August 4, 2020 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] but also what does it look like as you go up and some people don't realize that the height limit is based on the tallest cottonwood tree that you would see so the 55 feet is about the height of your mature cottonwood tree i think the open space program really reflected in the fact citizens voted to tax themselves was really a amazing milestone and it's often forgotten the one cent tax for open space also included funding for transportation of the two things that boulder is most known for now one is our open space program and that we have made such a a compact city surrounded by nature but also our transportation innovations our bike paths our circulator bus system those things are in part paid for with that original one-cent sales tax that the

[1:01] citizens of boulder put into place in 1968. we've been working with boulder county since the 1970s to develop the boulder valley comprehensive plan as a statement about our vision for our community's future and what we want to preserve about the things that are great and also how we respond to the new challenges [Applause] [Music] so

[2:07] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music]

[4:39] hi i'm trying to uh do some uh technology here to switch computers your honesty sound a lot better much better much better

[5:09] you so bob has asked me to let folks know that he's having internet connectivity issues at his home which is why he thinks he can't get into the meeting at the moment he is rebooting his router and he'll be with us shortly it's pretty important that we wait for bob because he's presiding over the meeting tonight so if you don't mind uh exercising a little bit of patience we very much appreciate it thank you who's uh [Music]

[6:08] so juni just to clarify i see you in here once as a panelist and once as an attendee do you want me to keep you in both places like that uh can you please get out of this [Music] boot on this end no worries like i let everybody know that you are experiencing some technical issues so i'm glad you could join us thank you is everybody here yes we are

[7:01] looks like it to me great debbie would you call the roll please present although you're hard to hear debbie i know sorry about that um councilmember friend here uh joseph here nagel swetlick here wallach here weber yates young president great thank you i should have announced thank you i should have announced this is the boulder city council meeting for august 4th 2020. i do want to announce that sam weaver had a personal matter come up today and so he will not be able to join us tonight so i'll be facilitating this evening's meeting uh first thing i'd like to do is ask for a motion to amend the agenda we have three changes to the agenda since it was originally published um item 6a

[8:02] was to be will be a presentation on evictions and foreclosures right simply moving it within the agenda from item 6a up to item 3d during the consent agenda will become apparent um when we get to that where that makes sense second is item 6b on police master plan and other policing matters this agenda was getting a little bit long and so at the council agenda meeting yesterday we agreed to move that off august 25th and then finally um item eight day um we're explaining that a little bit and mary will leave that discussion this can be some additional discussion on the search process for hiring the new city manager do i have a motion to amend the agenda in those three items so moved again great anyone opposed okay hearing none the agenda's amended uh normally at this point we would go into open comment um but we've got uh several guests with us tonight uh who are gonna make presentations and so

[9:00] i'm gonna turn it over to jane to introduce the first of what will be for a brief presentations thank you bob so our first presentation is the one that we do at the beginning of each month to catch up on what's going on with covid related matters and our pres presenter tonight is none other than jeff zack jeff is the executive director of the boulder county public health so jeff take it away all right well thank you jane and thanks council members so i will walk us through what we're seeing in the latest data and we'll talk a little bit i know that rob anderson will be on as well and there's going to be a school related update that relates to some of the data that we're seeing here so let me get rid of my this little box that's not supposed to be on my screen can we go to the next slide please so total case count at this point is 1969 are the number of people deceased thank goodness has changed very little uh over the last couple of months and again the

[10:00] majority of the folks who have deceived are associated with our long-term care facilities done a good job um really getting that under control and working with our all of our facilities to really control the spread in those in those places next slide this is our it's a busy slide but seven day moving average uh new case rates across the metro area the red one that you see towards the bottom there is boulder as as you've seen through most of these presentations we still remain lower on that graph although broomfield and boulder are are trending up a little bit more as others are trending down so we're keeping a close eye on that and when we get to a slide coming up you'll see our rates next slide this is our number of new cases and unfortunately what we're seeing here is we're seeing a trend upward so our cases are continuing to trend upward right now and we do want to keep a close eye on

[11:01] that we're up around an average of 20 cases per day and most of that spread is still occurring as we'll see in a slide associated with person-to-person transmission but we're starting to see more travel spread but that trend is a trend that we're going to keep an eye on and want to keep focusing on next slide this is a positive note so this is our five day rolling average positivity rate and the state's requirement or goal is to maintain less than five percent if we can maintain less than five percent positivity rate that means we're doing enough testing in our community to assure that we are catching our positives and able to control spread of the disease and we have remained below 4 for a while now so this is a positive trend and we do have full capability and capacity to meet the target of 500 tests per day in our community that is not a problem for us more of the

[12:00] issues that we're still focusing on with the state that are out of our control as a local community is turnaround time for testing results themselves the the average has been up as high as 10 days and that is obviously too long to do effective case investigations and contact tracing so we're continuing to to work with the state to to try to assure that there is more capacity at a statewide level to turn those things around quicker next slide this is the the residents who have tested positive and it's the rate per 100 000 population as you can see boulder and longmont are usually number one and two in the state and that is consistent with what we've seen in the past next slide this is the number of total people who have tested positive for covid19 and the number that are hospitalized end up in icu and are deceased this has been

[13:00] pretty consistent the last multiple times that i've presented we are still consistently seeing higher numbers in that 20 to 29 category in terms of numbers of positives and we haven't seen any kind of major changes in terms of hospitalizations or deaths they are still occurring in that 70 year old plus category um so this has not changed a lot and we still need to to focus and work on our 20 to 29 year olds uh in terms of spreading and and getting positives in this with the disease next slide uh you've seen this graph before this is where our um our source of transmission is coming from and if you look at the the orange bars on the slide that is community-wide transmission as you can see early on in this disease community-wise transmission was much higher and as we progress later in the disease we see more person-to-person spread and less community transmission

[14:00] as well as more travel so again uh when we first discovered that covid was in colorado it came from a travel associated case early on there was travel um and we're starting to see more travel here as we're progressing into uh these later safer at home and some communities moving to protect our neighbor phase and we want to make sure that we're keeping the community wide spread to as much of a minimum as possible we can control the person-to-person spread especially when we know what the source is but the more community-wide spread we have the more risk we have for losing control of the disease next slide thank you boulder county residents who tested positive for covet 19 or are considered prob uh probable or who are hospitalized or deceased and this is by race and hispanic origin and you've also

[15:01] seen this graph this is a continuing challenge for us we're actually seeing some more spread in our latinx community just so you know some of the things that boulder county public health is doing along with boulder county we're hiring a bilingual communications specialist because we really need to be able to support this community in a way that's different than we are right now we're still seeing obviously based on this slide equity issues uh with a larger percentage of this population being impacted than what we should see or expect to see we're also working with the counties hired a community engagement specialist to work with this community and there's a racial equity team that's been formed uh by the county that's working on the gear racial equity assessment tool as well as we are working with our management team now since we got some funding from the state that has been passed through from the feds to be able to hire a resource coordinator that can work directly with

[16:00] our latinx population because we we know we have work to do here and we want to help support reducing the disparity that exists that we're seeing on this slide next slide please this is i'm sorry it's kind of hard to see this i will change it for the next time that i present but this is our hospitalization data and we continue to to be pretty stable we are seeing a little bit of a tail up in boulder county and this is specific to coved 19 hospitalizations um we we want to make sure that this stays low our hospitals are doing still doing fine in terms of capacity so just like i've reported to you before we're tracking individual outcomes like looking at icu beds available med surg availability beds available and all those things are staying steady and our hospitalizations are staying low and we want them to continue to stay low next slide please this is the state hospitalization and we were starting to tail up in some

[17:01] of the i think it was the last presentation i was showing you the the national data and then the state level data for each of the states that were increasing and colorado was on that increase the governor as you know put some more orders in place a few weeks back and those orders appear to be having a positive impact in terms of hospitalizations and case rates i don't have a case rate slide for the state but if you looked at the current case rate slide you'd see a decline in cases in the state as well and we're going to see that in a slide coming up here next slide this is total coronal virus cases in the u.s it's great because we are starting to to dip and move back on a downward trend which is exactly what we want to see next slide will show us the states that are increasing and we're i'm happy to see that colorado is not on this slide so as i noted colorado is now on a decreased

[18:02] number of cases the total number of states that are increasing has dropped dramatically from i think it was 32 states the last time i presented to you so this is a positive trend in the united states and certainly a positive trend for colorado as well and then i think i have one more slide it's great to end it on a positive note here so what we are seeing this was a recent survey that we just did of um the percentage of persons that we were observed wearing a mask we'll be doing this once a month uh through until we're until we have a vaccine and it's readily available in the community we'll continue to repeat this survey and i i can't ex i can't express enough how much i appreciate anybody who's tuned in to watching this tonight to see these kind of numbers because we know for sure that masks can make a significant difference in the spread of this disease so the social distancing the masking hand washing are absolutely

[19:01] key again the key things for us to control our numbers here in boulder county is to maintain the social distancing at least six feet and to maintain wearing a mask and this demonstrates uh what a great job that everybody is doing from the surveys that we did so i want to thank those who are participating and keeping these numbers high and i certainly encourage you all to keep doing that because taking those three precautions will help assure that our community can operate uh continue continue to operate in a way that allows us to be able to do more social activity but do it in a safe way it allows our economy and our businesses to continue to operate and it really does come down to all of our individual behavior so thanks to all of you who are taking responsibility for that and i'll stop there and see if there's any questions thanks jeff i really appreciate that uh council members questions for uh jeff zack

[20:02] i have uh rachel then uh mary then mark rachel thanks um i had just one question i'm sure you've explained it before but um there was a chart where you showed community versus person to person versus travel modes um of transmission i would think community is like person-to-person within the community but what is community spread versus person-to-person like what's the distinction yeah that's a great question so community spread is more difficult to pinpoint where the source is coming from so if we start to see a lot of community spread and we don't know where it's coming from that's an indication that we have more virus circulating in our community it's spreading more readily and it's hard to pinpoint or control it when we know it's going person to person so a good example of person to person is we know that most of the spread person to person occurs when somebody's positive they isolate at home and then it's really difficult just like it is in a long-term care facility to control the

[21:01] spirit of that virus to other household members um so that's more of what a person to person versus community widespread might look like does that help thanks yes it's still it's still person to person it's just person to person kind of outside your household or your inner circle and maybe we can't trace who gave it to who thank you great thanks rachel uh mary mark and then adam mary hi jeff thank you for joining us tonight um just a quick question about you mentioned that you're going to be hiring a bilingual communications individual and i was wondering what your strategy is once that person is hired to reach the community that is most affected in terms of say for example looking at the data by employment type for example and um and trying to identify where to go

[22:01] absolutely so i can give you a high level and then if you want me to provide more detail after this i'm happy to follow up with that as well because i we have a team that's working on this but we have really two positions that are intended to work together the bilingual communications specialist and the resource coordinator that would work with our latinx and high-risk populations and they're intended to work with our cultural brokers some of the folks who are already providing services in the communities that we know are most impacted our center sister carmen el paso those types of organizations working with them to figure out how do we actually do a better job of integrating and supporting these communities which which we know um are already reticent uh to seek out services so we are going to be working with our community to figure out what's the best approach to that thank you thanks mary mark then adam mark

[23:00] yeah thanks for the briefing jeff as always uh it was very nice it's very good with some of the numbers trending upward um are there specific trigger points at which we might institute uh more stringent regulations and and if so what might those look like so i can uh we we are having this conversation at the statewide level now so i'm gonna give you um some examples of what those could look like but we don't have uh yet a statewide list of those but we are looking at those so i'm just gonna just to give you a flavor of what kinds of things we're looking at in the the kind of conversations that are occurring right now are sort of looking at a color coding associated with that so you would assign green yellow and red and at each of those different points you would have different recommendations and strategies that would move forward but it's looking at new cases per 100 000 population and then

[24:00] having measures within each of those so as an example one might be less than 10 you're in a green zone and if you're over 100 per population then you're in a red zone percent change in new cases per 100 000 population our positivity rate would absolutely be one of those things so if we start to get above five percent we may recommend additional strategies but those are not fully in place yet um but they we anticipate that they will be a group has just been formed their meeting this week and next week to actually talk about those levels and what kind of actions would be associated with each of those levels that could be a client applied at a statewide level so if that helps there's probably about 10 or 12 of those indicators that are being considered i can read more off uh but they're not finalized yet and they're under discussion when do you anticipate they might be finalized i would say well anytime i think something's going to be done it's always later than that so i'll say a

[25:00] couple weeks from now and i hope that that would be the case um but i expect that we would see something fairly soon groups meeting this week um and they're gonna they have at least two meetings scheduled this week and a series of meetings next week next week so i would hope within two weeks thank you so much great adam hey jeff um given that we won't see you for another month i had a quick question regarding um cu coming back in this session um we got a presentation from cu leadership last week but i wondered if you could speak a little bit about what older county health is going to do in anticipation of adding thousands and thousands of more students to the community um especially given that the age range of 20 to 29 seems to be the area where the highest rate of transmission is occurring so i just hoped you had a few words about what you're going to do in anticipation of that influx of students absolutely uh so we've been meeting with

[26:02] cu and the city of boulder both we have both the city of boulder and boulder county public health and cu have been meeting and talking about this it is it is not not a concern it is definitely a concern of ours what we are focused most on is wanting to make sure number one that i think you heard this stated by francis and i can't remember the other gentleman who presented but there's going to be a lot of education focus thanks to the city of boulder there is some support to work directly with landlords around potential evictions if people are just not following and supporting the restrictions around kovid that are important like the gatherings are a big piece we saw how that played out early on so we want to make sure that we have the ability to support enforcement around those things but to take an education approach approach first is going to be really important we're continuing to meet especially with cu it's been

[27:00] a positive relationship because we've been able to develop contact tracing supports um in case investigation supports directly with the university which allows us and puts us in a better position to be able to respond quickly to some of those things but we do we are going to watch closely what's happening i i you know i'm i'm concerned probably just like uh many of you are that we we do make sure that we have control in terms of what kinds of things are happening and if we we're going to need to be in close communication with cu throughout this process and with the city of boulder and be able to respond quickly we've also talked with cu specifically with francis about making sure that we have close connections in terms of how we will respond if things aren't working so those are part of the conversations that are continuing as we move forward into these next couple weeks and i i also know cu is ready to respond with the ability to test students as well if there is issues that

[28:01] are occurring so that we can quickly get a handle on any kind of outbreak that might occur thank you jeff i don't see other hands up i'm going to ask a question and then last call for questions for jeff jeff um um we we've touched on testing a little bit here tonight um i do recall from prior presentations that there were some ambitions to increase testing both in the county and statewide pretty significantly it looks like colorado is slipping behind other states and testing can you speak to what's going on statewide on on testing i can a little bit yeah so the the governor's office has definitely reached out to jurisdictions across the state to support increased testing in jurisdictions i do want to say again which i think i just said in this but i think it's important to illustrate is that we can completely meet our testing requirements so when we look at what testing requirements we have for boulder county there's a target number of 500 and that was projected from harvard university

[29:00] saying if you you need to make sure you contest all symptomatic people along with their asymptomatic contacts of somebody who is close to a positive we absolutely have the ability to do that in boulder county we are meeting that now our test positivity rate indicates that so i don't want people to think that we can't meet the testing requirements that we have right now because we absolutely can that being said there is work with the governor's office to expand testing and to specifically look at how can we make testing free and easier for the public to access one of the areas that we know is a challenge as i mentioned is with our latinx population and being able to make sure that there is available testing and people are comfortable to go get that testing is going to be an important component for us as we continue to work forward there's conversations right now with the governor's office about how to do that so we don't have anything finalized um but in the in the interim we are completely meeting all the

[30:00] symptomatic testing that we have right now for boulder county great thanks jeff i don't see other hands up so i think jeff we're we're done if you uh rob anderson's gonna be presenting next and it's possible that we could um some questions could come out of that so if you don't mind hanging on through rob's presentation questions that'd be great yeah thanks thanks jeff jane back to you thank you bob so rob anderson has joined our conversation he is the superintendent for boulder valley public schools and looks like he's got a powerpoint so rob it's you thank you jane uh thank you boulder city council for having me here this evening hope you all are well um i probably have too many slides here so i'm going to go pretty quickly because uh paul is shared i think i have 30 minutes is that right jane uh yes okay wonderful and so this information was just information that we shared with our board this evening in regards to reintroduction next slide

[31:00] uh we've been using the term uh hashtag together bvsd to to really um just frame you know our hopes uh in regards to coming back together i know that that our kids have been out of school for a very long time and we can't wait till we have them together um and but i will tell you uh council members that this is as complicated of a problem that i think that public education has ever faced um in regards to the competing priorities and the complexities and ground logistics um in in trying to navigate a pandemic our team has been working day and night uh since march really to try to figure out how to make all this work next slide we our team set these four priorities um in developing our back together plan uh number one to make sure that we're ensuring the health well-being and safety of students and staff making sure that we maximize not just growth but academic achievement providing support to our employees teachers and staff and making sure that any plan that we developed was operationally and financially viable

[32:02] next slide and so so based on these priorities we developed a five-phase plan that was really linked to uh to guidance from from jeff and his team at boulder county public health broomfield public health uh to to think about the different phases in which we could come back phase one being um on remote learning similar to what we had in the spring all the way up to phase five when the pandemic has passed and we're back to normal um phase two three four have to have different flavors in regards to hybrid learning um with lots of health precautions again as guided by by boulder county public health next slide so what i've learned and i think many of us as superintendents are learning as we as we're trying to navigate this the the the shelf life of information um has become really really short uh two weeks ago we made a solid recommendation in in in my estimation to implement a hybrid

[33:01] plan uh for all of our students that would blend in person and home learning opportunities um with with physical environment adjustments transportation adjustments uh to be able to bring students back and we feel we felt like two weeks ago we would be able to logistically pull that off um and it was supported by jeff and boulder county public health but that was two weeks ago next slide and looking forward to the next slide i would say that that there's three pieces of data that that all school districts are going to have to monitor um in regards to being able to decide what it is they're able to to do in regards to reintroduction first and foremost of course is the health data we feel like that that is is important we can't bring kids back if it's not safe but we have two other pieces of data that that we've been monitoring to try to make our hybrid plan work and again our hybrid plan would bring back 50 of our students on any given day um

[34:00] shrinking drinking the class sizes with social distancing masking taking all the precautions we felt like we were going to be able to make that work i will tell you that when we think about student opt-out data we wanted to provide options to our community and i think that was the right thing to do but the problem that i think many of our parents were having is how to decide what to what decision to uh make the options we provided were number one come in at 50 percent in our hybrid plan in person learning option two would be to stay with your home school but start the year online through online learning and option three would be to opt into our fully online program boulder universal uh which is a well-recognized online school that we've been running for quite some time um if you can go back one slide please uh so so um on that we i think while we tried to verify that data we felt like that it was still um a lot of parents still weren't comfortable making the decision even with all the information that we had up at this point

[35:00] so even though we had data we had some questions on the validity and reliability of that the last piece of data that i think that that we weren't certainly anticipating but has really driven our decision is the number of employees that qualified for exemptions under both of the executive orders from the governor both safer at home and protect your neighbor and so we had roughly 30 percent of our teachers qualify as high risk and then were exempt from being in person so if you were to think about our school district we have 57 schools and then and then obviously they make up one school district we have 57 problems or puzzles to try to solve um with all of that information so for example at some of our schools all but one or two of our teachers were exempt which would have meant we would have to move um employees from other schools with those types of certifications um with with the right um expertise and ability to fill in the in-person

[36:01] opportunity and then switching that teacher back into online learning somewhere else within the school district um at the end of the day we did everything we could to make that work but unfortunately uh because of of of the exemption and again it was it was difficult for employees to apply for that and um they were all provided us medical medical documentation that they were actually exempt per those executive orders but because of that we were not able to make phase three in our plan work logistically so next slide and i think you can go to the next slide as well and i can address both um so what we're doing right now is because our logistics um are logistically our logistics have challenged our original phase plan we're going back to the drawing board but we'll be starting in-home learning for at least the first month of school we're going to be closing uh our buildings and we'll be we're calling this phase

[37:00] one plus because there are some things that we're going to be doing that we didn't initially have in phase one on phase one really was initially designed um for um for when we uh left in the spring um where we were at it was our most restrictive phase because of the health data unfortunately again we're moving to phase one because of moral of logistical data um but we are working to provide child care continuing to to feed our families um and limited activities per chassa um as those uh requirements uh come out publicly next slide so as we think about our phase one in our online learning uh we've listened a lot to our parents we did extensive surveying we know that we had to stand up home learning uh remote learning in a week in the spring and we know that that um there was a lot of challenges that our parents and kids had in accessing their learning uh just fully remotely and so we've made some significant

[38:00] improvements that i would love to share next slide so um over the summer we narrowed our scope in regards to what we're asking teachers to teach by prioritizing standards uh the most important standards we feel like kids need to be successful we were running multiple platforms some kids and some families having to navigate two three four different platforms to access content um and instruction we've simplified those platforms to uh one platform for our youngest learners and um schoology which is our larger platform for our middle and high school students um we're setting expectations around the ability for kids to interact with their teachers both synchronously and being able to check in one of the concerns we heard from parents is that some teachers were doing a great job with this others weren't checking in with with kids in the ways that they needed to and so we've made those adjustments we're looking for more consistency consistent schedules constant communication from teachers we've improved materials and resources that we'll be able to access we had

[39:00] teachers working all summer um spending their own time helping us develop over a thousand lessons that are pre-recorded that our teachers can use uh parents could use um we're gonna make those available um and then we're really we're focusing on the professional learning to make sure that our teachers and leaders know how to best leverage the technology uh to create great learning experiences um in home learning for our for our students next slide so again this is just more of the specific details on on what it is i just shared at a high level and so i'm guessing jane that you all post these these presentations um up up with your documentation so for folks in the community that wanted to know more details is posted here also post will be posted on the vbsd website um for everybody to know and understand the things that that we're working on to make um home learning uh better as we are are in this phase one um phase one time um this at the beginning of the school year

[40:00] next line and one more um so one of the things that we know that we is we have a um i feel as a school district we have an obligation to make sure that if we are going into home learning because of the logistical challenges that i've shared with you that we still are here for our community in regards to um assisting our working families those that have to go to work with a robust child care program for those who don't know we have licensed sites at most of our schools through our community schools program and so this is something that our district has been doing for a long time we've actually been providing child care throughout on the past since march for our central workers and so and we've done that successfully without any outbreaks and so we're confident that we can continue to do this um these are the details we'll offer five day a week here um for um kids k k through 8. we also have a site for infant toddler care at arapahoe ridge and we have several preschool sites

[41:00] throughout the district that will be standing up to support our families those who have to go to work and those that are looking for a viable child care option while their students do home learning and we want to make sure that we're here for those families again high speed internet we can also help with with with devices and all of our programs are licensed uh next slide we have done everything we can to take these rates as low um as we possibly can uh forty dollars a day is is well below the market rate and um lets us to almost break even we will be investing some money to provide this service from from the district uh 65 for preschoolers 89 um for infants and toddlers 89 and 86. um that's tied to the ratios that we have to staff on some of the of our programs at um at lower ratios and we also want to make sure the families know that we're here to work with you and so for those of you that qualify for free and reduced lunch um there'll be no cost for those families in regards to child

