August 11, 2020 — City Council Special Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[35:31] so it will either be ai where there are massive investments going on in advancing artificial intelligence for controlling people social compliance uh weapon systems defense systems the the the weaponization of ai or the united states so we are in a non-kinetic warfare with china today and they are investing billions of dollars they are educating more people they are spending more money they are

[36:01] filing more patents and i think there's a reason to be concerned if things continue to go their current uh the way they are going today i think china might win this war and that's a call on the us government to to do a little bit more i think the western governments don't do more in this area we will be very sorry now let's talk about your startup i just said it was valued at three billion dollars it's called c3ai and it's helping companies take the digital turn maybe give us briefly an example of how you help your clients in that matter so we've spent the last decade in almost uh three-quarters of a billion dollars building a software platform that allows our customers like anal ng shell the united states air force um apply ai to massive social and economic benefit so this is about you know cleaner energy renewable energy more efficient manufacturing

[37:01] lower inventory costs lower cost products more satisfied customers and so we do this in banking telecommunications smart cities defense intelligence clean energy now you've decided to set up your headquarters here in europe in uh well i mean your your european headquarters are here in france you seem to appreciate france a lot is this still the case after uh all the strikes and why do you think it's a good country to invest well i think that you know if paris is very centrally located it's a great uh uh transportation hub we uh uh france offers you know a very uh deep and rich resource in there of human capital they have you know some of the best research and educational institutions on the planet like a cold poly technique and you know great computer scientists great data scientists great human capital so i think that siebel systems

[38:01] paris was our headquarters for emea that worked out very well for us and so paris is our headquarters for c3 dot ai as we as we grow our footprint uh throughout europe and the middle east uh i started this interview by saying that you had literally stared death in the eye i was referring of course to what happened back in 2009 in tanzania when you were on a foot safari uh you were attacked by an elephant and you underwent 19 surgeries i think right after that and you weren't able to walk for four years i'm just wondering on a personal level um the man that you are what how did it change your life to have to go through that yeah i was on a photo safari in tanzania and i was attacked and mulled by an elephant and uh my left leg was gored i broke a bunch of ribs the elephant stepped on my right leg and my foot came off and so it was pretty challenging and i spent the next four years i had 19 reconstructive surgeries and i walked

[39:00] four years later good news is today i'm fine but i think it puts things into perspective about you know you approach risk a little bit differently and it also you know you you know that most of the things that you worry about before an elephant attack that you think they're important they're really not important at all and so it helps you prioritize what's you know what's important from what's not so it changes the way you think and lastly for uh those of our viewers who are maybe thinking about starting their startup or their company uh what's your advice to them become a domain expert okay and you know in the the idea that uh i think that you know whether we're dealing with bioscience whether dealing with information technology whether we're dealing material science travel transportation there is no substitute for getting an education and being a domain expert in that field secondly

[40:00] before i started a company i would go to work for a company that is a leader in that field okay and you know learn you know how it's done how customers are engaged the language of the business how contracting is done how customers are supported so that you can be you know more successful out of the gate tom siebel thank you very much indeed for that it's the end of this interview but do stay with us here on france24 here at france 24 we're taking a broad outlook by talking about the women who are reshaping our world in france and internet

[41:02] [Music] actuality [Music] [Music]

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[43:03] hirosaki city is an old castle town in aomori here in the tohoku region winters are cold with heavy snow when spring arrives in late april the cherry blossom festival in hirosaki park always draws huge crowds the park has about 50 varieties of sakura over 2 600 trees blooming at once [Music] so many blossoms the water is hidden under the fallen petals [Music] when night falls and the illuminations come on the park is transformed again i love the way the flowers are so densely packed you can't even see the sky for the japanese cherry blossom viewing celebrates the arrival of spring

[44:01] [Music] the tree doctors who keep hirosaki park's cherry trees healthy call themselves team sakura mori [Music] as a child hashibar nakiko loved to play under hirosaki's cherry blossoms today her job is to look after these trees all year round we do our utmost to keep these trees healthy and ensure they live as long as possible most of the park's cherry blossoms are the variety called some yoshino these are normally thought to live only 60 years but hirosaki has 100 year old trees that still blossom profusely hashiba tells us the secret to long-lived cherry trees is regular

[45:00] pruning [Music] they trim many branches that appear sick or are preventing other branches from growing [Music] hashiba pruned this branch today after finding mushrooms on it [Music] it was always believed that you should never prune cherry trees but 60 years ago the tree doctors at the time found a way to make it work [Music] they were inspired by pruning techniques used on hirosaki's most famous farm product the apple the region's apple farm has experimented with methods to reduce

[46:08] apples belong to the same botanical family as cherry trees so it seemed likely a similar approach would work they found that pruning the park's cherry trees reduced disease prevented falling trees and lengthened life spans her colleagues inherited this know-how and use it to keep their trees healthy their work continues throughout the icy winter the park must be ready for spring [Music] and when sakura season arrives [Music]

[47:00] after a winter of loving care the flowers are as spectacular as always know-how and technique based on regional wisdom working behind the scenes to protect this magnificent site almost all japanese elementary schools provide lunch for their pupils these are carefully designed for nutritional balance [Music] as the children eat their meal the teacher gives a simple explanation of its nutritional content

[48:04] i learned a lot the children learn about their food and how to choose a balanced diet [Music] are sometimes invited to give shokuiku classes washoku or traditional japanese cuisine is good for health it has been recognized as a unesco intangible cultural heritage today the children are learning about dashi the stock that's the basis of miso soup umami is produced by simmering certain

[49:02] kinds of seaweed seafood or vegetables miso soup is so familiar to the children they're surprised by all the techniques and ingredients needed to make it also teach children about traditional japanese approaches to cooking and food [Music] so much of our japanese culture these classes are a great way to teach the traditional understanding of life as well as food this nursery school is for children up to six years old shokuiku lessons cover everything from how food is produced to how it's consumed [Music]

[50:07] [Music] topics range from growing and cooking food to how to properly serve and eat [Music] rice is the staple food of the japanese [Music] these nursery school children plant their own rice and care for it until it's ready to harvest six months later with their newly harvested rice they learn to make rice balls discovering for themselves the difficulties and the joys of growing food the children make the side dishes too [Music] i love cooking they learn cooking techniques like cutting stir frying and deep frying [Music]

[51:03] and they're taught how to serve themselves [Music] eating habits acquired at an early age stay with us all our lives hearing my son say how confident in today's class really makes me feel how quickly he's growing up [Music] food education in japanese schools is helping improve the nation's diet teaching children basic knowledge about food and instilling desirable eating habits shocking classes lay a good foundation for health in adult life [Music] [Music] it's a craze that just keeps on getting

[52:01] bigger among japanese youth the 2.5 d musical [Music] 2d or 2-dimensional refers to manga anime and video games combining 2d themes and technology with live-action stage performances has brought us a [Music] their guardian forms it's as if they jump straight from the pages of the original manga [Music] in the prince of tennis [Music] when the teen idols play the game on stage it's made super realistic by 2.5 new effects [Music] tour ken rambu online is a very popular computer game

[53:03] [Music] the musical captivates audiences with its recreational historical events using songs [Applause] [Music] of all 2.5 d musicals none has been so popular as the series based on the manga naruto [Music] with over 2.5 billion copies sold worldwide these stories of ninja warriors focus on the bonds of friendship they developed during their adventures [Music] special effects in live and action sequences [Music]

[54:09] enjoy the fun video effects bring the fantastical world of naruto to life the hero casts a spell producing hundreds of clones behind him on stage [Music] as well as all the training and rehearsal required for these intense non-stop scenes the actors must learn to move exactly in sync with the projected video [Music] we use these video effects to support and complement what the actors are doing on stage we're trying to make the audience's experience as close as possible to what they imagined when reading the manga

[55:05] these musicals bring all the excitement of the original works to the stage the director's creativity and the skill of the actors work together perfectly to draw audiences deep [Music] special effects and all the interaction with the other actors it was really great overseas performances of 2.5 musicals are generating great enthusiasm a new form of entertainment in japan the 2.5 d museum look set to follow manga anime and video games and win fans [Music]

[56:02] what's up [Music] japan's traditional costume the kimono in the past this was an everyday garment today it's mostly worn for special events and ceremonial occasions the roots of the kimono date back to the 8th century it went through many changes before evolving into the kimono we see today made in an almost limitless range of patterns and colors kimonos expressed the range of japanese aesthetic sensibility the tango region faces the sea of japan

[57:00] in the north part of kyoto prefecture this is where almost 70 percent of japanese silk kimono fabric is made the fabric is called tango tirimen [Music] at the region's annual kimono festival the streets are filled with people proudly showing off their favorite kimonos [Music] this is what makes tango chiriman fabric special its wrinkled surface these fine irregular wrinkles reflect light randomly adding a unique depth and richness to the colors of the cloth [Music] tango chili men has a 300 year history production involves a great many processes and is highly skilled work [Music]

[58:00] creating wrinkles in the cloth is one of the most complex of all these processes first the yarn is strongly twisted at high speed the twisted yarn is then woven into fabric [Music] this is followed by immersion in hot water to clean it in the hot water the twisted yarn loosens and tries to return to its original shape it's this that produces the distinctive wrinkles [Music] it [Music] recently kimono designers have been taking their motifs from the world outside japan this kimono was inspired by one of argentina's most famous glaciers [Music]

[59:01] silver and blue yarns are interwoven to suggest streams of melting ice on the glacier surface [Music] [Music] one of kyoto's oldest kimono stores is also one of the most adventurous this was a joint project between a japanese and a congolese designer what could you know historically people felt free to make kimonos so [Music] this is their latest joint creation

[60:01] in africa two hearts touching traditionally signifies a union or bond between people the collars and sleeves bear an arabesque pattern of vines that symbolizes vitality in japan you can have a collaboration you can have like a complementarity between the two cultures after all these centuries the kimono is as charming as ever and today overseas influences are taking this traditional symbol of japan in new and exciting directions [Music] colorado happens to be one of the worst states for radon levels if you can take measures as simple as testing your home but people don't know my exposure for the 10 years that i worked in a home office that's what resulted in my cancer and that's about a liter of air which is

[61:02] perfect because radon is defined by leaders it's a derivative of uranium radon is an odorless naturally occurring gas which occurs in the crust of the earth it's in our ground and it seeps up just by breathing radon at the average house in colorado you are getting radiation damage equivalent to 200 chest x-rays a year the more you breathe radon or the higher the radon value the more chance you have of one of those dna being hit and the cell mutated a neighbor was selling her house and she ran over to my house and said have you ever heard of radon they're asking me to test for it and and our levels were really high and they said that it's the leading cause of lung cancer and she knew that my husband had just passed away [Music]

[62:00] he was only 58 years old when he passed away and we had a 13 year old son it's a tragedy to know that had we tested for radon that outcome could have been different [Music] in my opinion there should be legislation that everybody's house is tested and if radon levels are above what's considered normal they have a mitigation done and mitigation is not expensive it all starts with testing your home so if you want to know what my priority is get people the test for radon [Music] right

[63:10] 100 [Music] the yampa valley regional airport located in hayden colorado this airport serves as the gateway to colorado's northern rockies the airport first opened in the fall of 1966 and it began serving the community with daily scheduled service from denver by frontier airlines today the yampa valley regional airport is a vibrant economic generator and one of the key ingredients to the overall success of the booming local tourism industry steamboat springs is a western agricultural town that just

[64:00] happens to have a world-class ski mountain the ski conditions that powder brings a lot of people here over 75 000 people each year travel through the yampa valley regional airport in pursuit of mount warner's world-renowned champagne powder this accounts for nearly 70 of the total annual destination visitors of the steamboat ski area when it comes to the economy and employment the yampa valley regional airport can boast some impressive numbers the airport is linked to over 3 000 jobs nearly 105 million dollars in payroll and it generates nearly 300 million dollars in overall economic output for the surrounding community the economic benefit is undeniable to keep an economic engine like this running strong it takes solid partnerships a passionate and knowledgeable staff as well as a safe

[65:00] and efficient airport infrastructure [Music] our partnership with the ski corporation is very tight they know that the lifeblood of their business is reliant on this airport even the people that work here how proud they are of the product they put out and the care they take with the passengers come through here it shows i couldn't ask for a more talented and dedicated staff than i have and great partners in the fba next door it's important that we take pride in the airport and we take good care of the customers is we are the first impression for a lot of people so the first thing they see is when they get off the airplane here and they come through our turbo it's especially important that in the apple valley that we we keep the right attitude and we take good care of our pastors because we want them to come back and because they're a critical component of

[66:02] this community [Music] so it's not by accident the hills and the mountains are protected and it's not by accident the city today is one of the most desirable cities

[67:04] our four fathers and four mothers had the foresight to see the value of protecting our natural lands and having that open space buffer chautauqua itself was really founded in 1898 so chatok was been a part of boulder for a very long time in fact the buying of the batchelder ranch which is where chautauqua is today [Music] [Applause] [Music]

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[72:05] [Music] do [Music] so chris is channel 8 working now uh yeah it's my understanding both the live stream and channel 8 is working okay great

[73:01] there's mary howdy howdy okay so we called this meeting to order this is the august 11th 2020 meeting of the boulder city council we're going to start with just a quick announcement the 2020 census is currently going on and boulder county has a 73 response rate which is great but we'd still like everyone to be able to be counted and respond to the census these counts are very important for federal funding amounts and so on completing the census is safe easy and important it only takes a few minutes to complete responses are secure and confidential they're not tracked by identity and we do get money based on how many people live in our community in our state and you fill it out by the september 30th deadline at my2020census.gov or there's a phone number eight four

[74:01] four three three zero two zero two zero so take the census and then i guess we're on to call to order [Music] [Music] wallach resin weaver here yates here young present mayor we have a quorum very good so the first order of business then is to amend the agenda to switch the order of items four a and four b so that we'll speak about the our mayor our choice um matter first and then prairie dogs and os um bt second so could i get immersion turn in the agenda

[75:01] second great any objections seeing none we've done that okay next is consent agenda um the only item on the consent agenda tonight is consideration of a motion to call a special meeting of city council on august 20th 2020. so it's just show of hands you said debbie for this so does anyone object to passing the consent agenda well why don't i just make a quick motion to pass the consent agenda thanks second any objections seeing none it passes and then i believe we're down into public hearings already yes we are your first public hearing this evening is direct election of mayor slash ranked choice voting

[76:02] tom i think that's you yup can we put the presentation up please just take a second you guys are just moving way too fast for me oh that's going to change yeah so as you know a charter amendment petition has been circulated by the group our mayor our choice the proposed amendment would take the authority to name the mayor away from council and give it to the voters for their election conducting through ranked choice or instant runoff voting system in presidential election years they've submitted 5 800 signatures to the clerk's office which are currently under review this would fall short of the 8096 signatures that would be required in state law for a charter amendment this year the proposed ordinance so so council members asked staff to work with

[77:00] the petitioners to draft the proposed ordinance that address some of the concerns raised by the community for council to consider putting on the ballot so that's what's before you tonight so i want to describe the proposed or alternative very quickly under the proposal rather than presidential election years which of course even numbered years the proposed alternative would have the mayor elected in odd numbered years this is address addresses a concern about gaps that would be created because council members would still be elected in odd-numbered years the proposed alternative would give the mayor no new powers in years when the mayoral position is not up for election the current system in which the top four vote getters get four year terms and the fifth place finishing against a two-year term would remain unchanged when the mayoral position is up uh the the top three vocators in the council election would get four-year terms and the fourth place finisher would get a two-year term if a council member who is in the middle of a four-year term which election is better than the fifth place finishing the council would also get a two-year term

[78:05] so the proposal is that this be done by rank choice or instant runoff voting state law actually says it this shall be called instant runoff voting so we probably should use this state law authorizes uh communities to use instant runoff voters voting and very simply voters rank the candidates in the order of their preference if no candidate receives 50 of the first choice votes the candidate with the fewest first choice votes is eliminated and the ballots cast with that candidate as the first choice are redistributed among the remaining candidates based on those voters second choices the process continues until a candidate gets 50 of the vote and has declared the winner the colorado secretary of state pursuant to state law has issued a rule governing how municipalities may conduct rank choice elections or instant runoff voting and the city could use that as the guidance to to do this um there are other provisions in the proposed alternative uh term limits for

[79:00] the mayor no person could run for mayor if he or she had previously served eight years as mayor or three terms on council in four years as mayor vacancies in the office of the mayor would be filled in the same way as council vacancies except in the event of a mayoral vacancy that mayor pro-tem would serve as mayor until a successor is elected the mayor would receive the same compensation as the rest of council members uh i wanted to point out that we posted on hotline late this afternoon at bob yates request a another version of the alternative giving the mayor a two-year term which makes the every uh odd year election the same so we wouldn't have the two different kinds of elections uh we've also added to that the phrase instant runoff voting as a parenthetical in the ballot title um to make it clear that that's what it is i would i would recommend that we just use the term instant runoff voting because that's the term that's used by state law rather than rank choice voting but we you i mean we've done it so that it's clear that uh rank choice voting is the same as

[80:00] instant runoff voting but and state law makes it pretty clear what it's called any questions questions for tom let me look at my hands you know i don't see any questions okay okay no we're ready to move on then to public participation i'm pulling the list up i had this all organized now it's broke okay so ryan would you like to give a brief um explanation of how people can use this format absolutely thank you my name is ryan hanson i'm an engagement specialist with the city of boulder i'm really grateful for all of you for being

[81:00] here this evening we wanted to give a quick refresher of some of the rules that we have in place for online council meetings let me share these slides real quick here and we're we're thankful you know for the city attorney's office to work with these work with us on these rules that really strike a balance between meaningful and transparent engagement and online security and so to be clear any activities that disrupt delay or otherwise interfere with the meeting are prohibited the time for speaking during our public hearing may be limited and will have a timer for those wishing to speak we have folks participating with their their real names and have registered to participate ahead of time also those speaking at the public

[82:00] hearing uh will be audio only uh will not be video and then we'll go ahead and have council ensure to enforce these rules the q a function is enabled and so if there are any process or technical questions please don't hesitate to use the q and a function and we'll go ahead and have only the folks who are sharing presentations uh share their screens so again please don't hesitate to reach out with a q a function uh with any technical or process questions and i'll turn it back to you thank you thank you okay um we have more than 15 speakers signed up tonight so everyone will get two minutes to speak to this the first three speakers are ali from zaglia jan burton and matt benjamin ally hi can you hear me

[83:01] yes great um ali franzalia 504 marine street um after the 2019 council election i was inspired by many of you and other community members to consider issues of equity and representation more deeply particularly as they pertain to our elections and governments is our local leadership as representative as it could be are there barriers to serving or even participating is every voice being heard and reflected and how can we make more space for those who are underrepresented i think we all agree that we can do better and doing better doesn't just happen on its own it requires looking at current systems critically and taking action accordingly one thing we know for sure if nothing ever changes then nothing ever changes i began having conversations about this in january and those conversations led me to matt benjamin who back in 2019 had already begun laying the groundwork for boulder to directly elect its mayor via ranked choice voting i believe this is an

[84:00] important step toward a more equitable and representative local government so i emailed men in early february introduced myself and asked if i could help now here we are on august 11th and a lot has happened since then petitioning all summer during a pandemic and speaking with so many citizens who support this measure has only strengthened my resolve that it's the right move for boulder right now i understand that some feel this is rushed to be clear this agenda item represents a community-wide effort that began 10 months ago and wouldn't go into effect for three more years it seems like time is on our side to act now and if the year 2020 has taught us anything it's that we should never wait to make improvements to our processes and our systems we should never wait to hear the voices of our community community members and we should never wait on issues of equity and representation please don't make boulder wait any longer put this on the ballot so the voters can decide for themselves thank you for all you do and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight

[85:01] thank you ali and next video oh mary has a question you're on mute sorry um i have a question for ali hi ali um how does this um single um vote or single person election um accomplish a more equitable representation um i mean for me i think that i see it as one step of a few that we could make that together um would make a world of difference in that area and i think you know um having every person's vote and you know everyone who's voting uh make a decision on mayor versus a majority of five on council it seems more representative um

[86:01] and uh and then you know i think it's a great way for us to get started on ranked choice voting um that later could be applied to other things if we if it's working for us and we like it okay thank you thanks thank you ali so jan burton matt benjamin and celeste landry jan good evening mayor and council and thanks to those council members who have invested time and energy to help us refine the ballot measure we'd also like to thank luis toro for working a tight timeline to revise the language this is an example of democracy at work with negotiation and give and take with petitioners we now feel we have a better ballot measure already popular with 6 000 signers today only five people select our mayor the highest elected position in boulder

[87:02] with our mayor our choice the people will select the mayor and with ranked choice voting a majority will be required this could mean fifteen to twenty thousand votes to get elected so five votes or fifteen thousand which is a better democracy we have all lamented the fact that few young people or minorities are involved in boulder's elections or government by directly electing the mayor we can get more people interested in the issues of the day and with ranked choice voting we will better hear their voices let me remind you that electronic petitioning passed in 2018 was not solving a problem it was proactively making citizen-led democracy better and bolder yet most of you supported that measure some people have said we're rushing this but actually a small team has been working on this for almost a year now we will have three years to execute a new voting system and by that time more boulder county communities may be using the same system

[88:01] in summary we have gathered close to 6 000 signatures from people who think it's a no-brainer to elect our mayor we will introduce the instant runoff form of ranked choice voting an alternate voting system already used around the country and recommended by good governance advocates like the league of women voters your voters want to vote on this measure please support strong democracy by placing it on the ballot tonight thank you so much have a question yes mary um jan thank you for that testimony um did you mention the legal women voters and um we got a very um informed email from the league this afternoon and i'm wondering um did you reach out to the league in order to advise on this ballot measure i had i have it was in fact they included me on the panel discussion they had several weeks ago i have not yet been able to spend time

[89:00] with celeste but i have with mark and dory i wish that i knew that they were involved in this kind of thing with different kinds of voting systems because we clearly would have uh involved them more from the very beginning of our planning so we are committed to working with them in the future and on on this and as well as if mary if you're interested in doing a form of ranked choice voting for council in the future they could be very very helpful with that thank you sure thank you so next we have matt benjamin celeste landry and mark parsons matt hi i'm matt benjamin 2395 vassar drive thank you members of council for considering to refer the petition to elect our mayor using the instant runoff version of ranked choice voting to the ballot this november the charter amendment petition that you are considering tonight has met an incredibly high bar of support during the most extraordinary

[90:01] times in unfortunate circumstances we have taken the original petition that has been studied and researched for over a year and signed by nearly 6 000 people in boulder and modified the language based on the feedback and recommendations from many of you on council the end result is a solid piece of legislation how many times has council's charter committee referred a measure to the ballot that was also endorsed by nearly 6 000 voters equally when was the last time a voter approved charter amendment petition has incorporated the recommendations of council i can think i can't think of any other charter amendment petition that's met this unprecedented level of input and scrutiny by both members of the community and council therefore there is no good reason to deny the voters a chance to vote on this measure in november i want to also clear up some some confusion out there about whether or not ranked choice voting requires a majority of votes to win the answer is yes our cv requires 50 a majority the threshold to win is and will always be 50 when the first second third and so on

[91:01] rounds are counted the winner was fifty percent of the votes wins ranked choice voting provides more voice and more choice to voters in other cities this has proven to increase the percentage of women and people of color running for and winning elections as compared to these cities prior to adopting rcv this is why ranked choice voting is the fastest growing alternative voting system in the u.s it's also worth noting that the term ranked choice voting is a general term for a few election systems most of the communities we research both in and outside of colorado explicitly used the term ranked choice voting and adopting the measure similar to the one before you stripping this term out of the ballot language would create an unnecessary confusion including both terms is the most accessible form of terminology that we would recommend thank you for your time and appreciate it thank you and bob has his hand up yeah just a quick question for matt matt uh thanks for that testimony um last week we um we were working with the the folks who had the eviction um ballot measure and we specifically invited rue orango

[92:01] who's the leader of that uh group to stick around and answer questions if it was the will of counsel would you um be available matt to answer questions in a few minutes i'd be more than happy to appreciate the opportunity however i can help clear it up okay thanks man uh mark wallach yeah i had a question for matt matt how many systems of ranked choice voting are you aware of and what led you to select this one oh it's a it's a good question um well so yeah rank resulting is sort of a general term uh but it's really any any term of voting where you're ranking the candidates in order of preference and really there's there's two main ones to consider and that is instant runoff for single winner contests which is what we're recommending for the direct election of mayor and then there's the single transferable vote which is the multi-winner version that would be only applicable to like a at large council election which we would consider and recommend as sort of another phase if we wanted to go that direction so there's really two underneath that umbrella of ranked choice voting um and so

[93:00] terminology wise it makes sense to say ranked choice voting instant runoff and therefore you're connecting what people understand is ranked choice voting with the specific version that's out there thank you okay any more questions great seeing none next speakers celeste landry mark parsons and mark mcintyre celeste hi this is celeste can you can you hear me okay i believe i'm pooling my time with two other people so i should get four minutes okay who are those mark parsons the next person on your list okay and marcus ogren okay and are they both here in the meeting i'm not in the room with them but uh mark and marcus would you please use the raise your hand feature to identify uh that you are in okay i see two okay good enough so you have four minutes

[94:00] thank you good evening council members my name is celeste landry i live at 745 university avenue and i'm speaking tonight on behalf of the league of women voters of boulder county the league of women voters is a non-partisan political organization striving to make democracy work for all in our ongoing effort to empower voters and defend democracy we are very heartened by the community's interest in improving our electoral systems most recently in this discussion of how boulder chooses its mayor with that in mind the league was happy to sponsor the recent forum that jan mentioned improving boulder city governance through better electoral systems the our mayor proponents working with the c attorney's office recently modified their ballot proposal resulting in significantly improved language our voting methods team is requesting one more modification please change the ballot language to replace every instance of ranked choice voting with instant runoff voting or instant runoff parenthesis rank to close

[95:01] parenthesis voting because ranked choice voting or rcv is actually an umbrella term as we've said in this meeting referring to way more than two methods and neither the colorado secretary of state nor colorado statute uses the confusing rcv term additionally we urge all those involved in campaigning for this measure to accurately describe the instant runoff process the proponents campaign material for instance claims quote rcv ensures that the mayor is elected by a majority of voters unquote this is false for instance in 2018 in san francisco and in maine's instant runoff elections the majority of voters did not vote for the eventual winner instant runoff voting offers more voter expression but still guaranteeing a majority of all the voters is an impossible criterion to meet when there are three or more candidates

[96:00] going forward the boulder county league's voting methods team hopes to serve as a resource in the crafting of any future electoral system initiatives and in educating the electorate on such ballot issues if boulder convenes another study group on elections as recommended by a subset of the campaign finance working group which included matt benjamin please include a member of our voting methods team our team would also like to present on the topic of proportional voting methods at a future city council study session in other cities which use the same at-large multi-winner council elections that boulder uses courts have ordered a different election structure in order to be more inclusive under of underrepresented populations and perspectives in conclusion if the city of boulder decides to have its mayor chosen by the electorate then instant runoff voting is an improvement the league of women voters supports voting methods that are better than the standard vote for one method

