September 15, 2020 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] with large gatherings so for months actually the city has been working with boulder county public health and cu and you all know that because we invite them to come visit us every month and tell us what's going on but this recent spike has caused grave concerns among all of those partners as well as the members of our community so over the weekend there have been a number of meetings in this week as well and only about a half hour ago boulder county public health issued an order i guess i'll call it recommending um in the strongest possible terms that all cu students in boulder remain quarantined for the next 14 days and they define quarantine as staying in your home with the exception of engaging in going to in-person classes or labs at school needs for food or medical help helping your family things like that

[1:01] and if you go out you are to be wearing a facial mask and of course maintain social distancing the university of colorado will be sending this information and also wording it strongly to all of the um cu affiliates that they that they have so this takes effect immediately in addition tomorrow i am going to be issuing an emergency order that will focus on some properties that the police department has identified as being particularly concerning and those properties will be subject to an emergency order from the city of boulder for folks to follow that 14-day quarantine period with the same exceptions so and that will be enforceable in addition boulder county public health and the other partners have been working with colorado department of health and cdphe

[2:00] and boulder county public health will be setting up a walk-up testing facility for all boulder county residents but primarily we hope that cu students will attend it's located on the hill it will be located in the city's pleasant street parking lot and many thanks to yvette bowden for working with tom again at the university to get that going we're starting right now to inform people to close the lot to make it ready for tomorrow beyond that we will be working with cdphe in boulder county public health to create a drive up facility in boulder these will be free testing for residents of boulder county and as soon as we have information about the drive up facility we will be letting people know but let me make sure that we all know that the facility being set up tomorrow in the pleasant street lot is a walk-up facility you cannot drive up to that facility in addition tomorrow

[3:01] in the morning we will be holding a media question and answer time and there'll be more information about that sent to the media tomorrow morning so with me tonight if you have questions are chris mischuck sarah huntley event bowdoin all of whom have been very intimately involved in working with our partners we do not have anyone from cu or public health tonight so we cannot answer specific questions about that and i believe that marist is also here if you have police questions thank you very good jane thanks very much for that and kudos to staff good to see you and boulder county public health and cbphe for all coming together this happened really quickly and a lot of things happened in parallel and so i really appreciate the rapidity of the response thank you all and rachel i see your hand up yep thanks jane and that's pretty

[4:00] awesome that that was worked on over the weekend and got such quick results so just a couple questions for the um walk up or drive up testing how long do we visualize those will be available it sounds like the whole community like we could go and get testing anybody in boulder county can go get free testing there which is something that's been lacking in the county yeah my understanding is that the pleasant street lot walk-up facility will be available for 14 days and i don't think that there has been determination about the drive up facility at this point okay um so maybe shorter term and then um in that public health order there was a lot of concern when we had our um sort of shelter in place order that people still wanted to be able to exercise can cu kids still say exercise with housemates and things like that or how strict is this quarantine in that regard i believe that they can exercise but they need to be

[5:00] wearing a mask and they can also go to um to see you to exercise if they're involved in a collegiate team [Music] they can engage in recreational activities alone so they can't exercise with their colleagues they can go for a run or a bike ride okay um and then um if it sounds like this is strongly encouraged what happens if people aren't following this is there a a penalty or a fine or is it just going to lead to that didn't work and we'll try something different so the county order says that if it doesn't work they'll they'll make it mandatory this is modeled after a program adopted by michigan state so the first step is to do it in the larger scale with voluntary compliance and then the city's doing an order that's mandatory that that focuses on problem properties okay thanks so much thanks rachel junie

[6:01] i just have a question i'm not sure if jane has the answer right now but you mentioned mandatory well you mentioned quarantine voluntary for 14 days for all cu students but how about students who are remote is it just for students who live on the hill or is it student across who live outside of the hill and people who are remote as well it's not for people that remote or in a different city but someone started to answer who may know sarah are you yeah this is sarah my understanding is the wording of the order or the recommendation letter says local and the intention of the health department is students who live in the city of boulder yeah that's the way i read that as well any other questions

[7:02] okay seeing no hands thank you all again for your hard work and your quick response we'll move on now to an announcement about the 2020 census um baltimore county is currently at a 73 response rate but there's still time to respond to the 2020 census don't be left out 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 that's coming up quickly two weeks at my2020census.gov my2020census.gov or by calling 844-3300 two zero two zero

[8:01] and i think that's our only announcement so i think we're ready for open comments so [Music] our first three speakers are dave hartzell elaine dana miller and katy farming dave hi can you hear me yes okay great thank you um so i would like to ask the council to please consider this a request for a call-up review of the proposed north boulder library project in order to address the concerns of the neighboring property and the interest of the boulder community at large well the potential continued covet shutdown of the north boulder corner and reynolds branches and given uncertain budgets going forward the council should consider a call-up review on the north boulder library project to address

[9:01] ongoing operating budget concerns the last thing the taxpayers should have are expenditures for a 13 000 square foot facility but then that facility to sit empty due to lack of operating budgets in the out years thank you very much thank you dave next we have elaine danner miller katie farnan and eric budd elaine hello i'm elaine dana miller i've lived in boulder for 11 years and i have loved ones who've struggled with the devastation of homelessness and addiction i just want to express my gratitude to city council for supporting the recent stepped-up enforcement of the camping ban being homeless is not a crime but there is evidence in many of these camps of widespread criminal activity police often find stolen property weapons drugs and other bio hazards only two months ago you guys know this city council voted against a sanctioned encampment

[10:00] city staff recommended against it as well in their presentation they included this definition of homelessness people living in a place that's not meant for human habitation that includes tents and cars sanctioned encampments trying to solve the crisis of people living in tents and cars by pursuing solutions that put people in tents and cars it's not compassionate it's not safe for anyone in the community especially in winter and we saw that was heartbreakingly clear last week other cities have tried this and failed including fort collins which shut down its coveted emergency campground because of increased crime complaints about trash hazardous materials and fighting among among the campground residents a sanctioned campground here would bring the same problems it would encourage the explosion of more unsanctioned camps and the crime fire health and safety risks would be unmanageable that would place a costly and continued burden on

[11:01] our first responders and we don't have unlimited resources wouldn't it be better to focus our solution on our coordinated entry approach with rapid rehousing solutions that address addiction and mental illness and mandatory case management and in the meantime let's provide safe clean temporary shelter in something more suitable than a tent or a car so please continue to enforce the camping ban and thank you thank you elaine next we have katie farnan eric budd and sarah campbell katie [Music] hi my name is katie and i'm a volunteer with bedrooms are for people we're working to reform discriminatory occupancy limits in boulder i support ending occupancy limits because i want to live in a community that prioritizes fair housing access boulder's legacy of exclusionary housing through its zoning laws restrictive

[12:01] ordinances has had reverberating impacts on our communities ability to thrive and grow such that our population has declined for three straight years school enrollment is down and according to a 2014 study on inter-county commute patterns greater than half of boulder county's low-income workers drive into the county to work city of boulder has a central role in fixing that and in this room there's a central role to be played our occupancy laws are discriminatory and unintended consequences are playing out right now but i'm also concerned with council's commitment to building a foundation of trust with the public hovid is a time to ensure more access to the ballot not less and the message that was sent to the community by council is not encouraging bedrooms turned in over 7.7 000 signatures during a pandemic they did their work and now council must do yours and not stand in the way of direct democracy council should place a

[13:01] moratorium on occupancy enforcement until you can come forward with a solution that allows at least one person per bedroom thank you thank you katie next we have eric budd sarah campbell and supreme eric hello my name is eric budd and i'm an organizer with bedrooms are for people we're working to reform discriminatory occupancy limits in boulder one thing i've seen during 2020 is how the pandemic has found the failings and republican institutions we've seen the failure of governments to uphold democracy and the failure of cities to keep people from eviction and out of homelessness now is the time to protect people from eviction and financial harm during the pandemic that's what we're asking for stop occupancy enforcement and reform these discriminatory occupancy laws for the long term and stop people from having to live in the shadows several people told me they wanted to speak tonight but they did not sign up because of fear of retaliation

[14:02] and eviction because of these laws of those who have concerns about people living together during the pandemic i can tell you that living in my cooperative during this time has been one of the few things to keep my own sanity living within community and supporting each other has been a lifeline in fact our yearly turnover has declined significantly since the pandemic has started largely because we take care of each other have you forgotten what it's like to not be wealthy to have to have to rely on others to live in a community to know your neighbors and to support them that's the boulder i want to live in we need to keep our community whole and our public services working to benefit people living here right now the pandemic has strained our public resources i'm not sure how many people in boulder realize that the south boulder library branch will be closed throughout all of 2021 i just wanted to make a short note that the library in north boulder will serve a great need to the community and i support moving forward that project

[15:01] we will get through this and can make our community stronger in the end thank you thank you eric next sarah campbell sue prance and chelsea castillano sarah hi city council and whoever whomever is listening my name is sarah campbell and sometimes i volunteer with bedrooms are for people i'm 32 i bought a house i decided to settle down here i mean i appreciate all the concern for young families like mine but i wonder are you representing people like me who can only put a modest amount of time into local politics i spoke at two city council meetings i wrote an editorial yet the unsubstantiated strawman arguments about affordability for young families keep coming anyway i hope that some folks are out there listening to me now and regardless agenda item 8a is not from bedrooms are for people it's from the office of our fairly centrist governor jared polis this particular ask from our government governor is not going to be the end of

[16:01] the world or the end of your property value i do happen to live on a street with one of those god forsaken co-ops that were supposed to destroy all of boulder or something my street is very quiet and my property value keeps going up if later tonight a city council member tries again to make the unsubstantiated claim that enforcing occupancy limits will help curb the spread of covid19 i expect you to also have the data that supports this claim with all of our national labs and our highly educated electorate we should at the bare minimum be making public health decisions based on available scientific available data and scientific reasoning public health is not an area where it's appropriate to feed irrational fears about how for example the four tenants living in a four bedroom rental next door might feel less pressure to keep up their front lawn to your standards if you suddenly no longer have the power to evict them with a phone call i mean it's just grass and this is an actual example from when i was a graduate student at cu

[17:01] this is what i do know enforcement of occupancy limits results and evictions the cdc has ordered a temporary halt against residential evictions in order to slow the spread of kevin 19. the cdc also cites five studies which have shown an association between eviction and hypertension which has been associated with more severe outcomes from coven 19. i also assume that destabilizing someone's housing and requiring them to couchsurf between multiple households could also be a transmission line for disease colorado has a state epidemiologist i'm sure paul has consulted them and uh i think you have to show that the positives outweigh the negatives with actual facts if you're going to try to continue making this argument thank you thank you sarah next to prank chelsea castillano and alana wilson hi you hear this hi my name is suprem i'm the executive director of community cycles and i'd

[18:00] like to speak about the site review proposal for 2400 2450 central ave the transportation master plan shows a proposed multi-use path connection through the properties that are considered part of the site review this connection is important because flatiron park has long had inadequate connections to the south boulder creek path and the boulder creek path on this stretch of multi-use path every building has a clearly defined social path better connections are desperately needed and have been for decades we are not coming to you with this 11th hour when this project came before planning board for concept review community cycles testified the connection through this parcel was shown in the tmp and was badly needed i'd like to talk more about the process in a letter of counsel this afternoon charles farrell states that see technical engineering and planning staff meant on several occasions to evaluate prosper alternatives to tnp alignment since community cycles has continued to show up to testify on this issue why weren't we included in this discussion more importantly why wasn't the transportation advisory board who

[19:00] was essentially the keeper of the tmp and his goals included in any of this this is not the first time community cycles has found something in concept or site review that does not comply with the tmp in fact non-tmp compliance or poor dangerous access for bikes and peds happens frequently enough that we have been reviewing every case before the planning board for probably the last seven years why is it fallen on community cycles to monitor these things and be the enforcer of the tmp if these projects were to come before tab as they should we would have better adherence to tmp and community cycles would not be here asking council why the city isn't following its own tmp there are at least two issues moving forward this is a connection that badly needs to be made we need innovative thinking from planning when it comes to transportation they could get that innovative thinking if they included tab tab needs to be allowed to have more input and planning and also parking by the way which is under community vitality in order to be able to actually move the city towards its tmt goals thank you very much thank you sue

[20:00] next we have chelsea castillano alana wilson and nissa chelsea hi my name is chelsea castellano and i'm an organizer with bedrooms are for people and we are working to reform discriminatory occupancy limits in boulder council if you have the power to relieve some fear and anxiety from thousands of boulder residents with a knot of your head would you well that is the question that is on your agenda this evening you actually have the power to temporarily give people just a little bit more security and stability in an increasingly unstable world by temporarily suspending enforcement of occupancy limits you have the opportunity to win back the community's trust by listening not to us but to the recommendations made by governor polis and the cdc they know that keeping people housing secure will save lives based on the conversations we had with thousands of boulder rights there are likely thousands of people in our community living over-occupied today these community members are not doing harm to their neighbors as you can see in your packet the relative number of complaints is low these community

[21:01] members are not criminals and yet they live in fear like they are simply because they have four people living in a four bedroom home i've heard many of you speak to the dire economic situation the city is in as a justification and a muni effort and so today we ask you to take that same concern and apply it to the people that you may have forgotten to represent or even try to understand bob you understand why effa endorsed us now it's because the people living on the edge of poverty need equal access to housing and reforming occupancy limits helps to achieve that i hope you all can take that knowledge and apply it to your conversation tonight on a brighter note thank you to rachel friend and adam swetlick for attending our hugely successful uh socially distance and mass march this past saturday and for listening to your community they got to see the wide array of people who support our movement from young professionals to families to students to retirees we're on the right side of history and tonight i hope you show the world that you are too thank you thank you chelsea next up alana wilson

[22:02] nisha shep and nicholas rosen alana hi can you hear me hi my name is elena wilson i'm an organizer with bedrooms are for people and yes we continue working to reform discriminatory occupancy limits in boulder tonight yet again you are hearing powerful words from bedrooms allies and organizers we are here showing up for vulnerable neighbors and asking you to support council member friends motion to suspend occupancy enforcement occupancy enforcement info is presented as a series of numbers to you from 2017 through the present there have been 140 investigated complaints 75 found to be in violation including 15 so far this year notice that these numbers are reported as complaints and the occupancy has a complaint based enforcement mechanism what were these complaints we can surmise that noise and trash were at play sometimes and it's likely that some of the complaints were inspired by one person with a car being issued with another person who has a car parking in the public right-of-way in front of the former person's house

[23:01] we also can't rule out the possibility that the complainer simply didn't like the looks or lifestyle of the people they were complaining about the point here is that we don't know what actually triggered the enforcement actions in these cases occupancy enforcement does not address the root causes often cited as its purpose we have other ordinances for trash and noise violations and tools to manage parking they would not leave hundreds of people in recent years looking for new housing or leaving our city remember that even if one person is required to leave to conform to the occupancy limit often chosen families refuse to be split and others can't afford to split the rent fewer ways responsibility of the city is to manage manage these other real external impacts and should not include displacing people from their homes when there is either no real issue or an issue that should be resolved another way and why is the city so hands off in addressing actual noise and trash issues and things are a source of occupancy complaints we are in the midst of a profound economic crisis that is disproportionately taking jobs from folks already struggling to match their budget to the cost of living here

[24:00] fees suspend occupancy enforcement and instead focus on protecting nisha schnepp nicholas rosen and nick grossman nisha hi i am nisha schnaff and i'm a volunteer with bedrooms art for people we're a group working to reform discriminatory occupancy limits in boulder this has been a brutal summer in so many ways we've been in the sort of situation where people really need to have governmental agencies that they can trust leaders who they know have their backs instead boulder city government has not been behaving in ways to encourage trust from its citizens i was part of the team collecting signatures during a pandemic only to find out that the city had messed up our deadlines and then to eventually get the second blow that the city council including elected officials i had voted

[25:02] for were refusing to move our measure to the ballot a lot of people are stressed past the breaking point by this pandemic and i don't just mean that we feel exhausted and burned out i mean that some people are in danger of losing their housing and not having an affordable place to turn to in boulder the city has been doing sweeps on homeless camps over a hundred sweeps have been done since february and this past week's snowstorm resulted in the death of a homeless man we'll never know why he was sleeping outside instead of in one of the city's available shelter beds but there's no denying that the city's government consistently behaves in ways that do not encourage trust from people who are down and out that this lack of trust can result in death is indicative of truly dire times i am begging this city council to take steps to repair all the damage that has been done starting with a moratorium on occupancy enforcement until the city passes a solution that allows at least

[26:00] one person per bedroom during this pandemic we do not need any more deaths because of a lack of housing or a lack of trust in our local government please consider doing what you can do to make this government truly by and for the people thank you thank you nisha next we have nicholas rosen nick grossman and sami lawrence support nicholas hi there um uh my name is nick rosen i'm a local businessman and a homeowner and a parent uh here in boulder um first time talking to city council thank you very much i'm here just to talk about a couple things firstly just to support the motion to suspend occupancy requirements in light of the cobi kovit epidemic um you know i'm against these requirements in normal times i really don't believe that they comport with the values that i wish for my community like making boulder a more equitable and accessible

[27:00] and open place with more diversity in terms of racial diversity cultural gender and economic um you know and then to see the bedrooms of her people folks a lot of whom are here at this meeting who are so committed to equitable and affordable housing have them brave kovid to go and collect signatures to get uh this on the ballot to later be told by the city that they missed the deadline um their whole process was for naught that was really frustrating and you know look i these are not simple issues and i i i know that the folks in the city and city council are well-intentioned people i'm friends with some of you um but it just seems like this is something that you know like people have mentioned trust is eroding um and uh you know this is something that even jared polis the governor is saying i strongly encourage all municipalities and other local jurisdictions to suspend

[28:00] occupancy requirements during covid people are struggling economically and i think this is the minimum that the city could do to support people in this difficult time to provide safe and affordable housing for everyone in boulder secondly as a resident of north boulder and with a family full of readers i fully support the north boulder library construction i'm excited to see the work begin i asked city council to please prioritize thank you nick next we have nick grossman sammy lawrence iv and carlson nassar nick picture tomorrow's news headlines now boulder continues evictions in pandemic ignoring colorado's governor and public health experts with so many people struggling to keep up with their housing payments due to covid related shutdowns business closures and layoffs it's more important

