you eric next we have evan ravitz hermine nagoymeier and jackie richardson evan europe good evening first i urge city council to follow the 10 recommendations of the human relations commission and the housing advisory board for the homeless including establishing campgrounds parking lots and tiny home villages please do it before the coming flood of evictions and homelessness second city council should be speaking up for our scientific community by protesting cu firing dr detlev helmig for exposing the poisoning of the front range by oil and gas operations the city did help former council member and scientist lisa marzell when she lied

[71:01] at a council meeting in 2011 to justify the city's supporting construction of the so-called plutonium parkway by removing that city council video from the city website every citizen should see it i've put it online at tinyurl.com boulder lie that's tinyurl.com boulder lie the city took action to protect the lying of one of your own take action to protect the truth of dr hellman last and least regarding performance reviews of the city attorney and city manager as i've been saying for six months they should be fired for lying to council and cheating the citizens i've put video audio and documentary proof at tinyurl.com slash petition story that's tinyurl.com

[72:02] petition story please see slides 13 and fourteen first thank you thank you evan next we have arameen nomir jackie richardson and jamie morgan hear me thank you so much for the council for allowing me to speak this is ermeen nomir and thank you for that i want to discuss really elevating housing solutions for those of us in boulder county in the greatest needs we had some recommendations recently come out from the housing relations commission and housing advisory board and they included the following high-level recommendations i won't go into the specifics but at first priority the need to create an oversight committee secondly restoring path to home funding and really support for the bridge house i like the and solution provide essential

[73:00] services including more bathrooms and food services commit to current data and additional data points every 30 days reopen faith-based community shelters and services for the first six months in support of coordinated entry increase the number of availability of beds throughout the city to accommodate the need including the expansion of availability for severe weather sheltering decriminalize homelessness and move the homeless outreach team and associated resources people often say how do we pay for this my response of late has been very simple defund the police department and really any public safety realms out there that have been over resourced i grew up in boulder played ball and had some phenomenal coaches and they really hammered home a couple of critical notions for us in that space it was all

[74:01] about integrity that lesson that we are all only as strong as our weakest link and not to compound mistakes i'm going to assume all of you guys here on on council have the integrity part right and when we look at um compounding our weakness not compounding our weakest excuse me not compounding our mistakes i just hope that we've made some in the past we learn from them and can move forward we need to take care of those of us that are the weakest and i hope we can ramp that up thank you thank you i mean we have jackie richardson jamie morgan and julie zanheiser jackie hello can you hear me okay good um so i think airmean actually took a lot of my talking points already um but i'm here to ask you to take funding away from bolder pd and put it towards homeless services by decriminalizing homelessness in boulder this issue is

[75:00] especially urgent right now due to the merciless logic of our country's response to the covet crisis much of the economy is still shut down which means many people are still scrambling to make rent or will be soon housing assistance is starting to run low and we're facing an oncoming tsunami of evictions potentially thousands of boulderites will become homeless and the existing shelters do not have anywhere near enough capacity especially with social distancing requirements in place and with the 30th street shelter currently shut down many many more people will be sleeping on the streets by later this year unfortunately taking steps to survive this traumatizing upheaval is still criminalized since boulder's camping ban is still in place boulder's 2020 budget gives 38.6 million dollars to the police and only a little over one million dollars for homeless services um which is a frankly embarrassing ratio we need to change these numbers by defunding the police and moving that money to homeless services

[76:02] although boulder does have a housing first program in place it could be much much bigger and better funded um and i'd like to bring up the example of finland which decided a little over a decade ago to um take the stance that nobody should be sleeping on the streets because housing is a human right and they put this into practice by building or buying apartments and making them available to the unhoused without preconditions as a result they're now saving sixteen thousand dollars per year per previously homeless person showing that it's far more cost effective to try to prevent or end homelessness rather than to manage it i urge city council to cut the bloated bpd budget and use that money in a way that will actually do some good for the community thank thank you jackie next jamie morgan julie zomheiser and kurt nordbach jamie hi can you hear me yes hi this is jamie from safe today we

[77:02] released a video exposing boulder pd officer waylon lolitai's personal instagram account which he uses to share videos of police brutality with glowing praise casual homophobia and covid19 denial to catch you up to speed lolita was put under investigation while working for denver pd for attacking an inmate who said something he didn't like he resigned from denver pd before the investigation could finish and because we only deal with the best here he was hired by boulder pd mr lola tai has since made the news several more times for attacking kelly clark a small middle-aged woman who was watching him detain an unhoused man on the pearl street mall sammy lawrence the disabled black man who was filming lolita at the required eight foot distance when he was engaging with some unhoused residents and michelle rodriguez who was sitting on a wall and requested someone higher up because she felt she was being unfairly treated the charges against ms rodriguez and miss clark were unsurprisingly dropped while sammy's case is still ongoing mr

[78:01] lola tai was one of the officers who showed up to intimidate zade atkinson for picking up trash while black in one post on lolita's account he shares footage that starts with an unarmed man being held in a chokehold by an officer another officer climbs on top of him and starts punching the man in the face while he lies there unable to move eventually another officer comes and puts his knee on the man's neck very similar to how george floyd was murdered by minneapolis pd lola tai writes it made me happy that she being the officer was dropping bombs on his stupid face there's a lot more of this on his account which you can see at tactical toa toa on instagram or in our video titled boulder pd officer lola ty's disturbing instagram account revealed on youtube lol tai should have never been hired and he should have been fired after each time one of his attacks was made known here is your opportunity to begin to approach justice for his victims by firing lolitai keeping his position

[79:01] vacant and defunding bpd next we have julie zonheiser kurt norbeck and michael holtz julie europe i'm you hi can you hear me yes okay great um uh i guess you can start the timer if you like um mayor weaver mayor pro tem yates and council members my name is julie zonizer i live in south boulder as you strive to position boulder for the best energy future your decision whether or not to negotiate a long-term agreement with excel at this time may leave a legacy that could endure long after you have left council we are in the midst of multiple crises i urge you to hit the pause button and hold off on a decision in order to make an informed decision i have five points number one even in the face of severe city budget shortfalls it is more important to not

[80:00] rush into an agreement than to hastily negotiate one a hurried agreement always favors the side with more resources please keep in mind city goals excel's goals and business model and excel's formidable legal and financial resources for preparing an agreement to maximally benefit and protect the company number two council needs more information in order to make a decision whether or not to negotiate council members need to learn a previous council's experiences with excel many regulatory and legal constraints and potential costs and lost opportunities number three council who were unable to attend listening sessions need to hear the complex and varied input pro and con from 44 citizens please review city listening sessions summaries which can capture much of what was said for example you will learn from excel slides that its proposed renewable technologies include costly unproven at scale natural gas carbon capture and storage and expensive advanced nuclear generation number four there's no reason

[81:01] to make a hasty decision this summer per colorado revised statute 40-3-16-106 we will continue to receive the same services as the rest of excel's customers without an agreement just as we do now excel will always be willing to make a deal with boulder this is a highly volatile issue voter engagement and education takes more than a couple of months thank you for your attention for your hard work on our behalf thank you julie next up kurt nordbeck michael holtz and patrick murphy kurt hurt we can't hear you if you're speaking now can you yes okay i'm sorry i'm kurt nordak i'm a resident of boulder we all know that efficient use of resources is key to environmental sustainability that means building our

[82:02] city so most trips don't require a car it means minimizing thirsty private lawns that benefit only a few it means making it legal and economically viable to create more smaller homes rather than fewer larger ones and it means using space effectively in the large houses we have that's why i support bedrooms are for people using our housing more efficiently means better use of the embodied energy in the structures and less energy that needs to go into new buildings it means more efficient use of operational energy as residents share heat and lighting and it allows people to live closer to their work or school reducing the transportation emissions that by sector are the country's largest contribution to climate change boulder has a reputation for environmental sustainability the reputation is well deserved in many ways we're a leader in waste reduction have ambitious climate goals and carry on a

[83:01] robust educational program around sustainability but our land use policies are in large degree and environmental failure and their harms fall disproportionately on the poor the underprivileged and people of color these are the people forced to endure long polluted commutes because there's no place in boulder for them to live as the climate changes most of us in boulder can crank our air conditioners and run the sprinklers a little longer while others will feel the effects of flood drought fires and rising seas much more acutely so bedrooms are for people is about environmental sustainability and about environmental justice please join me in supporting this common sense initiative people need it and the earth needs it thank you thank you kurt next michael holtz patrick murphy and paul coleman michael my name is michael holtz and i've lived

[84:01] in boulder since 1978 i'm an architect and i've worked in the field of energy and environmental research and design since 1972 including senior management research positions at the solar energy research institute architectural energy corporation and light louvre llc which i found in currently managed some of you may have read my recent open forum piece in the daily camera the point i made in this opinion piece and would like to make tonight is that many consequential things in life take time to overcome many entrenched positions especially when for-profit corporations are involved whose primary mission is to maximize profits for this for their stakeholders like others in boulders i urge you to hit the pause button and not proceed with deciding whether or not to negotiate a long-term franchise agreement with excellent energy it seems to be understood as a binary decision excel energy or municipalization this is not the case but this is this

[85:00] will save this for later a discussion here are a few reasons why a decision on long-term finance agreement should not be put on hold any long-term franchise agreement will constrain the city's ability to achieve its climate action goals the city needs to gain full and complete control over its electric service have more aggressive transition to sustainable and renewable energy sources and lower cost for all city customers second any long-term agreement will hamstring the city from accepting a better deal as competition is coming into colorado over the next few years city residents and businesses get the same services without franchise agreement as we would with the franchise agreement so nothing is gained so what's the big rush we are in the midst of a multiple crises and it's not it's not the time to be making any such consequent decisions that will impact the citizens of boulder for decades to come the community needs time to engage in this matter and again i urge you to hold off this decision well regarding the excel

[86:03] franchise negotiations thank you michael next up patrick murphy paul coleman and professor kkwa patrick my name is patrick murphy i live in boulder i hope negotiations with excel are going well and boulder has added a level of humility to compensate for the incredibly bad history of the muni effort that is more of a propaganda effort than a critical evaluation representing boulder citizens about half of the boulder community is vehemently opposed to the muni waste of 10 years and loss of over 33 million dollars muni supporters need to learn what the value of a highly regulated monopoly is versus an unregulated boulder monopoly here's a real example of what the boulder you water utility monopoly has done to boulder versus what the regulated excel monopoly has done to my

[87:01] monthly bills i compared my july 2014 and 2019 water and electric bills i've had a solar lease since 2011 and include my monthly lease payments of 37 my water bill in 2014 for five thousand gallons was thirty five dollars but in 2019 for three thousand gallons or forty percent less water was sixty three dollars my 2014 electric bill was 70. and in 2019 was 52. my boulder unregulated water utility monopoly bill went up over 80 percent and my excel regulated electric monopoly bill went down 25 percent and this doesn't include boulder's 2020 rate increases excel has increased renewables shut down coal plants and reduced carbon over 10 times boulders electric usage while boulder has been wasting time and

[88:00] money for 10 years muni supporters look in the muni mirror and see the failures and snap out of the denial we need to end the muni and let real carbon reduction begin now not five years from now we need to collaborate not litigate thank you thank you patrick next we have paul coleman aka davier and riley mancuso paul uh good evening mayor weaver and council members and staff uh this disembodied voice belongs to paul coleman and it's come to you from shanahan ridge on the southern edge of boulder thank you for your kind and these times courageous service to our community in addition to covet 19 i'm very concerned about global warming or climate change emergency we must consider social justice while we switch to clean power to reduce fossil fuel usage

[89:01] i believe the local control of our electricity is better for the climate and better for social justice in our community than having a regulated monopoly corporation control our electricity one example is that excel sells our wind source program at a premium we all know today that wind power is cheaper than fossil fuel power and yet excel charges more for it another example is residential time of use rates that excel is pushing through the puc right now time of use rates charge more for electricity when demand is high on summer afternoons when a lot of us run our ac the problem is that excel is structured in new rates so that the owners of large homes they use a lot of electricity will see their bills go down and ratepayers who use relatively small quantities of electricity like people in apartments and small condos will see their bills rise this is the very definition of

[90:01] regressive the rich will pay less and the poor will pay more so council please be stubborn about making a deal with excel that would increase the bills of boulder residents if the city should happen to control its own power supply we will not need to raise rates to clean local power and because the city would control a revenue stream we could develop programs that would benefit small users rather than punish them local control of our electricity pays for itself however if we make a deal with excel they will control the revenue stream and we boulder ratepayers will wind up paying for any special products and services from excel with increased bills thank you thank you paul next we have k.k duvivier uh ryan mancuso and roy arondo uh okay thank you for this opportunity to speak to you um i'm a professor a tenured professor at the university of denver and i

[91:01] specialize in energy policy and i'm now a resident of boulder although i only became a resident a couple years ago i and that means i don't have some of the history that other people do on the muni issue and maybe some of the traumatic stress i am aware of the legal maneuvers that xl has used to waste boulder's time and money and not move our climate goals forward but outside of that history i just want to say as someone who studies in this area i'm alarmed to hear that boulder is even considering a 20-year franchise with excel and i also know there's some discussion about including a five-year opt-out but that doesn't assuage my concerns and let me say here's why one is that the human race has seen more social and technological change in the past two decades than in all the previous centuries combined and these things are changing so fast that we barely have time to steady ourselves after one technological wave before another washes up on our deck so now we don't have adoption curves we have

[92:01] adoption rockets so the way we have to to overcome this is through agility and boulder boulder will be compromising its agility to move to other things if it gets tied decks out one of the main areas that things are changing is in solar and there's no other power technology that's matched solar space for change and finally many of you may have heard that congress just came out with a solving climate crisis report just last month and one of the recommendations in that report would be a clean energy standard to achieve net zero emissions by 2040 which is way ahead of excel's gold so i just hope that boulder will keep its options open and not get tied down to what's happened in the past because we can't go with the old systems anymore thank you climate is too thank you important um riley mancuso roy orongo and ryan selden riley

[93:00] hi um my name is riley mancuso i am a cu boulder student and i serve on the boulder police department's community dialogue and engagement panel um and um i would like to talk about um some of the uh disparities in enforcement uh that um by police in boulder um so looking at the data for um the month of april which is the last month for which uh data is available for police call logs roughly 30 percent of calls were for trespassing and vandalism which are minor broken windows offenses that both eight to abolition uh and the more moderate reformist campaign zero uh uh campaign uh call for the decriminalization of um so we should really think about decriminalizing a lot of these arbitrary enforcements to reduce uh

[94:00] the need for police and the taxpayer expense and the opportunity for discrimination and speaking of discrimination i would like to talk about how within the city of boulder um people experiencing homelessness are hundreds of times more likely to be arrested for minor non-violent broken windows offenses including trespassing public urination smoking and camping the smoking ban in 2018 was used to target 223 people who were housed and 685 unhoused people had uh faced site uh faced court dates for violating the smoking ban um this is given um boulder police department's own estimate in 2018 that the homeless population was a little under 2 000 people um so we can see that the disparity in enforcement is in is incredible um

[95:00] and we need to defund the police and stop them from hassling people for not having a place to sleep thank you riley last two speakers tonight roy arango and ryan selden roy hey everyone my name is ruingo i'm a resident here in boulder as most of y'all probably know already and tonight i am not here to tell you and talk to you about the incredible success of the no eviction without representation or newer initiative and getting on the ballot in the midst of a goddamn pandemic thanks to our brave volunteers i'm in fact here to talk to you about something else i'm here to talk to you about a petition it's got a long title so i'm going to read it out it is called the quote help us create a safer bolder colon tell our city leaders they must take action now petition it has 1149 signers i imagine