[97:00] contrary to what jan burton said neither the legal woman voters of boulder county nor the state nor the national league specifically recommends instant runoff voting we just recommend educating people and choosing the one that's best for your community and much more much more information on ways to improve our city's elections including a link to our recent online form can be found on our web page lwvbc.org and then click on teams at work and then click on voting methods thank you for engaging with the community as we strive to make democracy work for all and i want to make one more comment there are ranked voting methods that are not rcd for instance buckland voting also known as the grand junction system does not is not in the rcb umbrella because it does not have any transfer votes as rcv does thank you for your time thank you celeste we get some questions

[98:01] for you um bob and then aaron celes thank you so much for for um speaking tonight on behalf of yourself and league of voters that was really really informative and helpful um and thank you also for suggesting a clarification in the language that would would indicate instant runoff which sounds like it's the technical or legal term of art but also perhaps with a parenthetical around ranked choice voting which is probably a more commonly used phrase so that voters don't get confused i had a quick question for you celeste i was a little bit confused about something you said that maybe you can clarify around a majority you used san francisco and i think maine as an example a recent example um did you mean in those instances that the person who was in first place initially was not the person who was ultimately elected or when you said it was not the majority winner what what how did that work out matt here's here's an example with some easy numbers um in maine's elections second congressional district there were four

[99:00] candidates so suppose there were a hundred voters one candidate got 40 votes another candidate got 39 votes and then the other two candidates each got five those two candidates with only five were eliminated and if the people put a second choice on their ballot then um it would go to that person and maybe they did maybe they put the other losing candidate on there they didn't like either of the main candidates the the two major candidates they they preferred the sort of third party candidates um then it could have been the final vote tally would have been 45 and 44 uh votes so one person gets 45 percent of the votes cast in the election yes that person gets more than the other but it's not a majority of the people

[100:01] who cast ballots in that election because some people didn't want to put a third choice that they didn't like on their ballot okay second choice they didn't like it i get it so it's really it really would only come into you could really only not have a majority winner if people didn't follow through and pick a second or third or fourth choice if they just picked a first choice and stopped there or first and second stop there if they didn't if they didn't they effectively relinquish their votes by not not um not going all the way down the stack is that right right if they if they don't like a candidate we should not force them to vote for got it and then that would just be kind of a the plurality system that we we have right now yes okay great thanks thanks for that explanation celeste that was very helpful great two more questions um aaron and mary aaron bob asked my question but celeste i'll just also thank you for coming and thanks to you and the league for

[101:00] participating this discussion and i hope we can take you up on your offer uh to discuss voting methods uh next year i'd love to do that so thank you and then mary yeah i want to echo erin's comment about taking you up on your offer you mentioned that the way you determine a ranked choice voting system is by figuring out which what works best for your community and i'm curious as to what that determination looks like uh if you go to the league's website and our voting methods page we actually have examples five case studies i believe of different uh sorts of examples so for instance um one example is electing members of

[102:02] congress there is a bill h.r 4000 the fair representation act which uses a single transferable vote that's the good proportional ranked voting method that matt benjamin mentioned uh and so that might be a good way to elect a member of congress because you're used to only voting for one and in uh ranked voting you only get one vote you get to rank as many candidates as you want but your vote only goes to one candidate at a time that's a difference from right now our city council you get to vote for five people at a time with rank with any kind of ranked voting with transfers you only get one vote so you have to think about what do people have right now what are they willing to change to um you know maybe approval voting where you can vote for um lots of people everybody you approve of

[103:02] would be a good way to elect say a single winner person like a mayor because it's very easy to implement and it solves the spoiler effect it promotes positive campaigning so there basically think about all the issues you have and then think about what would be good in that situation and i direct you to that paper on the website thank you celeste and jenny sam should i ask my question now or should i wait until later because the question is for tom but on celeste's comments go ahead and ask it now okay tom i just have a question because i had a hard time figuring out the math that celeste was helping bob with and by the way thank you very much for

[104:01] for making all your comments celeste i i'm just not very sure what's the difference between instant runoff and rent choice because i know earlier you mentioned tom you mentioned that they're practically the same but from what i'm hearing from celeste they are different and i would like to know is the difference just the process or is it substantial is it will it really impact it so just to be clear you don't have a choice on the system you choose the state legislature provided a specific system for you to use and that's instant runoff voting i i think the dispute is in what you call it and the worry about some confusion that people will think it's something other than what the state has authorized so uh does that answer your question juni it does in a way because so you essentially saying that we're just having a discussion but at the end it will have to be instant voting as

[105:00] opposed to rent choice um i think that the petitioners and believe women voters both want the same system by the state big quality runoff i think there's a debate on whether or not that's a form of ranked choice voting and which term act more accurately describes it and so it's it's your choice in how you draft the ballot title and what you want to include but what you're able to do in my view is limited by state law thank you okay good well thank you again celeste these were great points if you don't want to stay on for further questions i'll ask one right now um i'm happy to stay on if you i'll plan to stay on whether or not you ask a question right now okay why don't you stay on them because i may want to ask you and matt similar questions later so thank you next we have

[106:00] mark mcintyre mark gelband and lynn siegel mark hi good evening mark mcintyre north boulder we all like to talk about participation in our democracy and for the most part we support greater involvement by more people or at least we say we do i'm going to use my limited time to tell you about my experience and your constituents respond both engage them outside of trader joe's in the july sun wearing a mask during a pandemic while they are watching their ice cream melt you learn a lot about your neighbors in these conditions i gathered hundreds of signatures there and the response of people fell into two camps first were those that were familiar with it with the fact that as few as five city council members elect our manner and somewhere in the 90 range they would say i never liked this method

[107:02] i always thought we should change this change this the other group didn't want didn't know about our current method but couldn't see why we would want to use the current method i was also surprised and pleased with the relatively high percentage of people that knew of and understood choice voting or as tom just pointed out is the correct technical term for the state those that knew of it supported it and those that didn't know of it supported it after a brief explanation the main thing i learned from the experience of gathering these hundreds of signatures is that boulderites are smart they're informed and they're ready for a change they are ready for a choice and especially ready for their voice to be heard now not at a later date not after more study they're ready for this now and i'm happy to also address any other

[108:01] questions about instantaneous runoff and our experience with that thank you thank you mark next we have mark gelband lynn siegel and chelsea castillano this is uh unequivocally as can you hear me this is unequivocally a step in the right direction it is long past time to change our at-large off-year election cycle since we don't really have the appetite to go to on-year elections and get to award system quickly enough this is one small way to expand the participation in our elections one of the things that concerns me as we discuss this tonight though is that the organizers of our mayor our choice are making a big deal about getting six thousand or nearly six boulder boulderites

[109:01] to do this in a pandemic and as we know there's another uh ballot initiative or charter initiative that was put on tried to put on the ballot by the people with over 7 500 people saying that they wanted to see it on the ballot one of the things in that discussion was that each of you said that it was important to consider the content of those measures before you put those on insinuating that it didn't matter what the electorate believed but that what the nine representatives voted on council believe so i for one as a longtime constituent of boulder a taxpayer somebody who votes i'd like to know what each of you think about the content of this as you make your vote since you were so up front and sharing that when you denied our bold or our bedrooms um

[110:01] the bedrooms are for people initiative thank you i appreciate it thank you mark next lynn siegel chelsea castillano and lucy carlson krakow hi i'm trying not when we can't hear you can you yes okay um first of all um first of all i don't think any thing should be put on the ballot i think it's you know obviously it's a politicization of the situation if you do put anything on the ballot i bring forth to you the south boulder fled plane which should definitely be put on the ballot because of the many weeks that were lost on that

[111:01] but i say at this point you should put nothing on the ballot or you should put everything on the ballot and my com my best recommendation is put nothing on the ballot um i personally don't believe in a mayor at all i don't think we should have a mayor i don't think we need one i think now with zoom you can you can have zoom operate as the mayor because the person who's spoken most often or has spoken in in the wrong order can be equated from the zoom technology you you can know how many times that person's both how many minutes they've spoken and um i'm sure that zoom is going to get a whole lot of improvements as the virus continues um i don't believe in a vertical integration like corporate vertical integration i i don't think there should be vertical integration

[112:01] in our um in our city council and if so then i would recommend that people rotate between having the position of mayor um it's interesting because it seems like now there's more interest in getting things put on the ballot or not than there is in the actual substance of the ballot measure itself it's kind of an interesting situation um and i like it thank you lynn next chelsea castiano then lucy carlson krakoff and eric butt chelsea hi i'm an organizer with bedrooms r for people but i'm here tonight to share my support for our mayor our choice our campaign teams worked collaboratively to collect the thousands of physical

[113:00] signatures needed to earn a spa on the ballot our volunteers carried and collected signatures for the rmir our choice petition and they did the same for ours this type of collaboration amongst different campaigns is unprecedented while this was born out of the difficulty to collect signatures during a time when people were being told to stay at home and stay six feet away the partnerships between the different groups ultimately made each campaign stronger so i guess i should thank you for refusing to give your constituents a safer option to participate in direct democracy over the course of months collecting hundreds of signatures for rma or our choice i have learned a lot about how our community views this issue one most people don't know how her mayor currently earns their seat as our representative two most boulder rights have no clue who our current mayor even is and three when it was explained that city council decides amongst themselves who should be mayor boulderice were appalled looked at me with shock and then quickly grabbed the freshly

[114:00] sanitized pen to sign the armed mayor our choice petition it is clear that the boulder community wants to elect its mayor and the r mayor our choice team has worked hard and risked their health to make that happen i am glad that you are considering upholding direct democracy for at least one charter initiative campaign i urge you to refer the measure as the authors had written it ultimately the our mayor our choice initiative is a good governance issue and by tampering with it you are demonstrating just how badly we need the type of accountability from our elected representatives that this measure aims to provide thank you thank you chelsea next lucy carlson krakoff eric budd and lila hickey lucy my name is lucy and i'm an organizer for bedrooms are for people i live in downtown boulder minutes ago mary asked how electing the mayor through public rank choice voting

[115:01] would make boulder more equitable here is an answer ranked choice voting is proven to increase the percentage of women and people of color running and then subsequently winning elections so i had the opportunity to collect signatures for our mayor our choice while organizing for bedrooms are for people both initiatives received more than 6 000 signatures from boulder voters and taxpayers it would make sense for the city council to refer both measures to the ballot it will not you will be silencing the voices of more than 6 000 voters thank you thank you lucy then eric budd lila hickey and ryan sullivan eric hello my name is eric budd i'm an organizer on the bedrooms are for people campaign i personally collected hundreds of signatures for the rmr choice measure and i support the change it's critical that we that we

[116:00] have our elected officials and particularly our mayor that share our values in the community that we have more say in who's running our government that we can directly hold our elected officials accountable directly electing our mayor would improve our current council system i want to share a quote from one of my heroes civil rights leader john lewis one of many people who fought for their right to vote the right to vote is precious and almost sacred and one of the most important blessings of our democracy we must be vigilant in protecting that blessing if the right to vote were not so important then those opposed to letting people vote would not work so hard to prevent it i support direct election of the mayor and electing people to boulder city council who will uphold our right to vote on thursday we will see you in court thank you thank you eric next laila hickey ryan selden and sarah don haynes laila

[117:03] hello council and staff as always thank you for listening to the voices of your constituents i am an organizer with bedrooms are for people here to voice support for putting our mare our choices initiative on the ballot i could tell you about my support for this initiative but frankly i don't think my support is what matters what matters is the opinion of almost 6 000 boulder voters who signed their support for this initiative having actually collected signatures during a pandemic i can speak to quite how challenging a task this is and i can think of few metrics more indicative of voter support than the collection of these signatures finally if you do want to consider the contents of an initiative rather than its ability to meet council's requirements both direct election and ranked choice voting are tangible tactical changes we can make to increase

[118:00] voter enfranchisement and engagement at the local level we should all be in favor of these things thank you for your time thank you lila next up ryan selden sarah don haynes and linda templin ryan and this is ryan hanson it doesn't look like uh ryan uh is joining us this evening okay you are able to to raise your hand if you're participating by by phone uh that's star9 let us know that you are here thank you ryan and we have sarah don haynes linda templin and emma donahue ceredone good evening council i am sarah haynes in south boulder and i also have been collecting signatures with bedrooms are for people and for our mayor our choice

[119:00] and talk to many hundreds of our city voters and they echoing what chelsea had said around the reactions people who have heard about ring choice voting were stoked and excited to have this become a part of um boulder's democracy the um writer courtney lamendola recently wrote over the last few years more women have been running for office and winning than ever before but women hold less than a quarter of all elected positions in the country and large representation gaps remain across ideology identity agent geography the problem is systemic much like our housing is related to systemic exclusion and as important as it is to recruit and prepare more women to run these efforts will yield disproportionate outcomes if we continue to rely on antiquated systems to determine the outcome of the

[120:01] election and so i support having them on the ballot with the many thousands of people who echo that support thank you thank you sheridan next linda templin emma donahue and nick grossman linda hi mayor and council thank you very much for your time this evening and thank you for your excellent explanation of the voting method i'm the executive director of rcv for colorado rcv is an upgrade to modern democracy because it eliminates boat splitting it is endorsed by leading political scientists as the best method to use to free voters to securely express their preferences it has been used in the u.s for over a hundred years with marked increased over the past 20 years sometimes called instant runoff voting

[121:00] rcv finds the community consensus without costly time-consuming separate runoff elections irv is the language used in the state law and rcv is the language used in federal matching funds legislation put forth by senator bennett so that is why i would suggest keeping the rcv language in [Music] now rank choice was created back in the 1830s to be more fair than the plurality races that we still use now the unintended consequences have been positive successful candidates have to plan on needing second and even third choice votes to build a win to get those votes they have to campaign on the issues this puts the voters in a more powerful position because they have a better understanding of their choices and of the issues in

[122:00] basalt where they just implemented rcv for the first time in april 88 percent of the voters said they were satisfied or very satisfied 95 percent said that the ballots were easy to use the software updates installed in boulder county include an rcv module now is a great time for boulder to embrace this common sense reform thank you linda next up emma donohue nick grossman and neil mcburnett emma uh thank you so much for having me here this evening and thank you for the city council for uh discussing this very important issue my name is emma daniel and i am the boulder area organizer for rape choice voting for colorado i also serve on the ranked choice voting policy committee ranked choice voting has been used in small colorado municipalities for around 10 years there have been lessons learned

[123:01] and updated materials created by the office of the secretary of state ballots have been designed for use of the equipment that boulder now has with the software we have now the office of the secretary of state the county parks association and denver elections have been working have been working on a long runway to suit to success with an eye from implementation in denver in 2023 boulder elections will be well supported by professionals around the state that my national level experts and local implementation senator bennett has sponsored the u.s voice choice act of 2020 to provide matching funds to jurisdictions implementing our cv rcp has been well vetted by political scientists around the country we see that turnout tends to increase and that fewer ballots are spoiled we see that that diversity of candidates increases and acrimony and campaign decreases this modern voting method is gaining popularity because it centers on the need of the voter so i would hope that boulder city

[124:00] council will refer this measure to the ballot and allow the uh people boulder to decide if this is what they want to use and honor the 6 000 people who signed the petition thank you thank you emma um junie i see your hand up do you have a question yes i did i do have a question for either emma or but she's working with rcb4 colorado so i believe she can answer the question and i think i wanted to know how many cities if she knows how many cities in colorado or counties that are using ranked choice voting uh so currently um under current law municipalities and special districts music counties um aren't authorized at this point um so the places we've seen it so far are the salt uh telluride and aspen have used it okay thank you sam yep you bet okay last two are nick grossman and neil

[125:01] mcburnett nick hello council thank you for demonstrating your respect for boulder voters by placing our mayor our choice on the 2020 ballot with voters trust in boulder's elected officials and democratic process at an all-time low it's important that you uphold the wishes of nearly 6 000 people to vote on this measure in november the thousands of older voters who risk their health to sign this petition were not asking city council to tinker with the ballot language they were demanding a more representative form of local government by establishing a system of ranked choice voting here in boulder voters will be able to reward council candidates with more moderate centrist views that better represent a broader portion of the electorate after speaking with hundreds of boulder

[126:01] voters about this issue this summer i've learned that most people do not know the name of our mayor and don't realize that they have no direct say in who is chosen to represent our city to the world many boulder voters are clearly disconnected from the mayoral selection process and are therefore less invested in that decision than they should be although boulder has a strong city manager weak mayor form of government our mayor does set the economic social and political agenda for our community what the mayor decides to leave off of that agenda is equally important especially when that includes urgent issues such as affordable private housing police reform or ending boulder's discriminatory home occupancy limits thank you thank you nick do we have a question nope

[127:00] last speaker is neil mike burnett uh one moment it looks like neil has an older version of zoom so in one moment we'll need to adjust this okay neil are you there can you hear us uh unmute testing testing testing testing we can hear you thank you great thank you i'm neil mcburnett a long time student of election methods since the 1980s a past board member of the center for election science and a risk limiting audit expert i sent you an email with some more details in summary please do not put the my our mayor proposal on the ballot this year it heads in the wrong direction with a flawed method but we do need reform of electoral methods in boulder instead please

[128:00] properly charter a task force to study the very complex issues involved i hope and expect that the result will include proportional representation as used in boulder from 1917 to 1947 and still used in cambridge massachusetts it's the best way to fix the flaws of our current method for electing council which has been struck down many times in court for not giving voices to minority groups there are new voting methods that make it that work even better the legal woman voters voting methods team would be eager to help with all of that i'd also like to follow up on the question of getting a majority winner as celeste noted it's impossible to guarantee a majority winner with three or more candidates but it's worse sometimes in instant runoff voting the wrong candidates get to the final runoff burlington vermont a city similar in many ways to boulder adopted in toronto voting but rejected it right after a huge mess in their night in their 2009

[129:01] election not only did the winner not get a majority but looking at all the rankings on all the ballots voters preferred the candidate in third place to the declared winner third place according to irv again a flawed method which sometimes causes you to hurt a candidate by ranking them higher finally i'd like to say that direct election of the mayor is not a good idea it would introduce gridlock and tensions in council that i think council can best handle by itself thank you very much thank you okay okay that's the end of the public speaker list i think it's back to council did we have any other questions i want to ask celeste the question any other just raise your hand if you have additional questions celeste my question to you can you hear me i expect you can um my question to you is you wrote an email

[130:00] to us that talked about how ranked choice voting is a much more impactful system for voter empowerment when used in a multi-candidate multi-seat race and this seems to be going with the single candidate but with a version of ranked choice voting so in your opinion would you prefer to see more time put in get it right and apply it across the whole council or would you like to see it done stepwise with this first and another one later unless they can see you but you're on mute so we're trying to unmute you okay it says i'm unmuted can you hear me yes okay so the question uh so

[131:00] i'm going to speak as a league member the question uh right now is should we directly elect our mayor and we have not stated a position on that so in terms of if we elect our councilmembers a new way yes we would like to use a method that would improve representation for groups that are currently underrepresented um did i answer your whole question there was this time when we were dealing with the muting and i got it yeah the only the only other part would be um it seemed like the rent choice with a single candidate single victor setup didn't improve things very much especially when compared to a multi-seat multi-candidate so you said the question at hand is should we directly elect our mayor that's one

[132:00] question at hand and the other question is how okay i think i i got it um so yes we we as the boulder county league voting methods team we are strong proponents of proportional representation so multi-winner voting methods and uh so yes we would prefer to see that over uh having districts for instance if you have districts you can have all single winner elections and then there's no proportional representation so we would strongly prefer a proportional representation multi-winner method over districts a mayor is a single winner office so and instant runoff voting is much better than plurality for two reasons one voters get to express their opinions more you may not see the second and third choice but they're there if the first choice gets eliminated and secondly

[133:02] you won't have the spoiler effect okay thank you we have one more question juni thank you sam my question is actually for matt benjamin okay great thank you celeste go ahead with your question juni thank you i have two questions actually for matt and my first question because he raised a concern and i wanted to know what is exactly the concern when it comes to the name when it comes to either rcv or the instant runoff is it because well it impact the success of the initiative in november so i'm just wondering why is why is he opposed to it or is he even opposed to it matt oh i was gonna um i'll i can answer the first one and then uh judy certainly answer your second um thanks for the

[134:01] question um so with regarding to you know the concern about the the naming i think it really comes down to two pieces and i think it was kind of somewhat already addressed the instant runoff voting is the actual technical term supported by state law the problem is is that's not the public vernacular and the terminology used for this voting system so ranked choice voting is on the other hand and so that's kind of the the conundrum here is do you provide a technical term which a vast majority electorate doesn't know in which case then there's confusion or do you provide a term that they do know which may be a little overly broad and generic so i think that's an interesting balance to strike i think as we've put in here we have them as both terms ranked choice voting instant runoff you can swap them but i think if you removed ranked choice voting from the terminology you would so massive confusion to people who actually want to support this but are now hearing a term they've never heard before in describing it and i think that would do a disservice to the overall objective of

[135:00] this proposal okay so what i'm hearing from you is that you open to keeping both both terms as the initiative move forward right we're not just open to it we've written that into the ballot language and the charter language as is so so we're we're committed to that thank you thank you juni um mary thank you um i have a question for matt and one for celeste um matt in um in celeste's response to my question as to how a community decides what the best method is for their community she mentioned that you start with identifying the problems and going from there could you speak to um your process of identifying the problems and going from there

[136:01] hey mary thank you so much for that question and that's a good one because i think it also speaks to the amount of time that our team has spent researching this and going through the process we've done we've done a number of community events that really focus on getting testing out some voting methods but also hearing what people think and and what's really vital here is there's not just the tactical and mathematical nature of some of these voting methods which are somewhat similar and complementary but really the the key things here that are that are issues is the spoiler effect but let's remember this is phase one of of trying to get to the ultimate phase of having proportional representation on council and what we found in our research and looking in the boulder community is it was a bridge too far to just go straight to that and so we saw by using the instant runoff by electing the mayor as a way to narrow that gap and help people understand a new voting system before we make that eventual evolution and so to that is the spoiler effect we have the spoiler effect in our

[137:00] at-large races and you almost certainly have a spoiler effect in a mayoral election so maintaining consistency there in a voting system is is vital the other part is eliminating not just the spoiler effect but the slates i think we we've all been a part of the slates we understand them and we see that they're they're maybe creating a bifurcation in our community um that i think is undermining some of the moderation that i think we'd like to see in some of the issues and some of us are feeling that that's the case and uh ranked choice voting and others look to do that and the reason why we chose ranked choice voting over others and i'll give credit to celeste here she's done a lot of great education on a lot of these voting methods and some of them are actually quite quite good um and they're all pretty much on even keel with ranked choice voting or instant runoff or single transferable vote but the big big difference here is that ranked choice voting in instant runoff form is the one that is more massively used across the country it's the one where we have data we have experience we can look to other communities to how they've used it almost all of these other voting methods

[138:01] either have virtually no usage in the u.s or have like one and so in terms of that it comes down to well what do you want to use a proven method or an unproven method it's not to say those others won't work but it matter of where do you want to put the risk you already want to put your weight in capital and and we chose to put one that's proven that people understand and you also have to go to voters and say what do you know do they know of this vote this method they've never heard of that's hard to sell it's hard to get people to vote for that or one that they've heard of they've seen articles they see state and city after city moving to that from a place of getting voter support seems like a better choice so it was the marketability the usability but also the merits of the voting system that led us to choose ranked choice voting instant runoff as the preferred method tim can i call it just a process question before we move on so i'm um i have not experienced that we've had somebody who wasn't like staff or sort of a party to something that we were doing answering questions um the

[139:01] way that i appreciate that the league of women voter celeste is here but on most issues i would say we have sort of volunteer experts from the community who would be willing to answer questions so it's confusing to me why somebody's in this conversation when we didn't talk about it well council members usually have the prerogative to ask questions of people who testify and so i think we're just following that we we let other people testify first um do you would you like us not to ask the questions of the well no it's just like we usually say like would you stick around and answer questions sort of at parties and then ask people questions kind of um as they go so it's just confusing and a little bit concerning in terms of precedent for me in terms of somebody um hanging out and and answering ongoing questions so i just wanted to touch base on whether that's i haven't seen it before

[140:02] oh um well in my experience it happens from time to time um it's not usually been something we've tried to stop um bob did ask matt if matt would be the spokesperson for our mayor our choice and i think we're just using some less deep knowledge here to to try and figure things out so and mary did you have another question you wanted to ask what um yeah i have actually i have a follow-up question for matt and um so matt you mentioned that during the process of determining what your um initiative language would be you did outreach and you held meetings and um and then when the language came out i know that immediately you received feedback that said that um the the the initiative as written would create conflicts within the charter

[141:01] amendment because of some years there would be eight members um in council and if the charter requires nine etc etc so you got feedback right after the language came out and and why um did you not change the language then and wait until now uh thanks mary that that's also a good question um and actually it helps us clarify i think something that was in tom's presentation i think he mentioned that our original petition had presidential years as the election cycle um and i believe it's actually was even near non-presidential so just as a clarifying point um that was that was what was in our original petition language um so we we looked at this and we looked at pros and cons at the end of the day our judgment call was for a a focus and a lean towards increased voter engagement increased voter turnout

[142:00] greater equity and greater diversity in our representation that comes from engaging 20 000 more people than otherwise currently participate in our election systems that is why we focused on even your non-presidential in some of our local ballot initiatives that have been held those years you get as many as 54 000 people participating that is in comparison to the high water mark of 2019's council election of 34 000 people and yes there might be an occasional vacancy created by a council member running for mayor getting elected and leaving a one-year vacancy where council is down a person we looked at that and we said you know what that's actually a we can live with that if in exchange we're engaging engaging 20 000 more people who otherwise don't participate whose voice we want to have in telling us what they care about in our community so we weighed that and we led that that was more important than having an occasional hiccup as to a vacancy on

[143:00] council so we heard that feedback but at the end of the day that was a value decision we made um that we cared about the input of more people in our community um than perhaps the status quo so why have we then changed now really because we had to prioritize in looking at our petition of what were the most important facets of it it was directly electing the mayor using ranked choice voting instant runoff as number two and the even year non-presidential is number three that was the third priority and so we quickly realized that if our route to get on the ballot through direct democracy was no longer viable that in a being pragmatic and looking to you know look at collaboration rather than litigation to work with council to allow the voters to decide this we looked at ditching that third piece which was the even year non-presidential because we felt at the core most of the people signing this petition were in support of electing the mayor and using ranked choice voting and so we wanted to honor and stay true to the will of those voters and also look for an opportunity