[42:01] care and anybody who's going through a financial hardship we'll have an easy to fill out waiver process that will help us work with those families um and because we want to make sure that that we're there for everybody that needs us in our community next line and we're hiring if you know anybody who's looking on what they want to do they can do to help out their community um we are hiring additional child care staff right now we're trying to build up our staff to be able to serve over 800 students that was the initial number that we got from our community when we rolled out our hybrid plant hybrid plan that they would need additional child care so we're staffing up to at a minimum to 800 and we'll staff as much as we possibly can based on the needs within our community next slide next slide um so as we think about next steps again the reason uh the major reason that we are in moving into phase one is a logistical challenge that we're trying to overcome um in the meantime we

[43:00] are hoping to bring back in-person opportunities as soon as we are able to as and as long as the health data allows us to do that and we make sure that that is safe um so as i shared earlier our phases were based based um almost solely on health data uh but now we're going to have to adjust our phase plan based on the logistical data that that we are now challenged with next slide so we're pulling together a working advisory group we're going to be tapping into the talent of our community and of our teachers and leaders uh making sure that we focus on our back to together bvsc priorities uh we have considered concerns and considerable concerns regarding equity making sure that our significantly impacted learners and working families are able to be supported especially as we move back towards in-person learning and that we know and i think i'm most uh worried about our youngest kids our kids that that are in grades uh k through three where they're learning those essential skills that serve them well throughout their

[44:00] their um schooling um we want to make sure that that we get in person with those kids as soon as we can when it is safe and we can logistically be able to do that and that's going to be a priority next slide this is a timeline for that working group again about a member about 30 members of both the community both staff teachers um other employee groups um parent members from parent advisory committees that already exist we'll we'll be having members from our district accountability committee a district parent council and our latino parent advisory council and hope to bring a recommendation for um for in-person learning in a phase two plus timeline by september 22nd uh to our board of education next slide the last thing that i'll share is that um many of you i'm sure are hearing this uh within your neighborhoods for those that that are watching at home for for council members that this is something that is happening across the country where parents are actually uh bonding

[45:01] together to figure out how can they provide these in-laws in-person opportunities for their kids i mean they're developing something that's that's that has um evolved that are called learning pods um and we embrace this we know that uh that we think that there is not only the opportunity for us to integrate learning pods that are developing in the community um with the school district but that we could also provide similar opportunities for those students who might not be fortunate enough at this point to be in a learning pod um so for those learning pods that are existing we've been reaching out to those those facebook groups and however we're finding out about that because these are performing organically in our community um we are going to try to make sure that we are all on the same page on the standards we want each student to learn and master um each each year in school we want to make sure that we're making our resources materials scope and sequence for our curriculum available for those pods and then also that as is as safe as guided by boulder county public health how do we begin some social interactions

[46:00] and academic opportunities either cross pods or to the extent we can bring kids together next slide so again that's our plan i hopefully i didn't speak too fast or take up too much time i'm happy if you go to the next slide to answer any questions that that council may have and i'll do the best to answer that we presented this with about 12 people members of mike's team and i tried to take this all on by myself so if there aren't questions that i'm able to answer i promise that i'll get back to you with those answers but i think that i'm in a pretty good position to answer those questions great thanks thanks so much rob that was that was really great um i see aaron's hand up thanks so much for that presentation um and appreciate how you all are being flexible and data-driven in your response to the situation just a couple hours ago i sat down with my two high schoolers and said okay guys online only and there were there were groans of disappointment uh but in my

[47:01] house from my two kids trust me that guy got the same yeah for sure but so my my question for you is you guys i don't envy you the difficulty of trying to figure this out but so obviously the public health data is going to be a big factor in determining uh when you would move into phases two and later but in talking about your logistical challenges um how do you what might change about that over time like i mean it seems like you're probably gonna have the same number of high risk teachers similar numbers of parents with concerns about bringing kids back to school so like i'm just wondering how you feel like that might evolve and get better well um i don't know that it evolves or gets better i think aaron to your point i think that that that he stays the same what it means is that we can't bring together um half of our kids every day in our schools which is what our plan was to run at 50 but there's certainly going to be other options on the table um potentially as we as we work with our working group it may be that we prioritize other groups

[48:01] of students you know again i i've encouraged this group to really think about through three so with the number of teachers that we have and the expertise is it possible to bring those kids back um quicker than other groups um and in a fifty percent or even more uh depending upon how the logistics will work out um i do think that that there are going to be some options and we do have to get kids in person to to whatever extent is safe um and i don't know that that we can't stay in online um and i want everybody to know and hear that um when it's safe that we need to bring folks back um and so but we're just going to need a little bit of space and time to work out some of these logistics that we felt like by providing a month uh it gives parents in the community um a fair um sense of what is going to happen because this is changing that not just in our community but communities across colorado on a weekly basis where folks are saying one thing and having to come back and they're running into some of the issues that we ran into we felt like for the first month um with with the child care we can provide hopefully to be there for our working families our

[49:01] vulnerable families and working towards a better phase two slash three plan we'll be able to have up something i think really special to be able to bring kids back in person thanks for that that makes sense well good luck and figure out these next stages and i i do appreciate that robust child care plan i know how important that is to so many working families right now absolutely thanks erin i have mary and then rachel thank you very much rob and i too appreciate the effort that you're taking into trying to make all these considerations um my first question is regarding um teacher compensation and the um extended expectation of um of their job duties and if there's any um effort being made to address that well uh mary thanks for the question i would say that um in in regards to compensation um our

[50:00] teachers are amongst the best paid in colorado i think that that's something we all can be proud of and thanks to the support of our taxpayers for the the various uh mill levy overrides that you all have supported us in that's that's really put this in a really great starting place i will say that as we think about the operational and financial viability of our school district um there's a couple of things that can impact that and we have to see where those things land before we can even think about any other changes in compensation uh one way or the other um enrollment is a big factor for us uh just so the public knows and understands for every 100 students who either show up or don't show up to our school district that equates to about a million dollars in funding um we are we have prepared for a slight dip in in student enrollment this year of about 200 students when we presented our budget to our board back in june but if there's an increase in students who for for whatever reason decide to go um and and find other opportunities for education and not stick with us that

[51:00] could have a detrimental um impact on our budget conversely if somehow um that there are more students who who find their way to boulder valley schools during this um that we would have more money so we'll have a better sense of that and be and i shared today and made a commitment to our board to present that to them on september 22nd but uh we're going to need to know what that is and that challenge is i think that we all know and understand there's a potential funding cliff um that's that's heading our way come next year um and so we're we've we're going to take some steps um in regards to that as well to make sure we're able to adjust with that but uh we have to really see in regards to our students showing up how that's going to impact us and again i would encourage our parents if you if you can stick with us we're going to do a great job we're going to be back in person as soon as we can um in regards to as as long as that's safe but would hope that folks would stick with bvsd great thank you very much um my next question is with respect to um the pod

[52:02] extension extension of pods that you're finding to other families um as well as the efforts that you're making towards affordable and um and free child care i'm wondering if you are also considering other factors such as for example transportation yeah i think all of those factors will will come into play as we think about that we actually um are going to be taking on a pretty significant effort here over the next month to really dig into to to learn and understand how these pods have evolved um and then and i think to think to our partners in our communities strategic partners folks that are that are already engaged with with our most vulnerable families how can we partner with them to think through how we can stand these things up and transportation is going to certainly be an issue we have limitations on how well we can transport our students based on on health regulations and guidance from both the state and from boulder county public health

[53:00] we feel like that we bet there is an opportunity there and we're looking for our task force to really to take that as as an opportunity to think upon on how we can provide equal and great opportunities for all kids you very much thanks mary uh the only other hand i have up is rachel so um last call for questions rachel hi thanks for being here rob i do not envy the decisions that you're having to make so thank you for stepping into that um my son like yours and aarons was not happy to hear that we were um living off of in real life so one question i have is you know i think that kids have kind of been holding you know holding out and holding hope and there's going to be some kids who are really sad so are you that's in any of our kids or that level of sad but like are there mental health supports for kids who who may need it and who usually get it and also um my sister-in-law is a counselor for bbsd

[54:00] and so she often meets with with you know some of the um kids who are most struggling are there plans to like send people into homes or to meet meet community members students where they're at somehow so that's my first question is kind of mental health and supports absolutely i would say that within the first few weeks social emotional learning is going to be a heavy focus of all of our teachers we've actually built out lessons for teachers to develop i think our counselors are keenly aware of the challenges that some of our families and kids are going to be facing certainly the disappointment and the lack of civil and social interaction but i shared with wit as i shared with our board earlier today i've got deep concern over those families that will begin to suffer from situational poverty which is a different type of poverty it's one thing to have been poor and and and adjust to that it's another thing to go from not being poor too poor and we know that a lot of our families are struggling and um we have to figure out ways to make sure that we put our eyes on those kids

[55:00] so we're working with our counselors to reaching out with students counting on our teachers as our first line of engagement um and any students we feel like where there may be some issues we'll be doing follow-up okay that's another piece is obviously teachers are often um the first line of defense for getting involved with cases of child abuse and so there are i assume continued discussions and plans for um that safety net as well yeah it's a huge worry right when kids come when can we see we can we can see kids we can read their body language we know our teachers know our principals know when something is wrong right we don't have those avenues when we're not pulling kids together it's one of the urgencies that really really pushed us towards moving um as as as as much as we could towards a phase three and i just need our community to know that we did everything we could to make that happen um we just ran into these logistical challenges that we now have to figure out and overcome uh but uh again we're gonna be doing everything we can to make sure that we're reaching out connecting with students

[56:01] we also have resources on our website rachel and i would i would encourage anybody in our community bvsd.org we have we have a help hotline where if you don't know where else to go that number is on our website call the number we'll answer it and we'll get somebody to help you in regardless of what it is that you're dealing with okay um and to the point of you know we wanted to be phase three and everybody's excited for it and then we jumped back to phase one um why can you explain a little bit more why phase two is passed over all together sure um the the the logistical challenges that we need to kind of figure out and go through um we felt like that that we needed a little bit of time to work that out and again um it would have taken me two three four weeks uh to uh potentially um come up with with an alternative phase two um which doesn't give parents much much reaction time at all we felt like the sound decision um and uh it was to move to to to phase one temporarily really focus

[57:01] our efforts on connecting with pods um providing child care starting the year off strong um in online um with the understanding that we've got a long way to go and i think our community knows that that this is this this pandemic isn't going away any time soon that throughout the course of the next two years you know and our initial thoughts and i still believe this is true is that we're going to see various phases as as the ebbs and flows of this virus hit our community um so it's disappointing certainly and i know the first day of school is a big day of school for everybody but our goal is to let's let's put our heads together let's put together a good plan to get make sure that our kids can come in person as many days as possible this year we felt like by taking that time and focusing on those other things that the right path okay um two more questions um are the teachers exemptions which it sounds like um underpin you know the need to do things differently to some extent are those for the whole year for the semester well well those are aligned to the executive orders that the governor issued on both um safer at home and protect your neighbor

[58:01] so you know we're assuming that those numbers are pretty static they're not as dynamic as the other the data points we're trying to navigate um but that's not to say that somebody who um was imu compromised or was um you know met one of the other indicators uh that wouldn't change and and and we would adjust on that but we're not counting those numbers to change very much okay so it's possible that um what we're looking at now and phase two plus is for the whole school year potentially if you're a community member trying to plan out your year potentially right unless something significantly different happens with this virus or with with um with the the uh information that we have know that this is it could be phase two plus it could be you know we're going to continue to work and iterate to try to react as the information changes um but uh the idea that we're gonna go five days all in person unless we see

[59:00] significant declines um in this virus i think that we just have to prepare for uh you know these these different types of versions that that not only boulder valley uh school district is standing up but school districts across the state okay um and last thing we talked about the these pods that people are creating um well in general will students in those pods be enrolled also at bbsd because that alarms me a little bit that for each hundred students that don't enroll you lose a million dollars so are there efforts to be made to ensure that our funding stays your funding stays robust for the community obviously that's the hope that's the hope that we can provide an online opportunity and that parents who have developed pods can supplement that with however they've determined it whether it's a parent volunteering to to teach kids in a neighborhood whether it's a retired teacher or or or anyone they feel confident to lead that you know our hope is that we could also you know we could partner provide some continuity provide some of the level of resources um and

[60:02] provide the expectations right if if you were a third grade teacher and you didn't teach in bvsd you might have a whole different set of expectations on what kids need to learn and not learn we have a very strong school district and we have high expectations for our kids and so it's important that all kids get the opportunity to be held to those expectations so we're hoping to really engage and try to unify and people are trying to figure out how to make this work okay thanks i don't see more hands up rob we want to thank you so much i know you had a big day today between the um school board and now with us you're always welcome to come back and visit with us and present to our community through us so just let jane know if you've got updates that you'd like to share with the community through city council we're always happy to have you um jeff thanks for your presentation tonight we'll see you again the first tuesday of september so thank you for always being on standby and presenting and we really appreciate both of you being here tonight and sharing with our community thanks so much thank you thank you everyone appreciate it

[61:00] for those who are patiently waiting for open comment um we have two more short presentations um both by city staff and i i predict we'll probably be on to open comment in about 15 10 to 15 minutes so please stand by jane back to you thank you bob so the next one is very short um chief maris harold is um going to remind us that this would have been national night out if only we had not had the pandemic so chief harold thanks jane good evening council members um yeah unfortunately we should be out celebrating national night out um and this is the first time in my career that uh one has been cancelled um as you may be aware national night out started in 1984 and it has been flourishing ever since across the country according to their national website we might want to consider a date in october but i'd be glad to come back and discuss if that's a realistic

[62:01] option or not they are requesting that we consider october 6 which i don't know if it'll be realistic but almost certainly keep you updated on their website and again i wish i was out in the community this is a wonderful opportunity for police community relations and also the fire i understand in boulder we take a whole public safety approach to national light out which i totally support and i know that the police could really uh spend some time with the community and have a good night so with that jane if there's any questions i'll be glad to hang on thank you chief harold well thank you chief and i think we're all sad that we we can't be out on on front lawns and parks and in uh front porches um interacting with our public safety officers but hopefully we won't be too many more months before we can do that so thank you so much for please acknowledging that uh what we're missing my pleasure thank you and jane back to you for the final presentation before open comment

[63:00] yeah absolutely the final presentation will be given by our communications director sarah huntley um we have been planning for a couple of months how we would return to in-person council meetings but as rob talked about things are changing every day and so we have a recommendation tonight that we hope you will agree with but i'll give sarah the floor so that she can make that presentation sarah thank you jane thank you council members um i am running the presentation computer and giving this presentation simultaneously so hopefully i can multitask this evening i'm delighted to be here with you to talk about conversations that we've been having on the staff level with regards to the possibility of council returning to in-person meetings we know that there is a desire amongst council members and our community to have face-to-face interactions we know those are very meaningful community relations

[64:01] opportunities and decision-making opportunities but we are also in a place where we have to balance public safety and so we had actually thought that by now we might be able to be looking at some in-person meeting options and strongly recommend those we actually are in a different place than we had anticipated but we're going to walk through some of the options that are on the table this evening so the purpose of this update is to talk about uh how to discuss this issue with several goals in mind one is that we clearly want to reduce covid19 exposure for council members staff and members of the public we're still in a critical place with this virus as jeff said told us today this evening and that's a very important goal for us we also want to maintain valuable and accessible public participation so we're in that fine point of having to figure out what the balance looks like and we also want to meet the objectives of the coven 19 recovery effort which i think have been gone over before with council they're listed here and if there's

[65:00] questions about them i have a backup slide we can get into more detail we're requesting feedback tonight on your priorities in terms of meeting in person as well as direction on a preferred option to guide our work together from the end of august through october just so that you know we do have some boards in commission meetings who are watching this decision because we do intend to have council go first in whatever direction you all choose as being appropriate and then determining how to support boards and commissions after that point okay so i just want to quickly remind folks of where we are in terms of state levels so currently we're in level two which is it safer at home and in the vast great outdoors so the spirit of safer at home is to discourage gatherings whenever possible and in many ways we think that um city council meetings probably constitute gatherings at least in a lay person terminology in alignment with this we've been keeping staff remote and services

[66:00] virtual whenever we can we did get some clarification from the county health department that i do want to share with council that technically council could be meeting in this phase under the critical government functions clause again we're not recommending it but you could if you chose to exercise that discretion under that clause chamber's capacity would be extremely limited and we're going to talk a little bit about what that is going to look like guidelines would include six feet of separation and limited sustained time indoors so we'd likely have to have a lot of people waiting outside for their turn to speak and we would need to make sure that we were gathering information to allow for contact tracing if we had a known exposure case and protect our neighbors um it does limit activities in space to 50 capacity up to 500 people so we think we probably could do it with fewer limitations than we would have it safer at home there are other guidelines or requirements likely to be determined by

[67:00] boulder county public health we are currently not in protect our neighbors and it's not clear to us when the county will be in a position to do so they have to meet certain data requirements to get that consideration from the state so again we had sort of hoped that we might be in a different case by the end of august but that's not looking particularly promising so our recommendation is to avoid in-person participation at least until boulder county moves to protect our neighbors and perhaps even longer depending on what council's comfort level is with returning so we put together this chart and i think the first line of this chart is really important because depending on what your objective is or in engagement terminology the problem you're trying to solve we're going to come up with different options right so we wanted to start off with option number one which again is the one that staff has recommended which is that we stay virtual until it's safer so for us what we're recommending is that if we stay if council chooses that option we

[68:00] would re-evaluate at the end of october-ish to see where we are but we would stay virtual for meetings from now until the end of october again the objective of that option is to eliminate risk of exposure to council member staff and the public we would continue we could possibly make some modifications to how we run meetings online and we'll talk about that in a little bit little later in this presentation there would be no virtual no in-person present uh participation would all be virtual um option two we could make a decision to have sort of a i guess phased-in approach where council members and staff could meet in chambers we could begin this under safer at home we don't think we'd be able technology wise to set that up and get it going to september 8th we would say study sessions could be in person and regular meetings remain online for the regular meetings since they

[69:00] would be online people would continue to participate through zoom the third option to really make sure that we are at a point where community members can participate in public comment in person we're recommending that that occur when we move to protect our neighbors or later all meetings would be in person we are determining um at this point that we are likely to continue to have a virtual option for meetings moving forward regardless of which choice council chooses so even when we get to a stage where council is comfortable having members of the public be in person we recognize that there are likely to be community members who just are not in that place yet they might be compromised for some reason because of their health already they might be older adults and we don't want to disenfranchise them so one of the things that's critically important to the communication and engagement and clerks office staff and we've been working together also with it to determine how to make a hybrid approach work at least for the

[70:01] foreseeable future and again that um so so online participation will live with us for quite some time regardless of which option council chooses i want to talk a little bit about what some of the primary considerations are that staff factored in when we made the recommendation that we stay in the current state that we're in for prolonged indoor gatherings the guidance from the health department is that face coverings need to be worn at all times even when presenting perhaps even more so when presenting because if you look at this little asterisk when somebody's public speaking the data actually suggests that they need to maintain a 25 foot distance from others if they're not wearing a mask just because when you're projecting your voice you're also more likely to be projecting the particles that cause problems and end um and infection so there's a lot of difficulty obviously with understanding people through face masks and asking people to wear face

[71:01] coverings for what often amounts to a five to six hour meeting we would need to accommodate physical distancing and i'm going to show you some room schematics that explain why that's a little challenging and then also we just want people to understand that um coronavirus particles are not going to get filtered through our commercial non-hospital grade hvac system so just being an enclosed space also increases the risk and the longer you're in that space the bigger the risk becomes we also did a little bit of community benchmarking and i just want to point out that these major front range cities that we often consider our peer cities are all meeting online denver city council did attempt to come back in person with quite a few requirements in place they had a very difficult time enforcing those requirements they had a couple of meetings with very passionate groups of individuals coming and they quickly were determined that they were not able to control that situation and they had

[72:00] to make a decision to go back online so we are mindful of cautionary tales like that we did get some input from our racial equity connectors because one of the things that we are very concerned about is that when you move online you could potentially be experiencing more digital divide issues i will say one sort of silver lining of this as we have learned that there are quite a few organizations support community members of colors color and other folks in our community who have been doing zoom trainings and when individuals who typically don't participate in council meetings are getting online and in other types of settings besides council meetings we have found that there's kind of a level of the playing field and they're becoming more assertive and more vocal perhaps because of the comfort of being able to speak from their home but notwithstanding that we did get some feedback from our racial equity

[73:00] connectors that we definitely understand and want to be mindful of in general they prefer to attend meetings in person because of concerns about internet access device access and they also feel like we all do that the smoke social emotional connections that you get from being in person are really really critical and we understand that but we also have to balance that with public health realities they did make some suggestions to mitigate challenges given that they understand safety has to remain a top priority so um they are suggesting that organizations perhaps appoint somebody who's comfortable speaking and participating online to speak on their behalf they're also suggesting that we continue to explore ways to make hot spots available to community members and distribute to impacted individuals as council may recall we did quite a bit of that work through partnership with the library and the library foundation and also bbsd early on in the pandemic and there may according to our racial equity connectors continue to be a need for

[74:00] that they're also suggesting we do more training um and possibly create pods where people could get together with staff supported technology to participate in the meeting so we will definitely take that into account they also want us to more fully explore the interpretation components of zoom we've actually found that to be another silver lining is that zoom does have some nice interpretation features and we've been able to use that in meetings where spanish language has been a priority um and a necessity and we've been able to do it probably in a way that is a little more streamlined than in person okay sorry for some reason my slide is not advancing here bear with me for one moment why uh sarah's team that up i think

[75:00] she's near the end of her presentation feel free to raise your hands council uh colleagues if you've got questions for sarah okay sorry about that so this is the um schematic that i talked about so in order to have the council meeting option where council members and staff are present only in order to be able to maintain the six feet distance we are talking about having to use the floor space that council typically uses for study sessions to space council members and then using the dice and the staff diocese to support clerk and supporting staff to help council run the meeting the meeting could be televised under this scenario i think council knows that our camera configuration for the study session space is a little bit tricky but we do believe we could make that work so that's the option that we would be recommending if it were just option two which is staff and council members

[76:01] option three is if we were to have council members i'm sorry some public participation in the meeting so as a reminder under this option people would have the ability to participate virtually but if they wanted to participate in person they would be able to do so the challenges that we would have is that we cannot allow gatherings in the lobby or in the chambers so again people would likely have to wait outside until it became their time to speak which would be okay in warm weather conditions probably not so great as the weather gets colder we could have face-to-face interactions but we want people to understand that it would be a very different experience than pre-covered there are concerns for how to facilitate compliance with physical distancing face coverings and group gatherings we're not entirely sure what resources we would be able to put to that but we absolutely anticipate we would have to have some resources and what we are proposing