[29:01] than ever that boulder's government takes measures to help keep people housed during the pandemic governor police's executive order strongly encourages cities like boulder that limit the number of unrelated people who can live together to suspend or eliminate those restrictions to enable homeowners to rent or give rooms to people who need housing occupancy limits jeopardize housing stability for so many people who currently rely on sharing living costs in order to stay in boulder the threat of occupancy enforcement also limits affordable housing options for families and individuals who don't want to risk living illegally forcing them to choose more expensive housing or to live outside of boulder in these stressful times passing this motion would help thousands of our neighbors sleep better at night by knowing that the government won't kick people out of a private home because

[30:00] they don't match the city's definition of a family suspending occupancy enforcement will allow people to minimize their housing expenses by safely living together without the constant fear of being evicted it will also enable homeowners and tenants to choose to legally house their vulnerable neighbors whose lives have been upended by the pandemic keeping our community together means keeping people housed please take action now to restore voters faith in our government and show your compassion for your neighbors by supporting this motion to help keep boulder whole if you do so tomorrow's headlines could instead read boulder votes to keep people housed during the pandemic thank you thank you nick next we have sammy lawrence carlson nassar and tamar stone tammy [Music] thank you sam i don't have a script

[31:01] and typically i have a speech that i write down that i take time for however i have not had the time to write i have not had the time as our people are suffering much like the broken lord at the black lives matter altar at the justice center i feel physically broken when watching our people suffer suffer in ways similar that i have suffered over the past year suffering in ways that are still persistent from being treated less than and misled and lied to our faces i have had hope for justice and truth to come into play yet i am broken

[32:01] as i hear my very well-known chief herald call my assailant a man who assaulted and disabled me who assaulted an elderly woman and another woman prior a good man good men and good people are accountable and honorable from what i believe what i was taught from the last time i've checked this is what we all know i'm tired of seeking justice through the normal ways and now we'll make sure to get them the right ways through non-violence and civility the truth of the cover-up of samuel lawrence iv voter colorado will come to light thank you for helping me become greater i love you all i'm sorry for what i must do next bye for now thank you sammy

[33:01] next we have carlson nasser tamar stone and sarah don haynes carlson yeah yeah i just did can you hear me yeah okay well i do have a script that is pretty brief and pretty concise i'm cultural master i'm a volunteer with that rooms are for people and i strongly support a temporary suspension of the enforcement of the occupancy limit due to the strain imposed on all the to cover it i will lay out a few points that i think will report revision of the occupancy rules after this test period so uh i strongly support an immediate suspension but the points of layout are the foundation of why i think this

[34:01] the rule should be revised current system constrains access to cheapest most abundant and obvious housing option available to all existing underutilized bedrooms that could be used by people who actually want or need to live with housemates the occupancy limits in place by default undermined the city home efforts city's own efforts to encourage to limit congestion and pollution and to increase affordability this great city can be smarter about how it uses its finite resources the limits incentivize new housing development in areas where transportation infrastructure is lacking further away from higher density areas where jobs and entertainment is located with the inevitable inevitable environmental costs that come with it there is a significant footprint environmentally

[35:01] speaking starting any new construction the new construction invariably also involves impact fees execution that are funded by the development and of the developer and increase the cost of making the new housing even the new housing supply less affordable too a downward spiral we also find occupancy limits in place thank you carlton thank you next we have tamar stone sarah don haynes and kurt nordbach tamar hey thank you for this time as a homeowner in uptown north boulder we are asking council to please consider the request to call up the review of the proposed north boulder library branch in order to address the concerns of the neighboring property and the interest of older community at

[36:00] large the original blueprint for this vision was a 5 000 square foot single story library annex that that we the homeowners knew about upon purchasing our condos how it went from a charming 5 000 square foot north boulder library annex to a 13 100 square foot two-story branch library without ever writing email or including the homeowners at uptown in the expansion process remains a mystery and a travesty to us we believe the city is shoehorning something much bigger than the space allows and we would appreciate oversight we have reasons to believe that the traffic study that was done is not accurate and does not reflect the current state of congestion and limited parking that already exists in addition as the daily camera just announced the north boulder corner and george reynolds

[37:00] library branches have been closed these are extremely unusual times some of our small businesses that make up the uniqueness of boulder are hanging on by their fingernails this is not the time to be building a branch library thank you thank you tamar next we have sarah don haynes kurt nordbach and oc adeltang saradon hi good evening this is sarah don haynes i'm an organizer volunteer supporter with bedrooms are for people and we're working to reform the discriminatory occupancy limits in boulder none of the fears and concerns that were explained exclaimed about co-op ordinance have come to pass and recently when speaking about shared housing mary and others on social media have brought up what about housemate spreading covid i can't help but roll my eyes none of the co-ops in boulder my own included even with the folks being critical workers several of my roommates

[38:01] have had we have not had an outbreak none of the co-ops have but i know of several single-family homes who have tossed tested positive research on national trends is showing similar well-being and shared housing the benefits of having a house mates from you know dealing with wages loss to meals have been invaluable to our resiliency 52 of our residents are renters um there's our students who are not full-time residents including that i'm going to say probably not because they're not counted in other metrics the city and county collects let's also recognize the myth that all renters are students and all students are frat boys we are talking about adults sharing housing so let's show care for young people non-traditional families retirees elders climate activists the people who are considering low income not middle income and make less than 60 000 a year like many of the staff at the university like me and the city employees black indigenous immigrant queer folks

[39:01] to support people with these identities especially when they intersect many of these identities like so many renters do increasing housing opportunities by changing the exclusionary occupancy limits and placing a moratorium on enforcing them is critical to the health and well-being of our community let's also celebrate the years of work and opening the new library in north boulder that'll be a profound resource for enriching the community thank you thank you sarah don next kurt nordbeck oc idlefang and kristen nordback kurt hi kurt nordback speaking on behalf of community cycles i'm addressing the proposed project on central avenue following up the comments by sue prandt staff provided a detailed response to questions about this from council member brocky mostly bearing on the nino and more geotechnical report prepared for the applicant but the report does not back up most of staff's assertions the sum total of the report's discussion of the potential

[40:00] path is as follows quote if the incorporation of a ramp that meets the requirements of the americans with disabilities act is considered for design and construction the grade raised fill needed to construct such cramp will need to be benched into the steep two horizontal to one vertical burn which may compromise the stability of the berm and therefore it is not recommended unquote this is the cursory opinion of an engineering firm primarily addressing conditions for the building's foundation and paving there's zero analysis here there's zero consideration of constructing the path by filling rather than invention there's zero in the way of cost estimates and the wording is far from conclusive it's possible that constructing the path would be prohibitively expensive but we don't know in short the process did not value people walking or biking enough to get more data it didn't value the unique connectivity this particular link would

[41:01] provide between flatiron parkway and the path east to stasio fields and 63rd street and it didn't value the tmp the foundational document of the city's transportation policy as sue pointed out there are micro and macro issues here at the micro level we need better access now to flatiron park for people walking and biking at the macro level we need better attention to transportation in the development review process and to stop dismissing walk and bike facilities as optional thank you thank you kurt next we have oc adelsang kristen nordbach and patrick murphy aussie hi um my name is osi adelfang i live in boulder meadows and i support housing justice i'm here to talk about life in boulder for the non-wealthy and about how our occupancy rules and the

[42:01] cost of housing in general affect us so my family moved here five years ago um because we would get better services for our two disabled children um boulder would give me a healthy lifestyle for my autoimmune disease and then we were going to get a city and a city government that was progressive committed to human rights and the environment it's been five years and so here we are two professional people making what would be a good wage somewhere else even with the financial burden of our kids disabilities we now live in a 1200 square foot trailer with a family of five because that's the only housing we can afford without taking on housemates now with kovid my partner and i are both working full-time in the trailer while doing online school with one typical high school kid and two with special needs in our tiny little space

[43:01] still i know that that's nothing compared to most of my neighbors real economic suffering during the covert crisis it's a stead it's a sad statement about boulder that people here are so wealthy and so entitled that their desires supersede other people's basic need for shelter i moved here with a very idealistic view and i have to tell you it's come to us having the conversation of considering leaving and that's from the perspective of professionals who even despite our own privilege are relegated to the edge of boulder living in this crisis suspend oppressive occupancy enforcement and then create real affordable living options or keep punishing people for not being wealthy but admit that boulder has chosen to become a so-called progressive whites-only country club thank you thank you next we have kristen nordbach patrick murphy and kristen eller christo

[44:01] hello krista nord back can you hear me yep krista nordbach boulder resident organizer with bedrooms are for people thank you to rachel and adam and the over 100 people who marched with us on saturday it was great fun question why is it okay for my neighbor to buy the house next door to them tear it down and put in no not a huge house a swimming pool and yet it's not legal for us to have more than three unrelated people living in our house so my mother lived in a rooming house in college in illinois the owner and her daughter lived downstairs and rented out the four upstairs bedrooms the income probably allowed the single mom to keep her house why do we deprive homeowners in boulder of similar opportunities to find creative ways to stay in their homes we're losing the people that make boulder special

[45:01] boulder claims to care about climate change we even have a climate action plan and yet our housing policy creates sprawl because people can't afford to live here they drive in to access jobs education mountain parks if more could live here fewer would have to drive in reducing tail pipe emissions they could live more efficiently with less energy use from heat ac etc as forests around us burn it's past time to use all available means to fight climate change if you don't support occupancy reform for the sake of homeowner rights or compassion or fairness support it for the climate we don't have time not to given the current crisis pandemic climate economic recession even cdc has placed an eviction moratorium it's high time for a moratorium on occupancy enforcement and remember bedrooms are for people

[46:00] thank you krista last two speakers patrick murphy and kristen eller patrick my name is patrick murphy i live in boulder boulder power and light the muni is a financial failure today tomorrow and decades into the future the planet burns floods and dies while boulder fiddles time to burn that fiddle and let real carbon reduction begin now not six years from now muni supporters ask why the rush have they forgotten that we were in a rush ten years ago and it would be six years from now for the muni to exist if everything went perfectly which it never has we've accomplished nothing while in a rush so rushing to the muni full truth seems intimidating to muni supporters now the bizarre thing is that we all have the same goals but muni supporters are blind to full truth

[47:00] many supporters say we were promised the true cost to the muni and we should wait i guess they haven't learned that the muni never keeps a promise we were promised that the muni would be up and running by 2017. we were promised that we would get the true cost by 2020 after giving them a bonus of 7 million dollars in 2017. we were promised off-ramps but were denied them three times when previous excel negotiations were not allowed on the ballot past non-performance is indeed a good indicator of future non-performance if you feel that you are idealistic and losing the dream you aren't the dream was not to have a city monopoly which has raised water rates by 80 since 2015 but it was to have a replicable scalable way to reduce our carbon footprint in an equitable way that other towns would emulate that was the real dream and the shared dream the only thing standing between us and that shared dream is the muni

[48:02] finally we get to vote thank you thank you patrick and finally we have kristin eller kristen hello hello oh there we go hi my name is kristen eller and i'm a volunteer with bedrooms are for people your actions tonight determine how boulder will go down in history during a pandemic housing crisis an economic recession will you protect boulder citizens or where you put the nail in the coffin cementing boulder as a city that caters to the elite and upholds discriminatory occupancy laws even during a pandemic we are in a housing and unemployment crisis where people in boulder are

[49:00] losing their basic form of protection the roof over their heads relaxing occupancy enforcement would allow for struggling families to move in together and support one another fiscally emotionally with child care and much more governor polis and the cdc realize that remaining housed is the first step to mitigating the spread of cobin 19 and boulder should too continuing to enforce occupancy laws upholds the exclusionary practices that have made boulder a city of majority rich white people boulder claims to want diversity claims to want young families and claims to be opening and inclusive yet time after time we've had the chance to change our old exclusionary housing laws and time again we've kept them we need this moratorium now more than ever and without change we will continue to see people move out of boulder and will be stuck with the long-term consequences of shaping our city through exclusionary and discriminatory laws at bedrooms are

[50:00] for people we want boulder to be inclusive diverse and welcoming and we won't back down our community has said that they want change through over 7 700 signers numerous open comment speakers and the 100 plus people who marched with us on saturday you have the chance to place a temporary hold on occupancy information right now but know that we will hold you accountable and we will be putting bedrooms over people on the ballot in 2021. thank you thank you kristen and with that we wrap up open comment i'll turn to staff and see if staff has any response to what we heard tonight sorry i was on mute because my able assistant henry is barking um yeah we have i have no comments thanks i just wanted to clarify ms prant uh asked why the development review for the central avenue project didn't go to tab staff is prohibited from taking development reviews from staff tab it's

[51:02] a specific provision in the code thank you tom and then i'll turn the council members any council members want to speak to what we heard mark and then mary i just want to ask a question of tom what was the purpose of that restriction prohibiting staff from taking a development proposal to tab when tab was created in 1992 council debated its appropriate role and he decided that development review issues with respect to transportation should be handled by the planning board okay thank you can i colloquy on that may yeah um so is that what would be required to change that um is that like in the charter or could we just change it it's an ordinance you can change it at any time your audience also get the code provision also gives you the authority to reverse something to tab staff just can't do it so council

[52:00] refers to something to tab the council's request okay uh mary yeah i just have a couple questions that were brought up by some of the speakers as well as in some emails that we received so they have to do with north boulder library um regarding um that the building was first envisioned as a 5 000 square foot building and that there was going to be a connection through to violet and i just wanted to raise those questions because they've come up and if we can get a response on them that'd be appreciated thank you so this is one of the items for call up tonight and staff has a presentation and can talk about it then is that all right perfect thank you yeah okay any other council response okay none

[53:02] next is your consent agenda items a through h okay and do we have any i know for sure that there's been a change in 3d that we will need to make an amendment to is there any other consent item that people want to discuss rachel i just had a question on 3h for ratifying the emergency orders by the city manager um and i understand it's i guess we're at the six-month mark and so we're looking at ratifying many at once as an optional step i just wondered might we want to instead ratify these as we go so that we can just have it in a more digestible chunk than all of them in six months going forward there's no process for council ratification of orders in the

[54:00] code i'm kind of making it up it just felt uncomfortable but i'd be happy to bring them to council whenever council wants them if you want to do them every time we do them we can bring them to the next meeting or the meeting after depending on scheduling that's that's council's choice and we probably should consider changing the emergency code to provide for council review of orders at some in some process so i would just put a a plug in like i read them as they came out obviously but then to go back and reread them you know required a little refreshing so i'd rather just ratify them as we go going forward that's an option aaron yeah i was going to say something about 3h as well and i think it makes sense that we're uh taking this ratification step but might be worth speaking to it just briefly um and not just passed on the consent agenda so i'll just say that i thought that i have thought that jane and the city manager and city staff's offices have done an exemplary job in

[55:02] doing these emergencies orders as the coveted crisis has continued along so i've been fully supportive of each of them and i'm happy to ratify them uh formally tonight okay very good and someone from staff want to give us a brief update on item 3d the go ev city yeah thank you i actually was under the impression that um we did have a staff member attending tonight but i'm not seeing him in the list so i've been following the emails and thank you mary for raising the issue that you raised with regard to equity um carl castillo worked with matt lehrman and jonathan cohn and they made a recommendation that this item be amended to remove item number six so i would look for a motion to do so

[56:01] so moved second okay great so uh we now have an amendment on 3d and the cons and i'm not seeing any more hands up so this is a roll call so and sam sorry i did i had my hands still up do you mind if i say something real quick about that go eve that's fine i thought it hadn't come down yet go for it yeah just the the um you know the go ev um declaration is for committing us to take steps to electrifier transportation infrastructure uh as a city organization and since transportation is one of our very largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and our electricity supply is getting greener all the time this is committing the city organization to electrifying as much as possible so it's a good good statement to make and i appreciate mary raising the equity issues that she did in her email and so i think it's been

[57:00] improved and i'll just make a follow-up comment to that um i think the city of boulder has one of the highest uptake rates of evs of any city between the coasts so it is a place where if we if we do things right and that trend keeps up we can continue um being progressive in the way that we make them more and more attractive not just making them more accessible but also making charging um ubiquitous everywhere so um mary did you have a follow-up um well i did not post my request on hotline um but and so for that reason i'll just briefly explain um what the change is is um there were um an itemization of resolutions within this resolution after the the findings and um and rest of the um document and i found that there were two of those

[58:01] items that were in conflict with each other um one was um hoping to provide social equity in every all things transportation basically and the other one was to advocate to rtd for the electrification of buses in boulder um to reduce air pollution and because of the way because rtd is a district and covers areas bigger than boulder um the the effect of just um advocating for electrification of buses in boulder would have um taken budget from other places um and not and therefore would have been inequitable um so if anyone has any more questions about that i'd be happy to respond by email thank you mary

[59:01] aaron your hand is still up do you have something else or left over okay it's just left over okay super now i think we're ready for the roll call though dibby did we have a motion to accept the consent uh we no we just had a motion to amend so far that's a good point so we've amended 3d and so now we do need a motion thank you for passing consent okay yes we do thank you debbie you're welcome councilmember friend yes joseph hi wetlick hi wallach hi weaver hi yates hi young yes rocket hi motion passes

[60:00] very good so next we have the um call of first call up tonight and it's 2400 and 2450 central avenue um within the flatiron industrial industrial business park and industrial general zoning district okay thank you i i think that one may have some discussion on the folks like to have and the staff have any presentation on it i think charles you do actually we don't have any presentation this evening but we do have um representatives from floodplain engineering transportation as well as planning here to answer any questions that council may have very good well i appreciated your detailed response um and we have aaron's hand up yeah charles thank you as well for that detailed response uh to those concerns about the multi-use path connection in the business park today so you know i had uh passed along uh my uh the

[61:03] concerns that i shared from community cycles uh letter to us about the project and about the possibility of making the multi-use path connection to the east from the park as called for in the transportation master plan i do see from charles's response that it is primarily a flood safety matter and that it does not appear doable to establish that connection kind of through that and on top of that berm without compromising the potential flood safety that that berm provides so i'm not going to suggest that we call it up or or force that connection to be made but i did uh appreciate the email from ben mulk today from crescent real estate one of the owners of the project uh saying that they are committed to meet with community cycles to see if there's a way to come up with some kind of alternate path and way to make that bike pet connection so hopefully something positive comes out of that and i appreciate community cycles for continuing to work on it with them

