September 22, 2020 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music]

[1:24] in a spaceship yeah today i wanted to keep it simple there you go well i like your background i think people lean back and their heads disappear completely [Music] well i do have six o'clock on my side but um [Music]

[2:06] is perfect thank you uh is channel 8 ready to go by any chance except we're ready to go okay perfect then we call the meeting to order welcome everyone welcome to the september 22nd study session of the boulder city council first we have one announcement concerning the 2020 census boulder county is currently at 76.5 percent response rate and in the city we are at 73.8 percent there is still time to respond to the 2020 census so let's get to 100 percent completing the census is 100 safe easy and important the questionnaire only takes a few minutes to complete your responses are secure and

[3:01] confidential the result will help direct billions of dollars in federal funding to our community including resources for emergencies and disaster responses please encourage your friends and family to to respond by september 30th deadline at my 2020 census.gov or by calling 844-330-2020 tonight we'll be covering two topics the police oversight implementation update and next step and then input from council concerning the severe weather shelter for the 2021 season before we do so our councilmember rachael friend will read a special message on behalf of the entire council in honor of ruth bader ginsburg thanks juni

[4:00] um so i have been without uh wi-fi or reception for the last five days so i did not receive whatever we might be reading tonight does anybody have something i didn't get an updated packet so we may have to delay um until two weeks if it's not at anybody's disposal yeah we are going to have to delay because rachel we were under the impression that you were preparing this not citizen got it all right we'll come back to it in two weeks thanks thank you well thank you rachel so does anyone has any comment about ruth bader ginsburg that they would like to say or make i believe wait i need to check uh sam do you have any comments anyone well i think that we all recognize that she was a great woman and she gave her life to public service many of the causes that she devoted her life to were around empowering people who were disempowered

[5:00] including women and minorities she was a champion for the voter access laws as well as for women's right to choose whether to have an abortion or not and putting women on equal fitting with men and so it is a great loss to all of us that she passed um and uh we regret that that that happened and we look forward to hopefully having someone replace her on the court who shares their values thank you sam um rachel i saw your hands up would you like to say something nope no okay not yet yeah i just learned as well from mark that ruth bader ginsburg was his teacher i don't know if he wants to say anything but [Music] no i i i greatly appreciated having the opportunity to study under her but i would be remiss if

[6:00] i didn't say she was as intimidating a professor as i ever had and she would look down at her chart of the attendees in the class and the scariest words i ever heard were when she would look up and say mr wallock and it was uh but it was an honor to be in her class and and i reiterate what sam said she was she was a a great woman and a great supreme court justice and if we got a replacement justice who was two-thirds of what she was we would be doing well indeed um and i greatly greatly mourn her passing thank you thank you for your reflection mark and and and sam now we will move on to the next uh step or the next part of our presentation here and i will turn into the meeting over to jane uh or city manager to kick off the presentations thank you council member joseph um so

[7:00] this part of the presentation will be uh started by our new independent police monitor who i know you all have met joey lapari and joey has been working with our oversight task force so joey do you want to introduce your team absolutely so good evening everyone uh thank you all for uh having this on the agenda and for your ongoing interest and support uh for the oversight um ordinance um so as uh as jane said my name's joseph lapari um the other presenters uh tonight uh will be todd conklin see you on your screen and um michelle denae both todd and michelle are members of the uh current uh implementation team and have been both working hard very hard um to get this across the finish line so um looks like we have a presentation all right so what we'll be doing tonight we'll take you through if you can go to the next slide

[8:05] we'll just take you through sort of a reminder for you of what the goals and the purpose of this oversight mechanism are michelle will review with you the monitor panel hybrid that the implementation team ultimately decided on and she'll also review with you some of the other options that were looked at i'll take a few minutes then to update you on sort of the progress of the implementation team and give you a sense of the the work that they've been doing the very diligent uh persistent work that they've been doing and then we'll hand it over to todd and todd will cover the different roles of the various entities involved in this process and then he'll walk you through a procedural flow chart to show you how the the process is going to work then i will come back on and take you through some of the specific revisions that

[9:01] we've made since the initial passage of the ordinance most of this was just to flesh out aspects of the ordinance that had not been fully articulated in the initial version then we'll wrap up with next steps and any questions that the council members may have and so next slide so we'll turn it over to michelle hello everybody thank you so much for being here tonight there's some new faces that i'm happy to see and some rejoining faces that i'm also happy to see so much has happened i feel like since we were all in the same room together so i just want to say thank you for being here and for your time before i get into slide city i would like to remind us what brought us here and bring in a quote from mr zaid atkinson that he made at the age of 26 after his