[77:01] is that we have sort of this flow of people waiting in line to come in and speak one at a time so what you can see here is that there would be public circulation where people would queue up on the staircase that's on the north side and you could have three people two people queued up on the staircase and one actually in front of chain council members in this scenario again remember the 25-foot rule for public speaking so all council members and the public speaker at the podium would need to be wearing their masks at all time and then they would need to leave they would go out the other entrance and go down the stairs and we'd cue the next person up that's the safest way we can think of as a staff to make this happen so it's not necessarily i don't want people to think that in person means that it would be same as pre-covered conditions because it absolutely would not be so again just to say our staff recommendation is to stay with the status quo

[78:00] we do however want to be open to feedback that we've been receiving from community members both about what they like about the online options as well as frustrations they have with the ways in which we're choosing to administer these meetings i think council knows that we've had to make some choices about how to use the functionality of zoom to try to strike a bounds between public participation and security concerns but we nonetheless want to hear from the community if they have suggestions and ways to make this a more meaningful experience for them there may be some changes that we could make so our um kind members of the council engagement subcommittee bob and rachel have agreed to join me for a listening session which will be scheduled via zoom on august 19th it's literally going to be a drop in sessions we're going to be there from 5 30 to 7 30 and people can sign up to come in any time during those two hours we are going to do more listening than talking so basically we're just going to cue up a few questions the questions i'm anticipating are

[79:01] have if you have not participated in an online meeting why is that and what might be some barriers we could help you remove if you have participated what has been positive about that experience that we should definitely make sure we continue and lean into and what has not been positive and what suggestions do you have for improvement and we will capture all of those themes and if there are possible recommended changes to the way we're handling online participation we will address those with the engagement subcommittee and i'm sure they'll roll them up appropriately to the rest of council we are also making some technical changes in chambers to make the inevitability of having a hybrid system more workable and more sustainable and again if city council agrees with our recommendations tonight we are committed to come back to you in the month of october to provide an update and reevaluate where we are so with that i'm happy to end the presentation and take any questions um

[80:00] that you all might have hey thanks sarah we got a couple people lined three people in line right now for questions let me suggest this by way of process staff has made a recommendation um of option one and that is we retain the status quo until at least the end of october status staff will come back to us in october and update that recommendation so um let's let's say this if you don't weigh in um you are presumed to have endorsed uh staff's option one recommendation if you disagree with that please raise your hand um and we'll call on for either questions or um disagreement first to mark then to rachel then to aaron mark hey thank you uh sarah that was good presentation uh i would heartily endorse the um staff's recommendation at this moment in time i have a very restrained enthusiasm uh for being spending six hours in a potential petri dish of kovid so i would support the recommendation

[81:00] wholeheartedly i do have a question however i think one of the great frustrations people have with our system is that an open comment and in public hearings all we get is audio not visual is there some way to provide the opportunity for community members um to speak to us more directly not as a disembodied voice so we have developed a possible alternative to our approach of not allowing video it's something that i would like to have the engagement subcommittee consider after the august 19th listening session but essentially the concept is that if people were willing to use a pre-approved background or a blank wall then we wouldn't have to make a decision as staff members about the content we would only have to make a decision of whether they were complying with that request so i think we might be able to make that happen but again i'd like to consider that that option in a holistic way with

[82:00] other suggestions that community members make okay thank you sarah that would be a great step up thanks mark rachel aaron and then juni hi sarah thanks i have a couple questions um first we've gotten some um complaints about the subtitles not being or included effectively on our council meetings is that solved yet or are we working on that so we have resolved closed captioning for anything that's being broadcast on channel 8 as well as the live streams of these meetings we are not currently utilizing the closed captioning option that's available in zoom because we would have to pay an additional contractor to make that possible the people who are watching the meetings live or on demand later on on our channel 8 website our youtube stream or either of the comcast channels are getting closed captioning now we've resolved those issues so and also that gets confusing to me

[83:00] who then doesn't is it just people who are in this call like waiting to speak then who don't have it then they can go back and watch it or they could yes and we need us here and watch on channel eight yes one of the nice features of zoom also is that when they record the meeting they also will provide us with an audio transcript sometimes takes a day or two especially if the meetings are particularly long but we are making a commitment to post the audio transcripts as soon as we receive them in the count on the council documents page so people can go back and look at the audio transcript from the meeting as well after the fact awesome okay so that was one of my questions um a second if we are meeting in real life are we all wearing masks the whole time yes okay um because that that seems like it might be um a diminishment to the value of being together and we can't read people's facial expressions and some of the benefit is you know um having that in real life you know

[84:00] uh being able to read micro expressions and things and that's really diminished with the mask so that's helpful to know um let's see if we were to go back to meeting on any given night roughly how many staff are implicated like how many staff are we requiring to expose themselves possibly i know there are there are nine council members but then there must be a right so you have a certain number of staff staff members who are on the diets so that's our city manager and our city attorney we also have at least one perhaps two clerks office staff we have our channel eight crew if we're having a hybrid situation we are likely to have somebody from my staff working the virtual space as well as any staff presenters and that is one concern we have is that if we go back even just council and staff it could create some inequities or pressures for staff if they feel like they have to show up in person to perform their job and maybe they aren't going to feel comfortable saying that they would

[85:01] prefer to present virtually so we'd have to think that through we'd have to make sure we're sending clear communication to our staff that both options are available to them but i do want council to understand that there are impacts on staff yeah okay that's helpful um and then um the the concerns um from an equity lens included people that couldn't couldn't participate that didn't have internet and things could is it possible that we could have uh you know somebody wins an open comment open speaker lottery one of us could read their comment if they if they can't participate and we could do it that way i think that's an idea that we could certainly think about as the engagement subcommittee as we evaluate all the ideas that come in after the listening session one thing i want to point out is that we do always create the zoom meetings for council with a phone number so we recognize that while it's a more meaningful experience for people to be able to watch the meeting and see the

[86:00] presentations there is an audio option for individuals who do not have a phone um or phone connected to the internet um so there is there's still an audio participation option okay last question i promise um when we go back whenever to the option three of in person or beyond that we will retain a virtual option for community members at least until cove is over might there also be an option for staff or council members who don't feel comfortable going in that might be a question for my colleagues or to tom i don't know the legalistic issues associated with that for council members but i do think that we could techno from a technology perspective make that work it would be a little bit more complex but i think we're up to the challenge okay thanks from legal perspective it's okay from legal is that what you said make it work we need to adjust the rules a little bit but okay i mean in

[87:01] the same way that some community members may want to continue participating from afar there may be staff or council members who also would prefer that option for a bit um so i i think due to the the safety implications for staff primarily and also the fact that we're wearing masks and wouldn't i think get too much out of of meeting in person i'm supportive of option one thanks thanks rachel uh aaron and juni yeah i'm supportive of option one as well i appreciate the all the thought that you put into really realizing what it could look like if we were in person um and i'll just echo what rachel said that it if in person involves wearing masks um which of course it should while we're still in danger from code infection then the value of being in person gets pretty minimized um because you can't see each other's facial expressions and it's hard to talk and you're hard to hear each other and all that kind of stuff so i'd say end of october is a good starting point but

[88:00] based on what it would look like on the in person i'm in no rush whatsoever thanks thanks erin judy okay can you hear me good pretty sad we can hear you great thank you i welcome option one as well to hold off until a later date and i wanted to go back to the idea of community engagement and outreach i think that's great that we are thinking about that but what i wanted to hear from you maybe at some later point if we are going to look into having one person who represent an entire community who is that person and how do we know for sure they truly represent the community and one thing that i thought of as you were speaking i thought okay again because we know that there's always going to be someone who falls through the cracks because of either

[89:02] lack of technology they don't have access to the internet or they're not even represented by that particular community leader if it would be feasible to have maybe message boxes and certain landmark areas for instance whether it's around city the city council building itself and i think part of that question would be as well are there staff members who goes to council between i don't know monday through friday see the staff who go to the municipal building you mean yes very very few the municipal building is closed so it has to be a really critical reason or function for somebody to be in that space many many many weekdays currently this building is empty okay thank you thank you juni uh mary

[90:03] yeah um so i support option one i just um judy's questions prompted a question for me which is the idea of suggestion boxes in different areas of town or targeted areas um i just like to throw that out there for consideration we can certainly work that into the ideas that come out of the august 19 discussion and see um you know currently people can email counsel with suggestions but i understand that not everybody has access to email so maybe that's a way to allow other people to have their voices heard the one question i would ask for counsel is how do you intend to look at those suggestions as individual council members if we were like to scan them and send them to you or would you be looking to have part of your meeting time dedicated to going through those which i think could pose some challenges in terms of the length of the meetings already

[91:00] but we could talk about what that would look like if if that's the direction council wanted to pursue yeah it's it's just a suggestion that was prompted through junie's questions and definitely needs to be thought through for sure thank you thanks mary um i don't see any other hands up i'll i'll jump in here and say i also support option one i think it's a sensible approach it sounds like our pure cities up and down the front range are doing the same thing um obviously sarah as you and your team um consider uh the health implications you know please do keep an eye on what our peer cities are doing and whether um they start to take different approaches um and with that i think we're done no one else has raised their hand so let's just assume that if you haven't spoken up you're you join everyone who has endorsed option one and i still see no hands let's call it good and sarah will schedule sometime in october for you and your team to come back and assess the situation and make further

[92:01] recommendations to us that sounds terrific thank you for your input tonight we appreciate it don't go anywhere sarah because you're up next uh so we're um we're a few minutes behind schedule uh but we are now to open comment thanks again to those who have patiently waited for open comment we've got a full compliment of people who've signed up we've got 20 people signed up sir do you want to walk us through um the our policies on uh on open government happy too so we do have quite a few people signed up tonight who i don't believe have participated in online open comments so i um appreciate the opportunity to let folks know what to expect the most common question i get is i don't see a mute or unmute button and that's by design because we're in a webinar format when the mayor or the presiding officer calls your name tonight i will toggle on a button that allows you to turn yourself on and off mute and unmute tonight so you will have a chance to turn your voice on and be

[93:01] heard this evening when we get to your point in time um uh council member yates will tell us at the beginning of open comment how much time he's going to be able to allow each speaker it's either two or three minutes depending on the number of speakers in the length of the meeting um we are only taking um testimony through audio as we discussed earlier there have been some issues with video screens being shared that are not appropriate content and that's very challenging for us in general the way we've chosen to run these meetings is to really try to strike a balance between a tendency for people to participate in zoom bombing which i'm sad to say has happened to us in three separate meetings since the pandemic started and also allow for inclusive and meaningful engagement we are using the q a box tonight as a method for people who are attendees in the meeting so community members who have technical questions about the platform or about when they can speak you can communicate with me through the q a box i know some folks have a

[94:01] tendency to want to state in the q a box what their position is on an issue i can't stop you from doing that but i'm going to try to discourage you by letting you know that none of the council members and none of the staff presenters are monitoring that q a box we want to be very transparent about people sharing their perspectives in the meeting so that's all happening in live time we are not creating a separate record of perspectives for this meeting there are some people who are signed up with phone numbers and some people who have signed in with association names we're going to do the best we can to recognize people when the mayor calls on them if you are signed up under one of those things though i'm not going to know for sure if that you're in the meeting so the best way to communicate with me is to send a message through q a and let me know you're here and if we skip over you um to get to the next person who i can see in the meeting our commitment is that we will circle back and you will get your turn as long as i know who's on the line

[95:00] and who's using association names so that's going to be very important we'll do the best we can to recognize people um so they have their chance to speak and i think that's all i needed to say at this point great thanks sarah so i'm going to read off names i'll give you uh two or three names forward so you know that you're on on deck so to speak uh and apologies in advance if i mispronounce you mispronounce your name the first three speakers we have 20 people so it'll be two minutes of peace first three speakers sammy lawrence azing peugeot and william mcgrew sammy i am not seeing sammy in the meeting yet sometimes he joins a little bit later so i suggest we go to the next speaker and if he joins the meeting we'll cue him up great and sami if you're listening in we will come back to you so we'll just send a text to uh or a chat to um to sarah and we'll make sure to get back to you sammy um aisling uh peugeot you may need to unmute

[96:00] uh my name is aisling piggett i'm a volunteer for bedrooms or for people i graduated from cu in may and i'm now going into a phd program studying renewable energy and residential electricity markets part of the reason that i support bedrooms are for people is because i've spent so much time studying how inefficient large mostly empty single family homes can be another reason is that i'm 21 years old and renting a room is the only way for me to stay in boulder and do research that is both personally and i believe environmentally valuable i don't have boulder city council's perfect family unit i moved here out of state at 17. however i live in a house and cook dinner with my three roommates almost daily this looks close enough to family for me i can tell you from first-hand experience that it's not the same as living in a dorm the fact that council's afraid of houses like mine moving into their neighborhoods is ridiculous juni i know that as a cu student this experience is probably familiar to you thank you for voting to refer bedrooms are for people and our mayor our choice to the ballot i'm glad that you stood up for good governance and for the campaigns that were driven by young people like us organizing in boulder i'm frustrated that five city council

[97:00] council members want to invalidate the work of young people getting involved i'm sure that you all know that in a presidential election year younger voter turnout is higher i suspect high turnout is one reason that council is fighting to keep these measures off the ballot opposing ballot access is part of a continued pattern of disenfranchising and speaking over younger members of the community instead council should want their constituents including students to have a say juni i'm grateful that you're on council as a cu student i hope that everyone on council wants to help students like me and yourself and the other 30 000 of our peers thank you so much sarah can we put up a time clock um realize that i didn't have that right no that's fine that's fine just so that speakers know how much time they have um willie mcgrew then anna segur william there's going to be a quick lapse while i put up the time clock bear with me please stand by william

[98:05] danny i'm going to share my screen and let me just reset the time is it three minutes two minutes two minutes okay please remind me who the next speaker is william mcgrew

[99:01] okay william you should be on the line you may have to unmute hey there uh can you hear me we can perfect hello i'm william mcgrew i'm a resident of the city of boulder and an organizer with the no eviction without representation electoral committee or newer for short this initiative which was recently certified by the city clerk for placement on the ballot will guarantee all tenants facing eviction access to an attorney regardless of age income or immigration status having the initiative certified felt like something of a culmination to us we at newar have been developing this project for over two years the initiative as currently written creates a five-person tenant committee who are invested with a degree of discretion over how the program's funds are appropriated the primary goal of newer is to provide legal representation but the language as written allows funds not needed for the initiative's primary goals to be spent on other programs such as rent assistance and tenant educate education

[100:02] for the past several weeks we have been in dialogue with aaron brockett pursuing a relatively minor alteration to the initiative this alteration would elevate rental assistance to one of the primary purposes of the initiative along with providing legal representation we believe that this tweak will make the initiative even more beneficial for bolder tenants as council will be discussing these revisions later on i would like to make uh one thing clear this initiative represents years of work by our volunteer base of tenants and workers we intend to maintain the basic structure of the initiative adding means testing reducing the fee and changing the funding structure will fundamentally alter the spirit and implementation of our program and we are not amenable to such changes we consider the initiative as currently written to be immensely beneficial for bolder tenants and if substantial changes are made in the amended version we will happily exercise our prerogative to run the original initiative thank you

[101:01] thank you william ana segura and then angie nalen um hello can you hear me you can okay my name is anna sigur and i support bedrooms are for people a group trying to reform discriminatory occupancy limits my family lives in city of boulder affordable housing i work part-time at cu and my husband works in landscaping many of my neighbors also work in cu or are in trades without affordable housing we couldn't afford to live in boulder i was offended to hear comments in the last council meeting that people correlate affordable housing with crime boulders blue and white-collar workers desperately need more affordable housing i would like to thank council members friend bracket joseph and swetlick for their support in trying to help the city recover its legitimacy as a good steward of democracy bedrooms are for people has demonstrated strong community support volunteers collected and submitted over 7 764 signatures for this ballot proposal however council members have

[102:01] bent over backwards to stifle democracy because they personally don't like the initiative council willfully sent volunteers out to collect signatures in a pandemic gave volunteers false information and when these mistakes were made public council's response was to double down and choose to proceed with a lawsuit rather than exercise council's existing powers to put this initiative directly on the ballot this is not good stewardship of democracy the city should not waste money on this lawsuit to defend false pride please uphold your oath and do what is right and best for the city exercise your existing powers to put this initiative directly on the ballot and let the voters decide if you don't personally like the initiative then don't vote for it in november but don't try to kill democracy don't try to kill the democracy that was entrusted to you thank you thanks hannah angie naylan and then suzanne batt

[103:03] my name is angie nalin and i'm also with bedrooms refer people i'm here to express gratitude to those council members who at a minimum care enough about protecting democracy to support referring this measure to the ballot to those of you who don't you're letting bolder residents know that their 7764 signatures don't count that their concerns don't count but their desire for direct democracy doesn't count as someone who voted for many of you i respectfully ask what's happened to your integrity what are your values i came to boulder to live in a city that claimed to be aligned with my values one that's inclusive that cares about diversity that works to write the imbalance of privilege one that's just and fair one that offers a strong sense of community i'm lucky to work for cu and i'm even

[104:00] more lucky to be able to live in boulder most of my colleagues can't afford to live in the city where they work a city they're a vital part of our community ultimately loses by purposefully excluding so many by devaluing those who aren't wealthy i urge you to please set aside this paternalistic patronizing father knows best approach to blocking democracy avoid unnecessary legal risk avoid unnecessarily spending taxpayer dollars fighting a pointless legal battle in a time of financial constraint putting this measure on the ballot for voters to decide is simply the prudent and just thing to do as i'm sure you all realize boulder is full of intelligent insightful voters allow us to make a decision about what's best for us and i encourage anyone who's interested in eliminating policies that are racist elitist and antiquated to join the cause by visiting bedrooms or for people.com thank you

[105:00] thank you angie um suzanne lucy carlson krakov and katie farnam suzanne okay i'm suzanne ba and uh from boulder and i'm commenting on the excel agreement on behalf of the indian peaks group of the sierra club the sierra club is very concerned and disappointed that the council is moving forward too rapidly on this agreement with excel without providing enough information and time for the public to actually evaluate the pros and cons to begin with all we have now is the franchise agreement while all the additional agreements that are supposed to spell out the benefits to the city are not even available yet how is it possible to move forward on a first reading without all of the information that's necessary to evaluate this arrangement also there is no hint about how much all of this is going to cost already excel siphons off around 23 million a year out of the city

[106:01] anything they do under this new effort including exotic things like hydrogen generation and storage is going to cost a bunch of money this will include a fat profit that will be added on by excel and we have no idea how much this is all going to add up to in contrast we will clearly know how much municipalization will cost by next spring so why are we hurting to do this now how are we supposed to compare two alternatives without knowing how much each is going to cost why not wait many of you on council have personally promised the sierra club that you will support municipalization and allow people to vote on it by moving forward on this alternative you will be breaking the promise because municipalization will be off the table now before the costs are even known finally we should not pretend that all this is is just allowing people to vote practically speaking this is an open door to excel to inundate voters with

[107:00] propaganda from now until november and it's anybody's guess what will happen at the polls then please slow this down make sure we have more specifics in the agreements get a better idea of the costs and compare the costs with those of municipalization and then we'll be in a better position to judge whether this agreement is the way to go thank you thank you suzanne lucy carlson krakow and then katie farnham hello my name is lucy carlson craigoff and i am an organizer with bedrooms are for people i'm 20 years old and i was born and raised in boulder i went to boulder high casey and whittier i have worked at three local businesses and volunteered at two community organizations i love boulder the people the infrastructure the scenery and i think we can make some major improvements i started organizing for progressive reform during the 2016 election which is still the most formative event in my

[108:00] life i saw injustices both nationally and locally and wanted to become part of the solution as i grew older i continued to fight for sustainable and effective change i even took my sophomore year of college off to work as a field organizer for elizabeth warren i did this right here in boulder building teams and knocking indoors in search of progressive victory i talked to thousands of boulder county voters and heard many of the same concerns in my experience the issues that matter most to boulder voters are the environment structural inequality and cost of living expenses it is not necessary to go all the way to the presidency to start fixing these structural problems removing the antiquated ordinance permitting only three people to live together demonstrates the exact type of economic and policy reform elizabeth warren fights for we don't have to wait around for the national government to take action before we do so let's stay true to the progressive values i know behold and administer housing equity elizabeth warren is not going to sweep in and enact progressive change for us

[109:00] we can start reforming locally by tackling this antiquated and discriminatory ordinance and protecting the human rights to housing and companionship in our charter this election day thank you lucy uh katie foreign followed by ethanol green and then um bob i'll let you know that sammy lawrence is in the meeting now so perhaps we could cue him up um in one of the next great sammy let's do a katy farm ethan all green and then we'll go to sammy lawrence katie katie you're queued up you may need to unmute if you're on the phone you can hear that okay thank you hi my name is katie farnan i am an organizer with bedrooms r for people i am asking council to protect direct democracy boulder voters are smart and 7 764 signatures gathered during a pandemic and at risk to the volunteers

[110:01] who collected them is proof that this measure should be put on the ballot i also believe that housing is a human right and that's why it belongs in the charter as opposed to simply code changes ending outdated discriminatory occupancy laws will cost the city nothing does not require new development and will decriminalize what's already happening across the city boulder has an ongoing legacy of exclusionary housing through its zoning laws and restrictive ordinances our occupancy laws are discriminatory and unintended consequences quote unquote are playing out right now boulder's housing policies have had reverberating effects on our community's ability to thrive and grow such that our population has declined for three straight years school enrollment is down and according to a 2014 study on inter-county commuting patterns greater than half of boulder county's low-income workers drive into the county to work proactive measures are needed now and the community has spoken on this now all eyes are on you city council whose central role must be this not

[111:01] standing in the way of the petitions this year that achieved the thresholds they were advised on i'm very concerned with council's commitment to building the foundation of trust with the public as the story plays out covid is a time to ensure more access to the ballot not less and this is where council and council alone has to act the petitioners did their work and now council must do theirs and not stand in the way of direct democracy thank you thank you katie i'm ethan all green sammy lawrence and kelly stone ethan i'm not seeing an ethanol green in the meeting so i suggest we go on to the next speaker and if ethan can make himself known to me through the q a box we'd be happy to come back to you great sammy lawrence and kelly stone sammy hello can you hear me you can't see me excellent thank you very much pardon me as i challenge myself not to allow my trauma to control me my name is sammy leonard support my address is homeless

[112:00] it is an auspicious honor to speak in my final days of house living in boulder colorado i'm leaving and roaming as i've arrived four years ago an unhoused man seeking justice but wiser and disabled i can't help but ponder at what inhumanity and humanity to speak of in boulder in my opinion the first one is to thank you is to thank you my comrades and my supporters especially those present when i'm vulnerable including fresh fake the boulder naacp trill boulder antifa as well as many more but what's really important to me to speak to right now is not only that my assailant weylin lowatai was put on ministry of leave but that he has actually just recently sent a harassing message to one of my friend's personal addresses why is it that waylon lowe's high boulder police department can assault myself as well as three other people half his weight in size and not be fired but be put on administrative leave when his personal instagram tactical vote tactical toa utilizes

