August 25, 2020 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] to see the value of protecting our natural lands and having that open space buffer chautauqua itself was really founded in 1898 so chautauqua's been a part of boulder for a very long time in fact the buying of the bachelor ranch which is where chautauqua is today [Music] [Applause] [Music]

[1:01] so [Music] so [Music]

[3:08] [Music]

[4:06] do [Music]

[5:06] do [Music] okay mark you're working now i guess it's working i i think this is a plot by president trump to keep me from participating or uh so we are almost there nearby won't be here tonight um she's still recovering so yep and aaron wants uh once everybody's here you can start whenever so i will text junie as well and see

[6:00] if she's having any difficulty damn i've just sent juni and adam and rachel third third approach to get them in there's rachel now so that's good news i think we're just are we just waiting for judy that's right um he says that the email looks blank on her side [Music] let me try again oh no here she is she said no okay [Music] i'm going to go ahead and start the

[7:00] recording here's the channel 8 ready to go yup ready to go so aaron if you go ahead and get started all right we good to go very good well good evening everyone and welcome to the tuesday august 25th 2020 study session of the boulder city council uh first you may be wondering why i'm talking and not sam well don't worry there hasn't been a coup or anything sam is still in good health um but we have started something this year where council members are rotating leading study sessions so the mayor steps to the side and each of us is taking a turn at leading a study session meeting so for tonight uh you get me and i think the next one mark are you doing the next next study session september 8th yes very good all right well before we get into the agenda we have an announcement for the evening which is about the 2020 census so um the boulder

[8:00] county is currently at a 73 response rate which is good but there is still time to respond to the 2020 census and please don't be left out because your response matters completing the census is safe easy and important the questionnaire only takes a few minutes to complete your responses are secure and confidential and results help direct billions of dollars in federal funds to our community including resources for emergencies and disaster responses please encourage your friends and family to respond by the september 30th deadline at my2020census.gov or by calling 844-330-2020 right thanks for that okay so we've got an exciting agenda ahead of us for this evening we're going to start with an update on phase 2 of the community benefit project followed by an update of phase 2 of the youth standards and table project and then concluding with matters regarding policing so stick with us for the whole evening it promises to be very interesting

[9:01] so uh let's start with the uh phase two of the community benefit project who's going to get us going on that great thanks very much aaron carl geiler is going to present stamps analysis this evening we look forward to your feedback great take it away carl okay just going to get the presentation started can everyone see that yes okay so we had a check-in with city council in april of this year on the community benefit project at that discussion uh council members had requested that we return in quarter three uh to check in on this project again so it's good timing for us since we've been part of the community engagement phase so it allows us now to present to council some of the results of that community feedback as well as some preliminary options that we want to get

[10:00] some feedback from the council so we can move forward with the project okay so this is what we're going to cover tonight slide a little bit of a delay so we're just going to talk a little bit about the background of the community benefit project and then talk about what's been done the progress that's been made in phase two of the project where we've been basically trying to define um the three community benefits that are part of phase two and working with stakeholders on those we want to get some feedback from the council on the duration and penalty fee options that we've discussed a little bit with council in the past as well as our approaches and updates to updating the site review criteria so we'll talk about some of the engagement we've heard it's been an interesting year doing everything online due to the pandemic and then we'll conclude with the

[11:01] questions for counsel these are the questions i'll read through them just so you're thinking about them during the course of the presentation the first relates to the community benefit uses we included a number of tables in the packet tables one through five that talk about our staff recommendations on a number of these points so does the city council agree with the staff recommendations in tables one through three related to adding below market rate rent commercial arts and cultural uses and human so in social service uses as community benefit uses um the next question is about duration uh one of the goals and objectives of this project was to talk about duration and see if if there is consensus around perpetuity so the question we're asking is should community benefit uses be required uh by agreements uh to be in operation for a certain a set period of time so some other

[12:01] jurisdictions um set it at 10 years or 20 years or should they be required in perpetuity like permanently affordable housing the next piece also derives its um the topic from other communities that we've looked at penalty fees so the question is for community benefit uses that cease operation after approval should a penalty fee be required until a use of equal benefit is established and then lastly the question is does the city council agree with the staff recommendations in table 5 relating to the updates to the site review criteria just going back in time a little bit um prior to 1971 there wasn't actually a maximum height in the city of boulder uh you can see there's quite a few buildings that were built you know in the 50s 60s and 70s that are well over the limits that we have today over 100

[13:00] feet in 1971 there was a city charter amendment that set the maximum height of buildings in boulder at 55 feet that's not changing to be clear what that really gets us is really four and five story buildings typically a buy right building is usually two or three stories any requests in a zoning district to go over that two or three stories depending on how the calculation is done would require site review and what we call a height modification so that's something that requires planning board approval at a public hearing that's also not changing this is something that would still be the purview of planning board and still could be called up by city council we did see a lot of buildings going up uh prior to like after the great recession they were all coming up out of the ground at the same time that caused some concern so that led to a ordinance being put in effect by council in 2015 that limited height

[14:01] modifications to specific areas of the city which this is the old map shown on the screen the areas in red generally areas that were under some sort of area plan or had design guidelines where you were allowed to come in with a height modification and then the concerns related to height translated to the update to the boulder valley commercial plan um if you recall you know community benefit's been a discussion for quite a while now but prior to 2017 it wasn't really applied to any site review projects it was really only a component of annexations so when the comp plan was updated in 2017 it included some new policies that set the expectation that for any projects that add additional intensity or floor area or height that that in return there might be an expectation for some community benefit and even listed some of the things that we should be looking at so we had commenced this project in 2018

[15:02] after those policies went into effect and we had a study session with council at that time where we went into a lot of detail on the goals and objectives of the project the range of community benefits to look at and we also looked at a number of peer communities so ultimately the project was split into two phases uh phase one was adopted by council in october of last year i'll talk a little bit more about that uh on another slide so in general what this slide is showing is that you know the building in blue on the left is would be considered a buy right building wouldn't have any additional associated community benefit with it but for with this particular project the list shows that if this were to move forward with all the community benefits that we're looking at there would be basically four community benefit options added to the code and there'd be an expectation that that some of these uses would be in a building that has a fourth or a fifth story

[16:00] and again this still would require uh planning board review and approval uh for any kind of hype modification so going into a little bit more of the detail of phase one this basically shows that anything that's above the height limit that's in a fourth or a fifth story or any floor area that's above a floor area ratio limit of a zone would be considered bonus floor area so the way the code is written is that there's additional requirements that kick in for those areas above the height limit or above the floor area so phase one was really focused on permanently affordable housing uh we had an economic consultant that we're still working with to look at a number of projects and looking around town and where this could be an incentive so they we basically want by their recommendations that for the area that's by right we have our standard 25 of the of the number of units would have to be permanently

[17:01] affordable for the bonus floor area that increases to 36 percent so there's also an in luffy option that was allowed through that and as well as the commercial linkage fee so if they were doing a commercial building anything that's bonus floor area would have to be 43 percent more than a buy right option so the other thing that was a common component of that ordinance was updates to the appendix j map so you can see on the right the map was updated to include the rh3 zoning districts on arapahoe and the frontage road and it also added the alpine balsam site it also put a sunset date on the map of may 31st 2021 so our goal has been to try to complete this project by that end date so moving into phase two we've really been focusing on defining the three uh community benefit uses as part of this again these would have to be these would

[18:01] be additional options to permanently affordable housing the nexus between these particular uses is just the high rents that exist in boulder that have been driving some businesses out of boulder so like we did with the restrictive covenant on the 30 pearl project we'd be looking at some sort of requirement that would lower the lease rate by a certain percentage of the market rate to make these spaces more affordable to these particular uses so again we're working with the uh economic consultant to advise on that uh obviously we're we're not in a great year to um provide a trial period for phase one and not necessarily a good year to evaluate the economics given the downturn what our economist kaiser marston associates has recommended is that we use the pre-2020 assumptions that were used in phase one just so we're doing an apples to apples comparison uh and also looking at what would be

[19:01] equivalent to the permanently affordable housing that was adopted through phase one so that people aren't always you know deferring to the easiest or cheapest option their recommendation is that we do that apples to apples kind of comparison and then reassess after a certain period of time and we may need to adjust the numbers to react to whatever the outcome of the economic downturn is so another component of the project is is working on the site review criteria these are linked uh if you recall when we did phase one the changes that added the community benefit for permanently affordables in the site review criteria and the land use intensity modifications so we're also just looking at um how can we make the site review criteria better um there's been some criticisms about the process so we're looking at trying to create more consistency with comprehensive plan policies through updates try to get more high quality design

[20:00] outcomes improve the clarity simplicity and predictability of the site review process and also looking deeper into view protection this has been something that's been somewhat vague in sight reviews and that perhaps we should maybe borrow from the form based code and making that more specific we've spent a lot of time looking at the criteria internally and also talking to folks externally about what updates could be made so we do have some suggestions that we've been trying to get feedback on we've been looking at trying to emphasize key policies in the site review criteria rather than just having a blanket statement that it is consistent with all comprehensive planning policies on balance which obviously adds some unpredictability to projects we we're recommending that the criteria be reorganized in a top-down approach so kind of starting high level with policy things that should be considered and working down

[21:01] uh through site design and then to more detailed things like the building design the the facades of buildings there's a fair amount of redundancy in the site review criteria um that can be removed i mean the criteria are like seven pages long and there's a lot of statements that repeat through different sections that we think can be consolidated there's also some sections that are unnecessarily complicated or actually don't don't get used at all that we are thinking about removing and replacing with the community benefits standards to add more predictability we're also looking at maybe borrowing some things that make sense from the form base code and putting them into the site review criteria to have more of a black and white kind of prescriptive standard rather than what we have in the site review today so along those lines we've been looking at some of the things that were implemented through the form based code like limiting building length looking at other bulk restrictions that might be necessary to make buildings

[22:00] more compatible uh specific building material requirements we're looking at uh for instance you know in the site review criteria it just says that the building has authentic building materials on it the form-based code goes into a little bit more detail by having specific percentages of masonry materials or wood or stone or metal the form-based code also protects the view of the flat irons from the park in boulder junction uh this is kind of set the the stage for a discussion of maybe there's other areas of the city where uh this could be done and maybe implemented through site review it's something that's certainly important to uh citizens that we've been hearing uh feedback on so talking about community engagement so community engagement on this project started in 2018 we com we created some focus groups with a number of neighbors development

[23:01] professionals other people that were interested just to get their viewpoints on building height if you recall we had a number of open house events that we called coda paloozas we had some stakeholder meetings and we also did a be heard boulder questionnaire last year this year's been a little different similar in that we've been having similar discussions and focus groups and like open houses but it's all been online we've been uh trying to get the word out with the updated website and handouts uh we did a channel eight segment we've done next door notifications we've put notifications in the planning newsletter we did a community information event in july we put together a site review focus group that was composed of design professionals to kind of get their input on the changes to the site review criteria we also talked about the whole project with a neighborhood representative focus group that was composed of folks from all over the city just to hear

[24:01] their viewpoints and we've also been having ongoing stakeholder meetings with with a number of different organizations what we've heard is there is support for adding community benefit options and a lot of agreement with the three that we're focusing on but also we've been hearing a lot of concerns from folks about not allowing any additional buildings over the height limit we've also heard words of caution from some folks about putting new regulations in place during the economic slowdown that we're experiencing so a lot of that is summarized in the uh in the attachments to the packet so i'm going to talk about the be herd boulder questionnaire we've had over 500 visits to this particular project in over 175 responses the numbers have changed somewhat since the packet went out but but not too much what we saw in the past was kind of more of a split between folks those who

[25:01] support it and those who don't you know like 48 to 48 something like that it's it's shifted a little bit more towards over 60 percent disagreed with the three options for community benefit um allowing additional height modifications uh there was 30 percent of respondents that uh supported it when we asked the question about just appendix j you know should it be repealed or should it should it be kept in place but modified uh we did get over 70 percent that indicated their opposition to removing the appendix j map which means keeping the restrictions that are currently in place as is when we talked about questions about additional requirements that would apply to taller buildings we did get most of the respondents over 100 responses for each idea uh that there was support for that uh we originally had more support for updating the site review criteria but

[26:01] that's kind of dropped a bit uh it's nearly 60 now or saying that there's support for uh changing the site review criteria to be less subjective and more predictable so this is the specific recommendations that we have at this time um i'm not going to go through all these different options for each of the community benefits but there's a lot of similarities but generally we're looking to create you know very clear definitions of what the particular use is uh our economic economic consultant would have to advise on on a minimum amount that would work this would be memorialized in an agreement the same way that we do permanently affordable housing we would have to set a minimum duration we're recommending in perpetuity to make it equivalent to the permanently affordable housing option in the case of below market rate commercial we are looking at an option that would

[27:00] limit the size of tenant spaces just to be more conducive to smaller local businesses it would be more attractive to them we are we're not looking at restricting tenant furniture that we talked about last time in april uh or restricting uh franchises from from out of state just because there's some there's some legal questions regarding that and our city power may not actually allow us to cover that there's some complications with that that we still need to look at so with respect to art and cultural uses similar recommendations we did ask the council whether the arts commission should provide a recommendation on the consistent consistency of the use with the definition we've talked to the arts commission about it they're supportive of it there are some folks in the arts community that uh have recommended that the arts commission not be providing a recommendation to that effect but we we think that they would be a good gauge of whether something meets

[28:01] the definition humans in human and social services we also looked at we asked the question to them whether human services staff should be providing a recommendation they were apprehensive to do so just because they wanted to avoid any kind of sense of of favoritism of any kind of business they felt like they do have some minimum standards that they already operate by that we could work with them to get that into a code so that it we would be able to look at it and make sure that those minimum standards are are met and therefore they wouldn't need to provide any kind of recommendation they've also asked that we not restrict it just to non-profits just because there are some uses that serve the community that are for-profit like child care things of that nature but i know that nursing homes is something we talked about in the past we've put a definition in the code that we think could work that there could be a minimum number of

