July 14, 2020 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[10:00] foreign

[57:56] foreign foreign

[63:00] right additional firework display did take place over the iconic I4 Tower but members

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[68:13] foreign and as a function in our society a

[69:00] symbol and you're vital to democracy and if higher ed shrivels all Society suffers and we feel this is very much in line with what we're trying to achieve here and that is creating a balance we're part of a network of higher ed in our state that's really integral to the future of the state and the future of our young people and what we're trying to do is create that balance to create a plan that is as safe as we can create it we know we cannot completely eliminate the risk of covid but at the same time we're trying to sustain that contribution to the future of the state economically culturally Innovation and the education of our young people and basic research next slide please Sarah we're working on the next slide I think there we go so in order to do the health and safety plans we think this requires we have a long list of things to achieve

[70:01] and first you can see there is public health guidance compliance and so that's going to require a robust testing capability lots of PPE making sure that we've radically stepped up our cleaning protocols and supplies and that we have the way to manage our own contact tracing and containment process that also includes we've got to reduce the density on the campus so we're working on everything from living and dining to research facilities and how we teach and we'll talk about that and then we're intentionally rearranging the way we manage students on the campus so you used to get assigned to dorms in lots of different ways now you get assigned by what your your college is and what your study interests are so that we can get you with a cohort of students that hopefully you will take all of your classes with so that we can reduce your interactions across the campus at the same time we've done an overhaul of training and compliance requirements

[71:00] for faculty staff and students and at the same time we recognize we've got to be flexible we've got to be able to turn on a dime with these with the situation has evolves around us and also to allow our vulnerable and at-risk population to access education next please Sarah so this is the basics we are rearranging that physical environment and our academic operations to reduce that person-to-person infection contacts and then the standards distance face coverings and reducing our population density next please so two key elements we updated our own campus safety and policy on June 23rd which reflects the health ordinances that we see and then the student code of conduct was updated on the 25th which clearly reflects the health ordinances State County local and also our new policy and specifically calls out on face coverings and how

[72:00] they're to be utilized next please so testing capabilities in the spring we in the state didn't have much in the way of testing we didn't have contact tracing and we certainly didn't hadn't figured out our facilities how to do distancing or isolation so in the fall we have requirements for incoming students that are living on campus to provide a proof of a covid test five days before arrival or when they get to the campus we'll do both clinical and Rapid testing we're planning to do ongoing surveillance testing so that's pool testing where we can look at a community and see if there's any occurrence that requires more in-depth testing of that group and then we're going to be doing something with Wastewater on 20 of our buildings to also see if there's anything that would alert us to problems going on with the community in that building next please we will also provide on-campus testing for high-risk individuals that may be

[73:00] based on their role or contact so if you're in a role where you're coming into a contact with a lot of students all the time we may put you in for testing more often we're developing our Allen campus capability for doing this for students with symptoms and we're planning to offer faculty and staff testing when they've been identified at risk either through contact tracing or some activity they may have been involved in we will do additional monitoring to detect the emergence of infections so we're going to do a number of things obviously we're going to do wellness and Reporting and we're requiring that now with faculty staff and students that will be on a daily basis and then we're going to do some addition testing to high risk periods and you know what might be a high risk period it might be we had a particular Crush at move-in and we want to test that that group and make sure that nothing has happened there so it'll depend on locations and other things we'll make those judgments as we go and we're constantly looking for new

[74:01] testing capabilities fortunately we're not short of a few rocket scientists in this area which is a wonderful thing to have in our community and they are working feverishly on on solutions that can help us with testing and detection overall next please so we're also working on developing a contact tracing ability and we've trained a number of students in this and just one side here um in the most recent uptick in cases in mid-june um uh we had a real compliment from the county that said they could not have gotten through all the contact tracing they had to get completed in 24 hours if it had not been for the 50 percent that were done by our students so we're actually setting this up as an mou with Boulder County Public Health we will operate hand in glove with them and a lot of it will be our students and we're setting it up so they can actually get

[75:01] some credit for doing this work so that we're fully coordinated with them we're requiring students faculty and staff to complete these Health surveys I mentioned tell us what their health is like so if something's amiss we can follow up on the next steps that need to be taken and we have facilities that are designated for isolation and quarantine and we hope that these combined strategies are going to support our efforts to maintain the health and safety of the campus and therefore the community around us next please so equipment side and what are we doing in buildings um we have ordered quite a number as you can see reusable mass and also disposable masks so that we have those for all students faculty and staff and then the facilities team is working overtime to determine how we're going to do all our spacing what are we going to do in terms of of supplies for the buildings air filters for some of the buildings and then even plexiglass they can be used to divide people functionally say in the bursar's office

[76:00] or maybe it's even for a student who needs to practice clarinet and cannot keep his mask on next please so the key we think to this about keeping our campus healthy is also keeping the broader Community healthy we are all responsible for social distancing and we are responsible providing our community with masks and training those trainings are going to be required for all faculty and staff and they're going to cover all the requirements of what we expect students faculty and staff to adhere to and students are going to be required to do that before they arrive and there there are holds on their accounts if they haven't done it and then if each unit within the campus needs to do a complete risk assessment so if I have a teeny weeny little lab I may have a more difficult situation in terms of distancing with my researching students then if I have a bigger space and all of those things are being assessed with a plan being put forward for each

[77:00] next please so just to summarize for students who are in on-campus housing they have online training testing five days before arrival or once they arrive they are subject to all of our changes in policy and code of conduct and there are consequences for that and we're asked frequently about that how many strikes and they're out and those kinds of things so the consequences are going to range depending on the situation we find in that particular student we have a very great a wonderful group of student advising that looks at each case and works with each of the students so it can be everything from education restorative justice to the extreme cases where we may do an exclusion or a suspension mass will be provided for all on-campus students to cloth masks um we're going to do an extended move in so instead of doing doing it in two or three days it'll be spread out more over five so that we can have fewer people

[78:00] moving into the residences at one time we're going to have lower density within the residences and we're going to restrict who can come into the residences parents can come and help drop off but they can't just come visit your friend from the next dorm cannot just come visit you in your room um and then we're changing our dining so we have a new capability so students can order their meals online and pick them up or what they can come in for limited distance dining or outdoor dining next please so for off-campus students we're determining the testing requirements for those students and our overall capabilities we're going to incorporate any public health requirements for those students living off campus and particularly those that are arriving from geographical areas with increased covid infections so the policies and codes all that applies to you if you're living off campus just like it does if you live on campus and in fact COPD and BPD have been working with our student code of conduct

[79:01] and our off-campus housing office so that they can have a much closer reporting section um and response for the students so there's a desire to do education but it doesn't mean they can't send us a report and your new Chief Harold has instituted that process and in fact she and our chief were on the phone today to look at that process how it's working and how speedy it is so their goal is to get it down to we need those reports and we need them within 24 hours ideally so that's something that we've all committed to make happen so that we can give timely response to those reports in the neighborhood again to cloth mass for those students at well as well and testing is available for them on campus for any students showing symptoms or if they're part of something where we have contact traced and found that they've been exposed next please so the complexity of this plan is for 19

[80:01] different modes of operation and what that means is what are we doing with everything so there's extensive um information that has gone out to our faculty on how they can prepare their classes to be remote online all the time a combination what are the requirements so there are a lot of tools have been developed for them same thing for staff and of course students so it's everything from being completely online to all the way back to the through this hybrid thing that we're talking about for the fall all the way to back to normal and so those are going to be looked at and the data for that on a regular daily and weekly basis and provided to the chancellor so he can make decisions on this with a comprehensive set of recommendations from his health and safety experts based on key monitoring factors next please so you might ask what are those monitoring factors and Sarah if we can move to the next one

[81:05] so these are a little hard to see so I'll kind of read through them um we have a number of things we want to look at first there are external conditions so what what are the status of the current government orders um regarding everyone or higher ed in particular monitoring CDC and guidelines for institutions of higher ed we've got to monitor those and we are by the way in regular contact with our Care Group from AAU and also from Pac-12 we are regularly comparing notes and looking at Best Practices what's the increase in covid infection rate what is the status of local schools and our fellow higher institutions around the state on the campus we're going to look at what are the availability for face coverings do we have a shortage do we have what we need availability of PPE for our health and safety personnel so at wurtenberg in

[82:00] particular utilization rate of our campus contact tracing capability so if we could do 100 day or we are we at 20 or are we at 50 is that going up or down um quarantining how are we using our quarantining and isolation space and what's our utilization rate with our local Health Care Providers and then looking at our the effectiveness of our controls do they need to be changed that's one thing we're going to look at we're trying to reduce campus density to 45 percent of pre-covered levels we want to see how our health questionnaire completion rate is fairing um are we getting where are we getting outbreaks on campus are they singular in a dorm or do we see a cluster and how are we reacting and containing that and what are the number of warnings and violations that are being issued to students and where are we seeing that and how can we follow up promptly on those so that's pretty much it which takes us back to our last slide which is what are we trying to achieve

[83:01] and that is this tension and balance of trying to keep the community safe we know we can't eliminate everything but we want to do the finest job we can with the brains that we have behind this and help keep the state and our community competitive and a bright future for our young people and with that on we'll wrap it up and turn it over to questions which I think you'll mostly want to ask a pet great uh thank you so much Francis and Patrick for being here um first question is from Rachel hi Francis nice to virtually meet you as well um so I have a couple questions that are focused on I would say the off-campus housing situation um so it sounds like you've reduced density for on-campus living are there fewer students overall coming back into the community though I have a multi-part

[84:00] question that's probably part one let me answer part one and let me back up one step which is when Francis was talking about reducing density on campus um we're going to have close to normal cohorts within the residence Halls what we're trying to do is reduce the overall number of potentially infectious contacts to about 45 and that's done through a number of different modalities part of that is by reducing density within classrooms and buildings part of that's being done by social distancing and part of it's being done by physical measures whether it's Plexiglas or otherwise being able to control the physical environment but the density within the residence Halls is going to be pretty close to normal within a residence hall um and what we're really trying to do is

[85:00] prevent the number of times that you mix the deck and that's why there wouldn't be different uh there would be different cohorts and um that those people would largely take their classes together rather than be interspersed because what our epidemiologists are telling us it's not so much the density within a residence hall or in a single building for example it's the contacts that people have in the outside of those environments so I wanted to just make sure that was clear that we're not actually reducing the the number of students that much who are living on campus for off-campus students we're looking at um what our enrollments are going to be and enrollments are fairly normal um they're not completely aligned in one thing we've seen in particular is a drop in international enrollments but our overall enrollments seem to be fairly normal

[86:00] and that assumes that we don't have melt over the course of the summer and people who have confirmed decide that they're not going to attend so we think that the student population and the overall Community is going to be fairly close to normal okay um so in that case I I it concerns me to hear that we would only be testing students who are on campus because off-campus students um also I would think have have a decent chance of of spreading the virus to each other and you know could be um living in homes with a number of people and just to use my own family as an example so I've got a student at CU so he'll be coming from my home where my husband works in the ER and you know could certainly come back with covet at any time could take it to campus or could take it from campus and bring it into the home so it would it seems relevant that that the testing would also apply off campus so I'm just wondering what the rationale is for

[87:00] um not doing that uh so let me walk you through the testing ideas and so that you understand uh where that's coming from we are requiring all students coming into the residence Halls to be able to get tested because we have the ability to check them in um but we're also going to be working and we're going to have the ability to run up to 9 000 tests in the first week we're not just going to be limiting those to Residence halls but we're looking for other high-risk places whether that might be fraternity houses sorority houses other places so we can employ testing there as necessary the other thing that we're going to be doing is that we're going to be doing to another type of testing which is called batched surveillance testing a test is only good for the moment that it exists and that one of the things that we also want to be able to do is build ongoing testing capabilities not just on campus but in the community with those

[88:01] populations when we have reason to believe that there is a place where there could be risk so they off-campus students are part of our batched surveillance testing we've developed the capacity to run up to 900 pooled surveillance tests per week and then we're also going to be working on some of the other testing modalities that France has mentioned you may have seen that one of our researchers has been working on technology to be able to use saliva based tests which aren't as his face of his PCR test and wouldn't impose the same type of burden in the community so we're going to have multiple testing modalities we're not probably going to hit every student that comes on into the community but that we do have strategies that will Encompass the overall Community including off-campus students yeah just a little bit go ahead Francis I

[89:00] just want to say we're working on the capacity of the the test to run also and as Pat said other ways that we can test that don't necessarily rely on the current backlog that we see in the labs around the state yeah well I just stick with I think it would be helpful if we were testing all off-campus students who are coming in especially from other places but also also local and then my last question is in terms of quarantining if you have a student who's off campus say living with five other students can they quarantine in the sort of safe places on campus or the quarantine set-aside spots uh the answer is possibly and it would depend upon the situation if you have a student who's living off campus in a apartment with one other person that's probably not going to be somebody who we would say let's move them into uh

[90:00] reserve the quarantine setting because they're not different than another Community member on the other hand if we identify a student who is infected or potentially infected who's living here in a riskier environment that would be the type of student who would want to be able to move into isolation quarantine on campus so we're going to be balancing that based upon an assessment of the situation of the particular student who is potentially exposed we don't want to overwhelm the those facilities by potentially moving everybody in if they can effectively quarantine in place like another member of the community so we'd want to assess that on a case-by-case basis okay and that and that would that be the same thing with on campus if you're just living with one other person you also wouldn't quarantine um it depends I mean we're gonna look at it and then it depends on the living situation if that person for example we're in a dormitory that had a communal bathroom we would probably move them

[91:01] into an isolated space where if there is somebody who would be in uh contained housing unit that has a bathroom then that person's less necessary to move into a dedicated isolation quarantine space okay thanks thanks Rachel uh Folk's been a little bit of a technical um glitch so some of the hands that were raised got inadvertently lowered I have Aaron then Sam and then Mark if you're somebody other than those three people and you raise your hand just re-raise your hand please uh Aaron right uh Francis and Pat thanks so much for that presentation I appreciate the comprehensive approach that you all are taking um just follow up on a couple things that have been touched on briefly already Francis you mentioned about the testing and the backlog because we are hearing that testing at the state level is taking a week or more to be processed so what are you all going to do to to ensure that those tests are processed quickly uh We've entered into an arrangement

[92:00] Quest Laboratory we'll be providing our our testing capabilities and so we'll be working with them the other thing that we are going to be doing is as I just described is we're working on some of the rapid response tests which we can use for screening that's not a full PCR test which involves the nasal spot but we think that we're fairly close to having technology available that will allow us to do a rapid screen which would then allow us to be able to act more effectively and not be subject to the same delays and you'd be able to do that yourselves as an organization rather than relying on third parties correct yes okay and that's the beauty of maybe extending that to more off-campus if we're able to do that pretty good and so I'm hearing from like reading about other institutions across the country that are having a quarantine period for arriving students and it sounds like that's not an approach that you all are taking instead you're relying on testing kind of to make sure everybody stays safe is that set it fair to say um I think that's fair to say we are

[93:01] looking at whether or not if we had uh students who are arriving from localities that have a much higher incidence that that might be something we need to address but we don't have the capacity to have full quarantining in isolation for everyone who's arriving with on campus sure okay well I'll just sort of piggyback on Rachel's Point um you know this this does sound like a really thorough plan but the the not necessarily testing every student is something that does raise a concern I would say because of course you will have students coming in from all over the country including places where incidents are much higher than they are here um so you know to the extent that you can roll that testing out to every student that arrives rather than just on campus or as close as you can get I think us as elected officials and our citizens would um feel better about that more safe

[94:00] thanks Aaron Sam then Mark great thank you and thank you Francis and Patrick for being here it's uh great that you were able to arrange to give us this briefing on such short notice so two thumbs up for that um I just got back from a weekend spent around 10 college and high school age students and I can tell you that what I observed was that they don't seem to be concerned about the issue of over transmission amongst each other that have been more mass and all of them uh were pretty close to each other to the point of hugging from time to time and this is a natural thing for this age group right there's nothing no bad reflection on them it's their natural instinct and the way they've been raised however we're in a different time and so you know one of the experiences of college is getting to know new people and you know circulating kind of widely among different groups and so I think

[95:02] it's great to say that we did what Rachel and Aaron hoped for and tested everyone when they got here that's fantastic however um there's going to be Community spread and the the thing I'm most concerned about is how we both educate and then especially off campus monitor the behavior of folks House parties are one thing and we have a hook into the landlord there um if there's a report of overcrowding or too many people but I'm really concerned with what kind of message is going to be given to the students about this being an extraordinary time and the behaviors that are needed being extraordinary and I think the obvious response that you will get from many is We're Young and we are likely to to pass through an incident of covid-19 as if it's the flu or less and

[96:02] it's really about the other folks in the community and the concern that's being raised is how do we make sure that students don't revert to the behavior that is normative and normal in times that there's not a pandemic so I was just curious um have the university is going to approach the bulk of your students who are going to live off campus and I'm let's assume that house parties are dealt with and Residences are dealt with what about the bars what about you know all the other opportunities will you be offering Alternatives as well as education so just these kind of let our community know how you're going to look at the non-campus part of this equation yeah and that um an excellent question I I appreciate it so the first thing we do have to start with is um exactly what you described which is education we have developed covet

[97:01] modules that every single student has to take as a condition of their enrollment for the semester if they don't receive those educational modules which cover social distancing um proper Sanitation social distancing expectations how to behave in groups all of those type of things you can't register and there's a hold on your registration process but we can't treat this as a single moment in time we have to start with training we then also have to continually reinforce the message and we are going to be doing that through a number of communications we're also going to be enlisting cusg which is our Student Government representatives to be able to help us serve as Liaisons in working with our student population to remind them of the necessity of being able to engage in proper behaviors not

[98:03] surprisingly we have found that students are more receptive to those messages when they're being reinforced by other students on a continuous basis rather than coming from University administrators we'll be doing specific education and one of the things that was important for us was to modify the student code of conduct and to make students aware that there are consequences for their behaviors those consequences will apply both on and off campus as Francis mentioned a lot of times our first approach on those educational consequences or the consequences for violation of the student code of conduct we want to start with educational approaches we want to try to make people aware of their responsibilities as you may have seen when we did have the covet outbreak that broke out in the first couple weeks of June part of what Chancellor de Stefano

[99:00] communicated clearly is that their ability to be able to have the educational opportunities that they've said are important to them and that we're reflected in the slide that France has projected at the beginning talking about the importance of having education in person and not just having it be done remotely we know that's contingent upon their ability to be able to conform their conduct in ways that will allow the community to remain safe and we will continue you to reinforce that message we will con continue to also conduct surveillance testing and to that will be a constant reminder of the presence of the disease in the community and the consequences of not being able to maintain maintain it so we're going to be in the position where um we're going to have multivariate strategies for being able to do exactly what you described which is impressed upon them the

[100:00] contingency of us being able to return them to campus and to keep them on campus depends on their ability to be able to meet their expectations one thing I think is important is that I was looking at some survey data this week that really shows that notwithstanding The Experience where you had where some of your young people were in a group together as a whole young people first believe that covid is important that it is something that um is likely to get worse before it gets better and they have more um receptive attitudes towards things like social distancing wearing mass in lots of setting than a lot of other 20 and 30 year olds do so we need to tap into that those that inclination and get them to understand that that's not just

[101:00] an expectation when they're going to a store but it's also going to be an expectation when they're in class and when they're in social situations to be able to maintain the health of the community and I might just add Pat that we just met with our cusg leaders and they are working with our Communications team we're about to launch a whole campaign on campus reinforcing all of this and they are developing their own campaign to put out to students and they said they would love to come and talk to you guys at some point about how they're planning to approach students overall thank you those are great answers and I appreciate it we'd look forward to hosting CSG um and hearing what what the student government thinks about how to best manage the interaction between the students at CU and the rest of the the community and I had one other question which is I've been reading about some other uh universities and their plans and some of them have adopted hybrid modes where