[113:00] promoting of support of police violence upon our citizens via use of force fridays why is why is he as well messaging one of my friends via his own address this is immoral wrong and unacceptable behavior for anyone serving our community the only logical conclusion is that in boulder colorado bpd officers can assault our citizens and get away with it but when they endorse similar actions personally there is an issue of only vacation in my opinion it sounds a lot like boulder it's like the very same boulder a kkk leader endorsed in the past sadly others have shown the embodiment of these ideals elected officials who literally and metaphorically stand opposed to the citizens they claim to serve to those of you who fall in line with these ideals may the creator cure the evil in your hearts that being said if anyone has been wronged put at risk displaced or traumatized by the actions or in actions of mentioned parties i invite you to come walk with me to

[114:00] boulder police department's headquarters and demand justice walk with me on september 21st the international day of peace and my birthday we will have a challenging safe space utilizing ppe social distancing non-violence instability thank you my name is family thank you sami kelly stone uh sarah campbell and crystal grey kelly thank you for giving me the chance to speak today my name is kelly stone and i'm a homeowner in boulder in support of bedrooms are for people i was really excited to sign the petition for a ballot initiative addressing the current occupancy laws and i would like to vote for it in november i think having one person per bedroom plus one additional person is a safe and reasonable change the current occupancy laws i moved to boulder in 2012 with my now husband who was born and raised here i noticed right away how the current occupancy laws kept people from thriving

[115:00] in this community my job my first job in boulder was a contracted nurse at bch there i met many nurses who were unable to afford to live in boulder and had to commute in many were unhappy about it i wonder if this is why bch used nursing agencies in order to ensure adequate staffing at the hospital commuting after a 12 hour shift is really rough as a renter the occupancy laws put me on edge we had to pay high rent prices so we could live in boulder without roommates now as a homeowner i don't like that there are limitations on who can live with me i see scenarios in which current laws negatively affect me and my family we may want to have roommates and we may have a foster kid who ages out of the system and needs to become a tenant while they attend cu we may want to offer my in-laws 4-bedroom house as an affordable rental after they move to a retirement home rather than sell to a developer the current occupancy laws affect more than just students they affect professionals home loaders home owners

[116:03] alternative families poc lgbt and low wage earners in our community i want to thank council members friend brockett joseph and swetlick for advertiser for advocating for community members with limited financial resources and promoting direct direct democracy in boulder thank you thank you kelly sarah campbell followed by crystal gray sarah my name is sarah campbell and i'm a volunteer with bedrooms are free people i understand that boulder is changing and there's a desire to keep everything as it is with low-density neighborhoods and single-family homes but boulder cannot single-handedly resist global trends the world united states and colorado populations will continue to increase automation will continue to reduce the number of jobs in rural areas bob yates left omaha to go work for level three in london and then in broomfield mary young left el paso for an engineering job in denver

[117:00] so you got here first and the rest of us were born to wait i just don't think the accident of where and when you were born should dictate whether or not you can make a living and afford a bedroom as populations increase i don't understand where the city leadership thinks these additional human beings are supposed to go i guess to longmont lafayette and louisville so they can burn carbon and clog streets by commuting in at 60 a majority of boulder's workforce does every day boulder's housing policies do succeed at keeping people out according to the the u.s census bureau from 1990 to the present boulder's population only increased by 24 while the colorado population increased by 70 percent who exactly arrayed excluding according to the us census bureau boulder is only one percent black where colorado is five percent black and denver is ten percent black high home prices disproportionately affect those who are historically excluded from using home equity to build family wealth

[118:01] even more bewildering from 1990 to the present you have allowed a 60 increase in number of jobs in boulder a 60 increase in the number of jobs and only a 24 increase in the population no wonder home prices have more than doubled over the past 10 years the city is bordered by open space and you refuse to increase density our ballot initiative is simple we're not trying to do more than simply give humans the right to live in bedrooms look at the numbers you're intentionally keeping people out you want to keep people out so much that you won't even let citizens vote on a ballot measure thank you sarah crystal grey diane curlett andrew harris crystal crystal you may need to unmute hi there council crystal gray speaking on me initialization the city's tagline for public engagement is boulder creating a culture of meaningful and

[119:00] inclusive engagement i recommend following our own engagement standards and put off the franchise until we can have a full inclusive input we're talking about a 24 million dollar investment and there will only be one public hearing and that is in two weeks in addition we only have a conceptual idea of what settlement agreements might be on equity one aspect of the equity that i spoke to repeatedly in the listening sessions is to be able to have input into making policy and decisions regarding power under excel this can be done at excel's headquarters in minneapolis if you are a shareholder or at the puc in denver under boulder power and light there will be a board that council appoints and it can and should appoint people of diverse incomes and ethnicity to join in making recommendations or to join in making recommendations to council this is one step to combating environmental racism

[120:00] on the local level under this franchise what do we get for giving up our 24 million dollar investment some of you said the cap but that exclude does not include sent stranded assets state law allows recovery for going concerns only by rural electric cooperatives so that's out we estimate our acquisition costs that 80 million plus two substations hardly 200 million and i will send you my comments on trying to leverage ex sales reductions and carbon emissions by 2030 but the state's recently adopted clean energy plan already mandates this google it okay thank you thank you crystal diane curlett andrew harris brad siegel diane

[121:00] oh no so you diane you may need to unmute yourself if you are on the phone you can do that by pressing star six i actually see you in the meeting twice so i may try the other listing in case that will allow you to speak bear with me for a moment and let me give that a try [Applause] there i'm sorry i'm gonna remove you from the meeting on the second there we go there we go thank you all right uh can you hear me now yeah go

[122:03] i'm sorry i couldn't see an unmute on my screen i went to my phone sorry okay i'm diane crewett from boulder i want to thank you city council for upholding the state and city laws regarding the management of petitions being submitted for the ballot true group circulating petitions were given partial and false information from the city attorney's office they were also warned to obtain legal guidance to frame their petition campaigns which some apparently failed to do with the complete legal analysis of state and local laws regarding petition signature numbers required and the due dates for submission to the city were revealed city council followed and supported the law in response the bedrooms are for people campaign has vilified the boulder city council and the media claiming to be victims of discrimination and of an uncaring governing board today it was announced

[123:00] they're suing the city of boulder will drop the suit if the council changes its ruling puts the petitions on the ballots this bullying demanding an entitled behavior alternated with playing the victim and verbally abusing our elected officials and residents is becoming very tiresome as well as being harmful to our system of governance the city of boulder was renowned for its intelligent reasonable and thoughtful citizen participation in decision making but for at least five years elements of the same interest group have used similar tactics to gain leverage to pass their versions of the co-op ordinance and the adu ordinance please stand past and uphold the law please also demonstrate that demands of entitlement and bullying behavior do not result in decisions that favor those who use those tactics thank you

[124:00] thank you diane andrew harris brad siegel leslie bluestrom andrew hi thank you for the introduction i'm an aerospace engineer in the boulder area and a doctoral student at cu i've been a member of the boulder community for going out five years now i'd like to start by thanking those members of the council who have taken responsibility for the mistakes made by the council and spoken up in support of our right to participate directly in democracy in the spring i helped volunteer to get newer on the ballot to help reform what i viewed for severe inequities at play in boulder's housing system however i was forced to stop uh petitioning out of concern not for my health but for the health and safety of my loved ones who are at risk due to this pandemic while i've been thoroughly inspired by the efforts of other petition petitioners for newer i'm distraught at the council's treatment of the bedrooms are for people campaign petitioners for both campaigns have put

[125:01] their lives and the lives of their loved ones on the line under the belief that they were participating in a democratic system that would judge their efforts in good faith however the council's treatment of this issue has shown anything but undermining not only the direct democracy that we claim to uphold but faith in the system as a whole at a time of great unraveling along so many other political fronts uh from this perspective i strongly advise the council to revisit their decision and to support direct democracy in the face of these uh multiple cascading crises at the same time i feel that the ballot issue itself is more relevant than ever uh echoing the sentiment of ms pigott i know many people in the community several of whom have now become homeowners and that have started young families who were only able to survive here by living in illegal arrangements now these people looked and acted a certain way and were able to do so

[126:00] without harassment or without threats of addiction but i doubt that many other low-income and minority families or persons seeking non-traditional living arrangements would be given the same benefit of the doubt for the sake of transparency and equity in the housing market we really need to uh at least have the opportunity to vote on bedrooms are for people all right thank you for your time thank you andrew sir how's the clock going i know that's had some problems we had an issue but we have it back it up and running now great thanks uh brad siegel leslie gloostrom and sarah dawn haynes brad here can you hear me we can great i'm brad d siegel a long time boulder resident with franchise proposal comments here i sent you some written comments yesterday hope you had a chance to review them uh my summary of those off-ramps and the proposal won't work thus no leverage this means the deal

[127:00] won't work and that's of course a problem two issues every time we have a vote xl can overpower us with massive election hearing result virtually impossible to exit the franchise two off-ramps are opt-out variety hard to get out of the franchise versus opt-in easy to leave furthermore the intervals between them is too long this limits flexibility key points without working off ramps we lack leverage needed to assure compliance with provisions of the agreement making it largely unworkable two needs one need easy off-ramps opt-in at appropriate time intervals two we need to mitigate excellent selectionary advantage suggestion fix this prior to the second reading council could work on this in tonight's meeting or assign it to staff needed modifications one even the playing field need a requirement that excel not spend any funds either directly or indirectly on any franchise-related ballot issues including this false potential citizen vote two change to more frequent automatic off-ramps opt-in franchise would

[128:00] automatically expire and be put up for citizen vote every two years stipulation excel must agree to both these or we don't move forward with a proposal concluding point i can't over emphasize the importance of credible off ramps in a deal like this especially given xl's huge power advantage over boulder i also continue to be baffled by the unnecessary rush this whole thing has taken on we currently have a minimally vetted proposal with problems this being just one of many as others have articulated this is not even close to being ready for citizen vote this fall remember excel will be back next year as always with an even better deal it always happens i guarantee you check the record remember we are in the driver's seat at least unless we uh screw this up but if you if you must take it to the voters this fall please take something with at least some leverage to make it its provisions enforceable one last point the 30-day windows is another problem in this thing that's not nearly long enough to overcome uh the big money

[129:00] factor big money will win out over citizens in a 30-day window for evaluating these uh measures thank you leslie bluestrom sarah dawn haynes and cedar barstow leslie hi thank you very much thank you sarah for for juggling all of this for us and thank you always to the council members and uh i'll be speaking about the proposed excel franchise and i've got to say i'm quite encouraged i've had conversations and communications with many of you um and i think we're we're coming to a good point uh you've got a lot of emails that say slow the process down you've also got some emails that say let us vote the great news is those are not mutually exclusive um we can slow it down we can actually have a proper community engagement process and you can have a vote the vote might be a few months later than november but i think we can do this alternatively if excel really wants to do this we could get it a lot of it done

[130:00] in two weeks but that would really require excel really you know coming forth with a lot of good faith so obviously the staff and you know our council members thank you have have done a good job of getting us this far but there are many many things that either aren't adequately addressed or aren't addressed at all our goal is 100 renewable eighty percent carbon reduction is a very different thing it's not equate it's something much less than 80 renewable and they're not counting methane properly another big area that's missing is reliability we need that done quantitatively with things like sadie and safety one of the really important things here is rates we've got to have that discussion about rates if we care about equity we can't do this and let xl spend seven and a half billion dollars and then transfer that to our low-income communities it flies in the face of everything we say we care about so there's a there's so many things that we

[131:02] can do and i'm excited because i think with the proper process i've suggested waiting till november of 21 others have said a special election in spring of 21 um i'm i'm kind of agnostic on that but i really appreciate let's do this properly it's a really big decision so thank you so much council thank you leslie sarah don haynes cedar barstow kristen eller good evening this is sarah don haynes by the bedrooms are for people in its early history our town was a stronghold of the kkk with one of the largest planned chapters in the state boulder has maintained a reputation in the civil rights community as one of the most racist towns in colorado the lack of black and brown folks is not accidental early in our history boulder decided he did not want to be the home to blue-collar workers we had lost prohibiting carrying a lunch pill and discouraged jobs that brought in immigrants mexicans and black folks

[132:02] so we hired frederick law olmsted jr in 1859 to design a white college town and well look around by the early 20th century the town passed zoning requirements that assured small but expensive lots ensuring olmsted's vision of exclusion while no longer dominated by the clan boulder has continued to maintain a policy of exclusionary zoning and occupancy limits based on the city's definition of a family keeps housing costs high and making it difficult for middle or working class people to live in the city white hetero patriarchal supremacist values featured in our charter no longer serves boulder and bedrooms are for people gets it on his deathbed congressman john lewis echoes lessons from mlk junior that it is not enough to say it will get better by and by you must do something democracy is not a state it is an act and each generation must do its part to

[133:00] help build what we call the beloved community voting and participating in the democratic process are key so it makes me feel really good to know that almost 8 000 other boulderites get it and sign the petition to put builder bedrooms on the ballot covet is not inhibiting progress city council is inhibiting progress well not you rachel aaron junio and adam you're cool you'll be celebrated for being on the right side of history in boulder's anti-racism efforts cedar barstow kristen eller and rebecca davies cedar there we go hi cedar barstow 1485 sumac avenue bedrooms are for people i'm an old timer here i've been living cooperatively for some 36 years in the same co-op house it's a

[134:02] great way to live i was part of the team that put together the very first co-op ordinance that turned out to be so restrictive that no group was able to use it then i worked with the extraordinary team that got the second co-op ordinance version passed a couple of years ago this one has worked for a number of groups this is good but i really want you to know that correcting prejudicial treatment of related versus unrelated adults in housing was what we really wanted to do from the very beginning 25-ish years ago this was then considered a hopeless cause but it's a new day now and we the people are seeing and putting great effort into changing prejudicial laws of all sorts

[135:00] this is one of them bedrooms are for people in a remarkably simple way removes the injustice and sensibly focuses housing on the size of the house not number of related family members it was surely an unintentional mistake giving us an incorrect signature data but it is a mistake that can be fixed i don't believe this ballot issue is is not i believe this value valid issue is not what the framers of the date law we're trying to address or prevent and i feel the right time for this ballot measure is actually now riding the strong and imminent wave of concern for justice not in our next election cycle two years from now i'm asking you to use your leadership to write the mistake by putting our initiative on the ballot thanks thank you cedar christian eller and

[136:01] rebecca davies christian hi my name is kristen eller i'm a boulder resident and organizer with bedroom server people i joined the bedrooms campaign because i was appalled by bedrooms outdated homophobic and discriminatory housing laws that tell people what does and what does not constitute a family a family is the group of people who love you care for you and support you you determine who those people are to you the city you live in should not as a graduate student in my fifth year at cu i cannot tell you how important it is to live with and find your family many graduate students at cu live communally in houses not only because we can't afford to live in boulder by ourselves but because it's crucial to have your support network your family close to you the suicide rate for graduate students is high and continues to increase living together and supporting one

[137:01] another is one way graduate students can combat this statistic and i don't see why the city of boulder should discourage this i'm not the only one who believes the bedrooms initiative is important even during a pandemic concerned citizens came together and seven thousand seven hundred and sixty four people signed our petition the people of boulder want this on the ballot at the settle city council meeting two weeks ago you discussed the legal language ballot initiatives in boulder and i watched as city council struggled to understand the rules yet somehow five members of city council concluded that the city's misunderstanding and after the fact reversal democracy justifies ignoring the over seven thousand voices of boulder that signed our petition and told you this should be on the ballot whatever your opinion is on the bedrooms or for people initiative you should listen to the people boulder

[138:00] rectify your mistake and put this on the ballot thank you thank you kristen rebecca davies and then ethan algreen if you joined us you'll be their final speaker rebecca hi my name is rebecca davies and i'm an organizer with bedrooms are for people in 2019 mayor sam weaver said quote occupancy limits is a political question i personally feel like the place to settle political questions really is at the ballot box end quote we agree 20 years of working groups have led to 20 years of inaction numerous speakers have detailed how boulder's restrictive occupancy limits have hurt them their families friends businesses and communities opponents of our measure have made oblique references to what they say are the unintended consequences they provide no evidence but instead traffic in fear and scarcity we have a new narrative to offer and

[139:01] that narrative is that boulder is a city of opportunity we believe that diversity makes us better and we should strive to correct past actions that have made boulder predominantly wealthy and white the boulder we envision is a place that welcomes you whether you are from the city or county littleton texas or china whether you are here to stay or just visiting whether you are a student parent homeowner or renter and whether you are thriving in life or struggling to get on your feet there are empty bedrooms and we welcome you to them so yes let's settle this at the ballot box we have done the hard work for you we researched and drafted a measure we collected over 7 700 signatures in a pandemic and we have built an incredible team of dedicated volunteers and while we did not want to sue the city for access to the ballot we have taken that step because we believe the residents of boulder deserve real solutions to their very real problems not endless working groups that produce watered-down bureaucratic processes with no real

[140:00] reform thank you to the council members who've supported our efforts to get on the ballot thus far thank you to everyone who believes in a better fairer bolder one in which bedrooms are for people to support this cause please visit bedroomsrforpeople.com donate thank you thank you rebecca uh sarah do you see uh nathan on here i do not see ethanol green in the meeting okay ethan yeah okay well that i think ends up open comment thank you for everybody who uh who participated tonight and sharing with us your views we'll turn now to uh jane and tom for any uh comments or reactions to what you heard in open comment nothing from the city manager thanks thinks okay tom tom you're a little quiet so you might want to get closer to your um microphone for because you'll be up soon uh debbie i'm going to turn it back to you then okay next we have your consent agenda items a through h

[141:02] okay i want to um maybe make a comment here this is probably the most unusual consent agenda that i've ever seen on council the the bad news is it's going to take us a while to get through consent agendas and we'll have um some presentations along the way the good news is we have no public hearing tonight and so when we get through the consent agenda which will take us like uh cac's estimate about two hours uh we will be nearly done with the meeting because we have just a few administrative matters to take care of at the end of the meeting so um i think we're about 15 minutes behind schedule where this meeting is scheduled to go to 10 30 and and how long this being last is going to be entirely up to us because all the speakers from here on out are going to be us interacting with staff um i'm going to because we have presentations along the way i'm going to just kind of walk us through each item of of um the concept of jedi kind i know this is unusual but this is just kind of the way things fell this this week and we'll pause at places where we know we have presentations and we anticipate

[142:00] we'll have council discussion so i'm going to skip over unless anybody has any um any uh serious comment on 3a and 3b of course we haven't no one's made a motion on the consent agenda but i don't anticipate a lot of discussion on 3a and 3b we have no presentation and then turn it over to tom at 4 item 3c let's let tom make a presentation let's ask him questions and then tom if you want to go to g right after that that would be fine or if you want to do g later that's okay too but what we start with 3c which is the question of first reading on placing the franchise with excel the proposed franchise on the ballot you're right my presentation my my intention was to go right to 3g but i will stop for questions and as always council members can feel free to ask me questions whenever they want so this is item 3c is the first reading of a proposed franchise with excel

[143:02] there one of the things i wanted i was asked to remind you is there cac has tentatively scheduled a special meeting on august 20th which is a thursday to have a public hearing on this on the final franchise uh the their the clerk's office is doing a poll of council members to make sure that you're available for that evening if you could respond to that poll and let them know whether that's a problem or not that would be great uh so what you have before you is a franchise agreement which is a portion of the picture and in many ways a very small portion uh we did it this way just to get it in front of you you have to have a first reading as you know the parties only reached agreement in principle we could go friday and we are furiously drafting the the other documents my plan is to have them public by the end of this week um as you may know as you i'm sure you know this week is a friday is a furlough day for us and we're not allowed to work on friday so that means we have until thursday to get

[144:00] all of this done uh i'm working very hard to get that done as as is our whole team um i'm hoping to get it done by the end of the week but remember it takes two to agree um so excel would have to agree to these agreements or at least agree to put them out on the internet in this in the state that they're in so we're working on that that's my goal i hope to have them out for all those who are concerned about not seeing the others i will go over what is in the other agreements and what they are as part of this presentation the franchise grants a franchise what if what a franchise does is give a utility the op the basically the right to use city right of way uh it it it um for the last 10 years we have been out of franchise so every time we needed to do any kind of project we had to negotiate separately with excel we attempted to give them a city-wide permit but they've never really honored that so it has been a challenge to work with the franchise the franchise that's before you includes the opt-out provisions one of the commentators talked about the 30-day limitation we drafted that but i'm not sure that

[145:01] that's appropriate and i think you might want to think about that the so what i'm talking about is over the 20-year life of the franchise the city will have six opportunities to opt out three of those are based on uh whether or not excel meets certain karma carbon emission standards uh and three are absolute rights to opt out the way that franchise has written is is that you have 30 days from the anniversary of the approval from the puc uh my own view is that we should have a date certain and a lot more time than 30 days and we've talked about this with excel's lawyer and i'd love council's guidance on this either now or at second reading about when you need how much time you need one of the options of course is to place it before the voters so the opt-out could be exercised either by a super majority of councils six members or by placing it before the voters if you only have 30 days it's it would be almost impossible for you to do all the work you need to do to decide whether to place a matter of such importance before the voters so i would suggest something like six or seven

[146:01] months to do that um maybe a july first or a june 1st deadline in the year after the year that where in which you have the opportunity to opt out so those are things that need to be refined better another important thing in the franchise is the franchise fee uh the right now we have a utility occupation tax that provides the city over four million dollars a year that goes to the general fund as part of the franchise the the city would get that fee and the tax would go away there are four more agreements which we hope to as i said to make public this week at latest monday there's a settlement agreement the settlement agreement is the overarching agreement that describes all the things we've talked about to date it includes the following session sections one that describes the existing conditions where we are today uh one that describes the the fate of the cost agreement as you may recall as part of the pucs decision the city was report required to pay excel's expenses for municipalization we took i believe

[147:01] two years to negotiate a cost agreement under which the excel has been doing the work to basically us to create the separation plan and realign the substations uh the we the the agreement provides for the ways what that for basically that agreement to be held in a balance and for uh termination wrap up that agreement there's also a provision on facility study and detailed engineering design agreement that that is carrying forward the facilities designed for the six substations in boulder and the interconnection between those substations and the distribution system in the event that the city decides to opt out there's a provision on litigation which uh which describes how we what litigation we wrap up and what litigation we continue there is a provision on letters and credit the city has over four million dollars of letters of credit out there to secure the obligation to pay for the work that excel is doing those letters of credit have to be retired under the agreement there's a provision uh that control that