[29:02] of medicaid beds that would um qualify a particular nursing home so that's something that we thought we could move forward with we want to get your feedback on that so lastly uh the site review criteria we're recommending most of the updates that i've talked about again with the site review focus group we had a discussion talking about you know making the criteria more prescriptive uh i think at the beginning of the discussion there was some reservation about that about losing flexibility um some skepticism on that but as we talked through kind of what form-based code standards might work you know some minimum things just about you know percentage of a certain material or where material changes can occur or maybe building length maximums might just make sense broadly for projects and then there was a little bit more cohesion between the group and being interested in that particular

[30:00] option i think it all obviously comes down to the details so we went to planning board last week and we posed all these questions to planning board and i wanted to summarize that before we get to our questions so when we talked about the community benefit uses there was general support for the three uses but there was some skepticism regarding below market rate commercial in the sense that it would be difficult to determine what users would go into each of those space it wouldn't necessarily always result in a business that's of benefit to the community and may not necessarily be a local business um so there was some uh concern about that when we talked about minimum duration uh the board felt that perpetuity made sense to be equivalent to the permanently affordable housing uh but they felt like the discussion kind of moved towards maybe in luffy's might make sense for all these different uses uh perhaps there could be different

[31:00] um pots where the where money could go into to help you know arts and cultural uses or human services or you know to community vitality for affordable business uh that might make sense there was there was some um cohesion between board members for an in-lieu fee option uh just like a lump sum that would basically uh be easier to implement um there was some uh support for that based on the fact that it it removes the cons the the questions about duration and and penalty fees um so that's something that was was interesting from the board uh penalty fees when we talked about that there was concern that that could be difficult to track how would we know if a particular use got switched out for a use that doesn't meet you know community benefit or if if a space has been vacant for some period of time they felt like there needed to be some flexibility there perhaps like some sort of voucher

[32:00] system but there was concerns that that basically the you know the program could be gamed by this or it would be difficult uh to track and then uh lastly we talked about the site review criteria another mixed response from the board um there was some concern about mixing form-based code standards with the site review i think a lot of them just kind of needed to know what the details would be before they commented on this i think it kind of ended with you know let's see how the the community benefit portion plays out before you know they advise on what kind of changes should be made to the criteria so just as far as next steps we want to continue to collect feedback from the public uh online at this point i mean we're not looking at in person for the foreseeable future but we want to continue to have some stakeholder and focus group meetings to talk about our progress but after we get more direction from the council we want to start refining the

[33:01] options and start uh drafting code and with the goal of trying to bring something forward either in quarter four of this year or first quarter of next year so any questions for us before we go back to the questions for the council i'll bet there are um of course mark put out a number of questions that were answered this afternoon so hopefully mark you uh got those questions satisfactorily answered anyone else with questions for staff and sarah you're gonna have to tell me in presentation mode how to bring up the list oh there we go i got it um looks like we have sam and then mary and then mark great thank you aaron great um i want to compliment staff on both of these memos

[34:00] the community benefit as well as the use table they're very thorough well organized and it was easy to find what your suggestions were and what you wanted to get feedback on so i thought these were both very well done and since they're complicated subjects i think the only question i have is you talked about in-lieu funding for community benefits so you know that's a strategy we use with affordable housing as well but with affordable housing it's pretty easy to know how the in the fees will be applied later the subsidies typically for getting affordable housing built how would these in lieu fees be applied would it be on other projects [Music] what would the what would the concept be for how in lieu for say affordable commercial would end up being used well i think we wanted to get feedback from the council about whether there was interest in in lieu um for these options

[35:00] number one and then number two if there is then we would start to work with community vitality on if and also with our attorneys to see if there was a way to allocate funds to you know a community vitality bucket or if we could put something into an arts and cultural use fund that would help you know with arts districts or it could be you know something that goes to human services to help them with finding spaces for tenants um obviously within luffy's we don't want to come up with a financial or monetary option that's going to be easier cheaper than the permanently affordable so it would have to be equivalent um to that as far as the the money it just might be like where do you direct that money um the other thing that uh we're working with the economist on is giving us advice about you know how the in luffy may change by adding these additional options

[36:01] um they're looking at that more broadly okay and then another question that the polling numbers quote numbers that you shared with us those who are all self-selected respondents is that correct that's correct so we can view those polling results kind of like we view emails that we get on a given subject it's more about the the qualitative suggestions they were making rather than the quantitative numbers correct it's one of the tools that we've been using to gauge feedback okay thanks i think that's all my questions great mary thank you aaron so one of the things that came up from commenters was process and changing process um to what extent is staff considering

[37:02] that or is it being considered at all and and if it is what kinds of things [Music] we are we do plan to convene the site review focus group and just kind of get comments on process process improvements at this point i think the scope of the project has really not been focused as much on the process i think where we're headed with this at least for now is it would be a hype modification just as it has been done in the past it would be us it'd be a site review application there just would be new criteria that would relate to community benefit and would relate to the updates and an applicant would have to design their project and work things out before they submit we review it and if it's a hype modification we bring it to planning board for uh their decision same as before okay thank you um and then how

[38:00] [Music] did staff consider linkage fees on this square footage that would have the reduced um [Music] rent um how or did that work into it at all it's something that's being looked at again our our economist is currently doing the analysis we don't have the results of their analysis so we we anticipate in the next few months to be working with them and getting some sort of recommendations that would look at that okay thank you um and then um you mentioned that the arts commission would be a place to take the the proposed um arts community benefit to have you all considered what that might look like would it be like the whole um arts commission taking a look at it or would it just be a couple of designated a subcommittee of members or

[39:01] has there been any thought into what that might look like i don't know that we've gotten into that much detail about it i think we just thought about it in the same way that you know a site review project might go to dab you know that it gets referred to them it goes on their agenda they they quickly talk about they review the written statement they review the materials and they provide you know their comments you know based on whether or not it it meets the the definition that's in our code whatever that is um and then um with respect well i guess we'll yeah this this got talked about in the memo which was what kinds of businesses might get the benefit of of the reduced rent and what did staff consider looking at what are the services that are provided what is who benefits from

[40:00] the particular business as a gauge um as to whether or not that business would qualify aside from the fact that we talked about national chains or local businesses i mean you could have the national chain either be gucci or walmart and that would serve different people you could have the local business be some high-end clothing store versus um you know a small um business that that sells a thrift store say for example so how how did is that shaping up yet or it's not fully formed um you know it's it's we started by looking at you know the 30 pearl restrictive covenant so that was a voluntary agreement that had you know what kind of businesses would qualify so it listed women owned or minority owned or or was uh defined as a local business

[41:00] when we get into actually putting the regulations into the code there are some challenges with that of being too specific about that use so that's something that we still need to to look at further i think the 30 pearl gives us a good guide um but there's still more analysis that needs to be done on the legal side to make sure that that can work in our code okay great that's all i have thank you great mark then rachel hey first thanks for answering all my questions um i unfortunately have a few more um at 30 pro we did a 25 to market discount is there any particular magic in that number um does it have to be 75 percent of market should it be less more i mean [Music] how are we going to wrestle that one to the ground i mean again that's something that we're going to be relying heavily on our economic consultant to advise on i think

[42:01] when we come back to council i think we may have to have some different ordinance options that have some numbers you know and they'll have their recommendation as to what the most appropriate number would be and then we would want to get you know councils buy in on that okay there's a great deal as i understand the program of discretionary uh power to be exercised here to some extent we're picking winners and losers in determining who gets the prize how are we going to manage this in a way that is not so arbitrary and capricious and has complete standards so that everybody knows what what to expect well that's precisely what the goals and objectives of this project state so that's what's been driving you know the need to really define the uses very clearly and also update the criteria to be

[43:00] more clear so the goal is hopefully that it'd be very straightforward to find out when an application comes in by going through their their package that it would meet those minimum definitions and would be more clean in the site review as far as how it meets those criteria i mean do you contemplate for instance saying you know no ice cream shops because you don't think that they're appropriate as a use but shoe repair shops are okay i mean how is this going to work how is what is going to be the exclusion of any business on what basis well i think as this discussion is showing the below market rate commercial is a difficult one and and planning boards struggled with that i think we thought we were on a good path with that one but because there are some things where it may not be consistent with federal law i think we need to dig into that further to find out what uses could fit into that okay and

[44:02] have we defined what our financial goals are here we are conferring a benefit on the developer of a project if we are conferring a benefit that equals 100 extra dollars of revenue uh either per year or in total to the developer do we have a sense of how much we're looking to recapture as a community benefit is it based on a percentage is it what are our standards well again i think the economist is going to advise on that when we presented phase one we had some slides that actually specifically showed you know with a buy right project the city would get this much with a community benefit project there would be this monetary value and again we want the economist to make sure that that economic value of these particular three are going to be equivalent to the permanently affordable if not greater so they're going to have to advise on that my last question is in the criteria for

[45:01] review you indicated that one of the objectives was to increase high quality design outcomes um as we have not been entirely fortunate in achieving that to date how would you do that well again i i think we're drawing from the form form-based code i think what we've been hearing from folks is that there are some standards in that that are relatively straightforward that do get better design results so for instance you know the form based code has fenestration requirements so a minimum percentage of windows per floor something that we struggle with site review projects on because there might be a lot of spaces or blank walls if there was at least a minimum percentage that has to be you know window penetrations that improves the design there's basic detailing requirements like a differentiation between the ground floor and the floors above that do result in in better designs more you know masonry buildings more

[46:01] simplicity um are things that we think result in better design outcomes so i think there are some things from the form based code that i think could be relatively straightforward put into the site review criteria to get some nice baselines in there okay all right thank you uh i'll pass the baton to rachel now all right rachel tegan um so just one question for now and i asked the same thing last time and i know it's touched on in the packet and you touched on it also tonight but do we have any data for phase one like how many um applicants for the two extra floors were there any anything you tell us about phase one well i mean the way we're looking at it is that those particular requirements started on january 1st of this year and then we were in full pandemic mode by march so it hasn't been the greatest year to have any kind of you know analysis of this we've not seen

[47:01] any applications come in that are pursuing it to phase one um and any so we we did have a couple months in there and was you know were there any inquiries or nibbles or anything because my concern is if we make it so you know if we if we choose to offer these benefits in such an onerous way that nobody wants to take us up on the fourth and fifth then we have a de facto uh 35 foot 38 foot um building height requirement and we're trying to have this community benefit so that's why phase one is so i think maybe so telling and so is there is there any way to know whether that was um well received at all we've not gotten any inquiries we we have gotten some you know anecdotal comments from some in the community that that feel that the way it's written it does not provide an incentive which contrasts with what the economist

[48:00] had stated there would be an incentive again this is something that we're going to have if we do implement all of this we're going to have to continually evaluate it for feasibility and whether it does make sense and make adjustments um okay that's all i have for now thanks so much great so i'll call myself i have one question so it seems we've got these three buckets right of different kinds of community benefits that we're considering with this phase two but it seems like to some extent the they could be you could have the same space used for more than one of these purposes right like below market commercial um you know could be some kind of local business but a human services organization could use that same space so are we imagining that there would be flexibility built into these requirements such that like if you provide you know one of them it could be switched to another one um what's your thought on that i mean that that's what we would like we've been having discussions with our economist on

[49:01] what our expectations are and that there should be some level of flexibility of switching between uses we don't want you know the economist to come back and say well it makes sense to have this amount for this particular use and then this larger amount for this particular type of use and then there's not like a lot of adaptability there so we've set that as one of our concerns and something that they should be um looking at and advising us on great thanks that's good and i just i'll make a comment on it since we're just talking about it that it would be good to incorporate that flexibility into any eventual regulations such that if you're providing a 2000 square foot office space that it could be you know potentially switch between the different different types okay that was my one question um carl do you want to bring up your questions for council well let me just first any did anybody else want to crack at a question i don't see any other hands i put my hand up um i just had one more question um

[50:00] carl would you mind going back to i think 2015 and just recounting um it was briefly mentioned in here but i believe the discussion we had at that time was that we would put in the appendix j we didn't call it that back then but just outside of the areas with with some kind of area plan we put in uh the moratorium on going above 35 feet and then there was a vote the council took at some point after that which was not to make that permanent but to continue with what i believe was the original um discussion which was put in place until we had community benefit definition and then lift it could you just recount that because i've forgotten some of it sure so when the appendix j map was adopted in 2015 it had a sunset date i think it was

[51:00] i think it was 2017 originally and then it was extended to um 2020 and when council acted on the appendix j map again in october of last year the the sunset date was extended to may 2021. so the expectation that was set up you know back in 2015 is that this was a basically an interim map that would allow us to do the analysis and homework to put together a community benefit program and then when it the community benefit program was put into place in the code that map would then go away and it would open up to the rest of the city but we have heard some you know comments from folks about you know maybe it should be you know modified or incrementally uh opened up in certain areas or maybe it should be kept restricted and see how the the program uh gets implemented and whether or not

[52:00] there's comfort in removing it so there are there are still some questions about you know what to do with appendix j but the original intent was that it was going to be temporary thank you okay unless anyone else has more questions let's look at those questions that staff has for us hey chris do you need to share your screen again because i'm not seeing my presentation up here there we go so um we've got these four questions in front of us i'll just start um by reading the first one does city council agree with the staff recommendations in those tables one through three in our packet related to adding below market rent commercial uh art and cultural uses and human social services uses as community benefit uses so because the question for

[53:00] us here is do we feel like staff's recommendations are on track or do we feel like they need some tweaking for those three areas so um if people want to raise their hand to to speak to that question go ahead let's see sam is your hand up for this one or is that from last time i can start it i haven't put it up yet but let mark go first okay uh mark you want to start and then sam sure um [Music] i've expressed this before it's my view that a more focused program is better than a more diffuse program every poll every indication we have is that lack of affordable housing is the number one priority in boulder certainly among people who respond to these kinds of things and a more broadly based program will serve

[54:02] to decrease the amount of affordable housing that we are going to be producing through uh through a program of this type um i am i want to emphasize this is not that i don't think that affordable commercial housing is is bad uh it's not that i don't support arts and cultural uses and humans and social services uses uh but that um the highest priority that we have is housing and it seems to me that it's most appropriate to give away a little bit of extra floor area and height in exchange for our number one need we do this quite frequently where we tend to dilute the mission um to try to accommodate more needs of the community but our greatest need is affordable housing so i don't understand why we would be wanting to take away from the production