[10:02] encounter with the boulder police department and all the fallout that came from it and he said there are instances like this where people don't come out alive i'm blessed that i got out alive and unharmed it definitely brings fear to my heart knowing that some people don't survive as we've seen in all of the headlines recently that is unfortunately entirely too true which brings me to my second quote from mary frances berry when you have police officers who abuse citizens you erode public confidence in law enforcement that makes the job of good police officers unsafe and i just really think both of those bring in so much of the energy

[11:01] that brought us here and so much of what we look forward to building with this department in this community so i'll continue into my first slide a reminder of our goals the task force was to develop an oversight model independent from the police department to better analyze police department trends and policies procedural improvements regarding complaint filing investigation monitoring and community oversight of investigation outcomes so instead of people sitting around feeling voiceless they feel like they are in fact heard and a part of the process the last piece and one of the most important is to enhance community outreach and engagement because if we all feel like we're walking on the same street then it's not going to be the same sort of energy next side please here we have something that was sort of the focus of our work

[12:00] over the last i feel like the last six months counts for two years so i'm gonna say three years um in order to build equity you have to start with trust and through equity you can build transparency in order to build transparency you have to have a means of timeliness and things getting turned around to where people feel like there's accountability and through accountability you have trust and round and round we go building a stronger community next slide this is a recap of the main three models of police oversight we worked directly with the national association for oversight of law enforcement otherwise known as naycole you might hear it referred to that further in the presentation the three main models um are as follows investigation focused which means that an outside entity is coming in

[13:01] and reviewing an investigation usually after the fact and can be costly depending on the needs of the community and has its own pros and cons that we weighed and then there's review focused which means that after the fact there's a board of community members that is reviewing a case and sort of making commentary to the chief or to the public the third is an auditor monitor focused model which has someone independent of the police department who is sort of walking alongside the investigation making sure everything is being done in a timely and respectful manner and we ended up with a hybrid of the three next slide please we've decided on a full-time independent police monitor with a community police oversight panel so like i was saying before the monitor

[14:00] is independent from the police department that person will review and audit investigations we like the idea of opening doors for complaints being received outside of the police department so they can be received through the monitor's office and communicated to the department accordingly the monitor will establish direct relationships with community members both those feeling underrepresented or disenfranchised and those who would like to better get to know the neighbors all the members of the community panel will have voting power and together they will make policy recommendations to further the growth of this department and this community next slide okay and it's back to joey thank you michelle um i thought michelle's uh portion of the presentation uh was helpful to try to sort of remind us uh

[15:00] what sort of issues and decisions have been thought through up to this point um and now i want to take a moment um just to kind of pause and um and highlight the uh the the really uh difficult work that this entire implementation team has been engaged in uh over the past uh almost two years for some of them now um and you know anytime you're talking about policing you're talking about race you're gonna have um just inherently difficult conversations difficult issues to work through and i just want to thank the entire implementation team for not only bringing their their own observations their own life experiences to this process but but i also want to thank the members of the police department who also engaged in this process which is not always easy for police departments and police officers to do so all the folks that have been involved in this process i think have demonstrated a commitment

[16:00] to not only their community but just persistence in the pursuit of justice and i think they should be thanked for that and um really applauded for the work that they've been doing uh next slide please i just wanted to share a few images with all of you from uh this two-year process that uh many of these folks have been through um i had access to an archive collection of photos that i was able to go through and really see um visually you know the the meetings and the work that had been done before i arrived and again i think you can look at these pictures and sort of see um the the both the camaraderie but also um you know they were engaged in some some intense discussions uh there were disagreements that they had to work through um and going through the archive pictures there were so many of these um large post-it note uh images that you see in there in the middle and you could literally see them thinking through the process and

[17:00] documenting the their own thought process and so i think that was really valuable that they went through that process these entities are unique to each city you can't just take one and copy it from one city and paste it into another city you really have to go through this process to build your own um oversight mechanism and these folks did that and i just wanted to thank them again and sort of honor their uh the hard work that they they did um and i should say i think they had some fun along the way too it wasn't just uh doom and gloom and difficulty um i think that's that should be mentioned as well um next slide please um i i also just wanted to use a couple of quotes i thought that sort of for me encapsulated what i observed with this implementation team over time um the first one is from helen keller she said until the great mass of the people shall be filled with a sense of responsibility for each other's welfare social justice could never be attained when i came across that quote it really struck me as wow that's that's really what this group of people did they