[148:01] overs that describes the undergrounding process as you know in the prior franchise the one that expired in 2010 the city got uh one percent of the gross revenues from an amount equal to one percent of the gross revenues from excel service to customers in boulder for undergrounding projects that resulted in a little bit over a million dollars a year spent on undergrounding city hasn't gotten any undergrounding uh funds in the last year the agreement will provide for excel to catch up on the undergrounding payments the city missed during the during that time when the city was out of franchise that is excel will be obligated to pay one percent of uh i'm sorry a number equal to one percent of the gross revenues it received during the period the city was out of franchise for underground in the city that money will have to be made available during the first three years of the franchise in addition to that the city will get the the undergrounding fund for the for for the under the new franchise equal to one percent of the gross revenues for customers in the city so that that if

[149:02] you you do the math that's approximately 30 33 million dollars in undergrounding with the bulk of it being spent in the first few years that this is important in terms of providing um better reliability for our system by being able to un underground significant portions of the distribution system there's a provision on data sharing in order to be able to monitor what's going on with the system and what and and do distribution planning the city is going to need the data uh the the two principal pieces of data and we're getting way out of my depth but the the prince of data that we're looking at is uh annual updates uh based on a gis description of the system so we know what's going on with this system and data on usage that's aggregated but provides hourly data for a whole year on various groups of customers um that's important to be able to measure if we're actually achieving reductions in usage by by being able to look at the actual data which is something we haven't been able to do very often

[150:00] there's a provision um there's a provision that governs what happens if boulder exercises its right to opt out this is the perhaps the media's provision in the in the agreement right now it has 32 paragraphs that describe in detail the steps that the city can take to facilitate condemnation it covers one of one of the things we really wanted to get out of this agreement was surety in substation design and access as you may know that was one thing that was left open by the puc and the pc basically said negotiate a deal with excel we've been trying to negotiate that deal for a couple of years and we currently have a proceeding filed with the federal energy regulatory commission attempt to force access to the substations um the the uh settlement agreement will provide uh a path to access to all six substations that serve the city of boulder um there's also that's also where uh we have the terms for restarting condemnation and the cap on acquisition costs you've

[151:00] heard me talk about that is the 200 million dollar cap that covers the total acquisition of the system the uh any going concern damages it awarded any damages to the remainder which is a form of damages and condemnation and the cost of purchasing two of the substations the ones called in-car and gun barrel i'm sorry the one called yeah the one-hand car gun barrel um there's a provision that allows the city to purchase street lights and then there's some additional terms that allows the city that that provides a transition during the period between the time of the signature of the agreement and the time of the voter decision on the franchise the next agreement is what's called a distribution partnership agreement this agreement will cut will govern the partnership between the city and excel during the course of the franchise it it includes all the details about how that works it has sections on the purpose vision guiding principles goals who serves on the executive team

[152:00] the partnership agreement oversight team and the advisory panel which i've described to you these are community members who will help provide assistance to the city and excel in planning the grid modernization we want to do uh it has a process for comprehensive community grid planning and the programs it it has and the pro there's a there are two different um there are two different attachments that provide lists of potential projects one that that our projects that we intend to do and one and the second that are potential projects we might want to do in the future there are a section on metrics and goals and in include prioritization and then there's a section on funding the third agreement is a load interconnection agreement this is th this is the agreement that provides the terms for the interconnection of the electric load from boulder to the boulder system to the various substations uh this would not be effective of course unless the city decided to opt out of the franchise and the final agreement is a distribution wheeling agreement for one of the the substations we were not able to

[153:00] reach agreement on acquisition by the city uh it's a small substation that's in a very dense area of the city and very difficult to adjust so what we've decided to do is agree on a distribution wheeling system which means basically the city will pay a rate for excel to continue to operate the substation provide transmission to distribution services at that substation to the city um there'll also be some some provisions in the load integration agreement that allows for the city to control the electricity of that substation for safety reasons so that's my overview of the settlement agreement in the franchise does anybody have any questions i'm okay here we go rachel then mark rachel start out with a softball for you tom um that was a lot of information and i know there are a lot of community members who are super interested in you know going through all of the written documents on a short amount of time

[154:00] roughly how long are these like how many pages are we going to be looking at between all the documents the settlement agreement is 14 pages single-spaced the um i was working on the distribution wheeling agreement before we started tonight that's uh 16 pages but a lot of that's boilerplate the load integration agreement i can't say i think that's longer um the distribution partner agreement is i think is eight or ten pages it sounds like it's under 100 yes i was fearing much worse than that so that's good to hear that's my only question for now thanks thanks thanks rachel um mark then aaron the nearby um tom thanks for the presentation um since i assume we will be going at this in much more detail on august 20 i want to confine myself at the moment to some overreaching uh issues one as you heard a number of community members have uh expressed a concern uh with excel's

[155:03] participation either in this referendum or any future referendum is it uh i would like to see them agree [Music] essentially to keep their hands off our election and is that contained in any of the agreements and can it be contained in any of the agreements there is a provision in the settlement agreement that provides that they will not make any reportable campaign contributions in any boulder election this year just this year what about opt-outs it doesn't cover that but we could talk about that my second issue is sort of process we're obviously going to get a lot of you're going to get comments from counsel you're going to get comments from the community um how is this going to work do you do you then incorporate them all and bring it to excel and say what can you live with what can't you live with let's negotiate um or are we simply being presented with documents that are not subject to amendment

[156:00] i think the the bottom line is mark counsel has to be confident in what we're doing and comfortable with the result so you'll tell me what you want uh it would be easier for us if you didn't amend anything but i i wouldn't expect that to happen um just two more uh i'm glad you covered the the issue of termination process there's a lot of concern about that i think people want to know that if we exercise our rights in 2026 um we're not sub we may be subject to litigation over condemnation value but we ought not to be subject to a litigation over our right to exercise uh our exit and so i i hope you'll keep focused on that i'm going to read it very carefully and then we'll want to understand that very very clearly and lastly um obviously you know they're very conflicting views

[157:00] here and some people are saying slow the process down um and and wait um i i will tell you i i don't think it is realistic to have a transaction with excel if we're saying we're not going to get to it until 2021 november um but my question for you is if we wanted to buy an extra month or so december or january to allow a slightly more detailed and robust uh conversation is that possible i mean is there a special election that we could call in uh december or january if if we feel too rushed for november third if that is possible what might it cost um what are our options there uh i'm i just want i wanted to double check i don't see anything in the charter that requires that a franchise be be voted on at a regular or election so i i think you could call a special election

[158:00] that there's some cost associated with that and we could negotiate that um but that that could be an option and you know obviously i'm not sure excel is going to want that and then i think they're well i'm not going to talk about the difference in the electric between a general election and a special election is substantial so you'd have to think about that i i do understand but it's it's um there's a there's a lot of concern on that um you know in my experience in the private sector deals come when they come and you don't always have the luxury of the timing that you want but i want to at least explore the options for greater flexibility if if it is doable and it doesn't cost us 500 000 to to exercise that uh mark i should i should add as you know there's an old saying ninety percent of all uh negotiations get done in the last five percent of the time this deal came together because we gave excel a hard deadline that it had to be done in order to

[159:00] to have a hearing in this third week of march uh i'm sorry in august so no i understand and and i congratulate you for the efforts and i know the the work that's been put into it by staff by you um you know by members of our council and i i applaud you for the uh for the work uh i just want to get a result that the community can be satisfied with and comfortable with the process great so thank you tom thank you very much i just wanted i just wanted to call it queen real quickly on a comment that tom made in response to mark's questions um when he was asking about a special election and with respect to the cost you said tom that we could negotiate that who would we be negotiating costs with well uh mary the charter says that uh no

[160:00] no franchise shall be granted by the city except upon the vote of the registered electors and the questions being granted shall be submitted to such a vote upon deposit with the chief financial officer of the expense to be determined by the chief financial officer of such submission by the applicant for such f said franchise so it sounds to me like under the under the charter excel has to pay for it whether they'd agree to that is something separate do we have any idea what it might cost i do not we have not run a special election since i've been here [Music] thank you i am a little bit concerned about the idea of the special election because my question would be aside from the cause what would be the benefit because i understand an election in november and even that i think will put it will be a little bit lopsided because of kovit

[161:00] 19 and we know that during a general presidential election we have more people in boulder but because of kovit 19 and not knowing whether we will be fully online with students or not so we might not have the same amount of people here in boulder but in january we would still have the same issue so i'm thinking what would be the benefit of doing it in january as opposed to waiting until november 2021 okay um aaron sorry judy were you looking for a response from someone right now to that question from tom oh i'm sorry thank you aaron i i wasn't sure the the question i don't know the answer to that i think whether or not you go to a special election or a regular election is the political question and as i as i indicated to mark i think i was i was

[162:01] trying to say what you said better judy there are different electorates vastly different electorates between special elections and general elections especially a presidential general election which is the largest turnout election that we have so yes it would it would make a big difference um in terms of who votes and if i can call queen with judy judy i wasn't making a firm suggestion on that just something to be considered in light of the fact that many people are concerned about the lack of time for analysis but it's a cost-benefit analysis at the end of the day uh and as a council we would have to make that decision anything else on this point aaron you're up uh yeah so mark thanks for bringing up the the point about the the viability of the exits because we're certainly getting lots of input and feedback about that so tom i appreciated you saying that you were looking at more time

[163:00] for those exits i think that's a great idea so hopefully that's something that could be brought forward and just also as you move forward with finalizing these documents and then also kind of preparing the analysis for us for the public hearing if you can address the question of how you know iron clad our ability to exit will be pleased because i think that is a point of great community interest so you know for example the you know it would there be any ability for excel to contend uh our ability to exit you know or is that really just a cut and dried you know we vote by counselor we vote by the people and if that happens we're done and nothing they can contest yeah and i'm looking forward to the community comments on the way we've drafted it and feeling if we can approve it the idea was that for the three uh five year outs that that would be absolute there's no no contest if the six council members or the majority of the voters voted in favor of it would be able to get out we've tried to make the ones that are

[164:01] triggered by carbon emissions to be really fairly clear a number that's reported by a identified source in a particular year um so we're trying to remove all the ambiguity but as you've all noted this is coming together very fast one of the the things that i'm resisting is i would i would like a month to draft these agreements and we're having we're doing in a matter of days so if folks see things that we can improve i'm happy to work on them okay thanks for that that's all i had thanks aaron nearby and then mary um so that actually thanks for that question aaron because that kind of teased me up perfectly for my question um tom this is just information i received from someone in the community so i'm hoping to get some clarification with regards to these outs you know we have this out at five years but i was informed that the puc only had per state law 20-year outs so they were telling me that these outs then

[165:01] mean nothing and so can you help clarify that confusion for me is is that just a is that misinformation is that an actual thing what's going on with that sure i'm happy to so under state law any franchise has to provide the franchisee with an option to leave in years 10 and 15. so what we've done is negotiated an additional out the the the franchise will have to be approved by the puc so if the p uc goes ahead and approve it approves it there's no issue this is a contractual arrangement and it this is the the arrangement is conditioned on the city's ability to leave it would be very difficult for me to believe that a court wouldn't allow would allow a challenge to something that was mutually agreed by parties like us so that i think what the person is referring to is state law on the 10 that the 10 and 15 year outs which every franchisees have what we've done is negotiated an additional four outs okay so we're basically saying that

[166:00] because it's a mutual agreement most likely the puc will approve it and so then we won't have to worry about that yes well it won't go into effect unless the puc approves it so if they disapprove it then we're back to municipalization i i that that would be very unlikely okay great thank you for clarifying thanks mayor bike mary and then adam um so tom on the the same topic of the exits so say we did take an exit um what does the next day look like after an exit i mean what's how have we considered what the process might look like well as i said the this the section on what happens if we opt out has 32 paragraphs in it it may be down to 30 i think i eliminated two today but there there are detailed steps in what we can do uh what we've tried to do is recognizing that we will obviously be set back because we're in

[167:00] the middle of condemnation now we've got appeals pending uh that we're going we're not going to be in exactly the same place we've reached agreements on things that make it a little bit easier for us to proceed so there's there's a provision for how we do the uh estimate of the acquisition cost there's a provision that allows for us to avoid any challenge to the good faith negotiations that are required there's a provision for us to limit the possibility for excel to get attorney's fees there's a provision that that deals with the case management order there's a there are provisions that lock in the list of assets that the puc approves so we don't have to go back to the puc there's there are provisions that detail each of the how we're going to address each of the substations so the the there are there are details on what happens next um if the if the council or the people decide to hop down thank you for that um i guess my question is um

[168:00] about so we would be out a franchise and we would depending on when we would come out of franchise there would be some portion fraction of the four million dollar franchise fee that would be getting collected and if we went out of franchise we wouldn't have that four million dollar for franchise fee so the only way to make that up would be to go to the voters to get that franchise fee replaced so there would presumably be a gap um that's what i'm curious about is how do we address restarting the municipal utility and um and how um yeah what would that look like well if you went to a vote of the people to make that decision i would recommend the council at the time to go ahead and put measures on the

[169:00] ballot to replace the franchise fee like we did in 2010 and to fund municipalization like we did initially in 2011 so because we will need money to fund the project so the uh that's one way to do it council could decide to do it but have it have the departure be conditioned on the voter approval of funding or council could devote other city funds to it [Music] okay um so i guess from that aspect i know right be right after covet hit um we were in a place where we were trying to figure out what to do about the project because um obviously the budget had has been severely constrained and we were basically um having challenges in terms of financing the project so how

[170:02] i mean could you describe a little bit about what our situation was right after covet hit with respect to funding the project and how this agreement compares to that situation had we not um obtained this this negotiated agreement well as you'll recall the original plan was to ask for a general fund loan to fill the gap between what the taxes were paying for and what were our estimated expenses over the next two years was uh and then is when covert hid steve katnack and his excellent team reworked the budget so they could avoid having to seek additional funding from the the uh general fund the the as you know the tax that which i'll describe in a minute in the next my next presentation is a fixed amount so it's not affected by the economy at

[171:01] all excel has to pay uh the four million dollars plus two million dollars uh regardless of how much revenue they get so it's it's the one it's one of the few segments of our of our revenue stream in the city that wasn't affected by covet 19. where we'll be in the future is hard to predict but this is expensive so we'll need to find a way to fund it if the community wants to go forward with municipalization at some point based on one of the outs so the the options would likely be um well two options fees or taxes right um so we would either have to perform some sort of a nexus analysis if we were going to do a fee and then a nexus as to what and then the other one would be a tax which would mean going to the voters and asking them for money to fund the project yes okay thank you

[172:01] thanks mary adam and then juni hey tom uh mine is actually a follow-up to mark's question regarding um financing campaigns by excel um about the ballot initiative itself uh you used the term and i forgot it already it was um [Music] recordable reportable reportable okay can you explain exactly what the definition of that is it'd be hard off the top of my head i think my recollection of boulders campaign reporting laws they're fairly broad um so any any um financial or in-kind contribution to a campaign has to be reported they insisted on inserting the word reportable because they didn't want to go beyond that and be be held to be in breach because somebody talked to somebody at a meeting but we can certainly work on that um it basically is intended to cover any

[173:01] monetary or income contribution in support of an opposition of a ballot measure and that's simply by excel as a company itself yes gotcha okay thank you thank you um junie had your hand up but i don't see it anymore juni do you have something to junior are you here i think you're shaking your head no i am here um no more questions thank you um rachel you also had your hand up earlier but that may have already been taken care of anybody else um i lowered my hand somehow you usually used to get yeah the hands keep going up even though does anybody else have anything to say or any other questions to ask okay i i think all the hand raisings on online are all stale i'll just um try to recap what i think i heard

[174:01] um for example thank you tom for all the hard work i know um having been a commercial lawyer myself many years ago i know it's it's um the hardest part is often not the negotiating is it's the actually putting that down in writing and i know some of the stuff is not off the shelf um it's largely bespoke work especially the settlement agreements you're having to start from scratch so we really appreciate all the hard work of your team you and your team as you're you're drafting these things very very quickly i think our community although you outlined the settlement in the in the staff memo and and did a good job of uh recapping that here tonight i think the their community members would actually like to see the um the agreements in writing as well so thank you for your commitment uh to get them out either late this week or early next week um i i think the two things that i heard and i don't want to speak for anybody but the thing two things i heard by way of suggested revisions um were i heard a few people say and i agree

[175:00] with this that um the franchise outs need to be broader not necessarily additional but the time frame for the city to exercise those outs need to be longer than the 30 days that's contemplated tom and i think i heard several council members say that and i would agree with that as well so if you could work with your counterpart at excel to give us a reasonable period of time in each of those various outs whether the discretionary outs or the ones that are tied to the emission targets to give council future councils or the community time to exercise um it's out decisions that would be great and the second comment that i heard from a couple council members is um perhaps sounds like there's a prohibition against excel making financial contributions to the campaign that might happen this fall if this ends up on the ballot but but perhaps expanding that to campaigns in future years um when there are future votes on whether to exit the franchise i

[176:01] think i heard a few council members ask for that as well um let me just pause right there to see if anybody has any violent disagreement with those two sets of comments raise your hand or jump in don't see any hands okay any other changes this is first reading so we'll have an opportunity to work on this at second reading uh public hearing on either the 18th or the 20th and then i think the final vote on this will be september 1 with along with all the final votes on the ballot if that's what council's wishes any other um uh guidance or counsel that we'd like to provide to tom at least with respect to the agreements that are on the table or the things you heard tonight again hearing nothing we'll uh we'll assume that we're we're good for now um and i i just want i know that taylor sent a note out to everybody asking them if they're available on the 20th could anybody raise their hand um if you're not available for a special

[177:00] meeting on the 20th so i think this is important enough to make sure that we all are there the reason why the council agenda committee suggested held in a special meeting on thursday the 20th is because the meeting on the 18th was getting pretty long and pretty chunky and this is a super important thing and we didn't want to be um asking uh people to come to public hearings at nine or ten o'clock at night and and having council deliberate after midnight and so we thought we'd dedicate an entire special meeting i know people are not thrilled about special meetings but a dedicated entire special meeting so we can get right at this right at six o'clock um have some questions asked by council then get right to the public hearing which i think we anticipate will be lengthy so that we're not deliberating very late does anybody have any problem with joining a meeting on the 20th in council and seeing no hands or no jump ins well let's just assume that we'll go with the 20th and thank you for adjusting your schedules if you have to do that to make yourself available tom do you want to roll into the item 3g presentation on the utility occupation

[178:01] tax since that's related if that's okay i'm happy to do that let's do it so item 3g is uh proposed ballot measures for the utility occupation tax the utility occupation tax is attacked as i said on excel in a fixed amount it was first approved by the voters in 2010 as a substitute for the franchise fee that generates a little bit over four million dollars a year for the general fund uh there there is another portion uh that funds municipalization that was first approved in 2011 [Music] both expire on the earlier of entering a franchise or december 31st 2022 so the one with respect to the franchise fee the one the the four million dollars or so what that says is it it's only a tax on electric or electric companies that don't have a franchise so as soon as we go into franchise that disappears the other portion which is about two million dollars a little bit more than two million dollars

[179:00] a year um only will expire on december 31st 2022 or if the city stops the municipalization effort so in my view if a franchise is approved both of those taxes will go away um the franchise fee obviously would be replaced the portion would be replaced by a franchise fee in the franchise we don't necessarily have to worry about that um the uh the question is does council want to consider consider consider repurposing the municipalization franchise fee for the municipalization portion of the utility occupation tax for other things so we brought before you two different ordinances ordinance eight four one six and eight four one seven eight four one six would just repurpose the tax eight four one seven would repurpose the tax and extend it to december thirty first twenty thirty uh the if the repurposing would allow it for to be used for to repay all costs related to

[180:01] municipalization uh to provide energy related assistance to disadvantaged members of the community including support for utility bill payments and access to renewable energy uh improving system reliability and modernization implementing the partnership with excel and increasing um the access to energy efficiency renewable energy solutions the ballot measure sets the outside boundaries when when the ballot measure authorizes the tax it says this is what broadly you can do it use it for council would then have to adopt an ordinance appropriating the money either especially or through the budget process for specific purposes so this sets the boundaries an example of how this works is the sugarly sweetened beverage tax that provides funding for health related programs so but every year in your budget approval you approve specific uses of those funds that are dedicated to those projects you that we would do something similar with this funding if council decided to extend it

[181:01] and that's the extent of my presentation so what i'd like from you is just either pass them both and we'll have a discussion later or tell me what you like and the december 31st 2030 i put in there as a logical endpoint because that's when excel is supposed to meet its 80 reduction of a carbon emissions goal so it provides a nice time frame but council could pick a greater or lesser date there's no magic to that date thanks tom um we have mirabai and then mark thanks for that tom um so again another clarifying question because of information i was given um from members in the community so i and that was kind of my thought too is what we did with this sugary sweetened beverage tax um and how we allocated it but the information i was given and not being a lawyer again kind of difficult to decipher between what's accurate and what isn't um i was told that if a tax was voted on

[182:01] that was dedicated with dedicated funds in a specific way like this one is that you cannot have a vote of counsel to rededicate it to something else so you have to start an entire new initiative that has to then go onto the ballot and have people vote for that so you're saying something different from other lawyers i've you know heard from in the community so can you help clarify that point for me of course i'm not saying anything different that what the ballot measure does is set the outer boundaries which is what the person is talking to is telling you but all it does is authorize the tax council has to still appropriate the money an appropriation is a separate step so you would have to appropriate the money and it would have to conform to the categories in the ballot measure okay so a new basically a new measure would be going on the ballot that people would vote for which would then fix that law or the issue surrounding what i'm talking about and then we'd be able to dedicate it exactly so you wouldn't be able to pass an ordinance to use the money the municipalization funds to pay utility

[183:02] bills so the the purpose for this ballot measure is to repurpose the um the tax so you may recall a few years ago there was a transportation tax that was repurposed to open space voters can do that but the voters have to do that but then how the money is spent in open space is decided by council through the budget process council has the authority to appropriate okay great thank you very much for clarifying that helps thanks mayor bye mark and aaron um thanks tom at least one of the taxes expires upon in your view on the execution of a franchise correct i think they both do mark is there an argument to be made because i'm a little concerned about sort of decisional overload um here it's an argument to be made that that we have not suspended the municipalization we have not terminated the municipalization effort we've merely put

[184:02] it in abeyance um subject to revival and continue at least one of the taxes or or deal with it at a later stage is there an argument to be made there there is there are a couple of challenges there first of all as a policy boulder is very conservative on how we spend the taxpayers money the the trust with trust the trust of the voters depends on us honoring their intent and since the language says upon ceasing municipalization or something like that i'm not quoting exactly i i would be concerned if we chose to to not end the tax and then the second challenge is there it says specifically in the ballot measure that was approved the last one in 2017 that will be used to support the municipalization effort so you might be able to continue collecting the tax but if we weren't engaged in municipalization you couldn't spend it until unless we decided to go