[144:01] for council and other people to provide input and that seemed to be the biggest sticking point was the even year non-presidential so that's where in our collaborative process we felt it was right to move on from that and maintain these two key functions of electing our mayor using ranked choice voting instant runoff thank you matt and then um i had another question for um for celeste and um so jan in in her testimony mentioned that they had consulted with the league during the process and i was curious to know that in their consultation with the league um as to how they should conduct this initiative what was your advice to them we reached out to them after the petition was already getting signatures collected to invite them to

[145:00] be on a forum which you can see on our website um and that was the first time that we had official discussions with them um and we most of those discussions were just logistical when can you make a forum this is how long you'll talk but since then we have uh been talking with them more partly i reached out to bob yates asking if the league could be involved in the revisions that the city attorney's office was going to work on and bob replied that i should we should reach out to the our mayor folks so we did we were not involved in any of the revisions with the city attorney's office but we are looking forward to being involved going forward thank you and tom carr if it's okay if i could turn to you for a brief point of order

[146:02] um rachel asked a good question um from time to time we've done this kind of thing do we have rules that say we can or can't do that no there's nothing in the rules either say you can or can't okay you could you could amend the rules to allow it but yeah i don't know that you need to do that i didn't hear rachel objecting i thought it was a point of inquiry more than objection okay that's fine i just wanted to make sure that we ran that to groundhog it was still warm um bob you're up next thanks um yeah just following up on that that final point i mean i see this dialogue with with um with matt uh very very similar to the dialogue we had just last week with rui orango which aaron graciously arranged and he was the leader of that petition which we're working on collaboratively so i thought that was a great dialogue between council members and rui and it was um invaluable to have rui there answering our questions and working with him and matt i really appreciate you being

[147:00] available tonight to do the same thing um and i also want to thank you matt for collaboration and not litigation uh collaboration is always better than litigation um i just had a quick question for you matt um you mentioned in response to mary's first question that this could be the first step in a two-step process of ultimately having rank choice voting for all of council i think that this ranked choice voting this phase one i guess i'll call it a rank choice voting for one council member in this case the mayor would go into effect in 2023 question do you anticipate that then expanding ranked choice voting to all of council would happen before that first 2023 election or is it your group's preference to have a couple trial runs um and piloting and educating the community with the direct election mayor first and then bring it in after 2023 i know some cities have done it one way and some cities have done it the other do you have a preference thanks to that question bob you know i have to say this kind of goes back to mark mcintyre's um points that he made

[148:02] in his public comment we learned a lot you know you can hold some small scale public you know stuff and get inputs from small groups but when you interact with you know 10 000 people over the course of 90 days you learn a lot more than you can from small focus groups and one thing we learned is that there's more people in this town that are not only familiar with but actually favor ranked choice voting than our smaller focus groups led on to believe and so original thinking was well we need to let the community get one or two of these elections with ranked choice voting is to run off under their belt before they feel comfortable migrating to the multi-winner version i'm not sure that's the case anymore based on what we found out in the community and now and so i would say you know what if there's an appetite and if council wants to move forward and there's some more community discussion that builds on what we've started with our petition i think it could happen earlier um there's no reason why it couldn't in for a matter of speaking but but certainly our plan was oh maybe 20 25 2027. i think it can

[149:03] happen a lot faster given the amount of community support we had and certainly if councils behind it i think the two of those things will will lead to a ton of momentum to make this happen for a councilwide perhaps even sooner than 2023. thanks man okay if we have no more questions for our public participants thank you very much for your testimony and we'll bring this back to council for action bob yeah i'll just kick us off i'm going to support this and i'm going to the version i'm going to support is the alternative version that tom and luis sent out today i'll tell you why first of all just on the on the proposition itself i'm quite excited about ranked choice voting i'm excited to hear that what matt and others had said about the community actually having a better understanding i actually didn't understand ranked choice voting until a few weeks ago myself and so i'm really happy and proud that um so many people in the community already get it i see just looking online that there's

[150:00] already 18 cities in the united states that um have ranked choice voting including as mentioned in the testimony three here in colorado and in fact the colorado secretary of state already developed rules for that which we can then uh incorporate as one state main that uses rank choice voting including five additional states that use rank choice voting for residential primaries and five more cities in addition those 18 are in the process of implementing rank choice voting including new york city so this is something that clearly works has worked for many for for some many cities for many many years um and and so we're not really out on a limb here um i like the fact that this is an opportunity to pilot um rate choice voting um i think in our perfect world we loved how ranks was voting for all council members um but as is mentioned in the testimony that can be a little bit complicated and so i do like the approach that this group has taken and said let's let's pick one council member uh obviously it's you know the mayor is probably the only one logical one this is not about direct election mayor as i see it i think this

[151:01] is about right uh ranked choice voting or instant runoff and i'm i wasn't heartened by what matt just said about the fact that perhaps if we put this on the ballot and the voters approve it we might move to ranked choice voting for all council right away we may not have to wait until after the first mayor elected in 2023 to do this but let's see if the voters understand ranked choice voting if they support it if they do on this falls ballot then let's have a discussion next year about expanding it potentially as early as the whole 2023 slate um so i am supportive of this i think this is a good idea i think this is a good opportunity to ask the voters what they think about it i don't see a whole lot of downside quite frankly i am going to support the alternative that tom and luis sent out this afternoon with a two-year mayor tournament let me tell you why um now five reasons for this number one i think it's important to hold because the mayor holds a symbolic role and well the mayor is one of nine council members and has the same um authority and weight as all council members i think members in

[152:00] the community look at the mayor as um as the symbolic leader of of the community and often is called upon by people outside of our community to represent our town and i think it's very very important therefore to hold that person accountable to the community and council and one way to do that is through regular elections every two years number two sometimes voters make mistakes i'm not going to mention any current elected officials at the federal level but um perhaps mistakes are made made and i think an opportunity to correct mistakes if those happen every two years is not a bad idea we do that with congress right now um and uh and it seems to to work for the house of representatives third um i think this many in um our um our community and outside of our community um look at the mayor in a different way than they look at council members whether that's right or wrong that just happens i think it's it's it's important for us to offset the potential for

[153:00] that position to be elevated we don't want the position to be elevated we want it to be just as it is right now in the great job that sam is doing as as mayor to continue and i think one way to ensure that that position doesn't somehow get elevated above the other council positions is to have that um that position be elected every two years and then all council members would be four years so again it'd be a little like the house of representatives in the in the senate right now which has worked for over 200 years uh fourth um it works elegantly uh i was gonna say you say it works yeah well probably there are problems but that has nothing to do with that thanks sam um it works mechanically very elegantly because um under the original proposition you'd have kind of a mayor cycle and a non-mayor cycle and sometimes you'd be electing four people and sometimes you've been electing five people if you made the mayor term two years and all the council terms four years it's it's entirely symmetrical you would have every every two years you'd have four people elected to counsel for four-year terms and a

[154:00] two-year mayor two years later you have four people elected for council and a two-year mayor is entirely symmetrical it's very elegant and i think it would work and then finally it's what we have right now we have a two-year mayor system we've had some great mayors including our current mayor and it seems to work to to do a check-in whether we're checking with the voters or checking with council every two years to say that person how have you been doing do you would you like to serve another two years um some of our mayors have served two years some are mayors have served four years uh that seems to work out really really well and i think um that's one part of our system which is with a check in at two years with the mayor that i would not want to change and so for all those reasons i'm going to support putting this measure on the ballot in the version that has a two-year mayor term thanks adam thanks sam first i'll say i think it's important to support this simply because they did reach the amount of signatures after they're verified we're not sure

[155:01] whether or not they'll have reached it but they got so many more signatures on top of what they needed to get verified that the likelihood is very high that given our original rules that we gave to them this would have been on the ballot so number one i think that's a very important thing not to forget um number two for many of the reasons bob suggested i would also support this just as something that would go to the ballot i think it really provides the opportunity to [Music] kill two birds with one stone direct like electing the mayor is i think important for that figurehead role um i really don't want to see the mayor become you know a strong mayor or anything like that i don't think that's necessarily the best move for the community but this provides sort of a little bit of community input um to a process that

[156:01] right now is dominated simply by council we haven't ever had a problem electing the mayor you know we've gotten a bunch of good ones um but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be improved and i do think it's even though it's just a figurehead um and someone who runs the meeting it is still looked at differently by the town in general so um that part of it's very important to me but more than that is the ranked choice voting part of this i totally agree i think we need to get to ranked choice eventually for the entire council especially to remove the partisanship that seems to be continually growing i i thought that this is a small step in that direction and i hope that we will have future ballot initiatives that allow us to hopefully get um ranked choice across the board

[157:00] that's why i would support putting this on the ballot this year thank you uh we got junie rachel and mark junie thank you sam and i want to also thank bob for the way he expressed the two years alternative and i do support it as well because i don't want to stand in the way of progress i would have preferred the four years because again i think a lot of the things that bob brought forward were good ideas for instance the accountability part which is necessary um but i've always failed two years for instance you mentioned congress you mentioned the house of representative which is every two years and senate every four year but the thing is with the two years term the mayor will be someone who's constantly thinking of re-election if the person wants to be re-elected and i think that will be disruptive because

[158:00] the person after one year being elected being on council or being the mayor they will run again or start thinking about the process of running instead of managing helping the city manager manage the city but at the end of the day i don't want to again stand in the way of progress and i will support it because i think the people wanted over 6 000 people wanted this initiative and i think that's the right thing to do and i think you know that's the right idea and i i like the idea of what you brought forward about the symmetry and the parallelism i think that's very important with the process that it is smooth so i think that's great and you know i'm excited and i look forward to putting this initiative on the ballot and by the way my computer is about to die if i drop off you you all know why thank you junie rachel mark aaron rachel i hope your computer makes it juni i'll be rooting for you there

[159:00] um so i like the idea of two years but i would like to hear um matt benjamin's uh reaction to that i don't know if we've heard from them and how they might feel about that matt if you're on speak up are you guys here you're on mute matt can you hear me now there we go sorry i i muted i thought we were done with that um thanks for that question uh so you know we we prefer four-year um but we are but we certainly aren't going to you know for the metaphor fall on the sword for it you know at the end of the day it's prioritizing what you know can get us done and it's how do we pragmatically collaborate with council based on what 6 000 people told us they want in this and so uh we prefer four for the reasons that have been stated it takes some of the

[160:00] electioneering out of it also we reward our highest vote getters for council to four years and whose likely winning mayor is going to receive many more votes than that and yet almost we penalize them with two but at the end of the day bob also makes good points about checking in and to some extent you know four years is a long time to be mayor so so we see both sides we prefer four for the reasons we stated but but at the end of the day um we would be okay with either one going forward thanks matt um so i think the reason that i i like the idea of two is um number one and i would suspect sam can speak to this a lot more um than i could but the the mayor position is so um administrative and focused on running meetings and i think that we um if we elected somebody who was you know turned out didn't have a talent at that four years would be a long time and i worry that like

[161:01] somebody who couldn't run an efficient meeting say would would cost staff you know to have to be in council meetings maybe until two in the morning regularly in the community to to function with kind of clunky meetings so uh due to the really administrative uh duties of this position i think that two years makes a lot of sense i also um think that that it it presents more opportunities for people to possibly run for mayor you know we're doing it every two years and um i don't know that the mayor would want to run again um so again i would think sam could maybe speak to that more than me um not after 2020. um and then just the last um suggestion i would have is um if it looks like we're going to have five council members who are going to support this going on to the ballot it might be helpful if the four who weren't

[162:01] going to vote for it to be on the ballot would at least weigh in on the two versus four years to help us figure that piece out thanks thank you mark and aaron mark yeah i'm gonna have a different perspective on this but first i wanted to express my appreciation for to the sponsors uh for agreeing to work with members of the council to try to rectify whatever defects they were in the original proposition i want to specifically thank ali and and matt for spending time with me and explaining their views which they did very very skillfully at the end of the day i however i am i am very troubled by the fact that we are sitting here at uh 7 30 p.m uh on the night that we will presumably elect to put this on the ballot and we're still talking about what to call things uh and what the specific terms and conditions of the

[163:00] charter amendment should look like to me despite the fact that the sponsors have engaged hundreds and thousands of people in their efforts and they've certainly put in a good deal of work this tells me that there hasn't been a broad enough community discussion um of this proposition um i am fairly agnostic about rank choice voting i would certainly like to learn more and i'd like to hear more perspectives on it than we have heard to date um the fact that the league seems to have some issues with respect to how this is phrased and structured gives me some pause as well [Music] so to me it's something that probably ought to be on the ballot um it may well be well received by the voters um but i think that

[164:00] um it ought to be next year and we ought to be able to focus on it and get the kind of analysis and breadth of opinion that we normally like to see on issues of this type um on the theory um suspect it's more than a theory uh that i will be in the minority on this issue i would like to say that if we're going to do this um i think that i agree with juni as to a four-year term for a few reasons one is to provide some stability to the office and and not to have somebody uh worrying after eight months how they're going to run the following year um you know the job is as rachel properly says mostly administrative i don't think everybody in the audience necessarily realizes the non-executive nature of the mayoral office but i think it helps to have some degree of continuity

[165:01] if a mistake is made it will be corrected in due course and we will survive that as we are hopefully going to survive the executive leadership we have on a national level um and i this is one area where i would agree with matt i think if we're going to go this route uh it is um better to have a four-year term in some ways a two-year term is is almost like a punishment um you know you figure out how you're gonna do the job for six months and then start running for office again and i just think we would be better off with a four-year term but having said that i i will assume that i will be in the minority and voting uh against putting it on the ballot this year thank you thank you mark uh aaron and mary great thanks for all the things people have said um yeah and so i would just want to start by uh congratulating the our mayors our choice team for uh getting this initiative put together uh so well and uh for getting out there

[166:00] during the pandemic and getting um all those signatures well over the amount that they were told they would need to get from our previous guidance so nice job um and so i definitely uh support putting it on the ballot and support of that uh impressive grassroots effort and uh you know i am impressed also by what they've said about how generally when they talk to voters people were pretty quickly supportive either either they knew how things work weren't that crazy about it or weren't familiar and thought it was a little silly so um i think it's probably pretty likely to succeed i think giving the whole uh city a voice in who uh the mayor is is i imagine something that'll be attractive to people so i'm definitely in support of putting it on i do appreciate the collaboration with the organizers um i think some of the changes that have been made uh at least in my opinion are a little better than what we've done before i think the even your i'm sorry the odd year elections will be smoother from process

[167:01] perspective so then i'll just uh weigh in on the tier versus four-year question um i would support the four-year version as the organizers presented that and i'm going to focus there on the um the continuity and the uh electioneering aspect of it that i thought judy said that well that uh with the year term you do have to start running again almost not long after you've been elected and uh so i think it's it would be helpful for people to be able to focus on executing the office rather than running for office all the time i'll also say that i would think it would be a little bit more exclusionary as well with the two-year term speaking as someone who just ran for re-election a few months ago while also serving on council while also holding down a day job it's really taxing and the mayor's job is more intense than a regular council member so i think having to do that every two years would be a

[168:01] significant disincentive to folks um who maybe were not retired or you know didn't have too many outside commitments or kids at home and such so there's that and then the one other thing i'll mention is that uh you know one of the roles of the mayor is to represent the city on the regional um stage and go to things like the metro mayor's caucus and the us 36 mayor and commissioner coalition and you know boulder has always had i think an outsized impact at those bodies you know they may think we're a little wacky but they also respect our opinion as a thought leader on a lot of issues so um it's helpful when a mayor can have uh a few more years to build up those relationships and increase our influence on those regional issues which can make a really big a lot of difference that's it thank you aaron mary so i just wanted to start with a clarifying question um this is first reading correct

[169:05] yes it's a first reading publish okay so we're not voting tonight we don't vote until second reading right well our preference would be that you selected and we're the second reading will be on consent on september 1st okay um thank you for that clarification um so i the other thing i want to start out with is by thanking the committee for um their willingness to collaborate instead of litigate i think um that is um [Music] a very um thoughtful thing to do and very um cooperative thing to do and um i always prefer a collaborative method rather than um yeah rather than lawsuits um so i want to start by saying that um i think one of the things that we need to remember about the mayor position

[170:00] is that it is um a lot of work we all know as council members how much work this is and and that being mayor is more hours of work on top of that it is all uncompensated and and to presume that all mayors would want to do that for four years is i think quite presumptuous and i think that after two years i would imagine that a lot of mayors are kind of exhausted and probably don't um need to go run for another um term so i just wanted to just clarify that that it's it's very hard uncompensated work um unless you have a very large ego so um that's one thing and um the other thing um that well i i won't be supporting this and because it concerns me very much that we

[171:00] are piloting um what is an administrative process our voting methods which i am really supportive of alternative voting methods um but to pilot quote-unquote pilot something with something that you have to change the charter for it just doesn't make sense to me um i could see us piloting it with um um you know deciding on our on our city council rules for example something like that but but to do it with something that changes the charter um i it gives me pause but i do support alternative methods in fact i told the committee when we met i met with jan and with um with matt along with rachel and i mentioned that um if they did not decouple this i would not be supporting it so they did not decouple it and i would hope to see

[172:02] some method of alternative voting for the council election because i do agree that finding another way to elect the council members would try to would begin to [Music] dissipate the the slate phenomenon that has begun to emerge and um and i think that would be a real important thing also i spent some time speaking with celeste landry this afternoon and she assured me that um a single um winner vote is definitely not more inclusive so it in and of itself um it does not create a more diverse or or um inclusive outcome so um for those reasons um i won't be supporting this but i have to say that if it was something that was just an alternative method by itself i would be um very enthusiastically

[173:02] supporting it and if it was to elect all council members i would also be very enthusiastically supporting it thank you nearby um so for me i'm pretty agnostic on this and i think that um i appreciate you know the way it's coming the collaboration as well i'm really drawn and had a vote on this i feel pretty strongly with how mary and mark what they've stated um i and i'm also pretty torn on this too versus four years i think the two years from an administrative side makes perfect sense because it is a lot of work and it would be nice to give someone an out at the two-year mark but then i understand as aaron was saying it's really difficult to run and it's kind of a punishment so i'm really stuck there and then on top of it i really like i am the league of women voters and their hesitancy on it is a concern for me and i would really

[174:01] like to see it more how we did with the election working group where we brought a group of really great people together and they did a great collaboration and came up with some wonderful answers and so i like the idea i support the idea i just don't love this draft of it so i'm kind of agnostic at the moment and it sounds like we have the votes for it so it looks like it's probably going to go forward so it really doesn't matter if i oppose it i guess um but that's just kind of where i'm thinking at the moment great well thank you all very much i will take my crack now thank you to the supporters for working with us that is a definitely positive outcome and you know you won't have to worry about me running for more than two years as mayor so i i would lean very hard on the two-year side if we're gonna do this because of all the reasons bob said and you know i think it's important that we cycle through people you know

[175:01] and we i think the longest serving mayor in boulder history was eight years ruth carell maybe but most mayors serve two or four year terms it is a rare mayor who serves six years and they obviously get elected every second cycle or every two years that way as well um you know this is one of those i'm kind of ambivalent as well i don't know what problem we're trying to fix exactly with the mate i you know maybe i wasn't the the one favorite for everyone but it's a process that the town has had for years and so you know i asked the question bob asked when he first heard about this which is what are we trying to fix i don't know the answer um but i do think the ranked choice voting piece of this is critically important and i think what i learned from celeste today was really influential on my thinking about this

[176:00] which is what mary quoted which is that the if it done properly and the rank choice approach definitely empowers people who otherwise wouldn't vote and wouldn't run so i very much like the rent choice component and regardless of how this comes out and whether it passes or not i think we have to reconvene the election working group for other issues right we need to fix our notification for petitioners for instance and so i think there's good reason to want to bring that group back together i think the one thing that i may hold my nose and vote yes on this even though i think it's incomplete is it doesn't happen until 2023 right and so there's time to get a whole integrated system in place and i think that's going to be the most effective at breaking down the slates i think breaking down the slates is what will bring people into the

[177:01] election because elections have gotten harder you know than when i first ran and part of that is the polarization part of it's the times but anything we can do to break down those barriers we need to think about so this will not be a great solution to that problem so pass or not i don't really care but we need to follow through with the next step rachel thanks for that sam um it just made me think of two things one was that um that for anybody who's on the fence um i did bring this up at the retreat and the response from council was that this should be a community driven effort and not something that was crafted by council so you know i think in in fairness to the community who who kind of responded to us and and brought us this um it's it it's a little bit um strange if we then say well we should you know take and own

[178:02] it and do it differently because we we asked them to go do it and they did get the signatures under the first definition we gave them and then second um in terms of kind of breaking down the the power of the slate and the divisiveness in the community i agree i think that's um an important feature of ranked choice voting or instant runoff and and one thing that i really like about this initiative is that it did bring together kind of both sides of both parties if you will in boulder it had people from both camps working on it and supporting it so i think it is a pretty cool initiative and we don't really see that often so that's another reason that i'm supportive of it thanks bob i mean if people don't have any comments i was going to make a motion and maybe at least test the waters on number one who supports it in number two whether there's support for two years versus four years so if there's no for the comment i was going to try to make a motion singapore can i can i actually

[179:00] i'm sorry to interrupt but i just wonder if is it from a process perspective if we might consider a straw poll on the two versus four year and then have the motion be whichever one wins the straw poll bob i don't want to if you want to go ahead and make your motion that's really what i was thinking that's exactly what i was intending i don't i don't mean to jump ahead so if a straw poll on four versus two would be a good start then we could make the motion based on how it looks okay um raise your hands if you want to raise your hands when you see him one two three four five six so we've got it's clear i think two years good now i can just vote in favor of your emotion bob and i don't have to worry about what i vote in favor again so i'm going to move that we adopt um ordinance 84 13 in the version as sent out on hotline today by tom and luis which provides for a two-year term and i'll stop with the motion that i

[180:00] just want to make a quick comment i would observe to celeste point that in three of the four places that the word um ranked choice voting appears on the version of thompson out today it also says instant runoff so i think it does tick that box there's only one place i see is ranked choice voting without instant runoff and it's actually not an important place and most importantly it's in the ballot language itself so i i i'm content with the um with the measure as um presented the ordinance 8413 is presented by tom and luis this afternoon second can i try to i'll go for it if i um so the one thing that i have not uh looked into on that version is how how is the term limit language written before it was two four year terms does it say four two year terms or how how was it written in the revi i'll try to look it up we've gotten so many emails huh a great question aaron you can find it in um

[181:00] the second paragraph of section four i'll just read it for purposes of everybody in front of them says no person shall be eligible for the uh to the office of mayor if such person has previously served eight years as mayor or if such person has previously served three terms as council in four years as mayor i think it's the same language in both versions okay great i'm good then thanks okay um who is going to oppose this any votes in opposition mark mary everybody have you chosen i can't see yeah i'm not a president yeah i'm not going to oppose it either so i think it passes seven to two they get that right so congratulations to the supporters and um now we're off to something really fun and before we do that i wanted to ask we could either take a short bio break

[182:01] now or we could get through the staff presentation um and council questions and take a break then or we could try and power through the whole thing but i think powering through the whole thing there's 105 speakers so um i like option two option two so do the first half and then come back for the second okay good enough for me onward all right i guess i'm up uh good evening council my name is dan burke i'm the director of open space in mountain parks and i will be doing a very brief introduction and then turning things over to staff to lead us through the presentation i just want to start off by saying a few words and and for those who have followed open space related issues

[183:00] over the years you know that the conservation and management of prairie dogs and open space has long been a topic of not only intense community interests but of a lot but a lot of open space and mountain parks departments attention actions and activities as well here are just a few of those actions that we've been involved with over the years this has developed and the board and council have approved very thorough management plans such as the grasslands ecosystem management plan and the recently approved agricultural resources management plan both of which addresses the conservation and management of prairie dogs across the system the department has also developed a robust robust annual census if you will in order to track prairie dog occupation levels across the system work has allowed us to track population levels since the late 1990s we have also created job positions and hired talented staff with job responsibility aimed at prairie dog conservation and have encouraged their

[184:00] professional growth and expertise in this area in fact we most recently created a prairie dog coordinator and the soil health coordinator positions despite decreased budgets and for a good part of the past four years department staff have been highly engaged with community members the open space board and city council on two very important efforts first the convening and collaborating with the prairie dog working group to develop and implement a set of prairie dog conservation and management recommendations across the system and this most recent 13-month effort looking at ways to more effectively address soil health and conflicts we're seeing between prairie dog occupancy and irrigated agriculture recent efforts have been a heavy ask of staff and i want to acknowledge that lift these two recent initiatives demanded of staff and to thank them all for their perseverance and professionalism in responding to a very difficult set of

[185:00] topics that also comes with it a lot of community input and very and often strong opinions so what you're going to hear tonight is a message from staff that all of the city's prairie dog conservation efforts over these years has played a big part in establishing a very robust healthy prairie dog population across the osmp system you will also hear the message tonight that there are some locations on our system where prairie dog occupancy has played a part in the loss of productive agricultural land and the loss of soil which in turn is creating hardship for some of our agricultural tenants and neighbors the serious set of issues that staff feels needs to be addressed and our recently accepted master plan also calls us to act on this inherent conflict that we that we are faced with and that we're all going to be discussing here tonight with prairie dog colonies at historic high levels and increasing by hundreds of acres each year staff board conclude

[186:02] that we can't address the inherent conflict or adequately address soil health issues by relocating prairie dogs alone or without some bureau damage the approach being recommended recommended tonight is reasonable is sensible and is responsible and has taken into account all of the varied community feedback and input that we have received for the past year we have been listening to the many perspectives on this issue and we do care as a staff about the different views and values that are involved nobody goes into the land and water conservation field because they want to harm or kill wildlife we are doing and we are doing what we can short of compromising our mission for agricultural and water rights preservation and the need to restore and maintain soil health to minimize the need for lethal control over the long term the outcome tonight i want you to know that osmp commits to continuing to listen

[187:00] to speak and understand to adapt and to learn so with that we are looking forward to council's consideration of the recommended preferred alternative and we're now going to turn the presentation over to osmp senior planner mark gershman who helped to coordinate and lead this effort to develop an approach that staff and the board unanimously agreed strikes the right balance we'll turn it over to you thanks very much dan i appreciate the introduction and i appreciate the opportunity to address council i'd like to also um provide some acknowledgements uh more broadly uh first off to the many community members who have participated in this project since uh we got started in october of last year um i'd also like to specifically recognize the open space board of trustees who have done a huge and heavy lift associated with this project

[188:00] including uh kurt brown uh the board chair uh currently and tom miller our past chair and past member of the board i'd like to call out dave cootes and karen hulwig members of the open space board of trustees as they were appointed by the board to serve as process advisors working with staff on the development of the expedited public process that council directed us to undertake uh the project has uh involved staff from across the city most notably val mathison from the planning department uh the city is senior urban uh wildlife coordinator um a host of people from the open space department we've had janet michaels and doug kalisch from the city attorney's office uh phil yates on tuesday time isaac said not tom miller i don't know how i did that excuse me uh caroline miller is one of our board members um and then