[102:02] they're trying to reduce the number of in-person classes that students will attend um in order to reduce the density on campus so that you might have two day a week classes where students attend in person on Tuesdays and then on Thursdays they take it online and then vice versa for the other half of that class where they take it online on Tuesday and attend in person on Thursday so are those strategies something that you guys are considering yes we are we're in a hybrid model and quite simply we all would be unable to offer a full complement of in-person courses for example because we're going to have social distancing in the classroom we won't have the ability to offer the type of large lecture courses that we've previously had and so every student will have online learning there will be Opera

[103:02] occasions for students to have in-person learning but when we're returning students to campus we need to be very clear that it's not going to be the same experience that they might have had a year ago that this is going to be a situation where they're going to be learning through multiple modalities rather than just through in-person instruction and that not only reduces the density in the classroom and on campus it allows us to make sure that people can continue to advance towards their degrees and make academic progress at the same at the same time so we have to employ all those strategies very good thank you I have Mark and I don't have else with their hand on so if no one else has a question after Mark I'm going to jump in Patrick Francis uh first I wanted to thank you for what appears to be a very well thought out and comprehensive plan I know we all hope it's going to be successful

[104:01] but I have to commend you for what you have done and and the effort that you've made um with respect to my questions the first one was essentially asked by Sam so I don't want to repeat myself my second question is about the rapid screen test that that you're hoping to develop I assume if that proves to be successful it will be rolled out to the larger community um yeah we're currently in the process of trying to be able to develop that test and um that we know that it will be something that will be in demand not just on campus but I imagine and be valuable in lots of communities you think yes yeah what do you think good luck I hope you get it thank you uh Mary and then if no one else I don't know Mary I just have a very simple um thank you to provide to um Francis for um responding to my questions ahead

[105:02] of time thanks very much yeah you're welcome I just I um I just want to Echo um what comments were made by I think salmon and Rachel um you know we we get a lot of emails from our community I'm sure you do too um we all live in the same community and we have a lot of concern especially among uh residents on the hill um and we all know that more than half of the people who have tested positive in Boulder County are between the ages of 20 and 29 not all of them are University students but many of them probably are and um as as Sam reflected you know sometimes younger people don't always um understand risk I just read literally within the last 10 minutes received a text from my family that my three nephews who live together they're in their 20s in New Jersey have all been exposed and are being tested positive so um we um you know I think that you know oftentimes kids don't make good young people kids don't make good decisions and you know anecdotally I will tell you

[106:00] that you know whenever I'm downtown I see just a stream of of young people coming acrossing the 11th Street Bridge into downtown rarely amassed amongst them um and I know that's not something the university can control but obviously our education um efforts are not necessarily working if we have so many people who are exposed that are in their 20s and anecdotally we just see lots and lots of people coming from the hill to downtown without not not just carrying mass and not worrying I'm just not having mass at all and one program that I think has been pretty effective downtown is an ambassador program the downtown Boulder partnership has and so they have ambassadors who are wandering around downtown with masspawn of course but also a mask at the ready so that for those visitors to downtown who have forgotten to bring their Mass they're provided a Mass for free and I can't remember if you mentioned this in your your peer support part of your

[107:00] presentation Francis but if you haven't thought of it already I suggest that maybe one of the things that the student leaders could do is is have an ambassador program on the hill where they can walk up and down the hill with masks available as they see Pierce not wearing masks outside aside to offer them free and and also downtown I'm sure the downtown Boulder partnership would welcome students to join their Ambassador programs because in the evenings oftentimes a large percentage of the people that are downtown are students and so I think it's not it's not just paper and video education is actually on the ground education where you see someone without a mask and you walk up to them and say you you need to wear a mask here's a mask and I think that type of reinforcement is is better than forcing someone to watch a five minute video because 10 minutes later they've forgotten what they've been told but if if they're embarrassed by being asked to wear a mask um that's probably the last time that they'll not wear a mask one would hope so I love that idea Bob and I know that um Jeff Morris who's um has student

[108:01] ambassadors working for him in that off-campus student student housing Association um they would be interested in talking about that I love that idea and I love the idea of partnering with the downtown area sure just reach out to chip I'm sure you'd be happy to have student volunteers yes I sure would um I don't see any other hands up any other questions before we let Francis and Patrick go okay seeing none Francis and Patrick say one thing first of all we really really do appreciate this invitation because I think it's really important that we stay in close Communications this whole plan is developing daily um the capabilities that we have are developing daily we have some great Folks at our biosciences um departments that are helping us with a lot of the assessments and how we're going to go about this and we're hoping that we can be a big help to the community and eventually the state and some of these things so

[109:01] um the more we can talk about this the better I think so if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us thank you for having having us I really appreciate the opportunity and wish that uh I would have mentioned under different circumstances but I look forward to working with you in months to come together and have a beer yes well thank you so much for for being with us and presenting tonight and I and this was as much for the community as it was for Council and our staff and I know we have a lot of people who are watching this program tonight so thank you for getting the word out to our community about the plan the great plans you've got and perhaps we can have you back in uh six or eight weeks and have you give us a quick report on how the the beginning of the semester uh got off to a good start happy to do it great thank you thank you uh Jane I'm going to turn it back over to you for our second presentation on financial matters thank you Bob so the second presentation uh will be one that we had promised you

[110:00] a couple of weeks ago and Cheryl patelli our Chief Financial Officer will be presenting the current update on financial matters Cheryl thanks Jane evening Council um we do have a president a PowerPoint I'm not sure who's running that tonight I'm pulling it up right now okay thanks Sarah I appreciate it so um we're gonna have a an abbreviated presentation tonight compared to the ones you've seen the last few months but certainly if you have any questions along the way let us know I'll start off with a revenue update and really I'm going to focus mainly on the May sales and use tax results and then Carl will talk about our 2020 and 2021 and Beyond revenue forecast we just received an updated um modeling run from CU things didn't

[111:02] change uh but they there there were a few slight changes that we want to talk about tonight so looks like it [Music] so I'm not sure why that feedback is occurring um can you see the slides at this point I can see them but it's not allowing me to Advance okay I think I just got something that might you know it's still not allowing me so I think you might have to to run it would you like me to Advance the slide yeah that would be great for some reason it's not allowing me to do that so you can go two more slides please

[112:02] thanks Sarah so um a sales and use tax data again um May does include a partial reopening which is a little different from uh what you saw in April we although um we're saying processing is not complete the data or the word due June 20th so we do believe that the majority of the returns are full reflected in the numbers this evening and our as you can see in um related to our delinquencies they continue to improve since the covid pandemic began in March and April we saw many businesses deferring payments or wait waiting to see what federal stimulus money they would have and most of the delinquencies during that time were in eating places in storefront retail you can see in may we have about three percent of our taxpayers that have filed but not paid but certainly in the

[113:01] coming week weeks we do expect that number or that I'm sorry that percentage to decrease similarly uh to the march in April percentages that you see here next slide so this is that busy slide again that shows May um sales tax both month over month May which is in the seventh column there and then year to date May which includes um everything from January through May and it's important to note um that while we experience a significant amount of late payments in March and April the the month over month have been normalized or changed to reflect if we received a um April payment let's say at the end of uh June we actually put it in the April numbers we felt that that would be a better way to give you an Apples to

[114:01] Apples comparison year over year so the percentages that you see here might differ slightly from what you see in the revenue report on the web but that relates to the fact that we normalize these numbers and I I will talk about a few of these categories that the larger categories in the coming slides I do want to say something about computer related business sector the reason why that's up uh so much is related to some audits that we've uh we've completed so that audit revenue is reflected in these numbers that we're showing you tonight and I'll talk a little bit about eating and grocery in the upcoming slides but you can see the same type of categories retail Home Furnishings are all still down very much since covid began next slide

[115:05] thanks Sarah so uh this uh slide is along with the next few represent year to date amounts they don't represent month over month May it's year to date May and eating places represent 16 of our sales and use tax and like I talked about um last month we a lot of this relates to the fact that we are an incommuter and tourism community so because a lot of things have been canceled the Boulder Boulder Boulder Creek Fest CU commencement those types of cancellations very much affect our sales tax revenue especially in the eating places category next slide General retail continues to Trend downward year-to-date March we saw was up we

[116:02] talked about the online retailers we talked about um the stock up effect in March and year to date April is down even though we have the online retailers the these steep declines in brick and mortar have really offset any gains that we've gotten in that area I think it's slide number seven Sarah but you can go to slide eight summer stop share and get back to your slide in a moment Cheryl you I'm sorry what let me stop sharing and get back to you in a moment we're having a glitch here okay thanks Sarah [Music] so Bob if I might ask a question while

[117:02] we're waiting I'm looking at slide um there are pie charts Cheryl in many of the slides where you're breaking it down by um the the different types of sales tax and there's in the the pie chart says the wedge in the upper right what does that wedge represent that represents um the percentage of total sales and use tax that this category makes up so if Sarah can you go back two slides please thank you so in this eating Place example

[118:01] um that wedge represents about 16 of total sales and use tax collection that in the year 2019 that's what percentage eating place is represented thank you thanks okay can you go up two slides please Sarah so we're looking at Food Stores again food stores have outperformed what we expected a lot of that was the stock up also as a reminder it includes liquor stores which have done very well during the um pandemic and it's worth noting that we are still seeing gains although we had two uh closings in the year of Lucky's and Liquor Mart so um as you can see though the the increases are starting to become less and less um which is what we would expect because of that stock up effect in March

[119:01] next slide accommodations in short-term rental rentals um tourism is um almost non-existent so of course this area has been devastated by the lack of uh tourism in the economy so we are down nearly 60 percent from last year as of May and as I mentioned last month on the convention and visitors bureau has estimated a 4.3 million dollar drop in revenue for 2020 and they're still working on their 2021 but they um they have been using our numbers for now and will adjust accordingly in our um modeling to come so this is an area that we're going to continue to monitor but continue to expect large decreases over last year

[120:02] next slide so this chart shows a lot of the other different Revenue sources general fund Revenue in these areas for May down 52 to 100 percent year-to-date down 36 through 80 for general fund I do want to point out a couple bright spots um building permits and right-of-way permits so under the building permit Revenue the increase in May is tied to one very large high dollar value project that had several large permit payments that month and if you looked at the the heat map you also saw that construction use tax went up um in May and that was related to that same large project that occurred and then the right-of-way permit Revenue that increased it's tied to several different things one significant permit payment several permits for the city's

[121:02] fiber backbone project and then payment from a backlog in March and April so a lot of folks came in in May so that is a bright spot among the rest of the revenue for the city and then I have one final slide Sarah if you can before we move this is actually a new new slide that we've added to the presentation that I think is really interesting I will note it is sales tax revenue through April we were unable to get some of the communities May information at this point so that's why it's through April but um we looked at neighboring communities that post the reports and we also decided to include Fort Collins in Colorado Springs and as you can see the the performance of Boulder was really in line with Fort Collins in Colorado Springs in the smaller bedroom communities on this list generally fared

[122:00] better overall we think a lot of that at least for Boulder relates to our in commuter and tourism that that I discussed earlier longmont's kind of in the middle that that economy is increasing and getting larger food stores eating places General retail and lodging underperformed again in the city of Boulder again everything that we believe is because of the incommuter um and The Travelers spending the the lack of Travelers spending and that's all I have for the the May Revenue numbers do you have any questions before I turn it over to Cara Cheryl I've not seen any hands raised right now okay thank you okay thanks Cheryl and hopefully you all can hear me and good evening Council car Skinner Assistant Director of Finance so I'm going to cover if we can advance to

[123:01] the next slide please thank you the revenue forecasts and as Cheryl mentioned earlier we're doing a sort of abbreviated presentation tonight because the picture changed somewhat but not significantly so next slide so this is actually a repeat of a slide that we had in Our Deck last month and it's just a reminder that for sales and use tax CU is build it has built an econometric model for us so we are using that and we are largely using it for uh sales tax and vehicle use tax right now and we are taking it as a piece of information combined with information from our planning department with regard to construction use tax and then we are also using our conservative forecast for business use tags and then for other Revenue We are continuing to consult with experts within the city and outside the city to estimate those Revenue sources

[124:02] so next slide okay so this since we're not in presentation mode I was hoping to walk through this Slide line by line um I don't know Sarah if you think it might go but if not I can do it just through words but it is a lot so let me see if I can make it work just give me one more okay

[125:01] foreign that's fine it's not working we'll have to okay that's fine I'll try to talk talk through it so um first let me say that this is similar to the slide that CU has presented to you and it shows their total sales tax forecast um over the years 2020 through 2025.

[126:01] and as you recall they had three different levels high medium and low and the medium is the most likely and then the high and the low are the bounds around that most likely if you think of a you know their model uh generates um a range of results and you think of sort of like a bell curve in the the most likely is the medium and the high and the low are the bounds um and the color coding here is such that the lighter colors so the lighter green line and the light gray line and the lighter orangish line our last month's results and then the Bolder lines are what the new the new model run generated and so we kind of were focusing on the medium because that's the most likely result and what I think you can see for all three of these is that what happened with this most recent run is that 2020

[127:02] fell in every instance it fell to a lower value but then the trajectory improved and it improved even beginning in 2021. so each one of those darker lines is above the lighter line so the trajectory is better for altering instances so next slide so this is just a duplicate but it has this um oval on it to just draw your attention to 2020 and what I wanted to draw your attention to is that um it has dropped as I mentioned on the last slide a little bit and that it's also compressed so before the range was 11 million dollars and now the range is nine million dollars so as we move through the year we would expect that it's going to compress as we have more

[128:01] actual data to rely upon and we have fewer months that we're forecasting for the range of possibilities should tighten up and we're going to provide a little bit more detail with regard to 2020 on the next slide hmm so this um is similar to a slide we presented last month and I recognize there's a lot of data on this slide as well and I I promise we won't continue to add bars as we move along through the year um but I did want to just this one time add a few more so for we start from left to right the yellow on the left is the high bound that we saw last month and then the blue bar is the high of this month so it has fallen about four million dollars and again this is for 2020. so the most optimistic possible result has dropped a bit the next bar is the medium result or the most likely

[129:00] that we presented last month and if you recall when we discussed that last month we said it's slightly more optimistic than the scenario a which the city had presented back in April so last month the most likely was a little bit more optimistic than what we had thought before but then if you look to the right that blue bar now the medium is a little bit below on what we had thought in April so there's a little more pessimism to this um forecast than there was last month and even a little bit more pessimistic than what we saw back in April are those um 614s under the blue bar meant to be 714 as in today oh I'm so yes it is okay thanks that helps I apologize um 7 14. thank you for that and that is a mistake um so that is 7 14. so again similarly the the low um that we presented last month was a little bit higher than our

[130:02] scenario b or a more pessimistic and now we're really approaching that scenario B so we're sort of this month's iteration is sort of pushing us back toward what we thought in April I did have uh Joel Wagner and and the budget team and I had a number of conversations with CU over the last two weeks and and I talked to Brian again this morning and he uh shared that he thinks the number of things are happening clearly um we have more actual data or or um observed values as he would characterize them um and then a number of other forecast values have changed so the outlook for a number of the variables that they use in the model have changed so he thought of note for 2020 why this is pushed down is that the retail forecast the retail trade forecast has declined a

[131:00] little bit the real GDP forecast has declined a bit and so that those declines in outlooks are impacting the results for 2021 if you recall on on a previous slides looks a little more optimistic and that is largely because the retail Outlook has actually improved um as has the real GDP Outlook as well as the employment Outlook he said has improved a little bit so it's sort of mixed bag the I think the reality is is that the Outlook is that things maybe are hitting harder and more now and it's a little bit improved for the future outlook so next slide so um we decided to summarize a little bit more in this presentation since since it did not change significantly from last month we're still big picture

[132:02] remained in the same range of estimated Revenue shortfall when we started proposing ranges it was in the 30 to 40 million dollar and then we moved to the 25 to 42 million dollar range when CU built their model it actually broadened the range which I think reflects the uncertainty that we have in front of us and and now the range is sort of similar 27 to 43 million dollars so so same general range it just maybe um has shifted a little bit um so again we'll we'll keep a look keep an eye on this and monitor it uh but again in our conversations this morning with Brian he just also wanted to reiterate the um tremendous uncertainty that Still Remains but of course we do need to keep an eye on it and for 2021

[133:02] um we will have to land on a number for our budget but we will definitely have to be thinking about contingency plans um because of the uncertainty so then the next slide is just another reminder of the next steps that we have ahead of us we have another one of these Council Financial updates on August 11th um the and then the next four items on this timeline relates to the 2021 budget development process um the first important um thing on the timeline here is the CIP plan we'll go to the planning board and then we have our budget study session with you all on September 8th and then the the readings of the budget to follow and with that if you have any questions No Hands Up Now any questions for acara or Cheryl

[134:00] well I'm not seeing any hands um folks you must have done a really great job of presenting and no one has any uncertainty so other than uncertainty about the future um okay well thanks so much uh Cara and Cheryl for for that presentation we look forward to hearing back from you in about a month and then digging into the budget um in the late summer sounds great thank you thank you Gene I'm going to turn it back to you uh for our final uh presentation just want to remind council members this this presentation by Kurt is going to be a bit longer in the last two we had if you could try to hold your questions until the very end obviously if there's something that's super unclear on a on a slide um uh feel free to raise your hand or jump in uh for clarification purposes we can ask ask our questions at the very end uh and uh and then Kurt's gonna ask us some questions and then after we um we exhaust all of that we do have a very short kind of Part B of the presentation that um the council members asked for at

[135:00] a meeting uh last week or the week before I think will be put on by the legal department and um but let's get through all of the um presentation by Kurt first great thank you Bob and indeed the first presentation or the main presentation will be by Kurt fernhover and he is the director of Housing and Human Services so Kurt take it away thank you Jane and uh good evening Council um so before we start there was a uh um a video that we sent out today that was actually completed this morning by some of the volunteers at the covet Recovery Center as well as some of the folks at the county um Bob Yates asks it's because it is so short and so uh impactful as he thought that we show this first and then get onto the presentation so thank you

[136:03] yes [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

[137:01] difficulties I'll just know for others that that this was sent out on on hotline this afternoon so people can view it there as well um so Sarah can you bring up our um our presentation so um I want to First mention who's on the presentation with me um in case um the questions go beyond myself and my colleague Vicki Abner who's on on the uh on the presentation tonight also from the city I have uh Wendy Schwartz um Chief Harold um Allie Rhodes from Parks and Rec uh Steve Armstead from osmp judge cook um Charles Farrell from planning and lastly Greg harms from the uh the uh Boulder shelter

[138:01] before I start the presentation a couple of the council members um requested did I address one item uh you can probably keep the presentation up Sarah unless there's technical difficulties um but let me just start while you're doing that um so before we start I wanted to give a clarification to the community and Council regarding misinformation of the hab and HRC recommendation to council it is not uncommon that because of the timing of meetings a recommendation from a board or commission is not in the council memo present and it's presented in other ways prior to the Joint meeting of the HRC and Hab we met with the two chairs and indicated that because of the council member was completed and required to be submitted the next morning any recommendation that came up could be presented by the chairs directly to city council and that the council memo would have a link to the

[139:02] recorded meeting this was also discussed within that meeting this occurred and the chairs submitted their joint recommendation to you and we will present that in our slides this evening however you have seen that staff have been widely accused of blocking the HRC Hab recommendation even the opinion page in the Daily Camera on Sunday stated as if a fact that staff were negligent and Hindu and neglected to include this recommendation intentionally many have also referenced the Tipton reports I would indicate that the Tipton report describes psychological safety of staff when staff are falsely and publicly accused of actions this creates a lack of psychological safety for staff this occurs through the public through boards and commissions through opinion pages and sometimes by counsel members for the benefit of the council and the community I wanted to clearly communicate the