[18:01] uh this implementation team they came together um in the interest of other people's welfare and in the interest of their their fellow community members um and i think that you know needs to be um recognized and appreciated uh secondly for marianne wright edelman she said the challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place just as we make it a safer place and that that quote there i think encapsulates the the balancing act that any group that is doing a reform uh mechanism creating a reform mechanism um in the realm of policing has to keep in mind that yes we're here to uh make the the nation uh the country a better place make our communities a better place uh but we're also working for public safety here and um i think you know maintaining that commitment to public safety at the same time that you're making your community better is is an important balance to strike and they've done that i believe

[19:00] lastly from an unknown author i really like this quote because i think it demonstrates exactly what the overall process that this this implementation team this group of folks went through reform is not an idea we implement rather reform is something produced by the interactions between groups which comes to have meaning through institutions and that's really what we had a diverse group of folks with different backgrounds different professional experiences some police some not some civilians but they all came together brought their experiences together and built a new institution that that captures the values that they shared together and so um you know this is it's it shouldn't go you know without uh remark that uh the the um the commitment that is required to get through this process uh i've been a part of these processes in other cities and seen lots of people kind of come and go and i just really want to thank the implementation team for the commitment that they demonstrated

[20:00] and um how they you know came up with a you know very workable and uh good mechanism that is going to bring transparency um and increased accountability um on behalf of the public in boulder so with that um i will turn it over to todd who will take you through some of the specific roles of each entity and the float chart todd hello everybody all right next slide please it's good to be with all of you tonight i've been here several times before doing these update presentations so i haven't had the chance to meet all of you because of the pandemic unfortunately but it's good to be here with you tonight so here on this slide we see the four different institutions that will all be working together in some capacity in this police reform process so beginning at the top um with the role of the monitor obviously we have here with us tonight our monitor joey by pari um he's done a great job we have a very good relationship with him and we're very happy to have him so what you know just

[21:00] to quickly go through the role of the monitor here it would be to receive classify and route the complaints once those complaints are received upon that upon receiving classifying and routing those complaints he would also oversee the investigation that is being performed by the internal affairs department within the boulder police department the internal affairs department is that department within the boulder police department that's actually doing the investigation so the monitor would be there to oversee it make sure everything's being done responsibly fairly and thoroughly so the monitor would also be working with a community oversight panel in presenting the finalized case to them answering any questions that they might have in working with them and kind of helping them through that process so that brings us to the next kind of institution that we've built in this process which is the community oversight panel so the community oversight panel would be reviewing completed internal affairs investigations so the community oversight panel would have the authority to decide which cases that they would select

[22:00] they are not required to select all of them but we imagine that they realistically would because these would be pretty serious cases and that's what this panel is designed to do so upon reviewing that case they would work with a monitor monitor would help them work through these tough questions answer any questions that they might have once they feel complete with that process they would issue a recommendation to the chief of police regarding that case furthermore they can also select policy and procedure areas to be studied by the monitor for possible areas and avenues of reform furthermore they would also evaluate the office of the monitor itself in order to provide an internal accountability mechanism there going to keep things moving growing and going forward the next and third institution that actually already existed it predated our work is the office of the professional standards unit so another way to think about this office is there's essentially the internal affairs department of the boulder police department so if you hear me use the phrase internal affairs or professional standards unit functionally that's the

[23:01] same thing this is the office that is actually investigating a complaint against an officer once that complaint is filed so the professional standards unit and the monitor are going to have a very close relationship by definition they're going to be working together very closely the monitor would be overseeing that investigation offering guidance and assistance if that were to be needed and the fourth and final institution which also obviously predated our work would be the chief of police and their role in this process would be to make the final decision once that investigation has been completed all right next slide please all right so looking at this flow chart here i know the text is probably very small but this is the complaint procedure so i'm not gonna read through the whole thing but i will take you step by step through each step in this process of where the complaint would go so if you have any questions i would be more than happy to answer them at the end of this presentation because i know that this can be kind of a complex process here so the first step is that

[24:02] there would be a complaint so someone a community member is unhappy with how something's done or maybe it's an officer saw something that they thought need to be reported they would file that complaint now there are two ways that that complaint can be filed the complaint can number one be filed with the monitor themselves so that complaint can be filed via an email a phone call they can file it online in a dropbox they can walk into the monitor's office and file it we try to keep that as expansive as possible to make everyone feel welcome enough to file the complaint because some people might be more comfortable with anybody all or some people might just want to walk in the office or give a phone call that's why we have so many options there the second way to file the complaint is that they can go to the boulder police department themselves you know same thing there they could do a phone call they can go in person however they want to do that they can also file it with the boulder police department so the important thing here is that these two entities will communicate with each other within 24 hours once they have received a complaint the monitor receives the complaint they will