[96:02] um most of you on the council have seen this already make no mistake this petition is nothing more than the hysterical whalings of the most privileged privileged and comfortable boulder rights in our city their main demand for you the council is to fully enforce the urban camping ban aka in the middle of a pandemic have the police rough up throw out and destroy the belongings of our homeless neighbors this is reprehensible in the national moment in which we're acknowledging the horrendous violence that police perpetrate against the most vulnerable members of our society this group of comfortable wealthy boulderites wants more police violence against poor and homeless people it's awful there's a whole list of allegations about in this petition about just what a war zone boulder has become most notable among them that organized crime has taken hold in our city

[97:01] as if tony soprano is prancing around on pearl street with a switchblade threatening people counsel this is ridiculous i urge you to treat this petition with exactly the amount of uh severity and uh legitimacy that it deserves which is to say none thank you andy found the police too you're right um last ryan seldon ryan hello hello can you hear me yes thanks um hi my name is ryan um i'm a older resident and i'd like to speak in support of the bedroom for people ballot measure uh when i moved to boulder with my girlfriend the two of us rented the fourth bedroom and a four bedroom house where each other room had one person this entirely reasonable configuration we're unknowingly in violation of polar occupancy ordinances without knowing it we're at risk of eviction for this violation having known and followed this limit would have made it much harder for us to

[98:01] find a living situation this ordinance would have prevented me and my girlfriend from living here even though we are skilled and ready to work as well as shop dine and give back to the community here in boulder that we love so much for its climbing hiking biking restaurants creek and all the things that make boulder so wonderful we're now in compliance with the limits but we have an empty bedroom we cannot rent for this reason i ask you to support the bedroom door for people ballot measure because my girlfriend and i haven't gotten married we are legally blocked from opportunities that would be available to couples that happen to be married which on its very face makes no sense uh bedroom door for people resolves the problem that would have kept us from receiving the housing we really need i strongly urge you to put bedroom there for people on the ballot and to support in every way you can bedrooms are for people as a critical step toward making boulder accessible to a diverse group of people who deserve to share and all the amazing things that make boulder great thank you thank you ryan so one more time we will see if david browell

[99:00] is out here in the david crowl we see none in the meeting so with that we will close open comment and bring it back to council and turn to staff and see if staff has any response so start with the city manager thanks sam i tried to turn my video on but it didn't work just now i'm sorry um several of our speakers tonight had comments with regard to homeless issues and i just want to remind council and the community that next tuesday night we will be having a study session on these issues with plenty of time and information for council to ask questions so that should be a good meeting thanks great thank you tom nothing sam great so turn to council members rachel yeah i just wondered um similar to the um timing for homelessness updates jane could you speak to

[100:00] um we have had also a couple of speakers talk about defunding the police and policing concerns when we will bring that back to the public and updates maybe for timing for the oversight committee panel okay so in a way you asked me a couple of questions the issues about defunding the police relate to our budget and you will be having your major budget study session on september 8th we're currently working on the budget right now and that will be released to council and the community at the end of august and then you'll have a study session um in early september september 8th where you can ask as many questions as you want and you'll see our proposal for 2021 which will include some changes to the police budget and some changes to all of the budgets that we have we do have a financial study session

[101:01] next week as well the oversight situation is proceeding in this way later this week we hope to announce the acceptance by a new candidate or a candidate of the independent police monitor position we're still working on the final offer letter but we're very sure that he will accept and be on board by the end of july in addition the task force that has been working on these issues is getting ready to have a study session with council on september 22nd and at that time they will be going over their recommendations for some changes to the ordinance the council passed last fall to make it clearer and to fill in some gaps that were intentionally left for them to be doing their work over this year and that ordinance is scheduled for first reading in october and second

[102:01] reading in november so that work is well underway um in addition on october on august 4th i'm sorry um chief harold will be here to talk to you about the commencement of the police master plan and hopefully the council will be thinking about appointing a council process committee similar to what you have done with some of the other work that we have around master plans and also chief harold will be giving an update on the strategy that she talked to you about in june so that's the timeline right now for the many things that are happening thank you great any other council members have comments questions mark i i think this question is for kurt um and if not tell me who it should be directed to one of the speakers um

[103:01] mr o'connor noted that there had been a reduction in beds uh at our shelters of 69 percent and so that leads me to a two-part question is that an accurate figure and second how many nights have we been at capacity in the last year because i think that goes to the issue of of what expansion is required uh in order to serve the unhoused community um so i'll just give a brief answer to that we'll be able to give up a fuller answer next week so um darren is correct that there has been a reduction in beds um and um however normally we reduce severe weather shelter um every year at the end of may which we did this year the difference is that is that navigation which was 50 beds um there was a handful of individ individuals in navigation that moved to

[104:01] the boulder shelter we haven't been hitting um the capacity um i haven't looked at the data i was on vacation last week but um we'll present that next week i don't believe we've hit capacity though um since the closure of 30th street um and um his question doesn't um doesn't pick up the full question that should be asked um so while we are where are we while we are reducing beds for shelter we're significantly increasing beds for people to live in homes um so if you look at it from that perspective the number of beds has increased um significantly um but but again we'll we'll be able to explain that uh in a much more comprehensive way next

[105:02] week thank you appreciate it hey rachel and then adam um while you're there kurt i meant to um also ask about the bathroom at mapleton that's not open and uh i know we're getting into homelessness next week but wonder uh if there's an easy explanation for why that's not open if we thought it was going to be yeah i don't know the answer for that um i'll we'll have to check in with allie rhodes and get back with you on that um that's a bathroom within the parks department parks okay thanks yup great well seeing no more hands i would turn back to debbie next this evening is your consent agenda and you have items a through c great so i think that is two sets of minutes and uh a second reading about um

[106:01] an iga with bulba county so does anyone have comments or emotion remove the consent agenda second right we have a motion and a second is there any discussion i do not see anything let me check hands here real quick i don't see any hands so uh we have a motion in a second does anyone object to passing the consent agenda seeing none the consent agenda passes eight to zero debbie um next this evening we have your call up which is 34.85 stanford court is concept plan review and this matter will be presented briefly by shannon moeller i think thank you shannon has some remarks prepared this evening regarding stanford court i'd also note that we have some folks from

[107:00] ehp on the call tonight in case there's questions um for the applicant this evening so shannon you can take it away okay and then sarah are you able to put up that powerpoint well i don't have a powerpoint for this item you're with me you're at 4a yes i do okay one moment

[108:21] okay awesome um so good evening council um i was just asked to give a brief information about this concept plan um this concept plan the mount cavalry senior housing project was discussed at the 18th planning board hearing and it's a proposal to develop 60 permanently affordable senior housing units at 3485 stanford court in the residence medium 2 zoning district next slide and because this is a concept plan review there's no formal action being

[109:00] taken it's meant to be a dialogue between the city the community and the applicant next slide here you can see that the site it's 4.9 acres and located in the south folder at the terminus of stanford court west of broadway and north of table mesa the proposal is required to undergo a concept plan review because it exceeds two acres or 20 dwelling units in this zoning district and the existing site contains two church structures two parking areas and community gardens and the north portion of the site is heavily sloped and contains natural open space with social chair social trails next slide please the original church sanctuary was built in 1957 and is proposed to remain and in addition to the church constructed in 2001 is proposed to be removed and a new residential structure built in the southwest area of the site the church congregation has relocated in

[110:00] 2019 and the rainbow child care facility that currently operates on the site is proposed to remain next slide the boulder valley regional boulder valley comprehensive plan land use designation for this site is medium density residential um it was recently updated in the 2015 bbcp update and it's intended to provide a density of 6 to 14 units per acre next slide and the site is zoned residential medium 2 which permits attached dwelling units at a density of up to 12.4 units per acre next slide the proposal includes construction of a new three-story residential building in the southwestern area of the site to include 60 permanently affordable senior housing units the addition to the church constructed in 2001 would be removed and the original sanctuary building would remain the eastern parking area would remain

[111:00] with some improvements and a drive aisle and a small western parking area are also proposed in the southwest area of the site the applicant received input from the surrounding community that it's important to maintain the sweep of the existing hillside and the character of the ridge so this proposal does maintain to keep that hillside intact and the north portion of the site is proposed to remain natural open space next slide here you can see the north and south building elevations and the existing sanctuary building is rendered in white the proposal is a contemporary building with stack flats on a double loaded corridor it's cut into the grade appearing primarily as a three-story structure at the west end of the site or excuse me at the east end and a two-story structure at the east end it's oriented parallel to the southern property line and there are two short wings that extend from either end and there are several outdoor spaces

[112:00] provided including a large patio area and upper level terraces and small private outdoor ground level spaces for ground level units and there's also a covered vehicle drop off planned at this other entry next slide this slide list lists the overall city processes the proposal would be required to go through those include a site review amendment a use review might be required for the daycare if the operating characteristics of the existing daycare were to change a historic preservation review if landmarking was desired by the city or the applicant and then vacation of right-of-way technical documents preliminary and final flats and building permits next slide as part of the public process notification was sent to property owners within 600 feet of the site staff received emails from about 10 folks and five individuals spoke at the planning board meeting most of the folks were opposed to the proposal and shared concerns about

[113:00] traffic and on-street parking disturbance to the environment wildlife and light pollution and a desire to continue community access and use of the site for potential uses like community gardens or a playground and concerns about a lack of compatibility with the surrounding area staff also received a comment in support of the affordable senior housing and the daycare uses and a suggestion to incorporate a neighborhood serving use such as a restaurant or coffee shop or a rentable community room and the applicant also conducted several community outreach efforts prior to submitting this concept plan application which they detailed in their written statement and they also described those at the planning board meeting at the planning board excuse me next slide at the planning board hearing the board because the proposal's consistency with the boulder valley comprehensive plan and the compatibility with the existing character of the surrounding area

[114:01] the board found the proposal to be consistent with many bvcp policies especially those related to permanently affordable housing senior housing enhanced design and repurposing of the existing sanctuary building and the board supported the proposal's general compatibility with the surrounding character and discussed recommended changes to be made when the project moves forward to the site review application refinements were recommended to the height and the building massing to ensure public going through the site and integrating some principles or a pool car into the plan and overall the board recommended eliminating the western parking area and the drive aisle to allow for more flexibility with open space in that area and the board agreed that it would be comfortable with the parking reduction if one were to be proposed so that includes concludes staff's summary of this concept plan and i'm happy to answer any questions and the

[115:01] applicant ian swallow with vhp is here as well to answer any questions great thank you for that shannon and i see no hands there's mary um and then mark mary thank you sean for that presentation um i have several questions one is this is the sanctuary building is the one that's going to um become the coveted recovery center temporarily is that correct understanding is there is a use going on there i don't know the the details of that kurt yeah um thank you mary um again i think i forgot to introduce myself kirk fernand director of housing human services um it's actually the the facility that was built in 2001 that's um currently being used for the covid recovery center

[116:00] our intent is to use it through next spring we were looking for a facility that could um could meet that time frame and this facility is available during that time okay but it is the at that location that's correct yes okay great thank you um and then my uh another question is regarding um i know that there's existing community gardens there um what are the plans for that yeah that was discussed at the planning board meeting the um initial drawings showed a small area of community gardens and it was discussed that that could be an area that the community would like to see enlarged and to kind of keep that neighborhood access to some type of amenity like that um so that would be something that was recommended to kind of look at going forward when it goes to the site review stage so the existing gardens would not stay it would become a smaller area in the same area

[117:01] yes so in the proposal documents the new proposed residential structure would be built generally in the area where the community gardens are now so if that would go forward as shown on those documents the community gardens would need to be relocated um so that was something the board recommended to kind of look at and potentially change that proposal okay thank you and then my final question has to do with the landmarking and um there was a little caveat there at the end of the presentation where it said should that be desired and what is that should that be desired hinge on yeah so our landmarking folks would look at this proposal when it comes in for the site review and if they determine that we think that that should move forward they would make a recommendation through the site review process um that they recommend that that application be made by the applicant and if it were to go through the approval

[118:00] process that would be a condition of approval okay great thank you shannon great uh mark wallach adams sweat look at me here by nagel mark okay two questions thank you for that presentation um since we have the applicant here i'd like to know what is their view on landmarking the sanctuary would they be prepared to do that if requested absolutely so uh good evening council i'm ian swallow with boulder housing partners i am the project manager for this project and yeah as far as the landmarking goes i think you know we would certainly be open to that conversation with the city um i think the building certainly has some some value to it i think landmarking brings a whole host of responsibilities that we'd want to be sure we really understood but um the intent right now is a hundred percent to keep that building and preserve it and my my second question um is based on a previous walkthrough i had

[119:01] on the site uh there's a portion of the property that that's near um a large apartment building of course i think it's across the street and that portion of the site and my directions may be off i is it the maybe the eastern portion um receives very little of the massing of the residential um portion of the project and i was wondering why that is yeah yeah absolutely so i think um the adjacent apartments or the boulder creek apartments they're right um as you turn heading uh west on table mesa from broadway they're kind of right there on that corner so they uh but they're kind of east and i guess it would be south of the property and so as far as where the building mass got located we actually um did quite a bit of site planning work on on where we landed so the first part of that was a community design workshop that we had in february

[120:01] um at the site we presented three kind of concept plans of potential building locations to the adjacent neighborhood um one of which was the single building pretty similar to what you see in the concept plan and then two that were broken up into two separate buildings um we walked the attendees through that and at the end we had folks indicate preferences by putting little blue dots on which they preferred the result of that was really i think a strong preference for a single building in a single structure you know about where it's located now um and the real i think the real reason for that we heard in subsequent community events was to keep that building as far back from the edge of that hillside as possible and so when you put a a structure on that east side of the site what you end up having to do is push it a little bit north and it ends up sitting pretty pretty

[121:00] high and pretty close above some of those single family homes so that's why you see the building structure where it is it was really trying to keep it as far away from single family neighbors on the west side on the north side um and also accommodate the use on the site so does that answer the question yes if that's the community preference i'm fine thank you right thank you mark then we have adam and nearby adam thanks sam um i wanted to mirror mary's statement about the community gardens on the west side i know that's pretty important and i think that's something that we should try to maintain as best as possible when we're looking at the the site plan um i also had a question in regards to the traffic flow off table mesa are there any planned improvements to that intersection given that there will be additional units in this area and my my most critical concern is that since this is a senior living area

[122:01] ambulance access and emergency access may be you know used more often so just making sure that we can actually accommodate that um so in terms of the traffic for this project um this project was required to provide the traffic estimates for peak hour traffic generation and those were low enough that it wouldn't be required to do a full traffic study which would in turn trigger improvements potentially so because the the peak volume traffic counts are so low for this use type specifically for the senior housing that's what doesn't trigger some of those larger type of improvements however i have been told that separately that the city is looking at those intersections in the area and is looking at potential improvements to some of those intersections but that the burden

[123:00] of doing those improvements wouldn't be placed on this project in particular is my understanding thank you bill did you have a follow-up to that yeah i just wanted to confirm what shannon just said bill cowan with transportation we've identified uh the need for study and potential improvements at both the intersections of table mesa stanford and table mesa and broadway and they were identified in our safe streets boulder report um table mason and stanford was a study that we were going to do this year and was part of the covet budget cuts gotcha yeah just having some reaffirmation that emergency services could reach that area that's something that i'm really interested in our our studies were centered around crash elimination and it was not a congestion or efficiency concern okay

[124:02] okay um good enough nearby yeah i just wanted to chime in on the community gardens and hope that we can find a spot for them to keep them at least the same size or even preferably grow them if it's needed but not to lose them i appreciate that we're not losing our open space either and then um i guess the one question i have seeing is i know we don't have much say in this but i think it's just very sad that every building we see come up just gets uglier and uglier than the one previous and i mean to me this looks like a prison it doesn't look remotely homey it doesn't look welcoming it looks cold and concrete so i don't know if there's any influence or input that we can give to have it have a more welcoming feel but i just think it's really sad that we have this gorgeous town and we're just building these box buildings that just don't have any character to them so just my comment