[55:01] of affordable housing either through on-site or cash and lieu fees um and make this much more complex and it seems to me more arbitrary system um that will again foster a good deal of gaming on the part of uh developers and so my my view of this is i would prefer that if we would proceed that we would be proceeding with a very focused housing-oriented program and again it's not to say that the other goals are not important and cannot be supported but the highest goal we have in this town is to meet our affordability standards and this will detract from that thank you okay so mark to be clear then you would you would just not pursue this any further would be your oh i would put no i would do the community benefit program but i would i would want to do it in on the basis of housing um and you know there are other aspects of

[56:01] this uh that that could be you know the program could be tweaked we can we can look at a better site review process um you know better criteria and and more certain standards but to me the benefit that we should be extracting from uh developers who want to add a floor or two of um residential space should be residential space sorry i should have been a little more clear with my question so we the phase one process is done right so we have the community benefit for affordable housing written into the code already so there so you would just leave it there for community benefit okay thanks for clarifying sam do you want to go next yeah and i'll address that same point and i'll disagree with mark um in the sense that we already address affordable housing as kind of the entry price for building anything in boulder if you build housing you have to have 25

[57:00] affordable if that your development project is is residential if you do commercial we have a linkage fee and that commercial linkage fee was adopted specifically to support affordable housing as brought in on the order of five million dollars so far since we put that in place so that's been a success so the way i look at this is we have made affordable housing an absolute you know supporting affordable housing with new development a requirement of any development it is just you can't do development without supporting affordable housing more is better so i'm glad we did phase one the way we did but i think there are other needs in the city as well the reason that the affordable commercial became a part of 30 perl is because we had been lobbied by several different groups about how we could create more affordable commercial space i do agree that that is a more complex subject i would be tempted to start with a focus on non-profits i do take the comment from housing and human

[58:02] services that in social services that there are other for-profit services that can support human needs but at least for the affordable commercial it might be easiest to start with something like non-profits as a requirement but on the whole i would like to see this um continue because i believe that three identified uses are also high needs in boulder and because every development will support affordable housing and we have like that's the floor that's the expectation to even do development then having choices i i agree that i hope the economist makes it hard to game the system but i think these other uses are valuable and i think in answer to the rest of the questions i would continue with that i would like to see community vitality provide recommendations

[59:00] and then i don't know about restrictions on size and width or national franchises but i do think we should consider seriously the type of businesses and i think nonprofits is kind of front and center with having real difficulty finding space in boulder so those are my thoughts on the first question thanks aaron thanks sam we've got bob then mary then adam then rachel yeah i'm gonna agree with sam on this i think we do need to move into phase one and not pause on phase two i think if all we do is is focus on affordable housing which is great and sam sam did a great job of summarizing all the ways we we support affordable housing but i think if that's all we do we're gonna wake up ten years from now and have nothing but really high end market rate commercial and affordable housing and that's it and the affordable housing part of it is great but we're going to squeeze out our arts and culture cultural users and our human services and social services users i agree with mark that

[60:01] we have to be very very careful that we don't game this so that the developer builds uh picks the lowest um cost option and this is going to require a very very delicate balance and we're probably not going to get it right the first time but to figure out what that kind of point of inflection is between where the developer is kind of agnostic between does he build affordable housing or does he do some below market rate commercial or does he do something for culture in the arts or social services i think that's really going to be the test here and like i said we'll probably get it wrong the first time and we'll have to be tweaking it over the coming years but i think if we just simply abandon those uses we're going to end up with a city that's going to have nothing but very very expensive commercial space and affordable housing and nothing else and i don't think that's what we want thanks bob mary so i'm of two minds on this um and i i hear totally what mark is saying

[61:01] and the reason that we started going down this path um was because last year the year before that there were we were losing a lot of local businesses and there was a lot of concern um and the the mention of 30 pearl came up and how that came about and the reason that that is i think working out so well as it is is because the nonprofit that's going in there um has a serendipitous relationship to the housing that's going in there so the housing is um permanent supportive housing and the nonprofit serves folks that can use permanent supportive housing so i think that's perhaps the way maybe to approach it is when there is a relationship like that between um the business that's going in there and the proximity of the housing of the folks that are going in there whether or not

[62:00] they are in the affordable housing because it seems to me that and i'll say more about this in in the use tables discussion that when we talk about walkable neighborhoods it's like walkable for who um somebody is driving so that somebody can walk and um and if we approach the the affordable commercial from the standpoint of if this business didn't have affordable housing close by then they would have to either have the business way far away and residents would have to drive or if the housing is far away then um the the workers would have to drive so there's a certain um relationship there i think that that we need to look at between the business that's going in there and the proximity of the affordable housing

[63:02] so are they living in the affordable housing and maybe that's who qualifies maybe those are the kinds of businesses so that we balance out the fact that um people who have low-wage jobs are generally the ones that are driving into town um because they can't afford the housing here so um i would just say that you know kind of keep that in mind um so other than that i agree with three great thanks mary uh adam [Music] thank you aaron um yeah i i feel like we can move forward with phase two my biggest concern probably is about the the fact that it's it's usually larger companies that have the ability to find and navigate the systems

[64:03] that like you know lower rate rents for commercial spaces they just have the ability um so that's a major concern for me is the size of the business um i realize that there are legal issues with limiting out-of-state businesses or um types of corporations but to me you know the the soul of the program is supposed to be very small business the people who have a hard time navigating things like this and um making sure that they're the ones that sort of rise to the top when it comes to options for businesses inhabiting the below rate rental properties so that's that's kind of my biggest focus area is making sure it truly is supporting those types of businesses um because i'd hate to see stuff happen like we saw

[65:00] um with the carriers act where it was rather large corporations that ended up getting a bunch of small business loans um which you know is completely defeats the purpose so um that's that's my biggest sort of red flag thanks adam rachel and then juni and then i'll finish up all right thanks a couple things so um to answer number one yes i favor us um going forward and agree with this staff wreck but i'm gonna come back to you i think it needs to be done in such a way that red tape is really minimized and it's not so onerous that we're doing this in name only and that we are taking pains to ensure that the way that this is is offered is a product that developers would actually use because otherwise we're not getting the community benefit and i think we all want the community benefit so um i think we need to keep that front and center um on the

[66:01] issue or question of national chains um i i could see where that could be valuable for a couple reasons um number one like if i um you know think of like low-cost grocery stores say they they would be an affordable shopping option for people living there a walkable affordable way to get your um food and i think that that um that is not i don't have the data on that i think it could be helpful so i don't want to mix that without knowing more information and more data on who might be helped if national chains can go in especially if to some degree we are coupling this with nearby affordable housing and second just reflecting i think it was last week or a couple weeks ago we heard about how our tax base was hit more than um nearby like the elves because we don't have any big box stores here and so um maybe there is some value in

[67:01] having um in having a place in boulder that people obviously want to shop at because people from here i think we're going to the nearby towns to do that shopping so i think we can and none of that is to diminish that i support um space being made available and affordable for our small businesses um but also just noting there there may be value um in the other category as well um and then to the point of if i followed um mary accurately like tethering um the community benefit to um the the occupants of housing or i think if i heard that as maybe what was being said and and would just caution it's not always going to be a benefit to have an employee um either living or coming to work you know like tying everything together um having worked for um a non-profit that provided

[68:02] services to people with disabilities um there is sometimes you can be too close and you can be seen as like overstepping or sort of not giving people space and and there can be some ripple effects that we may not be thinking but the employee might not want to be right on top of their employer when they go to bed at night or the individuals being served might also not want to be um completely tethered to the organization that's providing the services so i got thanks okay thanks rachel junie [Music] thank you i just wanted to i guess close the loop with all of us saying something i support uh the recommendation and you know and the fact that we want a vibrant community that's what i was thinking when i saw number one community benefit and it talked about affordable commercial arts and culture

[69:00] and human services so i was thinking oh we've always talked about 15 minutes neighborhood what would that look like so i thought that's a great idea to have a balance between these two and i do understand um the concern of you know who are these affordable commercial who will they be or which company will that be and i wonder if there's uh the type of perimeters that we have to set to ensure that the right institutions get access to them because we do know you know there are a lot of huge corporations in organizations but also they are struggling businesses especially in this time of kobe 19 we have to think of these small organizations or even people who are thinking of opening new businesses and we have to create those opportunities for them so i think this is great and i support this idea of a vibrant community that is very balanced so i think this is great

[70:00] thanks juni i'll just wrap up um just by saying i do um also agree uh that we should move forward with these three items that um affordable uh space for local businesses and space for non-profits and human services and for arts and culture are critically needed in this community and we lose small businesses and arts organizations and other people this would be designed to serve on a regular basis from our town so i do definitely support moving forward with this um people have made a lot of great comments you know one theme that i thought i heard coming out of that was that how we write the criteria for who can apply and who gets accepted into these spaces is going to be a really critically important part of this program so um because i think that's that's where a lot of the whether it becomes a very successful program or doesn't work so well will depend on a great deal on how this criteria written so that's something we

[71:00] want to be really careful with but also maybe to have some flexibility around so that um you know we can have some some of that maybe that's written into an ordinance that would be require council action to change but maybe some uh some bits that um we have flexibility for for our staff to tweak as necessary so that's something to think carefully about as we move into um writing ordinances about this um and i'll just echo what what rachel said you know we uh that we need to make sure that these are programs that are actually feasible for people to include in their projects um because otherwise we won't get the community benefit that we're hoping to get from the program let's see mark looks like you want to have another word in here well yes obviously it's the will of counsel that we should proceed with phase two and not narrow it and in which case i'd like to express some support for sam's comment about focusing on not-for-profits at least at an initial stage i have you know a great deal of discomfort with some of the potential

[72:01] um users of this kind of space um i'd hate to see a um a sophisticated financial services firm um taking advantage of the program uh when an arts user might be foreclosed so i i think that would be a good way of focusing it at least initially to see uh see how it works okay thanks for that um all right so the next question is minimum duration so staff has recommended that uh these programs be required to be in perpetuity and not have a shorter time frame does anyone disagree with that recommendation see mary you did you want to say something no i just want to show that i um did not disagree okay great good uh well it sounds like we got agreement on that and then the next bit was uh the penalty fee staff is recommending

[73:00] that if a development uh is not complying with these requirements uh for some period of time that there be a penalty fee assessed uh does anyone want to disagree with that or offer a comment on that um sam i see you've got a hand up yep um my comment is that some of the earlier discussion i agreed with about um having the flexibility to change the use you know so if it was to go for instance from affordable commercial to some kind of human services space i think we should be flexible to that so i i think there should be a penalty fee if the the community benefit goes away that's kind of one of the things that started this whole conversation in the first place is how do we make sure that we get what is promised and so yes i think penalty fees are a good idea if if the benefit goes away entirely but i do want us to be flexible enough that you know it can evolve over time still

[74:01] providing community benefit that may be changing its form okay good point thanks mark and then juni i can agree with sam's comment on flexibility i think we need to have some of that but what i'm wondering um and i'd like staff to look at it do we need a penalty if we simply bar the leasing of the space outside of the program a dark space is a penalty in and of itself to a landlord and if you cannot release it other than according to the criteria that are established that is is in itself a fairly substantial penalty so i'm just wondering if if in fact we actually need a penalty fee or simply a prohibition on um leasing outside of the parameters of uh affordable commercials social services and arts okay good question uh let's see juni did you want to say

[75:00] something get your hand up yeah my my initial thoughts were exactly what sam said that we needed a little bit more flexibility especially thinking and the time that we're living in you know i would imagine i don't own any buildings i'm not a landlord but if you know they're trying to rent a property and they can't access uh people who wants to rent at an affordable rate so i think we have to look at the minimum and the maximum so okay if the person can't rent the entire space with for with affordable um at an affordable rate when is it when when does this penalty take effect okay good adam and then mary yeah i have a quick response for mark and that is that there are already those dark holes of commercial space and office

[76:01] space in this community that have been sitting idle for years because the mortgages are paid off and it's better to just let them sit um than lower the the rents across the board so to me i think a penalty is pretty necessary okay mary so i think we need to consider the fact that retail itself is changing um so if the space was designed more for retail um that seems to be um decreasing the need for retail space um and so perhaps that speaks to the kinds of uses that can go in a particular space as well as the ability for the space to be subdivided that might be another option that could happen in order to lower the rents even further and i i guess another consideration would be

[77:02] what if they wanted to convert to housing and you know that could be a very desirable way out of this of the commitment of providing a community benefit so um just things to consider thanks now rachel um sorry this is just a question is this are we just talking about phase two for the penalty like did phase one already have a penalty or with this penalty apply to both faces i think this mostly applies to phase two i think our housing already has provisions for you know it's once you build housing it's it's less likely that that's not being used as housing you know there's a lot of demand for it so i don't know that it pertains to proof to phase one like like this okay thanks good now just one comment i think um you want i i would advocate for a mix of

[78:00] flexibility um but also actually having a real penalty right so that you know if somebody has a use that's really no longer demanded in the community and they want to switch to a different use that's also within the program let's work with them and and not hit them with a penalty if it takes them a couple months to do that at the same time you want to make sure that the penalty is more than the differential of the rent that they would get for staying in the program and going to market rate right so if it um to make sure it's not just a little slap on the wrist that people might do anyway so that was my one comment um anything else on penalty fees all right seeing none our last bit on this is the site review criteria do people agree with the staff's recommendations on updating the site review criteria and i've got um mary to get us started then sam

[79:02] yes i thought they were outstanding categories um so i totally agree with them and the approach that um staff is proposing um i will add a comment about process um i think that process could be something that um could make a big difference in the way our projects occur um so for example the the liquor mart project that we looked at last week we saw it during concept and the comments that concept were taken seriously enough that when they came back for site review there weren't even people from the neighborhood that showed up to oppose it i mean it was just it just flew through site reviews so it makes sense that projects receive more scrutiny at concept because that's a place where there is more i guess less of an investment to be able

[80:00] to make changes to the project and that was that was contained in some of the projects that some of the or the comments that some of the folks made so um how you know how can concept play concept review play um a greater role so for example um maybe at concept review vdab looks at it um that that might be one way to consider things another there were comments also about how there's no architects on planning board right now well there could easily always be an architect on planning board by having a an ex-officio bdap member on planning board then you would always get that feedback so those are some thoughts on um on process and then um i should have made this comment a little earlier i want to talk about the the arts commission reviewing whether or not something would