[140:02] circumstances related to The Joint recommendation thank you Sarah if you can move it on to the next slide so it only appears to be advancing if we're in presenter mode I apologize for that but I can get it to advance this way okay thank you Sarah well hopefully our text will be large enough uh for this so um this is our our first slide in our last slide these are the questions that

[141:02] you're we're going to be asking you I'll read through them now and then we'll address those at the end of the presentation as well does council have input into input on interventions that currently included in the homeless strategy including sanction encampments safe parking day shelter tiny homes or others does council have input on the changes to the homeless programs does council have input or feedback on the current balancing of housing resources among vulnerable populations does council have input on alignment of the homeless strategy programs with national evidence-based programs and best practices next slide so as we were thinking about this we've um we've had some new members join the council since we last um address some of these issues around homelessness I want to give just a very brief history of how we got here in the season of 2015 and 2016 there

[142:03] were many organizations working in Desperate programs providing services around homelessness there was very limited data collection around these services and how it the impact it had on individuals and the real Focus within the city was really on emergency shelter everything sort of evolved around that and demand for for severe weather shelter through boho increase and at the boulder shelter the number of turnaways that we had on a nightly basis increase each year until this until this season um with those challenges um city council directed um a working group to to work on this come up with a strategy we worked for for many months on this

[143:01] with the community as well as the service providers it was facilitated by the corporation for support of housing um that that um evolved into the strategy which we have today which was um approved by Council um almost three years ago it's still a relatively new um strategy that's evolving um but after that strategy was approved there are all there was also a collaboration that occurred between uh Boulder County in this in the city of Longmont and the housing authorities to really work together um as as a regional approach and these two things have really worked closely to guide the work um that we've been doing over the last three years a data system was created for the county by the county where all service providers use the status system it enables us to have things like dashboards that we didn't have before

[144:02] um it um it's the backbone for coordinated entry as well this also helps us understand the funding and coordinating our funding between inter agencies as well as maximizing that partnership to bring in new funding everything we did at that point the focus was aligning with the housing first strategy um and um really really focusing on Housing Solutions next slide Sarah I'm going to pass it to Vicki for the next two slides Vicki you may be muted I I was it my computer decided to be honoring I'm sorry good evening um we thought it might be helpful to review some of the key terms and the programs that are in the current system so starting with coordinated entry it's really the front door of our of our

[145:00] Boulder County system so it's where people come to get screened to get referred to different uh or particular programs depending on their ability to divert they can also be sent to our navigation program and our housing Focus shelter we do look at their Boulder County residency and some of the barriers such as disabling conditions at that time um excuse me diversion services are based on a national model and this is our newest program it started at the beginning of February and I will say that while it is based on a national model some models do vary in the populations that they serve so it is sort of hard to compare how the different programs are set together but with Diversion the goal is to have people not ever enter into our Sheltering system so if we can address someone's crisis through a small Financial contribution or a labor landlord negotiation it's going to be

[146:00] more effective in the long run and as this is an only option for some people who don't really have Bolder ties the most often use of this program is reunification with families or friends or support systems and I want to be clear that that's not just paying for a one-way ticket out of town the diversion Services Worker Works really closely with the client to and the connection on the other side to make sure that there is that connection so for example if somebody wanted to go to California because they heard it was a great opportunity but they didn't have a support system or anything set there the diversions are program would not support that um navigation differs from diversion in basically in its structure first there's Sheltering that's associated with the Case Management Services that are provided under this program and um as these are people who couldn't be diverted you start with diversion and if you can't be diverted you move to a

[147:01] different program um they need a little longer to to resolve their issues and so while reunification may still occur um navigation interventions range all over the place they can be um people who need help with security deposits while they're saving money to make that first rent month it could be ready to work or treatment programs or any other kind of different interventions that we can provide them um moving on to permanent housing um this is generally speaking housing that is safe decent and stable So within permanent housing there are two subsets of housing interventions that would fall under this primarily and that's going to be permanent Supportive Housing and Rapid rehousing permanent Supportive Housing is tailored to the most vulnerable or the most chronically homeless and it provides rental assistance with addition to really intensive Case Management Services

[148:01] the difference with a rapid re-housing program is that rapid rehousing is a limited a Time limited program and so the case management Focus for permanent Supportive Housing is all about being a good tenant and helping to achieve some life goals rapid rehousing case management is focused on self-sufficiency and making sure that they can support the rent once this assistant ends um one other note I would make about permanent housing is that HUD characterizes things like tents shelters or cars as places not meant for human habitation or shelters I should say and they are not considered permanent housing next slide please so this is somewhat of a complicated slide but one of the things we look at when we're looking at the types of Housing and the types of interventions that we want to provide people is meeting them where they are and figuring

[149:01] out where they need to be so if you look at the green boxes those are exit interventions as opposed to the purple boxes which are programs and services and as we move along from left to right on the spectrum of where somebody falls under homelessness our resource is going to be higher and our case management services are going to be more intensive and those are reflected in those blue bars covid has provided us some challenges and I want everybody to know that we have been planning all through this pandemic as to any kind of future activities that we need housing resources or program resources that we will require we've been working very closely with our state and Regional partners for additional funding and where any proposed changes that have been coming through either of those entities would disproportionately impact our homeless population we've been talking to them about ways that we can

[150:01] make that better tailored to Boulder um one of the challenges quite frankly is that our services that we've provided for our coveted population have worked um while we know that that could change on a dime right now the low number of people that we have had that have been sick or that are currently at high risk have meant that we don't have hundreds and hundreds of people in shelters or in hotels that are are at higher risk and that can be a challenge when we're talking about state or Regional responses to housing resources um we've already prioritized in our ongoing methods for set-asides and city city Boulder vouchers really towards people who are elderly or have some common coveted risk factors um one of the other areas that's warranting monitoring and planning considerations

[151:00] for people who are homeless following the economic upturns includes you know making sure that we understand that that's going to really primarily impact us at prevention diversion and navigation and there are already a lot of community resources that are out there to try to help people before they ever really get on this chart um which we'll talk about later in the presentation and we did uh increase our up we did increase our estimates for navigation Services because if there is somebody who moves from an eviction to homelessness in the adult system and they're likely to be moving towards a navigation program and I'm going to switch back over to Kurt at that point okay next slide please sir so I'm going to talk about some of the changes that have occurred this year and I'm going to go on to talk in particular about the changes that have happened

[152:00] um in in 2020 related to covid but in February there was some changes to our program which occurred we went from a one-month Residency program to a six-month Residency program for for housing programs and there was um concern and both in the city of Boulder as well as longmonts about resources being diverted um from people who were part of our community um and that they didn't have sometimes the same opportunities for um for assistance as those that were new to the community so we went through quite a a lengthy period of time to to consider that and and look at that through the um through our system the the diversion system as the diversion program as Vicki talked about was implemented right at

[153:02] the end of January or the first of February and so there's that also led to a reduction in navigation because navigation was the program that really um took all of those individuals who needed that service now we've um targeted into two different services this these certain it's I'd like to remind us that our these services are not just in Boulder but they're in longmonts as well and it the the decrease in navigation was really for um seems to be as of the result of three things one is the implementation of the diversion program one is the six-month presidency and one is the um the the number of months um in this spring where severe weather shelter was open um each night and um we saw that some individuals came out of services in

[154:00] order to just use severe weather shelter on the on the right you'll see our coordinated entry um in 2020 what it looks like from month to month and for the length of time of individuals who had ties to our community or not and how long they have been in our community so you'll see the the um the green which is the one month that's the largest number of individuals basically in every month that we run coordinated entry next slide so severe weather shelter one of the things we'll be discussing tonight is the the changes in severe weather shelter over this year in its location and the closing of 30th Street and what we're looking at here is the the reduction on a month by month basis at the North Boulder shelter of um

[155:00] individuals that are staying there and using beds um in the uh the housing Focus shelter and we've had a really aggressive push to get individuals housed and even through this this covet environment so you can see it ranges from negative three down to 37 reduction in the number of individuals needing beds at the shelter and this is comparing from um each month is comparing the the month um a year ago next slide so this is um one that Aaron Brockett requested in which we had prepared earlier really looking at the what the forecast looks like so I want to I first want to start with that gray bar that says Boulder shelter for the homeless building capacity and the reason is it's a it's a very wide

[156:00] bar is because it's a range and the range um is between 140 and 155 beds the boulder shelter has been meeting with public health and getting advice on what full capacity looks like how they can rearrange things and which beds should come and go so this is the range that they have right now so if you look at um June and July August those are um those are well June is is actual but those are projections based so the green is housing Focus shelter which is the main been the main components at the shelter you know that navigation moved over there a couple months ago that's in the in the orange the red is the covid recovery center and that will be running through through next spring and then you can see the

[157:02] blue which is severe weather shelter um which is probably the most critical aspect of this of this graph what it what it shows is um there would be capacity anywhere from 26 to 67 beds for a severe weather shelter um based on the month on top of that however we have a a trigger for hotels we've been using hotel rooms for the past about three and a half months for individuals that have been at high risk to potentially if they got coveted if they became covered positive they would they would struggle either because of age or health conditions so they've been taken out of the the congregate care system and put into hotels um that that isn't running currently um from from July forward and that can

[158:01] be triggered as the as the season or the covid situation changes and then on top of that you can see the the coveted Recovery Center so there's a there's a bit of um variance within this estimate the uh the blue represents what we believe is our sort of our worst case scenario on the number of beds available for severe weather shelter next slide so this is to show the activities and the changes that have occurred since the middle of March and there are many um the homeless system has been um in the changes to the Holman system have been ongoing um through conversations with our our regional team with the county and Longmont with public health and with the service providers so on the 16th of March the first thing that we implemented

[159:00] um was CDC guidelines for the shelters and that had an impact on both 30th Street and the North Boulder shelter in separating beds um navigation moved to the boulder shelter for the homeless for a period of time and then on four days later I think the 16th was on a Monday on that Friday the 20th the uh the coveted Recovery Center opened at the East Boulder Community Center and from that night forward until tonight um every homeless individual that accesses services in our County um goes through a screening um and they're if they if they screen with coveted symptoms they're immediately transported to the coveted Recovery Center um so then dates on a week and a half later um day Services were open to 30th Street um severe weather shelter um was no longer trigger triggered by

[160:01] weather it was open every evening we also started Distributing water both at 30th Street and at the uh the North Boulder shelter um and then um I was quite relieved that we were able to um appoint a manager for the covert Recovery Center um uh at that time as well Clinica on on the 10th so we've been open for all three weeks started testing individuals um at uh at the CRC and we also started providing thermometers on the 17th to the hot team so they could also start doing symptom testing um out in the field on the first of May um the uh the boulder shelter had a um a positive individual in the shelter and um they were concerned reached out to Public Health and they reduced their bed capacity to 90. um

[161:00] uh I also missed that there was a mass distribution uh that occurred um in April as well um then on the first of June um the boulder shelter for the homeless um started opening seven days a week to provide services for any homeless individual in our community for showers and breakfast this is a result or many of these steps are a result of having many of our buildings and services closed in the city navigation transitioned to the boulder shelter on that day um ultraselter capacity was increased to a hundred on the um on the 12th of June we moved the covet Recovery Center uh to the Mount Calvary the former Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in South Boulder that was to enable the the rec center to start opening up and using that facility it's planned for that to be open until

[162:00] March next year and it's owned by Boulder housing partners um and then on the the 22nd of June um through coordination with public health we started testing a process for testing every homeless individual um uh that enters into services or offering that testing to them I I believe we've tested about 120 individuals um in in Boulder they're now testing in longmonts as well um the good news through all of these steps and interventions is that we did not have one individual who tested positive or asymptomatic we were quite relieved by that um by that outcome so over the next couple of months um we're going to be monitoring the shelter needs um uh prioritizing permanent Supportive Housing placements that's really our our strong push right now

[163:00] and um ensuring that the covid recovery center is is ready for new positives that may come into the system we will continue to screen individuals on a daily basis to ensure that they stay out of congregate care next slide so this is a um a a table which shows um the the different programs and the number of individuals that we're using um overnight shelter and you'll see at the bottom is the red The covid Recovery Center it doesn't include individuals that came from longmonts and then housing Focus shelter you can see there's a a downward Trend in that and those are individuals staying at the boulder shelter um older navigation in the uh in the purple um and you know that's ticked back up in

[164:00] in June um which were um I'm pleased to see um there's there's overflow and diversion those are individuals that would have gone from 30th Street to the shelter for capacity reasons severe weather shelter you can see that that shut down at the end of May and then on top is the yellow which is our hotels so this will give you a rough idea of sort of the breakouts um of how these various programs fit into the various bed capacity within the city next slide so a little overview on the CRC residency and results um and uh this this was a program that we um opened very quickly it opened seven days after we um put forward the idea

[165:00] um and um the the the initiative was really to get ahead of the of covid within this community which we really felt was at risk um so some of the things that have occurred we've provided assistance to to other cities as well we've had a number of front-range cities that have visited the CRC they that was primarily in the first month when Paris communities were trying to figure out what to do the state department of of housing was listed as a as a best practice and the CDC did a tour of the facility and they also had us review um their policies from this type of service that was done about a month ago we've had at the point that we started testing we've had eight people test positive five of those were from Health Facilities over 4 500 hours of volunteer hours

[166:00] so so look at the impact of of of this intervention I think it's important to to realize that the city of Denver if we use that as a comparison has six and a half times more homeless individuals or uh in their in their city than we do in Boulder and they have 57 times more positive homeless individuals um and many of those have passed away as well um so I think it's a um it's a a great data point to look at the efforts of bridge house the shelter our shelters in Longmont um and and the CRC next slide and I will let Vicky take over from this point so um when we start talking about how the city addresses homelessness it really runs across several City budgets includes departments such as Parks and

[167:01] Recreation Municipal Court open space and Mountain Parks police and transportation um but if you look specifically at the housing and Human Services budget we put in about four million dollars annually um to address the business needs and the adult homelessness Society it's a little over 2 million and that breaks out almost half and half between service and supplies and housing um this also does these numbers also don't include any kind of uh Staffing costs um the affordable housing that has been dedicated for permanent Supportive Housing in 2020 really ratcheted up and we're estimating that at approximately 1.2 million dollars there's an additional eight hundred thousand dollars that goes towards family or youth homelessness or and or prevention one of the other important aspects of our budget is that it's very much

[168:00] leveraged with uh Regional Partners in the city of Longmont so that we can really effectively address any needs so for example our local housing authorities decided to set aside 20 of all affordable housing that could be used for permanent Supportive Housing and we were able to match that rental assistance with a case manager provided through the samsa Grant and samsa stands for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that Grant is actually administered by Boulder County and so that was able to be mixed in and that provides us more opportunities for vouchers another example would be where our local permanent Supportive Housing funding that the council approved in this last budget can help us Target some people that maybe don't rise to the top of the seven County Regional um prioritization for permanent Supportive

[169:01] Housing and that is really important because then it lets us really meet the needs of some of the people who are very vulnerable in our community but maybe not quite as vulnerable and we can really be strategic on how we share those resources and how we make everything work the best it can um I I will say that on the budget side um you know it does not include things like our the numbers I showed like as I mentioned are only for housing and Human Services so this doesn't include the one and a half people that are dedicated at the municipal court for homeless navigation or the two-person homeless Outreach team in the in the police department um or any of the expenses that go with trash or hazardous material next slide please so um with severe weather shelter

[170:00] um as you're very much aware you adopted at the end of January um to have severe weather shelter run every night regardless of weather up through March 31st and then because of covid it was extended through May 31st for every night Sheltering for the upcoming season we are recommending a return to weather related triggers um really this is because our two factors one is budgeting and resourcing but the other is really about the the need to maintain our resourcing to ensure that we have something that is sustainable and is able to continue and at the same time helping people either self-resolve or move towards one of our programs as you can see from the chart on the right a high number of people who use the severe weather shelter are newer to the community um and I say that it may not be as clear

[171:00] as possible on this chart for you to make that connection um so I'll try to talk through that between January 1st 2019 and May 31st 2020 about 53 percent of the people who used our severe weather shelter actually had engaged with were new members of our coordinated entry group as we'll as we've seen in other slides um two-thirds to 75 percent of the people who come through CE during 2019 um were people who are newer to the community another important note about this particular group of people who did go through CE that's a um they were on almost to a one it's 91 percent of them were referred to one of the two Boulder shelters an alliance here of those being people who referred to back to home referrals keep in mind these are referrals it does not reflect

[172:01] whether people actually use those servers or not um the median night usage was only four nights and while there are some people who use severe weather shelter for many nights the vast majority of them only use this space periodically as I mentioned budget can't is a constraint in order to run severe weather shelter at the 38th Street location to put that back into place we estimate that would be somewhere between 500 and 600 000 based on our lease costs and the cost that it would take to staff and run that facility um as we've shown earlier bsh can hold somewhere between 25 and 50 people per night running severe weather shelter at their location um I do have a I do need to point out that that is a reduction from this past season next slide

[173:02] I mentioned a couple times that our municipal court and our homeless Outreach teams are very important members of our approach to ending homelessness and the municipal court and the police homeless Outreach team work with some of the most challenging clients these are people who are sex offenders significant substance abusers people who have severe mental health conditions and people who have frequent incarceration um even as they are incredibly challenging people to work with our Municipal Court team and our hot team who work together on some of these really challenging cases have really been able to push the needle on some of the people who are some of the highest users of our judicial system so the chart on the right will show you that there were 84 people that the Municipal Court navigation program has have helped assist with housing and assist with

[174:01] housing sounds a little weaker from what they actually do they're very involved in making sure that people make it all the way through that process and in some cases but for those two teams of people these people would not be able to successfully house another important piece of that is that over half of the people that they did assist with housing are people that are considered high utilizers of the municipal court system are basically people who have more than 20 cases um in to their credit um the the challenges still exist um we'll talk a little bit later about meth addiction and criminal histories and how those can be barriers to getting people into housing so we are still working through different responses and making sure that we have different ways to make sure that we can accommodate those needs um the other thing I would say is that our hot team or our homeless Outreach

[175:00] team have a really strong relationships with a lot of the people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness and they have been very instrumental in moving that needle they're non-enforcement but there are certain activities that they provide that being part of the police department actually helps them do their work with this with high utilizers so that justice system um one of the really important pieces is that through their efforts we actually help keep people out of the court system next slide one of the things that we wanted to look at was the um comparison of how we are doing as a system so when you try to Benchmark this becomes particularly difficult because there are few cities that actually report on their exit rates or their program successes as as Kurt mentioned at the very beginning of this presentation this was one of the

[176:00] benefits we had of setting up the Boulder County connect system through the Boulder County as part of the HSBC but there are a few communities that do measure and report on this information and so what we have found at a very um low level of information unfortunately cities like Santa Cruz California are housing about 11 of their active homeless population and the county that contains Ann Arbor Michigan is running at about 20 percent one of the things that shows that we are a or HSBC is really a learning system and we're trying to figure out how to correctly resource is the fact that a comparison of the people coming into our system and the people coming out of our system our our rate for getting people out of the homeless system is actually increasing as the years go by so we've

[177:00] moved from 15 of the first year of HSBC to 28 percent in 2019 and so far January through April we're running at about 33 percent next slide so specifically looking at exits we spend a lot of time talking about permanent Supportive Housing and this is really because it's the most intensive resource and quite frankly the most expensive resource um but that's not to say that there aren't other types of exes to homelessness or from homelessness so we break them in Broad categories housing reunification referral to other programs or treatment and then we do leave diversion as its own separate category and that is really a a function it can be housing it can be

[178:00] reunification but because it is a specific program we do keep it separate so as you can see even with covid we've had some pretty good responses on our homelessness throughout the different types um I will say that um housing is not just psh in this chart so the blue bar includes everything from permanent Supportive Housing to Rapid rehousing one-time assistance short-term Assistance or any of those things that relate to somebody being able to obtain housing and some people are referred to treatment programs when that's needed and those can include detoxification or long-term psychiatric help next slide so what we tried to show here is really how we offer our systems through a continuous a Continuum of both