[185:02] ahead with municipalization well could you use it in effect to generate a bit of a war chest in case we needed to go back to the well uh yes okay just asking thanks but mark i've got to tell you i would not advise that okay i hear you i'm a conservative lawyer so [Laughter] so am i thank you thanks mark aaron yeah so tom um thanks for putting this together my my concern is with the you know uh potential financial burden on folks who are uh struggling mightily right now in this the economic uh crisis we're we're in right now so the uot do we have any ability to uh like means test that i you know could is can we exempt lower income houses households from from a fee like that or a tax like that no because the way the tax is structured

[186:01] it's a tax on excel and then excel has a tariff that describes how it's passed along to their customers we i suppose we could try to get the puc to change the tariff but we don't have the power to uh to tell excel how it's passed on to customers okay that makes sense now i did hear you mentioned that one of the purposes of it as as it's written currently is for um i think funding assistance to lower income households did i hear that correctly so we could conceivably have a fund available that we could make broadly available to lower income households of course they'd have to opt in for that right so a lot of people probably wouldn't take us up on it if we did that well my thought was that one of our goal in minimization was fair rates and the settlement does not address that so this would give council an opportunity to address that in some way and also i've heard i've read that one of the first indicators of a path towards

[187:00] homelessness is uh an inability to pay utility bills so having a fund that helped address that would probably would address some of the city's concerns with respect to homelessness yeah that's interesting well so i'm fine with moving these two forward just to make a quick comment i'll carry some of these concerns forward to second reading when we talk about it more thoroughly uh mary thanks erin so tom um this this you this extension or repurposing was in there um given that we might be going to the ballot for a um franchise and and and the agreements that are surrounding that correct yes so i don't see it wasn't apparent to me that there was any language that said um that the this extension or this repurposing would not happen unless that

[188:01] franchise happened or did i miss it well i i believe you missed it it it's um in the ballot title okay it was let me see yeah in the ballot title uh i'm looking at um section two of the ordinance the ballot title is in there um do you have the page it's page six of the um of the item um it says after the list of things it can be used for only if a majority of registered electors approve a franchise agreement with the public service company of colorado with the november 3rd 2020 election okay thank you does it in both ordinances okay great thank you i know the other hands up so i'm going to jump in myself if anyone else has any questions on this one or comments raise your hand now while i'm speaking um tom a couple questions

[189:00] in addition to the two utility occupation taxes that you described um i believe we also have a climate action plan tax or a cap tax um and that um it seems to me sunsets in 2022 or 2023 is that right i think that's right i think i think it's a march sunset in 2023 but i i could be missing i'm pretty sure it's march i'm not sure which year and i can i can figure that out in a second that's okay that's good that's good enough for this this discussion does it doesn't expire now um and it would not be affected by by uh an approval of the franchise is that right it's independent of the franchise it is okay so if we did nothing uh we can obviously move these two matters to alternatives forward now but if we ultimately did nothing um and and the franchise was on the ballot and the franchise was approved by the people the utility occupation tax the one that pays for the municipalization would expire you know mark raised the issue about what exact moment it expires but under at least a conservative reading of

[190:00] what was passed in 2017 it would expire um you know when the franchise was approved by the voters or when the puc approved is that they're generally right yes and um if if we if we allowed that to happen and then came back let's say next year the year after when maybe the economy was a little better could it let's say it's right at the time we're we're seeking renewal of the climate action tax the cap tax could we um repurpose some of that tax for for the purposes that we're talking about here now that is doing this experimental work and in the some of the equity pieces that we're talking about in the ordinance you've drafted could that cap tax be repurposed in part for for these things some of it um the legislative intent for that tax i'd have to go back and check the ballot measure but it says that it can be used for uh assistance to boulder residents and businesses to improve energy efficiency expand the use of renewable energy and take other necessary steps towards reducing local

[191:02] greenhouse gas emissions right well i was i was not so much trying to shoehorn into the existing language i was just contemplating that when the cap tax came up for renewal presumably to the extent that that language was not broad enough we could repurpose it and ask the voters permission to use part of that cap tax for the things you're contemplating now is that right yes okay okay uh aaron bob can i colloquy on that so um so i hear you're saying about it could be repurposed you know to a different set of um applications for certainly but um tom from the list that you read it sounded like um there's a fair amount of overlap with say um some of the projects that we might undertake with excel if we go that route if say go ahead i'd be a little reluctant to say that my my understanding is the cap tax is fully committed to doing the sort of

[192:01] things that we've been doing that have been incredibly effective to to reduce greenhouse gases already so i mean we focus a lot on municipalization but the the uh and i see steve turn his camera on he knows it's better than me the work that they do in the climate initiatives group through the cap tax is very important and so you would have to balance your interest in the two and steve i'm probably muddling this up do you want to help me actually i thought you gave a great answer tom uh good evening council steve katnack the director of climate initiatives i just want to add that part of our concern would certainly be taking cap money away from those programs in order to support some of the projects and programs that we're proposing in the excel settlement which will require funding as well no totally fair so basically in in a word the answer is no which is totally fine so i knew i was in trouble when both steve and jane turned

[193:01] their camera on i was like okay it looks like the answer to that one was no so thanks for clarifying thanks aaron um any other council members have questions or comments on these two alternative versions of the tax again we don't have to necessarily decide tonight it sounds like we really effectively have three paths which is let the tax expire repurpose the tax for the remaining existing term which is two more years or repurpose attacks and extend it to 2030 um in all instances that would really depend on whether the franchise agreement actually was on the ballot and actually passed as mary pointed out in her comments nearby just out of curiosity on this one if we have the meeting on the 20th this is something that we can try and get the community's feedback on on instead of making a decision now sorry i think that's what we're planning i think that this is a first reading and then um the idea is to hear what the

[194:00] community thinks and then make a decision at that time great three-point nearby anybody else have comments on this one don't see any hands well thanks for that tom so now we're going to move back up the consent agenda and we have um item 3d which is actually has two parts to it i think jane's going to introduce kurt who's going to make a bit of a presentation which he had planned to make later in the evening anyway but it does it is a nice introduction um to the discussion then around the eviction ballot measure so let's go first to uh to jane to introduce kurt and then i'd like to after uh kurt uh answers any questions we have i'd like to turn it over to aaron to give us a little bit of background so jane thanks mom so indeed a couple of weeks ago cac and council requested that the folks from our housing human services provide an update on what's going on with evictions here in the city

[195:00] of boulder and so this has been prepared for a couple of weeks to bring to you but you're right a great synergy with this particular item on no evictions without representation so we'll start off with the background from kurt fernhauber and kristen heiser kurt uh good evening council so this evening we're gonna we're going to provide you with a presentation that describes the staff resources and community partners uh efforts to address the challenges of evictions and struggles of households to pay rent as impacted by covid so kristen heiser is the deputy director of housing human services she oversees this work and the funding that supports these efforts she'll be doing the presentation we're also joined by karen armstrong who directs the cd's mediation work so um kristin go ahead okay great thank you can you hear me

[196:00] okay okay great so good evening i'm kristen heiser as kurt mentioned i am the deputy director of the city of boulder housing and human services tonight i will be discussing the spectrum of housing supports available to keep people housed in the time of the copa19 pandemic and how we are preparing for an uncertain future from all the economic modeling that we have seen over the last five minute months we don't fully understand our economic future in particular the impacts on households with lower incomes the pro this presentation is specific to the resources serving people who are currently housed and need additional resources to maintain their housing specifically renters and owners what you'll see is the federal and state response in the form of resources and protections have gone a long way in stabilizing housing for the most vulnerable members of our community this has allowed the city and our housing and human services partners to be strategic in our deployment of our

[197:00] limited resources to effectively serve those most need however the uncertain future of income supports and protections is requiring us to prepare for the unknown we will remain committed to pursuing this next period with a measured and collaborative approach in coordination with our many partners who share our commitment to keeping people housed next slide please are we on the next level well so i'll just go ahead um so tonight i'm going to give a little bit of a historical context specific to evictions and then we're going to move through federal state and local interventions that have maintained housing for so many over the last five months and we'll wrap it up um to discuss what how we are preparing for what is coming next and then open into questions next slide are we on slide three by chance the slides are now down kristen we're waiting for the next slide

[198:05] so i would go on but there is a visual on this that kind of goes along with the point we're trying to make so here we go perfect so here's slide three so let's begin with an eviction analysis um colorado eviction numbers are highly stable through time what you see in the slide in the next slide is that historically unemployment and rent have not been drivers in eviction filings what this chart shows is that eviction filings over the last 20 years in colorado have stayed relatively stable despite large movements and unemployment rates the record high for colorado eviction filings occurred in 2007 which you see marked with the red circle on the slide at a time when the unemployment rate was only 3.6 on the flip side between 2007 and 2010 the unemployment rates skyrocketed while eviction filings fell next slide

[199:03] so reaching a similar conclusion this slide demonstrates there doesn't seem to be a connection between rent increases and eviction filings eviction rates have trended down since 2001 while colorado's rent rates have increased on an annualized basis of 2.2 percent per year next slide please now we're looking at eviction filings here in boulder county over the last five years as for the first six months of 2020 some non-coveted related affections did continue these evictions may have occurred if public safety was a concern if there was a lease violation or non-payment of rent pre-covered those were not identified in the moratoriums those reasons for eviction however with the eviction moratoriums in place we did see a reduction in evictions the 282 evictions filed in 2020 between january and july is 40 the number of

[200:00] cases filed for the same period of time last year next slide please since day one as a city and our housing and human services partners navigated an unprecedented pandemic the message to our community for the purposes of preserving our local resources has been to access all the federal and state aid they can we're able to whether it was the financial supports of stimulus checks and the expanded employment insurance or the sba ppp loans these federal financial resources have successfully served as a major component of many people's financial lifelines and supported them remaining housed at the as they navigated the impacts of cobit 19. the primary concern at this point is the expiration of these resources and their current unknown fates this is all currently being discussed and negotiated by congress as i'm sure you are aware as for the state we have seen cares act funds provided through two programs the

[201:01] emergency housing assistance program provides short-term emergency rental mortgage assistance and the property owner preservation program which allows landlords including mobile home park owners to seek rental assistance on behalf of their tenants and finally the city will be benefiting from the cares act relief funds you'll hear more about that on august 11th but the city does stand to receive approximately 4.8 million to reimburse for unbudgeted covid19 related relief costs please as for eviction and foreclosure protections for people impacted by covid19 protections were put in place for federally subsidized properties and federally backed loans this action offered protections for much of our permanently affordable housing stock in boulder which has benefited from federal subsidies in their purchase development and our preservation over the years the moratorium one evictions expire july 25th and the protections from

[202:00] foreclosures will expire august 31st mortgage holders whether they're single-family or multi-family property owners can qualify for suspension or reduction in their mortgage payments this forbearance is in place until march of next year as for the state the eviction protections governor poll is expired july 25th with only the prohibition of late fees extended to august 11. now while landlords must give 30 days notice rather than the previous 10 days which was the case pre-covered they might file court cases to evict tenants tenants can be evicted if they are behind on rent even if their failure to pay is a result of covid 19 economic hardship it's worth noting that over the last five months what we've seen is that banks and lenders have been working with borrowers and continue to do so landlords and tenants have also been working together to find solutions to losses of income devising payment plans or other solutions to ensure residents can remain housed people are using the

[203:00] income supports provided by the federal government to maintain housing however without these protections in place without the federal income supports and the economic contractions in a recession the need for continued financial assistance and protections to keep people housed is critical next slide please so let's take a step now and look at what we're experiencing locally since the beginning of the pandemic i'll go into more detail about this in a second about the boulder count boulder county housing helpline but i want to take a moment to show their call volume this is a site this is a a call line that individuals can call as they're trying to navigate resources um in the community to maintain their housing so since april 12th when the helpline was launched they have received over 650 calls this is from across the entire county it is a boulder county initiative with the height being over 100 calls the week of may 10th but on average it's about 40 calls per week 109 of these

[204:01] calls that have actually resulted in rental assistance have come from the city of boulder and of all the beneficiaries across the county 30 37 of those reading receiving rental assistance live in manufactured housing communities next slide so shifting from the county to the city of boulder we're going to use boulder housing partners as a case study knowing that they are experiencing um their experiences similar to what many of our housing partners are experiencing for those that don't know boulder housing partners bhp is our local housing authority they manage over 1400 rental units administer over 1200 housing vouchers since march bhp has forgiven rent to 138 households totaling approximately 141 000 in the early months of the pandemic bhp used this as a time limited emergency measure offered one time to tenants who lost their income because of covet 19

[205:01] and were in the process of accessing rental assistance assistance options since march 514 bhp resident residents have accessed rental assistance through partner agencies totaling 450 000 that's often through effa or resources offered through boulder county as for unpaid rent about 131 000 has gone unpaid in june this lack of income was about seventy thousand dollars roughly double what bhp experienced last year at the same time bhp has also adjusted rents for 250 voucher holders 215 excuse me about shareholders reducing rents by 200 000 so we are really fortunate to have a strong housing authority and many other housing providers in our community that run on tight margins have cut operational and capital costs and are able to tap into reserves and leverage outlier resources in the case of bhp they were able to access the housing assistance payments that allowed them to

[206:00] reduce the cost of on the vouchers essentially there's it makes up the difference between the rent and what the tenant is able to pay but these reserves and supports are not limitless and are not accessible to all property owners next slide please so what are we experiencing as housing and human services first i'm going to start with our community mediation services program the table shows the number of inquiries cms has received since the start of covet 19. the blue knows the number of general housing calls this might look like somebody calling trying to get back their security deposit or they're concerned about their landlord entering their um unit during covid um and the orange represents calls that are very specific to non-payment or eviction concerns it also shows the comparison to contacts during the same time period last year of note is the increase in inquiries related to the non-payment of rent in 2020. however it's important to know that since april

[207:01] we've had the opportunity to expand the geographic scope that community mediation services is serving um we're doing that in partnership with the housing helpline that i discussed earlier we'll go in more detail in a second but because there's a lot of communities in boulder county that do not have access to mediation services or lower income individuals don't have access to mediation services the city of boulder and city of longmont both expanded our geographic areas to serve those communities and so that might might account for the little bit of the increase in contacts so when it comes to how our contacts around community mediation are uh resolved or um how they how those conversations go 51 never move beyond initial consultation an individual calls in they speak to a community mediator and just from that conversation they're given tools and resources that allow them to

[208:00] move forward and resolve their situation but 26 reach mediation and of that 22 percent of those reaching using mediation reach successful resolution as for direct financial assistance that has provided a residence through our older adult services program and our family services programs um 66 percent of contacts are housing related these days that it might include include assistance for rent mortgage or utility bill assistance or sometimes minor home repairs since march the older adult services as an example has provided 31 000 of financial assistance up that's up 60 from the same period last year so having reviewed the range of needs and what we're seeing in the communities so how are we responding locally what are the local interventions since the beginning of the pandemic the city along with our partners have relied on and

[209:00] short of long existing partnerships through constant communication coordination of resources we're able to respond nimbly in this ever-changing environment efficiently effectively and with efficacy two examples are the boulder county funders collaborative and the housing stakeholder response coordination effort and both can i interrupt for a second that looks like her kids aren't going forward oh i'm sorry did i forget to say next slide sorry there if we could jump to 13. sorry about that oh wow i forgot a few of them here we go 13. okay we can go back and visit those in more detail if we need to um so yeah we're really proud to discuss the work that we're doing with the boulder county funders collaborative since the beginning of covid really since day one we have been meeting we first started out meeting five days a week we're now up to three days a week where we have an hour-long conversation um to identify um existing and emerging needs

[210:01] coordinating our responses and deploy our resources strategically and equitably across the county um since the beginning of the pandemic we as a collaborative we've been able to deploy approximately 3.6 million dollars to meet a variety of basic needs across the county including housing supports next slide please get it right that time sorry about that and a new and really critical resource that's merged in response to covid19 is the boulder county housing helpline that i mentioned earlier this was launched in april and the housing helpline is staffed by experienced housing and human services experts that can refer people to rental assistance mortgage relief mediation and legal services and family resource centers like alpha it's important to note that the housing helpline will support anyone navigate to services and resources regardless of their citizenship status as we saw earlier since april the helpline has connected 109 boulder residents to rental assistance

[211:02] next slide please as for the city we have long provided funding to community partners for services that are even greater that are in even greater demand during cobit 19. here are some figures of some of the direct housing and shelter services provided through our partner agency this is not all-inclusive it's just two examples of the amazing work environment partners well tonight's presentation is focused on housing preventions a critical part of the city's investments go to other basic needs through our investments our partner agencies are meeting demands of our low-income and under-represented community members our partners are seeing that there that these needs are up 20 to 70 percent um compared to what they experienced last year all these additional services food assistance um uh transportation supports a variety of services relieves the economic burdens so people are able to use their limited dollars to maintain

[212:00] their housing next slide please so continue with the broader picture of the city's housing investments and invest in response to the pandemic housing and human services came into 2020 having planned and budgeted for 590 000 to support housing programs that's across cdbg the health equity fund human services fund a little bit of our chap an affordable housing fund we have since identified using those sources an additional 930 000 to add to these supports our strategy all along has been to encourage residents to pursue income supports provided by the feds to stabilize their housing while we preserved local resources until the time when they were most needed well that time is now we intend to use all our local funds we tend to use our not all but we intend to use our local funds immediately to seek reimbursement for federal um and then to seek reimbursement from federal sources such as fema and the cares act allowing us to replenish our

[213:00] funding and continue to provide resources to our community partners next slide in addition to strategically investing local funds the city continues to expand and shore up its eviction protection measures pre-dating covet 19 the community services program lawn provided services to residents at risk of eviction while the eviction moratorium brought evictions to almost a standstill cms remained busy fielding calls and providing supports for both tenants and landlords at the same time they actively coordinated with the court's da's office and other stakeholders in anticipation of the lifting of the moratorium with the eviction court now resumed cms has enacted the following staff has worked with the courts to ensure all landlords and tenants now receive information about mediation services when the case is filed or a summons is issued to encourage mediation prior to court mediation is now also available on-site the day of eviction court we have staff

[214:00] and technology available at the courthouse for mediation to happen on-site community mediation services has increased their mediator capacity to meet the anticipated increase in cases this includes recruitment and training to diversify the pool of meteorite mediators and finally to assist tenants who have faced income loss due to covet 19 mediators have information that will help them serve individuals calling to navigate to financial services as part of the mediation process in the early weeks since the moratorium lifted we are seeing positive results parties are reaching out to schedule mediations to resolve their cases prior to court and we have seen 80 percent of cases reach resolution next slide please as i said in the beginning of this presentation we are in uncharted territory and the landscape is shifting unless congress and the state reinstate the eviction moratorium expand unemployment insurance benefits and

[215:00] provide a second round of stimulus checks our best approach is to continue to continue doing what we're doing monitoring coordinating investing leveraging and protecting where we can hhs will continue to monitor and access resources as they come available through the federal government and the state this includes advocating for more resources coming to our community we will continue to align with our partners to track needs while strategically deploying local resources to ensure dollars are being invested effectively and reach those most in need this includes supporting a variety of access points to ensure that all can be served and find the city remains committed to ensuring all people have the potential to successfully sustain and recover from this pandemic regardless of identity health or socioeconomic circumstances next slide please so that is the conclusion of my presentation i am joined here with kurt fernharber the director of housing and human services and karen armstrong is also available she is the community mediation services

[216:00] program manager and we are available to answer any questions great thanks kristen anybody have questions for kristin or karen or kurt i'm mary thank you kristen for that presentation i have several questions um with respect to um let's see you showed in in one of your slides where you had the blue bars and and the orange bars um you were showing um that there was an increase in mediation needs um and there were they were for non-payment of rent and eviction and i was just wondering um what you talked about the the mediations and how successful they are

[217:00] for the ones that are not um successful what what happens there i am actually that is slide 10 that you're referring to and i'm actually going to ask karen armstrong because she can give a much more well-rounded answer than i can so karen are you available yes i am and actually kristen if you could go to the next slide to just show the variety of things that's right it's slide 11 this is the outcome for those those calls so as kristen said in the majority of cases it's we're just providing consultation talking folks through a strategy maybe giving them resources and then there's a variety of other outcomes in 22 percent of those cases we are able to get them to mediation and

[218:00] in those cases those we we've had resolution for the cases that have been sent to mediation but did not reach an agreement it's been very few so just three cases total that have gone to mediation and haven't reached a resolution and um i'm trying to think of those specific cases and the outcomes but it can just be some folks are just entrenched in um what what they're seeking and maybe feel that they'll have a better outcome if they take it to court rather than settle so um but it's it's pretty infrequent does that answer your question mary yeah yes it does that that's what i wanted to get a feel for um and then um there was mention of the on-site um at the courthouse mediation and i was wondering what the utilization is of that and and if you have um

[219:02] information on outcomes and are those um those cases that are being seen on site at the courthouse are they heading towards eviction or what is their status so um so for the cases that have uh that remediate at court um sorry i'm worried about the dog working again so uh for the cases that we mediate at court we're really we're really encouraged and excited the judges are extremely supportive of mediation and whenever a tenant shows up at court they encourage if not require that the

[220:00] parties step out into the hallway to mediate we have the option of of folks mediating with a mediator remotely and also to keep social distancing and social distancing possible and then also the possibility of folks meeting with a mediator there in person if they're comfortable so we have both options to accommodate folks and um in the majority of the cases we are able to reach a resolution reach an agreement in the few cases that we're not able and i would say that when we say that we reach an agreement sometimes it is for the tenant to be able to remain in the property and come up with a payment plan or some arrangement to remain in the property and in some cases it's just coming up with an agreement of what is a reasonable time frame for the tenant to move out if it looks like it's not going to be a

[221:01] sustainable um housing arrangement so that's usually the outcome in the mediations and then sometimes we're not able to reach in the 20 of the cases were not able to reach an agreement they go back in front of the judge and the judge uh rules on the matter or it's set for trial is that and yeah and in those cases that you're mediating at the courthouse um and are they are the folks generally represented by attorneys or are they there by themselves how does that work typically they are not represented by attorneys the mediators are well trained in it does require some additional training to understand the nuances and options and so we offer every tenant and landlord an information packet that explains some of the terms to

[222:02] orient them and the mediators can also assist to kind of guide the parties on um not give legal advice but just help to orient them and help them navigate the process okay thank you and um i see that rui is on the call and would this be an appropriate time to ask a question of him um well we certainly can i was going to actually ask council if they were okay with um making the folks from newer available that was a request that aaron made earlier today and does it relate to the ballot measure or does it relate to the topic on mediation well it relates to the topic of representation by attorneys at the court um sure all right um hi rui thanks for being with us tonight um so my question is is had you in the process of

[223:02] um researching this initiative had you considered mediation as one of the potential beneficiaries of the um the fee that you're looking at uh yeah um uh short answer is no um i will say that uh myself and everyone on the campaign has been aware of uh and seeing the mediators doing really good work um for the hundreds of eviction cases we've recorded data for um it is our belief that um access to legal counsel as would be granted by newer would enable tenants to utilize mediation services even more effectively even though mediators are doing great work the reality is they are not advocates for the tenant and as