[81:01] fit the community benefit definition i actually think that it should be a subcommittee of the arts commission because otherwise staff is trying to coordinate the review of bodies that only meet once a month as opposed to having a subcommittee that's that is a little more nimble and can um and can provide the feedback on more of an ad hoc basis rather than having to wait for a monthly meeting so um other than that i think that the um the categories are fantastic all right mary do you mind if i call a queen on that last bit please thanks so i'll just say that that's a that's a great point um and maybe um staff can go consult with the arts commission and the art commission staff and kind of kind of do a a gaming test of how it would all work through the process to sort of take that into consideration and see whether a

[82:00] subcommittee or the full um commission might work better if is that all right mary i was just i think it's worth considering for sure yeah sure great thanks uh sam i think it's next yeah and i also want to commend staff on this um you know in a way this is site review criteria update is its own project it actually fits in very nicely here so you know because site review will be linked to the community benefit um so i like it all and i i will just point out to other council members that sometimes change can take a long time i've been talking about the minimize and mitigate energy use issues since i was on planning board probably starting in 2012 so here it is 2020 and and that's happening so these big projects sometimes take a long time but uh you know if we stick with it enough and get concurrence on what to do they come to fruition and so this is an example and i really do i'm very pleased to see these being updated and

[83:01] streamlined and made more efficient so thank you thanks for that sam yeah i remember um you and mary and i among others back on planning board you know eight years ago or something bang our heads against the wall going wow these criteria could really use some revisions um so it's really great to see this coming to fruition i also agree that the you guys are on the right track if i can call on myself and say that um i think you're going in a really great direction just one particular comment like i saw that um building uh like maximum widths i think was one of them and which seemed like a good one to look at but just for that and for any others just keep in mind um the possibility of flexibility like for example there's a building across the street from me that's wider than we normally allow buildings to be because it's an elevator access building for seniors right so that was that's a good enough reason to make it a wider building where we wouldn't normally allow that so it's always important to think about flexibility

[84:01] any other comments on the site review criterium seeing none then it looks like we are through this item uh staff carl and others did you get what you needed do you think do you have any uh final questions for us um i i think that's it yeah thanks very much for the feedback it's very helpful excellent well thanks for an excellent presentation and uh project you guys are doing great work but don't go far because i believe you're still up and on tap for our next project which is phase two of um yeah the use tables great so andrew collins will be presenting staffs now excuse me staff's analysis tonight and again we look forward to your feedback great and good evening council i'm andrew collins with the planning department going to uh see if i can get the control here

[85:00] okay so our objective for tonight is to first review the project background and then we'll go into the preliminary results from the beer boulder online questionnaire at a high level and then we'll have our questions for city council so we have the questions here uh for your reference to keep in mind as you move forward with the presentation uh i consult a version of the questions in the memo uh basically we're asking you if you agree or disagree or have other feedback on the three overarching practicals the first three questions relate to those number one is whether we should allow a rare diversity of uses in our neighborhood center areas the second question deals with whether to allow limited instances of additional uses in our homogeneous neighborhoods to help foster 15 minute neighborhoods the third question deals with whether

[86:00] additional uses should be allowed in industrial zones balanced with minimizing disruption to existing industrial uses question four is asking whether we should allow more flexibility for some of our creative uses citywide things such as our arts gallery spaces studios and woodwork uses as well question five is simply should we continue to streamline and consolidate some of our use categories in the use table and particularly the office use categories and the restaurant use categories so why are we doing this uh this project was a city council planning board work plan item in 2018. um the project was undertaken as the use table maybe out of alignment with the goals and policies of the bvcp initial goals of the project were to align or better align the use table and use standards to those goals to identify any any desired land use

[87:00] gaps by the community and the use table and also to simplify and to streamline it so here we have some of the guiding bbc policy guidance policy 2.14 a mix of complementary land uses which speaks to having a mix of land uses but they should be compatible with their surrounding neighborhoods policy 2.19 neighborhood centers which speaks to encouraging the evolution of neighborhood centers to better serve the surrounding neighborhoods and the policy 2.24 a commitment to a walkable and accessible city which talks about encouraging 15-minute neighborhoods the scope of this project as a refresher is chapter 9 6 youth standards in the city's land use code so this is a section of the code which tells us which land use which land uses are either allowed so we can get a future permit by right or which may be conditional use these are uses that have a few criteria that need administrative review

[88:02] uh also which is maybe a limited use this is a new category we put in as part of phase one in this project where a use could be allowed by a right up to a certain limitation so for instance our l1 category says that the use has to be located above the ground floor otherwise that use would require a use review or it could be a prohibited use and so our use reviews uses are the ones that require the discretionary review approval and has additional standards they must meet and then of course our prohibited uses importantly this project scope does not include the form and bulk standards so things like setbacks and building height and does not include the intensity chapter of the code either which includes floor area so the planning board appointed a subcommittee in 2018 comprised of three planning board members to help guide the project to make recommendations

[89:02] act as a sounding board for ideas and help us to engage with the public phase one of this project wrapped up in november of 2019 with a series of ordinances that were passed by council that were related to the opportunity zone phase two commenced in december of this year we've had 14 subcommittee meetings that have wrapped up in june they've been online due to the ongoing pandemic the last few months to give you a quick flavor of the work that's been done so far by the subcommittee they've done intensive deep dives into the various use categories and zoning districts and have come up with some initial considerations for 15-bit neighborhoods structural changes to the use table as well as ideas for definition changes and considerations for other topics also that might fall outside the scope and so those were put into the parking lot items as you can see here on the screen

[90:01] this is in addition to coming up with the goals objectives and action steps and reaffirming those for phase two and so for the phase two they developed three overarching uh project goals to help frame out the project they are number number one the first primary goal is to support a string of pearls consisting of mixed-use nodes along corridors and support walkable neighborhood centers secondly the other primary goal is to encourage 15-minute neighborhoods through use table changes in all types of districts and then again to incorporate updates to the use table for clarity and legibility in terms of community engagement the 14 subcommittee meetings have been open and notice to the public we have an open comment period for each one of those meetings and there the public's feedback has been informative and helped to shape the project so far as carl mentioned we held a community information session online on july 27th

[91:00] in addition to our project websites and information we've done next door online notifications and newsletter mailings with our communication staff the subcommittee helped us to inform the online questionnaire on bihar boulder we've had nearly 400 page visits and about 82 questionnaire responses so far and that questionnaire is still alive through the end of august so if anyone's watching this we encourage you to go online and participate so the first overarching uh goal is to support a string of pearls and neighborhood centers these are many of our areas that correspond to our older shopping centers and key intersections places like table mesa uh basemar the meadows and they are often have a business sewing district component to them so a business commercial or a business main street or business transitional zoning and the subcommittee uh

[92:00] first talked about the idea of a string of pearls which was conceptualized in the 90s in terms of a series of small neighborhood centers along north broadway and so this project is taking that idea and broadening it out to encompass all the neighborhood centers that are defined in the bbcp comp plan so the map on the right hand side of your screen the dark blue circles are those neighborhood center areas and we have a couple more examples of these locations so the gun barrel one your spine and lookout will be a newer example of a newer neighborhood center the idea is discussed with the subcommittee is that they felt the evolution of these areas they should be human scale they should be walkable and have a more diverse mix of uses that were allowed to to better serve the surrounding neighborhoods and also they felt like having some gathering space could be important so what we've heard so far based upon the be her boulder survey is that other

[93:00] respondents about 75 percent indicate they would be open to use standard changes they'll encourage a greater mix of uses in these neighborhood center areas there was a broad support for a variety of uses including restaurants coffee shops retail and personal services as well as a those that selected residential housing there was a broad mix of housing that was indicated for support ranging from duplexes all the way to condos and single-family homes the elements that they indicated were most important to them for a neighborhood center was that they should be walkable or have bike access followed by having a human skilled building design so something that's oriented towards the street has windows fenestration it's easily accessible uh the other primary overarching goal is to encourage 15-minute neighborhoods this is the concept of having limited commercial or mixed uses and predominantly homogeneous

[94:00] neighborhoods whether these are single-family neighborhoods or industrial neighborhoods you know how can we get a little bit of a mix of uses in these areas to foster uh walkability within the 15-minute walk and so the examples on the screen here are from boulder uh everyone talks about the alpine modern coffee shop and i think 9th college we have some examples up along with broadway and also along arapahoe avenue some of the american tile buildings i think street corners are good examples as well the character of these buildings and establishments really depends upon the character of the neighborhood so the idea is that they would be contextually appropriate limited in size and scale to fit into the fabric of the neighborhood and limit impacts the map on the right is shown here for for reference it's from the city's 2019 bike and network plan and so it's there 15 minute neighborhood assessments area in green has high walkability to more destinations and uses such as retail and stores areas in red and yellow have less

[95:02] access to those key destinations and so it's just shown here for reference to see uh how the inclusion of some additional uses could be helpful for fostering 15 minute neighborhoods the subcommittee talked about a variety of different uses under this concept and particularly the idea of having small-scale grocers or hardware stores personal services live work spaces allowed not just in the industrial zone but perhaps in other areas of the city so places where people the shopkeeper could live and work in the same premises the idea of having more limited commercial and creative spaces and industrial zones and then a more diverse mix of residential uses where appropriate and the idea with this concept is not to have these allowed everywhere but to have the more dispersed intermittently as may be appropriate to the neighborhood we've heard so far with the

[96:01] questionnaires about 70 of the people said they will be open to having these additional uses and establishments as described in the questionnaire within a 15-minute walking distance if limited and scale a number again a broad support for a variety of uses restaurants and coffee shops small scale grocers small-scale retail personal services and housing types we asked the question whether there should be additional zoning restrictions on these newer 15-minute neighborhood uses there was mixed sentiments about 40 percent of the respondents said yes or should be a third said maybe and about uh 29 said no there should not be any additional restrictions uh there was the most support however for requiring additional bike parking limiting vehicular parking in order to encourage again that walking and biking access as well as limiting the size of the establishments and limiting their location to multimodal corridors

[97:02] about 65 of the respondents said they agreed that the city should allow more flexibility for live work uses artist studios galleries and small scale performance venues citywide and a majority of respondents agree that we should consider allowing additional uses residential retail restaurants specifically in the light industrial areas the final primary goal of the project again is to incorporate updates to the use table itself to help streamline it particularly the office use categories we have six or so which can be an issue for the development community and staff alike we have to change out and do use change of use applications to take up time for some of these overlapping office use categories and definitions so the idea is to help simplify those down to a lesser number then also to take a look at just cleaning up the use restaurant use

[98:00] categories which are kind of numerous and use table itself so again we've had about 60 percent of respondents were open to these ideas of streamlining the similar use categories and some similar number of respondents are open to specifically consolidating the number of office use categories down to a lower lower number so before we get into the uh questions for council as carl mentioned we're at planning board last thursday and so we have some slides about their feedback that what we heard from them they agreed about neighborhood centers that they should be uh allow a more diverse mix of uses regarding 15 minute neighborhoods they generally agree that there should be limited instances of walkable compatible uses to help foster these these neighborhoods where appropriate they were open to the idea the details they were still

[99:00] wanting to see what those would be as we move through the process so some of the ideas discussed there was the idea of a pilot project that's kind of laid out in the boulder valley comp plan if that could apply to key corners of uh key neighborhood streets if you have an overlay looking at other limitations such as saturation like we've done with adus possibly looking at form-based code or other criteria to establish appropriate appropriate design and compatibility and then there was discussion on whether um if there was prescriptive standards whether that should be an administrative review you can have your approval or whether a discretionary view was still appropriate for these type types of uses regarding streamlining the use table and standards there was agreement that this should be done utilizing the new limited use category as well as the use review and conditional use standards regarding restaurants uh they felt there was a balance to be struck between streamlining those regulations

[100:01] and and not making them too permissible worried about impacts to neighboring properties perhaps regarding greater flexibility for creative uses there was agreement that that should be done city-wide uh regarding small-scale performance venues again there was some concern about maybe focusing those mostly to the mixed use in commercial areas and not adjacent to single-family areas given potential sounds noise complaints and then regarding allowing additional uses in light industrial areas they agree that to a limited degree that this should be allowed with additional criteria to ensure compatibility with those industrial users and they want to make sure that flexibility we built in to help to adapt to future needs but that shouldn't uh in any way force out the existing industrial users and on this last one you know our intent with the project is to

[101:00] look at making you know smaller incremental changes here they're in line with the the overall project goals but that east boulder sub community plan would help inform you know more holistic changes to that particular industrial area in terms of next steps you know where we're at in the process we're going to continue to collect public feedback uh develop options and alternatives based upon the feedback we receive tonight and from the public and planning board and then go back out with those options and get more feedback possibly doing targeted stakeholder outreach as needed then developing our you know preferred alternatives and recommendations we hope to do uh open houses and public hearings in quarter four this year as carl mentioned this could push into 2021 especially with more intensive code changes that might come out of this so you can actually have questions for us now if you'd like before we jump into

[102:00] questions for council thanks so much for that andrew it's very comprehensive appreciate that so um does council have questions for staff on this project all right mark comes in first really really one question uh when we talk about appropriate locations for commercial uses in residential neighborhoods what input will the neighborhoods have in making that determination if table mesa wants a lot of coffee shops and uh lower chautauqua does not is that going to be accommodated or is this going to be a one-size-fits-all sort of regime it would definitely be have to be accommodated i think um the 15-minute neighborhood question particularly you know once we figure out what our options are we'll have to go back out and do outreach with the specific communities and what the actual tools are to implement some of these ideas

[103:01] it remains to be seen um again if it's a pilot project it might be a one-off approach to see how it goes if it's an overlay that could be you know potentially another appendix map which highlights areas based upon public the public's feedback that yes we want some of these user uses here um so i think it remains to be seen at this point but that the intent would be that the neighborhoods would have a voice in the uses that would potentially be allowed and so with all this it's simply allowing the option to occur you know the the business owner the property owners will still have to even choose to even go through with changing out their building let's say from an older residential house to a commercial use in the future so and and there will be an opportunity for community input on that process that is what we're intending yes okay thank you good answer great um mary and then rachel