[179:00] Boulder County residency but also their level of Engagement so if somebody is um disengaged then it is going to be incredibly difficult to help them achieve an exit from homelessness and so really a lot of effort goes into moving people from the right hand of this chart to the left hand of this chart and that includes efforts from the homeless Outreach team other types of Outreach that are out there in the community our Sheltering systems our Municipal Court Navigator and then to some extent our severe weather shelter while it is used by people who are both engaged and disengaged generally these are people who are not engaged with our service system so whenever we have the opportunity and somebody does qualify we want to try to move them over to and encourage them to work with the different services that we provide obviously somebody who has been in

[180:01] Boulder County for a long time and is very willing and able to work on solving their problem and having and getting help there are a lot of different options that are open to them depending on what their needs are and those are all the purple bubbles listed in the top left hand corner of this chart um people who do not have ties to Boulder County obviously resourcing is a little bit more limited um and however if you are engaged and willing to work with us then we do have diversion services that are available and some Outreach Services that we can talk we will talk about in a minute um that are encouraging to help you figure out how to connect to whatever resources you may need for example Mental Health Services or some other non-sheltering type services next slide so uh I think we all know that

[181:03] homelessness is ongoing and evolving and it is not a perfect world and while we've made great strides there are still some areas that are challenging for us and there are some areas that we're looking at as areas of activity or things that we're investigating so um we are monitoring all of the changes that we've made today or that we're that we've talked about that we have made and looking at have they worked what needs to be tweaked and moving forward from there um one of the core components of the HSB system is that we can collect coordinated data and we can work collaboratively to make those adjustments based on that data and that evidence and we'll continue to focus strongly on creating housing opportunities and really that's the Bedrock of our success is what sets us apart from other communities is that collaboration and that working together with um people who bring a lot of experience

[182:00] into the into the mix um in addition we've highlighted a few ongoing challenges that we're working with our partners on the right housing opportunities for people with meth addiction this is extremely challenging both from a housing standpoint and a treatment perspective we're looking at increasing the level of data sharing across our organizations to impact our housing for high system utilizers so not just our justice system but also hospitals jails veteran services law enforcement and other community impacts We are continuing to address a campus through increased departmental coordination and we're building on the successful work we've done with it so far with our CRC and our screening process is to make sure that we're keeping people safe during the pandemic as well as planning for their housing and Sheltering after the pandemic next slide so one of the things I mentioned is a major challenge is substance abuse or

[183:00] substance use and addiction so addiction and mental health are certainly correlated with homelessness and can create challenges as we work to exit people through homelessness as with many things covet is creating some challenges there and uh so many of the services that are currently provided in a system have moved to an online or Telehealth option um it's not optimal they've made it work the best they can and this is slowly reverting back to in-person services most challenging aspect of mental health because there aren't any there aren't any tested treatment options and meth usage is in multi-family residences create a broader public health problem and therefore our landlords are not easily going to allow people with active addictions or significant criminal history related to math into their Apartments so HSBC or Housing Solutions for Boulder

[184:01] County has really been exploring some housing specific for people with meth addictions and they've been in conversations with the successful non-profit in Denver to see how we can maybe bring some of those types of services into Boulder successfully one of the other things I wanted to comment on is The Edge program The Edge program is a partnership between the police department and the mental health partners and mental health professionals assist with on-site Mental Health crisis situations um basically an edge encounter is when there's a police officer and the client agrees to the help and a co-responder for mental health joins the conversation to try to de-escalate the crisis and one thing that's important to note is that edge is not a homelessness service it's a mental health crisis service in fact between January and July of 2020 um obviously July is not finished yet so that would be a to-date number uh 47 of those encounters have occurred in a

[185:02] residence of a client so the other there's a handful of other people that are not in these two categories but then another 42 percent of those are just listed as other places of service and that may or may not mean that they are without a house next slide please so kind of Switching gears and starting to talk about how we evaluate kinds of system changes that need to occur the core guiding goal of HSBC is housing and that's part of a national strategy called housing first and housing Force doesn't mean housing only but it does mean that you focus on getting a person into housing as quickly as possible and deal with their other issues after you get them housed you're not trying to solve their drug problem before they get into housing and you're not trying to wait till they get a job um because of all of these problems are certainly more manageable once you have a stable housing

[186:01] so when we're in HSBC we look at new programs and other changes that we need to make and we really look hard to see how we're going to how each of those changes would help people further into getting into housing another thing we look at is how does it align with the city's overall homelessness strategy and HSBC goals we look at how the changes align with data and evidence in the community and nationally we really want to invest in things that have evidence that supports how they'll work make sense of what trends we're seeing um anything that we can look at for benchmarking against National best practices and I will say that our data is not perfect but it is better than we had what we used to have and certainly better than what most communities have um the other thing we want to look at is are changes cost effective when we look at the results we want to see and where

[187:01] where the Innovations fit into priorities are they going to be reasonable if we're spending money on something we're going to make sure that that is going to make those overall goals in a reasonable and responsible manner and then finally what we want to do is um we're not going to be able to solve homelessness for everybody that may want to come to Boulder and so we have to really look at how we prioritize services and housing for those people who are currently living in Boulder County and we do want to make sure that they have been in Boulder County for six months or more is how we Define Boulder County residency among the unhoused next slide another thing we look at when we're making changes is really the overall Community context there's a broader context that we have to consider when we're looking at adults experiencing homelessness we have to look at families

[188:01] that are experiencing homelessness and our lower income residents and the services that they need so that we aren't creating a situation where we're creating more people experiencing homelessness is much easier to help somebody avoid homelessness than it is to help somebody once they have become homeless um we have about 7 200 people in the city who live behind below the federal poverty line and that's about twenty five thousand dollars for a family of four um we did exclude the number of people that are likely to be CU students because they would um not be actually living in housing instability or poverty um we do a lot of work with the Community Partners to make sure that households living in poverty are supported on a regular basis and we've expedited about five hundred thousand dollars to Partners during covid to help people with basic needs like rent and food but as we evaluate some of the other things that the city might invest in for

[189:02] adults experiencing homelessness it's important to keep in mind that other people might need help too including people who are at the edge of housing stability and people we don't want to fall into homelessness so as the pandemic continues no one knows how many people in the community are going to end up needing more than Federal stimulus programs or or payments to the system wants um but we do have some information that's included in this slide that kind of talks through some of those trade-offs for potential Investments so for example we mentioned earlier that an additional severe weather shelter could cost approximately five hundred thousand dollars on the low end and that is really equivalent to helping another 330 households with rent for three months in some of our programs um you know there there is a pretty strong um backbone of preventative Services that

[190:00] have been put in place the factor into all these since uh situations but again there's only so much planning we can do and we have to be responsive to a broader need uh next slide please so one of the things that I'm fairly proud of that I would like to talk to you about is something that we're proposing to put in place and that's the boulder targeted homeless Outreach and referral effort and that's uh acronym to be there and that's a pro it's a program we're proposing this as a pilot to increase our Outreach and engagement in key Boulder locations and what we want to do is we want to make this the first line of Engagement with people experiencing homelessness and help connect them to their resources and compliance with existing ordinances so not only are we trying to get them to go through CE or work through some of the other services but we also want to make sure that they understand not only

[191:01] Public Health orders making sure they have masks our goal is to have masks that can be passed out do Health screenings but also just in general increase the knowledge of what is allowed and and not allowed in our public spaces the idea would be that this would be a three-person management team or engagement team made up of one Health a mental health professional one person with lived experience and one person with homeless Outreach or Services experience one of the things that really makes this exciting is that it's a multi-generational and a cross-disciplinary approach and it's really meant to augment the existing Outreach efforts that are are being done by the homeless Outreach team right now we're still working with a couple non-profits to uh get this developed and our budget estimates are really set to evenly disperse that between the non-profits

[192:02] the city of Boulder and hopefully be able to access part of a grant that the county has um so while this is something that we really feel is needed in the community it is still at the exploratory phase next comment please so um we are looking at some different topics that Council advised us to look at during their Retreat so you asked us to look specifically at encampments save parking and tiny homes one of the things I would preface with our conversation and I know that you have the memo that has a lot of our benchmarking that was done with different programs and you've received a lot of communication about different programs that are out there what we are looking at is how they are designed what are the considerations

[193:00] that need to be made um to that end staff does not feel that we can support uh safe parking in or encampment setups in our current environment with tiny homes there are some considerations that could be made that might make that work and critical talk about those a little bit later but generally what we're looking at is there are some factors that have to be considered and so what hasn't really been fully fleshed out are you know how how these programs would be administered the security and police and trash collection issues that would come up the cost to the city and or County for these types of programs how those trade-off in that broader Community context policies that need to be put into place everything from how long somebody can stay there what are their requirements

[194:01] for behavior um how do we ensure um who can stay there is it only adults can children be there Etc looking at the coordination with systems and housing exits uh you know how do they fit in with a coordinated entry policy what are the residency requirements is it going to be open across for anybody experiencing unshiltered homelessness um how we work with if any of those programs are set up how we would work within existing housing prioritization mechanisms and how do we Bridge them into housing evidence and success the the programs that are being proposed show in getting people into housing is an important criteria and then last but not least the location the sighting and the neighborhood condition considerations that have to be

[195:00] made so questions of density available land how the neighbors are going to feel about this is is that going to put an undue impact as to Neighborhood safety um one of the other things that I think is really important that we look at is our participant safety are we a lot of these camping type programs are usually done in more temperate climates and um having lived in Colorado for a whole weapon year and a half now I can tell you it gets cold here um and that it it can be a little bit more dangerous situation um so all of those things go into how we made those recommendations and um with that I'm going to turn back over to Kurt so he can kind of go through a little bit more specifically on some of those recommendations

[196:00] uh thank you Vicki um so we're on the um we're on the final run now um just a couple more slides um can you go to the next slide Sarah so um before we looked at before I go through the have HRC recommendations um so um we spent a lot of time looking at the information that was presented at tab um on that evening and then following information that was sent by both community members um and um and and have members um so as far as um uh encampments so these are the recommendations and I'll go through each of them those that are in Black lettering um uh we don't recommend those in green we support in those in Orange um I think we've got some some overlap of some of support with some with some

[197:00] caveats so in the research that we looked at particularly around encampments um one of the uh uh pieces of information that was sent to us by Mr O'Connor was from 2010 and um it talked about uh camping at a cost of one dollar a day we looked at that budget it didn't include land security case management admin and supplies so we would we would want to you know consider those things when when looking at this um Judy Dogg sent some very good articles around tiny homes and um I'll just address that quickly as well tiny homes um from my experience in developing co-housing I think are are great Community solution for housing the concern I had in comparing the other communities that have done tiny homes is they um they have lots of land which are

[198:00] much bigger than what we have in um in Boulder one of the ones that was referenced was over 50 acres the others are you know three to five acres and most of our development land in the city of Boulder um around affordable housing is anywhere from a half acre to um to an acre or two um it's difficult to um get a lot of development out of those um through that kind of density um but the the cost per um for tiny home is is the information that Judy had sent through was about fourteen thousand dollars per year which includes case management um in Boulder we pay about eighteen thousand dollars for for that same service through our current program um I think the difference between tiny homes in Seattle and Boulder is we first of all our land costs um are a bit higher than the areas identified for those tiny homes

[199:01] um in Washington um but more importantly um our our um our fees are higher we require foundations we have regulations around um requiring radon mitigation we have every residence requires sprinkler systems in Boulder um the way we look at it it costs sixty thousand dollars to create an affordable year or a residential unit before you've actually done anything um and so I think the costs um differences would be fairly significant in Boulder um every once in a while we get a piece of land where it seems like it would make sense for tiny homes a year and a half ago I thought that Hogan pancas would be that that location um the the the council went in a different direction than that but that's that's the kind of land and the size of land that really makes sense for that type of development

[200:00] um the investigating hotels we do use hotels as we've mentioned earlier but not not as far as purchasing hotels however they talk about the recommendation also talks about um you know converting different buildings into affordable housing we fully support that in fact currently there's a sports club that's being in our community that's being rebuilt into affordable housing there's a church that's being rebuilt into affordable housing so I think we're we're on on board with that component immediately find a way to restore path to home with Bridge house I would have pretty strong concerns about this one that was a competitive process we're required to go through a competitive process for all such um um contracts this is actually um in a lot of our contracts or most of

[201:01] our contracts are actually done through the county um and for me to interrupt a competitive process to give it to another organization that didn't compete for it um would probably be the last thing I would do as an employee of the city and so I'm I'm concerned about um us being directed around procurements um an oversight committee I think the challenge there is that the these um these contracts are actually adjudicated through the county um because um their their County initiatives that we contribute towards having a a city oversight committee for coordinated entry which is done throughout the county I think would be challenging we do definitely agree and support um their idea around uh having individuals with lived experience have a

[202:00] more active role in policy and program development um the single the um the dashboard that hasn't been updated since February it was updated I think yesterday there's two reasons for that one is we increase included a new program of diversion in in the end of January it required further developments and when covet hit our one of our data individuals was furloughed and the other was basically running our CRC um volunteer component we just simply haven't had the capacity they wanted um update it every 30 days we we fully support that the hot team Vicki talked about that the integration that they have with the the courts is a

[203:02] critical aspect to their work um that that's certainly a discussion where um willing to have but I think the discussion needs to occur before a direction is given um educate the public on issues related to the unhoused we fully support that that's why we have things like the dashboard and the the annual reports um creative financing um we believe that the private entities and non-profits in our organization need to continue to play a role in this and we support that um integrate the 2020 and house Vision plan with county-wide initiatives um we we wouldn't support that um and we we support the strategy that the community was involved with in developing that we're currently moving forward with next slide

[204:00] so in another group that put some ideas forward in our community safer Bolder um and I'll start off by saying this was a difficult one to put colors to um it's sometimes hard to to understand what's behind the words um fully enforcing the the urban camping ban we support that um it's our view that a successful program without enforcing the camping ban um is not going to be effective and and most importantly it creates safety for for individuals the housing Outreach team they're supporting that we also support that increased police patrols um I don't speak for the police department so I'm not going to give inputs around that however what we agree on is that there needs to be more engagement within the community or out in the community with individuals so better protecting our business Community obviously we support that however

[205:03] categorizing homeless individuals as criminals we didn't really support the way that that was portrayed um hear public concerns in response to accountability of citizens we absolutely support that next slide so I'm sorry that took a long time um there was a lot of information and several council members asked for more things so it got longer over the last couple of days but I'd like to Circle back to these four questions but I'll hand it over to you Bob and you can manage the the process from here well thanks Kurt Vicky that was a great great presentation and well worth the the time that it took um before we answer uh Kurt's questions let's ask questions occurred in and Vicki and Wendy and I want to remind council members that we also have

[206:01] available to answer questions uh Greg harness from the executive director of the boulder shelter um Judy dog from the housing Advisory Board and Lindsay loberg from um the human relations commission and so if you guys would raise your hands let's get through all of our questions exhaustrate questions and then we'll turn to the questions the staff is asking of us so I've got so far Aaron and then Mark Aaron foreign thanks so much Kurt and Vicki for the presentation and for the extraordinary work that you and the rest of the staff have been doing uh for a long time but particularly during the the covid crisis uh the standing up of the CRC was an extraordinary accomplishment um and also all the housing ex exits have been incredibly impressive so before I go any further just wanted to thank you for all the successes that the city and its Partners have made um absolutely so a couple just detailed questions um

[207:01] many slides back there was one about exits there was a a bar chart about what how many exits there were and what kinds of exits there were and in one section one of those types of exits was um reunification and then another type which only started happening more recently is diversion can you explain what diversion as an exit means because I thought that pretty much meant some kind of form of reunification if diversion was successful um Vicki I'll let you um go with that one sure so uh primarily diversion is reunification however it could be other things such as pay for somebody's car repair bill or it could be even in the case of somebody who has been in the community for a while um might be um non-financial where it could be

[208:01] negotiating with the landlord to keep them in to let them come back into a living situation um because it is so Broad and it's a little bit more light touch we kept it as a a separate category of reporting okay it is a new program so we wanted to keep it separate um but just for clarification as far as a car repair that's like to help someone um get to their jobs so they can stay in their housing it's not something and stay in their car thanks yeah so but the point would be that in all of those cases that they were either housed or kept in you know housing is that correct so that all those people that you record with those exits have housing at the end of that exit set is that fair that's correct great um and Kurt you had the the chart of um expected uh beds and resources

[209:01] available which I appreciate you doing that um my question that I posed over hotline last night had had another component as well which was how those numbers compare to the numbers that we've had over the last couple of years and and that I did not see in the presentation so kind of off the cuff or would you be able to summarize that um yes so I'm just adding them up right now so I make sure I get it right um um so last year um and Vicky correct me if I'm wrong I think we had 282 beds um we had 160 at the at the shelter um 72 in severe weather shelter and 50 in the in the navigation program um so um with the um so the so the range that that we presented is somewhere between

[210:00] about 160 and 170 or 175 in that area if you include the CRC um as well as the the hotels um so it's it's a drop of a little over 100 beds okay um yeah thanks for explaining that and then the the encrypt we know you and I talked about this some earlier today but just so that we're talking over in the meeting so um that that's a significant reduction and so the severe weather shelter component of the plan as I recalled a slide had about 30 beds available and it because I think you went to some larger numbers but that was in May which I don't think is terribly relevant right so do you think it'd be fair to characterize it as about 30 beds over the course of the winter season I would yes I would say that that is correct um and um so I think the um well a couple of just if I can just

[211:02] finish that sure sure and and so then the my question my concern is uh that's a much smaller number than we've had in the past and it seems like that may well have capacity problems and they're maybe the severe weather events that it may not be sufficient and so what are we going to do if there's a big blizzard and there's 30 severe weather shelter beds but you know there's 60 people that need to come come out of the out of the cold that night sure well let me first talk about some of the proactive steps that need to be taken um so if I can give the example um in the change from the seasons from 2016 to 27 2017 that's when we went from um the go to the 30th Street location um and so we went from having programs that were open um every night without out restrictions

[212:00] to having um uh restrictions on on weather conditions and those weather conditions were 20 degrees and 32 with with precipitation so there was obviously a lot of communication at that time with the homeless Community particularly through the fall um and as we've seen as we've gotten more individuals housed within our community the percentage of individuals who are homeless in our community um do not have ties to the community and so communicating with them about where they're going to be staying for the winter is critically important when that seasonal change happened we reduce the number on average the number of individuals um that um use severe weather shelter from one season to the next by a hundred um for the for the highest and Peak

[213:00] period it was 50 beds or 50 individuals um so we've seen that Homeless individuals um using the services do manage based on the availability of services so it will behoove us to be very clear on our communication with individuals about what the actual capacity is um I think all of us share the concern around capacity particularly particularly in this first year in this transition um the other proactive step that we'll do is we'll continue to look at lowering the number of individuals who are using the shelter waiting in the housing queue and getting them into housing between now and the end of the year um to create even more capacity for severe weather shelter um what we also saw in the change of season

[214:02] from 2016 to 2017 basically we had a number of in that that's the year that we had the largest capacity within our community for a severe weather shelter it's also the year that we had the largest number of um individuals that we had to turn away as a capacity problem we didn't have that issue in 2017 even though we had a much lower capacity um so I think our proact steps are incredibly important I think we share your concern and um we'll have to make sure that we do those steps correctly over the next few months to prevent us from being in that situation okay well so I think's that explanation with it but that's about you know how we're going to hopefully avoid not having enough capacity but you know we may regardless of those efforts end