[189:00] um uh we've also had uh phil yates uh from the city's communication and engagement department brella abernathy the city's ipm coordinator from the planning department and uh brent redken karen uh from climate initiatives on board to help us with this we've also had the support and consultation of agency partners including boulder county open space boulder county parks and open space and again many thanks to city council for the time and effort that you've put into this i know you've received a lot of comments from community members participated in field visits uh with community groups and staff as well so thank you very much uh with regards to the um agenda for uh tonight is as stan indicated and spent some time providing some background on this project um why are we here uh answering questions about why is uh osmp and city staff responding to this issue what a staff and open space board of

[190:00] trustees are recommending at this point and then it's typical they'll be opportunities for clarifying questions public hearing and then discussion of motion i'd like to uh note that the staff members that are shown uh highlighted in in brown and with asterisks next to their name are here and available uh to respond to your clarifying questions or available during your discussion to respond to issues that may emerge lauren kolb the city's soil health coordinator is also available and present although she isn't highlighted on this slide let me jump into uh answering the question about you know how did we arrive here and why are we here um the framework for um implementing recommendations of the prairie dog working group um one of the formative kind of items that happened and the impetus for this project was uh the open space board of

[191:02] trustees and city council public hearings at which staff requested support for implementation framework to address the recommendations of the prairie dog working group the prairie dog group was a group of 12 community members representing a variety of perspectives and five city staff members formed at council suggestion in 2016 to suggest additional prairie dog management practices the prairie dog working group presented their work to the city manager in two phases first in 2017 and then again in 2018. in april of last year staff from planning parks and recreation and open space and mountain parks departments presented a framework for implementing the many recommendations of the prairie dog working group to various cities city boards including the open space board of trustees and then to city council staff asked for support of the implementation framework and also asked if there were policy or strategy

[192:01] recommendations related to prairie dog management that had not been addressed that the board or council would like to see addressed in addition to supporting staff's framework for implementing the prairie dog working group recommendations the open space board of trustees also expressed concern that while the recommendations of the prairie dog working group to address conflict between irrigated and agriculture irrigated agricultural prairie dogs appeared in in the plan the approach would require investments on relocation and barriers that were either too expensive or would take too long and relied upon receiving sites that might not be available consequently open space board of trustees made the following recommendation um and what it says here read it aloud uh that prairie dog levels on numerous open space mountain parks irrigated agricultural properties have created a conflict between the city's prairie dog and agricultural policies and prevent

[193:01] open space mountain parks from fully meeting charter purposes it is infeasible to address these problems only by non-lethal means in a timely fashion accordingly we recommend commencing an expedited osmp led process with appropriate outreach to evaluate whether where and how to use lethal control to address these problems this motion passed unanimously by the open space board of trustees on april 10th of last year when staff subsequently presented the implementation framework for the prairie dog working group recommendations to city council in may of last year council um heard uh of course from the open space board of trustees and and staff had relayed their motion and in addition to accepting the framework for implementing the prairie dog working group recommendations city council also passed the motion shown

[194:00] here the context statement was entered into the minutes at the request of the office of the city attorney and that reads that prairie dog levels on numerous open space mountain parks irrigated agricultural properties have created a conflict between the city prairie dog and agricultural policies and prevent osmp from fully meeting charter purposes and have caused some degradation soil it may be infeasible to address these problems only by non-lethal means in a timely or economical fashion therefore council member carlisle moved to direct osmp to undertake an expedited public process that looks at agricultural uses on the northern grasslands including factors affecting the ecological conditions of the land high soil health healthy agricultural uses wildlife health and other conditions new land management tools can be considered including key lining soil amendments lethal control and other measures to achieve charter open space goals that motion passed council five to three

[195:00] and that's the last slide i'll read out loud but i just wanted to make sure that our direction from council and the recommendations of the board were laid out clearly here staff took this direction from council and developed a set of project goals um using this very specific direction to look at the the things shown here on the slide and consider a range of tools um excuse me i'd like to uh jump into some contextual information including uh the map of the project area uh the project area is shown here in blue outline open space in mountain parks managed properties or open space mountain parks properties are shown in various shades of green the bulk of the city lies in the middle of this map shown in grey and the project area outlined in blue

[196:02] includes a number of open space and mountain parks properties i'd just like to clarify that although there are the the area is shown in blue that there is significant private land within that area and land managed by other public agencies and that the project area is defined only refers to os open space mountain parks managed properties it's founded generally by jroad to the south it's bounded on the excuse me on the east by the longmont diagonal and on the west by foothills parkway or us 36 so that's generally the where um fundamental to kind of an understanding of what's going on within the project area is um some of the factors of the grassland plan grassland plan as dan mentioned is part of an ongoing

[197:01] set of management plans that the city has been engaged in since we began purchasing lands on the plains in the 1960s there have been a succession of prairie dog control management habitat conservation plans since the 1970s and our current management of prairie dogs is based upon the grassland ecosystem management plan which was open space and mountain park's first comprehensive plan to integrate the management of all elements of open space grasslands including the several flavors of native prairie riparian areas wetlands and notably for this evening agricultural operations and prairie dogs council approved the plan in 2010 and among other things it described the criteria for the five current management designations for prairie dogs these management designations are shown here excuse me

[198:00] um and and somewhat like zoning designations um they are based upon a set of criteria this slide and subsequent slides that you will see will use the same color conventions to show these designations and as dan mentioned osmp has been conducting annual field mapping of prairie dog colonies across open space mountain park since 1996 prairie dog colonies are assigned a designation of one of these five designations based upon the criteria in the grassland plan i'm just going to go over real briefly these five management designations prairie dog conservation areas serve primarily to conserve prairie dogs and provide receiving sites for relocation these tend to be smaller and generally more isolated and were selected because these were places where prairie dogs have regularly uh regularly survived plague epizootics over the course of several

[199:02] decades in some cases and places where prairie dogs are well established on the landscape often where there aren't a lot of other associated grassland values grastein preserves on the other hand are large continuous blocks of habitat where open space and mountain park seeks to support prairie dogs and their associates in the context of grassland biodiversity and quite often in the context of agricultural operations mostly grazing of upland prairie open space mountain park's range of acceptable prairie dog occupancy in grassland preserves is from 10 to 25 so the intention isn't for these areas to be completely occupied by prairie dogs but rather to have prairie dogs functioning in the context of large grasslands with considerable heterogeneity a variety of habitat types these areas provide our best opportunities for paradox to move around on the landscape naturally and open

[200:00] space and mountain parks has designated three grassland preserves one in the south one in the east and one in the north in the project area the grassland preserves present opportunities protect many species and a mosaic of communities the third management designation is referred to as multiple objective areas these are areas that typically have prairie dog colonies but osmp will not be relocating prairie dogs to these areas as they would be to grassland preserves and prey dog conservation areas multiple objective areas tend to be somewhat intermediate in size and provide a wide range of grassland values and some values associated with prairie dogs in larger landscapes transition and removal areas are usually focused where prairie dogs have found to be incompatible with other desired land use and this is most often

[201:01] a recognition that prairie dogs and irrigated agriculture are not compatible open space and mountain parks may relocate prairie dogs away from transition and removal areas or otherwise remove prairie dogs depending on the techniques that are in use um we depend upon available receiving sites typically in prairie dog conservation areas and grassland preserves when relocating prairie dogs from transition and removal areas um and have used lethal control as well for the treatment of prairie dogs that cannot be captured as part of relocation efforts in the recent past transition and removal areas differ with regards to the degree that they support species associated with prairie dogs it's important to note that in the grassland plan the removal of prairie dogs from any

[202:00] management designation is allowed where the irrigated lands where irrigated lands are occupied by prairie dogs the next slide shows a map at the time of the adoption of the grassland ecosystem management plan or the grassland plan what i wanted to use this for was to point out the location of the grassland preserves here in the southern portion of the system and i hope that my mouse is visible to you here generally um south of marshall road generally east of colorado highway 93 and generally north of colorado highway 128. those lands lie in adjacency to the rocky flats national wildlife refuge and extensive grasslands managed in part for prairie dog conservation by boulder county parks and open space so

[203:00] an even larger area of conservation exists to the south uh the eastern prairie dog conservation areas up on gun barrel hill north and south of lookout road and then the northern grassland preserve excuse me uh eastern grasslands and then the northern grassland reserve lies within the project area and is indicated here by the cross hatching the these management designations of the other prairie dog towns show the distribution of colonies at the time the grassland plan was adopted we'll be seeing other maps of the more recent distribution of prairie dogs in future slides we a series of tables and maps just trying to give an idea of the current situation right now so with regards to prairie dogs and prairie dog conservation as reflected in the grassland plan and plans before that prairie dogs are an

[204:00] essential element of the grasslands of the boulder valley they modify grasslands and create conditions such as burrows more open ground that support other speech species such as burrowing owls and horn larks tiger salamanders and many insects and other kinds of arthropods prairie dogs also create variety on the landscape by virtue of their burrowing activities and clipping of vegetation um and and alter soil composition in areas where they exist they're a diurnal active during the day and colonial and by virtue of this typically have a lot of abundance of as prey items to predators such as diurnal raptors such as hawks eagles and falcons there are also important predators for coyotes badgers and other species of grassland predators in addition to being active during the day and visible in large groups diurnal

[205:03] and colonial they're also social organisms and they're great interest to people because they share a lot of characteristics with us we are also diurnal colonial social animals um and um and this gives people a lot of enjoyment to observe prairie dog colonies in and around um older hear the vocalizations and other forms of communication watch grooming and they're and as a result they're a very very popular species and in the open space mountain parks grassland plan they are one of the eight focal elements of the plan um and a stat and an established focus for conservation uh the numbers seen here reflect the number of acres within the open space system in protected designations reflecting the importance of prairie dogs as part of the open space grasslands as you can see there's currently over 3 400

[206:02] acres of grasslands and protected designations system-wide and about 2 000 acres within the project area this table here just one is just an opportunity to put that context of the importance in conservation mixed with the recognition that prairie dogs are also um can create situations that are incompatible not just with irrigated agricultural but also for grassland types that need to exist undisturbed by prairie dogs where there are no boroughs where there is greater cover and so we also have the transition and removal areas so that we can address the sustainability of agricultural operations and the conservation of grasslands undisturbed by prairie dogs and as you can see here current occupation in transition and removal areas systemwide is at about a thousand acres and within the project area at about 663

[207:05] acres so this kind of gives a picture of a current uh distribution of prairie dogs across the management designations and this map shows the distribution of prairie dog management designations within the project area um again the area the the populations are prairie dogs shown in green representing grassland preserves uh the prairie dog populations in orange representing transition areas red removal areas then there's smaller areas one prey dog habitat conservation area south of j road and one and then a multiple objective area here shown in yellow

[208:00] as part of the grassland plan [Music] open space and mountain parks has established a set of indicators management objectives and thresholds of acceptable condition and several of those are related to the management area designations shown here in this table are three of those indicators shown here are three of those indicators on the percent of occupied land and protected status the objective of having at least 70 percent of the occupied land and protected status that is having the prairie dogs where we would like to see them and the columns show the values at the time the grassland plan uh was approved with 2009 mapping and uh immediate values from 2015 and then values from 2019 are the most recent mapping of prairie dogs so here as you can see we have met our objectives by having greater

[209:01] than 70 percent of the occupied of the open space occupied by prairie dogs in protected status in this case the colors represent a green represents the conditions where we have met our objectives orange represents situations where we are near but are not meeting our objectives and then red indicates situations where we are far from our objectives examples of of those two situations uh are shown with our second indicator the number of grassland preserves with occupancy between 10 and 26 our objective is to have all three of our grassland preserves occupied within that range um and at the time the grassland plan was approved there was one uh 2015 none and right now we have occupancy levels in the east and north grassland preserve um over 26 percent that's one of the reasons that we're here um and then in the southern

[210:00] uh grassland preserve we have um occupation levels under 10 and then the third indicator is the extent of active colonies on osmp managed grasslands apologize there's an extra word there in or on open space managed grasslands um our objective is that between 800 and 3 100 acres as you can see we currently are outside the range of acceptable conditions and we have um approximately 4 500 acres of uh prairie dogs active across all of our open space managed grasslands across all management designations so apologize there are quite a few tables oops oh dear i don't have any idea i don't know if i don't know

[211:00] what just happened mark it's showing slide 16 for us okay i was hearing some music and i don't know where that was coming from so thank you very much uh says slide 16 um i'm gonna go back uh one slide so we can spend a moment with slide 16. i'm going to try again sorry about that um so i'm going to switch gears now and talk a little bit about the context for our agricultural system and our agricultural objectives and the little nature of what's going on agriculturally on open space the grassland plan was our first attempt to integrate agriculture in with all the other uses of open space grasslands and in 2017 uh we had a a second opportunity

[212:01] uh and took a deeper dive um with an agricultural resources management plan or the ag plan which was approved by both the board and the open space board of trustees and city council in 2019 the board and council approved the open space master plan which had an agriculture today and tomorrow focus area one of the uh one of the plans i focus there it's worth noting that in the earlier drafts of the master plan there wasn't such a focus area and it was added in response to direction from city council reflecting the importance of agriculture uh to the community and um and we believe to council as well um what you see here is um the total excuse me uh total amount of open space managed land both across the system and in the project area the amount of land leased for agriculture systemide is about 16

[213:01] 400 acres about 2 700 acres in the project area of that about 6 400 acres not sure what's going on there about um 6 400 acres system-wide is irrigated and in the project area about 2300 acres is irrigated so as you can see over 85 of the leased land in the project area is irrigated that's far higher than overall across all of open space where it's about 39 or 40 percent this chart just provides a look at the distribution of land uses uh irrigated agricultural land uses across open space to give you a feel for that as you can see most of the agricultural land use takes place on native upland prairie often referred to in agricultural communities as rangeland

[214:03] and important fact here is that this is also the same area where most of our grassland preserves and prairie dog conservation areas also exist so multiple objective areas so this is an indication of the strong degree to which much of our agricultural activity on open space is compatible with the presence and activity of prairie dogs and while it requires certain concessions of our agricultural tenants we have been managing uh this situation fairly successfully for decades um also shown uh on this pie chart is the south boulder creek state natural area represents about eight percent of the irrigated of the agricultural land this is a complex of irrigated and upland uh lands uh irrigated pastures and hay fields along the south boulder creek floodplain much of you much of what you see as you enter boulder uh from the us 36 by the scenic

[215:02] overlook on davidson mesa looks out over the south boulder creek state natural area um call this out specifically because this is another example of our agricultural programming that has successfully integrated the conservation of areas of ecological and natural importance so such a degree that it is one of a handful of areas recognized by the state of colorado as a designated natural area and again trying to indicate that open space and mountain parks has been working in partnership with agricultural tenants to establish agro ecosystems that that deliver a wide range of community values such as prairie dogs native upland prairie endangered and threat are threatened species and other rare habitat types um in irrigated floodplains um however small they may be or representing probably about 40 percent

[216:00] of our excuse me about 40 of our agricultural lands they have value to the community and to agricultural producers well out of proportion to their presence on the landscape irrigated lands are critical parts of almost all osmp leases with the exception of perhaps some of the dry land farming that happens up on gun barrel hill and and based upon the data you see here from the colorado state university extension's office of agricultural business management the agricultural returns or the average returns of agricultural production on irrigated lands can be several orders of magnitude higher than on uplands or drylands as reflected here as required by the charter both the osbt and city council must approve open space property acquisitions and the acquisitions of irrigated lands and the

[217:01] water to irrigate them has routinely been approved by the boreham council acquiring these lands and waters not only addresses charter purposes associated with agriculture but also prevents the sales of these waters to facilitate development elsewhere in the boulder valley helping constrain growth in a manner consistent with the comprehensive plan when we do acquire lands and waters for irrigation it's also important to recognize that the costs associated with administering these water rights distributing the water across the landscape are borne by our agricultural tenants so that's a partnership that actually saves the open space and mountain parks department significant investment during the development of the grassland plan we estimated that there would be about a 2 million additional investment in staff capacity necessary to run the irrigation water across on the irrigated lands that open space in mountain parks has so

[218:00] i'd like to think that the current situation is a kind of winning strategy where we're in happy league with our agricultural tenants um to make this situation work uh in a way that they're able to generate an income provide for the charter purposes and also return uh through lease payments uh a financial return to the open space department as well to give a picture of the least lands uh in the project area um maybe a little bit challenging to see the orange outlines but uh the properties outlined in orange are those uh leased for agricultural purposes and then the subset of irrigated lands on those um least agric agricultural leaseholds is shown in the darker green here in this map and again that was that's just an opportunity to take a look at the fact that the amount of irrigated land and the leaseholds in this area is

[219:00] proportionally greater than elsewhere on the open space system um as with um the objectives associated with prairie dog conservation the grassland plan and agriculture and ag plan uh abbreviated here as gp and ap have a number of indicators objectives uh that have been evaluated to determine the degree to which we have been successfully sustaining agriculture on open space and mountain parks and a couple of these are related to irrigated agriculture and conditions of soil so i just wanted to point these out that we have been able to exceed or meet our objective i should say associated with having acres in agricultural production some of this is also due to the extensive areas acquired since 2010 when these objectives were set uh that are in agricultural production such as the shenahan ranch uh the poor farm or wells

[220:00] property um and others um of that uh land in agricultural production we've set an objective of having um at least 80 percent of the irrigated land available to be leased for agriculture uh there are a couple of factors that can keep that land from being leased agriculture water delivery infrastructure maybe in poor repair but the largest uh stressed on this system uh historically and currently has been the conflicts associated with prairie dog occupation and irrigated lands and so currently we're just below uh the threshold of acceptability we also feel that this indicator is probably a leading indicator and that the trends of prairie dog growth and occupation uh the declining conditions on irrigated lands including soil degradation and loss coupled with concerns being expressed directly to open space staff by our agricultural tenants indicated that

[221:02] unless we were to take action soon we would be moving further uh from meeting the objective associated with this measure the next three measures that are shown here are indications of what the grassland plan and ag plan anticipate but we're only currently getting started uh in developing our information around soil health with the establishment of lauren kolb as our soil health coordinator and the and that position just starting up we've just begun system-wide soil sampling and establishing standards uh with the research community and partnerships with citizen scientists to learn more and establish uh standards so that we can better define measure and know where we stand with regards to soil organic matter the use of

[222:01] soil best management practices um and then lastly we're in the process of developing asset management systems at open space to better track uh the condition of our irrigation delivery infrastructure so some of this stuff is still in progress as as we adapt and move forward to better manage our open space lands this map again of the project area shows the overlap of irrigated agricultural lands shown in the dark green and prairie dog occupation as shown in the kind of brown stippling as you can see there's considerable overlap of the of the agricultural lands with prairie dogs in the project area and this chart kind of tells the story uh numerically what it basically does is just add a couple of

[223:01] a couple of lines to the previous table you saw where you can see that the level of occupation in the project area of irrigated lands is about 967 acres and then another factor is that we have irrigable land within the uh open space system and uh within the project area that has been removed from our leased program uh largely because of the conflicts associated with prairie dog occupation and so that statistic is presented here as well taking another look at uh the situation uh from the perspective of the prairie dog management designations um this chart shows the overlap of prairie dogs and irrigated land within the project area in grassland preserves prairie dog

[224:01] conservation areas multiple objective areas transition areas and removal areas as you can see there's approximately 526 um 526 acres of overlap with designations where open space mountain park seeks to remove prairie dogs um in all situations and that indeed as we'll mention later is the initial focus of the open space board of trustees recommended preferred alternative there are also um prairie dogs overlapping with other management area designations uh within the project area as shown here including overlap with grassland preserves this map shows some system-wide context and shows to some degree the relative extent if you will of the conflict in the project

[225:00] area in yellow and green compared with prairie dogs occupying protective management designations in blue so in other words the areas in blue across the open space and mountain park system would be unaffected by the recommendations of the open space board of trustees preferred alternative the areas in yellow would be those prioritized by that recommendation and the areas in green would be those also addressed in those recommendations another way of looking at that is shown in this table on the y-axis is number of acres uh on the x or horizontal axis are years since 1996 each of these bars represents the number of acres occupied by prairie dogs

[226:00] in that year the blue bars indicate the number of acres occupied system-wide the yellow bars indicate the number of acres of irrigated open space lands occupied by prairie dogs so here you could see relative amounts of occupation system-wide and then on irrigated areas and this chart just gives a picture of where those 464 acres of irrigated um open space managed lands that have been removed from the agricultural lease program most of this removal has been the result of conflict with prairie dogs again on the vertical axis or y-axis are a number of acres and then each one of the bars represents a year during which properties were

[227:01] removed one or more properties were removed from the agricultural lease program the numbers on top of the bars represent the number of acres for that year and then the line shows the cumulative total uh from 2002 to 2018 the last year where property was removed from the agricultural lease program this is a certainly a trend that we don't want to see continue and one of the reasons that we're here today so moving from kind of what are the conditions out there and um and why we are here one of the situations um one of the questions that we want to answer next is why is open space and mountain parks responding well central to um our mission as a department are the charter the purposes of open space described in the city charter um based on the conditions and trends that we're seeing out there um a staff believes that without action it's likely

[228:02] we will be moving further away from the specific objectives that have been established uh to sustain agricultural operations as described in the city charter specifically the second and third bullet shown here the preservation of water resources in this case in their traditional state which is taken to mean irrigation water adjudicated water used to irrigate agricultural lands and the preservation of agricultural uses and land suitable for agricultural production while the charter gives the general direction as dan mentioned at the beginning we have worked with the community the open space board and city council to operationalize the general city guidance through a series of system-wide management plans and the open space and mountain parks master plan which as we've described

[229:01] includes specific and measurable objectives on how we advance ourselves towards delivering sustainable agricultural operations and how we can serve ecological systems including prairie dogs the master plan approved by city council last year also includes as a top-tier strategy the need to address this conflict as one of the primary means of addressing and achieving the vision for agriculture today and tomorrow in addition this isn't oops excuse me this is not a situation by any strictly limited to interests defined in open space plans but

[230:00] concerns over the loss and degradation of soil have significant implications for open space and mountain park's ability to participate in the climate mobilization action plan that plan has as one of its major focuses ecosystems and as one of the focuses within ecosystems the regeneration of land and large-scale carbon sequestration city staff feels that irrigated agricultural lands provide the best opportunity for open space and mountain parks to accelerate the sequestration of carbon and the regeneration of lands is a key factor in achieving that additional context associated with city-wide programs includes of course the city's um excuse me this city's wildlife protection program and specifically the prairie dog protection ordinances

[231:00] associated with that in fact these cities uh open spaces reliance over the past decades on non-lethal forms of prairie dog removal have been in part due to and consistent with the wildlife protection program of the city uh those programs are intended to limit lethal means of control of prairie dogs and um excuse me um and also damage to prairie dog burrows and establish a system for obtaining permits uh by which open space and mountain parks or others can pursue lethal control when other alternatives are not available so we've been actively engaged with val matheson the urban wildlife coordinator for the city in developing uh and reviewing the recommendations as part of the preferred alternative

[232:01] and we have also identified specific aspects of the prairie dog protection ordinances that would need to be modified in and recommendations on how to do that in a manner consistent with the authorities provided in in those ordinances so that's a little bit about why open space and mountain parks is responding i think it's also important to highlight the fact that we have been constantly engaged with the community not only through this effort but through the open space mountain park's master plan the agricultural plan and the grassland plan to gain a better understanding of community values associated with prairie dog management and one of the most recent and perhaps one of the most recent and perhaps

[233:00] uh fundamental questions uh associated with um prairie dog management is the degree to which the community supports uh lethal control and as part of the open space and mountain park's master plan community engagement the process committee made up of members of city council and rocket and mary young and you have to excuse me if i forget others and members of the open space board of trustees worked with staff to develop questions of the community one of which is shown here it includes a preamble as well as a question asking the community when other approaches have been unsuccessfully controlling prairie dog populations on or near irrigated farmland how much would you support or oppose lethal control to remove prairie dog colonies from these areas

[234:00] and there is the results of that um survey question are provided here um they're provided um in a number of different ways uh additionally in the report of the community of the statistically valid community survey but generally there was support about 52 percent of the communities supported this about 11 that they didn't know and about 36 percent uh said uh they opposed or or strongly opposed that so although it's certainly nothing as dan indicated that anyone savors or enjoys doing we recognize that um when responsible for a public land system with a multiple objective mission sometimes there are difficult choices that need to be made and we feel that we have at least some indication of community support for this

[235:01] the process that we engaged with for the community associated with this management review the expedited process directed by council was based upon a couple of steps or engagement windows the first of which was our attempt to build a shared understanding of the situation which we did through initially at an open house in october of last year at which we were able to gather information about community interests and values we also began a conversation about dialoguing about how to improve the situation much like the information shared earlier here we laid out where prairie dogs are where irrigated agriculture is discuss the nature of of the conflicts associated with prey dogs on irrigated agriculture and then as as people are want to do we began a conversation about what should we do about that and how would we improve the situation the second engagement window started in january of this year where a staff

[236:03] summarized the ideas associated with how we might improve the situation and evaluated them in accordance with the relative benefit at addressing um council and the board's concerns the feasibility of those actions um actually being able to be implemented and then the relative costs of those things and that opened up an opportunity for online engagement about not only the evaluation of those potential approaches uh potential actions but also a general approach that was based upon the ideas of removal through a combination of relocation and lethal control exclusion through visual barriers and other types of barriers and then restoration of lands we held the study session with the open space board of trustees at which there was also opportunity for the public to

[237:00] engage with the board and and then from that point developed a draft preferred alternative based upon that discussion about what sort of change would be desirable and feasible the third engagement window um actually uh included the march 21st um open space board of trustees public hearing where they unanimously supported the staff's uh the um preferred alternative uh with uh a they unanimously supported a preferred alternative uh including several adjustments to staff's recommendation which are included in attachment b of your packet we are now at the point of deciding what is uh desirable and feasible with council um and this meeting the two public hearings were intended to comprise the third and final engagement window we had a delay with the covid um

[238:02] excuse me the code epidemic and emergency and that were delayed from our april meeting with um council until today regardless of what direction we get we will implement that direction monitor it to improve the situation into the future as part of this process so again the first engagement window building a shared understanding second engagement window talking about how to improve that and the third engagement window uh the final conversations with the open space board of trustees and city council to make final decisions on what is desirable and feasible this is a timeline of the various steps i'm not going to spend a lot of time um associated with this we'll point out that during the covet emergency we did have the opportunity for some additional and limited engagement with stakeholder groups who had some questions and wanted to ask

[239:02] clarifying questions so we had three stakeholder group meetings during the third engagement window that hadn't been initially scheduled ran that by the process advisors on the open space board of trustees and and got there okay for that and felt that was a good thing uh to continue and ensure ongoing community dialogue and all along we've been providing updates to the open space board of trustees almost monthly so now we're here at this public meeting and what are we here for well we're here to present the open space board of trustees recommended preferred alternative um which is uh included as attachment c in your packet in addition to the preferred alternative actions the preferred alternative document contains a number of other sections uh establishing the background and findings uh set of prioritization criteria and