[125:01] great thank you um so i see no more hands up and the question before us tonight is do we want to call up the concept plan um i know that uh the applicant and staff will take into account everything that they've heard so far um so i think our discussion pretty much needs to focus on the yes or no we want to see this in a future date mary got your hand up yes i do and um i don't have any desire to call it up um but i did want to just further comment on both the community gardens and the landmarking one is on the community gardens two things i think that kind of feature is really really important because it um it brings community together if you ever been to community garden people are working together and chatting and getting to know each other and i think that it's a great way to

[126:01] bridge the two neighborhoods um and and create community so um i see it as a real important thing um it's a long established community gardens and um if um anybody who's ever garden knows that it takes many many many years to be able to create good soil in colorado so i believe that community garden is raised beds so if there's any way that if it is moved and not kept as it is to take that soil um save it put it aside and then put it in the new garden i think that would give people um a head start in a new community garden should it require a new one and then with respect to landmarking i see it also as a valuable effort i know that it does um provide the ability to

[127:02] obtain grants for its maintenance um and so i encourage you to go through with the landmarking so that's my comments thank you very good thank you mary um so a quick poll is does anyone want to call this concept plano okay seeing no one um who desires to call this up i will call for any final comments on the concept plan and seeing none very good i think we're done with this item thank you charles and shannon okay debbie all right your first public hearing this evening is second reading in motion to adopt ordinance 83 93 adding a new section 4-20-73 hemp licensing fee adding a new chapter

[128:00] 4-33 hemp adding chapter amending chapter 5-10 marijuana offenses adding a new chapter 5-11 cannabis offenses amending chapter 6-14 medical marijuana and 6-16 recreational marijuana senior counsel kathy haddock will be doing this presentation thank you and sarah there is a powerpoint for this and um cathy if you would like me to advance the slides i can or you can request control of the remote uh but i'm happy to do which is easier but i not sure i have not advanced the slides before so i didn't ask you and i'd be happy to move it forward for you thank you so much um so the first thing i want to do is emphasize the cross-dependent apartmental work that has happened on this issue all the people listed on the agenda memo

[129:00] had um real con contributions have been involved in the issue for years as part of the marijuana enforcement team and we're part of the drafting also michonne cook and rebecca bostrak are on the line to answer any questions you may have after we go through this i've started with the clarification of the state's definition that cannabis includes both hemp and marijuana cannabis refers to the plant and hemp and marijuana both refer to thc measurements within the plant the effect of the community is from the the plant not from the thc levels so we um are looking at making a level playing field for marijuana cultivation and processing facilities and hemp processing and cultivation facilities only for the portion that has an impact on the community

[130:02] we are not the regulations do not include anything with respect to hemp retail sales and do not include the parts of marijuana for cultivation and processing that relate to security and some of the other things that are related because of the high thc anecdotally there was an explosion at a house in netherland today when this happened in boulder for what we believe was marijuana extraction the homeowner claimed it was for hemp extraction and so avoided responsibility this ordinance will help protect so that doesn't happen again and would deal with the explosion that happened in netherland today the community has had input from the very beginning first from that we got the odor complaints they because it was cannabis plants it came to the marijuana enforcement team however they couldn't do anything because there were no regulations and so it was difficult to help

[131:01] mitigate the concerns of the people we then started to figure out how many hemp cultivation of manufacturers that were in the city and found that there are more than there are marijuana businesses and so we created a list of them and a draft ordinance was distributed to them directly and the chamber helped us distribute it to um let those businesses have any input we had two virtual public meetings for input and didn't have any uh boulder businesses participate these um we've been working on this code for visions for longer than clab has been appointed and clap just had the third meeting and feels like they're drinking from fire hose so they have not looked at these yet but when they get to the point of reviewing the marijuana codes will also provide them these codes because that will be in their jurisdiction so there

[132:02] may be some changes that come to you from clab i think i've already said that the ordinance does not address hemp products that are sold um it and it's doing the level playing field on the ventilation and safety practices with extractions hopefully we won't have any more explosions and um this adds an additional licensing program for those hemp businesses for the cultivation facilities and the processing i'm sorry sarah i'm not telling you when to advance slides but you're doing a great job the provisions of title five that are changing are because we did have marijuana offenses in the code already but most of those related to some of them related to odors and some of them related to high thc levels used by minors and that kind of thing so the

[133:01] changes to title five that are in the ordinance are to separate the marijuana offenses that are related to thc levels over 0.3 percent and then put all cannabis offenses that apply to both to either marijuana or hemp in a different section of title five we plan on doing licensing in two stages as a cova 19 accommodation this plan originally would have required additional staff and that will not be happening so we have proposed that the register start with a registration rather than licensing and that the businesses would register so that we know where the businesses are and what we have and then they would have until july 1st of 2021 to complete the application requirement

[134:00] next line um and off our council member brockett pointed out a few errors that we had missed um they're described in more detail in the agenda memo i just want to point out that they've been corrected in the ordinance that's in your packet for tonight council member rocket also had two policy amendments that he's proposed and we're prepared to answer any questions you may have about those and we're ready for council questions thank you kathy for that apologies for being a little slow um i do not have any hands at the moment um okay mark just showed up mark mark we can't hear you thank you um some of the language in the proposed statute was a little confusing to me

[135:01] because it talks about licensing on the basis of the completeness of the application but doesn't seem to grant um the licensing entity with sort of a police power to deny an application that is complete but unsatisfactory in terms of what is you know of what they're proposing in terms of odor control and the like um am i missing a provision of the statute that um yes i believe if i can get to my right place in your council packet numbers that the um requirements for the license and did not in um approval or denial are in sections about three it's so it's 4-33 related to that the license is required so the license has to be issued for operations of course that does not apply to any

[136:01] existing businesses that have a sales tax license from the city that would just apply to new businesses coming into the city and then 4-33-4 has general provisions which include the general licensing uh granting provisions and this is on pack the page 55 of your packet and then it goes on to what the application has to have in it okay and my other question um is that there's a you can't have a hemp operation operating within 500 feet of three other businesses is that correct that's correct uh how close can they get to another business if there are only two it we only measure the radius from each individual business of 500 feet around so we don't measure how close they are

[137:01] to each other so two could be right next to each other um and that wouldn't be a violation and also i want to point out what because good question this requirement also does not apply to any existing businesses we're not intending to shut down any existing businesses but voters are if odors are an issue um shouldn't we be a little firmer in our ability to control proximity well that's a policy question for you i mean this is um what was carried over from marijuana it would be easier to determine where the odor is coming from if well definitely if there's not a lot in the same area if there's two right together versus two apart it'd be easier to tell but there's also limited areas of industrial zoning in the city and that requirement has not been

[138:00] established before okay thank you appreciate it great and then mary and bob mary thank you kathy um so my question my first question is about the um energy offset fund will hemp businesses be required to pay into the energy offset fund they it's no it's not in this ordinance the reason is although it's the same and it's related to the plant the reason why we can impose it on the marijuana businesses as isolating a specific business is because they're having heavily regulated industry and we didn't have that same issue here so we didn't feel comfortable that we had the authority to impose those on criteria of the type of business it was if this council were to decide to impose that requirement more broadly based on emissions or something we could

[139:00] impose it on all the businesses that at that level but they do use um energy at the same intensity as marijuana yeah they do they grow the plants i shouldn't say exactly the same because i'm not an expert but it's pretty close to exactly the same okay great thank you um and then um my next question is about um one of um of aaron's um suggestions an additional 30 days for license request renew basically gives them an additional 30 days grace period um i think the memo said that in that window that 30-day window they would be basically operating without a license um is that the case yes we'd have to figure out what to do because we're kind of creating a limbo

[140:01] period so they're either operating without a license or we basically say that the term of a license is 13 months rather than 12. so um okay well i'll i'll deal with that in the comments and um and then my next question um in the ordinance there's different finds for cultivation and extraction based on whether or not they're major or minor cultivation or extraction businesses and i was just wondering how are those um delineated and what's the threshold between to be one versus the other okay and if i'm correct i think you're referring to the fees that are on the first page of the ordinance uh it is um for uh section 4-20-73 correct and those are the fees that are charged for the license application

[141:00] rather than fines that may be imposed for violation okay okay the fines are separate um you know that's not something that is in here specifically but our intent is that the map spent a lot of time determining what is the difference between a minor modification of a business facility and a major modification and these are the types of modifications that occur after the business has a license and it wants to expand or it wants to add you know a new big piece of equipment or whatever and map came up with a delineation of what's minor and what's major and that was made into a city manager rule and our intent is to apply the same rules for these so it's contained within a city manager rule yes okay great thank you um and then um and this may have been one of the corrections i'm not entirely sure

[142:02] um the current ordnance sunsets on august 7th 2021 and so that that's why we have to adopt this on emergency so i'm just curious as to why it requires a whole there's a year's gap and we have to do this on emergency so that confused me a little bit um this is on page uh packet page 82. whoops i just switched over to my non-packet version um and maybe that's near because this is not intended to be an emergency ordinance and you're right the staff recommendation does oh i'm sorry 82 is looks to me like it's the doctor spike ordinance oh did i jump over to the other one okay sorry

[143:01] sorry i i i confused my question sorry about that um and then um it's getting dark in here and i don't have enough light um oh oh oh what is my um so um in your presentation you mentioned that part of the work that lies ahead is to map out where all of the existing businesses are is that did i hear that correctly so that means that we don't know right now if um there is or there isn't a business that is already or businesses i guess that are already um co-located within a 500 foot radius of an existing marijuana business right that's correct okay so if if um if we didn't go through with this um

[144:01] six businesses within the 500 foot radius as proposed by aaron then um we'd have to figure out what to do with those businesses that are already within the 500 foot well this is written that it doesn't close any business that's existing on um i forget what the date is in here i think it's july 1st of 2020 if they have a sales tax license from the city that they wouldn't be closed because of the provisions in here so you know even if we end up that we have 10 within 500 feet this ordinance wouldn't close down any of them okay so it would be kind of a grandfathering exactly okay great and then um [Music] so the reason we're doing this is because of state law and um and what we really have to address is the um the safety and the older odor issues with hemp is that yes that's what we have to address state

[145:01] law is very confusing on this issue because it's regulated both by the colorado department of agriculture and the colorado department of public health and environment and right now they and ned in the colorado department of revenue are trying to reconcile how they make all this work and struggling with that and our team is participating in those committees okay great thank you and then my final question is um did the cannabis um advisory board um have a look at this ordinance they have not this was um done well before they were appointed and they just had their third meeting and feel like they're drinking from a fire hose so our plan is when we do when they look at the code revisions for marijuana i'm sorry i should back up they're looking for education at this point and adding more meetings for education but when they do look at the code provisions

[146:01] for marijuana they'll be looking at these two and maybe bringing some changes to you so if i understand what you're saying is that we would go ahead and pass this ordinance then they would have a look at the ordinance as we pass it today and then recommend changes to it um is that is that what you're thinking yes and and their changes would be either that marijuana and hemp should be treated differently in a way that we treated them the same in the ordinance or that both the marijuana and this ordinance should be changed okay now would it be another option to separate out just the safety and order um issues and issues and then deal with the land use issues um and

[147:00] any other issue separately is that another possibility that is an issue but as you know from matt i mean that is a possibility um although if you don't adopt anything now then marijuana and hemp are not on a level playing field because marijuana does have the limitation and you may recall that map has been asking you for a couple of years to put the title ix considerations the land use considerations for the marijuana code on the work plan for planning and it hasn't risen to that level of priority for council this and changing the or having different land use requirements would fall into that same category okay okay that's all i have thank you kathy thank you um bob uh thanks um i have three questions all of them relate to attachment b and i think sarah can put that up on the screen two of them are drafting questions and one of them is a process question

[148:01] so this is these are the two policy um changes that aaron had suggested and which by the way i do support but i do have two questions relating to the draft you can scroll down the drafting on the second one related renewal of license this is that grace trade that mary was just referring to um the third sentence doesn't make sense to me the way it's written it says if the applicant fails to apply for renewal at least 30 days after the expiration of the license but does apply for renewal prior to 30 days after the expiration license then it goes on to say that they can submit a late application i think there's a drafting error there i think you're right we have a duplicate clause in here that needs to come out or duplicate implementation yeah maybe if you could probably just take out um the first 30 days if the applicant fails to apply for renewal before the expiration but does apply for renewal prior to 30

[149:01] days afterwards that's true you're right that'd be another that'd be another way to do it and that's probably better okay so if you could we could fix that if there's support for attachment b the second question i have is also on attachment b is the drafting continuing on that sentence says the city may process the renewal application are is that an intentional may are we are we leaving it to the city's discretion whether to um allow people a grace period maybe we will maybe we won't or are we going to give everyone a grace period as long as they pay the 1500 uh fine um it's not an intentional may to give um discretion to the staff um it's the same language that was in um that is in the marijuana code and we interpret it as a shall we can write it as a shell if you'd prefer okay that just maybe would give applicants a little comfort to know that they can submit an application late if they pay the fine and then my final question is not a drafting question it's really

[150:00] just a process one will the applicant if the applicant misses is just inattentive and misses the uh their expiration date will the city send a notice out to them saying hey you missed your expiration date you got 30 days to get good with us or do they have to kind of like wake up within that 30 days on their own the the process is well it's a combination of answers um the city automatically sends notice to each business owner 90 days before their license expires gives them the warning and then that they have to apply within the next 45 days because they have to apply 45 days before expiration i'll let michonne cook answer what is a practical matter happens after that um good evening council this is michonne cook licensing manager so the way that we handle both liquor licensing and marijuana licensing

[151:01] and many other types of licensing that we do is we send renewal documents out to the licensee at their business mailing address or we're doing it via email right now but uh we send that information out 90 days prior we let them know on those documents what their 45-day deadline for filing is and we remind them also when their license expiration date is um depending on how many licenses we have and we have about 750 licenses right now that we're currently in charge of um we may or may not be able to send reminders um over and above that 90-day renewal documents okay thanks michelle yeah that's all i had okay i just wanted to follow up on the same

[152:01] topic um could somebody explain to me i'm not entirely understanding if you are if staff is sending out 90 day notices prior to the expiration of a license what the purpose of an extra 30 days would be um and if the way around um that 30 degree day grace period when they would be without operating without a license required the work around would be to provide licenses for 13 months that just seems like wildly inconsistent with everything else that the city does so i what is the purpose behind that 30-day grace period you know that's something that councilmember brockett would have to answer i think he was looking for additional time your question is exactly the same as previous councils have and

[153:03] why none of our licenses do have a grace period one of the things that councilmember brocket stated that he was concerned about is there has been a business that let his license expire and then his attorney wrote letters to counsel saying that it was because of this provision that he lost his license but the truth is that the applicant hadn't paid sales taxes for almost a year and didn't want to pay them which is why his license expired so mary i spoke with aaron about this a little bit and because we're grandfathering businesses there's a significant consequence if your license lapses so if you're a business with your within 500 feet of say four businesses or violate one of our other provisions but your grandfathered in if your license lapses then you lose

[154:01] your business um you can't just reapply because we won't accept a new application so aaron was wanted to give them a little bit more time even with a 90-day warning some people make mistakes and he just wanted to give some people a break that's that's the reason for his proposal um okay great thank you okay any more questions from council seeing none i think we want to turn to the public hearing now let's see i'm ready for you sam yeah hang on just one moment i am i had it and then now it's disappeared in just a moment having computer issues i believe the first person up was lynn stegall is that correct that's correct so we have two

[155:00] speakers signed up on this topic lynn siegel and then andrea minnigal great why didn't you go ahead uh lynn you will have three minutes when you're ready let me queue up the clock [Music] okay lynn you're on live speaking of rules and what mary was just speaking about this is lynn siegel is um the 13 months or the 90 days whatever

[156:00] if they're in these businesses they can learn to follow the rules you know and the city's in a downturn now they could use the money if people want to just relax off on their licenses for this stuff it's not necessary in our society anyway and i mean marijuana not hemp so i support anything you want with hemp but not so much with marijuana what i really think we need to do is get rid of alcohol does it help with virus at all because people get all touchy-feely and breathe all over each other when they're drinking alcohol and trying to um socialize um so i'm opposed to any alcohol now during this virus in particular but it's a downgraded whole culture anyway but that's just me i'm a prohibitionist from way back um but anything that would um um support hemp for oil and for all the functional