[215:01] up in a situation where we don't have enough capacity so do we have a sort of a backup overflow plan at this point uh we do not have a backup plan for that okay well thanks and when we get to comments I'll talk about that a little bit more but appreciate the answers great thanks Aaron um we got Mark followed by Mary followed by Adam mark yeah Kurt uh thank you very much for that presentation I I thought it was uh terrific my questions are also detail questions on CRC uh precisely how many beds do we have um I believe we haven't set up the upstairs totally we probably have in the range of um 20 to 30 capacity for 20 to 30 um beds okay and your chart sort of showed a phasing out by I think next April of that facility is that correct or did I know that's correct yep

[216:01] um I hope that's the case but do we have a plan B there if we're still stuck in in the grips of the pandemic so if we have to continue the the CRC is that your question yeah yeah um so we were stuck in that situation as you know about two months ago um and I think it took us we had about three weeks to figure that out um I think we were very fortunate um to find the location that we did um my understanding from our last meeting with Boulder housing Partners about a week ago they expect to break ground on um they're they're hoping to break ground on that development next a year from this fall so um we could theoretically keep the CRC going probably another six months after that okay and my other question is um um the be there program that's that's

[217:00] not up and running yet I tell you that that's correct that's something we've been working on for about the last two or three months is there any projected date for when it goes operational um I believe it could be operational in the next um 30 to 40 days okay and Grant with the grant money that with the county it's new money that's come into the county uh um allow us to get that going relatively quickly okay all right thank you appreciate it yeah we've got um um Mary and then Adam and then Rachel so thank you for that Kurt and Vicky and I see Wendy there too so thank you all um I will start with kind of a follow-up to uh Mark's question about the be there program and I was just curious about um

[218:00] what the difference well I it seems like the edge and the be there programs are kind of similar so I just wanted to understand um the difference okay so the The Edge program has been around for a while um I would see I would say that it's actually quite different from be there The Edge program um when you when someone calls 9-1-1 um for the police and there's someone that needs mental health assistance The Edge program um is on call and comes immediately with um PD um and um where appropriate the mental health providers would provide the assistance needed to that individual instead of having it provided by a police officer who may not have the qualifications for that um and also you know de-escalating

[219:00] situations as well they often get called to someone who lives in housing it's not a homeless program and so it's not an outreach program it's a it's a more of a Crisis Intervention Program um the the be there program is really identifying and trying to address what we see as sort of a shortfall in our in our work right now um and that's to um better um reach out and engage with individuals who simply are not are not engaging through our system right now and more and more in a higher percentage of of them are not going through the traditional coordinated entry approach um still the majority are um but there's a um there's a real need there to get out in the community um and we've we've looked at other communities that have tried this and it's helped with a number of things not

[220:02] just engagement around that but also also as Vicki mentioned um supporting Health initiatives and um and and mental health in the field as well thank you and then um that there were about 7 200 people living below the federal poverty level and um and I was and and that was uh when you were talking about the making sure that um we're focusing on the broad Community needs the the people that are unhoused as well as people that have needs because they're living in poverty so um the you mentioned 7200 FPL FPL is the federal poverty level is pretty darn low

[221:00] um twenty four thousand dollars for a family of four um and so even at 200 percent of that that still pretty low and and does require people to access services so is there any idea of how many people are at higher percentages of the fbl um I don't know that but we could look that information up and get that back to you if we're able to locate that thank you um but but is it safe to say that there are it's well more than 7 200. a 7200 additional absolutely it's certainly more than that okay if we look at I'm trying to remember from um our affordable housing program um but more than more than half of the individuals that we're serving through our affordable housing program are under 30

[222:00] percent of the area median they can come thank you um that real quick yes please great thank you uh hey Kurt um you mentioned that you actually took most of the student population out of that 7200 I'm wondering I know for a fact there are you know unhoused students in Boulder do you have any numbers regarding that population we don't okay um okay to continue Adam um all right um with respect to um the oversight committee that the HRC had requested um you mentioned that that would not be possible to do at the city level is that

[223:00] something that Advocates could work with the county to examine um I think certainly you would have received a letter I think it was today or yesterday um from from the county um where they uh um mentioned um I think one of their paragraphs was specific about that in the need to really look at more engagement with the uh with the Idaho's population and that that is a a priority that was identified as well a few months ago with the HSBC okay thank you um and then how many affordable housing units are coming online between now and um the Sheltering season so good question so there's 220 um new units of affordable coming into our

[224:01] city in 2020. um it's been probably one of the best years we've had in quite some time um the the actual numbers I wouldn't know the reason for that it's not just you it's not just new affordable units that come into the city um older housing Partners works now throughout their portfolio um to look for opportunities um for housing previously homeless individuals um not just new units we also work with some of our other existing affordable housing providers um however we've we've probably the best way to answer this is that if you if you remember that chart on how individuals are housed by month where housing for permanent Supportive Housing or housing you know between 10 and 20 individuals every month and we've been carrying on for several months over a

[225:01] year at that rate so I think there's no reason for me to think that that's not going to um continue um at least through this next season and that we'll be able to maintain that there's also been relative consistency with the navigation program although covet certainly impacted that as well as the diversion program so I I think our numbers have been really relatively consistent month over month um and in total those those numbers are between 30 and 40 individuals per month out of all those approaches and how does that correlate to um the the decreases in the number of Shelter beds that will be available that's a great that's a great question so it's not it's not a one-to-one ratio so if we're if we're housing um 15 individuals out of the shelter

[226:02] um every month or 10 every month um it doesn't just it doesn't automatically go down by by 10 every month we do have some individuals coming into the system as well um but it's I don't I'm reluctant to give a ratio off the top of my head but it's it's probably something like two to one um so every you know two two individuals or three individuals house is going to reduce it by another individual um at the at the shelter okay thank you and then um finally um with respect to um safe parking and camping um what are are there any land use issues land use barriers to prevent that from happening so I'm going to pass it over to Charles I'm just going to say one thing first

[227:00] before I pass it over so um safe parking and um and camping has been a discussion point for for many years it's been an idea that's been out there as well as in our community we looked at it at the Portland trip um and um there's um there's different also included in that is our different Management systems that would have to be in place but the point of Portland trip is we the city council discussed this we took a tour of of sites in Boulder um that were owned by the city and didn't find a an appropriate site that moved forward um so I would move it over to Charles and he could maybe talk about um private privately owned land and how that might work with um with that right good evening uh members of council Charles Farrell planning and development services so um yeah the safe to park it's kind of a

[228:01] fine line between um you know what would be considered an accessory use versus what really it would be considered a campground um I think if something's going to be routinely used it would probably fall within the city's definition of Campground that are typically limited to the city's industrial zones um and uh our review through the use review process so there are definitely land use considerations for um how we would address something like a safe depart use and um and but is is there anything that would prevent a private landowner from establishing safe parking so say um a group of Neighbors in the block wanted to uh allow people to Safe Park in their their driveways say for example on their property is there anything that would prevent that is there anything that would prevent

[229:01] um a commercial property owner from establishing safe parking on there um parking lot yeah I think there are we have some really specific regulations regarding the use of things like mobile homes um in people's Residential Properties the question is really enforcement as to you know whether or not we would find out about it whether or not it's one RV that's parking overnight or whether or not it's eight RVs that are there for a week but there are definitely land use considerations again that would preclude those sorts of uses on a regular basis if um if say a private property owner wanted to um establish safe parking um somebody like um you know I know Walmart allows parking in their parking lots um what do they have to go through to

[230:00] what would somebody like that have to go through in order to permit it so again where I think we get hung up is um you know we're the Walmart in Boulder used to be or if you use Target as an example it's not an industrially zoned property so you really wouldn't be able to use it as our definition of Campground so I think that's where you get um land use considerations come into play Just based on the underlying Zone District so um so what you're saying what I hear you saying then is if um if there were a desire to establish safe parking or a campground they kind of get lumped together um and it and because of the nature of them they it would have to be in one of the industrial zones and I believe also the agricultural Zone that's correct yeah the a Zone wood permit campgrounds as well and um and it would have to be with a use review that's correct in any of the industrial zones or the AG Zone a campground would

[231:01] require a use review and with respect to to tiny homes the um anybody could establish a tiny home Village if they um found a parcel of land that was big enough and um allowed the appropriate density right so Teddy homes in Boulder are still required to be on a fixed Foundation at the beginning of this year there was a building code amendment that was adopted that allowed home sizes to be reduced down to 400 square feet and you know really address things like staircase geometry and egress as well as Loft ceiling Heights but they still have to be on its foundations you still have to beat all of the minimum lot standards so rl1 is roughly 65 percent of the city's Zone land you need a seven

[232:01] thousand square foot lot you need domestic utilities you need to provide your parking so you'd still need to meet the minimum lot standards utilities um and everything that would go along with really a single family detached home okay [Music] um I think that's all I have so um thank you do you mind if I follow up on on that a little bit please yeah thanks for those questions Mary so Charles um in terms of I understand what you're saying about campgrounds do you know what the rules are about like uh just say on one single-family home resident allowing somebody to sleep in a vehicle whether it's a car or an RV or something like that is that something that people are allowed to do uh no not under our current regulations the code does make a provision for the allowance of somebody to sleep in a

[233:00] vehicle um in a residential Zone district one out of seven days a week so I think that's to address somebody who could potentially be a wary traveler and needs to pull over and and spend the night but you're not you wouldn't be allowed to do it in public right away more than once in a seven day period That's public right-of-way but we just don't allow people uh on say a private residential lot to allow people to sleep in vehicles that's correct yeah okay and then about the the tiny home sort of Village idea so like in the in a low density residential Zone you could put one tiny home on a lot right basically unless unless you use it as an Adu I guess you could do that as well but um but you know there's this idea of villages right that some other cities have done um so if you found some lot that that uh you know maybe medium density or something allowed multiple units per parcel would you be able to do a tiny home Village or would you have to meet like

[234:00] say side yard setback requirements for every single structure that that would make it kind of essentially impossible I want to say it's impossible it would be very difficult and I liken it to the Ponderosa mobile home where you know we had conventional City Zoning that we had to put on and it basically had to modify every single standard through the annexation so I think if that was something that Council wanted to do they might think about crafting um new tools in the in the code to accomplish it I think I think it'd be pretty difficult under our conventional zoning or absent some other legislative solution like an ordinance gotcha so we'd probably have to pass some kind of enabling legislation to make a tiny home Village feasible if that's something that Council was interested in doing I think that'd probably be the uh the best way to go about it got it thank you and then follow up on your follow-up when you're done yeah I've got one more all right we've got a chain here just one thing Kurt I just wanted to offer

[235:01] what a slightly different memory on something that you said which was when we reviewed Parcels of land in the city for suitability I think we were mostly thinking about tiny home Villages at that time my memory was that there were a couple that had potential to be used that way but it was more of a policy decision by the majority of council to not explore that rather than that it was deemed completely infeasible and somebody can correct me if they feel like I'm wrong about that but that was my memory of the decision at the time thank you obviously you've completely lost control here um so before we go to the the colloqui on the colloquial I want to come indulge Adam because he's been very very patiently Adam is it okay if um if Mark and Rachel colloquy on parents colloquy on Mary or or do you have something on this point as well because I know you've been playing very basically Adam uh they can absolutely do that I will wait my turn okay thank you for being generous so I think Mark jumped in and then and then Rachel then we'll come

[236:00] back down very quickly thank you Adam um Charles uh I assume the impediments to doing um a safe parking program are the same if you're a religious institution using your own parking lot no that's a that's a really good question mark um so the city is a history of partnering with a faith-based community um in Boulder to support their mission by allowing the provision of an array of services and that has that time included camping as an accessory use on a very limited basis I can think of the har Hashem where they had some tent camping that occurred there but it wasn't a very limited basis and um we had a management plan in place it was very deliberate in how the situation was managed and Tom I don't know if you have anything to I want to add is a federal law relupa the religious land

[237:00] use law that basically limits City's ability to to uh through land use regulation to regulate religious activities and there's some cases that involve camping and homelessness provisional services to homelessness so we tend to walk softly and try to work cooperatively with the face community in this area and Charles at some point at your convenience um could you put together a list of the various impediments to doing a say a safe parking program so we understand what the magnitude of the ask is and can determine whether to deal with it or not but but at least we understand what what has to happen sure I appreciate it next next customer well could I call a queen on my own colloquies um well I think we had I think Rachel wanted to call it B on your colleague and then and then and then it was okay with Adam we'll go back to you Mary and then we'll get to Adam um okay so my colleague question I'm just curious Charles um when you talk about campgrounds being in okay in industrial zones

[238:03] um I'm not aware of any campgrounds in Boulder are there some that I don't know about and also like when I think of camping personally it's usually in someplace green and I'm assuming we don't have anywhere green that one can camp so just one clarification no I'm not aware of any campgrounds that are active in Boulder right now that are privately including in industrial zones even though Apparently one could maybe have a campground there okay thanks great so that used to be yeah there used to be a campground a KOA over uh right Valmont and um and like 63rd where Western Disposal is um but that's gone now um so um just on the colloquy and my colloquy was about going back to the faith community and um the their ability to

[239:00] provide um safe parking slash camping um they could work with the city and um come up with a management plan and um and a way away we go that's typically how we've addressed it in the past okay thank you great now we have Adam followed by Rachel followed by Junior Adam thank you for your patience thanks Bob I'm going to preface this by saying I have a few questions for various staff members and then I'll let everybody else ask their questions and I'll swing back around for questions to the board members that are here tonight um so my first question I think is actually for it's sort of a broad staff question in general I know we track the amount of money that we spend on specifically on homeless Services Social Services things along those lines but does each department account for what

[240:00] dollars are spent in dealing with homelessness and by that I mean does the police department account for the percentage of their budget that ends up going towards their actions with homelessness um does the Parks and Recreation service do the same do we have a breakdown of the ancillary costs of homelessness by Department so I I think I can answer that but I think Jane might be able to answer it more completely than than I can okay and I will um we have asked the Departments to keep data on how much money they spend on homeless Services it is very difficult to to do that because there are are things that are easy to take care to understand like the homeless Outreach team we can figure out what the salaries are and what the expenses are but then there are other miscellaneous expenses

[241:01] that people spend on it so that the percentage of time that somebody from the parks department might spend um in meetings and stuff so we don't have it down to that kind of detail but we do have sort of broad brush costs like the homeless Outreach team how much it costs to do cleanup that we do along the encampments um and then of course the human services department is our main focus in that area so that that is how we keep the information first I think that information would be super useful for Council to have as well as what Kirk gave us second um I think it would be really interesting to see you know what the total costs are and try to I realize this is a really tough problem but try to figure out what it costs per person you know that we actually end up spending when we're interacting with

[242:00] unhoused people so that we can know if we're you know putting more money towards preventative measures do we then truly save money in the end on everybody else who ends up um having an interaction with unhoused people whether that be clean up or the police force you know interactions anything like that I realize that's a a very big ask but if we're trying to be data driven I feel like we should try to be as comprehensive as possible that all Sam like something Jane well I agree with you that we should be as data driven as possible and we certainly can get you the data that we have um but there are some data that like I would not be able to to give you so an example would be this let's say a police officer is on duty for his 10 hour shift or her 10 hour shift and encounters a

[243:00] number of different circumstances some of which deal with unhoused people and some of which deal with others we do not break it down we don't ask that officer to file timesheets on how much time was spent dealing with an house person versus others so I can't get that kind of granular data but again we can get sort of the broad brush data with regard to the homeless Outreach team costs the cleanup costs things like that did you have something to add oh really Adam show you what proportion amount in the aggregate police officer spend on people experiencing homelessness do you know that offhand or is that something we can get it fluctuates and I can tell you that um we've seen a big increase obviously uh since covid but it fluctuates from

[244:02] year to year um 2020 being much higher than the other years I can tell you that it it bounces back and forth from approximately 10 percent all the way up to 20 percent so a lot of fluctuation it's seasonal um but it obviously that's a uh I'm not going to call it a significant but it's a proportion of what police officers do gotcha thank you for that um my next question is about ticketing and enforcing the camping ban and that's probably going to be best for uh Chief Harold and judge cook and that is when we give tickets by trying to enforce the camping ban do people ultimately you know what is it what is the process end up looking like they get the ticket they either show up or don't show up to court um if they don't show up then

[245:00] they end up getting in more trouble and ultimately do these people often end up going to jail who are uh have multiple tickets for violating the camping ban or ultimately are they back on the street anyway so the camping ban isn't really able to be enforced since there isn't you know something that's going to actually remove them from the streets I'm just trying to clear that up because we hear from community members all the time oh we just need to enforce the camping ban and then things will get better but is that actually the case well I think is that question for me Adam yeah either you or judge cook yes yeah I I think that I look at it as an intervention point and I don't want to speak for the judge but I I think it's it all provides intervention points for services and you know just to keep in mind the hot team doesn't enforce the camping ban so they are actively working with the

[246:03] most hard to reach clientele in our community to get Services um so when we do issue citations um it is just one other intervention point to try to get people into services or some other type of intervention that will be positive for the community I'm sure judge cook could probably speak after the citations are issued yes um if they well so first of all there's a certain percentage of people who are interested who are issued camping tickets who don't come to court and theoretically at some point a warrant could be issued for their arrest and then we interact with them at the jail but as the chief said we really do try to use that as a point of intervention for people who've come to court our homeless Navigator can have a conversation with them that may be very brief or it may be pretty prolonged but our goal is to refer them on to other homeless services in the community and usually that interaction is the sanction

[247:01] itself it's not we're doing that and some and a fine or and some community service our goal is to get at the root cause and that that becomes the sentence got it thank you both for that yeah I'm just trying to understand myself and help the community understand what exactly happens by enforcing the camping ban it's generally we're trying to divert them to other services not actually arrest people and put them in jail well Adam I you know just keep in mind that in some of these encampments we do find signs of uh criminal activity I mean stolen property we find um you know drugs uh you know we find people with felony warrants we find people with weapons um so you know the issues that the judge was talking about we really tried to use that as intervention I just don't want you to think that we're not when we're

[248:01] investigating these encampments we don't find signs of serious issues with criminal activity as well that we have to address absolutely yeah I appreciate you making that point on that Adam yeah and I would like to call a queen after Rachel we're all we're on same kind of like we train here um so I I guess I didn't quite understand the the answer like the most direct answer to Adam's question so putting aside other criminal activity let's say you have somebody who's camping and is not committing any other crime if that person is arrested and is not interested in other services and so doesn't come to court or doesn't you know take take up what's What's um offered at these intervention points and so then gets another ticket or another another attempt at some point is that um something where a person would go to jail or or what would be the outcome if somebody just wants to camp and continues to get tickets so if somebody continues to camp

[249:02] um we're going and they come to court we're going to work with them repeatedly and we're going to try to help engage them in the kinds of things that are going to help them move move them along the Spectrum from being homeless to not being homeless working with them on on getting an ID or birth certificate or some of those things and that becomes the consequence um what that what that really does ultimately is creates engagement and people who have not been engaged before um start to engage so that's you know that's like the best case scenario if you have people who repeatedly get camping tickets and repeatedly do not come to court then eventually you know there is a warrant issued for their arrest and when at the time that they're arrested on that warrant it is not inconceivable that they would receive a jail sentence but a typical jail sentence for camping violation is one day in jail it's not you know my discretion is up to 90 days in jail we're not looking at something like that

[250:02] um to be honest that doesn't really um change a lot of behavior most of the people who are repeatedly violating have other things going on like mental illness and traumatic brain injury a whole range of things and so um really again our goal is to look at the root cause appreciate the clarification and I appreciate Adam you trying to just sort of clarify the the scope of reality that we're operating in thanks Mary I think you wanted to jump in and then back down yeah I just had a quick um question about where I believe it was called warrant pulling or ticket pooling or something like that and how does that fit into this scheme so what you're talking about is called warrant clustering and that was a concept out of the city prosecutor's office and the uh the idea behind warrant clustering is that for low-level Municipal Court violations such as camping