[25:01] notify the internal affairs division if the internal affairs division receives the complaint same thing they will notify the monitor within 24 hours so moving on to step two once that happens the oversight panel will be notified that a complaint has been filed and they will be given a general description of what that complaint is they are not going to be given regular updates regarding the investigation at this point and the reason for that is you do not want to bias the panel against any of the parties at this stage you don't want to inundate them with every nuanced detail the investigation they'll get that once it's been completed so right now they're just going to be told be on the lookout in the coming weeks because we have an investigation so try to make sure your schedule is reasonably open so moving forward to step three once that has been done the ia sergeant will conduct the investigation the monitor will oversee this process provide guidance if needed and that's pretty much step three in that one not a lot not too much complicated there moving on

[26:00] to step four the internal affairs sergeant will have completed their investigation so once the internal affairs sergeant has completed that investigation that the results and you know that completed investigation is then given up through the command staff of the boulder police department so we go you know to a sergeant a commander and a deputy chief i believe is the process there and the reason that they do that is because it provides an internal accountability mechanism within the boulder police department and kind of creates an accountability culture there which we believe is a very good thing and so they would be kind of making a recommendation saying we think this investigation has been done thoroughly and then they would push it up the chain of command that way and so once that has all been done it's gone up the chain of command then we get to step five which is the monitor would provide recommendations regarding the investigation kind of what they thought about the whole thing once that happens the case will then be given to the oversight panel and the oversight panel would vote on whether or not they want to accept that case if they do accept that case you know

[27:01] they would read through it in a confidential setting they would discuss it among themselves if they have any questions they are free to ask the internal affairs sergeant and the monitor about any questions you know like what's happening here do you think you need to look into this area a little bit more could you explain this to us we're a bit confused on this area and once they feel complete with that process they would then make a recommendation to the chief of police and then give that case to the chief which brings us to step seven the chief would then read through that read the recommendations that all these other parties have given and they would make that final determination on the case so the authority for final determination still rests with the chief of police once the chief has made that final determination they would then inform the original complainant and the party they would inform all the relevant parties what has happened and what the resolution is after that the monitor would also then talk to the complainant saying you know this is my opinion of the investigation here's what i think about it and they also have the ability to make a

[28:00] public report regarding this investigation so i know that was a lot of information be very happy to answer questions about that and i'll hand it back to joey thank you todd appreciate that go to the next slide please okay so um now i'll take you through um sort of the various categories of revisions or um really say revisions but it really was more of a fleshing out um or completion of the the initial ordinance so our first category is complaint and investigations process we made some language clarifications to make it absolutely clear that all civilian complaints will be received classified and reviewed by the monitor uh there's some initial language um in the ordinance um it was only if they were indicated that um the monitor would review it only if it was filed with the monitor and that that wasn't exactly the intention of the implementation team so the monitor will be able to see any complaint whether it's filed with the monitor or with the

[29:00] police department um the monitor will observe uh interviews and recommend additional investigation um if warranted there was some discussion around these areas in regards to observing interviews it was initially worded as participate in interviews um but through additional discussion uh we felt that that was sort of an impossible position to put the monitor in to both be in it to operate as an investigator and then have to come around and review the investigation that's sort of inherently a conflict and so we kept the monitor in the the interviews but in an observation role not in a investigative sort of questioning role and then around recommending uh additional investigation the initial the original ordinance said can propose additional investigation there was some discussion around making that uh stronger potentially to recom to require additional investigation ultimately where the implementation

[30:00] teams uh what the implementation team settled on was to recommend uh additional investigation but we also created a mechanism where it's not just a one-time recommendation so the monitor will make the recommendation to the internal affairs sergeant um to for additional investigation if if the internal affairs or sergeant rejects that recommendation the monitor can then make the recommendation to the chief and that is done in writing and then the chief's response is in writing if the chief refuses or rejects that recommendation then the monitor can appeal to the city manager and recommend that another angle of investigation uh be carried out and then the city manager would make that final determination in those cases um i don't expect that to that last one to be a a common issue i think that would be very rare um indeed um the last uh portion on this slide um we wanted we are adding we've added some

[31:01] clarification language just to make it absolutely clear that the monitor and the panel's uh review and recommendations occur prior to the chief of police decision the decision made by by the chief um so that they can get that those recommendations in a timely way next slide please application selection and removal process we just needed to flesh out what this was going to look like how people were going to apply to be on the panel how they were going to be selected and potentially removed if that needed to happen and so consistent with the city's overall commitment to racial equity the implementation team wanted to make sure that uh there were there weren't any unnecessary barriers to people applying to become a panel member and so the the the barriers are low there there are no barriers um i basically just have to make a phone call or send an email to indicate your your