[157:01] things that it serves in our society marijuana does not alcohol does not so i support marijuana much more than alcohol because i think it's a much friendlier drug to the community um and and alcohol is so destructive for you know other a lot of other things social systems and car accidents and everything else but um anything that you could do in the spill that would um hemp over marijuana and um and i'm sorry that i can't speak to what i wanted to tonight um because of all of your rules you know that way too many rules um five o'clock by this time on this day and two o'clock by that time on that day for signing up and different on all the boards and commissions so i didn't sign up for the parking thing tonight but that's your loss you're not gonna hear

[158:01] what your public has to say and it's your own fault so clean up your act i sent you i don't know how many letters about cleaning up the website for the city which is not navigable which is not user friendly which does not engage and invite the public this is not a city that should be engaging in this kind of behavior in drawing in its citizens as a resource in an educated community where you can get a lot of benefit from from your folks that are out there i'm sure there's so many that are not tuning in because they just don't want to go through the bureaucracy so just saying you're missing out on me on the parking tonight but that's your choice as far as i'm concerned done thank you then andrea

[159:00] andrea can you hear me yep all right uh the sun drive manigault on behalf of the boulder chamber 2440 pearl street and i'd like to start by thanking staff particularly michonne kathy officer bosstrack for the outreach opportunities that were provided to the businesses while we helped get the word out broadly covet 19 impacted the capacities for some to be engaged um recognizing that the primary objective of this ordinance is to regulate for safety and odor mitigation measures there's good reason to address those cultivation issues now and what's being presented seems to be consistent with the cannabis industry regulations as far as the additional aspects like what council member brockett pointed out on the hotline there are areas where we should differentiate the regulations between those in hemp and cannabis businesses for instance we

[160:00] support the point he raised about how new licensees can geographically impact previously established businesses but it sounds like you know we're trying to work through that um for other regulations that attempt to align with the city's cannabis code a lot of work has been dedicated over the years to create that code and it wasn't perfect right away but it continued to evolve and for which reason as a community we just seeded a cannabis licensing advisory board some of those members are steeped in the evolution and the complexities of our cannabis code and provide the expertise about not only where hemp could align with cannabis regulations but also where the hemp industry is unlike those in cannabis and we would want to differentiate policies accordingly so you know we realize the challenges about the timing of all this aligning our regulations with changes at the

[161:00] state level the recent seating of the cannabis board trying to conduct outreach during covet closures but we spoke with staff and we commend their willingness to allow the cannabis advisory board to review the regulations to continue to engage businesses and community members and to continually refine these regulations so we can get something that that everybody is um supportive of we hope you can support that and an approach to deal with the pressing issues now and allowing the citizen board to provide recommendations for for the rest and everything else that's out there so thank you for your time and um thank you for serving the community great thank you andrea and with that we will bring public comment to a close and return to council um so now's a good time to have discussion i have a comment that i would be happy to defer to anyone who wants to raise their hand

[162:02] great so i will just kick us off i think this is a great um first uh start at regulating hemp particularly the public uh facing impacts of him or the external impacts from the production process um i i'm going to disagree with aaron's suggestion a little bit but only because we're grandfathering so his suggestion about having three hemp businesses plus three marijuana businesses within a 500-foot radius is essentially doubling the concentration of odor production if we do that i certainly agree with staff's proposal not to put any businesses out of business through a concentration regulation so i definitely don't want a concentration regulation to result in anyone having to shut down but going forward as far as perspective and how we want to regulate um the two industries

[163:01] hampton and marijuana i think one thing we want to be sensitive to is the impacts on on the community as far as odor goes so for that reason i won't necessarily support what aaron was uh trying to do as far as not as far as allowing three plus three marijuana and a 500 foot radius but i do think if that 500 foot radius is not the right number you know if it's too big or too small for the purpose of controlling um odor i think we should look to our newly seated advisory board to let us know that so on on balance i think this is a good um start at these regulations i think putting hemp and marijuana to the extent that they have public impacts on the same footing is is the right thing to do here so i'll support all of this i don't think i will support um the proposal that aaron brought forward as far as the radius goes and then i guess i do

[164:02] have a little thought around his second point which is the grace period i i would almost prefer to solve that problem with multiple notices one at 90 and say one at 30 say hey you know you missed it because i kind of agree with a comment that mary made earlier which is it seems kind of crazy to either do 13 months or do a grace period i think you know if we're concerned that somebody losing their license would mean that they lose their business i think we just need to make sure that we're giving them enough notice ahead of time so that i'm done um next we have mary and bob thanks sam um yeah i agree with everything that sam has said and um since we are putting that kind of

[165:01] grandfathering process in there i i feel okay about um um not proceeding with um aaron's amendments i i really appreciate the effort that he was putting into trying the problem he was trying to solve but i don't think that we have that problem i think that we're gonna learn a lot when all the businesses get mapped and um and we see how close businesses are to each other and so i think that'll be an important piece um and then on the um 30-day grace period the two options of either allowing a business to operate without a license just doesn't make any sense to me and then issuing 13 months licenses kind of keeps moving the date down the road each time that you issue another 13 months license it just it doesn't make any sense and it could be really confusing so

[166:02] um i would prefer to go the route that sam suggested or to send um a notice at 135 days when at 90 days when it 45 days um and you know businesses will just have to be grown up about it and and be aware that their their um license is expiring so um the other thing is that um i do understand that trying to separate out the the safety and order portions of this ordinance would be really difficult um and just the way it's written right now so um my suggestion would be that we pass it and then kick it over to the collab as soon as possible because

[167:02] they'll do the deep dive and take a look at all of these questions in a very um um well thought out manner that council just can't do tonight so i would like to um as soon as this passes to send it over to the club asap and have them um come back with some recommendations for changes and um and the other thing um too is the energy offset fund i do think that um that should be one of the things that they'd look at um so that they are energy intensive just as energy intensive as marijuana so why not um that's what i would like to understand so um that's all i have thank you thanks mary bob you're up next

[168:01] well i'm going to disagree with sam and mary a little bit on on aaron's changes which i actually think are good and i'll take them one at a time um as i understand it the um the principal objective for the 500 foot radius back when marijuana was being licensed was less about odor and more about a fear that that too many marijuana companies will come into a concentrated area and take up a bunch of warehouse space and because marijuana is a lucrative business that they would be able to outbid other uses of warehouse space i don't think we've actually seen that and actually now in the age of covet i think landlords would be happy to get tenants so um i don't think that's a problem or it's not the problem that people thought it would be um i think actually just the opposite i think with respect to odor we want to encourage these types of businesses whether they're hemp or marijuana to be concentrated and closer together because the more they're spread out around town

[169:01] the more um residents and other businesses are going to impact i think we want to encourage concentration of hemp and marijuana businesses in warehouse districts near each other i understand that our staff has pretty sophisticated equipment that can detect if there's an odor problem where it's coming out of building a or building b that's a few hundred feet away so i think this is actually an odor concentration and prevention uh mechanism and i don't think we have the problem that we thought we were going to have when we were using the 500 foot radius so i actually support aaron's um 500 foot separate 500 foot radius measurement for new businesses in the camp industry with respect to the second i i partially agree with sam and mary i do i would like at least the first year or two staff to send out um reminder notices or follow-up notices either at or or um or or before the expiration the second notice um because as tom said you know

[170:01] the the penalty for for missing your deadline is pretty extreme i mean if you signed a long-term lease with your landlord and you've hired a bunch of employees and you've made substantial investments in your business and you miss you blow a date and we've all missed deadlines before you're in a very bad situation you have to lay off all your employees you may be have personally guaranteed your lease um you've made investments in equipment and so on and so forth and so i i would would like to encourage staff at least in the first couple years until people kind of get in the groove i realize michonne has to manage 700 licenses between liquor and other things but um it sounds like there's about 50 of these i would encourage to have to send out a second notice but i i i do think it's a draconian effect to have the have the business put out of business and and possibly lose their entire business because of the of the location the distance requirements um because they missed a deadline um i

[171:00] do think we should give them an opt-in there's all sorts of instances um where people who missed deadlines whether you forget to renew your driver's license your car registration or other deadlines you can come in you can say maya culpa you pay a little bit of a fine and you get and you get good and i think telling people hey listen if you blow your expiration date you're out of business and if you happen to be within uh 500 feet of of three other businesses you are literally out of business you you have to shut down you lose your lease you have to lay off your employees that seems to me awful dramatic a 1500 fine is a pretty steep penalty for missing the date but i think we should give people a 30 day grace i don't think it has to be a 13 month i if i were to do it i'd just say you're out of compliance you're out of there are people who who whose cars aren't registered or who's missed the driver's license or knew why a few days it's not the end of the world um they'll have 30 days of cure if they miss it a second time after michonne sends them a second notice um yeah then maybe they're big boys and big girls and

[172:01] um they they have to um suffer the consequences but i would not be that severe about about that so i actually do support aaron's attachment being the two changes that he suggests okay i see no other hands up so if there is a desire for more discussion now's the time to speak if not i would invite a motion can i suggest this sam says since it sounds like we have differences of opinion can i make a motion that would include attachment b see if there's five votes in support of that if not then somebody could make a second motion without attachment b does that make sense that works for me i assume for everyone else i'm sorry does somebody have an ordinance number i don't have this on my screen promotion language yeah it's uh ordinance number eight three nine three

[173:01] i move that we adopt uh ordinance eight three nine is eight three nine three time eight three nine three eight three nine three um with um attachment with the modifications the amendments proposed and attachment be as further amended by the discussion that i had with kathy on making those two language changes okay is there a second for bob's motion i will second okay you've got it rachel okay so we have motion in the second so all in favor of bob's motion raise your hand one two i count three okay uh juni did you vote on that are all opposed to bob's motion raise your hand two three four five okay so it fails

[174:03] five to three um mary so um i moved that we adopt ordnance 83 93 adding a new section 4-20-73 hemp licensing fee adding a new chapter 4-33 the suggested motion language on packet page 40 um 48 as presented in our memo with the with um without the the amendments as proposed by aaron brockett so i will second but i will also offer a friendly amendment um to the motion which is that we include the um drafting suggestions that bob had had put out there look those only doesn't apply to attachment b which we're not sounds like we're not moving oh i see okay right

[175:00] good point yeah good point okay uh adam yeah i was just thinking um i think bob has a pretty good point but the 30 days seems very lenient to me is there maybe a seven day grace period we could go for or like you know 30 days really is like dragging your feet if you're out of license then it seems like you're not caring if you get a full 30 days um just throwing that out there before we vote um so adam would you so the suggestion that i made was to provide another reminder um 135 days prior to the expiration so that's an additional 45 days ahead of the expiration so they would get one at 135 when at 90 which is usually what happens and then one at so you get it at the front end rather

[176:00] than after your um license has expired um yeah so yeah so long as staff is reasonably certain they can accomplish that i think we can move forward with three reminders um i think that's pretty fair okay um just to colloquy on that i see rachel's hand up so i'm calling you in a moment rachel i just wanted to ask staff um probably michonne could you respond to adam's point is it something that you could do for him businesses at least in the first couple of years to send them multiple reminders about their license exploration well my comment is the way that i would like to accomplish this is have it be consistent in uniform and i believe that what we can accomplish is it's part of our standard reporting in our database system that we send out

[177:00] renewals 90 days prior we have procedures for that we have reports it's automatic i think that what we could accomplish is sending an additional reminder sort of like a blanket report you know you're 90 days out from your license expiration date to the extent that you haven't renewed with the city yet you should do so now you know or something like that we we may want to do it though maybe we send out something 90 days prior and then we send out something 60 days prior because they still have two weeks to be timely you know before their 45 day deadline i think we could do two notices i think it would be difficult we do things in batches we do things in churns usually 25 at a time and it's an automated process i think we i think city licensing could write reporting in our database system to do one at 90 and 60

[178:01] but i probably would want to do a similar thing also um for marijuana businesses as well just to have it be consistent so okay very good adam do you have any follow-up for questions now the so to me that sounded like did i hear two or three just want to clarify too i think we can do two uh resource perspective okay that leaves me at a weird balancing point honestly um but i'd love to hear others um michonne i have a question um so sending out two notices when at 91 at 60 and sending them out to everybody um that is one more notice than what you do now it is because um right now we do 90 uniformly and then when we issue licenses we have lots of dialogues with liquor and marijuana

[179:01] you know your 60 days out from your license expiration date is a magic number put it in your phone write it on your calendar all of those types of things because you need to file 45 days prior um essentially what i'm proposing is we would do our standard at 90 they'd get all their renewal documents it would have their 45-day pre-file and also their license expiration date but then we could send one at 60. you know you your 45-day pre-file is two weeks from now to the extent that you haven't filed a renewal you have to do it now um you know and i and i i think that that's a good balance and it would also help um marijuana licensees as well because they have similar requirements as far as deadlines and timing so so the consequences for a marijuana business missing their renewal opportunity um is the same they lose

[180:00] their yes they're very similar so so fix um have a more global solution is what i'm proposing so really um by doing it um at 90 days and 60 days you're actually um making it better for everybody marijuana businesses and for him businesses and i also am uh still giving them a a a better chance to be timely to still hit their 45-day pre-file so yeah thank you and just to follow up on that question if if a business were to miss their filing deadline they would not necessarily be put out of business unless they were in a highly concentrated area under the current rules is that right well we will um so i'll use marijuana as the example which is what we have right now i mean if if a marijuana licensee

[181:00] were to file after their 45-day pre-file we would take the renewal they would have to pay a late filing fee but so long as they did all of the things that they needed to do in order to qualify for the city renewal by their license expiration date they would still be renewed if instead they show up you know a week after their license expiration date and say i want to file my renewal now my answer would be you have to file a new license application and under a new license application we would do zoning analysis anew because it's a brand new license application and um and then the zoning density would be denied um by virtue of that right but that's only if they're in the highly concentrated area yes if they're if there are more than three already and they're the fourth but they were operating under grandfathering originally so great so the risk is greatest to those who are grandfathered

[182:01] rachel yeah adam's question just made me wonder if maybe some people supported one of aaron's um requests or suggestions and not the other so did we want to do like a straw poll to see if maybe there was a majority for either the 500 or the 30 days we can do that so i guess just doing a straw poll who supports having aaron's suggestion of three camp businesses and three marijuana businesses within a 500 foot radius okay i count three okay and then we can okay junie that's four um sadly that's still not enough for that one then if we move to the second one um it is a 30-day grace period after the expiration

[183:01] of the license um for him so who would support a 30-day grace period so i see two people supporting that so i don't think there's appetite for either one what i will say is if we pass it the way it is i would hope that as mary suggested that the cannabis advisory board would take it up and if this is going to be a problem there's a year for them maybe more than a year actually um before we start licensing there's a lot of runway between here and there um before anybody could even potentially lose their business so if we pass it the way it is and the advisory board takes it up and comes back to council with advice on the subject i agree with mary they'll have had a lot more time to dig in and think about all the implications so hopefully we could make a change for their advice if there's any problems that we're passing tonight um so

[184:00] to that end sam would it make sense to make an additional motion that says um to have the the club um cannabis licensing advisory board take a look at this um right away i probably personally wouldn't say right away i'd say you know um with all due speed i i just don't you know from the way kathy described it they're coming up to speed right now and ramping up so i i don't know how we'd say it but i think i think we can at least direct kathy to have this is one of the first items staff suggests that they take a look at ibi i absolutely agree with you that um i think they're feeling a little overwhelmed now and already adding more meetings um than their once a month meeting so um we definitely will have it high on the list

[185:01] and and kathy can you remind me here to slide up but you talked about um when we would be starting implementation of this so when would we first start licensing accepting applications for hemp business licensing the licensing itself would be july 1st of 2021 before that we'll just be doing registrations and then can map to see whether we have a problem with a bunch within one area so then the first potential um license expiration will be in summer of 2022 is that correct exactly exactly so it seems to me like we have two years more or less for the board to get to this and give us advice so okay mary made a motion uh rachel do you have another comment i'm sorry no okay your hand's still up that's the only reason i asked so we have a motion