[62:02] great anyone else so i'll just weigh in here as well um i spent many years working out there and um that connection is greatly needed um it will definitely and there are social connections that are made as we heard from sue um behind most of the buildings there so i i expect that um mr mulk will follow through on what he said i'm sure community cycles will take him up on it and the goal would be to find an equivalent um connection somewhere nearby because it's that side of the park that is what needs that connection so it has to be somewhere on the east side of the park um maybe this isn't the best place but um it is needed okay any interest in calling it out doesn't sound like it all right your next call-up is items related to the property at 4514 broadway

[63:00] the north boulder branch library the site review and the use review application go ahead i'm sorry thanks janet i'm going to turn it over to sloane wahlberg she has served as the case manager she has a brief presentation this evening and then we're happy to take any questions thank you okay um good evening everyone so as was mentioned the purpose of this item is for council to decide whether to call up the site review to conduct an approximately thirteen thousand square foot public library on a city-owned property at 4540 broadway the purpose library would implement the vision for a library in the north boulder in boulder set by the library master plan and the north boulder subcommunity plan in terms of a review process a concept plan and site review are required for

[64:01] the project since the site is over two acres in size a concept plan review was reviewed last year and this is the required site review the library is considered a governmental facility in the land use code which requires a use review in the rm2 and mu2 districts on august 20th the planning board unanimously approved the site and use review applications and this decision is subject to call up for a public hearing before council as part of the discretionary review process written notice was sent and notice was posted on the property it's also important to note that this review follows a series of community engagement events facilitated by the library which began in august of 2018 which was described and detailed in the staff member the approximately 2.75 acre property is located west of

[65:00] broadway and north of violet avenue it has frontage on four streets four mile canyon creek runs through the site to give some backgrounds on the planning process as i mentioned the site is within the boundaries of the north boulder sub community plan which was adopted in 1995 to guide future development of north older in addition the need for a full service library in north boulder is outlined as a priority goal in the 2018 boulder public library master plan and lastly the most recent capital improvement plan includes 1.7 million dollars for the design and construction of this north boulder branch library city involvement and planning on the property began in 1997 which is the year city council directed staff to acquire land in the area for a library or of their public use in order to implement the visions set by the north boulder sub community plan

[66:01] subsequently the city negotiated with safeway for the donation of the site at that time safeway was intending to develop the property located to the north and the property was donated in 1999 for public purposes like a library the property is designated as mixed-use business medium density residential and open space other on the land use map of the comprehensive plan the library structure and parking lot would be located within the mixed use business designation likewise the project site crosses three zoning districts the proposed building would be located in the mu2 district the site is impacted by the high hazard and conveyance zones 100 year and 500 year flood plains of 4 mile canyon creek it's also considered high functioning wetlands protected by the 25 foot inner buffer and 50 50-foot outer buffer area

[67:01] flood and wetland constraints have driven the siding of the building and the development and development would be located outside of these zones and buffer areas to provide some further context the site is neighbored by the uptown broadway mixed-use development to the north the buildings in this development are two and three stories in height with a maximum height of 48 feet highland crossing residential development is located to the south which features two and three-story buildings and the boulder meadows mobile home park is located to the east and there's some images of those developments moving on to the proposal the proposal is for a thirteen thousand and ten square foot thirteen thousand and ten square foot uh branch library to extend services to north boulder as part of the larger public library system

[68:00] this the area of 13 000 square feet is actually far less than the minimum or the maximum outlined on the quick claim deed which limits the maximum square footage of the building to 21 000 square feet the proposed interior programming includes a community room offices classrooms children's space and a large maker space 30 vehicular parking spaces are proposed both with 20 spaces in a surface parking lot and 10 along an access drive as parallel spaces and that constitutes a 6.3 percent parking reduction [Music] in terms of bike parking the proposal includes 22 short-term and five long-term secure bike parking spaces the site plan includes a trapezoidal shaped building on the north end of the site at the terminus of 13th street a new access drive is proposed to connect 13th and 14th streets the site is designed to encourage

[69:00] vehicular access from 14th street directly into the new surface parking lot pedestrian connections occur at broadway and in the existing trail system along four mile canyon creek the proposal includes the extension of 14th street within dedicated public right-of-way to term within five feet of the property line this extension would accommodate the future 14th street south to violet avenue i pointed out there is a planned extension of 14th street to connect all the way down to violet currently the vehicle storage area for the mobile home park prohibits the full construction of this connection at this time city staff has had several conversations with the property owner and they're aware of the future connection and they've communicated a desire to work with the city to um facilitate that construction but at this

[70:01] point it's we're not able to fully realize that connection and funding for a bridge over the creek would have to be included in a future capital improvement plan uh the site design expands on improvements made by the uptown broadway development with an enlarged urban plaza along the western arm of the property there's an image of that plaza and the access drive along the northern edge of the site would be a private street maintained by the city it's intended as an extension of that urban plaza with a curbless access drive a more narrow street design the proposed building is two stories and 35 feet in height the library programs are distributed on two floors the buildings arranged with the highest point and main entrance aligned to the center of 13th street and then the building tapers down both

[71:01] to the east and west with a planted green roof [Music] the structure is designed in a contemporary style it's intended to be an iconic structure the exterior of the building is designed with two faces a residential neighborhood facing facade to the north and a more public facing transparent facade to the south proposed building materials include among others aluminum standing seam and metal panel systems engineered wood glass and aluminum storefront windows and the design includes the use of several green technologies and systems and the building is planned to be net zero ready and that was just a quick overview i'm happy to answer any questions you would have we also have library staff available as well okay good thank you sloan aaron is this new handbrake it is not okay pardon me any other questions

[72:02] uh rachel and then mary and then mark i do have a couple um i was eating while that presentation was happening so if um somebody else could go first that would be great i need to drink very sure i was eating as well so wiping my mouth [Music] um so um sloan as i understood from your presentation the 14th street uh connection to violet is um is stabbed out so the planned connection still exists it just cannot be constructed as part of this project we would have to continue to negotiate with the property owner of the um mobile home park and it would have to be included in a capital improvement plan to build the bridge to spam okay um but but the plan is still there um okay

[73:00] and i would encourage the mobile home park owners to um come to a conclusion with this it's been getting worked on since my very first year on council so um so um and then the other question i had was the building was initially planned to be 5 000 square feet and is now 13 000 so i just wanted to understand um what influenced that change in size right so in 1999 the original quitclaim deed agreement with safeway limited the building to 5000 square feet that deed was later amended in 2003 when the city was working with the uptown broadway development and rosewood avenue was vacated so this city was part of that development process and through that the maximum limitation on the building was increased to 21 000 square feet okay thank you

[74:02] thank you mary um rachel are you ready ready thanks thanks for the delay um okay so i have a number of questions and some of these i'm sure have been answered over the years but being new i may be asking some historic questions that i just don't understand but the first one is on the images that we saw you know we've had a lot of neighbors complaining about the project and being super close to the house do any of the images show the library's vantage point or like what it looks like in relation to those homes that people currently live in like can i see the context from their vantage point or what space would be between the library and those homes that make sense but i don't have any perspectives from the homes themselves to the library there are some perspectives i believe in the memo from showing that access drive

[75:02] could that maybe be pulled up i'm just trying i just want to visualize like is it is it you know in somebody's you know somebody's gonna have to walk sideways to get you know through an area yeah well i mean those are what is the what are the spatial relations there so i believe the building itself is located 63 feet from the closest building to the north i think some of those comments relate to the access drive the proximity of the access drive but the existing landscaping and sidewalk would remain which is on the neighboring property i think if you if we're able to bring up the site plan again i think it might be helpful sloan this isn't antonia i also just recently sent you a slide this evening that shows the vantage point or i'm sorry the distances between all the buildings and that development which might give some perspective

[76:00] okay i'm not sure if i'm able to share sarah am i able to share or do i need to send this to you i can see something it says proposal architecture and building design right so this is a separate document that um ryan if you can go ahead and make sloan a co-host really quick we can let her share her screen good thing ask another question while we're working on that you sure go ahead um a couple of us participated in some listening sessions with um elementary and maybe middle school kids i think elementary and they had some great ideas i was just wondering which of those were were acted on or pulled into the project if anybody knows antonia um from the library should be able to answer that yeah i think boulder was yes absolutely growing up boulder

[77:02] produced a fabulous student engagement report for us many of which um the feedback has already been incorporated into our internal layout design but we will continue to use that report as a guiding framework for our program and space development as we move forward so so far we've really been focused on the site and the exterior of the building and as we move into planning out and designing the interior space that's really where the student input is going to be incredibly pivotable incredibly pivotal for us um they had a lot of really good insight on programs they'd like to see ways they would like to use the maker space ways they would like to activate the outdoor space and so their feedback absolutely is a priority place um for us to place our ongoing focus awesome thanks um my next question is it looks like we scaled some things back due to budget which makes sense covid

[78:00] um and that we're keeping though most of the footprint of the building but then scaling back things like the urban plaza and the playground and some exterior learning spaces i think those are just delayed but i wanted to get clarification because those those were some of the things that they that the kids in my session were talking about and excited about so could that be clarified yes rachel that's absolutely true a lot of the things that um built excitement not only among the kids in north boulder but in the larger community engagement process that we heard from people was the exterior programming element although we were able to preserve the public plaza enhancements we did have to cut out the outdoor learning garden and the outdoor playground save for the iconic slide that attaches to the building we did have to cut those things out because of budget shortfall but um we absolutely are planning for those things to be add-ons and we're currently pursuing ex

[79:00] um external funding opportunity to add those things back on with the construction of the project so there's some opportunities we're pursuing with the boulder library foundation and other and other um potential donors that might be able to add that back in at the same time that we do the construction and if not we certainly can add that back in whenever the funding becomes available thanks because i was just thinking during covet those are the spaces really that that would be most uh functional quickly so i would almost have preferred to see those fast-tracked so that we had additional outdoor opportunities for people so absolutely so excited about that but yeah the planned opening of this building is uh middle of 2022 yeah so we hope that i mean obviously covid will be um a different perspective in a different situation at that time but during the the modifications that we made to the building we focused um on preserving

[80:00] as much as we could of the footprint and the finality of the actual structure and the building and preserving services and spaces that would meet the um most underrepresented groups in in the community particularly our adult learners for our literacy program and the inclusion of children's and youth programming spaces got it um okay and then just a couple more questions so when i looked at the parking analysis it looked like it was for a 12 000 foot building but we ended up doing 13 000 square feet so does that change the number we reduced the parking spaces by two um i think it was six percent which i think was two parking spaces but i just wanted to know if given the extra thousand square feet that parking analysis still held to the the two was okay to to reduce by yeah

[81:01] the existing documentation is for the current size of the building okay something in our packet was for a 12 000 square foot building analysis yeah it was it was later um updated there should have been an update later attached but i could see how that would be confusing that's right we updated it uh rachel right before the planning board hearing it was an 11th hour update but it does consider the 13 000 square foot building so that's still good all right perfect um and then like do we have any data on um the parking utilization downtown library i understand a lot of people park there you know to go to city council meetings and things like that and um go on the creek but it is like it's certainly a a small number of parking spaces provided for that library and do we have data on sort of what the usual utilization is for our downtown library and how that would translate i

[82:01] understand this is a more walkable neighborhood and should be in line with our 15-minute walkable and bikeable access but wanted to know if that was looked at yeah so as part of the study that was done they did look at other library locations i don't know if antonio if you have more detail on that um but that was part of the analysis was looking at other locations yeah you know without looking at it specifically and and our architect um nevin who's here may be able to speak to it more in depth since our traffic consultant isn't here but we did look we did actually um we did actually study traffic use or i'm sorry parking use at the main library and the branch libraries and being able to predict based on the level of programming we have in this space and the size of the building we i believe it was predicted maximum use at any time of 26 spaces so that is um [Music]

[83:00] less than what we're providing so i think we have a little bit of cushion plus i think we're expecting a higher level of multimodal access to this library because it's right on the bus line it's immediately adjacent to multi-use paths and like you said it's nearby major residential areas including boulder meadows and ponderosa as like a two-minute walk and we've also negotiated with the owners of boulder meadows to include a direct access path from the boulder meadows manufactured home community to this library so they will not have to drive to the space it'll be a very convenient walk so nevin i don't know if you ever have anything to add no i don't have anything to add that was well summarized thanks um just one more question um it's mentioned that there's uh that employees will get an eco pass for three years is that special for this library or do all library employees get eco passes all city of voters

[84:03] okay so i was just confused by like why that was a feature because i i thought everybody got passes okay thank you for answering all those questions um it's really exciting project and i appreciate the presentation thanks thanks rachel next up is mark and then adam mark okay first thanks for the presentation um i think the design of this looks terrific however i do have some questions um can you tell me what the footprint of the structure is going to be how many square feet thirteen thousand and ten oh that's that's the total square footage i'm asking approximately nine thousand square feet i'm sorry approximately nine thousand square feet and the total site is about a hundred and twenty five thousand square feet how much of that is buildable and obviously you know you don't wanna build in the floodplain area or the oso how much of that

[85:00] 125 000 square feet is potentially buildable i don't have that exact number on me and the reason that's well the reason i'm asking is um and i don't want to follow up on what i thought was a great question from rachel which is there are no depictions of what this structure will look like um from the affected properties to the north and it would seem to me to be appropriate for us to understand that um and that leads back to my question of was there no flexibility in terms of pushing it a little further away from those instructions so mark are you able to see my screen yes i am i can okay so you you'll see the building massing there and the proximity to the buildings and if we go to the next screen you can see that it is 65 feet from

[86:01] understood um so the building is pushed as far south as possible to stay out of the wetland buffers and the floodplain and the intent was to line up the building with 13th street to create sort of a visual to take advantage of the visual corridor so the alternative would be to push it to the east where you would lose that connectivity to broadway and that visual connection but there in this case it's not possible to move any further south so that entire area is essentially non-buildable that's correct um and if if we want to bring up my presentation there's a graphic showing the floodplain and the wetland buffers a large percentage of the site is unbuildable that's correct i do think it would be useful for us to understand and have some perspectives from those buildings themselves

[87:00] um from the from the condominiums to the north so we can understand exactly what what they are seeing and we'll be seeing i'll also add that because of the feedback we heard during our community engagement process the bulk of the building the build the massing was moved to be in alignment with 13th street immediately out of view of the condominiums so where it overlaps with the condominium's view it's a one-story building and that was a priority for us we also wanted to preserve the multimodal path to the south of our building that is existing and so we don't want to build over on top of that either okay now can you also summarize for me what what the community feedback looked like it was it was not summarized in the memo we were given a link to look at it one of those links took me to a 366 page document which frankly is more punishment than i need to endure i hear you on this

[88:00] subject so i'd like to understand what kind of community feedback you got yeah i can give you a brief overview if you'd like so we began community engagement in august of 2018 and have since connected with over 600 community members and those are events where we actually counted there were many other events where we didn't actually count so um these contacts and the residents influence the library's design and plans for future programs and services meeting included general community meetings that were open to the public as well as targeted engagements with communities like ponderosa boulder meadows and all of the local hoas [Music] the comment and input was also generated through a partnership student engagement initiative as rachel mentioned that was spearheaded by growing up boulder this engagement um energized and propelled us through many design changes over the last two years and heavily influenced the modifications that we made this spring so i would say that by and large

[89:03] every single thing we heard was incredibly positive and optimistic and in favor of everything that you see today and actually was largely shaped by the feedback that we heard we have heard from the direct immediate residents um some of them to the north that they're concerned and we've tried as best as we can to be responsive to those concerns so we understand that and recognize that construction growth and change can be difficult particularly for the adjacent neighbors so we've been as responsive as we can to those concerns without relocating the building scrapping the project or significantly reducing the size of the building which would not be in the best interest of the greater boulder community i'm not suggesting any of those i'm simply wanting to understand nature so from from i would say that at any given point in time the full level of concerns or complaints that we've heard

[90:01] has not been more than 23 to 26 people total and those concerns were for were were based in four different areas so increased traffic and inadequate parking is what they felt was a concern concerns around loss of privacy and security of private property concerns around loss of perceived open space or what they currently use as a community dog park concerns about the library potentially attracting unhoused or transient individuals and and what they consider is the associated unwanted behavior void rain or crime associated with those populations so we've been incredibly thoughtful and cognizant of each of those concerns and tried to respond to each of them with our design responses so in response to increased traffic and inadequate parking many of the traffic studies show that even with the library based in this in this location the traffic in this

[91:00] neighborhood would be significantly less than comparable neighborhoods we've also done studies that show that our parking is expected to be more than adequate for our purposes and our uses in regards to the increased loss of privacy and security as sloan had mentioned we've um situated the building such that the north facing side is very residential in nature has minimized um windows where people could actually look out of them and has like a more closed off wood cladding facade most of the views vantage points and actual places where a physical individual could look out is toward the south we've also tried to as best as we can to preserve the opportunity for open space we have plans for a playground in a community park and we have a great connection to the future planned violet park which is just immediately to the east of this lot

[92:00] in regards to the concerns around potentially attracting unhoused and transient individuals the library is welcome and open to all people regardless of their housing status but we do plan to patrol behavior so we will have we have planned for full-time security on this site to enforce library rules of conduct and city law and ordinances and we also will have a fully integrated security system out including external internal cameras and other than that everybody is welcome at any of our buildings and we just make sure that their behavior is in alignment with our expectations i thought your post today on on security issues was very good i have one last question um talk to me a little bit about the uh the financing for this project what's the nature of your construction reserve [Music] and

[93:00] since in my experience construction budgets only move one way and that's up what happens uh if you are short of funds because we are short of funds i hear you so we have um secure so every part of this construction budget is secured and allocated and or allocated um including a total of 10.5 million dollars we have made some modifications this spring that bring us well under that amount and i believe sorry our contingency we have both escalated costs planned into our budget as well as a contingency that are fair that are standard with any construction project and adam if you're on here can you clarify what those percentages are for me it's a ten percent this is david it's a ten percent contingency in a three percent cost escalation that's correct all right all right thank you i

[94:01] appreciate it all right thank you mark adam thanks sam i only had one question um and that is about i understand when the amount of buildable space changed in the early 2000s i was wondering when the actual change to the project occurred so when it went from being a 5 000 square foot project to a 13 000 square foot project i'm not aware of the library's plans but the 5 000 square foot limitation was not um specific to a library it was just a limitation on the property that if a building was constructed there it was limited to 5 000 square feet later we never had there were no previous plans to do a lot we never got to the point where we were planning there had been sketchups that had been done in the past of various types of buildings but we had never been in the planning process nor