[224:00] this person clarified they cannot give legal counsel um and especially because we found out that in boulder court only two percent of tenants show up to court with an attorney versus 88 of landlords oftentimes that mediation that happens in the hallway um it has a tenant a mediator and then the landlord and their attorney so it might not be there's a little bit of a power and balance there so we believe legal counsel would like i said increase the efficacy of any mediation that happens would you be open to having um mediation included in the the options for the use of the funds as um as is rental assistance um no okay thank you anything else mary could i add one comment to that um just to be clear so mediation has always been available

[225:00] but through covid um we've we've put significantly more effort into the mediation process and through karen's work um the courts have also made it part of the process um as she described so a lot of the things that we're describing here are relatively new as far as the both the efforts and the impact um just to speak to that so it is now an administrative order that all as christian reviewed that all tenants and landlords receive information about mediation when they file or receive the summons and we are seeing the effects of that that's only been in place now for a month and a half and we're seeing the effects we're seeing every week at least two cases get resolved before heading to an eviction court so those

[226:01] cases are dismissed before they even get to court so we're pleased to see that people are utilizing the service and we're able to mediate in much calmer [Music] environments where it's not as stressful as being they're not under the same kind of time pressure that you are at court so thank you um thanks mary rachel hi um i think i have a question for jane actually um relating back to something i brought up brought up a couple weeks ago sort of uh the worst case scenario here for somebody who is evicted or maybe mediation works out that they are going to exit their homes without eviction but still end up um not in that same home so we talked about governor polis um requesting that cities look at suspending their occupancy caps

[227:00] and i wasn't sure where we left that sort of um i guess procedurally like i didn't know if that was part of a discussion like this or where that landed that's my question where is that so governor polis did indicate his view that occupancy cap should be um not used in this time and we have not moved forward with it um so that's where it is so i i thought maybe staff was gonna look into i guess that was it was a long meeting and so i don't i don't remember exactly what council decided on it but i thought there was something we were gonna um look into it a bit more on sort of what the the underpinnings were of how suspending occupancy caps might help during covid rachel i don't recall that's not either anybody else who knows and and if if nobody remembers i guess i'll i'll lift it up again i i

[228:01] would like us to consider governor police's request and and get more information on it and and i guess have it added by cac as an agenda item if it needs to be formalized okay um aaron can i just call it qui on that rachel um thanks for raising that up and i just wonder if uh a forma format for that to take might be um say a moratorium on enforcement of um of over occupancy you know rather than lifting a cap saying like that during this period of crisis we would not um force anyone to leave their housing uh because they were in an a um safe but uh over occupant um situation i don't know what the thank you aaron uh again i guess on your collar fan mine um i don't know if there are fines or things like that that go along with over occupancy so i would i would hope that a

[229:00] moratorium would not just not result in people not losing their housing but also whatever other penalties could be um or gone during coven okay point um i don't see any other hands up let me suggest on that point uh that's drifting a little bit away from evictions to enforcement of occupancy so let me suggest that if someone wants to ask cac to put that on a future council agenda that they can make a request to cac i don't see any other hands up so i think we're going to segue now into thanks kristen and kurt and karen for that presentation that was really timely and helpful and informative and i think it's going to help inform our next discussion i want to turn it over to aaron because um this probably um begs a little bit of background in context and then after aaron shares it with us tom i thought you might walk us through what um what has been certified and then what council might consider doing by way of alternative or supplement but aaron

[230:00] please please tell us the background here yep will do and before i do that say just uh kristen thanks for that presentation is is really useful information and karen for your work in the the courts and kurt of course for everything you do so anyway so just uh talking about this is uh on the consent agenda it's um about the no eviction without representation ballot measure as i think we all know um the organizers of that measure uh collected enough certified signatures to be placed on the ballot and so generally when that happens council's role is a very small one that we uh i think we set the ballot title and and we place it on the ballot and that's pretty much it um but after they they were successful in getting all their certified signatures you know it just in reviewing uh the program which is uh focused on providing uh legal representation for every tenant facing eviction um it uh it was my opinion that that maybe it might be also additionally helpful

[231:01] for tenants in that situation to be provided with rental assistance out of this program that could uh also help prevent evictions and so i went and spoke to the organizers of newer and and mentioned that this is something that maybe uh yes which is re is here thanks free for coming tonight and talk to him and his wife megan who've been working very hard on this and and so suggested that hi megan um so suggested this might uh wondering whether that might be something that they might be willing to um add in there now and and they express an interest in doing that and so appreciate their flexibility on that so then the way that that could get done is uh for us as council to place um a variant of the ballot measure on uh with the addition of rental assistance funding and if that's amenable to the organizers then they can then withdraw their original ballot petition and instead uh we would

[232:00] put on the ballot the one that the council um uh authorized so so they've been willing to to go through this process and submitted a proposed draft revised version which is i believe ordinance 8412 that includes that rental assistance piece so so we now have before us on first reading two alternatives one is the original ballot proposal and one is this revised one that includes rental assistance funding so and my intention with this was not to say start a long negotiation with council and say well hey you know what are any number of things that we might change with this but really simply to say um uh to ask for the rental assistance piece to be added as a potential improvement to the program so a so my hope is that we could um pass both of them on first reading tonight and then when we have the public hearing um on second reading council consider whether the rental assistance version was preferable to the one uh without it which would be my recommendation um but i know i heard that at cac uh

[233:01] folks had a number of questions and um understandably so so i uh requested the rui to come and be available um to answer those uh if council does have particular questions for them about the ballot measure um so let me know if i missed anything with that summary but i think that's what we're talking about now well that was great aaron thanks so much for doing that thanks for for coordinating these discussions tom would it be helpful do you think for you to walk through the difference between ordinance 8411 which is the original uh ballot measure as circulated in 8412 which is the alternative that aaron just mentioned sure and aaron did a great job of summarizing so i'll try not to repeat um so there the original version and i heard one of the commentators say that it provided for rental relief i couldn't find any language that allows that but i mean i guess that's an interpretation uh it is a fee and i guess you could try to use it

[234:00] differently but the language i thought was pretty clear limiting it to attorney representation so 8412 is an alternative that was drafted by the committee all i did was take their language and put it into a ballot measure council's authority is to draft the ballot title staff has drafted proposed ballot titles from both measures and they're in there you have no discretion with the first with respect to 8411 if the committee does not withdraw the petition they uh you have to put it on the ballot the charter requires that uh they cannot change the language now the language was signed by uh 3 589 people so you it is what it is so their version which is 8411 has to go forward they can however withdraw 8412 includes the alternative that allows for uh the funding to be used it basically creates a joint program for both legal representation and rent relief run out of the city

[235:03] so the council also has the option and this may be somewhat distaste but i have to provide it to you council can provide an alternative measure so you have the right to put your own measure as a competing measure on the ballot and with language that says that they conflict and that only one goes to effect and the one with the most votes wins so you have that option um i'm not suggesting you do it but that's a possibility at cac there was a question about whether or not it would be better if this was a tax rather than a fee i think it's defensible as a fee it's more defensible as a tax so council the cac asked if my office would draft a version making it a tax with hebrew language we posted that on hotline today david gear was kind enough to draft that so that's in there there was also another uh question about whether or not the fee would apply or the fear the tax would

[236:00] apply to affordable housing units so there is an exemption in the uh proposal by the committee that only exempts the dwelling units that are not required to to get a rental license so that would be rumors um renting to members of the family who are over 21 years old what i call the battle sabbatical exception which basically people are outside of boulder county for 12 months in rent uh you know for a one-time period [Music] it does not exempt affordable housing there's another provision in the rental licensing section that does provide that bhp non-profit affordable housing providers and section eight holders don't have to pay the rental license fee there's nothing to get rid of license but the fee is exempt those individuals are not exempted from the committee's proposed fee so in the version that david drafted that was posted on hotline they would be exempt

[237:02] from the tax so we just did those because those were those were issues raised by the cac we're not recommending one thing or the other we're just making those available to you so council has the option i suppose of passing the two ordinances which are before you 84 11 or 8412 on first reading and going forward substituting 8412 for what david drafted which was posted on hotline today or just carrying it over and doing amendments at second reading okay thanks tom um let's um open it up to questions and if council doesn't mind um rio rengo has made himself available tonight as well rui so feel free to direct questions to to tom or to rui or um or to each other um and we'll um try to sort out which what we want to do going forward so we'll start with jenny and then go to adam

[238:01] [Music] hi roy i just have a question for you with what you've heard tonight i i am wondering if you are open to withdrawing your current ballot measure as it is right now um [Music] you are speaking about the original uh ballot measure absolutely not [Music] okay so i guess that answers one question for us tom so that means that tonight since he would not be withdrawing the only thing that we can do would be to put up our own measure if we decide to go forward is that so that would be the discussion no i'm sorry i i might have misunderstood your your question um so so i'm here tonight because uh myself and the council um uh would like to

[239:03] sort of make the offer of the amended um ordinance that would include specifically uh rental assistance so to be clear if the council passed 8412 you would reform you would withdraw the petition for 8411. yeah that is correct sorry i misunderstood you juni um but that that's the extent of your willingness to withdraw i assume that council makes further changes you're not willing to withdraw is that right that is correct tom thank you okay anything else jenny nothing else thank you thanks judy i'm adam and then mary thanks bob uh mine is for rui as well i believe and that uh my question being changing it from a fee to a tax and exempting bhp and other

[240:00] affordable housing providers does that make a significant impact on the total amount raised and is that okay with the campaign as far as you're concerned uh yeah i'll address the the latter part first um uh yeah it would make a considerable difference we estimate that be a reduction in funding of around eight percent um and and to clarify uh for those who are curious as to why we did not write in an exemption for affordable housing providers um our reasoning is that um even though they are providing affordable uh housing they are still landlords and they do still evict their tenants um i myself a couple weeks ago an eviction court did see boulder housing partners evict one of their tenants and that person did lose their housing not to say that there's uh any any specific malice that affordable housing providers or bhp are

[241:00] exhibiting here i just think that they have a lot of units that they own and when you own a lot of units as a landlord you wind up evicting a fair amount of people and one short follow-up just so i'm clear you are okay moving forward with 8412 as it's written no no changes uh yeah that's correct 8412 uh the um are amended uh ordinance that uh are red measure rather that just includes the addition of rental assistance got it thank you okay thanks adam mary then mark thank you um so roy i just wanted to further explore the mediation question and just ask why you would not be open to that uh sure yeah um so uh

[242:01] my my basic answer is that uh the the purpose of uh the newer program um would be to uh provide legal counsel to tenants and hopefully after tonight and uh following weeks rental assistance as well um and it's my opinion and opinion of the campaign that um uh legal counsel um tenants having legal counsel uh is more important and more beneficial when experiencing eviction proceedings than mediation again this is not to say that i don't think mediators are doing good work but i do think there's a greater value to having legal counsel thank you thanks mary mark then juni this is for rui as well a couple of questions why do it as a fee versus a tax if a tax

[243:00] is less vulnerable to challenge would be my first question what what is your thinking on that uh yeah i mean we chose a fee um because we didn't want to make it a tax uh because of tabor i don't think that's a surprise to anyone here um tabor is a real pain in the posterior and it introduces all sorts of restrictions it was unclear to us whether or not attacks could even be levied specifically on landlords in the same way that a fee is in addition the city of boulder already uh implements a fee that landlords pay for their rental license so it didn't seem like much of a stretch and in terms of the legal precedent and how defensible it is um i mean the campaign and our legal counsel um share the opinion of the colorado supreme court and that um there is a difference between fees and taxes

[244:00] and we feel pretty confident that it would survive a lawsuit if that ever happened and my other question is what are the boundaries of the legal representation uh are we funding appeals are we fund i mean at what point is the obligation satisfied yeah so that's defined in the language as a full scope legal representation and that is uh from the very start of eviction proceedings eviction deceiving proceedings are defined in the legislation as the um the demand for rent or notice to cure and that could potentially carry through um for the most part it would carry through uh the forcible entry and detainer or fed notice and the court hearing but it's possible they could go through to appeals um we really want to make sure that the program provides comprehensive full scope legal counsel that goes as far as the tenant needs it

[245:01] to but who makes that does the attorney make that determination or if the tenant says you know even if he has meager grounds for appeal simply says i want to keep appealing where is the where's the guardrail on that yeah sure well that would um ultimately go back to the legal services coordinator and the attendant committee okay legal services coordinator is the one who would uh contract directly with um uh designated legal service providers uh non-profits private attorneys possibly uh and the attendance committee is going to be essentially the um the soul of newer they will be five renters from the city of boulder who do not own property and um that would be up to them and uh it's my expectation that they would act in the best interest of the program and if for whatever reason a tenant just wanted to keep banging their head up

[246:00] against a wall with no chance of victory um i doubt that group of five people and the legal services coordinator would um [Music] encourage that type of behavior i guess my only comment is i would i would urge you to think perhaps reconsider your your view on older housing partners um i think taking a hundred thousand dollars from an organization that is dedicated to providing affordable housing as a fee is is something that's going to diminish support for what i think is otherwise a very workable and uh and worthy initiative that's up to you if i might respond to that briefly um uh i i don't think um newer and uh bhp are at odds at all i think newer is actually going to

[247:00] um ensure that people can stay in their homes and avoid homelessness um and in terms of you know the amount that the fee would cost the um the organization it actually is quite a small amount and to my knowledge if my information is correct housing and human services had their budget cut by 8.4 million over the past two years anyway um so compared to that amount it's really a trifle okay thank you thanks mark uh junie and then i'm going to call it myself judy thank you i just have a question for kurt and i think it goes back to what mary was asking about i don't know okay bird is on the line because i have had the opportunity to participate in the city's mediation process and i've seen it firsthand just by going there and seeing the process and how it works out and

[248:00] i think you know mary's comments are valid but my question to you is is there a shortage of funding for mediation or do you think it would be necessary for mediation to also be included as part of this current ballot initiative thank you for that juni um so we've over over the last few months since cobot started we've shift shifted a bit of our our resources and effort to be able to increase the amount of mediation i think to uh sustain um the level of mediation or the quantity of mediation that we're doing now um uh on a in perpetuity it might take a bit more

[249:01] funding um it's probably not significant um it's probably in the the range of 50 to 100 000 a year to do that provide that additional ongoing mediation um the one slight clarification i wanted to give i think it was from adam's question um so the percentage well the percentage of affordable housing in the city is i think it's about 8.7 right now for rental units it's actually higher than that um so it's it's a little bit higher than the eight percent that roy was um describing it's probably closer to the ten percent um we calculated at about 216 000 per year that affordable housing providers would give towards that which represents

[250:00] the creation of about three affordable units per year um so i just want to give that one roy was relatively close on that though i'm a little reluctant to give an opinion about what process is going to work better versus the you know the legal approach versus the um mediation approach um mediation is um uh is an agreement between both parties that they will do that the legal services that newer is describing would be sort of automatically there and available to to individuals regardless of if they agree or not so they're very different approaches um they could be complementary um i i don't have an opinion really if

[251:00] if um if newer were to be put into place whether that would reduce the amount of of mediation that would be probably unfair for me to give an opinion on that thank you california adam or do you have a mediation i want to cut you no go ahead so i guess this question is for really um i've been involved as an attorney in mediation and so i don't see it as either or either you get an attorney or you mediate um does this somehow foreclose that an attorney could be involved in mediation or could that not be um flow nicely with mediation uh yeah thanks for your question rachel uh so there's absolutely no reason um why uh tenant attorneys would not actively participate in mediation uh like i explained before i do think right now mediation is a little

[252:01] underutilized um by tenants because they are often don't have representation uh with with an attorney um i think uh landlords have 88 of the time uh in our recording of data have access to an attorney in eviction court and um we'd love to see um mediators um uh mediating with uh two sides that are um equally balanced we think that'd be fantastic i appreciated your point earlier that um that the attorneys aren't just in eviction court they are in mediation in the hallways and wherever else that occurs so all right just want to clarify that thanks i'm going to call myself and then go to adam and that then rachel you've got your hand up i think also um i've got a couple of questions for tom and a couple questions for rui tom um first one just a technical one um and in 8412 um i don't see in the ballot question

[253:00] i see it in the ordinance in the the the um um language of the statute but i don't see an the ballot question for the alternative ballot any reference to um eviction assistance is that intentional or was that an oversight it's an oversight okay so that needs to be included as maybe an item to rental assistance yeah okay so if we pass the e412 we need to get that in there right yes okay thanks um second questions also for you tom um i think i understand that this is this this fee would um based on the number of rental units we have and 75 dollars a unit would generate about one for between 1.8 and two million dollars a year based on the eviction number of evictions i know that the eviction counts were for boulder county that kristen put up um maybe we can extrapolate and say you know a third or forty percent or fifty

[254:01] percent of those are in boulder city any any guesstimate about how much of that one point eight to two million dollars would be spent on legal fees you know using an average assumption about how much in fees per case if everyone took a lawyer you have any idea well i mean it probably more expensive if you hired outside attorneys i mean my preference if i were running this would be to have in-house attorneys because you paid them a fixed amount okay which would that be that i would i would guess two or three attorneys on staff is what i would do and figure half a million dollars maybe at the outset yeah and and i i'm just back of the envelope bob i mean i'm just trying to get an order of magnitude so it sounds like it'd be significantly less than the 1.8 to 2 million that would be collected i i think it would but i'm not running the program okay um and then the rest would be if if we passed 8412 then the rest would be for eviction well administration and then also for uh

[255:01] eviction prevention is that right yeah okay great so really um based on that that last point that tom um answered i'm struggling a little bit with with why there would be resistance to exempting affordable housing which as kurt calculates is about 200 000 in other words if there's more than enough to pay for the legal defense um with lots of leftover maybe more than a million left over why would you be opposed to exempting affordable housing because it would be cutting into the eviction um prevention part of the of the fee and it would give all the money that you had hoped for for lawyers and then some yeah sure um so uh you know like i said before uh we think that our view is that affordable housing providers are still landlords and they still carry out evictions

[256:01] on the uh the funding component that's actually something that took a very long time for us to figure out um and uh basically our first step was to work with local legal service providers bridge to justice boulder county legal services folks who are already providing that um legal counsel for tenants experiencing eviction and we worked with them and developed um a base number that was around 750 000 for the program um and we then took that to our partners from the national right to council movement um newer is what you could call the name for it's just a right to council movement um they have sprung up throughout the country there are dozens in san francisco dc la new york city philadelphia cleveland so on and we talked to folks who were experts and involved in the administration of those programs and uh we received very specific advice that

[257:00] the initial amount that we had budgeted for would likely be insufficient and this is based on their experience starting founding right to council programs in various cities across the country um their reasons for that were twofold uh first eviction has been increasing nationwide for a while even before covet um uh as you saw in the slide uh that um housing and uh kurt vernon hopper was nice enough to share with us um it's been happening here in boulder county as well in fact from 2016 to 2019 the number of summons to eviction court have increased by 27 so the other reason they gave us as to why we should increase that amount of funding is that there are two kinds of evictions in our country um there are official evictions uh convictions that occur within the court system that are initiated by a notice to cure demand for rent then an fed then a day in court but there are also what's called unofficial or extrajudicial or

[258:00] you might call them illegal evictions that occur as well those are unrecorded because they never enter the court system and those can be as simple as a landlord just telling a tenant you better get out the sheriff's going to kick you out in 48 hours without having done any of the work to to establish that or to get the writ of restitution from the judge um in these cases tenants often just do what the landlord says because they are kind of in a personal crisis a personal emergency which is what eviction is um and they don't ever um access any of their any of their rights those addictions don't get recorded and when uh these right to council programs are implemented what tends to happen is those groups of people who would otherwise um not know anything about their rights eviction process or even be willing be a little too scared to take their uh case to court are now given the resources to do so and that can cause a sort of

[259:00] expansion of demand for a program um so yeah i know that answers your question yeah that's helpful i i really appreciate that so it sounds like it's a little uncertain how much in legal fees we'll need so i get that um how would you feel not to negotiate with you but i'm i'm trying to i'm i'm troubled by the the 200 000 and the three housing units per year that we would lose as a result of that um how would you feel about a situation where the first dollars were all spent on lawyers whatever that was whether it's the four or five hundred thousand the time estimates estimates or it's million or a million and a half or whatever up to the obviously the full amount of the fee because obviously that that's the way that 2412 is structured which is first it goes to the lawyers and then second whatever's left over goes to eviction prevention and if if there was money left over for eviction prevention and and the decision was made between refunding that money back to affordable housing providers or or eviction prevention um would you be okay with that in other words if it was all the

[260:00] money you needed for lawyers which is which was your original proposal you got you got it all the way up all the way to the full amount of tax but if there was money left over council could have the flexibility of either do an eviction prevention or refunding that back to affordable housing providers would you be okay with that you know that sounds an awful lot like a negotiation what is a negotiation i'm just trying to i'm trying to to avoid um taxing or affordable housing providers because they're the very people who are providing housing i get what you say as far as they do evictions so i'm not going to disagree with you on that i'm just trying to understand if your original proposal was to get money for lawyers and you get all the money you need for lawyers and there was money left over um would you be offended if council decided future councils decided to provide a refund to affordable housing providers rather than an eviction prevention i'm not saying that's what they would do but as long as you've got all the money you want for lawyers and there was call it 500 000 left over and council decided to refund 200 000 of that back to the

[261:00] affordable housing providers and use 300 000 for prevention wouldn't you be agnostic compared to your original ballot measure uh yeah so so i'll say this um we're here tonight um uh because of uh our interest and our offer to the council uh with the amended um measure that does include rental assistance um and and that's why we're here tonight so so that's what we're interested in and that's our dear hope um that council will be amenable to that and include rental assistance in there okay i'll take that as a no um and then final question this is again kind of a combination tom and rui um tom is is either the ballot measures that's on the table either the original one or um the alternative that is proposed 8412 does that limit the city's obligation to fund these things whether it's lawyers or eviction prevention does that limit it to the amount of money the city actually

[262:01] receives or is that an obligation the city must fulfill regardless of whether the city receives money the way i read it is that it says that it'll be funded from the fee so i don't believe the city would have to provide supplemental funding the way i read the initiative is that you know the only funding would come from the fee and so if if um if roy's right and and and lawyers are more expensive than we think they are and there was a bigger demand for lawyers than than the fee generated we would just simply stop funding that once we exhausted the fee is that right yeah the the um legal administrator would be given a budget and have to work within that budget okay and similarly if the um fee was set aside because um uh it was not a tabor tax the city's obligation would end once the fee was determined by a court to not be

[263:00] appropriate that's my reading of the initiative okay roy do you disagree with that i know you're not a lawyer but i'm just gonna make sure we're all on the same page legislatively uh yeah i think it's uh it's pretty clear that um the program would be funded by the fee um but uh the language does allow for the city council to [Music] expand and improve the scope of the program if if they so choose of course of course yeah okay thanks so much for me um i've got sorry for so many questions um mary and then mark um this is a question for tom in the um the initiative is there a um does the ordinance specify how and or where um the program is administered so in other words could it be administered by boulder county legal services for example i believe it requires that there be a city employee who administers the program it doesn't specify whether the attorneys