[104:03] thanks for the presentation andrew and um for all your work on this my question is about the string of pearls and um did staff consider in that map um with the string of pearls was there any effort to look at how affordable housing existing affordable housing fits into that string of pearls puzzle and if so what was done and if not how might that be incorporated in the future [Music] i don't know that we looked at particularly in terms of um where the existing affordable housing is i think we're looking at the residential land uses and the use table and maybe potentially looking at whether those allowances if it's you know prohibited use or if it's a limited use or use review let's say for maybe some other types of housing products that may be attached or versus single family maybe those could

[105:00] be loosened up potentially but i can't say that we've looked at that in particularly in any great detail in terms of the affordability factor thank you that's all i have rachel thanks i had a couple um first from the i think it was from planning board feedback it said that um in the single family um home zoned areas something wouldn't go there what all would not go or were thinking maybe wouldn't go in largely yeah that was related to um the small scale performance venues in particular that came up during our subcommittee meetings whether to allow that particular use more broadly and during the planning board meeting there was actually an open comment someone had an issue with an existing small-scale performance venue making noise and so as part of that discussion they wanted to make clear that perhaps um you know with all these ideas details remain to be seen

[106:01] and so we'll have to figure out you know what are the proper limits and boundaries for some of these uses to avoid you know impacts to neighbors essentially okay um and then second um to mark's question about what would neighborhood's um ability to give input be um i'm a little bit wary of um something that's not rolled out sort of with um concrete um boundaries around it so like would the whole neighborhood have to agree to it if one person objects like that seems that just um frightens me a little bit if if we're getting into like veto power for neighbors or neighborhoods if it's you know maybe something that's going to be beneficial to the community so i just wanted to hear more about what you're thinking about yeah yeah we're not we're not there yet with this particular project we're still kind of in the initial ideas working our way down to the options phase so

[107:02] our goal is to get more specificity on what these elements could look like with this particular idea of 15-minute neighborhoods is maybe one that would do more outreach around um what tools implementation we could use may push into 20-21 and so it could be that if we come up with an appendix j map it's only with certain criteria that it has to meet at you know major street corners of major streets with design criteria the public process may be more in this process and then it could be you know a discretionary view use review so it follows that same planning board approval process um we haven't thought about i don't think yet the specifics but hope to get there kind of soon so all right and then um last thing like when i visualize my own 15-minute walkable neighborhood um at least from my part of the neighborhood you're usually walking on thunderbird and there's a lot of you know it's very unattractive and there's a lot of emission uh

[108:02] vehicle emissions sort of um you're breathing it in as you walk so i just wonder like along with creating walkable neighborhoods or we're looking at all it um creating corridors or pathways that are going to make people more want to walk because at least in some neighborhoods there's uh you you don't necessarily want to get the noise pollution the vehicle pollution and it's ugly so yeah i think i think that would be you know an ideal for maybe perhaps other projects this the scope of this project really is just looking at the chapter nine six you know what leases are allowed or conditionally allowed um i think it dovetails in certainly i know the transportation group has been looking at you know their bike and network plan their 15-bit neighborhoods assessments um but this particular project you know we're not really considering um those design kind of landscaping and other comfort level

[109:01] elements so obviously a lot of that we included in the packet we had that parking lot so a lot of those things kind of well that's a good idea but that's out of the scope of this project let's put that in the parking lot and communicate that to other departments you know that might be able to go well that might be a good place to remove some sort of transportation barrier or you know this is a area that we might want to do an area plan on in the future um if i can jump in for a second rachel can i colloquy on your first question i thought i'm a little late but uh you may let me just uh tie up this last just i think it's helpful if we do move some things along together and i understand what you're saying that that's you know over in a parking lot for another department to look at but if we create walkable neighborhoods and they're not um appealing to walk in i don't think we've achieved what we're after there thanks okay my comment to rachel is it was not my intention to suggest that that a cranky neighbor should control in the determination of

[110:01] what goes where it's just that there ought to be some process for discerning what the community at large well not at large but in in small areas might want for their communities and that can differ on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis and ought to be to some degree accommodated out of 100 but to some degree they said if uh um if north boulder wants many more coffee shops they should have them if um you know if mapleton hill wants a laundromat they should have that um it's it's just incorporating that that neighborhood input nothing nothing really more than that that sounds great i just was trying to make sure we were making it so discretionary that it was um vetoed thanks okay fair enough um i had one question which was uh for the industrial zone changes did you have a particular list of zones that you were considering targeting with

[111:00] that or is it all industrial zones it would be all the industrial zones again i think for those particular sort of uses you know we're looking more at incremental changes for the youth tables now and then again waiting for these boulder subcommittee planning process to play out in terms of what they might come out with recommendation recommendation-wise i believe all uses were on the table all zoning districts are on the table okay thanks for clarifying because i think the in the presentation it said light industrial zones but it sounds like it might be all of them which i think is good okay great any other questions for steph adam you got your hand up thanks aaron yeah my mine is a follow-up to yours it seems when we're talking about um zoning changes a lot light industrial does come up pretty frequently and i'm wondering since that's something that we've wanted to also protect but it seems like we're also trying to open it

[112:00] up a little bit more at some point i'd love to see you know what the trend has been in the total area of light industrial that we've had in the city and what what's sort of happening in that because at some point we may have no light industrial and i think that does have an important role in the city as far as um providing some you know some jobs that aren't high tech um which seems to be the majority of what we have uh coming into the city so um that's just one concern sort of looking in the longer view for me okay fair enough um any other questions for staff all right seeing none if we can get those questions for council out please we hit it we can um have go back to the simplified version yeah that was well there there we go

[113:02] okay um so i think we can take these um one by one probably they are i think uh a little bit different from each other so and i think you know staff has a particular direction so i think maybe council can offer up uh comments about that or ways in which we think the direction should be changed in each of these but if i think if we think they're on track we probably don't need to talk a whole bunch about it but feel free to say whatever you want to say so let's start with this first one should we allow a greater diversity of uses in the neighborhood center areas to better serve i lost that word community needs thoughts on this one mark is in the lead again um to me this is the low-hanging fruit i mean we we don't even know what um

[114:02] what the vibrance of neighborhood centers will look like in a post-covert era it seems perfectly appropriate to look at those spaces and try to reimagine them in a way that's uh better for our community in terms of different uses housing etc so to me this one is easy great sam and then mary yeah and i i generally agree with that i mean the neighborhood centers are nodes and they're very important nodes um for the surrounding residential um the one thing i would comment is a lot of these are bc1 and bc2 business commercial zones and um one of the bullet points in the staff memo was a question about office uses and it seems to me like we've kind of run that down in our bc one and two conversation we had lots and lots of discussion about offices and we came up with rules that we eventually adopted so

[115:00] i guess one comment i would make is that i would pull the office used out of here because i think or at least had a bc one and bc2 conversation because i think we spent a lot of time getting a handle on that and coming up with something that that worked across the whole community so i would i would de-emphasize um straight office uses and i would focus on you know the community serving whether it's retail or coffee shops or bike shops or you know many many different things i just would emphasize office because there's lots of spaces for that and maybe these aren't the best space and i think i think we've we've run that one to ground so that was my only comment on number one thanks sam mary and then adam so i'm going to kind of respond to questions one two and three and kind of uh [Music] to hopefully help us think more broadly about how we approach this um so we talk about we talk about

[116:00] restaurants and coffee shops and retail and personal services a lot of those um businesses produce low-paying jobs so you know it's it's walkable for womb and and that's that's kind of my question is who who is going to be served by the walkability and if somebody can afford to live in these neighborhoods they're probably going to be driving so that's the reason that i was asking about affordable housing and if that was included in the string of pearls i think that if we look at the string of pearls and consider that perhaps affordable housing residents could benefit the most from having walkable neighborhoods because sometimes they often don't have cars not by choice but because they can't afford them so um

[117:00] and sometimes they may be the ones that are working in these places so i would to the extent that we can think about that and think a little more holistically about okay so who's going to be walking to this and who's going to be driving to this and how can we minimize that driving by finding synergies between what is there and what could be there so um that's kind of my comment other than that i do think um that yes yes and yes for all three of those um but thinking more broadly about walkable for whom and um and who can have who can benefit the most from access to these uses thanks mary great points um adam yeah i'm actually here to second both of those points um sam i think made a great point i remember i wasn't on council yet but i was sitting through that meeting

[118:00] where you guys drilled down office space as about as far down as you possibly could so i think that doesn't necessarily have to be in here um and to mary's point when you look at the map of walkable neighborhoods the green areas are not exactly where our current affordable housing is condensed right now that's for sure um so trying to incorporate as much of that affordable housing in the wakable neighborhoods makes absolute sense it's just a really really excellent point yeah i'll um call on myself and agree with those points as well although adam i will note that one of the green areas is up in my part of town at the north edge of town where there is actually a fair amount of affordable housing so and you sometimes will see folks uh walking from the neighborhood to jobs in the local retail commercial areas so i definitely agree with this and um just like um like sometimes we have

[119:00] overly restrictive narrow requirements on what can go in some of these centers and so like one of our local re retail strips up here uh only allows for neighborhood serving uses which is a fairly narrow definition and there just aren't enough businesses that want to be up here that meet that definition and so some of those spaces sit empty or or end up being a little office space that doesn't um have any retail function or contribute to that walkable neighborhood so definitely support that for sure okay um any other thoughts on um the neighborhood centers seeing none um how about oh yes i was just to say i agree with everything that was said i thought the discussion was balanced and i don't have to add any more to it thanks juni uh next should we allow limited instances of walkable and compatible uses such as small-scale cafes or corner stores to foster 15-minute neighborhoods

[120:00] in typically homogeneous neighborhoods in appropriate locations who wants to start us off on this one sam yeah i think the answer is yes and i think many of the pictures that were shown to illustrate what kind of cafes and and stores um fit nicely in neighborhoods were good i want to address the question of neighborhood input here first a question what level of review was staff imagining for this kind of change of use so imagine that it's a residential use that changes proposes to change to a small-scale cafe in an rl1 district how would that be handled what would the review process look like today under our code um any kind of non-residential use requires a use review and those types of uses require planning

[121:01] board review so i think we'd have to look at you know if that would be appropriate in a particular location it doesn't mean we couldn't find some specific criteria that could apply to a particular location if there was a lot of buy-in from the community to make it you know a conditional use potentially but i think our starting point would be use review unless we found something that was that was appropriate for conditional yeah other tools that we could probably look at would be hours of operation requiring management plans or neighborhood meetings things like that yep and that's where i think that's an appropriate venue um i i just wanted to comment you know rachel has a concern that leans one way which is too much restriction by a neighbor who's going to veto it and mark has a concern the other way that there won't be any neighborhood into it i think to start with in this the planning board use review is a nice venue because it

[122:01] provides a place for people to express their opinion and then planning board is going to look on balance right so it's a body that we've appointed specifically for this to hear you know the trade-offs um i think in the end you could also add some of the things you're describing charles like hours of operation if it's going to be in an rl1 things that are just kind of the ground rules so that anyone who's considering it would would know what they're going to go into but i think the planning board actually serves as a very useful place to gather the community input and not listen too much to one side too much to the other and try and come up with you know a a solution that will work for the community so i think that's a good place to start maybe it can be made easier if we learn as we go forward but i definitely say yes to number two and think we can approach the neighborhood input on specific proposals through the process

[123:01] that we have now thanks thanks sam i'll i'll go ahead and go next and say i'm i'm a huge fan of this idea i think you know when when you have little neighborhood commercial uses i think it just really adds to the vitality of the neighborhood and you know where you can just walk around the corner and and pick up something that you need or or want from a coffee shop or ice cream store or what have you or get your hair cut or something so big fan of this and i just said i think of like latin american neighborhoods are very good at this you know that they'll be predominantly residential neighborhoods that'll have a a little taco stand on the corner or a little grocery store and just really adds to the street life and vibrancy of of some of those neighborhoods so really glad you're working on this um and and i'll just just say kind of from kind of an equity perspective in terms of what uses are allowed i know this is out of scope but like um one of the ways that you do see that kind of neighborhood used sometimes is vendors

[124:01] out on the street selling um you know popsicles or or corn on the cob or something like that and i always which is totally legal by our code i believe and and but i always i enjoy it when i see it out there so you know in addition to allowing a little neighborhood uh serving retail uses uh at some point it'd be great to consider how we could have uh let people sell on you know a little bit of food on the corner as well any other thoughts on this one all right seeing none we can move on to number three which is about allowing additional uses such as residential retail or restaurants and light industrial areas in order to foster mixed-use walkable neighborhoods while protecting and minimizing disruption to industrial existing industrial uses thoughts on this one all right uh i think sam beat mark by a half second so sam

[125:00] i think this is really important and um really uh somewhat difficult to do a good job in because i i really do think there's a lot of opportunity to put residential in late industrial areas but two problems come up and both have already been flagged one is compatibility and so there are light industrial uses for example marijuana grows or coffee roasting that create a lot of smell and so one challenge with bringing residential in or even restaurants into venues like that is you end up with a conflict that can drive out the original uses that were there which creates the smells but which we have you know pretty pretty good industry in both coffee and in marijuana and so that's something we definitely don't want to do is drive those out so one of the things i think would have to happen is there would need to be covenants on these additional uses

[126:01] that you know kind of like there are covenants around airports sometimes some people build residential near airports which is you're not allowed to complain and attempt to drive away the use that was here first and which is something we desire so i don't know how that would work but that is one concern about about doing this and the other concern i have is that you know if if a place was attractive for residential development you could lose whole swaths of things i think of western avenue near 55th street which has a bunch of great funky little non-profits and businesses and startups and some high tech and many not um and i wouldn't want to see that all wiped out by residential development um because it's a starting place for lots of small businesses and so the other idea that i saw a few times but i want to really flag for this one is the saturation limit so in other words light industrial uses can go