[240:01] other information but at its heart these are the recommendations associated with the preferred alternative i'd like to stress the importance of the meeting with stakeholders throughout this process we've been engaged in conversations with the community and it's very clear that there's a high level of interest in prairie dog management one of the recommendations endorsed by council as part of the implementation of the prairie dog working group is to have an annual meeting with the community to discuss prairie dog management from the past year and ideas for upcoming management of prairie dogs and in fact our first public engagement for this project was held um in conjunction with the first of those meetings we look at these meetings as opportunities to check in on the progress and advancement of the preferred alternative actions on an annual basis we know that conditions associated with climate

[241:00] plague and other diseases could dramatically change the situation for us as we advance and move forward open space mountain park staff certainly hasn't and would not be interested in a kind of mindless implementation of the recommendations of it contained in the preferred alternative outside of the context of what's going on and we want to make sure um that we have an opportunity to describe what we've done what we've learned and what we're planning for upcoming years with the community so these annual stakeholder meetings are a critical and important part of the preferred alternative in addition at the core we will continue the commitment that we have to relocation as part of the city's ongoing commitment to non-lethal means of removal of prairie dogs we feel that the most we can do with an existing budget is between 30 and 40 acres annually in addition a small number up to 20

[242:01] individual prairie dogs um would could be included in this to allow uh for the facilitation of relocation um and dealing with issues associated with prairie dogs in urban sites um and val mathison can describe this nuance a little more if there's more questions about that that weren't answered in the materials there's also the proposal and an important one in this is uh to use lethal control and in-borough lethal control by means of pressurized vehicle uh pressurized exhaust for carbon monoxide for between 100 and to 800 and 200 acres on open space managed lands in areas that we would be removing prairie dogs there would be a goal of removing all the prairie dogs in that area so that there wouldn't be the opportunity for remaining prairie dogs to re-establish prairie dogs in that area and thus devalue the investment that the city had undertaken uh that our intention would be to

[243:00] implement uh the removal of prairie dogs with contractors as we don't have the staff capacity to do this all ourselves and do that with open space oversight where we do have the capacity and have now a prairie dog coordinator tori poulton hired on to oversee these actions once prairie dogs are removed either by lethal control or by relocation we would be in evaluating the opportunities to install barriers barriers are not always going to be appropriate but they are often going to be important and necessary to ensure that prairie dogs do not emigrate and re-establish in these areas where there are populations on surrounding lands we also want to work with neighbors to coordinate removal we've had considerable feedback throughout the process about concerns of our neighbors about the impacts of prairie dogs leaving open space and traveling across the landscape

[244:00] onto their properties where they are put in the position of having to undertake lethal control uh where they feel that their property values um are reduced or their land management goals cannot be achieved so we're going to be looking at ways to coordinate with neighbors so that if we're engaged in removal we can at least see if our neighbors would be interested in taking action at the same time once prairie dogs are removed and barriers are installed as appropriate or if appropriate we would be using a variety of techniques to restore soils and the vegetation so that we can use these lands again for irrigated agriculture and to sequester carb the agricultural activities in order to do this we would need we also feel it's necessary to allow agricultural activities to have limited effect upon boroughs

[245:00] both inside the project area and to a more limited degree outside the project area right now typical activities for agriculture including mowing directing water so that the fields can be irrigated cultivating and harvesting hay and other agricultural crops are inhibited because these activities have the potential to disturb burrow entrances or burrows an activity prohibited under current regulations and among the board's recommended act alter recommendations for the preferred alternative is to implement this is appropriate staff's recommendations to do that are to establish a rule to establish consistency of borough disturbance outside the project area with city code and to apply for a special permit for lethal control and burrow disturbance within the project area the details of these various recommendations are included

[246:02] in attachment c the preferred alternative the costs associated with this project are given in the preferred alternative um as well as other essential factors associated with that um we uh provided that information for the two-year focus starting uh next year and then into 2022 we would be continuing the conservation efforts called out in the grassland plan as well as those identified by the prairie dog working group and other conservation efforts associated with day-to-day open space activities as described previously annual removal would be between 130 and 240 acres uh 30 to 40 acres of relocation and 100 to 200 acres of lethal control the focus would be with on transition and removal areas

[247:00] within the project area and that we're looking at the removal in the first two years between 71 and 353 of the 526 acres of transition removal areas currently occupied by prairie dogs we don't count the number of prairie dogs on open space as part of our annual monitoring and prairie dog densities or the number of paradox per acre vary wildly across different landscapes however for the purposes of estimating the number of prairie dogs associated with the actions here we used figures of 30 prairie dogs per acre so currently the numbers of prairie dogs on the open space system based upon occupation levels uh shown here of 4 300 to about 4 700 acres would be between 131 and 141 000 prairie dogs

[248:02] the prairie dogs that would be lethally controlled annually under this uh proposed alternative would be between 3 000 to 6 000 animals about 900 to 1200 animals would be relocated costs associated with the project given here um are between uh five about 600 to uh 600 000 to about a million dollars for the total annual cost for implementation of that of that uh between three and four hundred thousand dollars for relocation between two and four point four and a half thousand dollars uh for lethal control uh with an additional ninety thousand uh dollars of additional staff uh needed uh to oversee lethal control activities so that is what open space and mountain park staff is advancing as part of the open space recommended preferred alternative the recommended motion included in the packet is presented here

[249:01] and i will finally close this presentation thank you very much well thank you so much for that mark and dan and the whole team that put this together it's a little dense but we knew it would be um and it was really well done in the memo as well as in the presentation so thank you for helping us frame that out um now's a good chance for any council questions you can always ask them later but this is the first opportunity and then we'll take that short break and we'll come back for public participation so um i don't see any hands up oh there's one mark and mary okay um first uh mark i want to congratulate you you must feel like you run a marathon it was a an excellent presentation

[250:00] uh i have actually a number of questions um uh first of 441 acres of the project extends outside the transition and removal areas what is good the rationale for lethal control in grassland preserves and conservation areas because i assume you're including them in the program yeah so the uh the rationale right now is for removal of prairie dogs uh from those areas uh or the the intention and recommendation is for removal uh the the means of removal has not yet determined and in addition to that it's quite likely that we will be able to avoid um the need for removal from the prairie dog conservation areas uh which is about 23 acres overlapping with irrigated by virtue of

[251:00] the fact that we've redirected that irrigation water uh elsewhere within the left-hand um left-hand ditch company um area which allows us to both preserve uh the opportunities for irrigation and irrigated agriculture and maintain our water rights while maintaining that pretty dog conservation area in its place we'll have to do further investigation of our abilities to make modifications in multiple objective areas and the grassland preserves but right now because of the overlap with the uh irrigated lands in those areas those are shown in the recommended uh ospt recommended preferred alternative is areas where prairie dogs would be considered for removal um all right my next question is uh i'm sure you're aware of the analysis done by keep boulder wild and they made

[252:00] a number of suggestions um of their 10 suggestions do you find any of them to be compatible with the objectives of the staff recommendations and worthy of consideration or not and and in particular i want to uh address two things one is this proposal that um 100 acres of not of land not currently under lease could be repurposed for hemp growing is that feasible is it desirable could you comment on it i'd i'd like to uh have one of the other staff members perhaps andy pelster could uh respond to the specific question uh regarding hemp farming and sure am i uh visible we can hear you yeah we can hear you andy you can go ahead um sorry about that i'm not seeing myself on my screen but um

[253:00] so there would be some irritable land in the project area that may be suitable for him production um [Music] i'm not sure which properties that would be we we did take a look at some of those um but some of the lion would would in fact have the water rights in the soil uh to to support that um that type of production um mark i guess i will go back to you for the last couple of questions uh one of the items in the uh kbw report uh is supposedly a an offer from the humane society to increase relocation capacity to 75 acres per year are we indifferent as to the ratio of acres of relocation versus acres of lethal control if we come out to the same place and do we have the receiving sites for that expansion of the program if it

[254:00] were feasible and legitimate i'd like to direct that question to heather swanson boulder open space and mountain parks uh ecological uh stewardship supervisor all right i'm trying to do a few things at once so we've got mary and then aaron mary whether you're on mute we'll check oh is that better yeah so many people sorry about that um yeah and we have we have been talking with uh members of keep boulder wild about um some of their thoughts on additional relocations and we may be partnering with them for some opportunities that they've had to provide themselves some additional relocations some of the limiting factors on relocation are both you know cost which is certainly helped

[255:01] if we have if we have other community members pitching in but also the the scale of receiving sites needed the staff time needed for permitting and mitigating neighbor concerns on those receiving sites and kind of the follow up then of management of those receiving sites in the long term so what we've found in the past is that as a staff um our largest relocation in a single year has been 38 acres and that that hasn't been because we haven't really wanted to do more than that but that's that's what the time frame of the relocation season has often allowed so the feasibility of increasing relocations to somewhere like 75 acres and having the receiving sites permitted for that much relocation in a single year um could be pretty problematic and so we're hoping not to over commit to something that we can't reach certainly if the opportunity was there to do additional relocation to speed up how much we could remove in a single year i think we would we would grasp

[256:01] those opportunities definitely uh but i don't think that we're in a position to be able to commit to doing that much relocation in a year and expect to be successful in every year doing it can i colloquy on that question sure thank you um so if it were if we had a bunch of volunteers who were willing to do the work obviously the receiving sites seemed like one of the bigger issues but if uh there was a large amount of volunteers who wanted to coordinate with osmp to do the actual work of relocation is osmp open to something along those lines well so what we've done in the past is we have worked with contractors relocation contractors that have used volunteers to help supplement their work and bring the cost down a bit um open space is really not set up to do the relocations and oversee the relocations themselves we've always contracted that work out so without really um you know maybe bringing on additional staff and

[257:01] expertise to do that we wouldn't be in a position in the near term to be able to take advantage of that we would need those volunteers working with a relocator um that had that expertise and experience to do the project thank you can i call quit um on that question please um so once we're done with the colic we string i want to make a process suggestion so let's get these out because we've got three or four people wanting to ask about this okay um thanks for that um so my colloquy has to do with um the state requirements on the delta dusting when you do relocation and so that question has to do with an additional number of relocations would introduce more of the neurotoxin into the receiving sites and and how would that affect

[258:00] other species in terms of the effects of the the neurotoxin that's required by by state law to um in order to relocate and mark it may be that umbrella is the most appropriate person to answer that probably i am not abernathy is here the city's integrated pest management coordinator in the planning department yeah and mary the the permits that are required by cpw colorado parks and wildlife for the prairie dog relocations require that delta thus be used at the descending sites so that would be the agricultural sites and not the receiving sites where we would send them one of the issues that we're trying to determine is if it's the label requirements and directions for using delta dust on irrigated ag land so we would have to you know look at each

[259:00] property separately to see if it were even legal to do it and you know potentially work with cpw and cda the department of agriculture to make sure that we were doing those applications illegally okay so the so the limitation would be the effects of the neurotoxin on the agricultural lands not the receiving sites well it would the limitation the first limitation we could even consider it would be the legality of using a court note the label um directions are considered a legal document so we have to follow what those label directions are and we there may be some circumstances where we couldn't use it and there may be circumstances where we could and that would be the starting point is determine which of these lands that we could use delta dust on um before we could consider relocation or we would have to work with cpw for the permitting process

[260:00] and determine some kind of alternative if we couldn't use delta dust in in situations where we determined that was a relocation site but that would be up to the whole staff team and staff to determine which sites would be um the best candidates for um prairie dog relocations from egg lands okay thank you rila um and then um my next question has to do um on this on the same topic um but just the numbers um you know the there's page um it is page just so everybody wants to get on that packet page 41 where there is a table that looks at the extent number of prairie dogs on osnp system so at the start of 2020 it shows 134 000 prairie dogs on the system

[261:01] and in two years later it shows approximately at the high end 141 000 prairie dogs so i'm just wondering how um and that's with that's with um 3 000 to 6 000 annually um in lethal control and 900 to 1200 relocated so if you increase the number of relocated i'm wondering what impact they would have on the numbers that would be expected in 2023 and um whether or not that number of prairie dogs can be sustained by our lands and and what effect does it have on the southern grasslands or or the relocation sites so that was a numbers question right mary

[262:00] yeah it was a numbers question and it's just i'm just wondering um you know with with respect to the numbers that are shown here um how how does that affect the sustainability of this whole process if you if you play with the numbers in columns in the in the prairie dogs relocated annually and the prairie dogs lethally controlled if you start to play around with those numbers how does that affect the expected numbers in 2023 and are higher numbers sustainable so you know when we talk about sort of sustainability of numbers um it's difficult to do that on a system-wide basis because what where those prairie dogs are what densities they're in is is really crucial to that piece of your question about is it sustainable so currently in the southern grasslands we have about

[263:00] three percent occupancy of um that large grassland preserve so our numbers in the southern part of our system are actually extremely low right now um the numbers up north are extremely high so i i don't think that um increasing the number of prairie dogs relocated would would initially necessarily lead to an unsustainable situation down there i think that we have the southern grasslands that can sustain much higher prairie dog populations i think through time though the prairie dogs that are in the southern grasslands if if plague is not circulating in the system will continue to grow and so you do cross some threshold then that the receiving sites that we have available currently might be filled in um or have sufficient occupancy that we wouldn't want to put more prairie dogs there and just like in the northern and the eastern grassland preserve where right now we have very high numbers we want to kind of watch that threshold and make sure that we're not pushing it beyond a place where then the native grasslands are starting to have extremely high occupancy levels where we

[264:00] have other grassland communities and different types of wildlife that are then negatively impacted by that so i'm really not trying to avoid your question but it's a hard one to answer because what the trajectory of prairie dog populations are in the south and the north will really influence whether or not it's sustainable in the long term and i think you know that that's why we're really planning with whatever plan we move forward with to be really evaluating it on a year by year basis because product populations on the system can you know change very very rapidly especially if we see something like the plague come through or have a very dry year where we see um great expansion um and you know we do need to get the state permits for those um relocation sites and you know that's um that's pretty crucial so if if we're proposing something that looks like a number that that isn't probably sustainable on the receiving side or that that's going to cause real problems with adjacent neighbors because even in

[265:00] the southern part of our system we do have adjacent neighbors to most of those receiving sites um that really have to sign on for the state to um initiate giving us a permit and so if we're proposing too high of numbers we certainly may not be able to get that permit even if we feel that there may be space there so again it's kind of a complicated system i think increasing the numbers in southern grasslands at this point would not lead to an unsustainable situation through time you know you might reach that point where it would be unsustainable so i think if we're talking near-term that's probably not the biggest issue with more relocation if you're talking a longer time frame then you start to to really run into some issues with that okay thank you sam if i can just jump in for something i may have some other questions which i would like to defer until everyone's had a chance to speak great and aaron's got his hand raised and then i was going to go to process things sam go for process okay we have a lot of people waiting to speak to us and i think because it's a very

[266:02] complex and detailed issue and i know how councils are we're going to want to ask a lot of questions and so out of uh deference to the people who have come to speak to us i would suggest that we take a short break come back do public comment and then we take our pulse again when we're done with that and see if we want to make any decisions yet tonight at jane's request i have already kicked off the last two items for the night so what we have left on our plate is this here so how does council feel about that and when you say about take the pulse do i think we might want to keep in mind that we might want to defer the conversation and the decision to another night is that what you mean that's what i mean yeah okay good good to know we have an option yeah um well it makes cac more complicated but what's new right so okay let's take a five-minute break and be back here and promptly so that we don't

[267:00] keep people waiting damn wait wait for those changes sam i'm sorry see again oh i just said thank you for those changes oh you're welcome you're welcome [Music]

[271:01] now this is a sound check can you hear me john potter yeah thank you nearby yes so are we not going to have a discussion afterwards we're just going to have the public hearing we are going to check in with council when we get to that point and see if people have the wherewithal to go through it sometimes on nights like this is better to put it off everybody i'll think more clearly there won't be any more public comments so i get that it says you said the last two items which is the charter committee updates and the fine financial legislative updates so those were the bottom two things i thought were jumping off but they are off okay but i didn't realize it was also possible so but what we're saying it's also possibly the discussion may come off too

[272:00] yes that's will council you know if it's 11 30 or 11 45 probably not going to be a useful discussion it's just going to take too long to get too detailed but we'll we'll get to that i think i need to take care of one bit of housekeeping here really quick which is we just amended the agenda and we kind of did it on the fly so if i could get a motion to amend the agenda to remove the last two items second second any objections great all right now um any other process questions before i um start the public hearing great well um a couple quick things this is a issue that arouses a lot of passions in people and so one of the things that i would ask of everyone is to listen respectfully to what other people say i know there won't be interruptions because of the zoom platform but when your turn comes to speak at least

[273:02] assume that maybe somebody who said something you didn't agree with had the best of intentions and a different way of looking at the world so that's the first thing is let's be polite and make this a community conversation the second thing is we have two um speakers who have reason to move uh what everybody has to say is important we have two sixth grade girls here on the call and we have um marlon rice um first gentleman of colorado so i would request permission to move those two to the front of the line if council is okay with it okay hearing no objection we will do that so the first two are number 71 in our short list and that is cecilia baumgartner and lucy crank so you guys will be our first speaker

[274:00] marlon rice will be our second speaker i'm assuming that both of these are still available and then we'll move on so i guess it looked to ryan ryan are you back in pocket i am here uh and cecilia uh you are are now able to to speak thank you ceo you should be unmuted hi i'm celia baumgartner i live at 1119 portland place i am speaking today on behalf of the prairie dogs because they are an important part of our ecosystem prairie dogs provide homes and food for many other animals can we please work together to come

[275:02] up with a better solution for the prairie dogs to support our community and our environment please do not allow lethal management in the entire project area if i could pray to save the prairie dogs i would but i can't you save them for me and my generation and does lucy want to speak as well with you um i think we're waiting for lucy to join lucy i did not see lucy on our participant list as active and they were one in the same speaker so cecilia thank you or celia it's different in two places for me thank you for your input and thank you for sticking up late at night so you could tell us what you think

[276:01] um with that we'll move on to marlon rice uh thank you to the honorable members of the boulder city council and mayor for allowing me to speak to you this evening my name is marlon reese as you mentioned i'm the first gentleman of colorado but more importantly i'm a boulder native and a resident as some of you may already know the focus of my work has been and continues to be better treatment for animals it is my understanding that in its current form the open space board of trustees proposal under consideration by the council tonight grants permission to use lethal control on as many as 29 000 prairie dogs spread out across 967 acres in north boulder county open space uh it's also my understanding that the current plan includes a priority

[277:00] implementation provision that will allow for the relocation of 1 200 prairie dogs per year and i want to thank the council for the inclusion of this provision i remain concerned about the remaining 25 000 prairie dogs that may be marked for extermination though residents of the city and county of boulder value and respect the diversity of our local wildlife and our city has long been known for its humane and innovative approaches to wildlife stewardship according to colorado parks and wildlife earlier mentioned prairie dogs are a keystone species which means they are species upon which other animals depend and the removal of these species from the ecosystem would cause changes to ecosystem function prairie dogs are prey for species like endangered black-footed ferrets which are a conservation success story in our great state hawks prairie falcons eagles badgers and

[278:00] bobcats their boroughs also provide escape structure nests and dents for species like burrowing owls kit and swift fox cotton rabbits and other small mammals and reptiles they also till and aerate the soil uh did i use up my time no yeah i think you did but if you ever finished a sentence or two that's fine sure yeah i uh what i uh wanted to uh to uh just highlight is uh you know i i'd like to be a partner to the city and county of boulder uh speaking from the state side in terms of getting the the kind of volunteer help that would be necessary [Music] fully understanding that uh we can't have this conflict on agricultural lands and we should always be

[279:00] looking at ways to fix problems in the most humane way possible so i'd like to to be an ally to the city council to the open space board of trustees and i am at your service thank you guys for having me speak tonight thank you marlon have a good night okay here we go i appreciate it uh here we go top of the list and the first speakers are shirley schaller aaron smalley and deanna meyer shirley europe surely you're muted is that on our end sure you should be able to there you go good all right thank you city council members and mayor

[280:02] my name is shirley schaller my husband and i live at 50 54 51st street and we've lived there since 2009 my great-grandparents homesteaded this piece of property in 1872 and it was a dry land farm at that time until my grandfather helped dig the farmer's ditch out so it could become a very prolific hayfield and hay farm and he worked this land behind a horse and then he had a tractor and i grew up on that tractor in my grandfather's lap and my parents taught me how to set dams and how to farm the land and i just want to say that agriculture land is a very important annuity for boulder county that is what boulder county

[281:01] basically started out with and it would be a great loss if the irrigated land would be lost to prairie dogs the prairie dogs were not on this land when my grand great grandparents arrived they have only come within the last 15 years by migrating in from the west and i know that my father sold all that five acres to the city of boulder and if he could see the land that he was told that would be preserved as growing farmland of hay i think he would have a few choice four-letter words and it is up to the city council to maintain this irrigated land and please help open space to do so and thank you very much for your time thank you surely next are aaron smalley ianna meyer and beth quist aaron

[282:01] yeah actually um i'm i have people pooling time for me so i get four minutes uh it'll be kellen anderson and wanda fuller giving me their time oh god he's gonna be there and are they here yes they are okay have we seen them right the previous person might still be unmuted so sorry anyway uh my name is here what was that ryan i do see them here please go ahead okay okay um my name is aaron i live in gun barrel i just want to start off by saying that i am disgusted but not surprised by the amount of people that support this ecocide this is a dark day in boulder history how typical of humans to choose themselves over every other living thing on this planet how typical of us americans to kill everything that gets in the way of our bank accounts many of you have not been raised to value nature and it shows our education system has

[283:00] failed us both in teaching a science as well as ethics i am frustrated that we are trying to convince the city council of boulder to protect wildlife i'm appalled this is even up for discussion last month at the concept review for the developments on spine road i wondered if our elected officials were listening the very fact we're having this meeting today confirms that public hearings are just for show that most of you are already bought and paid for i'm losing faith in our city leadership but here we are putting in yet another futile effort to try to stick to your famous climate commitments of taking bold innovative and collaborative actions to create systemic change that equitably addresses the global climate crisis and ensures quality of life in boulder and beyond the plan that is proposed by osbt is not bold it's not innovative and it definitely does not create systemic change this is a lazy and short-sighted evil plan how dare you try to claim this plan is for the benefit of the environment let's cut the charade it's all about the money and it always has been we have expanded

[284:00] our population and killed off predators and fragmented habitat and our solution is to kill more animals you say that prairie dogs are hurting our soil but if we really want to remove animals that are hurting the planet we should be calling cattle or better yet humans we are the infestation not our native wildlife i'm a naturalist and i go birdwatching in this project area regularly i have photos of foxes coyotes and multiple raptors on nests on these lands if the problem is that there aren't enough predators we should be working harder at protecting these creatures from persecution the lack of predators is caused by farmers and ranchers who shoot and poison them or their prey rather than coexisting this is their problem that they themselves created i don't want a single penny of my tax dollars going towards this the welfare the welfare ranchers could not exist without subsidies without our tax dollars it's a terrible business model with terrible ramifications to our local and global ecosystem we need to hold them accountable to be better environmental stewards are we really going to kill off a keystone species to feed domestic

[285:01] animals you want to destroy a dwindling native habitat to grow invasive grass in what way does this represent both their values i get the need for hay but we can and must do better humans and livestock now comprise 96 of vertebrate land biomass on earth this is 2020 we can come up with more creative solutions than removing all the wildlife from our open spaces if we don't start encouraging wildlife friendly food production rather than enabling farmers to continue to wreak havoc on our environment we will soon have nothing left prairie dogs are a keystone species also a flagship species in this case the burrowing owl is a threatened species in colorado whose decline is directly correlated to destruction of prairie dog towns that they rely on for survival heroist hawks in colorado eat only one live prey item during the winter and its prairie dogs can you see everything is connected if we keep killing prairie dogs we won't have any wildlife left we're approaching our own silent spring to our city council members who have already made up their minds who have

[286:01] decided that making money is more important than conserving our beautiful planet i ask you to go home and look your children in the eye tell them what you're doing notice how in the kids movies it's never the good guy who's destroying nature for personal gain you will be the actual super villains in your own children's life stories if we can't get it right in boulder then i don't want to live on this planet anymore i'm begging you please don't do this thank you thank you so we're going to go back it turns out lucy um the 6th grader is still in the meeting with a different number so we can do that can you hear me now yes okay hi i am lucy crank i live at 210 brook road boulder i am here to i'm here at city council tonight to help the prairie dogs and keep boulder wild i support keep water wild's recommendations all 10 of them but i especially am asking council to reduce the project area i was here at

[287:02] the beginning six years ago when council saved the prairie dogs at the armory and i am here to help to cause the prairie dog on the croplands so please reduce the lethal management on our cropland prairie dogs please help the prairie dogs through the struggle and please work on our community to find a better way than lethal management thank you thank you lucy now we have deanna meyer beth quist and randall clark indiana can you hear me yes okay i have two people that pulled time um it is james and julia warder okay do we know if they're here ryan uh let me check julia is here and james is also here okay very good you have four minutes

[288:01] all right my name is deanna meyer i am the executive director director of prairie protection colorado and here i am again trying to convince this council that killing a keystone species down to less than one percent of their historic populations is not in the best interest of the citizens or the environment i am raising my voice on behalf of the tens of thousands of individual lives who are currently existing in a publicly owned prairie community now slated for death and removal in service to ranchers so they can grow hay for horses in livestock reading the proposal and the various articles written in support of this lethal solution one could think that the city of boulder was proposing to solve the world's most pressing problem of grassland obliteration by further tilling of the soil and throwing industrially manufactured compost on the land as they pipe water in from the dying colorado river which is somehow supposed to increase the city of boulder's food sobriety by growing hay for horses and cows

[289:00] as voltaire famously said those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities and as robert j lifton has noted before you can commit any mass atrocity you must convince yourself and others that what you're doing is not atrocious but rather beneficial you must have a claim to virtue this is the city of boulder's claim to virtue insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results for over a century these lands have been cleared of every living being down to the bacteria and planted to human use this is biotic cleansing soil species rivers agriculture is carnivorous what it eats is ecosystems and it swallows them whole growing crops takes an entire community of plants of animals of microfauna and destroys them it gives them nowhere to live it's mass extinction on a global scale this is why these lands are degraded the prairie dogs are healers of the land unlike the

[290:02] destroyers that have rained down on them since colonization millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to acquire these lands for the boulder public and millions more are now being proposed to destroy the biotic communities that call this place home while it is true that these lands were purchased for the intent of biotic cleansing in service to one species only boulder's open space priorities can shift to protecting biotic communities that support our ability to breathe clean air eat food free of poisons and drink clean water the idea that the current inhabitants of these properties and the native keystone species who are already doing the hard work of loosening the soil should continue to be destroyed by conquest and eradication are the same false solutions that have placed all of us in the sixth mass extinction event to say that there are no predators to help balance out the prairie dog populations is dishonest and comes only from those who are not paying attention entire biotic communities made up of