[186:00] and the second the motion is to pass the staff recommended measures for hemp licensing so all in favor of the motion raise your hand one two three four five six seven eight so that passes unanimously um so i would like to make an additional motion um that um city council requests that the cannabis licensing advisory board analyze this ordinance as passed tonight prior to the summer of 2022 um such that their recommendations could be implemented prior to then any discussion on that motion i'd just like to offer maybe a friendly amendment um mary i think i thought you

[187:00] made a really good point about um um considering the energy surcharge um as well and and i don't know if we have to make that as part of the motion but i would like to suggest that you have collab um and staff come back um and suggest whether the energy surcharge should apply they have businesses as well uh friendly amendment accepted okay so i think this one will have good support is there anyone who objects to mary's motion seeing no one that also passes unanimously so i think unless anyone has any further comments we're done with this i want to thank staff for your hard work pulling this together i think it's important that we put these these two industries kind of on the same playing field i think everyone did a nice job at making some important distinctions here so with that back to you debbie

[188:02] okay your next public hearing is second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8398 doctors bike share licensing ordinance update and e-scooter check-in good evening city council this evening we're going to be presenting some information on the dockless bike share licensing ordinance change um and an e-scooter check-in and some information about b-cycle funding and that presentation is going to be provided by dk kemp dk pedal away thank you very much bill and council can you hear me okay oh great okay well good evening mayor and city council it's a pleasure to be here with you all this evening my name is dave kemp senior transportation planner in the go boulder work group within the city's transportation division

[189:05] questions and comments you may have about each of tonight's discussion items next slide please sarah see you next time i'm sorry dk having difficulty hearing you i did go to the next slide do you need to go again um let's okay great um it should be on the second slide i'm not seeing it discussion topics okay okay good it's not registering on my screen so i'll go ahead and speak to that slide one second

[190:00] okay um for some reason i'm having some technical difficulties um with my computer it's not advancing my notes nor is it advancing this the zoom call can you still hear me all we can hear you okay apologize for the technical difficulty um please give me one second i'll try to tell you um i'll pull counsel would cancel like a five-minute break well um dk brings his presentation up okay very good we will take a five-minute break dk and we'll be back in just a moment thank you very much dk i'm still here and happy to help you try to resolve the issue thanks i'm going to reboot my computer right now i'm not sure what's going on okay be with you

[192:13] uh hopefully that works and uh dk this is chris perhaps turning off your incoming video and turning off your own video may help with any connection issues too that's a great idea

[193:11] this you can send that to me and i did put that on his script because there's a you're adopting an ordinance reminder from debbie

[194:02] okay so

[195:19] sarah are you there yes how are we doing do we have the uh technical difficulties solved okay has just rebooted and joined the meeting as a panelist so i'm just waiting to hear from him if he can see the second slide as he requested okay can you hear me

[196:00] damn ek can you hear me yes i can hear you so you are promoted to a panelist again you should be seeing on your screen tonight's discussion topic slide number two you're muted i'm afraid can you unmute it will allow me wait okay i think this might be working now it wasn't allowing me to unmute can you see me okay okay yeah okay you might try um just turning off your video i'm gonna i think i'm gonna do that i mean maybe for the bandwidth might be bad so um just one second okay okay so we can still hear you

[197:00] and hopefully your slide is the list of discussion topics for this evening good just give me one second to get back to my powerpoint here okay council sorry about the technical difficulties tonight um it wasn't allowing me to advance my own notes in powerpoint but um okay let's discuss tonight's topics uh tonight's discussion is divided into four parts we'll begin tonight by explaining the details of the doctors bike share licensing ordinance which is the second reading and since the current ordinance sunsets on august 7 2020 this ordinance needs to be adopted as an emergency measure in order for it to go into effect prior to the expiration of the formal ordinance um following the

[198:01] presentation counts will have the opportunity to review and hopefully approve a motion adopting tonight's ordinance following the details of the dockless bike show ordinance and per council's request we will then discuss the current status of the boulder bike share b cycle and also describe a few potential scenarios moving forward with the organization staff would also like to conduct a brief check-in with council regarding the current e-scooter moratorium uh which expires this october we'd like to receive general feedback from council regarding ordinance options and also describe a few ideas staff has potentially moving forward and then finally we'll discuss overall next steps that will lead to the development of a comprehensive shared micro mobility program for the city of boulder okay next slide sarah great it's working okay and so moving on to tonight's main event we'd like to prevent uh present some of the details behind the update to the doctor spikes licensing ordinance when staff initially developed the 2018

[199:00] ordinance the micro mobility industry was quite different than it is today although the industry has been changing quite quickly ever since when the original ordinance was adopted in 2018 e-scooters were not even in cities yet and the industry was mainly comprised of self-locking bikes that could be basically left anywhere additionally the private sector startup companies were employing road techniques our tactics by deploying bicycles in cities without the consent of local government in order to avoid the negative impacts experienced by these other cities staff jumped into the action and to prevent the legal deployment of these bikes as we were primarily concerned with bikes being left on sidewalks and in crosswalks causing an impediment to pedestrians including people in wheelchairs and people with low vision in other cities bikes were vandalized or discarded in victorian areas and even placed up in trees or other unfavorable locations and again we wanted to impact and so one of the important functions of the 2018 ordinance however was the requirement for sure bikes to have lock

[200:00] 2 mechanism that would require users to lock the bike to a bike rack each after each use and since then many of the micro mobility companies have incorporated the lock 2 technology on their bikes and while the industry does continue to change we realize that the existing ordinance also needs to adapt to changing conditions to make it for micro mobility companies to do business in boulder next side slide please and so in preparation of the ordinance update staff prepare draft regulatory framework based on peer city programs community stakeholder feedback observed best practices from the national association for city transportation officials otherwise known as nacto and then feedback from several shared micro mobility companies the framework is organized by these categories before you next slide and so what's changed i'm going to go through some of the key modifications

[201:00] that we've updated the ordinance with here and on this slide here looking at the fleet size the original ordinance called for an initial fleet of 150 vehicles to be deployed at the um the time of the initiating a program we realized now that that was not enough and that 500 vehicles was more likely to suit the needs of of the city of boulder and then also works better with the micro mobility companies the operators will also have an opportunity to increase their fleet by 20 if an average of the two rides per vehicle per day is achieved and then in terms of rebalancing equity we wouldn't want to ensure that the underserved neighborhoods within the city also receive these bicycles and these communities will not be subject to the demand-based cap that we've built into the ordinance next slide all right and then in terms of pricing

[202:01] and equity again social equity we want to ensure that we have we can offer a low-income customer plan that weighs any fees with vehicle deposits and offers an affordable cash payment option uh within unlimited trips under 30 minutes and then we can also regulate the speeds of these vehicles as well using geofencing for example on multi-use paths the speed limit is 15 miles per hour and so we can regulate the speed of the shared electric assist bicycles next slide please great and then uh the technology has changed the dating reporting uh has changed a lot has evolved and so now we can get real-time information using the mobility data specification we also want to incentivize parking at on street and off street micro mobility parking hubs and then again what we did maintain is that e-bikes must be equipped with the lock 2 capabilities that the users are

[203:00] parking their bikes to bike racks after each use this helps with preventing vandalism and then also helps preventing prevent bikes from being parked in the middle of sidewalks and in crosswalks as i mentioned earlier next slide okay staff has engaged with numerous community stakeholders including city boards and commissions to understand their concerns and interests regarding the shared micro mobility program including dockless and electricity spikes community stakeholders are familiar with the various forms of micro mobility whether they consist of dock-based or dockless bikes e-bikes or e-scooters and there is a general community interest in e-bikes and people see a benefit for shared e-bikes giving bill holders uh hilly terrain and need for longer trips across boulder into and also to connect to neighboring communities within the region included the stakeholders is boulder bike share or b cycle and we'll discuss more about our coordination with them in just a few slides

[204:01] and for the last year transportation community vitality staff have been participating in a shared micro mobility subcommittee with cu bowler to examine both bike and e-scooter share and we've been working with the business community to also understand their interests and concerns members of the business community include i should say stakeholders of the business and community include the downtown business partners the boulder chamber and the downtown management commission additionally staff has coordinated with mobility for all a boulder county program whose goal is to promote accessible affordable and equitable multimodal transportation options for residents of all ages and abilities and to raise awareness that transportation is basic social economic and health need coordination with this organization has been very helpful enough for us to understand the social equity component of this ordinance transportation management organizations such as boulder transportation connections and community solutions have also been included in discussions as we think about the need for shared mic mobility

[205:00] on the regional level and finally staff has reached out to other boards and commissions including the parks and recreation advisory board and of course the transportation advisory board next slide please and on march 9th tab voted to the transportation advisory board voted unanimously on the motion to approve the documents fight share ordinance update as presented before you tonight next slide as i mentioned earlier there has been a lot of change in the shared micro mobility industry including increased volatility since proven 19 entered our community and so we've seen programs around the us go dormant we've seen some of these companies exit the communities we've seen a lot of company mergers some filed for bankruptcy and and then also there's been a decrease in the venture capital um

[206:00] providing a lot of the funding for these companies and autism is now seeking um financial sustainability um and so it's been a changing time for the micro mobility sector but regardless um uh some of the companies have maintained operations especially some of the smaller companies and have seen an uptick in usage likely due to the reductions in transit use these days several operators have provided comments um on the dockless bike share and we've worked to incorporate their feedback to make boulder and its regulations more attractive and manageable in order to in order for them to conduct conduct business in boulder and also meet our micro mobility goals and a few of their comments are before you in the column on the right next slide okay um and so moving on to boulder bike share in the second quarter of 2020 which is right about the time that cobit 19 entered our community uh the boulder

[207:01] bike oh sorry the b cycle system provided about 10 000 trips which is about 34 of the number of trips that the system averaged in the second quarter from 2017 through 2019 so ridership has definitely been down however it should be noted uh too that as a counter measure to impacts of coin 19 um b cycle did increase um the free trip periods for monthly and annual passes and also drop the price of its pay per trip passed down to one dollar per ride as of now these measures are still in effect and will likely stay through at least 2020 but it's a good indication or it's a good sign of our local partner here to react and provide service transportation services in a time of need so kudos to be cycled for that um so assist if the system revenue maintains um at the second quarter 2020 levels which is about 64 percent of their budget for the rest of 2020 and if their

[208:01] largest uh pending sponsor renewal google occurs um they should have it uh they should end the year with enough reserve to withstand having to implement any staffing reductions this basically means that they're barely behind their budget with a sponsorship increase from google and the federal government's paycheck protection program making up the difference if the city alone and not cu contributed to boulder bike shares operations in early 2021 uh the 50k subsidy that we have budgeted currently in 2021 would extend boulder bike shares operations by about six weeks this could force the organization to shut down the system as early as march 2021. if however cu also pla can also contributed a significant level the organization could operate into spring of 2021. it is staff's goal to develop a shared micro mobility program with a private sector company that can work in concert with b cycle

[209:00] and we like we include criteria in the request for proposal guidelines for operators to identify strategies in order to do so citi and b cycle staff and board members are in the process of developing a strategic master plan and we've identified a few potential scenarios moving forward and that we'd like to share with you tonight next slide the first scenario is for boulder bike share to continue to own and operate the the pedal bikes that are in service today while also deploying b cycle electric bikes under a cost revenue share model with the corporate headquarters of b cycle which is trek based out of wisconsin the second is scenario potential scenario is that they would operate a system owned by a private dockless mobility company under a cost revenue share agreement or as a contractor and then next slide please

[210:02] and uh the third scenario would be for boulder bike share to compete with other operators for contract to operate a system owned by the city county rtd or via the owning entity may purchase or take possession in exchange for the right to collect system revenue at this time staff doesn't recommend scenario number three as a viable option due to the financial responsibility of purchasing and operating new equipment especially in the time of copen 19 and significantly reduce funding and transportation particularly to our transit systems and then the fourth scenario here is boulder bike share would enter a partnership with the winner of the city's rfp request for proposal incorporating new technology agreeing on a constructive way to wind down the aging b cycle and transfer 8 000 plus active members to the new platform um at this time staff please number four is most likely the most viable path forward

[211:00] as it relies in the private sector provide new technology which is always evolving and who could also provide greater accessibility throughout boulder in a faster time frame given the city's the transportation department's latest financial reductions due to cover 19 the scenario makes the most financial sense at this time to align all three sectors private public and nonprofit and work toward a mutually agreeable strategy to achieve the city's micro mobility goals is our as our aim and this seems to have the most promise as of today but nonetheless we still have these are just a preview of potential scenarios and we need to con pleat the strategic planning process with b cycle and we'll be returning to council later this fall to share the results and hopefully a viable path forward for all parties next slide please dk if i could hold you up right there bob has a question okay bob you're on mute hey dk sorry to interrupt you that is

[212:00] pertinent to this point um so i so i understand that you're going to propose a 50 000 subsidy in the 2021 budget will which will be taken up here in a few weeks um and it sounds like you won't have an idea which of these four scenarios will occur until after we approve the budget in october is that a fair assumption quite likely um that is um that is a problem um at this point we we're pretty sure that we do not have um the money and transportation to go above and beyond the fifty thousand dollars that we currently have um allocated for b cycle okay um and so if we allocated the fifty thousand towards b cycle in the approved budget in october and then um your scenario four which you indicate is the most likely one occurs would we be able would we have to spend that whole 50 000 or is it possible that we would have some visibility before

[213:01] we actually spent the subsidy in 2021 about whether um there's a b cycle to subsidize i think if you let me continue the the presentation i'm going to talk about how we're going to wrap all this together but i think that is a potential option bob that we could um look at if and how we spend that fifty thousand dollars depending upon bringing on a new provider and what that time frame looks like nonetheless i think it's important that we do remember consider that investing in our in our local bike share is important to long-term success and it's really going to take that you know private public nonprofit partnership to make it work and so at least having that fifty thousand dollars available um for our micro mobility purposes and i think will be will be hooves in the long run so bob if i could i think the simplest answer to your question not saying not disagreeing with anything

[214:00] dk said is that yes we could choose not to spend that money even if it were allocated we could simply choose to spend it on something else okay well maybe we'll we'll revisit this when we get to the budget in september and october and you guys might have a little bit more guidance for us at that point in time absolutely thanks okay next slide please okay the the third part of these of the discussion tonight is to do a check-in with council uh regarding the the current e-school e-scooter moratorium um in march of 2020 staff was asked to bring a continued six-month moratorium on issuing business licenses to companies offering sharing scooters primarily because of covet 19. and data collection since then on safety and sustainability has been rather stagnant due to some of the issues we discussed earlier however staff still does not recommend

[215:01] including standing scooters as part of its shared micro mobility mobility program due to past safety problems but since the january 20th city council study session staff has investigated a new sit-down style of e-scooter uh these vehicles are relatively new and in operation in only a handful of cities um there is currently no substantive data though available at this time regarding their safety and sustainability apart from favorable statistics that have been provided by the operators themselves however the vehicle's componentry and other specifications indicate that these devices would be more durable and would handle variable pavement conditions more effectively while offering the rider a lower center of gravity staff recognizes that the transportation advisory board some council members and the boulder chamber are interested in experimenting with other forms of micro mobility and it's mainly due to the design of these vehicles that we feel comfortable experimenting with cdd scooters as part

[216:02] of the shared micro mobility program as we feel it's more of a calculated risk worth taking next slide please and just to provide a little better understanding tonight about what sets these uh vehicles apart from the the seated scooters apart from the stand-up scooters is looking at some of their design features including of course the seat which offers that lower center of gravity a larger wheel dynamic diameter which is better for variable pavement conditions a higher ground clearance if they were to hit a pothole and we understand that these have an anticipated longer lifespan so from a sustainability standpoint they seem to be a better choice next slide please and so we wanted to present just a few ordinance options for you tonight to get you thinking about what where you might like to go with the