[127:02] anywhere at any time in those but there would be a saturation limit on say residential so you can only have a certain amount of residential developments in x foot radius in an attempt to preserve the light industrial uses um and have some of the infill there's a big need for this i mean you go out to where one of my offices used to be in on 55th and flat iron it's hard to get to food from there there's one sandwich shop which comes and goes over the years but that's it and that was uh i think a non-conforming use everything else has to be office or something else that's no good because it's way too homogeneous and everybody many people get in their cars and drive out for lunch and so i think bringing restaurants in there some amount of residential would be really good for that area it would diversify it but you wouldn't want to again see it so attractive that all

[128:02] those other uses were wiped out so i think while protecting and minimizing disruption to existing industrial uses is the key to getting this right so i'm a big fan of it but i also think that we need to use tools to make sure that we preserve the industrial uses which are also very important to our community thank you thanks tim mark yeah i'm generally supportive of what sam has just said i support the idea of changing uses in light industrial areas to provide some residential to help offset our our housing jobs and balance um but we need to be very very careful about how we do it i take as an example you know the many many small uh businesses located uh off of pearl parkway uh if you zone that so that uh or change the use tables so that residential is permitted you will increase the value of

[129:02] the land immediately and probably drive out all of those uses or at least to the extent that we permit it because residential is going to be a much higher performing revenue source for the owner so you know the concept of protecting and minimizing disruption i i support um i'm a little concerned that we can actually do it well possibly with some of the restrictions that sam articulated we might be able to get there but i don't want us to be losing all of our small affordable businesses simply to level the area and end up with pure residential thanks yeah thanks for that mark i'll just chime in here um i agree with um both what you said and what sam said um i'm a big fan of this idea as well and particularly you know getting some more restaurant and food uses into those

[130:00] industrial parks um as well as some other convenience retail and then also allowing you know some residential so with the caveats already stated i think this is a great project and one thing is also to think about protecting like our service industrial uses right like the we want to make sure that we still have the ability to get an oil change in town for example you know those those kinds of those are things that um well if it's a car use it's not about a walkable neighborhood but it's about having a complete city right where you can meet um then all the needs of the citizens or the residents um within the city itself so i think that's a particular important thing to watch out for sam did you have something else your hand was up okay any other thoughts on this topic all right then how about just the generally allowing greater flexibility for creative uses citywide what do people think

[131:02] i'm getting a thumbs up all right i is that a thumbs down from ginny oh she's inverted junie you're turned upside down somehow anyway okay sounds like people are generally in favor of this i mean who doesn't like creativity right so um i think that sounds good and then next uh they're proposing to oh you're back right side up juni very nice um they're proposing to simplify and streamline use table and standards such as consolidating some office use categories and restaurant use categories people generally feel good about that direction okay i'm getting more thumbs up um all right and any other kind of broad brush thoughts on on the overall topic those are the specific questions okay go ahead sam um i just want to thank staff on this i

[132:00] mean this doesn't use tables right they don't get a ton of airplay and a lot of people never have a need to look at them but they govern a huge amount of the way the fabric of the city comes together and evolves going forward so i am just pleased that council supports what staff is doing i'm pleased that staff is digging into this it's a great job like i said the memos were really good so i'm excited to see both of these community benefit and the use tables and the site plan review adjustments get completed you know in latest like 21 because i think it'll be really good and it will have things in updated mode and we won't have to necessarily adjust them again in a significant way for a while so thanks to staff and council for working on this project thanks again for the feedback again very helpful yeah and mary you had something yeah i just wanted to kind of follow up on what sam said and

[133:01] and point out that this is again another thing that i believe aaron and sam and i have been talking about for years and years and years and an example of just how long it takes for things to come to fruition so um thank you for that and um i appreciate all the work that staff has done and that the planning board subcommittee has done and um the outreach in these trying times yeah i'll echo all of that and it is such it's such a great project to get done and it's really not very exciting in certain ways like use table standards but um you know when you when you work with this stuff for a while just every once in a while you know there's the charts are so complicated but you'll be reviewing a project and you say oh well how about doing this interesting things oh not allowed by the use tables oh that's really too bad so um and it's very hard to just change them incrementally a little bit by a little bit so i'm really glad that we're undertaking this so i want to echo the

[134:01] thanks to staff for all the hard work um and the creative directions you're going here i also wanted to shout out to the planning board particularly the use tables uh subcommittee which has had something like 14 meetings right it's been this really long involved process and i know i believe is um david enzyme and sarah silver and brian bowen have been on that um has anyone else participated from planet world yeah yeah so crystal gray was on there well and um lupita montoya joined us uh most recently for the last committee meeting i think that's the participants so far great thank you lupita and thank you crystal really appreciate all that hard and detailed work that playing board has done i have a final question are we removing typewriter factories from the list of uses in all in all zones

[135:03] good well steph did you have any other clarification you're looking for no thanks for the feedback great conversation thanks everyone great thanks everybody all right well we're running almost 50 minutes ahead here but our next item is about policing and so uh is chief harold uh here there you are marissa i see you turn out by introducing the two presenters for this and so um chris if you could pull up the presentation i'd appreciate it so we are going to do matters related to policing and you all will recall that in june um chief harold was here to talk about her strategic priorities so um if you could go to the next slide yes here's our today's presentation so the police chief and the police department team have been working really hard on establishing new strategic priorities

[136:01] for the organization and they've made quite a bit of process progress i'm sorry and process two probably um and chief harold is going to start out by making a presentation on that and then she'll be turning it over to wendy schwartz and you all know wendy as a member of our housing and human services team particularly focused on homeless services we have asked wendy to take an assignment a special assignment to be the project leader for our police department master plan we felt like wendy's great work as a project manager would assist us and in particular her heart for human services and the homeless issues would really make a difference in this particular process so those will be our two presenters and i'll turn it over now to chief maris harold thank you jane good evening council members hopefully everybody is safe and sound tonight if you would afford me the opportunity

[137:00] though to first say a very quick thanks to the boulder police department um reform and change is very challenging and it's challenging in any organization including the police department and i just wanted to say thank you for all the hard work they've met my challenge head on and they've provided me great support that includes our 911 staff and our civilians that work for the boulder police department the executive team supervisory staff as well so i just wanted to say thank you next slide i think this was a question for council um and maybe we will address that uh later next slide um so i've been asked a lot over the last several months about how i see policing in the future

[138:00] and no matter how you look at it i really believe it's going to come down to these three major categories technology and science because technology and science present provides police departments and cities strategies with strategies and solid decision making policing will also become much more harm focused and when you talk about harm focused you get away from policing being very reactive and start to look at um preventing bad things from happening which brings me to my next point um this is probably the most interesting thing i think of when i think of policing in the future and this is this concept of holistic governance and one of my favorite quotes is from perry sixx who is an organizational change agent out of the united kingdom who says problems that government is expected to tackle are not neatly organized along the functional lines by which government itself is organized and so when i think about that

[139:00] i think about any successful initiative i've ever worked on really relies on the work of not only other city departments in leadership but other organizations as well so everything i talk about tonight is really going to fit into those three boxes technology and science and you know i don't think it's scientific to mention this either futuristic there's engineers and scientists that are working in this country right now on developing technology that will stop killing and i followed this technology very closely um and so i really probably will not happen in my career but i do think that we will develop technology that will incapacitate uh weapons and incapacitate people without pain for a very long duration and it's it's something i'm very excited about and i'll follow closely but i do

[140:00] not think it's uh like science fiction to start thinking that way and i think these last incidents across the country continue to move this technology in the right direction next slide you can go ahead and change it again so boulder police department's commitment to ethical effective and equitable policing has fallen into these six categories this is not a new slide um i presented this last time but this is our commitment and what i've tried to do in the last couple months is i've tried to at least pick one area in each one of these boxes and have that completed and i plan to do that for the next couple years until we actually have a huge impact in each one of these categories keep in mind each one of these boxes contains at least 15 to 20 heavy lifts in each box but let's go through some of the things that we've been able to accomplish in the last few months next slide please

[141:02] so under the box of accountability the boulder police department has developed i think a very robust inspections policy process and plan the implementation while undergoing internal review will focus on any risky part of the police department and this is not only an inspection process but it's an auditing process so think of body-worn cameras actually to have a review of the sergeants and commanders that are reviewing incidents on the body-worn camera use of force to have another person looking at the uses of force in addition to my review the executive review but also have an internal inspection process that looks at that as well this can include overtime usage residence complaints and mental health interactions and so those are just a very few part of the processes and policies

[142:02] but when this inspection process is done i've assigned a commander for this and they will actually provide a third internal policy to inspect very risky operations within the police department and this becomes very robust and turns into approximately 50 internal processes and procedures that will be inspected as promised last time in june the police department has developed a robust disciplinary matrix again this provides consistent fair and progressive processes covering all policy and rule violations this will be completed with the collaboration of the independent police monitor with community input and this is again as far as accountability goes one of the most important things the police department can develop and implement i'm very excited that we've signed the kali accreditation contract and this work has already begun the importance of this work obviously is

[143:00] to have a third party internal expert come in review our model policies and make sure that the processes and procedures and guidelines that a police department has is meeting best practices but more importantly i think is that by signing this accreditation contract and committing to this work we also receive a what is called a power data management system and in that system we can test train and hold people accountable for all of the new model policies that we are undertaking as part of this accreditation so this is very exciting and we can begin the work on really developing this huge data management system where we can start working on all of these model policies next slide please so in the data category i'm very excited to um

[144:00] present that we've hired a strategic data and policy advisor for the police department her name is beth christensen she's an outstanding hire she started august 3rd and she's already started to change the automation of the data how it's seen how it's perceived within the department she has 20 years experience as a crime analyst she's a gi expert she's a programmer and she is a national problem-oriented policing expert which provides me great guidance on data that she's seen on a daily daily basis and she'll really bring this police department into 21st century policing concepts and really begins to form data-driven strategies which becomes so important in the 21st century policing reform era next slide please so none of the reform efforts can happen without a very talented full-time training section so i've committed to not only

[145:00] have one supervisor dedicated to this function but have four full-time 24 7 training employees that can keep us up to date on all of the new reform efforts that we'll be putting in place i can't understa i can't overstate this is that without a full-time 24 7 training academy for our staff reform really is not possible the new concepts are will be coming fast there'll be a lot of information that has to be digested and then put to good practice and the exciting thing is is that we've all committed that this training section will rely on evidence-based scenario training we will have an excellent lesson learned program when we do make mistakes these will be reviewed and we will get better and this group will also review critical incision incidences and uses of force so we get better at what we do when we make mistakes we learn from it we get better

[146:00] next slide please recruiting and hiring obviously the recruiting side i didn't have impact on the recruiting side but i did on the hiring side and i'm very excited about this new young group of recruits that we just hired they're 36 diverse employees we can do much better but i think we're above the national curve and standard on recruiting there's always room for improvement but i'm very excited about the educational levels the diverse perspectives of this group we've hired two female two hispanic and one asian and they just do provide a different perspective in the policing they are very open-minded to reform and the exciting part about this is you can really tell that the new training the new use of force all of the new policies that we're going to be putting in place this will become the way they have been trained so i

[147:00] don't have to peel back years and years and years of other types of training they'll be getting all the new innovation and training as we proceed next slide so we talked a lot the last time we were together on icat the icap model the critical decision making model and how it was radically different from other use of force policies and other use of force metrics and this is exciting i was able to bring in two icat nationally accredited experts from washington dc they have trained 30 of our swat and tactical officers this included university of colorado police as well and a commander from erie and we've also had a relationship started with cu denver dr paul taylor is evaluating the training moving forward and we've also the icat model has also been trained to all of the new recruits

[148:01] this will be ongoing and probably take us up until december or january to complete the the entire model for the whole police department the other exciting thing is is dr paul taylor has put in a grant for a research center right here in boulder with the police including boulder police department and cu police department that i think that if we work with the independent monitor we really could do some big things in policing and monitoring moving forward so i'm excited about that and i'm excited to have academic support to know if the training is actually working and if it's evidence-based so i'm very proud of that we have an updated use of force policy that integrates all the icat model into the policy itself and i think it brings us up to date with all concerns on a national level prohibits all chokeholds uh shooting

[149:02] moving vehicles requires intervention if excessive force is witnessed emphasizes withdrawing taking cover creating distance requires consideration of less lethal alternatives and it gives provides we must it requires warning issued before uses of deadly force in addition to the use of force policy we've established a robust investigative process it covers all use of force in residence complaints tomorrow and the next day la chief is coming into boulder to train our entire command staff and supervisory staff on the new use of force policy leadership and the expected investigative processes that must be undertaken as part of any citizens or resident complaint and use of force investigation next slide please

[150:01] so as i promised you and probably one of the most overlooked parts of police reform is developing comprehensive data-driven crime strategy i could have selected um from a different from various different problems that i see boulder is facing but our first major problem-oriented policing project we've selected domestic violence domestic violence is a chronic problem in boulder and it's a chronic problem that's often under reported across the country and my one of my main reasons for selecting domestic violence is that the numbers are increasing not only in boulder but across the country in large part due to covid and i don't see these numbers going down with some type without some type of intervention and so um we are going to tackle this problem next slide please

[151:01] i'm sorry next slide um if you could go back i'm sorry i just want to hit this on the domestic violence i have partnered with other experts in the field and one of the other reasons i picked domestic violence is that we have victim advocates that are civilian that are working within boulder police department and i do think best practices really suggest that co-response is so powerful on some of these type of crime problems and so this project will be led by our civilian division within the department who are victim advocates and domestic violence crime experts and so what i'd really like to accomplish here is we have chosen a lethality assessment um that on serious domestic violence will have a co-response and we will try to using this new tool predict um if future violence is likely

[152:01] and more importantly if fatality is likely and um so this this is just a really good project to start with i think there's a lot of exciting problem solving projects across the country that we could mimic and the other thing i want to try to accomplish is having a fatality review board something that this region of the state does not have denver has a very robust fatality review board and so partners in this region including the da and the sheriff are very anxious and very excited to start this process for boulder and the county so it'd be very exciting to get both of these new tools up and running next slide so here's here's with the road map to police reform i think i've covered at least one or um two or three in each of those six