[291:01] hundreds of species depend on these prairie dogs for their health and survival how many of the colonizers used similar justifications during the past 300 years when they annihilated through poison and shooting over 5 billion prairie dogs from the grasslands of the west while at the same time placed poisoned bait stations out to eradicate the predators who would feed on them all in the name of food production for humans not much has changed let the prairie dogs buffalo pronghorn elk raptors owls coyotes wolves bears weasels bobcats reptiles and insects heal this land and reverse the effects of stolen water pesticides herbicides gmo crops industrial fertilizers and the biotic cleansing that comes from tilling the soil i say biotic communities over hay thank you next we have beth quist randall clark and hayden fuller

[292:02] can you hear me yes temperate grasslands are the most endangered ecosystems on the planet keystone prairie dogs are at less than one percent of their historic populations humans and their domesticated animals comprise 96 of vertebrate land biomass and the conversation is how many prairie dogs to kill and whose property values are threatened rather than further restoration and expansion using yeomans or any plow for gm alfalfa sugar beets grains veggies and plastic laden methods of hemp cultivation kills entire native biotic communities forces land into growing that which its climate is not suited and is heavily dependent on petroleum-based industry input which can never be called sustainable in regards to relocation will the rest of the dependent biotic community in the areas being relocated go with them

[293:00] possible solution [Music] expand properly managed grazers combining the conservation work of her artist bios with the techniques of organizations like boulder's own savory institute managed livestock with prairie dogs that are already there encouraging soil and native grasses while fulfilling the agricult require requirements of open space reducing industrial dependencies of mono crops that are vulnerable to grid collapse thus strengthening local food resiliency dry land adapted species would be preferable cows will do a non-lethal predator controls of course so that the prairie dogs stabilize we need to mimic nature not fight it will boulder council choose the sixth mass extinction route of ecocidal agriculture or will you be a leader and innovator in new local climate and wildlife friendly methods of food production we should be celebrating and encouraging prairie dogs moving back into their traditional lands

[294:00] and crying for the rain yes they increased transpiration cycles along with countless other keystone gifts thank you i'm beth quist musician permaculture designer farmer board member of prairie protection colorado thank you beth next we have randall clark hayden fuller and cody orrick randall [Music] i'm a resident of boulder county and i'm personally opposed to any lethal control of our prairie dog population as they are as you know a keystone species then identified as another species which i'm not familiar with and they face many threats throughout their habitat that then also threatens well over a hundred other species that deanna just listed off the top of her head impressively um and so i strongly support keep bolder wild kpw's recommendations that they've made to you for a reduced project area

[295:01] and decreased lethal control on osmp's expedited plan for prairie dogs on irrigated agricultural lands they know more about this than i do i support them i support the council person who thankfully addressed their proposal and i would hope that that you actually partner with them they um represent uh numerous very concerned citizens and extremely knowledgeable concerned scientists prairie dog coalition the humane society of the united states of america [Music] and you know i would hope that you would proceed in coordination with them and in detail listen to and read their proposal um they know a lot more about this than i do i will honestly admit but i do feel that um their proposal more closely

[296:00] reflects um the values of boulder and and the values that i'm sure most of you also hold and the reason why you've chosen to live here that we want to be humanely treating the wildlife that we live among thank you very much thank you and no um next we have hayden kit fuller who's fooling time it looks like with joe stench's erik anderson and the anti-special um ryan are we all good to go yes hey then go ahead thank you very much uh my name is kit fuller and i live in the city of boulder i want to thank the council for this opportunity to speak tonight i'd also like to thank the open space mountain parks and the osbt the pdwg the keep older wild and all the others who have contributed to the plan that's been presented tonight in such depth the open space and mountain park system

[297:00] is the jewel in boulder's crown i don't need to tell you that but i do feel it's important to remind you because sometimes i think we do tend to forget um but also the balance of wildlife uses on our public lands is also a jewel in boulder's crown i would encourage city council to not go along with the expedited process which is what brings in the lethal control in this plan killing up to 29 000 prairie dogs over the next five years killing thousands of prairie dogs on our public lands every year for years is outrageous to any older citizen this is just not a boulder thing to do it's plainly inhumane how can city council even be at a point to be considering this in boulder colorado i realize and i understand that this is a complicated situation so i would

[298:02] encourage council to be very careful with your votes this vote could easily become a headline that will remove boulder from all those great places to live lists this vote may be the most significant legacy of this council so here's what boulder's goal should be avoid lethal control measures completely in other words manage the prairie dog populations in a humane way prairie dogs are not listed as an endangered species but for all practical purposes they are threatened having been reduced to only about two percent of their estimated former habitat here is a species that naturally manages its own ecosystem here in the high plains where ecosystem health is a delicate balance and climate conditions can vary widely during the year and from one year to the next this is a species we should ally ourselves with and learn from

[299:00] we should not continue to see prairie dogs as a nuisance they are a critical part of a natural ecosystem supporting many other forms of wildlife all of which we value they are a natural resource not a nuisance we need the benefits they provide whether we understand these benefits or not to say that prairie dogs destroy soil health is nonsense farming with the possible exception of organic farming is probably more detrimental to soil health so please do not allow this false claim to carry any weight in your considerations what is really at stake here is it water rights if this is a concern about maintaining water rights let's sell those water rights that we can't use to appropriate local entities instead of damaging our rare grassland preserves in prairie dog conservation areas boulder needs those funds right now and we need these areas to be kept in their natural grassland state and not irrigated killing thousands of prairie dogs on our public lands

[300:01] every year for years is just not a bolder thing to do please vote no to this inhumane plan tell staff to adopt the elements the plan proposed by keep older wild kbw has great recommendations to help reach this goal as fully as possible and their recommendations will result in a humane plan with manageable scale and costs thank you again for the opportunity to speak tonight thank you kitt next up cody orton paula schuler and elizabeth black council we deeply appreciate your thoughtful deliberations and leadership on these hard topics it's important to note first that the preferred alternative took months of compromising work by our osmp staff please don't discount their work of more than a year and send them back to the drawing board

[301:00] let's step back together to look at the big picture of this rare community that has deliberately taxed itself to own 45 000 acres of land with 6 400 acres of that in farmlands to maintain water rights and grow food instead of developments we've learned a lot about farming and ranching in these last 20 years about fostering biodiversity and mimicking nature using ruminants to give back to the soil we have painfully learned that without management imbalance prairie dogs turn fragments of previously tilled or grazed land into desert there is nothing wild about the 464 acres of moonscapes that have been left fallow with prairie dogs nor will they heal on their own the vision to hold before ourselves is one of healthy soil on these small parcels in the project area we will foster healthy soil ecosystems that support a variety of life and not

[302:00] just one species soils that can sequester carbon and provide for the clear need for local food security healthy soils can support jobs we have a thriving young farmers coalition and movement we have our osmp staff we have woofers people of all backgrounds ranchers farmers all eager to create a better world we can cultivate cultivate biodiverse soil plant insect and yes animal communities to grow healthy food but we must change the way we manage and we will need all the possible tools in our toolkit staff's preferred alternative is the first step toward that vision the first step toward healing degraded land where the topsoil has blown away with the wind we have checkpoints all along the way where we can assess what's working as a community let's do this thing with our whole hearts together thank you thank you next paula schuler elizabeth black and

[303:01] kanye boca paula my husband and i live and farm on private property in the project area the city of boulder is our neighbor there are two open space irrigated agricultural parcels across the street from our farm with high levels of prairie dogs prairie dogs emigrate to our farm all year long the same scene occurs throughout the entire project area unmanaged prairie dog populations from osmp irrigated parcels are moving to neighboring private property and causing unwanted damage the city's prairie dog problem has become the neighbor's prairie dog problem no neighbor in the project area wants prairie dogs on their private land neighbors are lethally controlling prairie dogs in large numbers some more humanely than others council is considering the osbt recommendations to lethally control one hundred to two hundred acres an estimated three thousand to six thousand prairie dogs per year on osm irrigated lands currently neighbors of

[304:00] of irrigated open space in the project area lethally control a whole lot more than 6 000 prairie dogs per year i sent council a chart outlining mitigation numbers and expenses from 10 neighbors and the numbers are alarming neighbors are mitigating tens of thousands of prairie dogs each year in the project area and the prairie dogs are only coming from one source osmp irrigated ag lands council has a tough decision tonight no one likes to kill prairie dogs council needs to realize that huge numbers of prairie dogs are already being mitigated in the project area boulder's lack of management is simply outsourcing the killing to neighbors and i believe boulder needs to take ownership of this conflict too boulder needs to take responsibility of the prairie dog conflict on their irrigated lands and to manage these parcels more appropriately efficiently and effectively abundant prairie dogs 3 400 protected acres the high end of conservation goals will remain unaffected by the osbt recommendations please approve the osbt

[305:01] recommended preferred alternative i look forward to osmp managing irrigated lands for sustainable agriculture without prairie dogs i look forward to boulder being a good neighbor thank you for your time thank you next elizabeth black connie bubka and ray bridge uh elizabeth black is nine tony boga is 10 and raymond bridge is 11. so it's elizabeth black now can you hear me we can okay good evening thank you for standing in the line of fire on prairie dogs please support owen osmp and osbt's unanimous recommendation for lethal control of prairie dogs on irrigated aglets please also allow all normal ag activities to disturb burrows without limitations we at heel have compromised over and over to reach the preferred alternative

[306:02] keep older wild last minute proposal is not a compromise but rather a derailment of the public staff osbts and our participation in good faith over two years to come to this preferred alternative please don't make a mockery of all our hard work please approve the preferred alternative i want to discuss finances which is hard on zoom so here's two sound demos for our first demo each little bean hitting the pot equals one thousand dollars so here's nine thousand dollars that's the cost to clear 40 acres with lethal control now here's 176 000 that's the cost for the same 40 acres with live trapping and relocation which bill would you rather pay now our let's next little demo each

[307:01] little bean equals one acre here's 40 acres that's how much 176 thousand dollars will clear will clear prairie dogs using relocation now here's 800 acres that's how much land the same money will clear using lethal control covet means every tax dollar must count please consider the amount thank you thank you elizabeth next up kanye barker raymond bridge and rona unsell connie can you hear me yeah okay i'm here speaking about the eradication of prairie dogs residing on the open space in boulder county before any decision is made council

[308:01] needs to recognize the purpose of the prairie dog a keystone species that is crucial to our ecosystem they are important not pests prey dogs provide homes to many species and food for eagles hawks coyotes etc wiping out the prairie dogs at this rate will result in certain demise of many species of animals it is often an overlooked fact that prairies prairie dogs are actually good for the land they aerate and fertilize the soil soil a natural solution allowing for a greater diversity of plants to survive this has been cited in many articles it's important to note that i believe pds should be listed as endangered species in colorado as they are down to one percent of the population due to the continual killings across the state blues is a result of the collection of data for all 50 states together rather than just one state colorado is the top one of the top states that kills more prairie dogs than any other this needs to change council needs to make a decision on this

[309:01] matter based on facts and not just the opinions of farmers ranchers and other special interest groups allocating more funding toward conservation of these animals and the animals they support and implementing solutions that promote life let's not kill our wildlife let's not kill our prairie dogs let's celebrate their life because they do bring joy to us in the midst of a pandemic people don't need to see more destruction they need to see that proper decisions are made to preserve the prairie dog and all other wildlife they need to see that these decisions send positive messages do it for the people do it for the animals the animals have no voice we are their voice do it for all of us thank you thank you connie raybridge rona unsell and karst bruce miller right

[310:10] you'll need to unmute yourself raymond bridge you're able to speak if you unmute yourself we'll come we'll come back ray are you ready or should we come back why don't we come back let's go to rhona unsa cars bruce mueller and molly davis right and rana is uh pooling her time with number 24 chris

[311:01] goodman [Music] yes she is she has given her time to number 24 uh chris goodman so we oh i see you gotta get to chris at number 24. ray are you there now yes i am ah there we go go for it good evening council members i'm raymond bridge and i live in boulder i've worked on open space issues for many years and i'm particularly concerned with maintaining our natural ecosystems grasslands are an important component and black-tailed prairie dogs are keystone species and our grasslands that is why osmp has designated over 3 000 acres of the system for their preservation it's a pitiful fragment of the belt of prairie that they once occupied along the western edge of the great plains but we humans have taken the rest to plant

[312:01] our crops or i'm sorry i had something pop up to plant our crops or pave over we also have to remember that one of the other charter purposes of open space is to preserve local agriculture our farming and ranching ranching families are critical to doing that and allowing unsustainable prairie dog populations on irrigated agricultural land is not humane or fair to those families in the end it results in more prairie dogs being killed and more of our farmers moving to nebraska please adopt the recommendations of osmp staff and the board of trustees thank you so

[313:18] did you hear that mueller molly davis and sue cass so cars is up can you hear me yep okay karst plus mueller 383 jasper drive and lions i'm a member of the prairie dog working group and i think that the working group's recommendations are really the best long-term solutions to the problem

[314:00] we're talking about tonight and they should have been included in the proposed plan to make it more balanced keep boulder wild's recommendations are reasonable and logical alternative to the proposed plan they include the following reduce the project area to include properties with the most conflicts by removing the pcas grassland preserves and areas that where coexistence can occur on alternative egg and conservation leases two analyze with stakeholders each property to determine best management for long-term solutions three use special use lethal permit only on reduced project area and only on properties that have been analyzed by stakeholders where lethal has been determined as the only option a blanket kill permit for all 967 acres is unacceptable four relocate prairie dogs to the southern grasslands where there is low

[315:01] occupancy less conflicts a larger landscape and historic habitat without these amendments the planned as a pro as proposed is not reasonable and it's not sensible it's like a bomb on the landscape with no mitigation to offset all the massive loss of prairie ducts and the species depending on them it would be unacceptable if approved the city would be complicit in continuing the dark history of the prairie dog that has resulted in its current status as a colorado species of greatest conservation need the plan as is is unjust is not justified as you heard in the presentation there is no reliable evidence that prairie dogs damaged the soil a place they evolved as beneficial engineers so inexcusable for a place like boulder to kill them all and then realize that they were not to blame i would recommend that you consider

[316:00] and be mindful of our city's legacy thank you very much next we have molly davis sue cass and ellen gager maybe that wrong molly davis is pool in time so you have four minutes oh actually mom it looks like one of your fooling people is not here um you know roxanne perkins is here only joel shaft is present okay so what does that give me three minutes two minutes okay um let's start with the facts jim crane and i the director of urban base for 25 years sat down before his death he said in that quote

[317:01] we did lethal control until i retired in 2002 we did it to control the population of the paradigms they did it with crack again team of dead antonio and chris wilson when you're on a ward or a council position the hope is that people would hear you the opposites that are chosen later and put their mindses aside and do what is good for the citizen i'm hoping that you can and that's here produce your responsibility is in your swearing and

[318:00] when you go on a ward you swear to take an oath for fiduciary responsibility i find that the bee needs immunity findings or outrages and they are unfeasible and they are going to bury the space department with the money that they recommend and i don't support verifying their findings i want you to please vote for this preferred alternative thank you molly next up let's see next is 18. next dorothy donohue eric and brian cotham

[319:01] dorky hi can you hear me yes okay uh to the members of boulder city council when i first moved to boulder 28 years ago we prided ourselves as protectors of prairie dogs in the past several years i've seen a boulder i'm not proud of killing and removing thousands of healthy prairie dogs from the grasslands is not neces is unnecessary and unacceptable for a species facing threats of extinction the recommendation would cost our tax dollars up to 545 hundred thousand dollars per year and killing annually up to six thousand prairie dogs removing prairie dogs to so-called improve the soil health

[320:00] what will it look like after they poison the prairie dogs large plowing machines pesticides tilling and piping for constant water supplies from the western slopes if boulder thinks this land will be used for planting fruits and vegetables for the people of boulder they are being fooled this land will probably be used to plant hay for horses and cows when it is all said and done after hundreds of thousands of taxpayer money spent the senseless killing of healthy endangered animals disrupting the food supply of various predators we will have some hay for horses we need to value these amazing keystone animals who play an important role in our ecosystem and to be a community that doesn't fall into the same trap of thinking progress means the annihilation of our wildlife thank you thank you i think i accidentally sniffed over sue

[321:02] cass so after sue will be alice carrick and ryan cotton can you hear me yes okay thank you uh sue cass i live in longmont colorado and i'm addressing you this evening from multiple perspectives as the matriarch of a sixth generation boulder family as a 20-year volunteer naturalist for boulder county parks and open space including nine years on the parks and open space advisory committee and as a burrowing owl and golden eagle nest monitor for boulder county parks and open space during my many observations of the new golden eagle nest i'm monitoring this year every observed green delivery to the nest has been a prairie dog the nest has produced a single fledgling a beautiful big female bigger than her mama and a couple of weeks ago i was privileged to observe her first kill a prairie dog

[322:00] prior to the turn of the century brewing owls were believed to have been extirpated from boulder county and only in recent years have they been observed again nesting in prairie dog boroughs in small numbers and routinely monitored on osmp and bcps properties i'm the volunteer coordinator for the county's portion of this important shared open-ended project supported by the boulder county audubon society and boulder county nature association we know our birds of prey population will decline significantly without healthy widely distributed prairie dog colonies yet we who support that conservation ethic must also acknowledge prairie dogs are untenable on irrigated farmland as this thoroughly researched staff proposal and unanimously approved osbt recommendation indicate i urge all stakeholders prairie dog conservationists multi-generational farmers and ranchers osmp bcpos cpw to come together to strategize workable

[323:01] solutions to the long-standing conundrum represented by prairie dog burrowing and breeding and feeding ecology on urban agricultural open space interface solutions that are viable for farmers and ranchers and sustainable for prairie dogs and birds of prayer and a continued preservation of large suitable open space tracks which we are sensible to this extraordinarily complicated endeavor thank you thank you sir next we have alistair brian compliment and cat narvaez alice hi my name is alice starrick and i'm a local farmer with the golden hoof um we are actively involved in the regenerative ag movement working both locally and on the federal level with congressman jonah goose trying to encourage regenerative ag practices on federal lands to us the open space staff's recommendations to limit tillage to

[324:01] mostly shallow surface tillage or futile at best and potentially very destructive to our frankly minimal chances of creating a truly sustainable local food system prairie dog burrows are very deep and soil life is concentrated in the top few inches of soil this top few inches is the worst zone to repeatedly disturb if you are trying to rebuild a healthy ecosystem or trying to grow healthy food disturbing this area repeatedly with shallow tillage also actually encourages prairie dogs by removing the soil protective plant life deep rooted plants thwart prairie dog invasions in our experience the best defense against prairie dog invasion is healthy soils with deep rooted plants a healthy regenerative ecosystem the kind of tillage that works best to fight prairie dogs is the same tillage that causes the least harm to the life in the soil

[325:00] deep tillage that disturbs the topsoil as little as possible we use a key line plow to accomplish this this tillage goes around 18 inches deep when done properly only creating minimal cut lines through the topsoil this allows the plow to destroy tunnels directly below the precious topsoil while breaking up sub-surface compaction and allowing water to penetrate deeply without running away all with minimal disturbance to the precious topsoil please let the farmers farm our open space agslands regeneratively and keep detrimental regulations out of their way thanks dallas ryan good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak i am just getting queued up here

[326:02] okay i'm brian kaplan boulder county farmers markets 55 54 45 conicelli court boulder colorado we are in this difficult place of deciding whether to kill prairie dogs because of our simple presence here means that the predators and other natural conditions that used to control prairie dog populations are largely gone today prairie dog numbers in many locations are rendering lands agricultural lands unusable much of which currently do serve as part of our local food system the result is that farmers and ranchers abandoning the land and the land turning turning fallow although that may sound good to some it is important to know that fallow land is not equated to natural or healthy land no species without balance creates healthy outcomes we humans are ample evidence of that we will see increasing amounts of degrading soils losses of farmers and ranchers

[327:01] permanently lost water rights and importantly a weakened food system we cannot say we are passionate about the preservation of ecosystems while at the same time abandoning our land stewards and letting healthy plants decay we also cannot say we are an enlightened and responsible community and continue to push the consequences of producing food for boulder residents onto other communities leaving those others to make the difficult decisions about how to meet our needs producing food is not the activity of a special interest group it is essential to our life despite the unfortunate nature of this situation it is incumbent upon all of us to make the difficult decisions necessary to maintain the fragile system we have i respectfully ask that you approve the preferred option as presented by staff

[328:00] thank you thank you brian next we have helen braider eureka getaway waldorf and chris goodman helen when you are now able to speak you'll need to unmute yourself yeah hello hello this is helen brader 1200 sumac avenue in boulder uh thank you for giving me time to speak and i'd like to endorse what brian just said i thought that was very moving i've been boarding horses in the pasture at boulder valley ranch for 25 years i've seen many come and go when i put my first horse out there there were 25 horses happily grazing on the four pastures carefully managed by bob lover now the pastures can only support a few horses because the fields have become so degraded by the prairie dogs in the past few years my two elderly horses barely made it through this last winter i used to walk out in the summer in grasses up to my knees

[329:00] now i trip on bindweed pass huge stands of thistle and cross bare spots with nothing but gravel because the topsoil is blown away in the winter winds it's truly urgent boulder valley ranch has been it has been a truly a jam in open space it needs desperately to be treasured not many cities have a working ranch so close where people can stroll or bike and see calves just born hay being cut and bailed and ranchers moving cattle on horseback it is also a rare place when where an average person can keep a horse we are not the elite who can afford 600 or more a month to keep a horse we are retired teachers artists and construction workers who happen to love horses and riding we have a vibrant hispanic community up at the barn and some of us work around the ranch to help cover costs the prairie dog situation needs to be dressed immediately the ranch may soon become a wasteland and unusable as the prairie dogs are steadily taking over

[330:00] the hay fields and will reduce them to weeds and bare soil as they've done to much of the pastures where we have our horses and where the cows grave since we no longer have bison and antelope to keep the grasses grazed we need cows and sheep and horses around thank you and please support the um the proposal by the board of trustees they worked very hard on it thank you thank you helen next eureka yatabi waldoc chris goodman and elle cushman enrico yes on the second my computer is not working well okay uh my name is eric [Music] using the use of little control of

[331:01] pralidox why do we human always try to control other living brain beings on earth in the name of management management is a euphemism for destroying other lives to father one's benefit and i'm speaking for praili dogs this plan would authorize staff to remove up to twenty nine thousand preli dogs do you realize how large the number is it is a little less than the number of the whole cu boulder student it is enormous we know what kind of impact the students have to boulder when the campus is closed similarly you cannot ignore the impact of killing 29 000 preyley dogs you may say oh it's just 29 000 but everywhere in boulder county they are being killed

[332:00] eventually they will be gone once they are gone they are gone taking many other species with them i have been braining bringing international student for short-term programs to boulder and i am so proud of wildlife and people who live here please keep the good name or boulder keep boulder wild thank you very much for the opportunity thank you eureka next chris pittman l cushman and dwayne cushman chris hi there i actually have um two people that have seated their time to me tonight we reviewed one earlier um rona i've got them both you have four minutes and also cindy seals and okay and then also by an error in my part i am also number 71 so i've already

[333:01] you could take me off there that would be great um okay we'll do all right here we go okay all right i want to ask the city council to consider in this project you'd be spending almost a million dollars is that more than is taken in from the proposed agricultural money next i'd like to address the fact that at no given point when i voted in favor of my tax dollars towards going towards open space purchase that that would ever be used to kill prairie dogs uh the next item i want to address is this delta dust that they're bringing up it this is a product that is banned in europe it's also banned in india the fact that our epa has not banned this should be a concern for everyone i will not buy any food or support any products that are coming from land that has been treated with this delta dust at any point now or ten years from now we all know the dangers of these pesticides um the next thing i want to effect

[334:00] or address is that i my sources tonight that i've gathered this information is the national wildlife federation the world wildlife federation and usgs one other fact that i've accrued this evening is ecologists consider prairie dogs to be a keystone species of immense ecological importance snakes burrowing owls and some other species use their deserted burrows for nesting areas they're also an important food source for many predator species including the rare black-footed ferret cornerstone species no one has actually defined what that means let's do that next a cornerstone species is also known as a keystone species which has a disproportionately large effect on its natural natural environment relative to its abundance this is such species are described as playing a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community we've addressed that grasslands are rapidly diminishing this cornerstone species affects many

[335:00] other organisms in the ecosystem the role of these keystone species play in its ecosystem is analogous with the role of keystone in an arch while the keystone is under the least pressure of any of the stones in the arch the arch still collapses without it similarly an ecosystem will experience the same dramatic shift the next thing i want to address is that prairie dogs are also considered an ecosystem engineer they are in north america the prairie dog is an ecosystem critical engineer with their burrows that provide nesting areas for all of these endangered species that i've addressed another topic that i reviewed this evening was that prairie dog tunnel systems can also help channel rain water into the water table and prevent runoff and erosion it can also serve to change the composition of the soil in a region by increasing aeration and reversing soil compaction that can be a result of cattle grazing this is coming directly from the world

[336:02] wildlife federation it stays superior dogs were killed in large numbers throughout the western united states because the prairie dog colonies disrupted farms and competed with grazing cattle as the number of prairie dogs dramatically declined it caused a ripple effect that impacted the success of other great plain species species black-footed ferrets are now one of the most endangered mammals in north america and that's another thing i want to address with you if they do use this delta dust to kill all these prairie dogs this is an insecticide used to kill insects what quantity are they going to have to use to wipe out prairie dogs the prairie dog is has a pronounced impact on the grassland ecosystem they maintain short vegetation by their grazing and a selective removal of tall plants and shrubs they also provide provide shelter foraging grounds and nesting habitat for a diverse array of animals i pray for many these species sorry about this i'm trying to read through all these papers um

[337:00] you know i guess that's just it i'm highly opposed to this um my open space tax dollars should not be going towards euthanizing prairie dogs thank you chris we have elle cushman dwayne cushman and charlotte whiteside oh hi so i'm not gonna pull time i'm just going to talk and i'm not going to say too much for once it's um some so many things have been said this evening um so wonderfully and stated that i don't want to overstate him but the few points that i'd like to make is for the lovers and the cushman's theory our fifth generation fam uh family ranching businesses and their sixth and seventh generations are currently on the ground these family owned and operated

[338:00] businesses have been in operation for over 160 years and they are among the oldest family owned and operated businesses in colorado which i think is quite an accomplishment and something we should be proud of and something that we have helped the continuation of and hoped further i appreciate all the work that's gone into um this conversation by the staff and the board and the council the community members prairie dog working group of which i'm a member um and while we i'm very relieved we're not going to have a further discussion tonight our vote so we can maybe have some time to reflect and research some of the implications of the delta dust and while we're taking a look at that i'm hoping we can maybe take a little look at that i i went out with the prairie dog working group prairie dog girls the other day