[95:00] was there ever capital funding for the building until this time gotcha so it has always been a 13 000 square foot library is essentially the answer so the um the sketchup for the 5 000 square foot library that some of the neighbors have referenced was simply that a conceptual drawing and it was included in the north boulder subcommittee plan simply as a placeholder that showed future residents that a library would be put in that location but again it was simply a conceptual drawing it was never part of the library's plans gotcha thank you okay very good any more questions okay seeing none then we can move on to the root question here and the discussion of do we want to call this up so who'd like to start us off on that erin yeah thanks sim and thanks um antonio and others for those excellent answers i'm not

[96:00] interested in calling this up um i do think it it's the site review criteria and i do think it's going to be a phenomenal community asset there's been hopes for north boulder library branch for decades just ask lisa morizel how long people have worked on this and it's going to be a phenomenal asset to the community there's a huge number of people who live within walking and biking distance here many of them in affordable housing many of them in the nearby mobile home parks so it's going to be great bull towel bridge the digital divide and other opportunity achievement gaps in our community so very excited to see this move okay i see no other hands i'll make a few comments too then i think this is a great project for all the reasons that aaron said and for all the reasons that many people in the community came and testified in favor of it um i'll also say you know whenever a building is is placed

[97:00] um near another building in new construction it's going to create some change for the neighbors and that's absolutely true however i will also point out that this is a by-right building height right so it's it's 35 feet and so this would be reasonably have been expected perhaps to be that um and and i think at the end of the day when this facility is in i think it will be a selling point for the neighbors um it's it's a really it is on a great path i love going up into that area it's one of the most complicated sites i've ever seen have to be planned for in boulder because of all the constraints on it but i think it will really fill in and complete um that nice community space so i'm not interested in calling it up either and i think the library has done a phenomenal design job here bob yeah i want to agree with sam and

[98:00] aaron this is a fantastically designed program a project i know there's concerns there's almost always concerns i don't mean to diminish them by indicating that but often when something new happens folks in the area are initially unhappy i hope that the folks in the area will become eventually very happy with having a beautiful library in their backyards as aaron said this has been talked about i've lived in north boulder for 20 years it's been talked about as long as i've been here as a matter of fact i think the first time i met mary young was around 2000 or 2013 when we got together at the coffee shop north boulder and talked about the north boulder library so mary and i have talked about this for a while and i also want to reflect the fact that this is not why the library is located in north boulder this is not north boulder's library this is a library for everybody in the community the funding for this library came primarily from a dedicated tax that was passed by the voters in 2017. i want to remind us that that tax which was a city-wide vote passed by a margin of 82

[99:00] percent to 18 percent so the community has wanted this library regardless of whether they're in north boulder or other parts of town for a long long time and they've put their money where the mouth is and i think the staff has done a great job of spending that money very wisely and created a beautiful building that i think we'll all be proud of thank you bob i see no other hands and i see nobody who's arguing that we should call it up so maybe we can move on thank you everyone for the great presentation okay your next item is the vacation of a utility easement at 1900 folsom street i don't see any hands up so probably no interest in calling it up okay the next item is the site review for 1629 17th street again looking for hands council members okay seeing on i think we can move on

[100:00] all right your first public hearing this evening is the second reading of ordinance 8414 annexing the 4.87 acre parcel at zero airport boulevard and a 1.03 acre parcel at zero valmont drive and i'll turn this over to charles and sloan again sloan will be presenting staff's analysis this evening okay um thanks for that introduction so as was described the item for tonight's discussion is a required public hearing and second reading for the ordinance to annex those two parcels generally located at 5600 airport boulevard on july 16th planning board unanimously voted to recommend to council approval of the proposed annexation subject to the recommended conditions of approval which are provided for in the draft annixation agreement at the same meeting the planning board approved the companion site review

[101:01] application to construct a approximately 111 000 square foot light industrial building and expand the existing industrial office campus did not call up the site review at the hearing on august 4th and the site review is considered conditionally approved based on approval of this annexation which is summarized on the screen so the total 9.9 a per site is located in east boulder southeast of the boulder municipal airport and at the easternmost terminus of airport boulevard the site is bordered by the lake center business park to the west and the north the property is located in planning areas one two and three of the comprehensive plan the site consists of two unplanted parcels and one planted lot the northernmost subdivided lot that was annexed to the city in 1990 is within

[102:00] area one this parcel has frontage on and access to airport boulevard the southern parcels under consideration for annexation are under the jurisdiction of boulder county and are within areas two and three the majority of the area to be annexed is designated as light industrial on the land use map of the comprehensive plan which applies primarily to industrial parks the southern areas of the site that are proposed to be dedicated to the city are designated as open space other the parcel currently within the city boundaries and properties to the north and west are zoned industrial manufacturing to give some context the overall site features substantial grade changes the boulder and left hand and north boulder farmer stitches and a paved multi-use path run along the south and east sides of the site and slopes exist

[103:01] along those ditches the proposal is not located with any within any identified wetlands flood plains or wildlife corridors so the north and west properties have been developed in a business park style of development and beyond outside city boundaries the san lorezo mobile home park is located directly to the south west and open space properties managed by osmp are located to the south and east the applicant is proposing annexation by petition the southern parcels which total approximately 5.9 acres are located within planning areas two and three and are eligible for annexation [Music] the applicant has requested a zoning of industrial general for the portions of those south parcels that would remain in private ownership

[104:00] public zoning is proposed for the area of land intended to be dedicated to osmp and that is the proposal given that the land would be deeded to the city our city policies proposed annexations with additional development potential must demonstrate community benefit consistent with the principle plan policies and that is in order to offset the negative impacts of additional development within the community as part of the community development package the applicant is proposing to dedicate approximately 1.6 acres to osmp for open space purposes do restoration work and install necessary fencing the ditches and natural vegetation south of the path would remain they are also proposing the payment of one and a half times the affordable housing commercial linkage fee and the approximate value of that payment is

[105:01] shown on the chart on the screen it also should be noted that as part of the annexation package a provision has been included to allow floor area to be transferred from the im portion of the site to the ig portion and that would be allowed as long as the development is consistent with the approved site review plans as described in the memo staff and planning board find that the project is consistent with the goals objectives and recommendations of the comprehensive plan including those specific to annexation the proposal is consistent with state statutes for annexation and public and ig zoning is appropriate as such staff's recommended motion language is shown on the screen and um available for any questions we also have some open space staff available as well so i don't see any hands up for questions

[106:00] um mayor you and i had talked about one that uh i would like to clarify which is how is the land to be deeded to the city and managed by open space is that going to be good habitat land is it has it going to be used and managed we have bethany collins from osmp in the meeting and i think she should be able to answer that question hey can you guys hear me yep yes we can so the land that is being deeded to open space is uh primarily the ditch corridor so the the riparian and habitat areas along the ditches there is some small amount of vacant land that currently has a structure that's been vacant for a very long time and will be removed and restored and that area will likely be added to the adjacent agricultural lease area great and how will this land be accessed

[107:01] i assume that it will be able to be walked and visited by anyone is it going to be managed from that standpoint so that area again is is primarily a agricultural at least agricultural area with uh cattle and hay there is access via the um uh we do have access via the road that enters from san lazaro mobile home park so all of the land that is being uh conveyed is either between the two ditches or south of the ditch south of the southernmost ditch so as far as yeah as far as accessibility it will be added to that complex that is is basically south of the two ditches and so as if it's managed as ag land it's generally not publicly accessible then right it is it is open it is publicly open to the public and um again it can be accessed um

[108:00] i believe people who do access that that field or that vacant land um do so from 61st street there's that that gate over on 61st street that people primarily tend to to enter and follow the road um the the informal two-track road that's at the kind of the southern end of that field um but it will uh eventually be added to the area and and fenced accordingly to be open to the public okay great thank you mary yeah um thank you for that bethany and um i did have a conversation this afternoon with dan burke and i just wanted to clarify um the management of the the 1.6 acres that is going to be deeded to the city um that is that um just to confirm that is does not require

[109:01] any ongoing um maintenance in other words what i'm trying to get at is that um that this is actually a net benefit to a commit net community benefit rather than a net operating expense for the city it is it's an area that uh you know from a preservation protection standpoint along the again there's a priority to protect the open-ditch corridors and the riparian areas that go along those they don't you know typically though that's done in collaboration or cooperation with ditch companies as well um so there's kind of a shared responsibility along those corridors for maintenance and then um again the the area that's vacant land will be added and will be uh part of the lease area for the agricultural tenant so as far as the um uh you know resources required or budget required would be minimal to open space okay um thank you and then finally

[110:01] when this gets upon approval of annexation um does this open that this 1.6 acres remain in area 3. sloan do you want can you bring up that map the annexation map if you have it um it it becomes area three annexed okay and therefore um it needs to be zoned and um and the only zoning option is public as i understand it yes yes for that area for for these types of areas where open space where the city owns them um they're they're not they don't have development or residential kind of um or they don't have applicable residential or or uh commercial type zoning um and so they are they would typically be zoned public yes okay thank you that's all i have

[111:01] okay mark just one question the remaining 22.4 acres that apparently neither the developer nor the or open space desires is there any sense of what happens with respect to that which 22 acres are you speaking of it wasn't the original proposal that we were going to be deeded 24 acres and open space didn't want it and so it's down to one and a half and that 22 and change yeah so the the developer didn't want it we didn't want it what happens to it actually the the applicant originally proposed that as part of an overall community benefit package it was brought to our board um because of the type of land because it's a you know there's a there's a pond there's a it was heavily damaged in the the flood in the 2013 flood the open space board wanted basically a planning board and council to consider

[112:00] if we were to accept if the city was to accept that that it would also require a substantial contribution from the applicant for restoration um and the applicant decided to um withdraw that uh proposal the re that additional acreage um because of the unknown of what that ask might be and instead propose the um uh commercial linkage fee as part of their uh the affordable housing commercial linkage fee instead of the open space land as part of their community benefit package is that land developable in the future it is not it has a it was long ago restricted and encumbered by a conservation easement to the city okay thank you okay i see no more hands up no more questions we do have a few people signed up for the public hearing do we need to hear

[113:00] from the applicant first they are available i think the plan was just to introduce themselves and say they're available for questions but not to do a formal presentation okay very good um we'll take them up on that maybe later let's hear the public hearing so we have two people signed up lynn siegel and mark gelband so lynn you're up [Music] no comment okay very good uh mark gelband ryan or sarah do you see mark in the um audience this is ryan it doesn't look like mark is uh this evening okay good enough with that we'll close public comment um bring it back

[114:00] um who wants to kick us off on make a motion or start discussion don't everybody raise your hand at once okay i'm seeing no hands i'll make a comment or two um i i'm happy about the public benefit of this annexation i think three million dollars for affordable housing right now is something that we very much would find a good use for and so i think that part of the annexation question does it provide the public benefit i think the answer is very much so i think that land uh that's being needed to the city is interesting but it is way less substantial than was originally envisioned for sure but if it's under conservation easement in any case that's fine so i think this is good enough and i'd ask for immersion unless somebody else wants to comment bob if uh staff would put the proposed

[115:01] motion up on the screen i'll i'll read it make it perfect [Music] bob i'm pulling it up for you here now thank you i moved to adopt ordinance 8414 and nxt oops disappeared yeah it did do what you ever do whatever you did slide 12. there you go i moved to adopt ordnance 8414 annexing to the city of boulder approximately 5.89 acres of land generally located south of 5600 airport boulevard with initial zoning designation of industrial general on the northern portion and public on the southern portion very good i'll give mary that second she was a little faster than um mark and why would you like this [Laughter] bob would you like to speak to your motion no you sam you said very well i have nothing to add

[116:01] mark no no further comment okay um let me look here i think this is a roll call though is that right okay okay councilman councilmember joseph yes wetlake yes wallach yes hi yes rocket ride yes motion passes unanimously awesome on to the next thing okay the next item is the second reading of the three ordinances related to the e-scooters ordinance 84 22 84 23 and 84 24. and sam as we get started with this i would like to introduce to you erica vandenbrand erica can you

[117:02] be here and turn on your screen let's see you working on it okay i got it thanks erica so council members this is erica vandenbrand and erica is our new transportation and mobility director she joined us a little over a week ago so she is new to the city but has a very extensive background in many different areas of local government we're really happy to have her so now i'm going to turn it over to erica and her team to make this presentation erica thank you very much it's nice to meet all of you and with that i'll turn it over to dk well thank you very much let me just pull up my presentation here or looks like someone's in it for me i think that's great okay i'm also going to uh turn off my camera just in case i have any bandwidth issues uh tonight so i can keep going here so

[118:00] one second okay great you see the screen um well good evening uh my name is david kemp and i'm a senior transportation center with and with me tonight are my colleagues in the transportation mobility department new deputy director natalie stiffler and also our new director erica vanderbrad who we just met and also with us tonight is tila duhami and she is the chairperson of the transportation advisory board who will be sharing tabs perspective on this matter later on and i'll be sharing fast presentation with you this evening but first i'd like to provide a brief introduction on this topic [Music] tonight's discussion is about authorizing the city or not to issue a business license to a company that rents electric powered scooters to community members for short trips this is one of the steps staff is taking to work through multiple policy items

[119:02] regarding the development of a shared micro mobility program for the city of boulder and it's a complex topic and within our community there are many different viewpoints on this item something from many individual community members and also multiple organ organizations okay next slide great well here's a brief review of the steps we've taken this year and some of the milestones along the way that bring us here tonight to discuss the ordinance options regarding the shared use of east cougars in boulder at the january 28th study session and citing safety and environmental safety concerns excuse me environmental sustainability concerns council asked staff to hold off on adding e-scooters to the shareback mobility program for six months and to move forward with shared dockless e-bikes around that same time

[120:01] cu boulder also announced that they would not allow sure e-scooters on cu's campus and checking with them recently they still maintain that position today and then on april 7th council asked staff to prepare an ordinance to extend the current moratorium to october 21st and uh that expiration is looming and so um that's one of the reasons why we're here tonight as well and then as part of the overall shared micro mobility program on july 7th council adopted the dockless bike share licensing program ordinance okay next slide and before we get into the main body of the presentation i just want to make sure that everyone is familiar with the types of e-scooters that we are discussing tonight on the left is a cdd scooter

[121:00] and on the right is a typical standing e-scooter and next slide okay so before you are the ordinance options for console consideration in a nutshell they include option number one to allow cdd scooters and to prohibit standing e scooters option number two is to allow all types of charity scooter devices and option number three is to prohibit shared e-scooters altogether it's important to note that staff's recommendation which is option number one is a collaborative staff recommendation that includes input from several city departments including the boulder police department parks and recreation community vitality uh the city's attorney's office and also the city manager's office recommendation staff is trying to find middle ground on the shared e-scooter option staff is comfortable recommending an ordinance that allows seated e scooters while also continuing to meet the city's

[122:00] vision zero goals we stand by our initial safety and sustainability analysis regarding standing e-scooters as part of the january 28 study session and we'll touch briefly on those concerns in the next few slides next slide thank you and so when taking a close look at the standing e-scooters they do account for a significant number of multi-modal trips um particularly in the larger markets as listed before you here however the safety of these vehicles still remains questionable as you can see from the statistics before you the greatest concern is the number of known fatalities that have occurred since 2018 when compared with bike share fatalities there's a stark contrast and today cd schools are operating in about eight different markets including austin houston dallas and a few other select cities

[123:02] next slide and then for cd scooters the data is not as robust as it is for standing east scooters it's a relatively newer technology but the data that we do have from the companies including an independent study from that was commissioned by the company wheel suggests that cdd scooters are safer than standing e-scooters and in some cases even safer than bikes to date there are no known fatalities involving these devices and the companies claim the lifespan of these devices is two years or longer i meant to mention earlier sorry about that that's a skeet that the cd scooters were operating in the two or three cities that i mentioned previously the standing e-scooters are in several cities throughout the us okay next slide and so uh let's take a little a little bit deeper on the cdd scooter

[124:02] and why we think this is a a safer alternative um to the standing e scooter primarily it's the lower center of gravity that the seat or adjustable seat um the fixed or adjustable seat offers and also the ability to put two feet on the ground um when stopped or if necessary to navigate the device um they all come with uh front and rear brakes uh disc brakes or drum brakes and uh they're equipped with suitable front and rear lights um and then another important characteristic of these are the larger wheel diameter on these devices which is better for negotiating variable terrain in addition to that as the higher ground clearance in the event they do hit a pothole or whatnot they're not as likely to bottom out and uh due to the fabrication of these devices the construction the materials and we've tested these things out firsthand with tab um we anticipate that there is a longer

[125:01] life span with these devices over the standing scooters okay next slide and so our meeting last night with tab was really helpful and going through a number of the issues that they were concerned with regarding um e-scooters and one of the things that came up was what was happening in different cities particularly denver and fort collins and probably more fort collins and so staff has been following activity in denver and they've recently recently issued an rfp and selected two operators to provide e-bike and e-scooter share and those companies are alignment left recently lime acquired uber's jump e-bikes and so both companies are now offering e-bikes and e-scooters in denver and today i also contacted a

[126:00] transportation planner from fort collins and learned a little bit more about the status of their shared micro mobility program they seem to be in a similar situation as as boulder right now recently their bike share provider pulled out of fort collins market citing financial concerns and speculatively this could be due to the competing operators in a smaller market and the ability to maintain a profitable business that is they have a separate they had a separate operator for bikes and another operator for e-scooters the other factor is likely due to proven 19 and drop in overall ridership four collins also conducted an e-scooter pilot program which was initiated in october 2019 in march the provider pulled their e-scooter from the streets due to cobia 19 and uh and the loss of their most frequent users being college students um was probably one of the reasons that they pulled as well as um making sure we didn't transmit any sort of disease

[127:03] okay so according to fort collins e-scooter users are comprised mainly of college students with an estimated um estimate of 70 of those trips being taken on cu's campus and the remaining 30 of those trips being taking place within the city um in august their e-scooter operator started operations back up and they're approximately 100 e-scooters currently deployed the pilot program was expanded or excuse me extended um through december 2019 and similar to boulder this is where the similarity comes into play they are also issuing an rfp to select one maybe two operators to offer both e-scooters and e-bikes to the fort collins community members okay next slide [Music]