[251:00] um whereas we used to issue an arrest warrant the first time they did not come to court we now wait until they've missed court at least three times on three different cases and at that point the warrant can be issued what is helpful there from the police perspective there's a lot of time involved when you encounter somebody with a warrant and they have to arrest them and then they're off of the street and not doing their job while they take the person to the jail and they book them in and they go through that process and so forth so if we could do that once for every three cases instead of three times for every three cases that are low-level cases that's a tremendous help for the police department in the community at large the other thing is once they're at the jail they're typically there for a slightly longer period of time which also then gives them the opportunity to engage with the services that are available at the jail and the jail has expanded their treatment and Mental Health Services pretty dramatically through some grants

[252:00] in the last year or so um and those are mostly through done through Community Justice Services at the um you know under Boulder County thank you for that clarification thank you Adam yep one more question right now um and this is for Kurt you mentioned there are some communities that we can't currently serve with the housing first approach like um people who are addicted to methamphetamine um I assume there's others like as far as I know people who have pets can't get into severe weather shelter right now people who are in couples often can't are there you know several groups like this that we can't provide temporary or permanent shelter to right now just trying to clarify whether or not there are some holes in the system sure um so I don't I don't think any of the

[253:01] examples that you gave would certainly prevent someone from getting into housing okay the um the um as far as pets um the boulder shelter as well as 30th Street um their policy was service animals um I think it's been a number of so a number of years ago before we at our current strategy the boulder shelter did attempt to um provide services for individuals with pets it became an un from what I'm told it became an unhealthy situation um for other residents so they unfortunately had to do away with that for a number of years it's been um service animals so individuals with with pets um that that would be correct that would be [Music] um

[254:00] um a segment of the population that would be more difficult for us to not engage with Services um but for shelter gotcha and couples was that the correct one as well you know I'm gonna Greg harms is on the call it'd be great if you got one question tonight sure so maybe I'll pass that on to Greg thanks Kurt um Greg harms here from the boulder shelter for the homeless um we we do not have the capacity to serve couples together a couple we do have couples that come to the shelter and they're welcome to stay but in separate dorms gotcha okay um I think that was but you did mention I just want to make sure I heard this correctly that um people who have methamphetamine addiction very hard to house right now as well absolutely I think it's difficult for

[255:00] every Community um I would as Vicki mentioned earlier we're engaging with an organization in Denver um I think we're very encouraged by their approach and some of their outcomes um and were in sort of initial conversations about potentially having a program like that in one of our upcoming affordable housing developments and do we have any idea how many or what percentage of our homeless population does have methamphetamine abuse problems um I don't believe that we have data on that I'll look to Wendy to see if she has any data on that no okay okay well if we can figure that out we might know at what percentage of our population is going to be very hard to house as well um so maybe if we can figure that out over time uh well I think our I think our be there program could probably assist with identifying

[256:01] um some of those needs and data points yeah I'm definitely looking forward to that being implemented that's it for now thank you thank you one clarification on um the service animals uh question for Greg is um there are certain rules around what can be asked of a person with a service animal are there not Greg yes that is correct and and so that um establishes um so you can't ask it's my understanding that you can't ask somebody um is that really your service animal and are you really do you really have um a disability that that requires you to have a service animal or you can't ask certain things about that so if a person says this is my service animal it is taken at face value is that

[257:01] correct the question we can ask legally is what what service is the animal trained to do for you that's about the only question that we can ask ask somebody about their service animal that's the only question that you can ask correct okay thank you great I think we're on to uh Rachel and then uh Judy after that all right thank you Bob um and thank you to all the presenters I'm going to follow Adam's lead and ask questions right now staff and then I'll Circle back to asking some members of the boards some questions after we finished and well I have the floor Bob I just wanted to put in a plug for a break maybe after we've gone through our some number of questions um why don't we just so people can anticipate why don't we get through the questions of staff take a five minute break sounds like there's a few people have questions of

[258:00] the boards and then I think staff wants to ask us questions so let's get through Rachel Junie uh Juni I don't see any hands up for questions I have one question myself which I'll tuck in at the end so uh salmon nearby we haven't heard any questions from you maybe you don't have any um and then we'll take a quick break all right thanks um so I had a couple questions on the slides um and I don't know that you'll need to go to them but I'll just say which they are in case you're interested um the first is on Slide Five the homelessness Continuum and it goes at risk to newly homeless to chronically homeless I'm just wondering we hear a lot about um people who've been in the community under you know under six months or brand new where do they fit on this Continuum like which Circle captures them um Vicky I'll let you answer that one so they're just like everybody else they're they're going to fit in all spots on that Continuum I would say that what our experience and Greg may be able to support this a little bit better but

[259:02] the people that we see coming to CE or coordinated entry um predominantly are newer to homeless but maybe not brand new to homelessness they'll maybe somewhere between newly and chronic um it just seems like a lot of people that are sort of um swept out of some of the the robust programs so I was trying to figure out where where they may fit in our continuum okay um my second question is on slide six um let's see it says and this is you don't have to look at slide six to get this but um for the six months uh residency eligibility requirement did that come from the city of Boulder or from the county um that would have been um from the um the the county collaborative so it would have been um longmont's Boulder County and the

[260:02] city of Boulder together um looking at that policy we did city council weigh in on it I don't believe so no those those policies are relatively um consistent um throughout the county okay um let's see I think on slide 14 I um was just curious I guess um it says it's talking about municipal court and homeless the hot Outreach team um working with challenging clients and and the number one listed is sex offenders and I just wondered um what is the like given that that's listed first are there like can you give us a number percentage of people um who are experiencing homelessness who are identified sex offenders so my assumption is that judge cook may be able to address that yeah I'm not sure that I can

[261:02] we've started as a project as we our homeless Navigators is looking at everybody who's on the um hmis which is the one home system for housing that is a Boulder County person and as we have extra time which isn't often we are looking up their criminal histories those are not um Municipal Court violations so we to find out we have to go to the state court to discover if they have criminal histories or not so we are working on quantifying that that's not going to capture people who are not in the system at this point of course I do want to mention that sex offender is including a large range of violations so the most common sex offense that is causing issues for people is a misdemeanor charge called indecent exposure that's filed in the county court and so most of the sex offenders are not disqualified because they are felony sex offenders but because of a violation like that again just curious but could that

[262:01] include like urinating in public urinating in public is not a sex offense okay um all right so next question is on slide 16 um it's talking about the exits um 898 exits October 2017 April 2020. um I'm just wondering if we if there's data and maybe it was in here and I didn't see it but on the on the long-term success so people who exited in October 2017 are we collecting data on on who is still successfully housed did I miss that somewhere so Vicki you want to answer that one so we don't have that as data for our dashboarding but um I know that we do collect um particularly with psh programs they do um when the case management from uh Boulder shelter for example is working with the clients they do keep track of and the county as a whole does keep

[263:01] track of uh people who have returned to homelessness from psh programs because that does sometimes happen or how long they have been in stably house so that does that mean we do have that data somewhere I bought at my fingertips no but um we in theory yes um it would be getting some information from the county I think that would be helpful um perspective for us to have and and I don't know how hard it is to get on like reunited and diversion um because I think people are often leaving Bolder but I don't know if we're doing any follow-up um tracking for people that that are leaving but I'd be curious like what it's good that people are exiting and that's a sign of success but also would be useful to know is that is that success long term yeah um I will say that with navigation there's um a less strenuous follow-up process

[264:01] when we put in the diversion program we instituted a 30-day follow-up uh if things worked out the way they were supposed to obviously it's a fairly new program so we don't have a lot of feedback on that yet um and as you can imagine with a very low income population cell phones gain and numbers change and so we're not going to get full 100 follow-up on that understood um and it still it might also be useful to have it at 30 days and then again in 12 months or something understanding that it's difficult to to gather um okay I think my next slide question was um 25 um and actually this I guess I was just wondering like why did we give safer Boulder their own slide that was equivalent to the hab HRC recommendations and especially since there were other community groups that

[265:00] were writing in like I was I was sort of confused to see that slide wanted to to just ask um that was impressed by one of the council members to put that up there we had different requests by different council members and I believe I'm I'm trying to think back of other um sort of defined recommendations like that I don't recall them but um obviously we got a lot of input from a lot of different people we did right so I was just like that's a little bit um that makes sense to what you're saying um and I I also wanted to just mention while all the staff are on the line that I appreciated um Kurt you're bringing up the Tipton report and um I know it's it's very hard to stand in this line of fire and I appreciate everybody being here with us tonight so thank you for doing that um and also um just wanted to give props on the CRC it sounds like that has had outstanding results so thank you for that too thank you oh wait you know what I do that was all my slide questions I have a couple

[266:01] more questions I'm sorry I I I like signed off but I have a couple more um so one is I was hoping to get a little bit more information on where can people go during the day especially with Library closed um and I know we don't have robust day services so what's happening right now with daytime um Vicky do you want to answer that or so um you are correct that there are a number of people that would use our libraries that cannot use them right now or rec centers um other than those three locations it's really not significantly different than it would be any other summer after severe weather shelter has ended which is one of the reasons why you see the difference in services that are provided day services that were provided at 30th Street versus in the winter months versus morning services at bsh now

[267:00] um but there are places such as harvest of Hope where they can get their food there are Waters facilities but as for a hangout Factor unfortunately there's just not a lot of options and we do walk a little bit of a line with when you are looking at a covid and a congregate situation in some ways having them have some time outside is actually healthier because it doesn't spread as easily outside if I could just add a bit to that as well so um having the city facilities closed has been a challenge for us so some of this things that we've implemented related to your question um if you remember we opened up 30th Street for day shelter or I'm sorry for day Services um and then as soon as they closed we opened up um Services each day at the North Boulder shelter we also struggled with

[268:01] um with bathrooms sort of in the 30th Street area we were in conversations with hope about putting a portable toilet there um they they do however because they they had a public bathroom prior to covid um but that also closed um so they have been giving out water um but then we also um opened up um um at the Mableton fields we opened up a um because it wasn't possible with with hope we opened up a temporary facility at the Mapleton ball fields um obviously we have new new toilets um and bathrooms at the um at um along the creek at night streets where a lot of the individuals have been um but that has that has been a challenge okay I appreciate that um I think uh

[269:02] maybe two more questions um one is we got an email from a Community member talking about rapid re-housing vouchers and sort of prioritization for placement and with covid maybe people over 65 jumping in front and I just was hoping you could give us some more clarification on um especially with exp you know we anticipate additional evictions what like do we have concerns about like who's in in line and how that's all going to play out and the increased capacity needs I would imagine possibly without increased capacity beds or shelter or housing options yeah so that's a great question Rachel yes we do have that same concern um on August 4th we'll be giving Council sort of an update on the steps that are in place and and are will will be um added um to prevent and address evictions

[270:02] um it's and and we'll be covering increased funding that we've allocated um increased mediation services particular particularly integrated with the court system um working with barhat and um I'm sorry Boulder housing Partners as well as our other providers so we'll give a more a comprehensive presentation on on those various steps on August 4th we do we we really want to make sure that we have the necessary resources and support to prevent evictions and not just evictions but people losing their housing which is probably a bigger number than evictions we really want to prevent that and from people going into homelessness okay um I will look forward to that in August and then last question I think you

[271:02] agreed with um this portion of um a couple recommendations which is engaging people with lived experience more so I'm just wondering if um Vicki or Kurt or Wendy or any of you um who do this front line um have suggestions for how we could engage people with lived experience in a more robust and um continuous way because I noticed like um we as city council members don't hear a lot from people who are actually impacted by the decisions we're making we hear a lot from um neighbors and you know people who work at at the shelter and things like that but we I don't feel like there's much of a voice for the individuals who are impacted by our decisions so is that it just invite suggestions or creative thoughts there so I'm gonna um I'm gonna ask if Wendy could answer that so she could also get one question

[272:00] tonight Wendy and we also look forward to your recommendations from Council uh good evening councilman Bruce went to Schwartz services policy manager um so so Rachel I I don't have the exact answer to your question in terms of here's how we do it but what I will say is that we in the broader partnership Homeless Solutions for Boulder County what we've recognized is that the mechanisms that we have sort of tried at the beginning are not effective in um in really having meaningful input from people with lived experience and so that's you know that's an issue that needs to be corrected and I know Robin Bohannon referenced to that and her letter to council and so what HSBC is doing now is starting a process of trying to reorganize some of its advisory boards so that there can be a

[273:00] structure that feels comfortable and meaningful for people with lived experience and we think that that is going to be something that will be probably more fulfilling and satisfying for people than having an Advisory Board to just the city because as Kurt referenced earlier there's a lot of HSBC and the decisions The Joint decisions that are made such as for instance the six-month question you asked earlier that are not just under the city's control and so I think that's just a better mechanism for giving people meaningful input about all the decisions and not just ones that are solely controlled by the city thanks hello Rachel those are all my questions thanks everybody for your patience okay um Judy I think you're the last one

[274:00] through your hand up thanks Bob can you hear me whale I hear an echo can you hear as well a little background error yeah thank you very much um I have a few questions and I just wanted to say I've had the opportunity to go to the CRC and Kurt gave me the tour and I was very impressed with the work that's been done there and the level of service and the level of care and attention and that's very important because as we know people who are homeless or people who are unhoused somehow they often fall in the margin and to know that we care about themselves a lot about our community but I want to get to the substance some substantive issues and I wanted to ask

[275:01] you um I saw a proposal from Graham Hill a Community member several months ago and I think he submitted that same proposal maybe a week or two ago and it was about a supportive outdoor living and I wanted to know whether your office had taking a look at that proposal and its visibility that's my first question um I I don't recall that one specifically my baby recalls that one or or Vicky I believe that was the um while they're answering the questions so we can I think it's I think it's your microphone sorry [Music]

[276:00] yeah great go ahead Wendy um so uh so yeah I that proposal um we did take a look at and uh I would say that the um I guess the concerns that we had with that proposal are really the same concerns that we have about setting up encampments in general that were just discussed through the presentation um we did also as Kurt mentioned earlier review Mr O'Connor's budget um and so there you know would appear to it would appear to be a somewhat optimistic budget because there's a lot that's not included that either he's not planning on offering so for example food um or perhaps he is planning on getting it um all donated um or some other measures so you know so for instance that expense alone is uh probably a little over a quarter million

[277:01] dollars a year um and that's not included so anyway I um I don't know if there's more that I can say about that that can be helpful Jenny but we did take a look at it and I would say that it um it kind of goes into the same line of discussion we had earlier about encampments in general thank you um I think my next question is about um you talked about the no suitable site on public land and I wanted to go back to a comment made by Mark and he wanted more um research and I was wondering what is maybe looking at possibly providing us some information on whether it's possible to repurpose or pocket or parking lots and the reason why I think about that is because you mentioned okay the only two

[278:00] places that you could put a campground is either on Industrial or agricultural land and I wanted to know whether since we already have parking lots in Boulder we have lots of them and I remember even when I was running you know we talked about how can we repurpose some of our parking spaces and have less parking well that's a different discussion but my my question to you is and I know that we also have the 343 at night to help community members to park or people who are traveling from other places to work in Boulder so I'm wondering what's the feasibility of repurposing some of our parking spaces from from let's say from 7 00 p.m at night or 11 am at night to five or six o'clock in the morning so that people can still get the opportunity to park uh let's say an RV or just sleep in their car if we cannot

[279:02] have um if we cannot have a safe parking program in Boulder um Charles before you came if I could just in place I'm Tony maybe you could put yourself on mute again thank you um let me just make one statement before Charles jumps in um and um Rachel asks a very similar question um recently so both at 30th Street when it was open as well as the the North Boulder shelter um individuals who have cars um can park their vehicle there um and they can have services at that location they can instead of sleeping in their car they can sleep um at that location so we currently do have and we have had for some time services that integrate with individuals

[280:00] um who have to park somewhere um so Charles I'll I'll leave the next area to you great thanks for the question Juni um so I think we could use parking lots overnight in properties that are Zone industrial through the use review process to allow overnight camping or parking because I think it kind of falls under the same definition of camping so I think that's a possibility under our existing regulations in industrial zones if you wanted to do it in different zones like say the Target parking lot from the hours of you know 10 P.M to 6 a.m there there would need to be changes to the city's code in order to accommodate that so what what you're saying is that even parking lots that are owned by the city it's not possible to

[281:02] have the repurpose option right now without a zoning change or unless the parking lots were in an industrial Zone okay thank you um question has to do with uh budgets because I know earlier you mentioned how how much it would cost to have or how money would be divested from providing housing to having a campground and I wanted to know what even if it's not tonight maybe add that to the list of information that you will provide Council eventually um what would be the impact on HHS budget if we were to have a public-private partnership for the provision of these Services I because to

[282:00] me I think there's two parts to it because I understand it may be something it would be very costly for the city itself to undertake the project of finding the land buying the land and also doing all the servicing but if we have other organizations doing it and we can partner with them either I don't know what that would like would look like but what would be the impact on our budgets on the HHS budget yeah so you we would have to um put a sort of a project plan together and do a budget for that um we wouldn't be able to pull numbers out of the air to understand um what that would look like though and the impact on our budget um as far as um sort of safe parking um you know communities that do safe

[283:00] parking they do have costs associated with those as you've sort of outlined but there's also things like security and management and um you know you know bathroom facilities and that sort of thing as well okay follow-up um but there's nothing to prevent um the private piece of the public private idea um to just have a private party or Community Driven party to come forward and say we want to create the safe parking we found an industrial Zone and we want to create the safe parking and camping and or Campground there or to have a private party or Community organization partner with a Faith organization there's nothing to stop anybody going forward with that going through the fundraising process and raising the funds and then moving

[284:01] forward with it that's correct thank you well I I guess I will uh follow Qui on my own uh treatment is because we're talking about industrial land and agricultural land and I wonder if in Boulder we have that space do we have those land available for such purposes uh Charles I don't know if you can what input you can give to that probably better than me I there's plenty of parking lots in the Industrials and what I think that could probably be used um not much raw developable land I would think thank you and I think my next question has to do with um Mary mentioned earlier as you were talking the 7 200 people living below

[285:03] the poverty line adjusted for college students and I thought that was shockingly low because I was looking at our numbers back in 2019 and they were about 21 to 23 percent uh when it comes to the poverty line so I was wondering where did this number came from how did you come about a statistic that is that low and and you might in my next questions for you on that same issue is do you have University or college students who come to your department for services and what is the referral process and do you want to address that yeah yeah so um thanks for your question Judy um one thing that often happens sometimes if you look at people just pulling the census data for the city of Boulder and they pull a percentage for

[286:01] people under the federal poverty line You'll see a higher number or a much higher percentage and you'll notice that we look very different to the communities around us that don't have a major university in them um and so you may have seen numbers in the past that were pulled in terms of just the raw income data and sometimes that causes challenges for college towns like ours because um I mean certainly we can't say that there aren't college students that are in very impoverished circumstances and might might need help from the city or our contractors um you know I'm I'm sure that's you know certainly true for some people but the reason that some of our staff worked with the state demographer's office to try and adjust that number to kind of um pull mitigate some of the impact of the

[287:00] the student population on those numbers and percentages is that it can be if we don't do that it can be unintentionally and misleading because um there are also a fair number of college students who you know they show no income or very minimal income which puts them below the federal poverty line but they might be being supported by their parents so for instance students they're not likely to necessarily need the types of Housing and Human Services that we and our partners provide because even though they're showing a low income they have family support so does that make sense as an explanation for how that was adjusted and why yes yeah thank you and I I mentioned to you um do you have a referral process for college students