[339:00] to discuss duane's idea back from 1997. he was a member of the first prairie dog conservation plan group and kind of walked through some of the properties and pointed out some places where his idea might work where he his idea was to put in fences in the areas where the prairie dogs could be and um where they couldn't be and keep your prairie dogs but keep them over there so i hope his letter pretty much states thank you thank you next we have francis hardtown lucky beckett and beth potter francis hey good evening i'm francis heart dog 3186 galena way in boulder and am an unabashed lover of prairie dogs that said i had the privilege of serving

[340:01] as an open space trustee from 2014 to 2017 when the challenge presented by prairie dogs on city irrigated ag lands was already an issue our farming and ranching families have waited years for relief as have their neighbors who deal with the consequences of our delay in acting the reason we have agricultural open space land rather than urban sprawl is because of compacts we've entered into over the years with boulder's historic farming and ranching families the trustee's preferred alternative is a balanced solution and the result of many hours of public comment and staff time the moment has come to give our farmers and ranchers the ability to farm and ranch as required by the open space charter please support the trustee's preferred alternative and also approve the revisions to the city's regulatory policies that are necessary for our aglesses to

[341:00] conduct those activities critical for productivity and soil restoration thank you for your consideration of this challenging problem much appreciated thank you francis next lucky beckett beth potter and dan moore lucky it does look like pam is is next on our list of uh participants who are present okay 33 let me pull pam up here hi hi pam hi um my name is pam wonnick i'm out of broomfield colorado but a fourth generation native i'm speaking in support of keep boulder wild's recommendations which includes reduction in the project area and decreased level control i also want to mention that i was watching one of your land management tools that i

[342:01] did not see in your presentation tonight was just to temporarily cease grazing or cutting grasses i think that would be helpful a particular concern to me also is a soils report that was generated for the city stating that prairie dogs inhibit carbon sequestration on boulder grasslands because they removed perennial grasses but the other research i've looked at indicates that the underground activities of growing rodents does sequester carbon and potentially better than growing perennial plants the carbon sequestration occurs below ground where the entire ecosystem thrives with the diversity of animals including the microorganisms which nourishes the fungi and healthy fungi is the goal of carbon sequestration people are wild is kindly asked in the city to conduct carbon sequestration studies on prairie dog occupied sites that test soils deep inside the tunnels not six inches of top soil such as those samples taken for the city's study also on many prairie dog occupied sites in boulder european weights eurasian weeds are a problem but these plants were inherited through past agricultural

[343:00] practices they're not the fault of the prairie dogs i know this because i've been studying plants on prairie dog towns for over 20 years on multiple grasslands including brolders grasslands we think that it's important the city recognizes this problem and considers the reintroduction of broad selection of native plants that indicate resiliency on prairie dog presence and finally keep boulder wild is comprised of professionals with decades of work involving prairie dogs we've been engaged in multiple projects on local state and federal grasslands thus providing us with broad and practical experiences in what does and does not work for prairie dog management please listen to the experts that work with prairie dogs and support keep boulder wild's recommendations thank you it looks like we have um beth potter's back now so can you check ryan uh sure i'm looking i don't see best part on the list of participants here number 31 yeah maybe

[344:02] she just texted anyway we'll move on um okay beth if you are here please use the q a feature to let us know your your name here let me come back to bath is number 32 here dan moore uh denmark is here he's up and then susan summers and ellen kessler dan you're able to speak you'll need to unmute yourself okay can you hear me now yep can you hear me now yes

[345:07] i don't know what else we should do i can hear you [Music] go ahead hello can you hear me we can hear you yes okay very good so this is dan moore i live at fifty fifty nine watt road good evening and thank you for the opportunity to address the council beth and i both decided to speak since we have several years experience and differing perspectives with respect to the expanding

[346:00] prairie dog population over the three years that we've managed our land at along nywatt road we've invested more than fifteen thousand dollars into prairie dog control that's just over three years and another fifteen thousand into rejuvenating and replanting the land damaged first by human activity and then by prairie dog extreme overpopulation currently we spend about a thousand dollars per month to control prairie dog incursion and their harvesting of the prairie dog grass that we hope to grow there despite this we recognize that the prey dog itself is not the problem the problem is as has been said before an unbalanced ecosystem part of that upset has been the exit of large numbers of predators that under natural conditions in my opinion might have kept the prairie dog population under control as an engineer and scientist also i can say that with certainty that any system

[347:02] when running without controls runs the risk of becoming unbalanced in the case of prairie dogs now without adequate numbers of predators their numbers can double each year this is not my opinion but it's supported by other studies that have been done it's called exponential growth and it's what we're experiencing with the prairie dog population so the prairie dog is not the problem they are indeed keystone the problem is instead the incredibly large numbers caused by exponential growth it continues to outpace the previous efforts by the city and the county and because of the nature of this growth time works against us therefore my wife and i support the so-called preferred alternative that the trustee mentioned a few moments ago not because it will solve the overpopulation problem but because it beats out all other

[348:00] methodologies that we have heard about in previous meetings on this topic in both cost and time and because we need to control the exponential growth now in this issue time works against us as we try to re-establish a balanced ecosystem that we all want and that's it thank you sam you're muted and we can come back to uh elizabeth potter beth is here that's fine elizabeth you're able to speak you'll just need to unmute yourself

[349:18] how about now wonderful okay thank you so much to the city council and thank you to our speakers dan burke and mark gershman for such a comprehensive presentation we also appreciated all of the osmp staff that we've interacted with in the last three years we're very impressed you all do an amazing job as stewards of our open space lands so as you just heard from dan my husband and i own land inside the project area i think a lot of people we heard from so far do not live inside the project area we're at 50 50 ny road which is just north of city of boulder open space we also support the healthy ecosystem

[350:00] and agricultural lands group many of whom are our new neighbors on nywatt road so i grew up in colorado and i went to school at cu i love the open space of mountain parks lands we often see all of the wildlife on the land that's been discussed the coyotes and the foxes and the raptors many people have talked about the ecosystem in healing the land and i support the idea of a healthy ecosystem so on our land we want to have healthy native grasses and trees but we've lost much of our topsoil because of the prairie dogs so healthy grasses and trees contribute to carbon sequestration we've been hearing a lot about carbon sequestration the last couple of years because carbon sequestration mitigates climate change so right now there are way more prairie dogs than there are predators i think there's been a lot of discussion about prairie dogs and predators as well the prairie dogs degrade the soil and i would add that they also bring the weed

[351:01] seeds that destroy the healthy native grasses you cannot sequester carbon when all of those native grasses are destroyed so we're hurting the environment and we're creating more problems with climate change if we don't do anything i urge you to vote in support of the osmp staff and open board open space board of trustees preferred alternative thank you so much thank you elizabeth next we have susan summers ellen kessler and kalyn anderson we do have number 31 lucky uh who is here and we've we've changed lucky's name uh have i had lucky

[352:01] hello hello yes lucky beckett you're up uh thank you i'm calling you from ohio this is a complicated issue thank you for letting me speak i am a i work in media um the greenpeace land warrior stayed in my driveway out of which came the dolphin dolphin-safe tuna i used the 404 wetland law to actually save about a thousand acres from development in my area i do believe your problem is partially because though there are keystone species you've also let hunting and other interests take out some of the the um the uh predators but the farmland that you're talking about to be watered greenpeace also brought up the fact that the down line water rights that came out what the 1800s are not practical i mean i've got a thousand acres here that are just watered every day for hay and i don't have to take water and irrigate land to make hay so the the problem with the horses that can't be

[353:01] grazed is partially because of the whole way it's the land is being managed i work in media and i want to tell you the state of uh colorado spends millions of dollars trying to get tourists i've been there skiing at breckenridge gone fishing there my kids have been there and i tell you what because of the internet hundreds of thousands of people all over the world whether you realize it or not our list are watching what's going to happen today tonight and you kill all those animals i don't care how justifiable they might be for the agricultural groups like i said i've got 300 acres of you know rain just comes on and i get hay and and it it it's it's it's ridiculous to water land in a in a desert area if you're going to water something maybe make a different kind of agriculture there was six acres in chicago that managed to feed 30 000 people so i highly suggest that you take a different tact really really go and reassess this because the whole

[354:02] world is watching you and you don't want to lose our your tourist dollars and your reputation for loving wildlife and being people that do care about them thank you very much for letting me speak all of you appreciate it thank you lucky so next we have susan summers ellen kessler and caitlin anderson susan hi can you hear me no hi um i'm a 46 36 55th street in boulder i'm speaking tonight as a public landowner and a taxpayer i am both appalled and deeply saddened that our city council is even considering proposition to exterminate 29 000 native animals on our public lands the lands and animals in question belong to the citizens of boulder not just to those in the agricultural industry we would not even be having this discussion tonight if you

[355:00] were considering killing 29 000 eagles hawks bears or mountain lions but make no mistake about it if you choose to allow this mass extermination of prairie dogs you will be gravely impacting many other species in boulder to even consider spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to kill not only native prairie dogs but the many other animals that depend upon them when there are alternatives is nothing short of a crappy proposition with the southern grasslands at a mere three percent prairie dog occupancy you should be voting to relocate all of the prairie dogs in the conflict areas over the last 200 years agricultural practices in this country have decimated the biodiversity and driven extinction and climate change and now the proposal before you is just more of the same antiquated practices the prairie dog advisory working group and keep older wild have given you alternatives to killing 29 000 prairie dogs use this information to make a decision worthy of boulder

[356:01] we believe this city should make an unprecedented departure from a long-standing policy that in many ways defines the heart of this city it then deserves nothing less than a public vote as a taxpayer i am categorically opposed to using tax money to exterminate native animals i would also like to note that pesticides are used on irrigated ag lands so the use of delta dust during relocation should certainly not be an issue and i leave you with these numbers to consider there are currently over 55 million acres of irrigated agricultural land in the u.s there are only one to two nations thank you thank you susan next we have ellen kessler suzanne smith and belinda reed hi good evening everybody can you hear me

[357:00] yes thank you um my name is ellen kessler i've helped relocate prairie dogs for more than five years and i've learned a thing or two about them along the way including the fact that they are a native keystone grassland species was disappeared from more than 98 of its historic range largely because of agricultural and developmental practices the prairie dogs under fire today have long made their home on public land more than 400 acres are currently considered grassland preserves and prairie dog conservation land why this land is even being looked at for prairie dog eradication is very upsetting please understand we are working towards a sustainable future it is imperative that we protect the prairie dogs by doing so we're also saving hundreds of other species water tables soil grasslands grasslands which are among the most critically endangered biotic communities in the world

[358:02] boulder is known as one of the world's most environmentally friendly communities so why is a proposal to kill tens of thousands of prairie dogs even on the table especially when you want to reintroduce the black-footed ferret there are nowhere near the number of prairie dogs needed to support this reintroduction less so if this proposal is approved i am furious that prairie dogs continue to be demonized and policies continue to support their demise there are other ways proven ways and many of us are willing to help please re-examine those options and opportunities thank you thank you ellen next suzanne smith belinda reed and michael browning susan you're able to

[359:00] okay thank you yeah um it's it's late and um everything that i wanted to say has been said so just very quickly um i believe that keep boulders keep older wild their 51-page document needs very very close consideration they're really giving good alternatives to the extinct to the eradication of twenty nine thousand dollar prairie dog sorry twenty nine thousand prairie dogs um so that's it and uh thank you council and i also wanna thank you know um the boulder parks open space staff you have worked for a couple years on this but please don't neglect to look at the really important document that keep boulder wild has submitted thank you thank you suzanne next belinda reed michael browning and deborah jones melinda

[360:08] linda you're able to speak you just need to unmute yourself there we go um can you hear me yes okay um dear city council members um i'm a colorado native i've lived here all my life and i oppose the city's proposed plan to lethally control prairie dogs on irrigated agricultural lands on our public open space i think that the plan is extreme in the numbers that would be killed such a massive removal would result in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of healthy prairie dogs and negatively impact so many other species that depend on prairie dogs and their habitat for food and shelter the plan is unnecessary as an alternative i support keep boulder

[361:01] wild's reasonable recommendations the recommendations would reduce the project area and prioritize the implementation of innovative non-lethal solutions over use of lethal control with project area thank you so much for allowing me to speak thank you belinda next we have michael browning ever jones and nicole huntley michael good evening yes my name is mike browning i've lived in boulder for 40 years and i want to commend the staff for a careful consideration of a very complex issue there's lots of emotions involved but i think they've looked at the data and the science and i think that needs to control the issue rather than emotional arguments um i think the preferred alternative is a balanced approach uh prairie dogs i love prairie dogs everybody loves prairie dogs but it's not the only value in open space we have lots of competing issues and i

[362:01] think the preferred alternative does a good job of balancing those one of the issues is that open space was was built on uh farmland historic farmland and part of the open source charter is protection of irrigated agriculture in boulder colorado and i don't think there's any dispute that prairie dog habitats and irrigated agriculture do not mix we're not talking about eradicating prairie dogs in boulder county under the prepared alternative we're talking about allowing humane lethal control on a limited number of acres where irrigated agriculture cannot survive with the appearance of increasing prairie dogs on those lands it would be wonderful if we had the natural environment we had 400 years ago or 100 years ago or 50 years ago but we don't we have a managed environment now and we have to manage it the best way we can

[363:00] and that is making hard choices about competing interests so i urge you to think about the value of agriculture in boulder county the role that irrigated elk culture has played in our open space program and allow irrigated agriculture in colorado to be to still become be viable um and that requires uh some hard choices and some management of the prairie dogs is recommended and preferred alternatives so for that alternative thank you thank you mike have deb jones nicole huntley and rose goodman can you hear me okay uh this is deb jones i will actually live in westminster but i'm president of prairie dog action we've been working with prairie dogs and prairie dog issues and relocations and grassland issues for over 25 years we have definitely hands-on experience in in the field so i wanted to bring up

[364:01] a couple of things that have been concerning to me through all of the conversation tonight one thing is uh the banking on that the three percent occupation in the southern grasslands uh that we can add to that and and create a healthy ecosystem out of that if plague were to come along in the northern end we would have nothing to put there uh it's already struggling we've had plague this year already on multiple relocation sites that we did last year uh where we've had to go in and do plague mitigation to save the remainder of the colonies one of the areas was near rocky flats and we went in to help work with the feds on the rocky flat site to protect it we are working to not just remove these prairie dogs from the northern grasslands to the southern grasslands which is what we want to do but to create a large scale prairie ecosystem in that whole

[365:02] region to support more introductions of black-footed ferrets and right now everybody's acting like all these prairie dogs in the north or they're they're just such a problem they're always going to be a problem but the reality of it is we are way overdue for plague and that i've already walked the sites this year myself with plague on them it's it's just a matter of time and we're playing russian roulette with whether we're going to have prairie dogs to put out there and the reality with the laws in the state of colorado we can't move them across county lines without county commissioner approval so i if you guys aren't going to get together with the county commissioners so that we could possibly restock then we're in really big trouble thank you very much next we have nicole huntley rose goodman and mark gilman nicole

[366:11] ryan do you see nicole here yes nicole is here uh she is using an older uh version of zoom and i've changed her role and nicole should be able to speak i don't see her in here uh it looks like we lost nicole as she transitioned in in the role if she comes back you can bring her in now maybe we should do rose goodman mark gilban and carol starring sure thing

[367:02] hello can you hear me yes okay great um my name is rose goodman and i live in north boulder and i am against the killing of these prairie dogs um as someone who has grown up in boulder boulder has been um an environmental green place and i think the fact that we're even considering killing a keystone species is ridiculous and doesn't go with everything that boulder stands for um i'd also like to address that although prairie dogs may compete for prairie grasses in space like livestock prairie dogs have been shown to consume only about four to seven percent of the forage and that otherwise would have been eaten by cattle and we know of no data supporting the contention that injury to livestock grazing on prairie dog colonies is greater than to livestock grazing elsewhere additionally the grasses on the prairie dog towns have been demonstrated to have higher protein levels and better digestibility than other prairie grasses and this constitutes

[368:01] the highest quality grasses in the grassland ecosystem thereby creating better habitat habitat for bison pronghorn and cattle i'd also like to say that the um delta dust or whatever they have considered to use is a nicotinamide pesticide and if you don't know about nicotinamide or neonicotinoids sorry nicotinoids are one of the number one killers of bees which are on the endangered species list so not only with the killing of the hor with of the keystone species prairie dogs should be devastating we would also be killing many bees that would be around this area and i think that's unacceptable as boulder is trying to rehab the bees they shouldn't also be killing them and the bees are on endangered species lists um thank you so much for your time i really hope that you make the right decision and i really hope that the prairie dogs can live through this thank you thank you rose next mark galband carol starrick and

[369:01] hunter levins mark thank you very much sam um i'm clearly no expert on prairie dogs and i know my lane but i have heard this council talk numerous times about public engagement process and listening to experts and it seems as if our open space staff is making strong recommendations generally though to use your language i'm a bit agnostic on this subject but i do want to call attention to the fact that we have a hundred people plus speaking tonight on prairie dogs and it's ironic to me given the fact that we still subject our unhoused humans to worse treatment than we're even considering these prairie dogs and then i want to call attention to section 616 of arm municipal codes subjecting animals to unnecessary suffering in which it says no person shall cause

[370:01] unnecessary suffering to any animal or take actions likely to cause unnecessary suffering to any animal needlessly shoot at wound capture or in any other manner needlessly molest injure or kill any animal so i guess there's a need right now for the farmers and i can agree with that though if it's for livestock i question that given uh the clear evidence that livestock harms the environment um all that being said i know i speak for a lot of boulder rights when i when i finish by saying that mary and bob should both be ashamed of themselves for laying out litigation verse compromise when this council in no way has compromised with the boulder for bedrooms people all of you talking about saving prairie

[371:01] dogs maybe comment on and help your unhoused humans as well thank you thank you mark next um and carol sterick is not here so we go to hunter lovins lynn seagull and jenny bryant hi my name is hunter lovens i am a professor of sustainable management published expert in regenerative agriculture i live at 5150 saint brain road within the project area and near to a osmp land and i have watched for over 20 years the damage caused by uncontrolled prairie dog population growth it's time to manage the prairie dogs i urge you to support osmp's and open space board of trustees unanimous recommendation to allow lethal control on the irrigated ag lands in the project area and to support the trustees recommendation to change the borough disturbance ordinance to let farmers farm on osmp irrigated egg lands

[372:03] please don't support osmp staff's more restrictive recommendations of only limited disturbance depth we're in a global climate crisis we need every piece of land we can get to be used for carbon farming this means keeping farmers on the land it also means using grazing animals the 10 feet of thick black soil that pioneers found when they came across the great plains got there from the co-evolution of grazing animals and grasslands without grazing animals we will not overcome the climate crisis with regenerative agriculture we could over 30 years time returned to 280 parts per million concentration of co2 the carbon in the soil is the basis of the health in the soil allowing overpopulation of prairie dogs is not good science in these circumstances they are not a keystone species we don't have intact ecosystems here

[373:00] so please listen to your own experts to the experts who have weighed in on this and let our farmers do their jobs please support lethal control thank you thank you honor ben siegel jenny bryant and ian aral men yeah it worked i can't see the minute deeper um can you hear me i'll let you yeah we can hear you you're good to go okay because i'll have to i can't tell how long it is um we we humans are occupying prairie dog plan this reminds me of israel and the west bank um the situation is like galban said we just approved three stories to canyon

[374:01] and 15th the former liquor mart we want to bring people into boulder as fast as we can bring them and guess what those people eat food and guess what that that's agricultural land and all this the colorado river all this irrigation is coming for us and the prairie dog competing for human for cattle i ca i can live i i ate meat but i can live without eating meat and um you know now that we've got the virus here you know it's a whole different story um things are gonna come down we don't have to worry about this anymore because we're gonna have less eating less people you know less restaurants brand new restaurants open that can't even be opened on 15th in pearl you know you're building at 21st and pearl and wasting our jobs housing

[375:01] imbalance and then to to build more housing to pre to make up for the jobs then those create new jobs for all the people that are housed they do they need clerks and people who are low income and you increase the jobs housing imbalance and you increase the demand for food and the demand for humans humans are the ones that are out of balance here entirely and um let's see the delta dust i certainly oppose as well the neonicotinoids um we can have individual gardens in our homes um we can have less marijuana you know that's growing stuff thank you lynn okay so so a bit of housekeeping again um i need a motion to continue the meeting

[376:04] okay is there a second somebody say something i heard a move is there a second i i made a motion to continue the meeting second perfect then unless there's any objection we can move on to jenny bryant yana rael and joe stitches so i think joe's not here but jenny greetings council thank you for being with us all tonight i am speaking up tonight as a 13-year resident of boulder county and i 100 support keep boulder wild's plan to reduce the project area and decrease lethal control boulder is a hub of innovation and creative solutions it is a community that creates the models for others in our country and the world to follow however this expedited plan does not align with or reflect that community tradition the plan in its current form dismisses those middle ground solutions that came to fruition after two years of

[377:01] negotiations between all stakeholders that made up the prairie dog working group it also dismisses the 70 plus years of combined experience of the keep holder wild group a collective comprised of scientists prairie dog specialists and environmental groups who have been involved in prairie dog management in boulder and along the front range for decades furthermore there is no credible science to back up claims that prairie dogs are any worse for the environment than current agricultural practices you cannot blame desertification coordinated vegetation growth and core carbon sequestration solely on the prairie dog climate change is affecting them as much as it is us and we need more objective studies my concern and the real problem with this plan is that the interests of a few are being used as an excuse to bypass previously agreed upon management methods and give blanket permission to kill tens of thousands of animals rather than using lethal control as a last resort i do want to recognize and thank osmp staff for keeping relocation a part of the plan and for recognizing the important role that prairie dogs play in what's left of our fragment and

[378:00] ecosystem here in boulder and long different range this issue is not just about excessive killing it's also about the unknown long-term repercussions of such a large-scale removal of our already damaged ecosystem there are innovative alternative solutions on the table and keep older wild's recommendations that meet in the middle such as making partial by parcel analyses and implementing alternative lease options on appropriate parcels these are solutions that better align with boulder's values of creative leadership innovative ecological stewardship and compassion for the wildlife we continue to displace in our community we can co-exist again i 100 support keep holder wild's logical and reasonable project area and increase the control respectfully s council council to consider and amend the current plan with their 10 recommendations thank you okay so we're down to lisa goodrich chris brown and richard reynolds lisa

[379:03] hello can you hear me yes hi my name is lisa goodrich i live in downtown boulder not many people have jobs where they make life and death decisions you do i am speaking against killing prairie dogs within boulder county on public lands please do not grant a special permit as described in the city code 6-1-39 to allow their killing in the presentation the land was mentioned in terms of acreage not in terms of prairie dogs on the land i understand that this is a hard number to estimate but it is crucial to have this information page 3 of your memos states that the plan for the in-borough lethal control of immoral lethal control of prairie dogs everywhere else in your document you speak of humane lethal control gassing prairie dogs in their burrows while they suffer for hours and in some cases days is not humane gassing has been banned by the geneva convention but we see fit to use it on

[380:00] wildlife no one including prairie dogs deserves to be gassed in their homes then there is a second wave of death that you are causing when coyotes birds pray like hawks and owls and others think they've got a free meal this is a horrible way to die we're in the middle of the planet's sixth maths extinction it is time we took more of an active role to set things on the correct path this involves helping the prairie dogs not gassing them prairie dogs have already seen their population reduced by over 99 of their original numbers please do your part excuse me your part to reject this special permit and protect this important keystone species i think we should prioritize wildlife and wild spaces over more agriculture and ranching i would like to end with a quote from gandhi the greatest of the nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated we have a long way to go please let's take a step in the right direction and end this attack on prairie dogs in our public land thank you

[381:01] thank you visa next we have chris brown richard reynolds and maggie fox chris uh chris brown if you are i've named christopher here you are able to speak oh okay you can hear me yes hey great i urge council to pass the preferred alternative for managing prairie dogs everyone has worked hard and compromised over and over to reach this solution keep boulder wild's 11th hour so-called compromise blows up a two-year-long process it is a torpedo to stall slash and derail your good faith efforts no one wants another zillion rounds of debates and there really are not any new facts to be considered be brave please vote for the preferred

[382:01] alternative as it stands i do have a few concerns about it relocation is just kicking the can down the road as we have been doing for 20 years it costs and negative consequences of relocation will continue to haunt us the notion that the southern grasslands will become a healthy ecosystem is a fantasy the space is too limited many of the natural predators can't exist in this urban environment the southern grasslands will be more like a temporary internment camp while the prairie dogs will continue their rapid population growth the landscape will become denuded vegetation the soil will blow away and the plague from over grazing and the plague will return any notion that the plague is a good form of population control is way off base it is not manageable is not humane it is risky to other wildlife pets and humans

[383:00] the keystone argument is an anacritism an overstatement there is no longer a cohesive natural ecosystem that one keystone would hold in place prairie dogs are a remnant of an already diminished ecosystem it is important to save our soil to save our farmers to save our local food production please give your support to the alternative preferred by open pace space staff and trustees we have all worked long and hard to get to this point it's time to move forward bingo thank you chris next richard reynolds maggie fox and roland halpern richard is that good yes oh richard you can unmute yourself and speak

[384:13] yeah this is richard go ahead okay well thank you for your staying power it's very impressive i support most of the recommendations by staff and osb osbt with one exception and that exception uh centers on relocation any relocation of prairie dogs will severely degrade the relative health of native grasslands to which they may be sent this bad outcome has already occurred and is ongoing please just take a look at relocation sites used in the past and you'll see mostly weeds and barren ground and poor soil health how does this happen one factor one of several is the combination of wind erosion dustin and loss of soil now i've shared with you several times

[385:01] images of wind erosion and dust emission from a prairie dog colony on osmp land west of highway 93 in 2009 the images speak for themselves within a few hours tons many tons of soil were sent skyward along with soil carbon and other nutrients i've seen some photos of similar dust emissions from northern osmp ag land degraded by prairie dog colonies prairie dogs unfortunately do and will severely degrade these ecosystems by converting native plant communities to those dominated by invasive plants these distressing outcomes are obvious and documented once converted native plant communities do not return in our situation in our county such is the dominance of nearby invasive plant seed banks please specifically do not approve relocations to native plant communities in our southern grasslands doing so

[386:01] would irreparably harm that ecosystem the plants the animals the insects the soil microbes and the soil itself through window erosion thank you thank you richard um next we have maggie fox and then i will go back to nicole huntley and then roland adam maggie hi this is maggie um like richard i want to ecu our gratitude for your patience and time tonight um a very difficult decision because this community cares a great deal about the environment about our open space and about these lands but as richard said and a number of other people have said um to call prairie dogs the keystone species and build the basis of an argument for not dealing with this challenge based on that science is fundamentally flawed because these ecosystems don't