[128:02] um so i'd like to reiterate why the timing of tonight's topic is important first we are on the cusp of a looming expiration of the existing moratorium but more importantly we are trying to gauge council's interests to include e-scooters of any type into the city's overall share micro mobility program as you can see before you there are remaining policy items that will be working with tab and counsel on the coming months and we anticipate initiating a new or refined shared micro mobility program in the second quarter of 2021. if and it's important to note that if e-scooters are allowed then we would fold both e-bikes and e-scooters into the universal shared micro mobility program for the community okay next slide and so last night we had a good meeting with tab and um here tonight with me as i mentioned is tila um who will speak to uh tila to tab's recommendation

[129:00] who supported option number two which is all scooters um with a four to one vote so tila would you like to speak on tao's behalf sure thank you dk thanks council for uh accommodating us this evening um we did have a public hearing last night it's important to note that as well that's part of tab's role and the the testimony that we got the public hearing as well as emails ahead of time aligned with tabs ultimate recommendation for option two the vote was four to one to license key scooters of all kinds so not supporting um staff's recommendation mark i can see you responding we'll get to the safety issues the overarching logic for tab was in service to our greater tmp micro mobility and sustainability goals specifically our mode share goals and our objectives to increase the amount of options that the public has other than single occupancy used vehicles we need to shift away from sovs

[130:00] and improv including as many options as we can is key to getting people to think of a different way of getting around so offering more and not fewer options for mobility was key to luring people out of their cars tab agreed we needed a broader array of ways for people to get around and particularly uh in light of covet the current restrictions on how many people can ride bus and how many people are interested in using transit make it all the more important for us to expand the menu of options that people have to get around tab was really concerned about over-regulation and excluding any of these options suppressing progress towards our larger tmp goals we have doubled down on our event horizon and when we want to reach these goals and we can't do it by excluding certain options now i know that the safety concerns have been an issue and i think that they need context and we spent a good deal of time last night talking about those um it is surprising to me that given uh how rapidly um the scooter industry has advanced the

[131:01] technology has advanced the data has been collected experiences of other cities using these um both as a ride share mode and also privately operated that staff is still relying largely on the information that they gave you in january um i will note that they did update uh in the memo um some more information and included a link to a government highway safety administration memorandum that came out recently and they also referenced enacto national association of city and transportation officials document that we're both very timely came out this summer about the um expansion of e-scooters and their impact on just the micro mobility landscape across the country and to quote from the ghsa one according to the international transport forum e-scooter riders do not face significantly higher risk of road traffic death or injury than cyclists and roads would be quote safer if e-scooter and bicycle trips replace car

[132:01] travel or motorcycle travel that's kind of where we came out the safety concerns are should be in context not about scooters versus bikes but in light of the overwhelming evidence that we see that e-scooter trips and micro mobility trips are displacing motor vehicle trips the motor vehicle is the most dangerous vehicle out there on the road we are used to it we are inured to the the damage that they are causing on public health but it's a public health emergency all in its own right and we need to consider these the the safety data that you saw in january in terms of the inexperience of people using the e-scooters they are new gadgets and the um the explosion in use made it look like a really emerging public health crisis but if they are displacing automobile um uses and trips that is something as a whole we as a city have agreed that we

[133:00] want to be supporting that's the larger policy goal and that's tab's job is to bring in line what the larger policy goals are and how we can best meet those a number of the scooter user deaths that were cited and were so alarming in january um were a result of collisions with motor vehicles according to the same ghsa um report that staff linked to 19 out of 22 of those deaths 22 deaths as of the time of that report 19 of them involved a motor vehicle and so it is not that these things are inherently unsafe and that we need to ban them but as one member said a tab member said last night we should focus on how to improve the safe use of these things rather than focusing on what is being used and it is also important to note that our infrastructure matters and boulder is in a better position than a lot of cities because we have a beautiful off street

[134:00] network right our multi-use path network we are building better and more protected bike lanes more visible bike lane infrastructure and if we guide eu scooter users onto that infrastructure the data from other cities with similar good infrastructure is that these things are not as dangerous as in cities that have worse road networks and more dangerous roadways they are hopefully going to support an overall ecosystem of multiple users outside of their vehicles that we need to accommodate as a city and as a community unsee on our streets today one of our tab members alerted our new director and copied me on an email that said in his opinion and he works on sustainability and transportation issues for rocky mountain institute uh he looked at the data from january he took a second look after our meeting last night at some of the um the emerging data and informed erica that in his opinion the um the january data that staff has been relying on is quote at best out of date and at worst potentially erroneous he implored us not

[135:02] to rely on that data to set policy but to look as much new and emerging data as we can it's a swift moving target you're going to hear i suspect from arthur oregon tonight um during the public hearing and a lot of the data that he has cited in emails to counsel and to tab are pretty persuasive generally shooting you straight on on those numbers the design and durability for these new gadgets is rapidly improving they have been vetted by independent agencies mark doesn't believe me it's okay mark um but it's constantly improving and the response is not to ban these things because another element here that we were that we discussed at the tab meeting last night was that leaving standing e-scooters out of the city's micro mobility mix is not going to keep them off our roads these things the price point is coming down they are wildly popular there will be private ownership of these vehicles and they're they're coming to our to our

[136:01] roadways whether we ignore it or not they are cheaper than e-bikes and they will be part of our transportation mix for the foreseeable future tab thinks you can best serve boulder's residents by preparing for that future figuring out how to regulate safe use instead of ignoring it entirely sam you're on me gotta happen once a night right anything more from staff dk no nothing at this point okay so that wraps up the presentation and this happened but okay do we have questions folks i expect we will i'm trying to get up there yeah adam and then mary uh thank you um dk for the presentation

[137:01] and welcome erica and thank you tila uh for the insight from tab i did have a follow-up question um did tab have any input about just the life cycle of these devices and do we actually have sort of a i don't know if i saw it from staff or not a firm length of life cycle for batteries and especially for the sit-down models right uh i think there was no dispute that the sit-down e-scooters do seem to be more durably made they're also much newer products and so to say that they are better than the standing e-scooters is to compare these newer products to the ones that we were looking at in january for standing e-scooters we have seen some evidence um from bird that they've had a third party verification that their current models of standing e scooters are expected to last over two years um another point that um arthur oregon

[138:02] pointed me to said that the same verifier noted that after five months eighty percent of their fleet was still um operational which isn't really telling me it's a two-year lifespan but the average age is expected to be over 18 months for the um the standing e scooters that they have out and he said that they have launched very recently an updated model that is expected to last over two years but since these things really only began in use in 2018 um you know how long they last is kind of an open question if the ones that are being made today will last longer the moves you know with all technology are for more durability more you know length of life um and again if we're weighing this against the environmental and health costs of motor vehicles which i think we ought to be considering that that's a relevant consideration okay thank you adam mayor dk did you

[139:01] have anything to add especially about the sit-down models yeah you know right now the companies that we have coordinated with the three companies that provide that model um say that um and some actually there is a one of the companies has um other model last longer than two years um and so they're all they're all claiming that it's two years or longer for those devices okay um mary and then aaron so thank you tila for that presentation and welcome erica um and thanks d.k as well um my first question is um if you could just summarize the minority view because it was four to one vote last night correct so if you could summarize the minority view i'd appreciate it sure um the minority view basically said um we've been spending a lot of staffs time

[140:00] and effort on thinking about the nitty-gritties of um these emerging technologies and it just changes the landscape keeps changing and it keeps changing the direction and it would be much better if council would just tell staff what they want if you don't want scooters just tell staff stop bothering with scooters um he wanted to emphasize bikes he likes bikes better thinks they're more useful you use them for longer trips and so uh although he did not propose his own motion he said he would have supported option three which was banned scooters entirely so that we could um focus staff's efforts on just expanding um e-bikes dockless e-bikes docked e-bikes but to pursue bikes as an option and just stop messing around with scooters because because it's so so changing all the time and we're just trying to regulate one one little thing at a time it was just a waste of time in his opinion

[141:01] thank you there was zero appetite for staff's um proposal thank you um and then my other question is um did staff have a conversation about having a um limited a pilot in a limited area i know in january we had council talked about having perhaps um a pilot out in east boulder so did that come up at tab last night so we've discussed that that was an idea that surfaced around the first time that we did we discussed allowing e-scooters to do a pilot demonstration i'm in a particular designated area and that was east boulder and it was to accommodate um a lot of the um commuting workforce the 18 000 folks or so that were coming into older every day since covet you know a lot of the commuting behaviors change and so there's not as many folks working in those business parks anymore and we thought

[142:02] you know if we were going to do um if we're going to allow these scooters of any sort then it's important i think that we allow them for all community members and not just one sector of the population and i think to really give it a fair shot and to and to see it through we would have to consider you know other areas outside of just you know closed designated area to see how it really works and so we we dropped the pilot program concept in a designated area because we didn't think it was giving it a fair shot if we just limited it to one specific zone and again making sure that it's inclusive for all community members to to give it a shot thanks dk and then finally um you mentioned that cu stands by their initial position um and and why are they do they not want to incorporate them on campus um i you know safety is one reason and also um their

[143:00] paths on campus right now are pretty congested there's a lot of um folks that between classes are you know riding skateboards and walking and so i think they feel like this is um and i don't want to speak for them entirely but they feel like this is sort of adding on to the existing issues that exist on campus today these scooters can go up to 20 miles per hour and so i think they're worried about um [Music] scooter bike bed conflicts and then also that you know just the congestion issue of um of all the people that are on campus already okay and um so if the city were to allow them uh as as you just described to make them accessible to everyone within the city um what would keep someone from grabbing a scooter downtown say for example and then riding it up on campus right so you know there is technology

[144:00] that allows to what's called geofencing it's a gps enabled [Music] program that can keep these devices shared devices anyway um out of a particular area of land and so it's possible to draw a ring around the cu campus and so then if a person riding an e-scooter went from downtown up to the hill and crossed into cu's campus then the the east good will lose power it would still be able to be operated um you know human power um and it could be left on campus as well however there would be no power administered to the to the device itself and i know that a lot of the companies are looking at incentives about um an education about where these things can be parked and and where they can be ridden um and so i i'd say that's probably one benefit from the e-scooter company that they're working on instructing their users on how to operate these

[145:00] devices but there is the the risk that the device can still be taken on the cu campus if cu still continues to not allow them on campus okay thank you that's all i have erin yeah thanks staff for the presentation and tayla appreciate you showing up and giving that articulate representation of tabs discussion so i just uh one question for staff you mentioned that uh fort collins is in a pretty similar space to us and of course their similar size city also university town nearby um so you said they're putting out an rfp right now and does that include um both bikes and all types of e-scooters are they putting limitations on that rfp what's that looking like for them yes the planner i spoke with today um they're planning on releasing an rfp in the fourth quarter of 2020 and um they are considering e-scooters they're they're doing their pilot now and then we'll evaluate it but they're pretty certain about moving forward with

[146:01] um the bike so it's possible that the scooters could be a part of that rfp um or not that's um that's the decision they haven't made yet got it thank you welcome okay i see no other hands so we can go to the public hearing we have four people signed up mark gelban lin siegel lisa white and andrea manigault so we'll start with mark mark is not present in the meeting got it then this is great um tila i didn't even pick up on the central idea of the virus and now people not like driving in cars is more dangerous doesn't matter who is in your car anyone's in the car the the ventilation is contained in the car

[147:00] we need to displace the tiger eater cars um definitely this is cool um and i say keep your options open this is just like excel energy we need to um keep our options open in boulder and vote against 2c or whatever it's called um bigger is not better it's it's the virus has taught us all this um it's interesting that lyft's even taking this over um i do see the value of a cargo pat like a pannier on my bike but a cargo thing on some of the um e-bike the e-scooters um and i think that my sense is that the danger would be when someone has got gear with them and they're on one of these things that they're going to get off balance so i think the cargo package on there would improve the safety aspects of the thing

[148:01] um i remember um considering this in the east boulder business parks but then like what the guys said today yeah um and i can't believe i was at a meeting the other day um on the flatiron's some new big office park there what for nobody goes to the office anymore why are they producing these things so we don't even have a discussion it's like a distraction it's like it's like trump's saying the the it's not climate change in california it's the the mismanagement of the forest well the destruction there is why didn't he manage the freaking forest and it's it's distractions um let's see um limited area east boulder i was thinking of that first that we could do that but it it's like there's no question about this taylor made a fabulous fabulous argument for this she should have been a

[149:00] lawyer she had the case closed completely perfect we need to displace cars especially because of the virus people shouldn't be in cars they shouldn't be in contained spaces especially in the winter and we're going to just take over boulder with these things and yes and they shouldn't be on the cu campus but you know the campus is is there's a lot less students on the campus now so it's a little less of a problem up there but if they can get de-powered so what if someone can walk them around the campus there is absolutely no reason that this thing shouldn't go through um keep your options open vote against tubes thank you lynn next lisa white and then andrea manigault lisa with the country on fire we can't ignore the climate crisis an important aspect of that is the impact from motor vehicles for folks to be able to choose more sustainable modes the city must provide

[150:02] options that work for different residents and workers with varying needs for that reason i support tabs recommendation to go with option two to allow all types of standing and seated e-scooters i appreciate council's concern for safety and sustainability and i would love to see that same logic and decision making applied to the status quo and weigh the impacts of e-scooters against that in the u.s 90 000 deaths are caused by road crashes and car pollution every year 90 000 that's about the equivalent of losing the population of longmont every year and of course the climate impact of manufacturing emissions and disposal of cars is undeniable yes even for electric vehicles and so while i support option two i am afraid that council will push for some sort of quote compromise that involves a substantial amount of restrictions in micromanaging i fear this would waste staff time and results in little actual impact due to

[151:01] the restrictions so if option two is a no-go for council then personally i would prefer option three over allowing them with substantial restrictions this would allow staff to spend their limited time on more impactful projects like what well in order to move the needle we don't really need fancy new technology especially in the presence of budget cuts we need political will to get creative to show vision when residents fear change and to use the space we already have in a more efficient equitable and sustainable manner boulder's walking and biking infrastructure is way better than many american cities but sadly that's not saying much the default design is for cars not for people and so council needs to have the political will to improve micro mobility route safety acknowledging that this might inconvenience some folks temporarily in order to save lives and reach its goals it's already been a year since council adopted the 2019 tmp with visionary objectives around environmental impact

[152:00] safety and air quality but a plan by itself is meaningless the 2014 tmp also called out the importance of a low-stress bike network and i have seen almost no projects successfully implemented toward that goal i'd also love to see council and transportation staff put energy into bike share as a public service particularly with expansion into e-bikes and so with the power that you hold as elected officials you have the ability to either keep the harm of the status quo or to help progress make our city better and more sustainable so in summary i support council allowing all types of scooters so standing and seated but i especially ask that you not go with a very restrictive option that will delay progress in waste time thank you thank you lisa next andrea manigault thank you can you hear me yes

[153:00] all right this is andrea manigault representing the boulder chamber 2440 pearl street and as many of you know improving workforce mobility and expanding transportation choices in this community is a key priority of the boulder chambers over the years we've engaged in collaborative efforts with the university andre if you can hear me we've lost you andrea we still see you in the workforce commutes but what we've known in boulder is that we need to continue to meet the challenges head on through innovative solutions and by providing a variety of ways that citizens students and workers can make their trips not only to reduce congestion on our roads but also to reduce the transportation expenses they incur as we look across the landscape we're seeing a regional transit agency struggle we're seeing our transportation budgets tighten

[154:00] these conditions make it imperative we develop more solutions to address our mood [Music] and very last year audio again towards achieving the micro mobility goals outlined in trans in boulder's transportation master plan new forms of micro mobility if planned and managed appropriately can be a valuable tool for addressing first and final mile challenges new models are available today that have longer lifespans better safety and stability as you've heard well while we incur andrea we've lost your audio again but you seem to come back after a few

[155:00] moments multimodal future our goal always has been to fully explore all possible opportunities to improve mobility for boulder's workforce and and as always the boulder chamber will continue to be a dedicated partner for supporting transportation solutions that address our needs especially during this unique and challenging time thank you very much and um just wanted to mention also i got a message from arthur ward again that bird who was mentioned a couple times tonight saying that he's available to council but did not make the public comment cut off tonight so that thank you for your time and uh look forward to your decision thank you andrea with that we will close public comment and bring it back to council um who would like to start us off here mark mark you're on mute it was your turn

[156:00] tonight gotta happen every once in a while uh first i wanted to uh welcome erica and uh thanks there for the for their presentation and tila for hers and i want to correct one misapprehension that taylor has which is i am not um unalterably opposed to these devices what i am opposed to are devices that do not have a proven record of safety and sustainability i would like us to be a leader in micro mobility transportation but not in landfill creation which is what happens with respect to the current standing e-scooters the statistics that we had and have not had any contradiction uh show that they were lasting about 28 days to me this is as unsustainable as it gets

[157:00] with respect to the seated e-scooters um my problem is that we have again no real data i put out a hotline post on this neither the staff memorandum nor david kemp's kind response to that hotline post really answered the question of where is the data that shows increased safety from the seated scooters other than coming from the companies themselves uh and you know that to me is not a reliable source of safety information and with respect to their sustainability the idea that they are designed for two years is is not really that much of an achievement if you think about the the lifespan for a bike um or an e-bike um and again the projection that they will last two years is only coming at this point um from the companies and to me that's a

[158:01] little bit like accepting uh mileage claims on cars uh you do so at your own peril so i think we are not in a position yet to make substantial changes to this which is why i propose that we continue the moratorium but give staff um the leeway to get us better information uh and try to create a form of experiment that would be that would let us see what what these things are like and what kind of um impact they have on our transportation patterns so uh that's my view and i don't you know the last time we did this uh adam said this the proposal was not ready for prime time i don't think we've entered prime time yet and that's simply my view of it so thank you thank you mark uh aaron and then i'm sorry rachel then aaron rachel

[159:01] thanks um welcome also to erica and thanks to dk and tila i found um tila's presentation really compelling uh want to let lynn know tila is indeed an attorney and a great one um so i think that i won't reiterate all of her points but she's correct that you know the world is on fire that covid changes some of our perspectives and how we want people to get around and not to be in shared transportation with each other so all the extra tools should come out of the toolbox now [Music] and i think it is worth bearing in mind that that the comparators is critical so the automobile really is worse than everything else and um all the other options everything else that's on the table is going to be an improvement from that so i i like uh i think it's version two and just moving forward um taking this off of um staff's you know back and forth list and