[288:00] or do you work with the universities or the colleges around Boulder if you're Wendy you want to answer that one um I'll I'll go ahead and start um so first of all um CU does have um some of its its own services for students in need and um it's too bad we don't still have to see if you see people on the line because we could ask them but we can follow up on that and then in terms of breaking down the broader population uh served by us and by our funded Community agencies I think we'd have to ask that question because we haven't really broken it down that way in the past thank you I think my last question has to do with um when you talked about the campaign ban and you mentioned that right now we're not enforcing it and you mentioned ticket as a form of accountability which

[289:02] I'm not so sure about us whether it's a good way of looking at ticketing ticketing poor people and I think it's somehow recreate a vicious cycle where you already poor you get a ticket and then it creates more problems and you just never get out of it um but I think my that goes into my question as well which is when someone get a ticket is it a monetary is it just a warning what is it a ticket to the homeless population look like uh Chief Harold or judge cook would you like to answer that I can answer the part when it gets to court I'm not involved obviously in the part where the the decision to issue a ticket is made and what the thinking is there but [Music] um they are written as a as a ticket where they can pay a fine and close their case but we understand that that's not going

[290:03] to happen because these people are severely impoverished and so again the strategies that we use is trying to figure out what are the root causes that cause them to get the camping citation in the first place and how can we help them and that's really the role of our Municipal Court Navigators is to interview individuals find out where they're at they frequently are referring them to coordinated entry or other services in the community um but that's our that's our sort of consequence if you will it's there is not a fine imposed it would be rare for jail to be imposed um we don't even use community service much anymore we're trying to um help them do something that will be productive to them such as getting a driver's license or an ID or something like that

[291:01] okay thank you I wonder if Chief Maris have a comment on whether on the ticketing issue yeah I do um I would say that on the encampment situations in Boulder that the police go out and issue warnings um and we combine that with the hot team to try to get Services involved before tickets are issued and tickets are given in situations where we feel like there's a public health issue um there's other activity going on that further complicates it repeat complaints from citizens um that they're you know encampments are blocking access to certain parts of the community trail system

[292:01] so there is a whole host of warnings and services offered almost at every intervention point before tickets are issued and so we work in close partnership with um all of the services in town and so I would say that issuing tickets even though sometimes is needed it is not the first intervention point the police department goes to if that's helpful Dooney thank you that's all my questions for tonight thank you Sam has his hand up for questions [Music] I just have one question um so this may be to Kurt or Vicky it looks like the governor signed House Bill 1410 which is the covid-19 housing assistance program which gives about 20

[293:00] million dollars for rental and Mortgage Assistance City staff planning on working to get some of those funds or would that be more of a county responsibility where most of the Human Services funding resides I'll let Vicky start with that we may want to finish that question on August 4th that was important answer is that I think that is part of the August 4th I will say that uh we have been in conversations as a collaborative to look at how we are using specific funding sources throughout the county and where it makes sense to fund them um and that goes for not only this money but other cares act funding that has come through us okay very good that's my only question thank you thanks Sam um we have no more questions I'm going to defer I'm going to skip my question um that was um a robust discussion

[294:03] um there's been a request for break we'll take one I I just want to do a real quick time check we had allocated two and a half hours for this we're now going on three hours and the things that we have left to do I know some council members wanted to ask questions of the board members who are with us and then we each need to go around and ask answer the questions that staff has asked us which I imagine will take a bit of time and then we still have a presentation by the city attorney's office although we've covered some of that material already so um I just um we can we can go as long as Council wants to I just want to be cognizant of the time and and it was the will Council to uh to have a lengthy meeting that's fine so let's take a three-minute break I've got 954. let's come back at 9 57 and uh resume with questions for the board members

[295:00] thank you um

[296:50] foreign foreign

[297:24] let's get back at it Adam you have your hand up I know you mentioned you have questions for um the board members that have joined us thanks Bob Yep this can be for either board member or both um so I know there was some discussion of discrepancies and staff data versus what the boards found for some of the information about you know uh campsites and parking and just other cities um attempts to you know help the unhoused population I just want to see real quick if they could provide a brief discussion

[298:01] of what those were why what they see is uh you know those discrepancies are so am I on now yep yes okay so and Lindsay I'll go first if it's okay you can follow up um we got the memo I'm sorry Judy could you identify yourself for the for the audience Judy nag I'm representing the housing Advisory Board and thank you for having me so um a joint meeting of HRC and have human relations commission and housing Advisory Board was called for June 29th without a whole lot of advance notice and we got the memo from staff I think about four or five days before and so I just sat down and read the memo without any preconceptions and I was alarmed when I got to the data that had been supplied in the memo both to to our

[299:02] group and and also to council but that wasn't in the presentation tonight at all and there was a lot of data for people who are watching comparing um information from other cities across the country maybe seven or eight cities and it just so happens by coincidence that I'm very good friends with somebody who runs programs working with homeless populations or the unhoused in Seattle and in King County and I just sent her the memo because I get her organization's newsletter and they been talking about how great their additional programs are and she um was freaked out and she got other providers and experts in the field to look at just the Seattle and King County data and found a lot of misinformation from their point of view based on their own outcomes and you know these aren't anecdotal stories these are these are

[300:00] hard data from there from their program outcomes and so when we had our meeting I asked staff where they got the information and they said my understanding was that they said they got it from secondary sources and they got it a little while ago so I don't hold them at fault for that but I am very disconcerted because it was the underlying it was the information that was provided to us as the underlying reason for the conclusions and if they were uh discordant with the information from the service providers themselves that alarmed me because we're making big decisions on data that at least in those two cases is somewhat question um so that's that's how that problem started and I was surprised that none of that was included in in this presentation but um I also want to add

[301:02] I'm I don't find fault with anyone I think the presentation today was great and there's a lot of great things everybody's doing I just um my background is non-profit management and I'm really concerned about the data on which decisions are made being accurate is Lindsay yes Judy Adam I was just sitting down as you were asking your question can can you repeat it please sure I was just asking um I had heard that there were some worries about the discrepancy in the data like Judy was referencing did you have anything to add to her I think she gave a pretty good answer if you have anything maybe identify yourself Lindsay also sure thank you Bob yeah and thanks thanks everyone thank you for having us um I I'm Lindsay loberg and I'm I'm representing the human relations commission um I think Judy

[302:00] answered answered that question I think um I think from the human relations commission perspective what we're um what we're providing I think is um a number of years of public feedback that are informing um informing our concerns that were contained in the letter Which is less um around around the data but I think speak to some of the discrepancies you might be mentioning thank you both for that um that's helpful I'm gonna pass on to the next person who has a question great and that next person is Rachel I've been busted eating I thought maybe Adam had a couple questions all right so pardon the chewing um so I guess it's pretty late and I think you all for staying on this consulate so I'll try and just ask a sustained question that can hopefully have a like

[303:00] a one to two sentences succinct answer ultimately what do you hope um is the outcome of this study session what would Hab and HRC like to see city council maybe green light again not all 11 points but like in a in a sentence or so like what are we hoping for from your perspectives Lindsay do you want to go first sure thanks Judy um yeah we would I think like Judy mentioned um you know we didn't um have a lot of time to really dig into a set of recommendations and what we would like from you is a green light for a subcommittee that's already been formed um to explore more deeply the recommendations um that we were able to make in those four or five days and within our first meeting um so part of that would be the

[304:02] willingness to hear more specifically about the recommendations contained in the letter that you received from us Judy do you have anything to add yeah and Rachel I I'm really afraid it's going to take probably about five cents since I apologize but but um I think it's really worthwhile the the thing that both boards really want the very most is for the conversation to continue um we think that there's a whole lot of voices out there um Advocates that we hear people who have been unhoused before or now um the people that that safe Boulder or whatever um they have a really legitimate complaint about feeling that the creek and other places aren't safe and we look at that as the uh another side of the same coin um that that although there's so much good that's been done there's still more to do and we also would like some public

[305:03] hearings and we would volunteer to do them for you so that staff doesn't have to put in the time and so that Council doesn't and we can report to you um I personally would be happy if if staff contacted the providers in Seattle and King County to just check in with them they've all offered um we are concerned about the severe weather shelter and um and we really would like to continue the committee um of two people from each with the board and the commission would uh really like to work perhaps get input from staff and perhaps have a council member or two that we can talk to and uh make some progress on some of these issues even you know and there were some that staff was not opposed to thank you I'll uh go to the next person with a

[306:00] question uh there's not a next person with the hand up anybody else have any questions for Lindsay or Judy okay well Lindsay and Judy don't go anywhere we we could come back in questions later on so thanks for being here tonight um I think we're now at the point of the meeting unless we have other questions for staff um where staff gets to ask us questions Kurt could you put or sir could you put up the question list please for questions could someone say yes and we're working on that I'm working on it okay thank you um I think the first question let me make a suggestion why Sarah's doing that it occurs to me the first question is kind of the big question of the night around interventions and whether uh

[307:02] Council wants further work on these various types of interventions like um say parking and uh or camping or tiny houses we've heard the recommendation of the of the two representatives of the board that's kind of one question and and then the other three questions I think are kind of um in one bucket I would suggest which is basically other than other than whatever we're going to say on that for you guys otherwise cool um so I want to suggest that just for purposes of time we kind of aggregate questions number two three and four which is we have any more input do we think the balance is right we think the strategy is aligned with with good programs I think those are all kind of the same questions so let me suggest we go through one by one answer the first question as succinctly as we can on whether you would like um more work done on these interventions or or whether you um would not like more work done these

[308:00] interventions I don't think we're going to make any decision tonight that we're going to set up a a campground or um a um a safe parking Zone because I don't think we have enough information on that so I guess the question is do you want staff to do more work on that and come back that's the way I'm going to interpret the question Kurt if that's okay with you that's good yep that's scary that would help at the time but let's just kind of go through one at a time and answer kind of that question whether we whether we want more work done on this or whether we're um we're happy with the staff recommendation that we that we not do more work on it and I have lined up so far Mary Mark and Adam and Rachel in that order thank you um so on question number one the interventions um it seems to me that there is the potential for creating a safe parking slash Campground um with a privately funded and Community

[309:01] Driven kind of approach um and there's nothing to prevent a group of Advocates from getting together and doing some organizing and working with perhaps um of Faith Community whose parking lot they could use or um to find an industrial zoned parking lot that they could use and then work with the city to come up with a management plan um and go through a use review because a campground would require a use review so the advantages to that would be that it wouldn't be a long drawn out process because of the such an effort would not require that they do community outreach which is something that the city has to do we have to follow our community outreach our engagement process they wouldn't have to do any rfps for the providers

[310:01] Graham Hill appeared to have somebody lined up that could do something like that so um that group could reach out to Graham and work with him um and I also um so I and could also as well reach out to um the King County providers which um are um from my my understanding there are non-profit so um it could all kind of happen outside of the city's um um efforts because um to answer the the rest of the questions um I think that there is one one thing that I would like to have a little bit more input on is that um there does appear to be a shortage of um beds for upcoming winter and I I guess I would like to better understand that and see if there are a few more beds that could be had um the balancing the resources

[311:03] um I think we're doing a lot with um what we have and I would rather spend the money on actually housing people than creating pilot programs that really don't move people out of homelessness but I do think that there is potential there and if there were community group that organized it they could keep data and come back and present that to council as to what their outcomes have been and then alignment of the homelessness strategy I think it does align and I think that um in in lieu of a national strategy that these best practices that people around the country have adopted are what we have to work with and I think that we are

[312:02] doing the best that we can with the resources that we have available um and I would also encourage Community groups as well to if they were interested to help with more fundraising so that perhaps we could put more money into it so um that's all I have thanks Mary we've got um Mark and then Adam Mercury on mute thank you um I would have gone on for five minutes I found the staff presentation to be extremely detailed and evidence based having said that um if uh HRC and have want to take a deeper dive into issues like alternative interventions I would encourage them to

[313:01] do so I regard the conclusions in the staff report as essentially rebuttable presumptions and if HRC and Hab wants to take a crack at articulating a different path or what they believe to be a better path I'm fine with them doing so um otherwise I'm fairly I'm content with our homeless programs to the extent of our resources in a better world we'd have uh much more in the way of resources we could come up with better Solutions but I I believe the housing first uh philosophy should remain our guiding philosophy um and with the caveat that you know we can explore some other uh Solutions as Mary suggested that are largely uh private

[314:00] sector driven or uh revolving charitable organizations and if we can come up with some good Solutions in that Arena we can Implement them um but otherwise I'm I'm taking my guidance at the moment from the staff report and I'd like to see uh you know having an HRC explore some of these other options if they are prepared to do so thanks thanks Mark Mary went into the second batch of questions to Mark so let's just just to be consistent um do you have any comments on on the uh the last three questions or was that subsumed in your answer it was absolutely my answer I'm I'm uh I basically think we're doing a good job within our capabilities um I wish we had more resources to do more but I'm not prepared at this point to suggest that we are on the wrong path great thanks Mark I'm Adam then Rachel

[315:02] thanks Bob um yeah I see overall the strategy is a really really solid foundation everything we've done at this point is commendable and I in my opinion I think we need to fill a lot of those holes that were talked about throughout this presentation um and I think green lighting HRC and Habs recommendation to explored further is is a pretty important step for tonight I would definitely support that having been a member of Hab and knowing the diversity of opinions and people and experiences on that board to have it be unanimous and then unanimous alongside another board tells me that this is a real issue that they really want to tackle and sink their teeth into and think they can provide additional input and ideas around so I don't want to preclude them from doing that in any way

[316:01] um I won't speak to anything individually I think there are a lot of good ideas here to explore but as the first step I think we should just allow them the bandwidth and give them a little bit of Staff resource time to look into these areas a little further and um see what we can get out of it as the best first step it seemed to me like the staff um their biggest issues were surrounding what are the details of Any Given one of these plans and unless we give them the time I don't think they can either the boards can either give good background as to what the specifics for tiny homes or the specifics for day Sheltering or encampments would be but um I think I would be supportive of listening to their findings um and their further suggestions thanks Adam and Adam do you have any other comments as long as we're just do all these questions at once sure

[317:01] um as I said I think we have a really good foundation but um things like uh people who are addicted to methamphetamine that one really sticks with me because I know that's a large population and I know that's a problem so if we can't house those people then a housing first solution isn't the only thing we can be exploring right now and that shows to me there's a glaring hole for maybe not um housing first being the ultimate solution to every problem at least in the way that the systems are currently set up so if that means more um funding for different resources that's great but um we need something a way to provide safety to people even if they have mental health and addiction problems um in the short term especially if we can't house them because no one wants to take them in based on their problems so that's all I'll say Bob thank you thanks Adam we got Rachel and then Aaron

[318:03] okay um well I agree with most of what Adam just said um I think if we're gonna green light HIV and HRC which were as Adam pointed out unanimous over two board recommendation we're going to Greenlight them to to go forward and dig deeper I don't know how much more I really need to say because I think they're going to look at the issues like do we have input to changes on homelessness programs I assume that that that's what they're going to be that that's what we're green lighting is for them to to dig into bullet points two through four so um I guess I'd want to reserve weighing in on on those bullet points if we're not going to Green Light them if that's the the not the will of this Council I'd want to come back and revisit those but um if we are going to do that I I trust that they will have a robust um process and look and and I trust in that in that process and the only other thing I would add is

[319:01] um I find it uh confusing sort of the the intersection between city and county I understand that we are our partners and it's um it sounds like a good healthy working relationship but um it's I guess the the impacts of homelessness are felt in our city and we get Communications and um issues from from the things that people who are unhoused or dealing with and so it's like when we say let's let's have um individuals with lived experience go to the county level I also think we need something that's vested here where we are giving people um what lived experience and a forum for us to participate in and hear from them and that somehow there's there feels like a real big disconnect between the city council and what happens at the county and like the fact that we don't weigh in on what the residency

[320:01] requirement is when it that deeply impacts our own community members and I understand we have staff members who are weighing in but as a council that disconnect feels um big to me and I I especially as as it impacts people whose voice I really want to hear I would like us to give them a forum somehow and that space thanks thanks Rachel um Aaron and Sam the Mirror by yeah thanks I'll I'll agree uh with the much of what's been said particularly the comments that Rachel and Adam made I do support having HRC and have um do additional exploration of these areas and one thing I'll say Rachel you you said points two through four but I'm interested in them looking at one through four which I think you meant as well um don't let me put words in your mouth but just to want to clarify that the I think you know staff as I said before has done

[321:01] a phenomenal job with this presentation and with the system of services um for folks experiencing homelessness but there are still people that are not served by that system people who uh fall through the cracks for one reason or another um you know say uh folks who are not um there's not yet a housing slot open for them and that our shelter averse whether it's for reasons of PTSD or you know a pad or some other condition um and so um you know offering some kinds of different options for folks in different situations I think is worth exploring I think we also have to be aware that uh you know we're going to do everything that we can to prevent a wave of evictions in our community but the economic crisis from covet is not going away anytime soon and we may well be facing some significant additional um problems with people not having

[322:00] secure housing in our community and so I think we need to make sure that that we have a a broad toolkit to cope with that so I I would like uh to hear more from HRC and Hab I really appreciate the work that they did on putting those preliminary recommendations together I would like to see them explore those more um okay and uh I lost my train of thought for a second but and you know not every single one is doable like uh staff mentioned for example that uh you know we can't single Source path to home back to bridge house uh but that doesn't mean that that we couldn't use some kind of success or program to path to home so um you know let's not dismiss anything entirely out of hand the the one other thing I want to speak to is the the issue of the um well actually before I do that just uh Mary I I thought your Point's about uh private um organizations uh could put

[323:01] together something like a safe parking program I thought that was a great point and you know maybe we can get the word out there that if there are uh Faith communities or nonprofits that are interested in setting up some kinds of services that's something that that is put possible and something that the city could just do a little work on facilitating without having to take the lead on on that so if anybody out there is interested in doing something like that that's maybe something we could help some with but but not have to do it run in a city program so that that was a great point so anyway my last thing is um I am very concerned about the potential capacity issues uh with severe weather shelter this winter and so um you know what I hear from staff is that at the moment they're doing a lot of work to house lots of people which is fantastic there are huge successes there we have more capacity available because of that but that we don't have a backup plan at this point if capacity is lacking and so

[324:04] um I would really urge that we develop some backup plans you know some kind of overflow options or you know maybe it's a um another crack at a severe weather shelter location um or but at the very least some kind of overflow plan you know maybe you may be done in partnership with faith communities but I very much want to see that and I it I'd appreciate it maybe if other council members could weigh in if they feel like that is an important priority for for us to be pursuing uh going into the winter Sheltering season I'll just leave it there thanks Aaron um we've got Sam mirabai um Rachel you've got your hand up again which is fine but I wonder if we would we should let Junie in there because she hasn't spoken before you have your second go and then I'll I'll go at the very end if there's no more comments so maybe we could do Sam mirabai Juni Rachel and Bob

[325:02] okay thank you Bob let's see if I yep I'm unmuted cool um so as we look at the first question that staff put up there I want to start before I go into potential other things that we could do by by saying what a great job I think that our staff has done in collaboration with the county um you know I think some of us have perspective on on what the system was like um before the change in the system to coordinate with homeless services in Boulder County and it's night and day where we are now um the data that we have is just so much more robust the knowledge that we have about who's using our system what their outcomes are I mean in the past if we go back even five years we wouldn't have known unique thing about those who we're

[326:00] serving we certainly wouldn't have exits data because that wasn't exactly the focus we had just started housing first at all with the Lee Hill location so I just want to compliment staff you you take a lot of heat a lot of people impute not only bad motivations but bad performance which I think is completely undeserved and I just want to say that you're doing work it's excellent both in its execution and in its Vision there's always more to be done one but we need to take a pause here as long as we're going to do what we're doing tonight which is essentially a review of where we are and recognize the progress that we've made and the outcomes so that the number of exits is phenomenal and as everyone who studies this says you know the ultimate solution to homelessness is housing maybe there's another run or two on the ladder that we need to put in but