[153:00] major categories um so i won't read through all of these but as you can see um i've tried to cover each of those six major categories that we talked about in june the work will continue um but i i think it's really important to talk about next steps in pace of the reform next slide please so next steps moving forward and and a lot of these initiatives will continue to take place throughout the fall and into december but the next steps are going to be explore evidence-based implicit bias training and i had a meeting with dr kimberly miller from colorado state university she's very interested in developing an evidence-based implicit bias training for boulder pd so i'm going to continue to explore that and i think that is another great step um starting in the next quarter we're going to start to integrate the i cap

[154:01] principles into traffic in all of our bias-free policies and this is a this is a heavy lift because the importance of the icap model has to be integrated into almost everything the police officer learns and does so we really have to take a hard look at all of our policies and procedures within the police department and start integrating the sanctity of life into all of these policies and procedures the importance of the sanctity of life tactically training everything we do becomes so vitally important i'm very interested in understanding our mental health request a lot more than we do right now and i foresee this is going to be another heavy lift but we we really need to understand that so we have to take a deep dive into that and understand and produce some type of quarterly or biannual report on how the police department is responding to mental health requests and concerns from across the community

[155:00] and then lastly we've already begun work on this the officer workload analysis which beth will help us walk through but this becomes another fundamental piece of work in police reform because what it tells the community what it tells the police executive team what it tells community leaders is how much time police are responding on reactive calls for service versus discretionary time and this becomes extremely important to understand do the police have the time to engage in high level problem solving or are they just going from radio run to radio run which is not what we want at all we want to be in a preventative stance understanding problems understanding harm in the community and it's only then do you get to the total picture of police reform so this will help me guide and the executive team guide how our officers are patrolling

[156:01] are they visible are we problem solving and that we can develop a robust patrol development strategy which becomes extremely important if you want the police department to be in a preventative mode a lot of police departments across the country are spending 80 percent of their time on reactionary policing and that is detrimental to the community and so it's something that i would just like to know data points are we at 60 are we at 50 and so this becomes critical to understanding the officer's specific workday and then you can start branching out into other areas of the police department as far as investigative work training work and it just goes down the line to understand where the discretionary time an officer has in any given day and i think that concludes my portion and i think the fundamental question

[157:01] wendy will address but i'll most certainly answer questions at any time or at the end thanks so much chief harold um folks we want to let them finish the presentation and then we can ask any questions at the end so work for people okay very good uh so i guess we'll go to wendy thanks so much um good evening council members um deputy chief johnson were you going to say a few words about the master plan background from 2013 absolutely before we dive into uh future master planning we thought we'd give you a little update or review of things that were accomplished based on the master plan was completed in 2013 um so real high level some of the more significant accomplishments and where we're headed into the future as an organization um in 2013 we really wanted to look at what community policing meant not only

[158:00] for the boulder police department but for our community and born of that was the neighborhood policing area program which we rolled out several years ago i think many of you are familiar with it really assigns an officer to a smaller area in the community allows them the opportunity to take responsibility for that area build relationships with community members and work on problem solving at the neighborhood level we also in the area of community policing expanded our neighborhood impact team and really pushed that team to work harder not just in university hill and downtown boulder but reach out into some of the more marginalized communities and had officers specifically assigned to those neighborhoods to build relationships and help us make sure that we are policing those areas fairly and giving them the service that they needed um as far as responding to calls for service you know one of the things we wanted to manage was are there things that we're responding to we don't need to be and to take a look at um how much time our officers were spending on calls and what work they were doing

[159:00] a significant piece of that calls for service reduction was born out of the alarm ordinance that was passed by council several years ago which required alarm holders to get permits and has helped us reduce significantly our response to the 99 false alarm rate in the city of boulder and uh so far we're seeing about a 20 reduction in alarm calls we have a new vendor on board as of this year that's really helping us reach out to community members with alarms and better manage that process and we do expect we will see additional reductions in having to respond to alarms and minimizing our response so that we're not wasting officers time with false reports of alarms we also looked at expanding our online reporting capabilities our community is very tech savvy and being able to file a police report online is something they were looking for and it's a way to maximize our officers time and generate a lot of police reports that don't need an in-person police officer

[160:01] presence through the online system with technology there are a couple areas that we worked hard on uh one was we knew we needed a new records management system and in late 2016 we really dove into that process and turned on our new system in 2017 and that system has helped us again move from older technology to newer technology and we also wanted to focus our energy on the radio system that we use and if you recall back about three and a half years ago now the community culture and safety tax the radio project was paid for through that tax and uh we're nearing the completion of that project now which will really give us a state of the art radio communication system for all of our first responders in boulder so we're happy to be near the end of that public outreach and education was another area we wanted to focus our energy on uh several years ago we decided to

[161:01] kind of reinvigorate our participation in national night out many of you have been out on that first tuesday in august with us meeting the community it gives us a great opportunity to communicate with and talk to people in their neighborhoods and uh we also wanted to partner better with social social services um groups and probably the biggest success there was our partnership with mental health partners that evolved into the edge program and really gave us a meaningful mental health co-responder program several years ago before it was really being pushed that's another program that we want to work on and continue to make better but it really has served our officers well and it has really provided better crisis intervention and mental health services to people in crisis in our community along the public outreach lines we've also improved and expanded our community police academy which allows community members to come in and experience what the police department does and learn

[162:00] about us we've done a significant amount of engagement with the university of colorado athletic department and we also created a community engagement and dialogue panel that meets with the chief police and the two deputy chiefs every other month to get feedback from community members allow us to communicate with them about policies procedures things going on in the community and what they expect from their police department um as we move forward um you know we policing is always evolving and changing there were a number of things that were not in our master plan in 2013 that we took on as additional work um an example of that is our early adoption of body worn cameras i think most of you are familiar with senate bill 217 that passed this summer which requires body cameras for all law enforcement officers in the state of colorado we've been wearing body cameras since 2015 which puts us well ahead of the curve in meeting that legislative requirement as well we started collecting stop data

[163:01] back in 2017 that was born out of the hillard hines report it is also mandated by senate bill 217 and since we've been doing that for years we're ahead of the curve in that area too when we started we were one of only three agencies in the state that was collecting stop data and by 2023 every police department in the state will have to collect that data so we're happy and proud that we're ahead of where things are going um both at the state level and our community level and i think you know as we talk about the the national and local discussions on police reform for us this master plan really gives us an opportunity to create that roadmap for us on what police reform looks like for the city of boulder and for the boulder police department and using the master planning process it really allows us also to create the police department that our community wants and expects and allows us to document that through the master planning process and hopefully create something

[164:00] 18 months to two years from now that really lays out our roadmap to the future so i'll turn it back over to wendy um good evening council members i'm going to start by giving a general overview of the city's master plan process then move on to the next steps specifically for the police master plan process to so to start with the general overview most city departments of course have master plans or strategic plans to establish policies priorities service standards and facility and system needs and acceptance of master plans provides direction for city-wide priorities for capital improvements plans are also required to be consistent with the boulder valley comprehensive plan and the city's sustainability and resilience framework master plan lengths vary based on a variety of factors in this case the 2013 master plan was designed as a five to seven year plan and the city's master plan process

[165:00] typically consists of four major phases over the course of approximately two years next slide please here's a chart of that process and i won't read every bullet but i'll touch on the main themes for each phase uh phase one so this is the phase we're heading into after this meeting tonight and this is essentially where we design the process key elements here include identifying stakeholders and laying out the scope the project timeline and the public process and that includes identifying underserved and underrepresented people most impacted by the plan to help design a a process of really robust and inclusive uh in the next phase phase two we really document the current state of the department so services offered how funding's allocated among priorities etc

[166:02] this phase also assesses the department's mission and core values and how the current activities are contributing to the mission and values at this time these service delivery levels are evaluated in the context of national standards pure cities or other benchmarks and it's also a time of needs assessment so identifying emerging needs from the perspective of the department and the community in phase three you use the work done in the previous steps to develop the key focus areas issues funding priorities to be addressed in the plan and this phase includes ongoing feedback from the community planning board and council and after input on these issues and priorities the draft master plan is developed and that draft then receives further review and revision before going

[167:00] on to the final phase and that's phase four the acceptance process and that's when the draft plan goes through around a final consideration by the public as well as planning board and city council public hearings next next slide as we look to get started on phase one we would like to recommend that council appoints a master plan process subcommittee consisting of two council members and this is a structure that's recently been used with other master plans i believe the open space and mountain parks plan is an example of that the process subcommittee will work with staff on the project core team and those members are listed here on this slide to guide the process and to really champion the project and those council members are in a good position to do that because they're so involved in the process along the way

[168:01] should council approve this recommendation staff would anticipate working with the process subcommittee through the end of 2020 on phase one and returning to council in early 2021 with the results of the work on the scope public process and timeline and that leads us to our last slide go ahead the next slide and that has our question for counsel in this study session which is does council agree with the staff recommendation to appoint a master plan process subcommittee composed of two council members to work with staff to develop the math the police master plan process and with that i'll end and we'll be happy to take any questions thank you yeah thanks so much for that wendy and also uh deputy chief johnson for your overview from the last master plan and and chief harold for your overview of where we're headed so really appreciate all that information uh we have questions for staff on any of

[169:02] these topics bob i see you've got your hand up yeah my question is actually for some council colleagues um erin you and mary served on the process subcommittee for the development of the open space master plan which seemed to go very very well what advice do you have did the two of you have for council on uh successfully uh navigating a process for a large and complex master plan mary do you want to go first sure um i think that it takes some dedication um and the process that that we were in took an entire two years um on a monthly basis we met and one of the key things i think was to be recognized our role in the process

[170:00] our role was um to i guess sort of a a course correction sort of role there were many times when um staff would come and say we're gonna present things this way or we're gonna ask the community that and this is how we're going to um tell that story and the process subcommittee which also consisted of two open space board of trustees would i think i can recall at least three or four times when we said ah that's not gonna work and um and it took i think some some courage on our part to just say nope they ain't gonna work and i think that it took some openness on staff's part to it meant that they had to scrap some of what they planned and kind of go back to the drawing board but we over the course of those two years we

[171:01] were able to develop a very strong partnership with staff and we worked hand in hand very well very candidly and i think we all learned to really trust each other so i think those are important things um yeah aaron yeah thanks for that mary that i think that's absolutely right and i think part of part of it is that you need to have a commitment to to be fairly neutral parties going in both directions right like i think i think mary and i really tried to represent i think what we understood to be how council as a whole would see an issue you know so we're really trying to focus on process and how the process would work well for the whole council and then we also served as ambassadors back from the open space department and the subcommittee back to council and you

[172:01] know would present things every so often so you know really really requires you to be in a fairly you really have to stick to process over substance right while mary and i have some different perspectives on open space it rarely mattered because we really both were working together to try to make sure the process worked as best as it possibly could uh for the whole community so i think you want that kind of dedication to the to the project um rather than to a particular point of view and i i just want to add one more thing given the the composition of this council um i think it would be really beneficial to have one senior council member um and one junior council member who is not yet serving on a process subcommittee because there's a lot to learn about process and

[173:00] that junior council member will take with them [Music] into their subsequent service what they learn and i think um it's it could be really valuable um not just to the council member but to the entire community great point and by junior you mean under the age of 40. [Music] just kidding oh yeah so aaron if i could jump in sure um i i just want to say i i've served on one with aaron we did the comp plan subcommittee together and then i'm on one with rachel right now and one thing i would just say bob in answer to your question is one of the roles of the council members it's to focus on process it's also to be a political sounding board you know one of the functions and i think that's what mary was alluding to one of the functions is we hear from

[174:01] community members all the time and so we have like this broad view of what the community thinks and so sometimes what might sound good in a staff meeting might come to the process subcommittee and the council members might say well that's going to fall flat or it's missing this element that the community will want to hear and so you know the role the council member on these process subcommittees is not to be at all a subject matter expert in fact you know it's better if you don't really know the subject matter and are instead listening from the perspective of what's the community going to think how they react you know if we do it this way versus that way i'll give a specific example um when the second survey was coming out on the comp plan aaron and i both were fairly unhappy with some of the questions that were being asked because

[175:00] they were somewhat leading or they left out important background information and so aaron and i spent a few hours working over the [Music] survey questions and thought that that was very important because we could see what some community members might think were shortcomings of the survey questions which would make the results much more questionable so anyway the council role is more of a liaison for what the community would think if this or that idea went public great thanks that's very helpful thanks yeah thanks for the question um i would think in terms of junior and senior council members like maybe the point would be that it's somebody who's been on a subcommittee a process subcommittee before and somebody who hasn't um as an example i could see mirabai maybe from her background being good for the subcommittee so she might be a senior council member but has not done a subcommittee so i wouldn't want to like close the door on that

[176:00] option for her well i think there's also something to consider i think this is going to be a two-year process so um that's another consideration good do we have any other questions for staff before we answer their question to us all right seeing none what do you all think about this process subcommittee idea yep yep i think every everybody likes it lots of thumbs ups and nodding heads um i think this is going to be i'll just speak a little bit here that this is going to be a big project there'll be a lot of community attention on it um i think you know chief harold is bringing a lot of um new perspectives and directions the department a lot of there'll be a lot of attention and interest on this so i think having a couple council members help shepherd it through um would be

[177:00] really useful so thanks for proposing that i think it's a good idea as do we all it seems like and so then what would be the next steps then we're are we putting people forward tonight or what what's the thought on how we're selecting these volunteer to later meeting i think we were thinking next week at the meeting okay does that work for council yeah i'd just make a suggestion that people who would be interested at least email the rest of the council so that we know going into the meeting next week who would like to be on or or you can say tonight i suppose but um we just need to know i think it'd be helpful to know before the meeting who might be interested okay good point good well anything else that anybody wants to add on the topic of uh policing and the master plan the upcoming master plan i had a question um so i had a number of

[178:01] questions as we went through the slides or are those not right for tonight like should i ask you i don't know that i was asking for questions before for just that kind of thing okay um sorry i missed the earlier call for questions so um thanks for the presentations um deputy chief john johnson and chief harold and wendy as well um so my first one i don't know if it's if it can be answered by you all or not i know there's some dovetailing so just wanted to verify um when we looked at the icat and the updated use of force policy um can you answer if in boulder we use and this would be that by the ems people that arrive not police but do we use ketamine to um sedate people who are perceived as out of control in boulder the police department doesn't rachel but is it used in boulder because it would be used in conjunction with police like if if police call and and