[160:01] just making a decision and going for it and getting the data we will i think get a lot of data when we roll this out so i'd say we do it and um i will go on with tab and teal's recommendation thanks rachel aaron yeah i agree with rachel and particularly that i thought tila did a really great job of passing along tabs recommendations in a very articulate matter so i'll basically just ditto what she said and just highlight two additional points one is that uh transit is going through tough times right now you know rtd's budgets are going down people are reluctant to ride transit during the cove crisis and services are being cut so we need some additional help with non-automotive ways of getting around town and so i think having e-scooters in our tool kit would be very valuable from that perspective and the other thing is just on the safety front that it's you know the cars primarily that

[161:00] are dangerous and um i was gonna call out that quote until beat me to it from the uh state highway uh report um about if uh people switched from car trips to e-scooter trips then uh we'd be substantially safer overall so i'll leave it there i support going with option two great i see no more hands up so i'll jump in here a little bit um so i think that welcome erica let me start there and thank you tila as well mdk [Music] this is a complex subject and we have to be careful about oversimplifying it so we've talked about safety talked about longevity um one thing we haven't spent so much time on is the litter problem i know that the scooter companies are working real hard i'm trying to get them parked in corrals and have things better organized but we have to be real careful about that and i think that's why we go with the rfp some other ones

[162:01] that i don't think we've talked about as much mary asked the question about cu and if we looked at at csu in fort collins about 70 percent of their trips were from college students so i think it and i do dk agree with you the cu campus during class changes is really no good place for e-scooters because there's a lot of people moving around most of the pedestrians but they do have dismount zones there but some of the information we had from january that i'd love to see updated is when these rides are taken because if we're trying to displace the automobile a lot of auto trips are made commuting and shopping and things of that nature well the january information showed us that the bulk of the trips in the cities they were deployed in happened between friday evening and sunday midday and so

[163:00] that doesn't necessarily mean that that ride displaced a car trip another thing that we had learned about stand-up rental e-scooters is that they were displacing walking drips um and so i'd be real curious about the validity of the studies but a huge question mark here is cu if they will ban these from campus is that going to you know negatively impact the the value of getting people out of cars the other thing uh certainly agreed with hila that these things are coming you know riding a bike on the path these days or walking you'll see all manner of one wheels and skateboards and and scooters but people treat things a lot differently when they're owned than when they're rented and so it seems to me like it needs to be some kind of docked facility because when things aren't docked they end up scattered all over the place and so our b cycle experience

[164:00] has been pretty good it seems to me that having to turn it back into the dock makes all the difference in how those things get treated as far as not being abandoned all over the place which leads to waste right um and then two other things that i think we're going to talk about one of them uh in october which is how do we regulate these things on our pathways and i know that there's been a lot of thought put into that um but we do hear from pedestrians who find these things to be off-putting and frightening so very much as the e-scooters um and car interactions are bad for the e-scooters i think it could be bad for pedestrians the interaction between the scooters and the pad and then the last thing i'll point out is these won't be a silver bullet um in winter weather um you ride your bike or you're in a car but i put my motorcycle away for the winter and anything with really small wheels in the winter is not going to do very well and if they're small hard

[165:01] wheels it's not going to work out very well in the winter so i'm supportive of any of these options to be quite honest and i don't want to i think lisa white's [Music] point about not putting too many burdensome regulations on these is important because otherwise we wouldn't get as good of data so i'll hear where the rest of you land um but i'm i'm supportive of going ahead with either option one or option two if a majority wants option three that's fine um but i could support one or two bob i'm going to be with uh mark on option three i think this is not ready for prime time um you know as a person who actually rides a moped um all year round i can tell you um it can be pretty scary on boulder streets i've got 11 000 kilometers on my moped these things are really just effectively electric mopeds is really

[166:01] what they are and i've had any number of close calls this is for a person who rides you know scores and scores of hours per year with always with a helmet and i think when we looked at the dead on stand-up scooters earlier this year we saw that a significant number of them were people on the the injuries and fatalities were people who were first-time writers um or people as sam pointed out a lot of usages between friday night and sunday morning intoxicated writers so i i shudder to think of dozens or hundreds of people zipping around on mopeds for the first time some of them without helmets um often many of them can experienced um i would prefer i know that older always considers itself cutting edge and we want to be the first it sounds like there's only two or three cities that have tried this so far and they've only had them for a few few months so we just don't have any data here and while i'm i'm happy to have boulder be the first on a number of experiments i'm not sure i want to have boulder be the first in experimenting with the lives of

[167:01] our um of our community members and some of some of the injuries and fatalities have not been limited to the riders but have actually impacted innocent bystanders innocent pedestrians and innocent bicyclists so just as observations were made this evening that cars are often the cause of um pedestrian or scooter or bicycle fatalities oftentimes these scooters which are heavy themselves and go pretty fast can be the cause of pedestrian and cyclist injuries and fatalities as well so until they're in and then on top of all that right in the middle of a pandemic and i'm not sure how much ridership we're going to get um as has been observed um 70 of the writers in some cities our students are our own university is going to ban them so that leaves the 30 um many of whom are now working from home um and maybe work from home for quite a while even after the pandemic ends so i'm just not sure i think you know in the middle of this pandemic where we have limited resources we're laying off

[168:01] staff we can't um honor our commitments to the community in their entirety on in transportation and in parks and so many other areas i just don't know why in the middle of this pandemic we think this is a good idea to experiment experiment with the lives of people in our community so um i i would like to park this for at least a year um see what other cities do what experiences maybe these are wonderful maybe they last longer than a year or two maybe there's no federal fatalities maybe these are great micro mobility um systems but i don't think that we need to be at the tip of the sword here so i'm going to join mark in um in continuing the moratorium on both stand-up scooters and sit-down scooters okay adam so for me i there's some critical inputs that are missing that i think are needed to make a decision and what i haven't heard so far is exactly how much

[169:00] carbon quote unquote goes into creating any of these scooters how long their life cycle will actually be and how many trips they will actually replace in that lifetime and without those i can't say that we're actually solving anything climate-wise um because to me without those answers it's very much like the plastic bag argument versus the total bag yes bringing a total bag is a great idea if you use it some hundreds of trips um and to me we just don't have those answers and that's you know i i like the idea of replacing car trips show me how it's replacing car trips and i will believe you but so far i just haven't seen that so to me that's that's a critical question that he needs answering and i still haven't seen that answered over the last six months

[170:00] okay thank you adam so the way i'm looking at it right now is we've got a split going on um maybe it would be time to take a straw ball and raise our hands so just go down one two and three uh oh mary your hands up i'm sorry i missed that that's cause i just raised it um you know i've been sitting here listening to everybody it was really uh i i hear i'm hearing both sides and um you know i definitely heard um the the notion that these are coming um and they are definitely coming i i guess what it comes down to is similar to um what adam just said um we don't we really don't have that and i guess to some extent bob um and and mark as well we don't have the the data and

[171:02] i think we should strive to make databased decisions and when the only data that we have right now is coming from the manufacturers um it gives me pause um and have things changed since january perhaps in the evolution but because of the pandemic we haven't been able to collect that data um i guess one one compromise approach could be to um roll this out no pun intended um with with an area based kind of of um restriction so i know dk you said that you wanted to make them available to the entire community but maybe it would be something that is available to um east of 28th street or east of folsom

[172:02] or something like that where um the walkability of town isn't as high so something like that where we ease into it rather than in the more crowded parts of town play with people's safety i i don't want to learn or gather data at the expense of other people's safety and i so that would be my proposal to roll it out east of folsom or 28th street for a limited amount of period for a limited time frame um and and see how that goes um i fear that allowing them west of 28th or

[173:02] um or folsom you know we see the from the data from fort collins that it's a 70 30 split as sam said 70 students um we're seeing with coved and the the spread of that that it's not entirely hopeful that all of the rules will be followed so um so that's what that's what i would propose is to roll it out cautiously in a geography-based uh form um for a limited time frame so just a clarifying question on that mary um were you thinking option one or two in a limited form um i think if we're going to do limited um i would just go ahead and

[174:01] do option two and get information on both types or all types and um and learn as much as we can with with cautious care um so that's that would be kind of a compromise that i would bring to the table okay and juni i see your hand up yeah i just wanted to say i think this is a very hard decision because i think when we had the discussion back in january february i was all up for just rolling it out and not really thinking about some of the challenges that we may face i think you know for instance the two years lifespan to me is also an issue disposable methods because yes we want

[175:01] to protect the environment but with something with a two years lifespan that's a that's a real issue um and i also the fact that cu is not a partner is very telling because i see you there a lot of students i don't know what deliberation what the deliberation was when they decided whether you know there are probably people who are under 18 and you know and they want to protect them and when they're driving this this particular machine around town so to me safety is very important and also even on infrastructure i went to i don't remember exactly i think it's either texas or some place i went in the u.s and the infrastructure was much more different they had not just bike paths they had lanes on the street for people to ride these different

[176:00] uh type of um machines or those type of bikes or mobility structures but we don't really have that in boulder so i think bob's comments are things that we really need to take into account um so i think with all that said before coming into the meeting i was thinking as well exactly what mary said area based restrictions and i think that's a good idea based just on the geographic area so i would definitely support mary's idea and go with option two but i just feel like everything that everyone else said is right spot on these are real hard issues that we really have to consider great thank you ginny and i'll jump in here and say that i can support mary's idea as well um it's going to take us five votes to get something done tonight

[177:01] so we may have to work a little uncompromising we had three who seemed pretty clear to me that they wouldn't go forward with this two folks wanted option two as presented and two of us could accept option two limited um so i think i've got this all in here um so i think a compromise on option two limited might be something we could get to tonight um if we want to if we want to do anything going forward so aaron rachel i turn to you and see what you think about that well i just raised my hand okay rachel's alright if i go um yeah well i i as you heard i i'd prefer uh you know to start with a larger area of the city but from what i'm hearing people say it does sound like we have uh five folks who would support um a pilot in the eastern portion of the city and um i think that would be better

[178:00] than nothing so i'm uh mary what do you um you're the one who brought it forward i i could make a motion or defer to you um you know about doing something say you know uh east of 28th street good and i'm going to interrupt the flow for just a moment and turn to dk and staff and say would you be amenable to and able to implement something like that geofence east of 28th street or however we lay it out but still doing both seated and stand up absolutely yeah we'll follow the direction that city council provides and we can um create yes i think through geo fencing it'll create those restrictions that parameter if you will uh where these devices can be operated uh one question is you know what are the sort of the north and south boundaries if we're working with 28 far north south so

[179:01] do you mind if i just jump in um you know one one possibility would be for us to uh pass an ordinance that states the intention but um look to staff for recommendation on the exact boundaries to not incorporate that in the formal ordinance i think that's a really good idea yeah thanks aaron i i support that totally to to give some guidance to to staff but to have them establish the exact parameters geographic parameters okay very good we got rachel bob and mark rachel yep um i can support it too i have a question sam had mentioned he would prefer that these be docked and i found um a lot of the appeal when i've used them traveling is that they are you know scattered really around the city in convenient spots so is there a way to geofence in or out places where the scooters could be left so we don't have

[180:00] to do docks it's a little bit more um widely available and also the docking process can be annoying that's really what i meant rachel was designated places like there's some pens and you know geofence is another way i think dk probably knows all about that so if if we could have them in designated areas kind of like the cycle is around the eastern part of the city um you know we can leave it to the company i think to come up with those geofencing parameters for where to pick them up and drop them off i guess i would just say have it be more since you don't have a physical dock have there be more of those spots around the city than we have in ruby cycle because that makes it more easy to you know walk a couple blocks and there's usually one hang around we might hope but thanks for the compromise proposal mary that sounds a reasonable place to start bob i'm gonna um continue to vote against i might get voted which is fine um we know that the um we know that the stand-up scooters are unsafe um we don't

[181:01] know whether the sit-down ones are safe or unsafe because there simply isn't data they've only been around for a few months in a few cities but i do have a question to help those of you who seem to be in the majority on uh in support of mary's proposal and this is a question for staff um staff again i continue to be concerned about us getting distracted with new projects in the middle of a pandemic when we're having a hard time just doing our daily work can you share with us the amount of work and staff time and cost to the transportation department of this pilot program has been proposed sure as of lately since we're focusing on all of our micro mobility policy items it has included quite a bit of work to get us to a point where we are understanding or determining which vehicles we like to have and the shared micromobility program and then um moving forward what will be the next steps for our current mic mobility provider b cycle and then of course following up after that is the regulation of these devices and where they should be operated in the

[182:01] city streets paths and sidewalks so um i imagine that um it will take up quite a bit of time here this this fall finishing up those policy items which are important to conclude and to contemporarize our our current ordinances um people are choosing these different forms of transportation um for private use and and right now the ordinances do not reflect uh people's current uses and enforcement is uh is somewhat lacking too due to limited resources and so um moving into 2021 and doing an rfp in the fall and moving into 2021 selecting an operator and initiating a new program in the second quarter of 2021 there will be staff time needed um whether it was for um the the administering a doctor's e-bike program or um you know or the inclusion of scooters too so i'd say the the um i wouldn't say there's an additional major workload on top of what we're

[183:00] planning to do already we've also built in to this program trying to achieve some more financial sustainability funds that would go back to the city to help augment some of the costs that we have with for example creating these micro mobility hubs in certain areas around the city to park bikes and scooters um and so that's why we've proposed the um the 15 cents per ride and you know that can add up depending upon the number of trips um that are taken and then we also have um the the fees associated with the business license um both the initial and the annual fees that can feed into supporting the program too so um yes there is work there will be consistent work but there is work today and there was work yesterday with our micro mobility program too um but i wouldn't say that it's overwhelming and it's included into our scope of work moving forward let me let me maybe ask the question a slightly different way um and i only want to focus on what's what we're talking about tonight which is the e-scooter rentals i would take b-cycle

[184:02] out of it take other things out of it those things will have their own work stream and we'll do what we do so just focusing on e-scooters if if um if mark and i had prevailed tonight which sounds like we won't um and we had imposed a moratorium on e-scooters what would the people on city staff be doing um in lieu of working on these scooters compared to what they it sounds like they will be doing on these scooters in other words i'm trying to understand from a because you'll be playing people often doing furloughs and i just want to make sure that we're maximizing our staff time and and i want to know if this is one of our top priorities and what would you do if you weren't working on any scooter you i mean you i mean you and your team if you weren't working on e-scooters do you you have other things to do oh yes there's plenty to do absolutely but does that mean that some of those things you wouldn't be able to do if you're gonna work on e-scooters um that's tough to say i it's a good question maybe natalie looks like she's joined the conversation she's our new deputy director she may want to weigh in on on that as she's making some of the

[185:01] scope of work decisions moving forward for our team sure good evening council um yeah so e-scooters were definitely part of our work program for the shared micro mobility program this year so it is not any additional work than what we were already planning for um if we were not to be moving forward with e-scooters we would continue to just work on the bike share components to our micro mobility program um and so they're we're not setting anything aside to do this work okay thank you it's natalie and mark and adam mark yeah thank uh i want to thank mary for the for the compromise suggestion i could have supported it if it were limited to um seated e-scooters but with respect to standing e-scooters i'm with bob we already know they are unsafe and we know

[186:00] that they have a half-life of of 28 days or so and they will end up in landfill and on those bases i don't understand why we are authorizing the use of a product that is contrary to our emphasis on sustainability and to safety um so had it been restricted to the uh seated e-scooters i think i could have gone along with it um however i will be with bob in the minority on this one um because i i just don't i don't see why we're authorizing a product we have already determined to be unsafe and unsustainable thank you thank you uh adam and then mary adam yeah it sounds like this is probably moving forward so i just want to bring up two things real early in the process um that i would like to see when the rfp goes out and that's an opt-in during future contracts so we you know

[187:01] the contract expires we actually have to opt in to continue it and that we actually have access to the trip data um generally that's pretty proprietary but part of the whole reason we're doing this is to figure out hey are we actually displacing car rides and all that so access to trip data i think is super important in this instance and i would push for that as part of the rfp also i really appreciate tenacity but um industry lobbyists probably shouldn't email me mid meeting to try to change mine so in the future maybe he could hold off on that i appreciate it though okay so mary i think we'd be ready for a motion if you're ready or aaron wants to yeah i i can um well i was going to throw something out there um in the interest of um in an effort to try and get us to unanimity

[188:00] um if we went with um what is that option one which drops the standing scooter option um no option two is everything option one is sit down only um so if we went with option one under the the with the temporally and geographically limited rollout um would we lose two council members and maybe gain one is that what would happen or or or could we get to a unanimous um agreement [Music] if i can colloquy on that please i i you know i'm not i actually suggested some form of experimentation when i did my hotline post so it would be ridiculous for me not to embrace some form of experimentation going forward but my greatest resistance is to the stand up

[189:00] the standing scooters uh which i just don't think are are safe or or reliable um so yeah i would i would in a spirit of cooperation if it were uh if it were choice one rather than choice two i would be supportive not necessarily happily but i would be supportive aaron yeah well mary i appreciate you working to bring everybody together but i'm actually i'm a little unsure that that the option one in the limit area of town is better than nothing um because you know what what we're hearing is that there's a very limited number of companies that are that are you know adding these uh seated e-scooters and so i i would worry that we would spend a great deal of time well we'd spend a fair amount of time on this and then not end up with anything to show for it because nobody would step up and take us up on the offer okay rachel yeah i think that's kind of what tab said too right like nobody supported

[190:00] option one from tab for those reasons that they were four for option two and one for option three like either um you know better get off the pot like you know let's let's do it or let's move on to something else so i think that um i i i would not want to cause us to lose a unanimous vote so i'm sort of hoping bob's just going to come and say i'm not voting for any of it and then the the pressure's off but i would rat i would much prefer to do two and i'm not 100 that i do one i'm thinking it through okay well what i would suggest to move us forward is get a motion on the table and take some votes all right well i'll put a motion on the table then um so i move that we go forward with option two in a geographically and temporally limited manner with the [Music] the scope of size and time

[191:02] to be recommended by staff and that as part of the rfp that we require access to the trip data as well as i will add one more thing to keep a close monitoring on the use and accident of all modes and if we see any one of them increasing in the number of accidents that we reserve the right to pull that one second okay very good all in favor of the motion raise your hand on the screen i'll count one two three four five that's it and then against okay it passes five to three go ahead if i could just say just one quick thing thanks again mary for that um just to note that um all modes of transportation