[264:01] have to be employees though okay thank you thanks mary mark and adam just a quick question for roy uh you are much more knowledgeable about these proceedings than i am um does this include entitlement to a lawyer if your lease is simply expired by its term the landlord says i no longer want you as a tenant is there an entitlement to an attorney for that uh no i i again i'm not an attorney myself um i but i don't believe that would be uh part of the definition of covered eviction proceedings okay thank you great thanks mark adam yeah bob just wondering are we gonna have like a comment period before we move forward or wouldn't you be the first one yeah okay i've been waiting um so it's it's pretty clear to me that uh they are here for one purpose

[265:01] and one purpose only um and that is a purpose that i would personally support is expanding to rental assistance um i think that would only be a good addition for any overage because right now if we don't include that any overage is just going to be an overage with no clear means for being spent um so to me it's you know i think it's pretty clear-cut and i think it's worth supporting what they're looking to do because the alternative is they just go with what they got the signatures for anyway so um you know it's it's a win-win in a way but i think there's improvement to be had and i hope we can do that thanks adam any other comments since we're moving into comments uh rachel yep i will um just support what adam

[266:01] just said i and and i think adam didn't mean it like rudely that they're here for one reason and one reason only but like that it's a focused um uh well-researched effort and that there aren't um compromises i think that that the newer team seems to have thought very concretely through all of the um permutations and and considerations and what they could have done and have pretty good rationales for how they've formulated this so i'm glad that they um wanted to work with the city to make this change that i think is beneficial so i'm supportive of yeah of moving forward with that thanks thanks rachel any other comments um i'll throw a comment i'll throw some comments in um i i i'm supportive i i appreciate very much uh aaron and roy and everybody else who's involved and the lawyers um in putting together an alternative version that includes rent prevention because i think for eviction prevention because i think that um

[267:00] increases the likelihood of success at the ballot box um but i would be remiss in saying that i'm not not saying that i'm disappointed in two changes which i think are entirely reasonable and do not adversely affect um the ballot manager in fact enhance it and make it more likely to to succeed and not only succeed at the ballot box but also succeed in court if it's attacked and the two changes that i would suggest i'm happy to to support passing both versions but i would suggest over the next two weeks that those are involved in this discussion deeply consider two changes to 8412 one would be to provide for an exemption or at least a refund to affordable housing providers because i simply don't understand if there's plenty of money to pay the lawyers which was which is the ballot measure itself as petitioned why anyone would care if council future councils decided to refund some of that back to affordable housing

[268:00] providers rather than doing eviction prevention future councils may not want to do that but i'm not too sure why the petitioners would care if if if all the money that they had hoped would go to lawyers go to lawyers and there was more than enough left over that future councils couldn't make that discretionary decision so i would ask the petitioners to consider that as an adjustment the second thing i would ask the petitioners to consider as an adjustment is to make this a tabor measure i think there is a non-zero risk that some judge will consider this a attacks i haven't heard any compelling reason not to make it a tabor i i knew really said it was a pain i'm not sure it's a pain it's just it's a language change because once there's language in there and there's a tabor revision it then goes to the voters i don't think it's less likely to pass with the taber language amended to it and once it passes it's exactly the same there's no there's no difference in administration and um there's a there's a risk that

[269:00] this fee we have not done the nexus study there's a risk that somebody will come in and take the position that this fee is in fact a tax was not properly passed and we're all going to be really really embarrassed because the tax would then the fee would then go away we would have nothing for eviction prevention or for legal representation we'd have to go back to the ballot box a year or two later so i don't see any downside in adding tabor language and i'd strongly suggest you consider doing that and if you need legal counsel no pun intended but if you need legal counsel to help you understand the advantages of having the table language i urge you to do that so those are the two things that i would suggest i may or may not support this on second reading but i certainly would support on second reading if those two changes were made mark yeah i want to echo my agreement with bob's comments i don't think making this a tax i think is a protective measure

[270:00] it is not going to impact its success at the ballot you know if you designate it as a tax most people are not paying this tax so i don't think there's any impact on the ordinary voter who will look at the merits of the proposal and say hey there's there's a good deal here that is uh uh you know that's worth doing and to me it's simply putting the program at risk it's up to you of course um but if there is a legal challenge and this is overturned uh you're back to square zero for no particular reason that i can discern um i think the merits of it are going to be fairly evident to most people and in terms of the comment on affordable housing providers where we a couple of times you've mentioned that that affordable housing providers are

[271:01] landlords too and they are but this this does not disqualify their tenants from legal representation it's merely saying that the landlord itself who was otherwise engaged in providing a valuable resource for this community doesn't have to pay that fee there's no you know nobody is claiming that that by creating such an exemption uh that the residents of affordable housing would not have the same access to council than any other tenant would have all right i would urge you to think of those i think it would make the passage of an otherwise worthy proposal much more secure and long-lasting again you will make that decision but i would hope you would think about that a little bit because i think both of those changes would enhance your position not detract from it thanks mark nearby then uh aaron

[272:01] i just thank you for all this information and presentations uh i'll and thanks mark and bob for stating that so clearly and i will be um probably supporting and being on the same page as you with both of you so thanks for buying aaron good well i appreciate the discussion everybody and the questions and ree for being here and answering those questions and so um you know obviously we'll have a public hearing on this and i'm not sure exactly when it's scheduled two weeks from now or or so where we can you know make some final decisions on this but um so we can advance both versions on uh tonight for that final step in a couple weeks great anyone else i don't see any other hands up i just want to remind whoever makes the motion on the consent agenda to um include in your motion language the revision to the 8412 version to include um in the

[273:01] ballot language of that um the um eviction prevention so i i talked about with tom mark yeah i also just wanted to thank aaron for the hard work he's put in on this project i think uh i i just i'm very appreciative of what he's done and uh i wanted to say thank you yeah thanks i appreciate the the collaboration with the organizers uh ree and megan and others great well i think we're done with that one um we have one this is this has to be the longest consent agenda ever um uh but good news is we don't have much after it um we have one more i think presentation relating to the consent agenda and that's on item e and jane i'm going to turn it back to you to introduce whoever's going to present this from planning and development services well let me introduce our friend sloane wahlberg oh charles are you going to start off or sloan no i'll pass the rectus loan to present staff's uh recommendation this evening

[274:00] right thanks charles slim okay um good evening everyone uh let's wait for my presentation to pop up here should be up now okay sounds good um so tonight's for your consideration is the annexation of two parcels generally located at 5600 airport boulevard on first reading of the ordinance and approval of the required resolution as well as whether to call up the companion site review for a public hearing if the site review is called up you'll have a hearing for second reading for the annexation and the public hearing for the site review on september 15th if not the site review would be considered conditionally approved based on approval of the annexation and the council would only hear the annexation in september

[275:05] so there's just a summary of that for you so just to give a quick summary of the proposal to develop the property as proposed the property must be annexed to the city and zone for industrial development in addition the project meets the thresholds for required concept plan and site review planning board reviewed the proposed annexation and initial zoning last month and the board voted to recommend approval of that annexation subject to the recommended conditions of approval provided in the draft annexation agreement at the same meeting the planning board approved the site review application and a summary of the board's discussion was provided in the memo and just as a note it was also reviewed by the design advisory board and the open space board so

[276:00] the nearly 10 acre site is located in east boulder just southeast of the municipal airport and at the easternmost terminus of airport boulevard approximately six of those acres are proposed to be annexed the site consists of two unplotted parcels and one platted lot that northernmost parcel was annexed into the city in 1990 and contains two one-story buildings constructed in the 1990s the southernmost parcels are undeveloped are and are under the jurisdiction of boulder county the site is bordered by the lake center business park to the west into the north and by the boulder and left hand and north boulder farmer stitches and a existing paved multi-use path along the east and south sides it's also adjacent to open space properties managed by osmp to the south and the east the applicant is requesting annexation

[277:01] by petition uh those southern parcels are located within planning areas two and three in the comprehensive plan and are eligible for annexation and the applicant is proposing to dedicate the southern portion of those parcels to the city within area three and designated as open space other on the land use map of the comprehensive plan uh the parcel currently within city boundaries and the surrounding properties are zoned industrial manufacturing the applicant has requested a zoning of industrial general for those portions of the southern parcels that would remain in private ownership and public zoning is proposed for the area of land um proposed to be dedicated to osmp given that the land would be deeded to the city and would have no urban density associated with it

[278:02] and per city policies annexations with additional development potential must demonstrate community benefit consistent with comprehensive plan policies and that's intended to offset the negative impacts of additional development in the boulder valley and as part of the community benefit package the applicant is proposing to dedicate 1.6 acres for open space purposes as i just described they would do restoration work and also install necessary fencing on that portion they're also proposing to pay one and a half times the affordable housing commercial linkage fee which is intended to address affordable housing needs generated direct both directly by jobs created by potential employers in the building and also indirectly by creation of service jobs needed to support that population increase and it's also important to note that

[279:01] as part of the annexation package they would be allowed to transfer some of the floor area from the im portion to the ig portion of the site as long as the development is consistent with the site review plans and in terms of the site review the proposal is for a light industrial building three stories and 45 feet in heights and designed to be suitable for light industrial uses like research and development facilities testing laboratories technical offices and the like and um due to topography the building would appear as two stories from the street and three stories from the open space to the south and those existing buildings fronting on airport boulevard would remain and the existing lay layout of the access streets are proposed to remain the building orientation is largely driven by the layout of the existing buildings and the pretty substantial

[280:00] grade change across the site parking would be shared across the sites with 323 spaces proposed and that equates to a 10.8 parking reduction so as described in the memo staff and planning board finds that the project is consistent with the goals objectives and recommendations of the comprehensive plan the state state statutes for annexation we find that public and ig zoning is appropriate and that the project meets all applicable site review criteria so that's just a quick overview but i'm happy to answer any questions okay just to be clear that was really kind of a presentation for two items three e which is the first reading of annexation and we'll take up the annexation at a public hearing in september but also sloan effectively also acted as your presentation for a potential call up which we'll we'll take up after the consent agenda is that right that's correct so that's both items okay

[281:00] any questions um of staff on this one mary yeah thank you sloan just a quick question um you mentioned that as part of the community benefit they would be paying one and a half times the commercial linkage fee and so what would that come to given the square footage and the current level of the commercial leakage fee yeah so it it is um proposed to increase up until 2022 when they would pay when the permit is issued so um so you're able to bring up slide seven it has a estimate of what those fees would amount to based on the 111 100 let me bring that up now thank you there you go oh

[282:04] keep going forward slide seven thank you sarah so you can see those totals there of what the standard rate versus what um the one and a half times rate would be okay and then they're anticipated to um pull the permit in what year or do we not know i my understanding is as soon as possible but i i don't think that they have a set date of when that would be okay thank you um other questions for sloan i am not seeing oh there we go mark yeah quick right the um the proposed 45 foot height is that an as of right

[283:02] that is the right height other questions alone we haven't been able to stump you yet uh i'm not seeing any hands okay um but st stick around just in case we have any follow-up questions we get to call it but thanks for the presentation okay i think that is all of the presentations on the consent agenda we didn't talk about f or h because um no one felt that we needed to have a presentation on those aaron you've got your hand up i'm raring to make a motion sure let me just add a cl couple clarifying points um and before you do and you can have the first dibs at it um when you make your motion please indicate on d and g whether you're you're moving for both versions of those respective ordinances and on uh as we just

[284:00] discussed on d if you would clarify that on 8412 the amendment that we've discussed with tom about adding eviction prevention would be helpful in the ballot language and then i want to call out two more procedural points on f because it's an emergency motion we do need a two-thirds vote we'll see how that comes out and then debbie reminded me that this is actually a roll call so with all that procedural stuff aaron take it away all right well i feel like we should be calling this the discussion agenda rather than the consent agenda but you know whatever i'll i'll go ahead and move the the consent agenda uh uh moving on both versions for both d and g and for d adding into the ballot language for um warning city 412 the language about eviction prevention tom did i get that right yes great is there a second

[285:00] second second by mark uh debbie this is a roll call go ahead council member yes hi young [Music] yes brockett hi friend yes joseph hi engel hi thank you for your attention to the longest consent agenda ever and we're almost done um debbie want to call up the next item [Music] um are we doing are we moving to columbus yes you declare it okay okay so our next item is a call up for the

[286:01] site review of 5600 airport boulevard great is there any interest in calling it up raise your hand now turn your hands up i think that's from before okay i'm assuming no one wants to call that up okay thank you sloane charles last two items are both under uh matters for mayor and city council i'm gonna for item 8a there's actually two or three items um bundled together and mary um would you please take the lead on this you are um so as most of you may know um jane is retiring and so we um need a search committee and um so sam and i have been working with trish um gerlitz currently who is our departing human resources director um congratulations trish and um

[287:01] there's several items that we need to um that we can decide tonight and i just want to bring them to your attention uh for possible decisions tonight so um the first one is the appointment of the subcommittee and as sam mentioned that he's willing to step aside and we have heard from aaron that he's interested and um i am as well and so the first question for council is do um you all agree that aaron and i um should be on the subcommittee working with hr on the search process mary do you mind if i say something here please yeah so yeah just so that i'd get my uh i i am interested in serving on the the subcommittee if uh folks are willing but i also wanted to make sure and give uh someone else a chance to put their name forward if they were interested as well

[288:03] rachel i'm completely supportive of aaron and mary taking this forward i am too anybody else uh either want to volunteer or express support okay tom do we need to um pass a motion um designating aaron and mary as the um subcommittee for this yes please um and what's the name of it so good appointment of the search committee for um new city manager i i move that um aaron and mary be appointed as the subcommittee for um the search for the replacement of city manager second and i would just clarify that that's the committee under charter section nine that pro that authorizes the the castle

[289:00] to hire the city manager i think that's what i said and i think that's what mark seconded do we need to open this up for a public hearing tom uh under your rules yes but i don't think that's practical okay um do we need to make do we need to have a motion to suspend the rules yes i move that we suspend the rules about having a public hearing on the motion that was just made is there a second second anyone opposed okay the rules are suspended getting back to the question what's that it was nearby okay getting back to the original motion that i made mark seconded um do we need a roll call on this tom no okay is anyone opposed to the motion okay see no opposition that motion passes as well mary you've got a few more things i think can i just say something real quick um so thanks everybody for for voting for that i just want to say you know mary

[290:00] and i served on the open space uh process subcommittee for it was a good 18 months or so and i thought i thought we were a good team so mary look forward to work working together as do i i'm i'm happy to start with you erin all right so we'll move on to um and i thank all of you for this um honor of serving on this committee um all right um next item is um so part of what we're our committee needs to do is to um figure out what we will do about a search consultant um there's a couple of things that can happen we can do um a request for proposal um or we can basically appoint a firm and the way that this affects the process is that it if we if we do a request for proposal it adds

[291:00] time approximately six weeks and sam and i who've been working on this because we were the evaluation committee actually recommend that we appoint a proven um search consultant um and the reason for this is the time factor um that's one reason and then the other reason is that we have several positions to fill and if we appoint this proven consultant we can put together a master contract so that's what sam and i are recommending um and um yeah so that's the question is um do you all agree that the subcommittee as um as it was sam and myself is authorized to work with hr to select a search consultant and return to

[292:00] council with a process timeline that will include public engagement thanks marie we've got a few hands up i'm adam then rachel then mark thanks bob and mary um what are the other positions just do you have a short list that you knew right off the top of your head um i'm gonna put that in trish's um lap there i see she's here hi good evening everyone yes i can answer that um presently we are recruiting for our director of planning and as you well know and as well as our senior manager for budget that we do have this consultant that mary is referring to already working on um she has also led a successful search for us for our deputy city manager which didn't result in an internal candidate um chris messchuck um

[293:01] and she i i would add to what um mary has shared is that what has been so effective about this contract recruiter heather gantz is um her ability to source so really go out and find the candidates who are successful in their current roles and not just people who are looking right and engage them in conversations um and and that is is why she has been so effective with the city thank you rachel and mark yep two quick questions um in terms of this recommendation to to select the search consultant i just wanted to get jane's opinion on it if possible to make sure that's the direction that she also recommends and then second well i'm assuming that city council will get a chance to weigh in on the job description before it goes out and so

[294:01] just wanted to make sure that with a subcommittee that would come to the full council or when that would come thanks thanks rachel so i absolutely agree with this recommendation this particular search consultant has been the best one that we have worked with in years here at the city and i'll just jump on what trish said which is that she does source candidates and while all the search consultants say that they do it i would say that they don't all do it and we have had great success with her i also really appreciate the fact that we could get moving on this a lot quicker rather than spending in six weeks trying to figure out who the search consultant is and and that kind of brings me to your next um question which is the city council and the job description what the subcommittee is asking for is an ability to work with this search consultant and then come back with a process

[295:00] that they would show to the council and that process will clearly include public engagement so that the public can weigh in on the attributes that they would like to see in the next city manager and then that would be brought to the council for council's final input and what normally happens is that the search consultant will probably meet with each one of you individually to understand what you're thinking before any final job description is developed so there will be plenty of input and getting that going as quickly as possible would be beneficial to the city thanks jade thanks jane and rachel mark yeah i want a second uh uh mary's suggestion and uh uh jane's comments i think at this moment in time um we don't really have the the leisure to spin this out the over an extended period of time

[296:01] and i think the stability of the city requires that we move forward and and find the appropriate candidate as expeditiously as possible and spending six months or six weeks on an rfp is is to me not productive so i would be very supportive of the suggestion that we go ahead utilize a proven uh search firm and get started on the process i don't see any other hands any other comments okay i i agree with with mark and mary and rachel sounds like uh mary and i'm straight mary and aaron uh it sounds like you've got your marching orders on um on hiring this recruiter and and uh bringing the process back to us in hopefully a few weeks so thank you for your service excellent um all right and then the the third question is

[297:04] deciding on a um an acting city manager um and so we just need to need to identify a person that's going to be the acting city manager after october 30th and the sooner the better so it'd be best for the organization if the person could be identified soon and sam and i are recommending that this discussion be added to the august 18th city council meeting so um it's it's a request for cac so does council agree that cac should schedule a discussion regarding the appointment of an acting city manager to serve after october 30th and until the city new city manager is appointed anyone have any objection to that if not cac will schedule it as requested

[298:01] and then mary can you speak a little bit to the evaluations of the city attorney and the municipal judge um right um so one of the suggestions that was made by council was to have a very brief five question um evaluation and obviously the evaluations would not include jane would just be linda and tom so i'll let trish take it from here too thanks mary um yes and we hadn't spoken on we didn't speak about this this topic yesterday with you with uh in this update mary um yesterday with you and sam so i do think um as we move forward um a conversation with you and aaron um would be warranted on just the specifics of of being able to implement that um certainly that's something we could do

[299:01] but to um to nail down that timing and the medium in which we should do that um i would i would love to to explore that over the next week um and certainly come back to to counsel with that if that if that is um [Music] something that council is amenable to and and my suggestion would be that in the next week um that aaron and myself have a meeting um with you trish um yep and and figure that piece of it out absolutely great thank you you think uh trisha and mary that it would be um reasonable since we're scheduling time on the 18th to talk about process and the appointment of the interim um city manager does it make sense also on the 18th to um talk about the the process for the performance review of the other two employees um that gives us a couple of weeks um trish is that a reasonable time absolutely

[300:01] and that would be your your last day so yeah okay super so cic will take that i'm sure debbie noted that and cac will take that up in a lot sometime for those discussions on the 18th anything else mary on that item i hate a i'll just add you know just one more thing is i'm really thankful to council for agreeing to go with the proven search consultant i think that the timeline will be critical we would hopefully in our meetings with trish sam and i we have discussed that it would be really great to target having a new city manager on board in the january february time frame so that extra six weeks is very critical to being able to reach that goal

[301:01] we have also discussed um you know having the the interviews kind of right before the holiday madness begins although it may be a different kind of madness this year but um but to make sure you know in the period kind of between thanksgiving and christmas where people are still in town and starting to kind of um perhaps prepare for um holidays and and maybe have some time to participate in engagement um it would be difficult to have it earlier but uh but that that's one of the things that um aaron and myself and and trish can um discuss sounds great thank you mary rachel your hand is up but i don't know that may be residual it is residual okay you're good okay

[302:01] thanks the last item on our agenda is 8b and this is also another volunteering opportunity i think someone's already been volunteered for this a few weeks ago we had a um a a very good discussion on homelessness and we considered some recommendations made by joint recommendations made by the human resources commission the housing advisory board and one of the things that they asked and we agreed with is that they would have a subcommittee that would work on a few follow-up items and i think they've designated a few people from the human relations commission and the housing advisory board but they did ask for a council liaison to work with them on those follow-up works and so we're looking for a volunteer um to be that council liaison to those those groups to work on the follow-up items adam sweatly what a surprise that you raised your hand yes i was uh originally voluntold to do

[303:00] this position and uh i'm happy to follow through on that it would be awesome to be able to reconnect with uh the members of hab and work on a little something housing related great well thank you for that mary and i just wanted to suggest um that perhaps something that council might want to see as you get going or just put it out there to council and see if council is amenable to this um to have um the committee come back with what the purpose of the subcommittee is is you know is it what are yeah what what is it going to do and and [Music] what can council expect from the committee if is it just a study or or what so um if just uh maybe a mission statement or something like that of what you're going to do i would be

[304:00] interested in seeing something like that so i'll just put it up to council rachel i want to thank adam for accepting his ball and told position and also um check in i've been sort of assuming that it might work out this way and so as people are emailing me suggestions and ideas um for solutions on homelessness i've been forwarding them to adam and wanted to make sure that was okay and if you wanted others to invite anybody else to do as i've been doing thanks yeah absolutely i'll continue to make those available to members of hab and hrc as well as we get them if they don't go to the entire council and adam i'll throw out there um that i received an email from charlotte pitts um from hab and lindsey loberg from hrc with very well thought out ideas about what the scope of this might be and so i think they've already given

[305:00] a lot of deep thought to this i don't know if you've seen that from them but you might want to sit down with them and um and look at what they've already prepared and and maybe you could bring that back to council after your first meeting or two with them yeah especially to mary's point i think that's important and uh again i think it's important to stress that i'm acting mostly as a liaison um not trying to you know push them in any particular directions or anything this was their request and uh this is just a you know to have a helping hand between council and and the two boards great tom do we need a motion um to appoint adam as liaison or is this a relatively informal thing i think it's relatively informal i think you're fine with where you are okay any other comments nothing adam you're it thank you so much thanks adam folks we have reached the end of the

[306:00] agenda any other um items for discussion or any debrief over the meeting uh hearing none we are adjourned at 1101. thank you so much thank you thanks bob good night everybody [Music] live from paris of northwest [Music] a mosque for hundreds of years hello and a very warm welcome to you i'm eve irvine glad you could join us a day of