[217:01] e-scooters and number one here is the indefinite prohibition against licensing businesses um offering shared e-scooters of all types number two is to discontinue the e-scooter moratorium altogether and allow the business licensing of businesses offering shared e-scooters of all types and then third is kind of a hybrid um which is the indefinite prohibition against licensing business businesses offering standing scooters with a caveat to offer shared seated e-scooters potentially in a designated area in preparation um of returning to city council later this fall some of your guidance tonight on if these are the right ordnance options would be great if these are the right ones or if there's more that you'd like to see we'd like to know next slide please okay and then to wrap all this together um

[218:00] uh here's transportation's uh seven steps to successfully developing a shared micro mobility program for the city of boulder um and so tonight we we hope that the the city council will adopt the updated doctor spectre licensing ordinance and then also we can get a little better site on uh which direction you'd like to go for the sheridan scooters um and then later the summer two will finalize the city manage manager rules component of the dockless ordinance and then work with b cycle to complete the strategic planning process and then this fall winter will return to city council for three items one is the e-scooter ordinance options and you pick one and then the regulation of human electric powered vehicles on streets and paths where can these human electric powered vehicles be allowed to operate there are certain ordinances that prevent include them from operating in certain locations so we want to visit that and make sure that the micro

[219:00] mobility program is consistent with local ordinances and then we'd also share the results of the b cycle strategic plan um process and then uh later to here we would develop oh following that i should say that that would that those three items right there would complete the policy work that we need to do in order to move forward with the development of the rfp guidelines and then we may release it and then go into the operator selection and contractual phase and then as anticipated by spring of 2021 we would be able to implement commence a new micro mobility shared program with the vehicles of your choice okay i it's time for council questions mark has a question i believe yeah um with respect to the the granting of effect a monopoly position to an operator

[220:01] is that to benefit them or to benefit the community it's to benefit both the community and the operator um if if you begin to if you introduce more than one operator then you're essentially digging into the profitability of the company to operate successfully within the city and so that used to happen quite a bit um when the organize when the micro mobility companies were having cash burn contests because they were going through their venture capital cash and they didn't really have any worries at the time about spending a lot of money because it was there to spend but a lot of that has changed now and that venture capital is um is drying up and so um having the market open to uh two or more companies um then digs into the viability of the organization's success i i guess i'm a little

[221:01] unclear by that i mean we would not protect a restaurant from competition the concept of protecting an operator that comes in under an rfp and granting the monopoly status is to me a little bit problematic um it's common with rfps to do this so this is the approach that we took with boulder b cycle in the very beginning to offer one contractor the ability to provide docked based bike share i understand your concerns though about the the monopoly piece but we do risk the potential of companies not applying for the rfp and or if they do and we award several licenses then um we could then lose them they would leave our market and so there is a lot of risk right now within the micro mobility industry in terms of the companies being able to be profitable and to stay within a

[222:01] community and we've seen them exit from different communities there's been a lot of shifting around and right now we feel that this is probably the best way to attract a company and then keep them here as well as for the community having having one platform is better than having multiple and my second question is the increase in the fleet from 150 to 500 was there a particular rationale for that or is it just a nice ground number i mean was it was there some yeah purposeful calculation that that led to 500 as opposed to 400 or 700. yes so well the 150 originally was um developed because we didn't want to inundate the community at the time with um these shared bikes being you know placed all over um we found that that number was also not financially viable for the companies to operate with that few of

[223:00] vehicles but 150 bicycles also throughout the city of boulder wouldn't have been enough to really provide the accessibility that we want to provide including gun bureau and so looking at best practices from around the country in cities our size 500 was a a good start that other cities had employed and and from there they were able to um ramp up the number of bikes depending upon how many rides per day they achieved and were those other cities of similar size to boulder they were yeah it's always hard to get you know directly you know the 110 000 population count but um very similar all right thank you great and i have bob i have your hand up is it do you have a question dude okay you're up and then mary i think mary was actually ahead of me okay great married

[224:01] i don't think so but i'll go ahead um thanks for the presentation dk um my first question is about the um dockless bikes and the locking does it allow for um locking only to bike racks or could a person lock them to a stop sign to other city signage um other you know a table um things like that or is it only allowed in a on a bike rack technically they the bike could be locked to any fixed object and then once you lock the bike it's registered as parked however through the education and through the app on the the micro mobility companies plus you say application mobile

[225:00] application they're encouraged to lock at a bike rack as opposed to a stop sign or a tree for example and whatnot so there's um more education on the side of where and how to operate the vehicle but technically the bicycle could be locked to any fixed object okay thank you um and then on the low income um cost it was set at the federal at or below the federal poverty level um what was the rationale behind setting it that low and so the exact um in terms of developing the social equity program there's more work we need to do um with our social equity team to determine what the um the appropriate pricing structure would be for that and that would be part of the city manager rules and development of the city management rules component um and so it would be that probably at

[226:00] the federal poverty level is there any reason why i couldn't mirror the the threshold for the income-based fare which is 185 fpo it absolutely could and that's great input um for us tonight to here in terms of um developing the final price pricing structure yeah that would be i think that would be a great way to um take advantage of people who have applied and have gotten the low income base fair then they could just show that and then immediately qualify so um and then my last question um on the options that you presented for the um the partnerships and the contracts um do would any of those pass on any kind of um savings to the end users um could you clarify your question again um so the the options there were i think

[227:02] like four options and the fourth one i think was the most likely oh yes the options with boulder um bike share potential scenarios moving forward right right would any of those if there were any kind of savings to be had would that be passed on to the end user um it's a good question um i would have to think about that further okay are you tonight sorry okay no problem um and that's all i have thank you thank you mary bob dk i had three questions um i saw in the memo that um your proposal with respect to a new dockless entrant would either increase or decrease that 500 bike allotment um based upon their rides per vehicle per day and i think you talked about increasing if they're averaging higher than two rides per vehicle per day and

[228:01] maybe decrease it if they're below one per day just so we can have some context around that can you share with us what um b cycle was doing and probably not drink cobia because that's unfair but do you have no off top your head what their your average rides per vehicle per day last year was for b cycle i don't have that information available right now bob that's a great question i can get back to you on that okay thanks kind of a related question do um so you know a couple years ago we we said well we would be willing to experiment with this with dockless um but no more than 150 bikes um and you know at the time we were debating it there were seems versus three or four companies lie lime and bird and so and so forth that all wanted to come in and and then we we made the limit 150 and we got crickets right no one came in um and so now we're proposing to increase that to 500 have we talked to people and but you also said that that industry is really really suffering right now have we talked to people in

[229:00] the industry do we have any idea if we issued an rfp for an exclusive um contract with 500 bikes whether we'd get any takers do you have any sense from the industry whether that's a sufficient number and that will actually have multiple bidders yes i've talked with uh two of two companies within the private sector that have expressed interest in operating in boulder with the on the regulations that we've provided okay great and then finally moving on to um the seated key scooters i know they're a relatively recent phenomenon do you have an idea i think we're going to at least i'm going to be continuing to be concerned about safety um i do understand that they may be safer than the types of stand-up scooters that we declined to allow um do you know what the rate of adoption is in those cities that have experienced c2d scooters that we could get some safety data i mean is this something that if we waited three or six months we're going to get lots of good safety data or is the rate of adoption slower than that and we would just we would have to be at the

[230:00] forefront of this so again the the companies themselves have provided some of their data on their safety data and it's looking a lot better than the standing use scooter companies and i think this is something that we would prepare and bring back as part of the ordinance options some additional information that we could find around the safety and sustainability of these devices so that you can make the wrong decision okay i would be more interested in safety data from the cities themselves okay very good thanks thank you great and i have no other hands up so i want to say thank you bk and and your coworkers for this great summary and presentation um my one question is gonna sound snarky but it's not um what is the difference between a seated e-scooter and an e-bike so i'm sure there's lots of flavors but is it that there's no pedal system and

[231:01] you don't pedal um you know and then i would ask an attendant question what's the difference between you know a seated e-scooter and the kinds of vehicles that are typically sold as as scooters so can you can you talk about how the e-scooter concept has evolved and how what differentiates it sure and so the e-scooter is different from an electric assist bicycle in that electric electric assist bicycle does have a a chain drive um it's uh you pedal and it powers the back wheel um and well and then and then the um the seated e-scooter basically just has a throttle that has foot pegs but no pedals that would function and so it goes by just pushing the button so to speak and there are versions of electric bikes these days which are sold as e-bikes which don't

[232:01] require pedaling right i think most of them you can pedal but not all of them require pedaling that's true the the class 2 e-bike while it does offer the um the pedal assist there's also an option to use a throttle in order for it to propel itself okay so i guess the only reason i'm asking the question is um is it is it the pedaling action the inability of seated e-scooters to have a pedaling action that that makes them distinct from class 2 e-bikes yeah i i would say that is um definitely a the most the most important characteristic that makes the distinction between the two vehicles um i would also say that e-bikes are built a little bit more robustly and the cdd scooters are a bit more small or a bit smaller in nature and

[233:00] while they i think they both have probably the same stopping power um the the design of the vehicle is just a bit smaller than the e-bike i would say okay very good i do not see any other questions um if there's no objection i would turn the public comment at this point okay i see no object objections so i will see if i can pull my list up okay so um i've got the list up sarah are we ready to go with um we are overcoming the timer right now okay very good and just in preparation we have six people so there will be three minutes allowed per um and the first three speakers will be lynn siegel mark gelband and judd valesky so lynn is up when you're ready sarah

[234:01] then you're on the air well just like to one day we are looking into all these expensive projects like the thing that the condos that were approved above above the janitorial service on pearl street you know all of this all of these projects all of this big bike stuff when we're in a freaking depression here there's a big pause here all the money that you're spending every day all of my tax dollars that you are spending is gonna really stretch out this depression a lot more than it needs to be why are we spending all of this first of all there's no transportation problem right now right because nobody's going anywhere so why all of this community cycles you know you can do something like in europe or somewhere where i know i'm on the wrong continent clearly but

[235:02] somewhere that's much more low profile than than all of this you know with just taking the tons of bikes i've been down a community cycle they just throw out tons of bikes all the time just refurbishing those bikes having community cycle the local group refurbished the bikes so what if people just take them and steal them just move them get them out in the society and you know as far as parking them somewhere and having them come back to the right place do community policing for that so it's unacceptable for people to stash their bike in the middle of the street when they're done using it um just more low profile type of an approach to this whole thing this is not rocket science here this is not like um you know it might be useful for a for a situation like this if you're going to do some motorized vehicles going out to

[236:01] gun barrel going from north to south boulder or something but not for regular bikes it doesn't make sense it's it's over expensive and in a virus now and with everything breaking down and with much less resources for everything you know homelessness rampant you know um um evictions um no jobs you know an immediate transfer transformation of the whole society from from lots of jobs to no jobs um and and how universal basic income is going to be accommodating that instead we've got you know twelve hundred dollars we throw out to people and unemployment comp there's not clearly you know and there's no hopes that this is gonna change november third no way so let's just be reasonable about how we're

[237:02] spending city funds and and bring it down a notch we don't have to build all this new stuff up and we don't have to have these huge companies developing this stuff thank you lynn thank you so next we have mark gelband who does not appear to be in the meeting if he joins the meeting we'll put him in at the end um so we have judd velesky karen hassan and e ori so judd you're up great thanks uh everyone and thanks tk for the uh the great update there uh jad volesky here boulder resident uh and prior founder and operator of a uh uh dockless uh bike share type program uh left that a couple of years ago but do have some experience in the arena as as was pointed out there's been a lot of evolution in this space uh obviously and

[238:00] i like the the recommendation for seated versus stand e-scooters uh for sure i think that's that's a a big safety positive one thing i think communities a few years ago and still today are overlooking is the parking dynamic of these things and and on device locks that allow you to lock to various bike racks or stop signs whatever you want it to be are helpful but if you go around small as well as large communities that have taken these types of dockless programs on you'll find the communities littered with these bikes whether they're self-locking or they have these independent locking mechanisms one one one thing we thought would not was not desirable i think has turned out to be desirable which was the actual dock itself

[239:00] it forced the user to corral and and place the transportation device back in a confined and defined location and what we had initially predicted as as being positive user behavior absolutely turned out not to be true at all whatsoever even with the on on device locking mechanisms people just wound up locking them locking the devices to themselves in the middle of the sidewalk and so i i would encourage everyone to consider the parking dynamic over the device itself i think the device itself is actually secondary it's where these things wind up at the end of the day and in general all over the u.s they wind up just littering the sidewalks and boulders in a highly constrained storage parking whether it's automobile

[240:01] or bicycle today highly constrained parking dynamic as it is and so i'd encourage us to [Music] be pursuing docked solutions that's my big thing is just the the parking dynamic and these things getting scattered all over the place so with focus there i'd love to see something like this in the system thanks thank you judd so next karen hassan eduare and andrea manical karen so i am not seeing karen hassan in the meeting okay great um edie and andrea menek out so is edie here i don't see edie in the meeting either i do believe andreas here okay let's move to andrea

[241:02] thank you can everybody hear me yes all right uh andrea menigo representing the boulder chamber at 2440 pearl street as many of you know improving workforce mobility and transportation choices in this community has been a key priority of the boulder chambers over the years we've engaged in collaborative efforts with the university the city county industry experts and other partners across the region 19 continues to present uncertainty about how our workforce commutes but what we've known in boulder is that we need to continue to meet the challenges head on through innovative solutions and providing a variety of ways that citizens and workers can make their trips not only to reduce future congestion on our roads but also to reduce the transportation expenses that they incur as we look across the landscape we're

[242:00] seeing a depleted regional transit agency we're seeing micro mobility companies falling day by day and we're seeing our transportation budgets tighten these conditions make it imperative that we seek to attract the type of providers that can creatively offer sustainable solutions to our mobility challenges we believe staff is doing just that with this ordinance we encourage flexibility in the regulations so that providers can be creative and responsive to the current market fluctuations and about what they can offer boulder the remaining providers have the first hand knowledge of what can be accomplished now and how to run these services through the partnerships the team at gobolder has established with the chamber the university btc b cycle and others we have confidence that the city staff understands the needs in the community and we can continue to collaboratively explore solutions to fit builders needs the chamber will continue to communicate

[243:00] what we understand about our workforce mobility challenges we'll continue to be a conduit for identifying private sector solutions and we will continue as a dedicated partner for developing uh the strategies to address our needs during this unique and challenging time thank you to all the staff working on this and for all your efforts to support finding these solutions great thank you andrea so with that i will bring this back to council and see if we have any discussion and perhaps move to emotion so i am seeing no hands up and um i think generally what that means is we might be ready to move to emotion is there anyone who would like to put a motion on the table um just as a formality the there is a suggested motion that staff has prepared

[244:00] on the second to the last slide if we can show that just album yes and it's on page 82 of our packet as well good thank you okay so i will jump in and put a motion out i move that we adopt emergency ordinance 83 98 amending title four um licenses and permits by amending chapter 20 to use in chapter 31.share and setting forth related details second very good we have a motion and a second um and i didn't see any uh suggested changes to what staff has put together um so mary i see your hand i do um well actually i guess the um the change

[245:00] in going from uh setting the low income rate from federal at or below federal poverty level to 185 fpl would be in the city manager rule so is it necessary for me to make an amendment no okay cool okay and mark i see your hand yeah um it's more in the way of a question and i'm going back to the comment of the earlier gentleman who cautioned against going dockless as opposed to docked what do we contemplate as the term of any agreement with a provider if we find that um we're suffering adverse consequences in terms of where these bikes are are left and and and parked how will we