[192:03] are dangerous to some extent so the question is is not whether anything is perfectly safe but whether it is safer than the alternatives as safe or safer than the alternatives and i think the data is showing that that's the case for okay okay very good so we're done with that one debbie do you have everything you need on that vote i believe so yes that one did not need to be a roll call did it i think it did cover passing in ordinance but they're amending it we'll have to come back okay well that's what i thought too so anyway all right we're good thank you for your time today yeah thank you all for your time good presentation welcome again erica um thank you very much my suggestion here is we take a five minute break um because we got a couple more items to talk about so anybody against taking a five-minute

[193:01] break see you in five minutes [Music] oh

[200:05] mary can you hear me how are you tom can you hear me okay good i can hear you okay we're good to go here let's count one two sam yep i have a question um because the moratorium is ending does council want to pass option one as is and leave it to the city manager rules to accommodate the things that were in mary's motion or do you want us to bring it back on third reading by emergency on october 6th if it's third reading by emergency it may not pass right so um i think that's an okay suggestion mary it's your motion what do you think i'm sorry tom i didn't catch what the suggestion was the suggestion was go ahead and pass on second reading option one uh there's a section that allows the

[201:00] city manager to draft rules and regulations she could incorporate all of the changes that you made in the rules and regulations and not require uh amendment to the ordinance itself um option one i thought we went with option two i'm sorry we did marry okay um so so everything you said tom the change option went to option two um yes i think so i think that that would work um then you would need a roll call though right okay suit tom if i can just jump in are you proposing by emergency or just rate a regular now just pass it as is the city manager will incorporate into her rules and regulations all of the changes that mary made in her motion okay because there is a provision that allows the city manager to limit where they can be used you're already in the ordinance so that works for me and um um aaron was

[202:01] the seconder so aaron that's fine okay cool okay i guess we need that roll call vote now thank you my apologies sam no no no problem uh councilmember sweat link name does everyone hey okay good wallach hey weaver yes yates no young yes rocket i friend yes joseph yes i'm on ocean [Music]

[203:01] yep the next item on the agenda is matters from the city manager and we have an update on the coveted 19 related evictions and foreclosures and kirk fern harbor i'm sorry kristen heiser is going to be presenting this kristin hi good evening just wanted to check my audio can you hear me okay yes okay great so thank you jane good evening i'm kristen heiser deputy director of housing and human services with the city of boulder i'm going to be joined this evening with karen armstrong the city's community mediation program manager we'll be providing an update um to the information we presented to you in early august regarding the interventions and resources available to keep people housed during the time of the pandemic and beyond this presentation is specific to the resources serving people who are currently housed and need additional supports to maintain their housing before going any further i want to reiterate our messaging since the early days of the pandemic the city

[204:00] strongly encourages our community members to access all the federal and state aid that they can to meet their needs this allows the city and our partners to preserve limited local resources to step in when the federal and state supports are no longer available as well we understand for some this is the first time they've ever had to turn to a government or community agency for help that can be difficult to accept and act on there is no shame in getting the help that is available and it is confidential so please reach out and access the supports available that i will be highlighting tonight to maintain your housing next slide please tonight here we go tonight i'll start with an update on what we're seeing by way of eviction filings and the rate of contacts with persons needing housing supports i'll then review the resources and interventions currently in place karen will then take over and focus on the city's community mediation program

[205:00] and following our presentation we will be available for questions next slide please starting with the numbers early in the pandemic as you know governor polis ordered an eviction moratorium that expired in june the federal moratorium also expired in july since the summer when the majority of the moratoriums and protections were lifted boulder county has seen an average of 52 addiction filings each month compared to an average of 94 filings per month in 2019. so the eviction moratorium lifted we have not seen a return to the filing rates of the previous year next slide please another indicator of housing supports needed is the number of calls received by the boulder county housing helpline whose phone number is listed on this slide in response to covid19 the helpline was launched by boulder county in april the housing helpline is staffed with experienced housing and human services

[206:01] experts that are able to refer people to rental assistance mortgage relief mediation and legal services it's important to note that the housing helpline will support anyone navigate to services and resources regardless of their citizenship status since april the helpline has received over a thousand phone calls this is from across the entire county in general the average volume has been about 50 calls per week the health plan did experience a spike as you see on this slide in early august when unemployment benefits ended and a large text outreach message went sent out by our cultural broker agency partners promoting the helpline following the helpline has returned to normal call volume of those 1000 calls i mentioned 152 that have resulted in rental assistance came from city of boulder residents and beneficiaries across the county it's important to note at least 36 percent live in manufactured housing communities

[207:00] actually as the housing helpline learns about the caller's circumstances they continue to hear that residents generally find are finding landlords working with them to find solutions uh to address the loss of income devise repayment plans or other means to ensure residents can remain housed what these last few slides show us is that we have not hit the eviction cliff and what we surmise is that this is due to the federal income supports that were made available early on the rental assistance that is available through local and state agencies and continues to be available the availability of local interventions and landlords working together effectively now let's shift to the resources and interventions in place that are supporting boulder residents in august i shared about the strong regional coordination that is occurring among local agencies housing authorities government partners and service providers this continues in all realms including housing human services and economic

[208:01] development as for city investments in addition to the 7 million we have budgeted in 20 for 2020 to support basic needs we've designated an additional 2.5 million for financial assistance and responds to cobid these sources include federal cdbg those are community development block grant dollars and the covid recovery fund dollars as well as local resources including the health equity fund and the human services fund these investments prioritize meeting the basic needs and immediate needs of boulder residents and include rental assistance food supports medical care and other expenses next slide please so as for the state and the interventions it is offering federal carers act funds are available through two programs the emergency housing assistance program which provides emergency rental and mortgage assistance can be accessed accessed through jewish family services locally as well as other agencies but they're primarily located in denver

[209:01] there is also the property owner preservation program which allows landlords including mobile home park owners to work on behalf to seek rental assistance through the colorado department of local affairs as well the city stands to benefit from the cares act relief funds that have come to the county we should be receiving about five million dollars benefiting us for unbudgeted covid 19 related relief costs as for the feds while the income supports provided early on in covid including the stimulus checks unemployment insurance those successfully served as a major component of many people's financial lifelines however those supports are currently being duked out in congress in the meantime there are a few interventions that will play a critical role in maintaining housing there is the mortgage of forbearance which is in place until march the provision of federal funds to local communities such as the community development block grant funds to support financial assistance programs

[210:00] excuse me the payroll tax deferral and the lost wage assistance program which is available through the colorado department of labor and employment the recent game changer that i'm sure many of you have heard about was the cdc's order to halt evictions for non-payment of rent through the year of through the end of 2020. unlike the previous federal moratorium the cdc's order comes with penalties for landlords who violate it while an important step it does not preclude landlords from changing and charging and collecting fees penalties or interests further it doesn't prevent evictions for reasons other than non-payment of rent and it doesn't protect homeowners from foreclosure next slide please also since we last spent on this topic governor polis has seated a temporary special eviction prevention task force we're very lucky the region is like a council member friend who is representing us as a member on this task

[211:00] force staff along with our regional partners had the opportunity to meet with counselor friend to share recommendations we would like to see the task force consider these include the continued flow of unencumbered financial sources to local governments housing providers and non-profits to meet basic needs including rent and mortgage assistance specific to evictions we would recommend the extension or permanency of the requirement for landlords to give tenants a 30-day notice rather than the previous 10-day before filing an eviction case in court this allows a tenant the time needed to hopefully make necessary payments to avoid eviction we would also seek landlords offering a reasonable repayment agreement before they seek eviction extend a tenant's legal opportunity to care cure for the entire duration of the eviction court process allowing them to pay back rent at any point before an eviction can be executed by a sheriff and locally in order order a moratorium on fees or penalties

[212:01] for late repayment or capping late fees to a reasonable percentage of monthly rents and banned availability of free free community mediation and with that i would like to transition to karen armstrong who is the city's community mediation program manager is going to provide you some great information about that work next delay please and karen just want to make sure you're able to jump on karen are you available are you unused ryan is sir i see her uh yeah can you can you hear me okay there you go great yeah can you hear me yeah yeah can you hear me okay yep we can hear me yes you can

[213:01] okay sorry can you hear me yes okay great so as christian mentioned mediation services is on our list of recommendations to the governor's task force as these services have been well utilized by our community since covid began particularly to assist with landlords and tenants to navigate these uncharted territory so before i get into the particulars of how we've adapted in these current times i want to just mention that our program community mediation service has been helping to resolve community conflicts for years in addition to staff we are fortunate to have a team of nearly 60 volunteer mediators many of whom are highly experienced and well-seasoned mediators we assist in resolving a range of community issues involving housing hoas neighbors and families so the chart that you're looking at shows the increase in calls between last year and this year the blue bar represents general housing related calls

[214:01] and the orange bar is the number of calls regarding non-payment of rent and or a potential eviction so you can see that both types of calls have increased significantly since the start of covet in march calls related to a potential eviction and or non-payment of rent have increased nearly 10-fold for some of the the past few months so it's clear that we've had more requests for assistance and there may be a there may be a few factors at play uh one the city of boulder has expanded our jurisdiction uh the community mediation service has expanded our jurisdiction to serve parts of the county as part of the pandemic response so a portion of these 20 20 numbers do represent county cases also with the increased communication and outreach targeted to assist with eviction and non-payment matters specifically represented by that orange bar more people are learning about our services and reaching out one other thing to note as we move

[215:00] through uh this summer you can see that it looks like difference between 2019 and 2020 is beginning to even out so july and august are a typical time for lease turnover and it's usually the busiest time of year for landlord tenant issues so we'll be curious to see how the pattern continues into the fall when these issues typically quiet down or if we see a sustained increased call volume next slide please i'm really going to hone in focus on that orange bar because i think that's what uh the focus is tonight on eviction and non-payment of rent so of those calls in that orange bar what happens to those calls when they come in 52 um actually it's 57 received consultation with the mediator including resource referral information and general consultation on their situation

[216:02] you can see on that blue section there 25 percent of our calls go to mediation with the resolution rate of 75 13 are still considering mediation and five percent are have reported that they're going to stall independently next slide so i'm going to focus in on a victim court where we have really focused a lot of our energy and attention so community mediation service has long been providing eviction mediation services at boulder courts and the start of each eviction docket speaking highly of mediation services and encouraging people to meet with our mediators to each agreement so covet has provided an opportunity to accelerate a lot of improvements to this

[217:00] already well mediation service in collaboration with other partners so now as part of an administrative order all landlords and tenants receive information prior to court on how to prepare for eviction court information on mediation services legal and financial resources as a result in services sometimes resolving our situation and avoiding court altogether we are seeing people reach out to us and we're able to resolve things before it even goes to court on the day of court we're still offering mediation and we're really excited about some enhancements we've made to connect tenants with legal and financial services as part of the mediation process housing hotline is now on call during eviction court to provide tenants with rent relief services and boulder county legal services also now available on

[218:01] call to provide legal content consultation to tenants all of our mediators have received additional training on these new processes so i want to share with how this works in practice recently we did three cases that really benefited from this coordination so in one case one tenant had fallen [Music] due to a slowdown at work at the start and by the time that he reached court he owed over five thousand dollars in the course of the mediation the mediator connected him to the housing hotline helping to fast track his application for the housing and avoided eviction in another case one parent had to commit their job to stay home with their young children this family actually decided that it would be better for them to move out and find a more affordable

[219:01] housing option so what we did is we mediated a reasonable time frame for them to move out and we did accelerate their rental assistance for first month's rent and deposit opting for a smoother transition and again they were able to avoid an eviction in a third case the tenants made a payment plan with their landlord received funds through the housing hotline and have their case dismissed so as you can see um with mediation uh you can see the the red uh resolution right there it's 75 we're reaching resolutions 75 of the time at eviction court which is actually an improvement over the typical 64 and i really believe that the combination of all our efforts to ensure the parties have better information entering into the courtroom the court's increased support of

[220:00] mediation and coordination with the housing hotline have all contributed to better outcomes the on-call legal assistance that i mentioned is new as of last week but we expect that this will only further assist tenants to understand their rights and make informed decisions on their cases boulder county legal services plans to offer this legal are services on a long term basis beyond the [Music] regular offering at eviction court at this point we do expect the cdc order will put a halt to the majority of addictions through january so our focus will really be community outreach at this point to landlords and

[221:00] tenants to make sure uh okay their housing rather than waiting uh until january when print please okay thank you karen we seem to be having some audio problems but hopefully you heard it enough to see that the work that the community mediation program has been doing and partnership with a variety of stakeholders has evolved and has really stepped into a space uh during copen to make a significant difference um and and helping people maintain their housing so if we can move on to the next slide our final slide um so what is next so housing and human services will continue to monitor and access resources as they come available through the feds and state

[222:01] we'll you know align with our partners to track needs and strategically invest our financial resources to effectively serve this most in need um this includes supporting a variety of accidents to ensure that all can be served and finally the city remains committed to ensuring that all people have the potential to successfully sustain and recover from this pandemic regardless of identity health and socioeconomic circumstances excellent so thank you very much for the opportunity to share this information um that is the end of our presentation and karen and i are happy to answer any questions kurt fernhofer is also on the meeting and is able to answer other questions as well thank you very much kristen for that presentation and and it was very interesting to learn about the mediation services um aaron has his hand up just thanks so much for that was very

[223:00] helpful um so i know we're utilizing rental assistance funds from a few different sources are those holding up so far do we have kind of what we need to give people the assistance they need or are we running low we are not running low um we were very the country was very fortunate with the stimulus um payments and the unemployment and that actually went very far for our community we have not the city we have identified um about 1.5 million that we are prepared to we're actually in the process of contracting with effa bhp and other partners to provide rental assistance so that should take us pretty far um but not knowing what's ahead of us to be able to be mindful of advocating and bringing more resources to the community can only serve us in the long run but as of right now we're feeling um that the resources available uh should carry us for a while it's great to hear thank you

[224:00] and mary thank you for the presentation kristen and um karen um really appreciate it one quick question i noticed in uh karen's presentation regarding the boulder county legal services they're providing free legal services and i was curious to know where the funding is coming from for for that can you hear me better yes okay that's too bad i'm sorry i wasn't able to get my audio uh working well so um boulder county legal services is offering that um within they are just absorbing that cost they're going to be having a an attorney on call and they're going to be allocating an attorney during that time period it's every friday morning from 8 30 to 11 and as we're just getting started i'll learn more as it goes on but

[225:02] they're going to just be absorbing that cost great thank you and thank you boulder county legal services very good any other questions okay sing none thank you again for the presentation and the update um sounds like things are holding up and appreciate all the work you're doing thank you very much have a good evening thank you okay we're moving on to matter from the mayor and members of the council we have the occupancy update and a motion to request that the city manager allow households to exceed the city's occupancy limitations so there's still a problem with the e-scooter ordinance that i'd like to return to sam if that's okay okay the problem is that they were on emergency because um you'll recall we raised in csp and i'd forgotten there was only

[226:01] nine days between hearings because of the between the publication and this hearing because of the labor day holiday so council cannot pass anything tonight by five votes so my recommendation is that council consider passing version three unanimously or with at least six votes on emergency and that'll keep the moratorium in place and then we bring back uh the version two that council wants to pass by five votes at a later date if we don't do that nothing passes and the moratorium ends which means the companies can just come in and try to drop these scooters so my recommendation is that we preserve the moratorium for another few weeks and then let us bring back the ordinance so that you can pass it legally can we not continue the hearing you could but then the so you could continue to to october 6th

[227:00] yes okay you could do that um what does council think about that if uh adam you got your hand up yeah if it's a matter of timing obviously i don't want to get in the way of the will of counsel so if another vote is going to just clear it up i might be willing to do that that would solve it i think it i think it would yeah that would give you a secret do we need to do do we need to do the roll call over that would be helpful okay okay debbie councilmember splitlick i wallock nay yes joseph yes

[228:02] thank you debbie thank you tom thank you adam that was really generous okay so we're now into mayor members of council so as far as the occupancy motion tom you want to tell us about that or should rachel start how do you want to run this i have a presentation that if we can bring it up i have the language of the motion in the presentation okay request okay so here's the motion [Music] and i will read it motion to request the city manager until at least may 31st 2021 allow households to exceed the city's occupancy limitations as set forth in section 9

[229:00] dash 8-5 of the boulder revised code to allow dwelling units to safely house people during the cobit 19 pandemic nothing in this request shall be deemed to create a non-conforming occupancy under subsection nine eight five c one or two effective enforcement of section ten three twenty or any other provision of the multiple revised code um and i have a presentation on occupancy enforcement uh does council wish to vote on this now or to do it after the presentation um what how long is the presentation uh it's i think 12 slides um i don't know if we need a long presentation or not can we ask questions and if the questions uh you've got a slide that will help us answer that we can go to the slide well part of my brief tonight was to provide a background on um enforcement so

[230:00] okay let's i would suggest i'd suggest we go ahead and see it then okay i'll try to be as quick as possible okay so occupy enforcement there's two types of enforcement there's uh title 10 which is proactive enforcement you some of you were on council when we added some of these provisions that require a disclosure of uh total occupancy on licensing regulates advertising that the advertising has to include a statement of the maximum legal accuracy and it requires um it requires disclosure doctor to be when a place is being sold which eliminated the allegations that people didn't know what the occupancy was and prevents landlords from advertising for over occupancy title ix is reactive that is we get complaints and we respond to those complaints because we find the property is over occupied that can result in evictions title 10 happens before it's rented title ix happens

[231:01] after so this is the data for that was in the memo that shows the total number of complaints and violations in each year um the violations would be title nine the total and then the title ten cases title 10 cases include all licensing cases so it's not just over occupancy bob yates asked us to do a little heat map on the breakdown of violations by area in boulder this is data from march 19 2018 through september 14 2020. this is a data that comes from our anargov system uh in during that period in that system there are 30 violations this does not really jive with the other data that's in the memo but it does it's demonstrative of i think the point bob was trying to make um and which staff could assemble in a couple of days uh that shows sort of it's spread out bob also asked for data on who the violation so for these 30 violations that are in our system two were married couples or domestic