[179:00] ems arrives they might be um asked as i understand it to sedate someone who's perceived as out of control so i i don't have any maybe deputy chief johnson does but i would just be speaking out of turn because of ohio is totally different we didn't use ketamine in ohio so maybe deputy chief johnson has an answer i don't know um but we we can certainly ask and find out you know our ambulance service is a contracted contract situation with american medical response amr um but we can ask and we can get you an answer that would be awesome thank you um number two you mentioned um i think uh deputy chief johnson mentioned it uh senate bill 217 and that we were out ahead and um a couple criteria there um what are we what is the timeline and what do we need to do to be responsive to senate bill 217 going forward like what two of them are kind of covered because

[180:00] we're already using uh body cams and collecting data are there other big lifts that were required for local police departments that we're working on right so there aren't really big lifts um what we haven't figured out yet is how how the stage is going to collect data from us but we have got to see me some emails from the state looking for working groups put together for example with the stop data how the state's going to collect that on a statewide basis and what format that'll be worked on because that that reporting really doesn't start until 2023 i think um a lot of the other pieces are really policy related and many of them were already addressed in our policies so for example the use of chokeholds we haven't used chokeholds at boulder pd since i've worked here in 1993 but clarifying that in our policies not not any real significant heavy lifts that we have to do to comply with 217. the real big ones i think are going to be financial burdens for other agencies on body cameras and agencies that have

[181:01] done zero stop data reporting are really going to have some work to do but those are really for the most part done for us okay i mean it might be nice to see sort of the column of what's required under that bill and what we've already done and what we're still working on at some point okay um so that was one question uh colloquy on that just a real um quick question on the stop data um the the department or actually recording the stop data um is really time consuming um i was able to go on a ride along with um a um sergeant and as they put in the data it it took a good i don't know five ten minutes to manually enter all the data will that be improved as we move forward i'm hoping so yeah we're hoping to figure out a better system to collect that data what we're using now is really embedded

[182:01] in our records management system but we are working with um in org through our our cad system our computer dispatch system looking at ways where we can pre-populate fields and make things easier looking at utilizing an app that we can use on a phone to collect that data and make it easier for our officers to collect that data all right just a couple more for me um maris you mentioned um a focus on domestic violence which is um i'm excited to hear that that's gonna be a focus and you mentioned um something about uh something that sounded like it would sort of be a point of data that would tell you whether lethality was indicated in a particular dv situation um i just wondered is that going to be like as an officer is responding and then if lethality is indicated would discretion sort of be removed and you

[183:00] would have to um take a course of action will does that make sense let's say that you're well i'll i'll parse that out is that going to be used like in when you were responding to calls for dv so the lethality assessment tool um there's a few different versions um but they're they basically i don't want to say predict it's too strong of a word but they most certainly have heavy influence on the victim of domestic violence to indicate the threat of fatality or serious physical harm and so my my desire is to have a co-response with somebody that's an expert in domestic violence respond out with the police on those type of incidents to fill out the lethality assessment and then make a joint decision with people that are experts in this field and to be able to call additional resources

[184:01] the tool has been very successful in convincing women that their life is in danger and to make immediate steps to remove themselves from that situation and so you know the police are under mandatory arrest in certain instances obviously the police would have to follow the rule of law on those arrests but most certainly that's why i'm using the tool to provide more information and insight to the victim so she or he is not repeatedly victimized thanks interesting so it's not so much from the you know whether or not you make it an arrest it's whether or not the the victim maybe wants to um leave the home that night from what i'm hearing so um and then last one it's a little bit off track but um from i think an email i saw earlier in this week it sort of looked like in our response to covid and at the hill we had maybe moved beyond education i just wanted to understand if my read of that was accurate

[185:00] that sort of there was going to be some indication to the community that there was going to be lower tolerance for parties and things like that that sounded to me like maybe we had um we were moving beyond education which the last update we got was we were in kind of an education only mode uh the police department has been pretty consistent education warning and egregious behavior requires citation and as a last resort arrest and some of the behavior that we saw last weekend on the hill was egregious we issued a lot of citations for underage drinking we've investigated a tremendous amount of nuisance calls for loud parties too many people at the parties and so um i don't have the exact data in front of me but we did take some citations and we did write i think six public health order violations independently of other charges all right thanks that's all i

[186:01] got i appreciate it you're welcome yeah good good question rachel it's good to hear uh mary did you have something else or did you get an answer no i i have a couple questions um one is um for maris in your presentation you went through a whole bunch of things that have changed since you came on which is pretty amazing what you've done in such a short time so thank you for that um but i wanted to just um ask how those all align with the requests that we heard so fervently from the community uh hi mary thanks um can you give me specifically what requests well if you if you go are we talking about if you like for example we heard some um some of this stuff was like eight can't wait um was one of the things and there's there were several things under there and so how

[187:02] do the changes that you've made since then align with those requests some of those requests such as eight can't wait that we saw it come in thanks mary that's a great question and i'm sorry i kind of rushed that part um so all of the use of force changes that we've made the icat model training the eight can't wait is very interesting because we have checked every box and they can't wait with the exception if you keep reading then it says defund the police so um i would say that if you looked at the categories in their web page that we are consistent or exceeding they can't wait we're very um consistent with uh the recommendations by the obama foundation um i think we're exceeding that and i think we have a model policy on use of force and i think that the independent monitor has reviewed that and would agree with me so as far as national standards and

[188:02] having a model policy on what people are demanding across the country um i think we are exceeding that with the exception of the defund the police movement um so um i feel confident we're we're ahead of the curve on on many of the national uh cries for new policies and reform thank you for that um appreciate it and then um the next one is for wendy and um on in that slide where you presented who was going to be part of the process subcommittee i don't recall seeing a member of the community and i'm sorry if it was on there but i didn't see it is there a just a community member from a certain demographic thanks for that mary um what i listed on that slide were

[189:00] staff members and departments involved in the internal staff core planning team so it's true that there wasn't a community member in that group but as we work together as the staff core team works with the process subcommittee the council members then what we would really want to do as as part of that process is determine um how we can be affected in getting community members involved in the process and so i think that that type of involvement the best way to accomplish what you're talking about hasn't been determined yet but determined during our phase one planning thank you and the reason i'm asking is because the um the open space master plan subcommittee had the two ospt members which are members of the community and i think we really benefit it from those perspectives so um in terms of the

[190:03] police master plan i think it would be really helpful to have somebody and i'm gonna name names because i think she would be amazing as part of this process subcommittee which is lou scalisia who works for nine to five and she's very very involved with the spanish-speaking community and does a lot of outreach and a lot of work and so i think she would be an excellent member or somebody like luz would be really great and um or somebody from the community connectors the community connectors i think might be a good resource but i think that um additional element would be really helpful as it was in the in the open space master plan process thanks for that mary and we'll definitely talk with the core team and the process subcommittee when council

[191:01] appoints it about how we accomplished what exactly what you're getting at thanks mary uh we got mark and then junie first i want to thank you for that presentation it was really terrific and very informative two questions the first one builds on uh one of rachel's questions um with respect to behaviors on the hill i had understood that there's going to be some sort of coordination between our police force and the cu administration and or police force in terms of passing information back and forth so that they could exert uh pressure from their end for better behaviors in a way that perhaps a citation cannot provide is that going on yeah mark thank you for that question um with our new data analyst um we actually um have built a pretty extensive report for uh the police department at cu who

[192:01] actually turns that over to her administration but it's a pretty extensive report on a daily basis of everything that we're doing either we're doing it together or we're doing it individually but she is getting a report on a daily basis so they are kept you know as close as real time as possible on what the boulder police department and the city attorneys are doing so um i think that's working out well obviously um you know i would like to have a much more robust data system which we're working on to work with cu which is going to require data agreements and so forth but um we've been able to accomplish that in short order the other uh item that was raised with respect to that was um effectively putting some pressure on property owners for the conduct that is ongoing on their properties and are we doing that in any form yes and um i think tom carr is here and

[193:02] he his team has been um really at this for at least a couple months and so tom if you want to say anything or i can take it whatever you want to do happy to report maris the so as you know we modified the nuisance ordinance to allow for more effective enforcement uh we we notified i think 13 properties uh we're in the process of uh following up with 12 of them um that that's the next step is a meeting and then potential public nuisance uh we're working with the property owners to try to address the issues uh as marist said that tool that she described the data rattles dr benson drafted allows our team to uh in real time download uh data from the computeris dispatch and ultimately link to body cam video so that we can build our cases so we're actively working that we're also coordinating directly with the county and with um cu on a weekly basis on all these cases

[194:00] terrific i had one last question for the chief or staff my recollection is that there was a mention in the staff memo about an asset forfeiture program um does boulder have such a thing i mean that's come under heavy criticism for a number of reasons do we practice asset forfeiture i can answer that chief um so many many many many years ago we had an asset seizure fund and to be quite frank as time went on we stopped seizing assets but we had this fund that we needed to expend because it's governed by the federal federal government so we actually used most of that money to buy our new records management system several years ago and we've been in the process of spending that down to zero we're within about fifty thousand dollars of having spent our entire seizure fund because we don't currently seize assets or seize funds

[195:00] because it is such a difficult and challenging thing to do and frowned upon we are no longer doing it then correct okay thanks that's what i need you to know thank you yeah thanks for that mark yep that's good good to hear for sure uh junie thank you aaron so i really appreciate this presentation and i'm very excited to hear that we are ahead of the curve when it comes to uh new policies and reforms around the country so i really appreciate you saying that and also i appreciate the idea on building relationships i think that was mentioned by curtis i believe and also you mentioned reducing response to certain calls so a week ago i was part of a panel discussion with a few of our state legislators and i learned about the star program in denver

[196:00] and i wanted to hear from you maris whether it is a program that's already been implemented in boulder or are we looking to these programs and basically the star program i learned is a support team assisted response program and basically it just diverts 911 calls from from armed officers to paramedics and social workers so i wonder if we already have that system in place here i know you mentioned something about paramedics but i could not make the connection so i just wanted to hear from you thank you thanks jenny that's a great question um so i've reached out to denver's police chief and on a couple issues and i've talked to their analytic team in denver and so they just implemented this program in denver and i think in the upper northwest there's a similar program and i've talked to our fire chief about

[197:01] um you know his input and i would be we could most certainly i'd be very open-minded to do a pilot project here and determine um you know if this would be a good thing i think it's too early to tell in denver um but you know preliminarily the analyst that i spoke to in denver uh says they they can divert a lot of these calls to the paramedic team i've also had conversations with our edge program here um and so i'm kind of looking at the evidence before that we would start it here but that doesn't mean we can't start a pilot project but that would require the fire chief you know to to weigh in on this so but i'm very open-minded to co-response thanks for that jenny it's great to hear chief um it's promising direction for sure sam did you have something yeah mine is not a question um i just

[198:01] want to compliment everyone involved with taking a deep dive into our policies it's great to see that the use of force policy has been addressed kind of um as a first order business because that is something that we've heard nationwide and from our community as well so i really appreciate that um the the command structure and the police department has really really dug into this and it seems very committed to it i also spoke with our new auditor monitor i'm joey lopari this morning i think that will be another component of this overall um policing review and master planning that we're going to do and um so i just want to say thank you for digging in i know that it it can be some of the feedback we've gotten a lot of it's very confrontational and um i appreciate it being taken in the spirit that it's delivered which is trying to improve the way that we react

[199:01] to incidents in our community so it's just thank you and um you know council definitely supports this effort and um we'll be very happy to appoint a couple council members to help with the process going forward so this is all this all sounds like progress to me so thank you all for that thank you yeah thanks for that sam absolutely i mean this is a time of of great changes right between the things sam outlined the new monitor the new oversight task force that's coming in the next few months the new master plan so really appreciate all the the work that you all are doing to um you know move in the new direction in the 21st century here so thanks very much any final comments yeah i i have a final comment i just wanted to um you know chief harold started out the presentation

[200:00] with acknowledging the the difficulty that change presents and the open-mindedness with which the um our police force is meeting that so i wanted to just echo that and and thank um all of the police force for um embracing the changes um i know that it is not easy and um and that it will take time and um i do appreciate um that openness to change and the willingness to change and um thank you all very much thanks mary rachel did you have something else yeah i just had um kind of a process question um agreeing with those who've spoken from the um vantage point of having been on a process the sub

[201:00] process subcommittee that those are as a council member your role is process and uh not getting into content or policy so my process question as a council member who is probably pretty interested in the policy ramifications of what we'll be looking at where where do we plug in like i'm sure a lot of us feel the same way that we will um care a lot about you know certain issues and whether we're looking at things where's where does that role come in um i will go ahead and answer that um unless someone else wants to jump in so rachel there's going to even though the process subcommittee is going to be working with the staff on as you stated the process then there's going to be multiple check-ins with the whole council and so that's you know throughout the stages um where it's you know every phase those four phases that were up on the slide so it's you know the assessment the needs assessment the you

[202:00] know identifying the issues the priorities that type of thing so there's going to be multiple opportunities for the whole council to to check in and give input on the overall direction that the process is taking us thanks good mary do you have some else yeah i just wanted to rachel's question prompted me that the open space master planning process was a pilot project for the [Music] community engagement wheel for that and the that particular process was very disciplined in the opening and closing of engagement windows and the collecting of feedback and i think that's one of the reasons that it moved along smoothly and also people were very clear as to when to

[203:00] provide feedback and when the feedback moved on to the next step and so i think that'll be real important because what i had seen in the past was you're way down the road in the process and then somebody brings up an issue that was addressed at the beginning and um if you're disciplined about the the engagement windows then people will be clear that that that ship sailed and if that wasn't brought up then um you missed the opportunity and so i think um whoever gets on the process subcommittee would be real important to be unflinchingly disciplined about that that's all very good any last thoughts

[204:00] going once going twice all right well then we'll we'll call that a night thanks so much uh maris and wendy and cj for those presentations and working on this and all the planning board folks as well all right any last thoughts before we um get gaveled out yes it's 9 19 which officially makes you my new hero [Laughter] 40 minutes early good job thanks good meeting everybody have a good night thank you [Music]

[205:00] so [Music] you