[246:00] amend our policies um if if it becomes necessary to do so i mean are we going to be locked into a 10-year contract a five-year contract hi mark this is dk um we can divide we can create the contract between the city and the mic mobility provider for one year for two years for three years accordingly um and in terms of and i think you're referring to um parked bikes bikes parked um improperly yes okay and so we there is a caveat or a stipulation within the ordinance um that requires the vendor to provide an identifier on each bike and then the user or the complaint the person making the complaint would call the operator and excuse me yeah call the micro mobility company and then they have two hours then to remove

[247:00] the bike from its improper park location and then if the bike isn't parked then the city can incur a fine on that provider thank you and if i may just elaborate to within the city manager rules we have key performance indicators that we would examine on a quarterly basis and their customer service and response times improperly parked bikes or bikes that are not functioning is included in those performance metrics okay all right i think that gives some protection thank you okay and so debbie reminded me that we need to tidy up something from our last vote but before we go there let's finish this one up um if there's no further discussion there's a motion and the second and this is a roll call vote council remember wallach

[248:16] councilmember brockett friend yes joseph yes nagel aye swetnick yes motion passes unanimously very good and debbie how would you like to clean up our last vote um the previous vote was supposed to be a roll call vote and so if i recall correctly we had two votes one was five to three and so is it sufficient to name the three who voted against the measure i already pulled that so we don't really need to clean anything up i i took care of that so okay very good thank you

[249:01] debbie so thank you city council thank you agreement bill much appreciate keeping keeping moving on this even in the face of the headwinds we've got very good have a good evening thank you do we do we need to get provide guidance on scooters or is that or do we do that well we made the motion and i i wasn't sure maybe that's a question for staff staff do you need further guidance tonight on scooters well with the three ordinance options that we presented this evening we didn't hear any disagreement that those were not the right ones or if there were any additional ones in that case then we'll move forward with those three options okay it's fine okay okay thank you okay so um i believe that rachel had a process point that she wanted to bring up at this point

[250:01] rachel that yep that's true um before we look at the all night parking issue i wanted to see if we could listen to staff presentation and public hearing but then hold off on the discussion and vote for two weeks so that we could have the benefit of next week's homelessness um issues discussion i think that this ordinance could impact people who are living out of their vehicles and um i imagine that we will learn more next week about how kovid has impacted homelessness and i think we're also getting a recommendation from hrc and hab to look at safe parking so i just think it would be helpful if we had the benefit of next week's study session before we decide on this so my request would be to have the um presentations because the people are here tonight and then have the discussion and vote in two weeks if

[251:00] possible did that make sense do i need to make anything more formal well so i have a question um so if for staff i think this would be for tom what's the rationale behind addressing this matter um or somebody you may recall this is the end i think we've been here three or four times on this ordinance uh we've lopped off pieces of it we asked to do this because the municipal court found an ambiguity in the language of our parking ordinance and refused to allow us to enforce it so we rewrote the ordinance to accommodate that change so i would ask that you go forward with this and if you need to make changes you can make changes this is a long-standing policy all we're trying to do is clean it up and as i said i think we've prepared this

[252:00] and put it before council like three or four times now um it should be controversial there's something else that i'd like to add which um council may not be aware of we actually have another code section that's more on point to the issue that's being raised and that's section 563 which is unlawful use of vehicle as a residence so that's something that's actually directly on point to what you may have in mind this ordinance is really directed more towards parking related to trailers and you know commercial vehicles and that sort of thing so but what that's worth i thought i'd share that with you i appreciate the clarification i think i i asked at cac and was told that this would this could though directly impact people who are living in vehicles

[253:05] so i'll ask another question um the ordinance that we're addressing tonight um does it would it address vans and and vehicles so it's mainly aimed at trailers i think it includes rvs standard does it include vans it includes motorhomes trailers commercial vehicles um vans would not be included in this so okay so i have a fault i have a follow-up question to mary's question which is is it just towed rvs because there's two flavors of rvs right there's the fifth wheel the toad rv and then there's the

[254:02] self-powered rv so is this really focused on vehicles which detach from the motor tower it's both okay all right thank you okay so i i think rachel if you i'm not hearing a lot of response so i'm uh adam and then bob yeah just a process thing if we were to move it another week the only problem with that is it's supposed to be a study session and then we'd have to have a public hearing if i'm thinking correctly so that might complicate that doesn't mean we couldn't do it but just bring that up the other issue just to put this out there is that we're pretty jammed up on schedule going forward for the next couple of months so that would raise the i mean we're looking at a very long meeting

[255:00] for the 21st and then a um a pretty long hearing at the special meeting on the 28th so what it's worth delay here i'm not sure when we pick it back up um so um i have another question would it be possible to include the ordinance that sandra pointed out that is more on point um within the study session memos so that we have that in front of us as we have the study session next week and then also include this one perhaps and then we can look at them both and see if there needs to be any further changes um so my suggestion would be to go ahead with tonight's ordinance and then include it in the memo um as passed and then the include the other ordinance which is more on point

[256:00] um in the study session memo as well would that be possible well the study session memo has already been published oh okay we could do an addendum uh revise the memo online and publish something on hotline if that would be helpful that would work for me okay i'd be happy to do that okay i've got bob i was gonna make a similar suggestion uh first of course i think rachel makes a very good point um but but i think the ordinance before us actually goes beyond um you know sleeping in campers um and as sandra pointed out um we do have another ordinance so i was gonna make the same suggestion why don't we see if we can pass this tonight but then let's talk about um whether there are after we have our discussion at city session next week whether there are changes to what we do tonight or changes to the other ordinance that might come out of that maybe there'll be um an appetite for that or maybe there won't be and if there is an appetite for it the cac can then schedule um further

[257:03] adjustment to the ordinance that we might pass tonight okay okay so i i'm hearing what sounds like consensus on moving ahead with this tonight but including it in the uh study session discussion next week what i heard was including the ordinance that prohibits sleeping in cars and whatever we passed tonight and whatever i heard both so all right thank you for the qualification okay with that let's do the staff presentation all right great um i i do have a presentation tonight um and for the record this is sandra yana she's a deputy city attorney good evening council also on the call tonight is chris jones who's the deputy director of the community vitality and leo pelle

[258:02] parking services and enforcement supervisor all right next slide please so whoop it's not moving there we go okay perfect so the intent of this proposed ordinance 8402 is to provide clarity um to uh the public regarding time limits for allowing certain vehicles to park on on the street um it's necessary as tom mentioned earlier because of a municipal court ruling that found the time limits to be vague parking enforcement receives many complaints and requests for enforcement of this provision it's a recurring problem because trailer owners move their trailers up and down the street to avoid enforcement but it's still in the same vicinity of the neighborhood one of the arguments proposed by a defendant in a recent case

[259:00] was that he was not in violation because he was moving the trailer a few feet every day the code is intended to prevent individuals from using the street as a storage facility for their trailers and instead encourage use of private property off the street this prohibition is similar to what many hoas have in place through covenants next slide these are examples of the types of vehicles addressed by this code section the red trailer that you see is actually a shaving ice stand that the mo the owner would move a few feet each day but left on the street uh pretty much all of the winter months so these are just a few examples of what this code section addresses next slide so subsection b

[260:01] prohibits parking of certain vehicles on any street unless they fall within one of the listed exceptions and the exceptions are under b1 2 and 3. on this slide you can see it's highlighted number one it allows parking for a maximum of 48 consecutive hours so long as the vehicle is parked on the street frontage of the registered vehicle's owner next slide b2 is intended for contractors landscapers etc that are providing a service to the nearby homeowner and therefore allows more time a maximum of 72 hours next slide b3 provides the ability to request a permit if a greater length of time is required and it complements the existing right-of-way permit process that

[261:00] currently exists an example of three might be a contractor that is working on a longer bigger project for a homeowner that might need additional time beyond 72 hours next slide and lastly subsection c is intended to further clarify the issue related to the tolling of time by not allowing for the clark excuse me for the clock to restart if the vehicle moves to another location on the street next slide that's it okay very good thank you for the presentation very to the point much appreciated um so are there questions uh rachel um start my video back up yeah uh two i

[262:02] think one i just wanted to understand like let's say that i live in a big apartment complex or something like that where where would i be able to legally park that for 72 hours there's no like street frontage right there for me so as long as it's located uh directly on the street frontage so the the street that you know is either on one side or the other of the building then that should be okay and all those i guess just allow on street parking i don't know i i haven't paid attention to that like do all apartment like massive complexes have ample parking well yeah i don't know the answer to that i mean i think most apartment complexes do have their own parking um because i've lived in a number and i like the the spots that i would get like outside my apartment wouldn't fit a

[263:01] trailer so if i was relying on street parking sometimes are on busy streets without a lot of parking so just i guess my second question is did we run this per chance through our new equity tool i think we're maybe still trialing it but are we fairly certain that this wouldn't have negative impacts on um well the the current ordinance doesn't allow for any parking for more than 24 hours and so this is just providing an another additional time up to 48 hours um so long as there's some connection with um where the vehicle owner lives um rather than just having it on a street randomly throughout the city yeah i i it i unders think that we would want to make sure it's equitable

[264:00] that's i'm just wondering if we if we did if we were able to run it through the tool no we're just addressing the municipal court's ruling and trying to address just the vagueness of the tolling of time so okay okay any other questions great i think we should probably go to public comment in that case list okay so sarah are you ready to go i see the timer up i am i will note that it looks like the fourth person on the list is not in the meeting so i believe we have three speakers this evening okay very good and so the three speakers we have are riley mancuso darren o'connor and sean collins so we will start with riley mancusa

[265:04] hi um hello again council um i'm riley mancuso introduced myself earlier so um what i want to talk about tonight is um as a council member friend pointed out this is in fact a law that is so discriminatory towards people who are living in vehicles um because they cannot afford housing that it's almost specifically targeting them um so i want to read uh from a letter that the aclu sent when they threatened to sue the city of mountain view california known for being the headquarters of google and one of the most expensive cities in the united states where hundreds of people live in their cars now of course boulder is not nearly at this scale but our housing policies are pushing us in this way uh and if like mountain view we try to adopt what is functionally a ban on overnight parking

[266:01] um uh we will be um well i'll read what the aclu wrote an overnight oversized vehicle parking prohibition would make it impossible for people who reside in vehicles such as vans trailers and recreational vehicles to live anywhere in mountain view replace mountain view with boulder and all these things even though mountain view is unable to offer these residents indoor shelter space an overnight parking ban would therefore violate the state and federal constitutions because a ban would disproportionately deny housing to people with disabilities and likely people of color it would also violate the fair housing act in the americans with disabilities act so i really want the council to think long and hard as i've asked you in the past to think about how the laws that you're passing even when they don't explicitly have to do with race and class in fact have to do with race with disability with class and with all forms of marginalization so think about the actual impact that this law is going to

[267:01] have on some of the most vulnerable people in your city um think about the amount of stress that trying to sleep in a car while being constantly hassled living in fear of being ticketed and summoned to court um by police for sleeping and occupying a space i also want to point out that the way that the draft seems to be written uh it says no camper motorhome or trailer shall be parked on any street uh and then the only exceptions are for buy permit for workers or for the owner so i'm wondering you know if i'm a pers if i'm a tourist and i want to walk down pearl street and buy an expensive puzzle i can't park my rv on pine street for an hour uh that seems like a real flaw in the language but most importantly i digress think about the impact that this will have on unhoused residents and please make a decision that is not inhumane

[268:00] thank you thank you riley uh next we have darren o'connor sean collins and jennifer so i first want to just say that i second everything riley just shared about the desperate impact and and we you know supposedly have all these equity tools to pay attention to these kind of issues and policy changes and there's no sign of it being used here but i want to move on to the fact that that this ordinance is trying to solve a problem a a void for vagueness issue at the court on the existing law but then we're hearing from our city attorney and assistant sergey attorney that um you know to all the questions well we're solving that problem but how many more are we creating for example as riley pointed out no one can park an rv

[269:00] unless they own it and then they can park it in front of their house for a short amount of time so what if grandma and grandpa which i've had happen come visit in their rv and you live in an apartment and they park it on the street they don't they're the registered owner it's not their home they're parking in front of so you have immediately a right to travel problem with this law that you really ought to be thinking hard about and going back to the drawing board i know um tom carr is expressing frustration at having you know had to put this off several times and i can understand that frustration but if you draft a law that is this exclusionary and literally tells people that your family can't visit in their motor home you you've created more problems than you're solving so i don't have much more to say on that other than again you know

[270:01] riley was spot on that this has gross race and class issues that it impacts but it's it's also basically telling even people that we would normally you know if we admit that we don't want homeless people sleeping in vehicles period um and when we take that as a given this law is still exclusionary to just about anyone who would come and vacation in a motor home here or or a fifth wheel or anything like that unless they have a place to park it on their family's property and there's just so many places in boulder where that would not be the case so you've excluded family from visiting under those conditions thank you thank you darren um we have sean collins and jennifer soon sean hello my name is sean collins i live in boulder

[271:00] um i want to echo what um both riley and daryn said they make great points um one thing that i want to talk about is i think that the memo from staff is misleading it makes it seem like this is like a routine like like legal language change um really to keep up with current legal precedence it says um and from to fix it from being unconstitutionally vague but this is actually an expansion of police powers um in this cultural moment it's clear that people including me want you to divest from policing and invest in social services instead of reducing the scope of police powers like you should be doing you'd be increasing them with this change and as for the text of the change of the the ordinance change in subsection b it says that no camper motorhome or trailer should be parked to any street for more than 24 hours except as follows and i want to know that i want to know how camper motorhome is defined um some of the council members before this kind

[272:00] of after that point of like is a van count because you you can convert a van into a rv title but most people don't and so then those vans which are clearly rvs um wouldn't be affected and those are the more expensive ones that people aren't actually living in um but they're more for vacationing and for part one of subsection b um it says it so it restricts campers motorhomes and trailers except when located on a directly on a street frontage of a single family or multi-family dwelling the vehicle's registered owner for a consecutive period of 40 hours or less i think it's unnecessarily restrictive um it's inequitable and um apparently there's some equity tools that you could use um i didn't know about that but you should definitely use those um like the most obvious one is that not everybody has the private driveway to move their rv to um so i have three asks now um one is that since staff said that this isn't directed people living in their cars you could

[273:01] make this only applied to commercial vehicles and then you can like you talked about you can deal with the issue of people living in their cars at a later time um that way it doesn't unduly burden them the second ask is that you can right the way it's written is that the person can't move their car within the city limits at all um and that just seems ridiculous because um you're literally like forcing people out of the city at that point and boulder has a long history of exporting our housing issues to the suburbs the l towns in broomfield and this would be continuing that and finally my final ask is that um you do what rachel friend suggested and you delay this until you have your study session next week and talk about homelessness um especially the the point about how an rv couldn't park for an hour um seems ridiculous and seems like an obvious mistake of how the law is written thank you thank you sean and finally jenniferson

[274:06] so sarah do we have jennifer on the line you do bear with me for one moment sure just making sure okay should be cued up to speak now okay hello hello all right um i first i want to say that the this ordinance i feel is extremely discriminatory against blue collar small business individuals who are most likely the class of people to own a utility trailer for daily work purposes these people do much of the regular service work in our community and this ordinance is sending the clear message that boulder does not welcome them as part of our community to live here um as a community we all benefit from the services these small business owners provide um

[275:01] but we can't seem to accept them as part of our community without settling them with burdens to be able to stop them from being able to do their job um i don't understand why we want to make bolder less diverse than it already is i feel like it's unfair for the people that are in landscaping as well because so they can only park for a total of 72 hours and then never park again so are they not allowed to work in boulder again ever um environmentally storing your trailer in a different place then you live will increase the need to drive more to get your trailer causing more pollution and more traffic private storage is pretty scarce and expensive

[276:00] thus pushing people out of our city even more um the definition of campers just like the previous speakers said can be interpreted in many different ways um how are you guys going to determine if a camper how are you going to determine what a camper is are you going to include fans and i think that's all i have to say great thank you jennifer with that we will bring the public hearing to a close and bring this back to council [Music] i see junie's hand up thank you sam i just have a few questions and i wanted to start first by saying that i understand