[232:01] partners two were related adults such as siblings or cousins none were families with children and 20 the other 26 were unrelated results admittedly a small sample size so here this is basic occupancy um and so i'm going to go through this relatively quickly but we all know about three or four persons and the three or four persons depends on the zone district in which the property resides it's basically three and lower density zones and four and higher density zones and next few stones and then there's two other additional groups it's any two persons uh and any of their children by blood marriage guardianship including foster children or adoption so the the the two people do not have to have any relationship uh under our code it can be any two people um so and they don't have to be married to be domestic partners two people and all of their children can reside together and then in 1988 the federal government amended

[233:02] the fair housing act to make families a protected class so we exempt families completely from our occupancy limitations and we um so and then a family can also have two unrelated rumors so you get a family plus two so this is the definition of family and as you can see we've tried to include basically every degree of relationship so it's first it goes out to first cousins but also great grandchildren and great great grandparents um it also adds a provision that allows for uh somebody to qualify for as a family if they're if they're a domestic partner under boulder law a domestic or tibetan partner provision allows any two people to become domestic partners you do not have to register although you were you can register uh to become a domestic partner um but you you can just go and file and get a certificate and as you see we've just waived the fee for that

[234:00] so it's a fairly low barrier so there's also non-conforming occupancy we have about a little over 1200 properties in boulder that have non-conforming occupancies that are occupancies that predated some change in the zoning um so 85 percent um have a non-performing accuracy based on a prior non uh down zoning 15 for other reasons most likely roaming units um the also council um amended the code to fix some of the challenges with co-ops um and so these are this is a summary of the co-op rules we have nine additional co-op licenses since council adopted those changes accessory dwelling units just last year and earlier this year in 2018 earlier this year council amended the adu requirements to open it up um there have been 352 permits issued since

[235:01] january 1st 1970 73 of those were issued since january 1st 2019 which is about when the new changes took effect of those 26 or 36 percent are um affordable adus and i think that's it yeah so that was quick thank you john yep it was okay um we have a motion on the table and rachel essentially you've made that motion so you can either make make it again and talk to it or we can go about this however you'd like sure um i'll speak a little bit to it and then i think aaron wanted to um maybe chime in and i see his hands already raided so i will just give a little bit of background information and then maybe turn it over to aaron to um speak to it as well if that's okay so just background wise on july 12th governor polis issued an executive order

[236:00] asking cities with occupancy limits to suspend them um or suspend enforcement of them during kobed um and this was brought to my attention from a city councillor from another city on july 14th so i sent out a hotline email proposing that we consider governor poulos request that day um so it's taken us about two months to get to this point of taking up the july request it seemed like there was a little bit of community confusion around why were we talking about it and why now so that's the background um i would add that covid and its grueling impacts have not gotten lesser or receded or been resolved in intervening months and then tonight i know most i'm sure all counselors saw it but for the benefit of the public um i will just read governor polis emailed boulder city council tonight saying i appreciate the boulder city council taking up the question of temporary forbearance of occupancy limits that you're meeting tonight making sure that coloradans have access to safe housing during the covet crisis is one of our top priorities statewide

[237:01] accordingly i fully support your initiative to temporarily to temporarily suspend the city's occupancy limits until next may during these extraordinary times with so many families in danger of losing their housing because of the economic disruption due to the covet-19 pandemic we need to make sure that we provide as many safe housing options as possible to folks in need and then i just wanted to add a couple of data points from statewide numbers that i received this week that highlight some of the reasons i think we should all care about helping people to stay housed in boulder so the first again these are statewide numbers first number is amid the coven 19 public health crisis 457 174 renters do not have stable housing 66 of black runners and 85 percent of latino renters are at risk of losing housing and students who move and change schools have lower reading achievement scores by the end of the year um so it's not like a hypothetical um you know maybe this

[238:02] will hit one or two people like it's going to hit real people and it's going to hit more vulnerable populations harder and i would especially point out that with the 85 percent of latinos at risk they're also getting hit really hard by the kobe pandemic itself so that's a bit of a double whammy for that population so um helping to keep people safely housed in boulder is why the governor asked us to look at this and it's the reason that i support his request if we need guard rails which i'm sensitive to some people are worried about what might happen if we uh suspend enforcement i think we should figure out the guard rails but i don't think we should reject this as just not necessary the state has worked really hard i think since march to ensure that we stay out in front of things that might negatively impact people and this is another way to accomplish that and so i support us doing what the governor has requested over to aaron if that's okay thanks sure thanks

[239:02] and tom could just ask you a quick question first uh which is so in terms of how this would work out if we did adopt this motion um life safety codes would still be in effect correct so like i know people have been concerned about whether people would be living safely over occupied but if we uh were to find um unsafe living conditions that still wouldn't be allowed correct that's correct that's it and then motion says any other provision of the code it only suspends enforcement under section 985 which is the over occupancy right so we would still be able to deal with uh life safety problems with this classes so yeah so anyway so thanks for bringing this up rachel really appreciate it and um you know we're just getting the information about how we're preventing evictions and um which i think we're generally all in support of but you know if we enforce uh on over occupancy that is also an eviction right so that's an additional person or persons that were

[240:00] living in a house that we would then be forcing them to leave and i think that's exactly the kind of disruption that we want to be avoiding right now um due to the kind of economic crisis that so many people are facing uh during these coveted times so you know it's it's just for a few months you know i know some people are worried about you know landlords somehow making a bonanza off of this but um it would just as proposed it's just for the time period of this crisis so if the idea is that if uh people lose uh their current housing they could uh stay with a friend for a few months or a family could live with another family um and you know i thought the data on previous over occupancy enforcement was interesting because it did show that it was scattered all over the city i think sometimes people fear that this is mostly about college students on the hill but you know people need roommates in order to be able to afford housing in boulder all across the

[241:01] city so i just hope we can take this what i see is a pretty common sense step towards protecting housing um for um and the ability to stay in safe uh housing uh for people in our community for the next few months during this crisis adam thanks sam i have a question for tom actually um since this is essentially loosening rules and providing more opportunity for income is there a way to attain uh to tie affordability requirements for additional rooms since you're giving something so with rental units you have the challenge of the state rent control law um so anything we we try to do that forces affordability in the rental area um we have a problem we go up against the rent control law so it would be challenging at best

[242:01] gotcha so it's a maybe it's yeah it's a week maybe okay so the the limitation to may 31st was intended to prevent profiteering because the you're thinking that people who are over occupying or have a current lease and any new lease should probably isn't isn't going to start so would we still do the proactive enforcement to prevent over over renting initially okay i just want to clear that up not only for this instance but for future instances um bob yeah first i want to i have two or three questions um first of all i just want to make sure that i understood your presentation tom correct i think you said two things um about families with children one it sounds like two families that are whose heads of household are unrelated and an unlimited number of their respective children can live together is

[243:00] that correct no i don't think two families can two people can two people and their respective children yes that's well okay two people on their respective children for some reason and and i i think as a matter of fact as a matter of practice i think you you showed a slide that said at least in this measuring period we've been forced um no occupancy limits against families with children's all right that's correct at least in that limited set of data we had yeah right over the two and a half years and then i looked at the memo and it looked to me like um our enforcement rate was relatively steady if you average the three and two-thirds years um reflecting the memo looks like we've averaged about 20 enforcements per year and we're running at about we've run 15 through the first two thirds of this year so it looks like we're running pretty close to that average is is there any evidence since covet started this year that um there's greater over occupancy or greater level of enforcement

[244:04] so the challenge bob is that the folks that we normally have doing occupancy enforcement have been doing covet 19 enforcement so we have resources we and we've diverted the resources we have to the point on the hill actually okay so as a practical matter we've kind of softened up on occupancy in any event because people have been redirected to other other things absolutely okay and the final question is if this motion went forward and we just we announced that we weren't going to enforce occupancy and presumably part of that as an encouragement of people to have more people in a place um what would happen if once the moratorium ended in may with those people that that kind of piled into those houses would now be in violation and they'd have to leave is that right yes okay so who kind of chose may because it's between move out and move in well you talk about students but this is city-wide though right yeah that's correct okay so if if if there's three

[245:02] people in a house and we passed this and we said we're not gonna enforce it and now there's six people in a house i don't care if their students are not students and then may comes the moratorium ends those three incremental people are gonna have to move out otherwise it's gonna be in violation is that right yes okay thanks any other questions any discussion okay aaron your hands still up do you want to speak okay um if there's no questions and no conversation and emotion on the table we're we're going to just vote um the the motion on the table will require five votes tonight um that's just the way it is and so i just want to make sure we're all aware before we do that um rachel are you comfortable moving ahead with the vote

[246:00] i mean i don't get to control the process or delay things i assume but i guess i'd be curious um to the extent that people are fearful of of moving forward with this um which is in line again with a request from um a governor who's been proactive and has us you know handling covet i think better than a lot of other states what are the what are the fears and and what would be the hang-ups and and where could we find common ground on this to at least um if five people aren't going to vote for it um unfettered what are the guard rails that we could put in um to address fears and and you know to bob's point i think if if we have a vaccine in march and cove is off the table and and the economy starts coming along again by may then um we're back to normal if not i think we can look at extending this if we needed to um for another three months and so it wouldn't necessarily impact people

[247:01] who are signing new leases um but it would continue to protect people um also with the the families if you've got two people who are married to you know you can't have two couples two married families living together so um and i think that it you know there's there's always a risk of discriminating discriminatory enforcement when when somebody does complain so if we have this on the table and you know we haven't removed this [Music] we haven't suspended enforcement of occupancy limits then when a family does get called on i think they would be essentially evicted and they wouldn't get swept up in our eviction statistics because they wouldn't be on the lease so there's there's just a lot of um concern for protecting people who have kind of the least protections right now in a hard economic time and wanting to help them be stable so if people have fears and we can um move through some of those i think it's it's worth it and it's doing

[248:00] right by the people in boulder who need us most mark uh yeah um i had thought that we had at some point in the in the past had a conversation about discussing occupancy in a more uh measured way and as part of our work plan for the coming year is that still on the table or is that simply irrelevant to the uh passage of this motion i think it's separate i'll step in there just so it is separate from the motion and we're gonna have a study session i believe it's october 12th um at which we will discuss we'll hear from staff about what it would mean to address the occupancy and holistic weight markers you're talking about like what would the staff resources need to be what do we expect what so it would be more of a process framing study session

[249:01] where we could get questions on the table and we could take the knowledge from that into the retreat and decide now that we have some scoping done how long would it take how hard would it be and what would it look like my only other comment is i kind of share adam's concern for affordability um as opposed to turning this into simply a an income generator um or landlords in the absence of that i'm somewhat disinclined [Music] and i was finished if you ever it wasn't clear adam yeah i'm just gonna talk oh sorry aaron you just uh i'm used to you well aaron for some reason your hands going up and down it's up here

[250:00] yeah how do you hear first time the next okay thanks um so obviously there's a lot to talk about on the issue of occupancy one of the things that i'm weighing in this vote is we don't have any data you know i hear a lot from either side about whether or not opening up our occupancy limits is going to be good for what the actual rents are and while this isn't exactly a perfect test of that since none of these are supposed to be new leases that are signed during this you know it would at least give us a data point um when we're having the broader discussion so that coupled with the fact that we are in a crisis and the governor has asked us to do something about it um sort of leads me towards voting for it since it is it has a deadline on it

[251:01] um those are kind of my considerations when thinking about it obviously there's a whole lot more to talk about with occupancy this is one of the biggest issues in the community and uh it needs its its day that we've been asking for for years now so those are kind of my thoughts going into this okay anywhere else i think that's my turn now okay my hand goes up it goes down but um yeah thanks for that adam and and i would i was hoping after we have this discussion about this particular motion i was hoping that we could uh as a group say that we are interested in um having that october study session where we look at the overall issue for the long term because i think mark as you mentioned there's been mentions of doing that but i don't think council has ever said you know hey yes we would like to to look into what it would take to tackle it as an overall

[252:01] issue so my hope is that we could um agree to that tonight before we're done with the overall topic uh but just one process thing i don't think um rachel's actually made a motion so we might want to take that form this day yes i will make that motion time do you mind putting it back up i don't have it right in front of me the language if it's easy otherwise i can pull it out of an email [Music] okay um i make a motion to request that the city manager until at least may 31st 2021 allow households to exceed the city's occupancy limitations that set a as set forth in section 985 of the boulder revised code to allow dwelling units to safely house people during the kobit 19 pandemic nothing in this request shall be deemed to create a non-conforming occupancy under

[253:01] subsection 985 c1 or to affect enforcement of section 10 320 or any other provision of the boulder revised code second okay all in favor raise your hands one two three juniors your hand raised four all opposed raise your hand and that's four so the motion fails um and we know how nearby would have been inclined to vote as well she sent us an email letting us know um and aaron i i think now would be the time to ask for your nada five for um [Music] supporting the uh scoping process for october thanks sam well um just point in that outcome for a next step you know i would hope that we could say that we would like to look into tackling this issue

[254:01] uh you know from an overall long-term perspective starting with that study session that's already preliminarily on the calendar for late october so is that something that folks would be um up for saying tonight raise your hand well let's just raise our hands and aaron was asking for another five so that's unanimous i appreciate you all doing that in indulging thank you look forward to the discussion okay i think it's back to rachel for an update on cu south i get no more okay um no morning period for me okay um i have to pull up a different document here okay um so as you all probably know sam and i are on the cu south process subcommittee and we wanted to bring a little update tonight and get

[255:00] some input and check in to make sure that we are on track so we still sort of have two parallel tracks going with the process subcommittee one in sort of the flood mitigation design and the second on annexation so first as to design we had asked utilities to be uh responsive to osbt's request to review upstream again at our june um hearing and utility staff is actively working on um both the chosen variant and looking into the upstream options so they're getting input from sam and i and the subcommittee as well as osbt rab and planning board members and the hope is that utilities and joe will have the information on upstream viability to ospt by november and then to council in december so that is a little bit longer than we had originally envisioned in june but the subcommittee feels that that's a reasonable timeline sam anything you would add on kind of the first flood mitigation

[256:01] aspect i think that's perfect i just had the one bit that we have a sub working group of the process subcommittee that's been looking at upstream and we have a meeting coming up on friday and we may be at the point and maybe you're going to talk more about this rachel but we may be at the point then that we disband that sub group and the matter goes back to staff and then ospt and then council so for what it's worth there has been focused effort on making sure that we understood the request by osbt to look it upstream and what that meant and so there's been a lot of work done pretty quickly around that and i think it's been good work and i'm hopeful that um we will have those questions answered properly any questions on kind of that first bucket from anybody concerns objections all right um so then the second piece is

[257:00] annexation um and we as a subcommittee are turning our attention a bit more to um the community engagement around csl annexation so we anticipate that cu boulder is going to submit revised annexation application materials in early october and sam and i would like to recommend that the city not respond within the usual timeline which i think is 30 days to an annexation request instead we would propose that we would like city council to hear from staff and cu boulder either november 10th or november 17th to review the updated application and then we would discuss as a council a plan for engaging the community sam and i would like to solicit community input kind of from mid-november maybe through january-ish and then use that to inform our response to the annexation application so then council could have a study session or meeting in january to review that community input and

[258:00] assess whether the city and cu boulder are aligned on annexation terms and then hopefully we would have public hearings for annexation starting in like april um assuming that there's alignment on that agreement between the city and cu so that is um really what we wanted to to check in with you all on to see if that sounded like a good um plan of action for the process subcommittee and for the beginning of the um engagement process on annexation sam anything to add mark wellix giving me a thumb one thumbs up that was pretty pretty well summarized rachel i think the one thing that i would add is it just seemed too quick to us to have staff respond to a proposal that's going to be this big and this impactful to the community and so what we're asking for your input on is to tell us if you want us to do something different than that because it's not the normal process timeline and it will invite a

[259:02] lot more community focus on this so just thumbs up or thumbs down that there hasn't been a really an opportunity for the community to engage on what they would like to see happen at that site um or wouldn't like to see happen at that site so we think it's pretty important that the community engage on the front end of this otherwise engagement after that feels you know like we've already responded to the annexation offer and we didn't but you know we didn't hear from the community we don't we're not informed by that and and we didn't properly engage so that's where we're coming from no mary and then mark yeah quick question um so the you're probably saying is that um the feedback be withheld um until after community um feedback and then um is that correct that is correct yeah the staff does not respond to what

[260:01] are essentially going to be the terms they're proposing um and staff has been negotiating those terms um but they're not sure what they're gonna get back so okay lengthen the response time okay so um what where on the engagement wheel will be will we be during that process or or will we will be you know there's there's these different nine steps on the engagement wheel or will we not be using that or where on that will we be um so will there be an inform stage will there be um i forget what all the steps are but um i think staff have might have that little flow chart if that's what you're talking about that they could pop up tonight but i my understanding is we would we would sort of be talking about that in november when we get together to discuss engagement after we get the the um annexation proposal from cu and

[261:00] so we would make sure that we're all in alignment on whatever the next steps of annexation are and that would be determined at our november meeting and we can i was going to say we can bring this up so a week from friday we have another process subcommittee meeting so it's upstream this friday in the full process subcommittee so mary we can raise that question with staff at that meeting it's a good question well what i would like a really clear process of engagement because otherwise we'll make there'll be a recommendation or not and then there'll be more changes requested they kind of go back to step one so i want us to be clear about what the engagement process looks like um i also think it might make sense to have staff gather all the feedback at whatever point makes sense and then present what they're going to present

[262:00] to how they're going to respond to the university prior to actually responding to the university so that there's an interim step there just a thought mark i want to second two things one uh mary's emphasis on structuring the community engagement correctly um and two the entire process that rachel has suggested uh in which we get community input before we respond and finalize a transaction this is a very contentious uh proposal and too often we do community engagement when it looks like the transaction is fully baked in and i think it would be very helpful let people have their say and make their points and give us give us some guidance before we formally respond to whatever it is that

[263:00] cu comes up with so i i think this this process is um really very very good and perfectly aligned with what we ought to be doing so thank you okay good enough that was the intention but we wanted to check in and make sure that we weren't making decisions on the process subcommittee without the support of council so good enough that's what i was hoping we'd get out of this rachel how about you yeah it doesn't sound like any objections or concerns other than um mary wanting us to to drill down better on on the actual engagement process right right well yep i think so okay that was the last scheduled item anything else to bring up in the post meeting discussion okay with that this meeting is adjourned thank you all very much have a good night everybody

[264:13] [Music] i'm