[387:00] exist in a framework in which these keystone species could be seen as holding the basis for protection of the ecosystem i support the two years of work by the staff trustees of open space and the many competing points of view and i would respectfully ask that the council look at the science it is evolving but the recommendations of the charter and the science make it very clear at this moment in time that we have to try different methods after 20 years of increasing prairie dog populations soil degradation native species degradation and the inability of individuals with irrigated agricultural properties and rights on open space lands to actually use those lands to bring them back to a greater degree of health prairie dog species aren't able to re-generate these lands and it's going to take some other methods no one in

[388:03] this community is happy about the idea of lethal injection and of course we would hope that there were alternatives but after two years of discussion i think it's fairly clear that we've reached a point where we have to try a different management technique as painful as it might be in order to see if we can actually return these lands to a more healthy and useful position and respect the rights of the individuals who have the ability to farm those lands thank you imagine uh we're going to go back now to nicole huntley and then we'll go to the world uh i'll just do nicole huntley already [Music] hello can you hear me yes hi this is nicole huntley thank you for your patience a little bit of control

[389:00] computer troubles i'm here to speak out against the proposed extermination of our native prairie wildlife this issue is not just about prairie dogs but it will also kill tens of thousands of other animals lives should this proposal get approved during my observation with city council meeting today i always hear concerns about it regarding the use of delta dust but i never hear any mentioning of the use of herbicides pesticides and artificial fertilizers that are being used during common act practices and i would like to encourage council to hopefully include this in their further discussions i'm here to speak up for our prairie ecosystem for declining kids from species and for the lives of tens of thousands of wild animals your decision will also have an impact on us people that care about our ecosystem so it's not from a financial level it will take a great emotional toll on our on those people on us we are not asking you to throw up your hands and tell the our community that

[390:00] they have to just to continue to deal with this conflict there are humane solutions that will benefit everybody and i hope that you will choose to relocate these prairie dogs and restock the southern grasslands and make a little piece of your disappear of our disappearing short grass prairie a whole again by participating in a very important preservation project it doesn't take a genius to recognize that it is in large part the paradox that created these beautiful praise by aerating churning and fertilizing those soils or otherwise this landscape could not have supported the billions of paradox that used to live here before white man's arrival thank you so much thank you next we have roland halpern julie dye and ben valley roland yes can you hear me we can thank you um i'll be brief because the hour is late my name is roland halpern i'm an ordained animal chaplain and the executive director of colorado voters

[391:00] for animals a non-profit nonpartisan organization whose mission is to identify and help elect animal friendly candidates our 2576 supporters residing in boulder county vote for candidates who share their values well i appreciate efforts taken to not totally eradicate prairie dog colonies in boulder and while i support keep boulder wild's recommendation to reduce the project area for lethal management let there be no mistake we are destroying innocent lives genesis 6 reminds us that on the sixth day even before he created people god created the prairie dogs and declared his creation very good and not one sparrow falls that goes unnoticed by god and hurting any of his creation hurts god as well mark 8 36 reminds us for what will it profit a person if he or she gains the whole world and loses his or her own soul in the end when you're called upon and asked the question what have you done to

[392:00] protect that which i entrusted to you what shall your answer be i pray for those peridot and prairie dogs whose lives will be stolen from them and i also pray for your souls thank you thank you roland next we have julie dye and then track a little bit here and then julia warder and james warder julie hi thank you all for an opportunity to perform our civic duty and use our voices tonight i wasn't prepared to speak this evening and intended to seed but here i am granddaughter of a dairy farmer and a voice for the environment and our community one of my neighbors spoke so eloquently earlier when he said this to city council this is your legacy and i'd like to add not just the prairie dogs but in sacrificing the voice of the many to benefit the few i've lived in gun barrel within the city for 20 years and i've witnessed the plague of the nearby prairie dog community and loss of population and

[393:00] here's what happened owls eagles hawks coyotes and more disappeared and while i like prairie dogs i love eagles owls and other birds most of us move to and live in boulder as we were drawn by the balance of people and environment and as much as i respect and appreciate all of you on council what i'm continuing to witness again is sacrificing the many for the benefit of the few we see the developers and we're seeing it again with this lethal control proposal earlier tonight mark showed us the charter purposes and what it clearly shows is contradictions you can't claim to have the goal of truly preserving contradictory goals and with contradictions we get a reliance on subjectivity instead of data and science to be honest i'm a little tired right now and not just because it's 20 20. boulder citizens keep showing you science and data but looking at the proposals being reviewed by council science data numbers these don't seem to be what in the end matter decisions are being made right now that are antiquated unimaginative and lacking

[394:01] in innovation and it's exhausting i ask you to listen to the voices of the many to review the data and the science to listen to your citizens who are trying to keep boulder a balance of ecosystem and economy consider your legacy and i also ask you to reject osmp's lethal control also known as killing on this land thank you so much for your time thank you julian who do we have next ryan 63 jill but correct jill you're able to speak you'll just want to unmute can you hear me

[395:00] yes okay great um i moved to boulder in 95 because the city had a reputation of protecting the environment and fostering appreciation for wildlife i worked with an excellent boulder city council on animal protections including the wild bird and prairie dog ordinances passed in the early 2000s people were proud of our city council seeing prairie dogs on our open space has always brought me joy as it has for so many locals and tourists alike however lately when i see them my heart sinks in fear and dread that you'll approve their mass slaughter if you do it will become deeply painful to see the graveyards as well as those who are spared and to be reminded of what you've done and what we will have become wildlife killers devoid of compassion is that what we want to be known by a city that panders to wildlife ranchers welfare ranchers and their unsustainable

[396:01] polluting animal agriculture if you accept the osbt's proposal the people of boulder gain nothing but with blue's cherished wildlife habitat and precious lives that we value only the welfare ranchers would profit and then ship most of the food they grow out of boulder anyway or use it to feed cows not people don't forget that irrigated crops are mainly cattle cattle feed and rarely if at all the vegetables we see at our farmers market the city talks a good game about mitigating climate change so why capitulate to cattle ranchers who are a major contributor and how many prairie dog predators are shot or poisoned every year by ranchers this proposal is excessive irresponsible and cruel i urge you to protect our prairie dogs and their associated species and also to save the colony at celestial seasonings from development every local i know is upset about that and this proposal please let go of the

[397:01] ag leases in the high conflict areas progress progress sometimes means releasing cruel exploitive traditions you can leave a legacy of compassion by standing up and saying no to the slaughter of our native wildlife thank you jill next richard reading stephen sawaski and emily yanero richard yeah hi my name is richard reading um i did my phd on on like back in the 1980s and i've been studying them ever since i live in denver i find it interesting listening to the comments and to um mark gershman's presentation about all the myths that are associated with prairie dogs and how they continue to be promulgated um we we honestly don't know some of the things that are being portrayed as being true such as degradation of soils carbon sequestration those things have not been studied as mark himself pointed out

[398:00] they're just starting to get those on the dock in terms of doing the research to determine whether or not there is degradation of soil it's usually interesting to me that a native species that was here for millennia and helped build the soils upon which the farmers now rely as being is being blamed for the loss of those soils when it is in fact agriculture over the last 100 150 years that has lost foot degradation and loss of our soils not the prairie dogs so i would urge the city council to think carefully about the science that has been conducted not just the things we think we know because with prairie dogs what we what we found out is when we go and study the things that we think we know we find out they're not really true preg dogs don't really destroy the landscape for cattle raising they don't really compete with cattle to the extent we think they do now when we did the research we found out in fact that wasn't true so let's do the research first and let's

[399:00] find out later um what we should do best to conserve prairie dogs for that reason i i stand with i keep keep boulder wild thank you for your time thank you we have steven zawaski and then emily yanero and then and then cynthia seals so we've got steven soloski up next hello yep we can hear you all right um i'm going to start with reading a quote here it says begin quote prairie dogs have lived here for more than a thousand years in fact prairie dogs once had the biggest towns along the front range but not anymore now prairie dogs have repaired our are now no prairie dogs and people are close neighbors it's up to us to learn to coexist with them i'm going to read one more quote here

[400:01] five billion prairie dogs once lived in america's planes today prairie dogs live a mere one percent of their original range and more of their home is lost to development every day both those quotes are on display at the border reservoir written by the city of boulder now i think that this this idea of killing prairie dogs in our wildlife is hypocritical to what borders become i think a lot of us have moved here and lived and live in boulder because it's the it's one of the most innovative places in the country where we live where we aspire to co-exist together with nature um and i'm just just every every time i come and i speak at these council meetings whether it's regarding the the spine road project and and stuff i just see boulder going into different direction than it should be and i i reach out and i hope that the the city council members will hear this

[401:01] and that we can go back to what boulder used to be and why we live here and trying to protect our environment um i'm just going to leave it short of that and i hope that the city council will live up to what is written um in voters history and their website and undercity reservoir that's all steven um i want to go next to emily yanero and i'm figuring out the ones after emily hi can you hear me yes hi um thank you so much council for your time tonight i know it's late um i'd like to reiterate um several things that um some other citizens have expressed i am absolutely opposed to lethal control of these prairie dogs in our environment um i just don't i know that this might seem like a really complicated issue in so many ways

[402:00] but for me it just comes back to something pretty pretty simple who who are we to think that we can just destroy this population um you know we're bigger we're stronger but that doesn't give us the right to take these lives away you know boulder is looked at as an innovator and a creative problem solver and we need to do a better job here i don't think we're at a solution that really stands up to what boulder is about um you know i think that there's a lot of great information in the keep boulder wild proposal i would really hope that council would in their deliberation of this go through each point that keep older wild brings up and see what can be incorporated into this because i think that there's got to be another way we've got to hold ourselves to a higher higher standard here you know i was raised by my mom who was

[403:01] a science teacher and she always taught my brother and i to respect life um it just seems like the prairie dogs lives are not being valued here we're putting ourselves above the environment and we're not going to have an environment if we keep doing that and i just really hope that the council is listening to the voices out there and really analyzing this and not just accepting that lethal control is the way to get rid of this problem so thank you for your time thank you emily next we have carmen porter and sherry depock we do have uh aaron number 68 who is is here but i believe is on the line with emily is that right aaron hello can you hear me yes yes i'm on my own line okay

[404:01] good evening my name is erin michael and i'm a boulder resident and owner of my company earth love gardens making garden vents and greenhouse even though to change this land may be in my business's best interest the love for the earth is a bit more important than the love of gardens the mission of osmp is to preserve and protect the natural environment and land resources to characterize boulder they foster appreciation and uses that sustain the natural values of the land for current and future generations according to osmp's website the significant decline of prairie adult populations is related to several factors including habitat fragmentation conversion of habitat to agricultural uses and systemic poisoning all of which are being proposed today notwithstanding with osmp osmp's budget there is no shortage of irrigable agriculture land elsewhere and not where prairie dogs are already home to osmp otherwise provides the rare protections for prairie dogs which also

[405:00] according to them are so limited outside of boulder county if it is osmp's mission to sustain the natural values to land there need to be non-natural ways to provide for agriculture that will require killing a native species to support these practices taking a walk yesterday by the boulder valley ranch trailhead nearby one of the potential removal areas of prairie dogs i felt the peace and noticed the rolling ocean of prairie a land unique that i always thought open space was supposed to protect the sounds of prairie dogs communicating were a part of this natural sacred piece something available right outside our city the thought of let them be let the prairie dogs be was the only thought that came to me how did natives work with the land before settlers decided that we were not able to co-exist with prairie dogs why is it that we are the generation to ask the question should we preserve what was here before us or should we kill a species because we are unable to realize how we can coexist with the land we live and love and appreciate it as it is the fate of tens of thousands of prairie native of the fate of tens of thousands of native prairie dogs rely on our

[406:00] answer thank you thank you aaron next we have carmen porter hi sam so thank you uh city council for letting everybody speak up i'm carmen porter i i live in boulder county i've lived here for 22 years and i stayed on long enough because i really want to get my opinion in and tell you that i really encourage you to approve this preferred alternative proposal that your staff your highly expert staff that you've hired has put together and worked long and hard on the one thing that i echoes what some other people have said i would i'm not in favor of the the relocation i feel like that's kind of a thing that's being done to appease people that

[407:00] want to avoid killing prairie dogs at all costs and it's extremely expensive and not that successful this is a really difficult thing to do but i grew up on a farm in a ranch and i we were very good ecological stewards and very concerned about the environment and coexisted but there are places where prairie dogs belong and can and can thrive well in places where they shouldn't be and all your years of managing prairie dogs have shown that without some lethal control in some times you just can't do a good job of protecting the grasslands that we have purchased so i encourage you to just approve it i think that no further study is needed time and experience have proven that some lethal control is needed to properly manage the prairie dog populations they have been very destructive

[408:00] and it's a fact that they do destroy grassland when they're not properly managed thank you very much thank you carmen next jeffrey hirsch can you hear me yes uh i'll start by saying uh it's quite amazing and you're able to pay attention for this many speakers i appreciate it i also want to very quickly second what only one person has said deb jones about a very major and ill-conceived regulation about crossing county lines with prairie dogs which has made relocation so incredibly difficult now i'll start i know that most people think they see prairie dogs everywhere and that there is an infinite number which development

[409:00] and poisons put on put only a small dent in the same was once thought of the bison thundering in the millions on the great plains and the passenger pigeon that filled the skies a century ago with only a fraction of the human population but with a similar mindset this was proved terribly wrong the passenger pigeon is long gone extinct and the bison came within a hair's breath of the same i have worked rescuing wildlife dating back to rocky mountain animal defense some 20 years ago although bolder policies haven't been always what i had hoped i usually felt that the city showed some caring for wildlife beyond economic purposes and would listen to opinions and information in support of wildlife that is why it is so shocking that the council is even considering the exterminations of thousands of prairie dogs now knowing as it does that this is a keystone species i don't need to tell you that votes and papers and the words lethal control authorizing the death of animals as a sterile and distant action that in no

[410:00] way reflects the reality of painful inhumane deaths by poison or gas of sentient beings that is the result of such a vote it is often said that if people had to witness a slaughterhouse there would be many bit more vegetarians if you had to see a prairie dog bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain i think relocation and management plans might change considerably boulder has wealth and also a wealth of experts with the knowledge of saving prairie dogs relocating them and anything else required to address problems that come up between people and prairie dogs it is your job job to not take the quick and easy way out when prairie dogs don't fit into open space plans and to use the human resources you have here to help you reach other non-lethal alternatives thank you sam you're muted lindsay sterling crank your pooling time with two others you have four minutes

[411:02] okay 11 38 pm let's do this okay so my name is lindsey sterling crank and i'm a member of the prairie dog working group and i also really appreciate everyone who has worked so much on this very complex issue over the last year and the last three years for all of those of us on the prairie dog working group um thank you to the council members and the staff for listening to all of us on all sides of this issue i know it's been really hard and even painful for so many of us and one thing we all have in common is that before tonight we were looking forward to tomorrow and this being over but now we will continue and that's actually what the next point i wanted to make is so much of this hard work implementation comes after these plans are passed and i want you guys to know that keep older wild and the humane society and myself and my team we're committed to staying engaged and really trying to participate in this as a community-based sharing

[412:00] learn shared learning process in fact the hsus my parent company and myself are so committed that we've raised and planned for additional acres per year of relocation of prairie dogs off irrigated ag lands or other staff directed areas for the next three years and relocation is not just a band-aid it's a legitimate conservation tool backed by science with the process in place to make it succeed i have been doing it for 20 years and i'm proud of how far we've come we look forward to continue to collaborate with the stakeholders on this plan and appreciate staff for including relocation as is but the plan that's before you tonight is a plan that needs to be amended it gives broad approval and sweeping permission to kill or remove prairie dogs from all 967 acres of occupied periodic habitat in the project area not all of these 967 acres need lethal management several parcels have been identified as areas where local farmers

[413:01] could lease and grow cops crops and coexist with the prairie dogs on site these acres should be removed from the project area they don't need lethal management after a tour of the project area with colleagues and experts who've been working on product management for a year lethal control doesn't even make sense on some some of these parcels it wouldn't even be necessary or effective these areas should be removed from the project area not all of the 967 acres need lethal management so we should not have a plan that permits lethal where it is not needed this does not represent our community's values we also what also does not represent our community's values is using lethal to remove prairie dogs from our grassland preserves and paradigm conservation areas these acres are places where prairie dog systems should be a priority additionally some of these parcels although irrigated they're surrounded by unirrigated grassland preserves again lethal management does not make sense here these acres need to be removed from

[414:01] the project area it is clear that a reduced project area meets many stakeholders needs and so to keep boulder wild's recommendations staff and ag get the tool they are asking for coexistence measures are put in place with the borough destruction ordinance lethal prairie dog management is reduced and wildlife advocates get to go ahead and continue forward with meaningful coexistence strategies it's also clear that prior to lethal taking place a parcel by parcel analysis must occur to re responsibly understand what management actions are being implemented and to only use lethal management as a last result and sparingly please do not pass this plan as is we have an opportunity here to create a model studying the soils soils and coexistence and to really still create a model for other communities also grappling with this issue all of the stakeholders involved very all very much want to be involved on a regular basis i will send my other four points in

[415:02] since i've lost my time um but i will end with please do not let a blanket permit for lethal control be allowed pass this plan with a reduced project area and let's keep boulder a little wild while we still can thank you lindsay next is john scott can you hear me yes hi i'm john scott i live in central boulder i'm here to say i stand with those who do not want to see prairie dogs killed i feel enriched whenever i see native wildlife more than that we humans have a terrible history of convincing ourselves that we have a good reason to destroy whatever wildlife seems inconvenient to us at the time then down the road realizing how foolish we were i urge you to implement recommendations you have from keep border wild thank you

[416:01] thank you john um next up is mike sterling marcus mccauley and julia worker mike can you hear me yes 50 years ago actually more than 50 years ago we put a man on the moon and tonight we're discussing a solution to a problem that involves killing you know there's valid concerns on both sides tonight has been extremely educational for me i'm confident that with bolder brain power we can come up with something that's even more coexistent

[417:00] and develop strategies excuse me that doesn't kill to the board members and open space members the thousands of hours you guys have put in is just commendable and appreciated but i still believe with a few more hours we can resolve this and come up with a better solution thank you thank you mike next step is marcus mccauley julia warder and aaron shea balor marcus marcus you're able to speak you just need to unmute yourself can you hear me yes hello yes

[418:00] good evening um first i'd like to say thank you to uh city council uh the board of trustees and open space staff for all the work that you put in on this issue it's certainly a difficult issue and it requires a nuanced perspective so thank you for listening to all of our voices here tonight i'm a regenerative farmer and organic farmer in boulder and my mission is to heal people and the planet with delicious food i'm doing that on my farm by building a functioning pharmacology a place where birds and grass and insects and ruminants and fungi and humans all play a role i'm growing the most ecological food that i know how to grow for a good number of boulder families i'm your neighbor and a partner we share a boundary to our west is the bennett opens open space property we are on the same ridge same soil type but the difference between our farm and

[419:01] the bennett property is drastic i've watched that ecosystem collapse i've watched the topsoil blow away the topsoil that took millennia to build millennia of ruminants on grass and you know it's it's obvious that bison and cattle should need grass but maybe it's not as obvious that the grass needs them they co-evolved and together they thrive if managed holistically i've heard the nrcs conservationists tell me that the bennett property is the most degraded land that he has seen the difference between the open space land to our west and our farm to me is the will to manage the land holistically and not elevate one species above all other others i invite you to come walk the land with me and see the difference in species richness between our farm and the open space property another important difference between these two properties is that my farm can feed people

[420:01] whereas the bennett open space property is currently unleashable i endeavored over the last two and a half years on the land to heal it without burrow disturbance or lethal control and i haven't been able to i have failed thank you marcus next we have it's getting hard to track jeremy gregory susan summers and anna reedus jeremy there can you guys hear me yes all right hey there i'm jeremy gregory i'm a third generation eco-conscious farmer born and raised here in boulder county i'm employing city council to utilize non-legal solutions with the prairie dog colonies on bouldering osmp lands because they are out there in fact as kate boulder wild and hsus has tested my company possesses such options that we have presented to city council and osbt these need to be considered by city council and osbt more seriously

[421:01] earlier a slide was shown where the public would support lethal control measures only if other non-lethal measures didn't work well again what my entity has proposed hasn't been utilized yet so moving into lethal options would be disingenuous and actually go against what this slide indicates it would be a breach of the public's trust if osmp were granted authority to jump into legal control when the public has stated that they prefer non-lethal options first again as an equal conscious farmer who has proven that if implemented correctly farmers can coexist with prairie dogs i find this agenda to hastily employ lethal options first very disturbing let's just call it what it is an antiquated lazy in the box mindset that is antithetical to what boulder is supposed to be about this way of thinking is no different than what we are seeing happen in the pacific northwest where apex predators are being slaughtered to protect cows on public lands demonizing a vital keystone species while ignoring that is in fact primarily industrialized

[422:00] mono crop farming and ranching that has caused soil health depletion is repulsive demanding that nature change for us is it is toxically anthropocentric city council owes it to the public our future generations into the legacy of our natural heritage to incorporate non-lethal modalities be implemented if city council moves forward with the agenda to kill it will be destroying a reputation based on integrity compassion and ingenuity and uh the arapahoe navajo peoples were the first to use bioregen principles successfully coexisting with prairie dogs and other species for hundreds and hundreds of years so it's pretty disingenuous also to hear that prairie dogs um are the problem and uh yeah we need to uh we need to give some of these other options a chance so i implore you to um look at some of these other options that we have available thanks

[423:00] thank you jeremy next is anna ritas hello hello okay um all right um i'll just keep it short um global or i live in uh and longmont actually but i am in boulder so frequently that i call it my second home um globally wild animal populations are being decimated and the root cause of all their dwindling numbers are humans as a species we're terrible about thinking ahead with the well-being of our fellow creatures in mind such selfish behavior can have enforcing negative impacts down the line a glaring current example is animal trafficking and wet markets which set the stage for the emergence of

[424:00] a pandemic which led to massive economic health social and emotional impacts for our entire society current and i think it's insane to even be considering the mass extermination of a native species that is already imperiled in addition to the 29 000 prairie dogs that are targeted the impact would be felt by dozens of other species including birds of prey that rely on them as a food source and maybe you have heard about a virus it's a hemorrhagic disease rhdv2 that that's been sweeping through and killing wild rabbit populations so between thousands of prairie dogs intentionally being killed the ever-present threat of plague wiping out colonies and then rabbits potentially imperiled by the virus raptors and other predators could get hit very hard but apparently this is not something we're thinking about as we're planning on wiping out all the prairie dogs donating a few prairie dogs to a raptor

[425:01] and ferret program [Music] while the restaurant killed in mass is hypocritical it's the left hand pantomining good will towards ferrets and raptors while the right hand is wiping out the source they actually depend on so please uh do not go with this plan i just think it's a bad idea and we need to do better than that for our wildlife thank you thank you next we have taylor jones and then peter gunned hello hello let me get my notes up my name is taylor jones i'm a conservation biologist i'm the endangered species advocate for wild earth guardians we're a conservation organization with over 400

[426:01] members in boulder county and as an advocate for wildlife and healthy ecosystems i'm deeply concerned about the proposed plan which would give blanket permission to legally remove potentially tens of thousands of prairie dogs from 967 acres of boulder open space i'm asking council to moderate the plan by including the asks from keep boulder wild which are not a last minute ask i'm probably the newest member of keep older wild and i've been working on this since january other members of keep older wild were part of the prairie dog working group since its inception and have been involved in this issue for years and we're not asking for the world we're asking to get some things in writing do parcel by parcel analysis restrict application of the special use permit to sites that have undergone that analysis and re-evaluate the plan annually thank you for your consideration thank you taylor next is peter gennady

[427:13] either you're able to speak you'll just need to unmute yourself uh peter if you're there you're able to speak you just need to unmute yourself all right peter is not a meeting maybe we move on to

[428:00] this one here number 99 that's that's the last one it's either peter or jaclyn said jacqueline romelly hi this is jackie we can hear you great i i thought i might be last um thank you for your time i support the open space for recommendation regarding the prioritized removal of the prairie dogs participated in and intended many of the meetings during the public debate held between october 2019 and march 2020 it became clear to me after looking at the maps that the past land use decisions have allowed subdivisions and other billing to occur um which reduced some of the acreage available to agriculture which increased fragmentation and then subsequently

[429:01] reduced habitat for prairie dogs but there we are and in the face um the osmp staff consistently came back to the board with creative well-developed and sensitive solutions to address all stakeholder concerns it was with reluctance that the board recommended termination of prairie dogs and explored all other avenues to reduce the numbers that might have to be considered key to my support of the open space board recommendation is the plan's commitment to adaptive management which will include an annual report and adjustments to the plan based on data obtained this is where the ongoing community input from all the people that spoke tonight with very deep and committed feelings that i need to stay committed to this but i think this is a good first step i consider the plan an opportunity to approach the multi-level conflict in

[430:01] a prudent well-considered manner with a goal um to integrate all of the concepts that have been brought on the table tonight and to continue to work for the values that we all hold in boulder thank you thank you jackie jacqueline i'm sorry do we want to try for peter gonna have one more time sure let's try uh peter if you would like to speak now as your opportunity just go ahead and unmute yourself okay i'm not seeing unmuting it maybe a different peter so i believe we're through you know that's

[431:01] that's all folks so it is just moments before midnight and this is where i'm gonna watch for two more minutes i'm just teasing i don't see any good way that we could have a hearing right now i mean a thoughtful debate or you know more questions or discussions so i'm open to suggestions if anybody wants to try but it just seems like continuing the item to another meeting and planning an hour and a half two hours for it will give us time to come back to staff ask questions and then debate and make a decision so if you'd like to make another suggestion that i'm open to it otherwise we can adjourn the meeting at 11 59. oh aaron i'm sorry so i just want to make sure to push us past midnight here sam um no i i absolutely agree

[432:01] there was just there was just one factual thing that i just wonder if we might clarify before we finish if people are still on the on the line i heard one or two people um it sounded like they thought that delta dust would be used for the lethal control of prairie dogs and i just want to clarify um that that the delta dust is is not something you'd be used to to kill prairie dogs who'd be used to to try to control the plague so i don't know if maybe a member of staff wants to give a very brief correction on on that uh you um i think i can chime in and aaron thank you very much for making that clarification as the public comments were proceeding that was one of the notes that we wanted to make sure that was clarified and um the use of delta dust to control fleas is a requirement of colorado parks and wildlife for treating prairie dogs

[433:01] and holes that are involved in relocation provide more detail uh next time we're together right and it's to control fleas just to be clear that's what it kills is fleas that's right it controls the fleas as several members of the public point it out yeah so for better for worse just want to get that point clarified and and now we're past midnight so and now we've got two more hands up so mark i just wanted to say i i supported a german uh organize my thoughts uh before midnight um and i think it would be beneficial to all of us if uh we uh finish this on another day good enough so do i i do want to point out one important little factoid that is probably the last prairie dog hearing that jane brodigan is ever going to sit there

[434:00] anyway and on that note i guess cac now takes this up to schedule the time thank you all we're adjourned and thanks to everyone for all their commentary appreciate yeah absolutely appreciate the involvement good night [Music] you