[277:00] you know what some of the speakers discussed expressed over the fact that the law may be discriminatory against people without residence but i also understand the need to protect homeowners because people care about who's coming in and out of their neighborhoods and care about who their neighbors are i don't have kids but i can just imagine that people do care about these things but i'm also confused about the parking and the front edge road and i think i would like to ask um i would like to ask tom about um is there a place can we parse out the ordinance more where is there a place we can allow people to park maybe because i think one of the speaker mentioned on pearl street uh the business district because for me when i was thinking as to why and the purpose because it is true it is

[278:01] discriminatory but because of you know when we think of okay if people say okay we want to know who's coming in and out of our community but at the same time what can we do to have some level of equity or balance so that's my question and then i have another question um [Music] and i also understand that the extension is helpful for one group of people um so is there a way we can disconnect the home ownership to the parking so i guess that would probably undo the purpose somehow but to me i just think this is so one-sided is there a way we can make it more equitable and that's what i'm thinking um parking on pearl street or some other place for people because i just feel this is way too one-sided so judy i want to just push back a little the intent is not to keep people

[279:00] out of neighborhoods the challenge that we have is businesses who are running their businesses with vehicles who parked them in front of their homes and then um we we had we had a 24-hour limit neighbors would complain and then people would just move in an inch and say well it moved it's not in the same place so that's the problem we're trying to solve uh and i assume that people could in fact complain because they don't like an rv parked in front of their house although i'm not aware that that that we've seen a lot of those complaints the ones i've seen are mostly about commercial vehicles and so we could limit it to those um as somebody suggested we could make lots of changes um but so this is a policy consideration for council um it's unusual it's somewhat unusable to have an ordinance that's come before council several times and then have this level of debate so if you want to suggest changes we can make changes it's your ordinance and you shouldn't pass it unless you're comfortable with it but it's not intended as discriminatory and i don't believe it's applied in

[280:01] discriminatory manner okay um next we have adam and then mary thanks sam um my question it's not exactly a question it's just more of a statement um i noticed pretty much almost all the examples were some type of recreational vehicle not saying that that's the most complaints we get but um in that slide it showed mostly recreational vehicles and they were mostly commercial vehicles really yeah i thought i mean it was there was the shave ice truck sandra can you can we put that slide back up i mean i saw only the shave ice truck i don't have access to it sarah would have to do that i think it's probably it's a mix of both um and i don't know what the ratio is um you know we've got chris and leo that

[281:00] might be able to address that question if they want more i might count it six to two there but that's not my point my point being um one of the interesting things that covid has brought about is people living outside in their trailers uh because they're social distancing and that's a very specific reasonable thing in my mind that we wouldn't want to remove people from a situation of parking when they're actually trying to protect society at that moment so um i have a personal problem with the rv usage especially right in this moment so i might ask council to consider that part of it um maybe separating that yeah of course as sandra points out generally we charge the most specific charge and if there was someone were living in a in a car or rv outside there outside the house on the street that would violate the provision against living in a motor vehicle

[282:00] which you've asked to address next week and you can but we could certainly do that thank you mary sorry adam were you finished this is yeah i'll just say one more thing since i've had the floor real quick i i totally understand the shave ice truck there for nine months out of the year doesn't make much sense but it still doesn't feel exactly like we hit it in the nail on the head with this yet thank you mary actually i think chris jones wanted to respond chris did you want to say okay sorry chris jones deputy director of community vitality um we oversee the parking enforcement team and so they're the folks that that pour over the ordinances that you all approve um to determine how they should enforce these rules um so i just want to clarify for the team that the way they would interpret this um is overnight parking so if someone does come and park an rv on

[283:00] pearl street during the day to go shopping and that's their preferred vehicle um that is not an activity that would be ticketed um a 25 ticket um for first 48 hours of parking if they do stay overnight and our officers discover that the vehicle stayed overnight um or if there's a complaint that's what would trigger their use of this ordinance if the complaint has anything to do with someone living in the vehicle those those ordinances are not enforced by the parking enforcement team that gets referred to the police department i did also want to add that there are definitions in our code for camper trailer and motorhome so those issues are addressed as well very good thank you mary your hand is now down to me do you have a comment um i did i did it was still technically up

[284:02] um so one of the speakers said that um you could a vehicle could be parked um on the street for 72 hours than never again is that true i don't know not the way i would read the ordinance no okay um [Music] so again i guess well if i'll wait till we move to comments uh i i think we're kind of there so um given given that it's 11 o'clock i think uh this is we brought it back to council so you can make comments now if you'd like as well um so i think we should just pass this tonight um or go ahead and vote on it and if it doesn't pass it doesn't pass but i think we should go ahead and vote on it um and then as we spoke about earlier

[285:01] is to include both of these ordinances in the study session memo by addendum or however staff can get it done and um that in the interim that we if we have questions about each ordinance that we talk speak with the appropriate staff members to better understand them and and to consider what changes we might want to make and then have our conversation next um tuesday and make changes that we might want to make to one or both ordinances then um that way we're looking at it in a more holistic manner with the chance to consider what will be in front of us next week rather than right now to rachel's point is you know we'd be looking at it with that

[286:02] topic in mind so that's my proposal um [Music] and i'd like to make sure that it isn't being discriminatory but i can't tell right now because we don't have the other ordinance in front of us and i don't understand the um how the most specific ordinance is applied as sandra um mentioned and so i just think it makes a lot more sense to have a holistic conversation next week you mary rachel yeah i want to say i do understand um for the attorneys on the line how frustrating it must be to have this um lengthy discussion um and and i'm empathetic to that frustration um and i'm still concerned though just about um the equity of sort of somebody who's wealthy and maybe has a

[287:00] driveway that can fit eight cars versus somebody who's working class and has a trailer and if i'm understanding it correctly like let's say that i have a trailer for a landscape business and i want to take a week off and i don't have a driveway or street frontage like i can't uh i can't leave it on the street on my block right right in that scenario right the idea is that it goes into a storage facility because it's a business it's in a residential um neighborhood when it is a commercial more of a commercial vehicle yeah i get it i guess i just it seems like it's going to hit working class businesses harder than um wealthy business owners and and wealthy home owners um so i would like to see it run through the equity tool and i'm mindful that it sounds like what we're trying to do is take something that was 24 hours which was worse and raise it up

[288:01] to 72 hours which is better so i'm i'm that that's not lost on me it just seems like if we're doing it we would want to do it right and then not have to go revisit it and create more work for you so i would also like to offer that the language that allows a permit to be issued does open up the opportunity to work through some of our processes similar to the neighborhood permit parking program that we could explore options for folks that want to store these types of vehicles longer term we could work through our processes to create permits to allow that it would there would just be some charge for it we charge for a lot of different types of smaller vehicle parking in our higher demand neighborhoods and so this the way the ordinance has been written could possibly um open up that opportunity adam yeah sam um i did have one follow-up it wasn't really clear

[289:00] once your time is expired how long does the vehicle have to leave before it could be back in a similar place again is that specified anywhere no it isn't specified okay so so i i want to jump in here and point out just a couple of things that i've been thinking about as we get through currently you can't park a passenger vehicle on the street for more than 72 hours so for what it's worth the trailers aren't being treated much different than um other vehicles in the sense that there are limits being able to park any kind of a personal vehicle on a street frontage so let me ask and make sure i'm right about that chris isn't there a limit to private vehicles and how long they can be on the street correct there is a 72-hour limit

[290:00] got it and so this is not that out of line with kind of our current practice of regulating the amount of time that the public street parking areas can be used for any purpose in this case the commercial vehicles has kind of inspired it but the point being that if we want to talk about equity lenses and the differential impacts and things of that nature we're going to need to go probably beyond the trailers and rvs and talk about everything which is why i'm kind of inclined towards mary's suggestion which is go ahead and get this definitional problem solved and and put you know in into effect and then let's have a conversation holistically that talks about everything that we care about which really isn't just rvs um and i will say further that the way i read this is that if you want to park the trailer overnight on the street you can find a spot to do it but you're going to use it

[291:00] the next day for work you can go out pick up your trailer and and go and you won't be in violation of any law particularly if you come back and park it different part on the street so at least the way the 72 hour limit on personal vehicles is enforced is somebody comes by and chalks your vehicle tire and so if they see that the vehicle has not moved and the chalk mark is in the same spot after 72 hours then i think that's when a ticket can come out so um i i guess i'm pretty inclined to what mary has suggested which is the subject is a lot bigger than this small fix that the um the staff has brought to us so i i would see moving ahead with this but if and it's also a parking thing right it's enforced by parking staff and not police and so it is yet again different in the sense that the intention here is not that you're preventing people from

[292:02] living in a vehicle so much as you're dealing with the parking issues around public streets so i feel like you know there has to be some regulation about parking on public streets otherwise we end up with abandoned vehicles all up and down street frontages and and when do they get towed and how does that look so i guess it's my inclination to support mary's suggestion vote on this tonight one way or the other and then make sure it's included as a subject of questions and conversation of the study session so mark yeah i'm gonna support what you've said salmon and mary's suggestion uh i think it's a reasonable way of proceeding uh let's clear up the ambiguity in the statute today and we can have a more far-reaching conversation next week on larger topics okay um

[293:00] i don't see any other hands so this would be a good time for a motion so we can see if there's support or whatever the motion will be mary do you want to make a mushroom sure i just need to bring up the motion language um yeah and i see it on page 102 of the packet yeah there it is um all right um i move that we adopt ordnance 8402 amending section 7-624 all-night parking of commercial vehicle camper or motorhome or trailer prohibited brc 1981 and sitting forth related [Music]

[294:01] okay that's details is there a second second okay we have motion and the second is there any further discussion get my window up here i see no hands so debbie i think this is a roll call vote yes um mayor weaver aye councilmember yates yes young yes rocket friend no joseph yes nagel yes sweat click nay wall yes here the motion passes [Music] very good thank you staff for the presentation and

[295:00] uh we will be revisiting the larger subject next week at the earliest so okay let me pull up my script here so debbie um next on the agenda is matters from the city attorney which is an update update on the excel settlement discussion sam do you want to have unanimous consent to wave the rules and continue the meeting past 11 o'clock thank you uh yeah i i i'll ask for a motion to extend the meeting absolutely a second anyone opposed to extending the meeting seeing now that passes unanimously sarah do i have control [Music] actually i'm not seeing how to advance

[296:01] request control so would you go ahead and advance the slides sure happy to do so thank you sorry sir there aren't that many no worries i don't see puppies though no puppies so this is a a periodic report on the good negotiations we're having with excel sarah can you go to the next slide yeah so we've had 20 meetings from april 20th to through today uh bob sam and alice i believe have attended six meetings thus far um since april 17th there have been additional one to two meetings weeks for planning and debriefing um two weekly meetings for the team started on may 25th this week we had too many schedules we're go we're having two or three meetings each week can we go to the next slide so we've completed our community engagement process uh we had a fairly good turnout at the the four here meetings uh we had 248 total people 172 four unique individuals uh we had 84 88

[297:02] speakers 44 of them were unique individuals so some people spoke twice we got a wide range of comments uh we have a um we go to the next slide so comments about the franchise uh other agreements that we should have with engage in with excel uh how we should engage with the community uh the future of municipalization uh excel's role as a partner uh our team did a great job of taking notes those notes can be found at bouldercolorado.gov local power and then slash working with excel energy or if you just google excel negotiations local power it will come up um and so you can read detailed notes on what what the feedback we got which is extensive and which we have incorporated into our negotiating positions next slide so the key elements that we're still looking at are the carbon goals and we our our team has looked at them um

[298:02] that basically right that we have a lot of questions that we're still working through uh we'll have a more detailed report uh in this study session coming up um the distribution system planning uh we the issue there is how how certain we can be of the system planning that will have um undergrounding we're working that through we still have a lot of issues about information sharing what they'll tell us and when they'll tell us we have we have attention agreement on the right to terminate after five years um and then the biggest challenge for us is if we terminate after five years how do we structure it so that we uh have an ability to restart and that that termination after five years really the only enforcement mechanism we have to make sure that excel complies with the agreement um so these are challenges the negotiations are difficult um i would

[299:01] be reluctant to to to make any predictions one way or another about whether we'll be successful or not the challenge will be trying to get an agreement that council members will feel sufficiently comfortable to recommend to the community so we're still working at that and we'll continue to update day council as we go and that's the conclusion of my presentation thank you sarah you're good [Music] debbie is there a council discussion or is this simply a presentation and moving to the next issue uh i i believe it was just an update um let me check i didn't see any hands up when i looked last so i don't see any answer are there any questions absolutely uh mark has a question yeah uh just that's a quick question um

[300:01] uh without going into too much detail can you characterize the right to terminate after five years as um unconditional or is it the kind of thing that's going to lead to an immediate litigation it's unconditional as in in our current drafts okay i appreciate that thanks tom okay moving on to matters from the mayor and members of council we have um item the first item is review process for the city manager city attorney and the municipal judge great and i think uh mary are you good to go on this one yeah um real quickly um two points um one is that um there will be no evaluations for our three employees this year

[301:00] um for reasons of um budget reasons and um the extra workload due to um coved and um so we've we've had a conversation with sam and i have had a conversation with all three of our employees and um they're supportive of this and so that means that we will have some time between now and next year's evaluation to consider changes to the process um this is my first time being on this subcommittee but as i understand it the process could use improvements and so we will look to accomplish some improvements between now and then and we certainly welcome comments from from tom and jane and linda as to how we

[302:00] might be able to improve that and we'll be working with human resources staff to recommend a better process and so what i've just outlined is actually a recommendation from sam and i as the subcommittee and we just need to have the support of the rest of council in order to ratify it yeah and i'll just say i haven't been on this subcommittee that long either i've done two cycles of the evaluation and it was very difficult last year for a variety of reasons and in the process of speaking with our employees about this it is clear that the process hasn't worked very well on balance and so whether or not we use council members choose to accept our recommendation for no evaluations or we

[303:00] want to talk about that further that's fine but i will say from my perspective the process that we've been using in the past really needs a thorough review top to bottom and the um hr department is totally willing to support that over the next year so i've got two hands up i've got bob and rachel um so i um i understand that there may be some well i agree first of all that the process at least last year's process was not very good and and we need to improve upon it um and i also understand that there may be some constraints um in the hr department or others that might be administering the evaluations um i'm a little reluctant to have no evaluation however um and so i'd like to suggest that we have some form of evaluation some form of communication by council to those three employees about our thoughts on how things are going areas for improvement

[304:02] uh [Music] you know congratulations disappointments i i just don't want to go for 24 months without that type of formal feedback um this has nothing to do with salary adjustments this just has to do with feedback uh and i'm just wondering if we could put together something that maybe is quick and dirty where council members can weigh in you know it could be on a survey it could be open-ended questions that could be collected by somebody in hr um and shared with our um three employees with with um some delivery by the committee which i think is mary and sam but i i just i'm reluctant to have no evaluation at all this year um and i'd just be curious to see if the council members share that and rachel's hand was up and it went away and came back so i'm going to go to her next and then mark so rachel yeah i don't know why the hand went away so i put it back up um i'm obviously new to

[305:01] this uh and so one question is this has this been done before and i guess part two of that question i assume it's okay under the charter to not evaluate to the best of my knowledge there's no charter requirement to evaluate and um to the best of my knowledge in the time i've been on council we've always done an evaluation but the form has changed and the way the data is compiled and presented has changed over that time but i can't remember us in the past having done zero evaluation and i will add that in the past we haven't been in the kind of situation that we're in that we find ourselves in right now there's no doubt it's been a hell of a year and uh nothing's uh out of bounds in terms of of uh needing to be changed so i i don't disagree with that i just wondered if this is unprecedented

[306:00] and if there's something that requires us to give an annual evaluation i guess it's um i will say this that in our conversation with um with one of our employees they did comment that when they speak to their colleagues from other cities they're the only one that actually gets an annual evaluation when that what we do annually is a rare thing so um just conveying that information i appreciate it and and maybe my question is bigger like