[327:00] that focus on the ultimate solution for homelessness is one that we should celebrate how far we've gotten um and then the other thing I'd like to put out there before I dive into the question is the the way that that social services administered in Colorado is through counties right and so what the city is doing with our four million dollar budget for uh Human Services is above and beyond what the structure that is supposed to support this looks like if we look at the amount that we contribute to the bowler shelter for the homeless it's a relative pittance hidden compared to what the county contributes and that's because the county gets a fair bit of federal funding that they can then pass on to the the organizations the Community Partners that we have so I think that we we do need to understand that we are operating in a system where

[328:03] what we do is in addition to the systems that are in place so we also need to recognize that not only the the money that goes directly through human services but things like the work that um judge cook does for us in the courts the work that our police department does is also above and beyond um kind of the normal practices and it's the entire system that provides the support so I think what HRC and have were pointing out is um holes and those holes might be be able to be filled or they might not I think it's worth looking into which of of the potential alternative programs would be the best so I I don't mind at all looking into whether camping and I've I've worked in

[329:03] the past when trying to create a campground it's much harder than than people would think it it requires finding a partner who will run it and that's not a trivial thing to do so as I look down the Habit HRC recommendations things like pilot two to four encampments within the year I think that would be very difficult to do so I think the the idea and you go down the list and and any one of the the things on the list alone would would be a full work program for staff so I think as we we direct have and staff and HRC to look into this we need to understand that that's going to be a pretty heavy load um for them to to take on particularly in light of covet particularly in light of what Aaron mentioned which is the coming you know potential eviction crisis an increase in homelessness we need to be careful a lot to add

[330:01] um to the plate to the detriment of programs that we currently have that we currently care about and may care about more such as severe weather Sheltering so I'm going to come back to what Mary said um and and point out that if there is energy and funding available to do something along the lines of safe parking that's one that has a place where it can fit within zoning and with the use for View and could be something with the right Partners could could be done so I would say we're going to investigate these things that might be useful at the beginning to prioritize which ones are most likely to be successful which ones are likely to impact the most people which ones are likely to be cost effective and which ones are likely to get Community Support so I will support the idea of moving forward with looking at these Alternatives but I would say um you know staff's going to have to

[331:01] give feedback both to us and to the to boards on what they can and can't support and what the timelines realistically would be but we don't see any erosion in the the really good programs and then and exits into housing that we're seeing right now so yes to looking into it but with the caveat that it has to be realistic um you know it the homeless unsheltered Community needs our support they do need the the programs that we're talking about but there are other groups in our community that also need our support I could list many of them but but we need to understand that there's not an infinite budget nor is there infinite staff time when we come to the other questions that that are um in in what staff asked us I did you know are we cool is the way Bob put it with

[332:00] what we're doing now I think I covered that at the beginning that many of the things that we're doing are quite successful and our ability to evaluate that success is is quite you know much more advanced than it was a few years ago so I would say yes let's keep looking for what additional we can do but let's make sure that we don't degrade what we're already doing um our success and I will Echo Aaron's point at Mary's point that we need to keep our eye on the severe weather Sheltering capacity as we move into the winter and that's all thank you thanks Sam I've got mirabai then Juni and then Rachel and Mary have additional things to say and then I'll go and I'll try to recap so mayor bye let's keep mine short and sweet thank you Sam I think you put that um most eloquently and seconded everything he just said

[333:00] wow you win the award for the uh the most concise statement everybody thank you um let's see Junie then Rachel then Mary [Music] um I do welcome the opportunity to engage into that discussion and also see what we can do because I think tonight if there's one thing that I realize which I already had an idea of is that we have two different group of people that we serve we serve people who need housing and also people we know that can't be housed or are unable to to engage in the system because of mental health reasons so I think because of that we also have to look into other

[334:02] opportunities to house them so maybe they're we can't put them in permanent housing because they're not going to stay there because staying in an enclosed space is just not something that they can do because of mental health issues or other reasons so I think looking and still engaging and finding solutions to providing safe space to these people are very important so I welcome the opportunity to research more and look into how we can provide an open space where people can where they can camp and I think we've tonight we've talked about Agricultural and industrial areas so I think for me the only thing I can say is that maybe staff can have these spots readily available so that if a partner wants to

[335:03] work with the city or find ways have that information ready for them because honestly when I was thinking of I couldn't imagine where those places would be so I think I'm not the only person who's who who is unaware of where these places are so I think it'll be good to have that research available and show us exactly where these campgrounds can be placed um because again it's about feasibility so if we're gonna do a project we want to know where and whether it's feasible and I had also mentioned earlier about the parking repurposing and that's something I think we should definitely look into um and I understand as well what Sam mentioned when it comes to staff time especially during this really um unprecedented time of stress and lots of

[336:03] work and demand on staff does council have any input on changes I think you know I think Curtis doing a great job keep doing the job that you're doing we just have to find ways to reach the Gap and that Gap are those people that are unable to um to engage or system the as is so we have to be more creative and I think just keep up the good work uh and I know you have a lot of uh wonderful staff members who are just as creative who will find a solution so thank you for your hard work and all that you do and keep that up thank you Judy uh Rachel had more comments as did Mary yep um Aaron had asked us to kind of weigh in on severe weather shelter and whether we were concerned and I would um second third or fourth his um concern there that I surely am concerned that we don't

[337:00] um that we're losing available beds and severe weather situations and and also the um we didn't talk through whether to use um temperature uh triggers so I don't know if we need to get into that or if that will go to have an HRC and then just a second thing I think Judy mentioned that they had um established sort of four people to be on this HRC Hab committee so it sounds like they each group already designated two members and then they wanted people from Council so I thought maybe we should establish that tonight um and personally I would say um if Adam were willing to do it coming from Hab he might make a lot of sense Mitchell Mary yeah um I wanted to um reiterate something that Sam said that um most housing and Human Services are

[338:03] administered through um counties Boulder is very rare in that it actually does some housing and Human Services at the city level through a tax that was established I believe back in the 60s but it is highly highly unusual and so therefore I I think that the HSBC the Housing Solutions Boulder County is a collaborative among um communities within the county and including the County government so therefore that is where um an oversight committee um or something as such would should reside and that is where any search for folks that are have the lived experience should reside within that structure so that they can advise at that level

[339:00] because we do not have that at the city level nor do I think that we should have it at the city level it would be more effective at the county level um I want to be real clear that my support for looking into the safe parking and campgrounds is from um have it come from a Community Driven private effort I do not support um staff putting any time into it beyond what it might take to approve a use review so that's where I'm coming from I I really do not want to expend any energy on something that takes away from coming up with Housing Solutions um and um we don't have data very much data available so if HRC and Hab can present that I know that it's out there but it's not all in one place and many

[340:01] community members wrote in saying that we the council members should go Google it so um I think that there's um that's the kind of work that um have was appointed to do is to do that research and present that data in a in a collected and cohesive um in one place kind of manner but I do not support um having staff expend energy on it I want it to come from the have members and to look for a um Community organization and private funding to make it happen and then the other thing I wanted to say is to add to that is that the Longmont safe parking as well as the Denver safe parking are all coming from Community Driven programs they are not City supported I believe that all

[341:01] governments are supporting the housing first solutions that align with you know National evidence-based programs and best practices so um I just wanted to make that clear thank you thanks Mary Adam had another comment yes I did Bob just a quick follow-up to Mary I totally understand where you're coming from as far as the Community Driven approach I just don't want to prevent Hab from having HRC from doing their own work I remember when I was on Hab we asked to look at occupancy limits and we were told specifically by Council don't look at occupancy limits so I wanted to avoid a situation like that where they wouldn't either you know have the green light or um be able to look at it at all it doesn't sound like that's what you want I think we're trying to meet exactly what they want by spending their time and their resources on looking at

[342:02] these issues further um I also wanted to say I share um Aaron's worries about severe weather Sheltering just to take my uh check in that box and as to Rachel's idea of a board member helping um between the two boards in Council I love being volunteered for additional work so um I'm definitely on board to do that if Hab and HRC want that going forward thanks Adam um I don't see any more hands so I'm going to go ahead and give you my comments and then maybe I'll try to summarize what we've heard from everybody um first of all I do want to um thank and congratulate staff on an outstanding presentation probably one of the best presentations I've seen and heard in my four and a half years on Council the memo was thorough and comprehensive the presentation tonight was excellent so

[343:01] thank you so much for to everybody who was involved in the in the presentation very very good um I want to express enthusiasm which others I think expressed earlier in the presentation over the be there program I think that sounds exciting I've been advocating for years um for a program like that where we have um non-police um uh involved in Outreach social workers people with lived experience people who provide services and understand those Services my son did that for many years in New York and I know the value of those Services um the our cops are great but if if a cop shows up um with the person on the street it's a different Dynamic benefit someone there who is there to provide a different type of supported service so I fully fully support the be there program and I'm very excited about having that launch soon um with it sounds like there's there's

[344:00] support by most people to have HRC and have do some additional work um I'm going to say that I do agree with Mary and Sam in their caveat or their caution on um that um we need to be thoughtful about who actually would pay I'm sure that having HRC could come up with some really great ideas and then the question is who foots the bill for that I do worry that this is zero sum that dollars we take away that we that is dollars we um the city so you might apply to one of these new programs would be dollars that we take away from putting people in housing which of course is the ultimate solution so I do agree with Mary and Sam that um while it's I think it's fine for for folks to further investigate this the type of things that I would consider supporting really would be would involve private dollars and private initiatives and not um divert from our goal of providing housing to people who who need

[345:00] it so that's kind of where I'm at I'm not telling HRC or AB what to do I'm just telling them I'm just foreshadowing where I will be on whatever recommendations and I'm not going to be enthusiastic about City money for for any of those types of things um I do want to read a couple sentences from the memo because for me you know we've been spending a lot of time tonight talking about how we could add things and and do new things um and add more beds or more virtual beds um and and I and I think that's fine but I think there's a threshold question which is who are we going to serve because obviously there are far more homeless people um in in in the state in the country that we could possibly serve and we're serving people who who have no connection to Boulder whatsoever we're we're one of the few cities up and down the Front Range that provides extensive services and the question I think we have to ask ourselves before we say how many more

[346:00] beds do we need is who are we going to serve and let me just read this passage from the memos page nine of the memo between January and April 2020 so just the first four months of this year 326 people were screened through coordinated entry in Boulder during this time 83 percent of the people referred through coordinated entry were new to Boulder County with 71 of the total being in Boulder County for less than one month of the people who reported being from places in Colorado but not from Boulder County 71 are from Denver so I do think I would ask HRC and have as they consider recommendations on new interventions and new programs and new beds to also ask the question what is the limit of our capacity what responsibility do we have do we have the responsibility to provide housing to people from Denver from people from outside of the state from people who

[347:00] just who have been in Boulder for days or in many cases hours and so the question is who do we serve because I think we have to ask that question answer that question first before we say do we have enough beds because obviously if our viewers we're going to serve all comers will never have enough beds it doesn't matter what intervention or how many campgrounds or how much state parking we have if we are going to serve every single person who shows up and says I want service we will never have enough beds so I think we need to First decide who shall we serve who do we have a responsibility to serve and then decide uh whether the beds we have are adequate and if not what Solutions we have as alternatives um so that's all I have to say from my perspective let me just try to recap um what um I think Council said in the last uh 45 minutes or so here it sounds like there is um uh support for HRC and have

[348:00] to do some further work on other interventions some council members would like to see that focused on uh the options for for private interventions other council members didn't Express that view there seems to be a pretty uniform concern around severe weather service beds and whether they're going to be adequate that may be something that staff wants to take on on its own separate from the HRC Hab um review because um we're only three or four months away from severe weather season and so we have um if staff has some some other ideas and severe weather Sheltering you might want to bring that back here in the next couple of months um independent of the work that HRC and have might be doing there was an expression of concern for housing people with meth addictions um there seem to be enthusiasm for the be their program um I think that

[349:02] handles it I hope I did a fair job of summarizing what people were saying if anybody has something to add to that or disagrees raise your hand right now um Aaron Aaron has something to add yeah it's a good summary about thank you I just I'll agree with what you said about the the severe shelter coming back with that on a different track than than working with HRC on on the other questions that that would definitely be my request and it sounded like there was a majority that was interested in that so I want to make sure that we we have some options before the Sheltering season starts uh let me suggest um thanks Aaron let me suggest one other thing is um there was a suggestion that we we designate a council member to be a liaison back to those boards I might suggest thanks for um for being be willing to be volunteered um Adam I want I wonder if we should take that up at a council of one or two Council meetings down the road in case

[350:00] there's somebody else who may be interested in that and just didn't speak up so I'm going to suggest that maybe uh CAC schedule five minutes at one of our next meetings just to say who all wants to be at liaise do we want one or two and who all wants to be in so so we know that Adam's willing to do it and if others want to do it they can express themselves in that meeting rather than trying to do that on the Fly tonight any objection to that okay hearing none any other comments on this we have a really short presentation we've covered actually some of this material already um but Tom I think you were going to make a presentation on um by why a follow-up to a a discussion we had a week or two ago about um use of cars and and campers yes thanks Bob and Sarah I assume you're trying to put the presentation up I am just give me a second of course thank you this is uh I'll start with the

[351:00] presentation you saw last week to sort of ground you in where we are and then I have some data on number of tickets uh and a small amount of racial data on one of the two ordinances in question so uh which was in the memo so I'm going to start talking um and then we I can go through the presentation when Sarah is kind enough to get it up um and There She Goes can we go to the next slide please or can I control this Sarah so the as you'll recall last week you approved ordinance 8402 to amend the uh overnight parking rules for trailers this arose because the Municipal Court

[352:02] had um refused to enforce some tickets based on a reading of the ordinance regarding moving and basically a dispute the city had with someone who owned a shave ice truck uh next slide please these are some pictures of some Vehicles which Adam and I kind of went back and forth over the last week I agree with him that they are mostly seen to be residential Vehicles next slide please this is the first sentence of the change you can see that the the previously it just prohibited them from being on the street for more than 24 hours we've created some exceptions um next slide please this is another one the 72 hours for service Vehicles one more and then uh by permit so if we go to the next slide uh and then the the this this was added to deal with someone who's moving at a few inches uh on the same block to avoid the Restriction next slide please

[353:03] so the the what some of the background that we've got is that these uh tickets are issued on a complaint basis um and I'll give you the exact numbers but the the the basically between 100 and 150 violations a year um and um that the complaints often have to do with safety issues blocking uh sight lines and bike lanes and things like that um okay and then um the problem we tried to find racial Equity data on who's getting these tickets but of course parking tickets are issued to Vehicles not to people so there's no data maintained on the race uh or ethnicity of any uh ticket issue in-person position to ticket so uh between July 7th of 2019 and July 8 of 2019 there are 143 violations issued uh between July 9th of 2019 and July 9th

[354:03] 2020 there were 131 violations issued uh so the 100 to 150 basically the midpoint of that next slide please so one of the things that we mentioned last week was that there's an ordinance called unlawful unlawful use of vehicle as residents so as I understand it if the parking enforcement folks see someone uh sleeping in a vehicle if it's occupied they do not write a ticket they call the police and the Police Issue this violation of 563 unlawful use of a vehicle as a residence so since 2014 there have been 28 tickets issued for violation of section 563 that's the total for for those six years three were issued to the same person a white male for through over a couple of days in 2017 of the 28 tickets 22 were issued to white males five were issued to white females and one was issued to a black male so 96 of the tickets were issued to

[355:01] uh to Caucasians next slide please so this is a breakdown of the tickets as issued by year as you can see no tickets have been issued year today 2020. um the the biggest number was 2018-8 sometimes of course in 2015 2016 they issued a bunch of warnings but still very small numbers averaging less than five a year over six years next slide please any questions or discussion okay thanks for that Tom um Aaron your hands up I may have been from the last presentation uh um um speak up Aaron if you have a question otherwise anybody else have questions raise their hand Aaron's hand is down I guess I just it's late but you know I apologize for missing the meeting last week can can I just get a better sense of the what was asked for last week and um whether we're thinking about changing anything about the ordinance or what's our scope of

[356:00] I'm sorry Aaron there's some community members who Express concern that this wardens was used to Target homeless individuals um and the council wanted to have some discussion at least some protection of additional data and there was a request that we imply an equity filter to look at it and we've done that as best as we can we're asked to bring it back for discussion this week in conjunction with the homeless position okay I guess I will ask a question since I served at the floor less about um homelessness but what about the the issue of um say folks who own a a commercial a small commercial trailer like I see them occasionally a landscaping trailer around my neighborhood and and who don't say they live in multi-family housing or something and don't have another place to park at like what's there would they be able to move it from one block to another and cycle around and kind of keep it working that way or yeah although the preference is that a business we we prefer the business find

[357:00] a place to park it off the street if they're running a business and so one of the things that we did do was create an exception which did not exist before for businesses that were providing services in the community to stay at a house that they're working out for up to 72 hours you can park at where you're working as opposed to you know where you live say yeah okay well I guess I understand some concerns around that were raised last last week and it does seem like a that there is an equity concern there um Adam has end up thanks Bob yeah mine is just the carry over from last week too the only since you're looking for comments Tom the only concern I have is uh it doesn't State how long the trailer has to be gone or the RV has to be gone before it can come back to that spot um which I think leaves open a different

[358:00] set of loopholes in the in the long run so maybe that needs to be addressed at some point too okay thanks thanks Adam Mary yeah I want to go back to Aaron's point about someone who lives in multi-family housing and um has say a landscaping business that has a truck with a trailer for their landscaping business um what options exist for such a situation do they have to go out and find some alternative parking space elsewhere I think that's the expectation the business will find a place to store it a commercial storage yard or something like that okay yeah I I would agree with with Aaron that that does present um Tom are you aware of um any cities anywhere that provide some accommodation for such a situation no I

[359:03] I've never heard of that but I mean it's fairly common to not allow commercial vehicles but in fact we don't really even allow cars to be parked on for more than 72 hours although that that's something that's ignored throughout the city and Mary one of the things I I wanted to emphasize is that this is complaint based so we don't have parking folks out um trying looking looking for violations uh it's when someone in the community is concerned and as I said many of those concerns are raised by safety issues so my guess would be I that you would you wouldn't see it you generally would not see a community uh going after one of their own so you wouldn't get we would probably would not get complaints in that situation although I can't say that I don't we don't have any data on that at all Mary thank you I'm going to call myself and throw out a suggestion I think one of the exceptions that we um we did pass last week was um a permit issued by the city um and I almost wonder if in those

[360:02] situations that Aaron and Mary were referring to were for someone's in a you know multi-family dwelling there's not a parking space or a parking driveway for them to put their trailer in if we could have a mechanism for um those people in those businesses to apply for a permit maybe there's notice to their immediate neighbors to see if anybody is fussed about that and if no one's fussed we could issue a permit for for trailers to be parked for a longer time or indefinitely in those circumstances is that something that um we could could do I know that we created an exception as or is there a process that we could then take advantage of yes that was the intent of that I think Bob okay any other comments or questions for Tom I don't see any hands up Kurt if you're still on I'm sorry I should have asked you if you've got all

[361:00] the guidance you needed um I did I'm just um hanging on for the rest of the meeting to observe this okay great um I think we're I think that is the rest of the meeting unless anybody has anything else I think we're we're done anybody have any um either meeting debrief or other comments just want to say thanks for running the medium bob did a really nice job uh sure sorry it went long we had um a lot of interest and enthusiasm and and to be fair to those of you who've joined Council in the last year this is I think the first Deep dive we've had on um on homelessness since you guys have joined um and um uh um we we were all we were all first year council members and had lots of the same questions that you did and we've learned along the way so it was great to hear your questions um and uh to your councils and the staff's answer and so I hope we're now

[362:01] pretty close to on the same page from a fact standpoint and we've got some uh work ahead of us um any other questions or comments okay with that I think we're adjourned thanks so much guys night thanks everybody good night foreign