[32:00] interest um once you've indicated your interest the current implementation the way the implementation team is proposing that this will work is that uh the implementation team members the current implementation team members who are not interested in being on the oversight panel will partner with two local non-profits to select uh to interview and select the panel members and this this will be a fairly intensive interview process um where you know the panel members will be able to ask any questions they want um and you know really get to know the person get to know their their their background their perspective and then once the uh that selection panel makes their selection of who they want on the oversight panel those names will then go to uh the city council as proposed here and the council will vote uh individually on each um each um proposed or prospective panel member um to whether to approve their

[33:00] appointment or not um similarly um if the oversight panel has cause to need to remove a fellow oversight panel member either because they violated the confidentiality agreement which i'll talk about in just a minute or they just fail to perform their duties they don't they don't show up for meetings don't participate in the case reviews the rest of the panel can actually vote them them off the the panel uh if that were to occur those removals those votes to remove would also go before the city council and the council would then approve or confirm that removal i should say that once the initial oversight panel is seated the way this uh this ordinance is proposing would be that the exit the seat this the existing oversight panel will work with uh we'll partner with two local non-profits just like the implementation team does in the initial stage but in the future the oversight panel um will work with the non-profit

[34:01] uh to interview and select members uh for council's approval next slide please uh in terms regarding the terms of service um we the implementation team settled on 11 panel members two of which will be designated as a specific student seats uh these could be any student in higher education whether it be cu naropa or any other uh university or college in the in the area we thought it was important to ensure that we incorporated college students into this process uh partly because this process was sort of kicked off um because of an interaction with a college student um the the challenge with that was if we had you know your typical terms for panels like this would be two to three years but for that would be a challenge for students if we had a particularly three year term for students that would pretty much eliminate seniors and probably juniors from participating

[35:01] we'd only get freshmen and maybe sophomores applying to this and so we wanted to make sure we opened this up to uh all classes of students um and including grad students and so um we thought one year was reasonable for students given their sort of inherently transitory nature graduating moving on but we'll also have a two-term maximum both for the um the the non-student members who will have three-year terms and the student members who will have one year term so maximum of six years for non-students in two years for students next slide please we also needed to create a process where the oversight panel could hear uh hear reviews of cases and the details of cases in confidence in in a in a confidential setting um the reason for this is um

[36:01] fairly obvious but you know in these cases you often have um privacy concerns you have juveniles who may be a part of these cases and so you know you have to have a sort of protected confidential setting to openly discuss these and so we created um two different uh meetings we had initially the the ordinance just had a public meeting and directed the monitor to sort of discuss all the details of the cases in public um that we we decided just wasn't workable it wasn't in anyone anyone's interest and so uh we'll have public meetings where we report out on sort of summary information about sort of the number of cases that are under investigation how long they've been under investigation what what types of complaints what types of allegations it includes to give the public some sense of what what is happening in the process um but when we when the implementation team discusses the actual case itself we'll go into a close uh meeting uh to

[37:01] protect uh the complainant and the officer's confidentiality once the case is closed and it's completed um the board and the monitor are required by the ordinance to report out on on that case but that's after it's closed and then everything is completed uh as i've indicated there will be a confidentiality agreement uh that wasn't a part of the initial ordinance um and this is just uh to protect the the um as i said the the uh privacy um of the complainants um and to ensure the integrity of the process next slide please lastly the ordinance did direct us did direct the implementation team to create a mediation process the implementation team discussed this and felt that it would be better to put that in the operations manual once that once the oversight panel was created let that oversight panel create the mediation process

[38:00] and then put it in their operations manual mediation processes can be things that kind of evolve and develop over time and so you wouldn't want to put the specific language of that process in the ordinance then you'd have to go back to the ordinance every time you wanted to adjust the mediation process and i should say this once this is created it will replace the existing uh conflict facilitation process that is within the police department currently and so we'll create this mediation process outside of the department but that officers and compliance can engage in uh when they feel it's appropriate next slide i think that yeah that's that's about it in terms of the any sort of revisions or changes to the initial ordinance as you know we have the first reading of the ordinance coming up in october and then followed in november by the second reading and the public hearing next slide

[39:00] and so we're at the question portion of the presentation now um we just want to open this up to the council uh give you and i'll give all of you an opportunity to ask us any questions you have about the ordinance about the revisions are there any particular modifications you all would like to see we are happy to answer any questions you have thank you very much julie for this wonderful presentation and i appreciate the fact that students are included as part of the presentations it's very thoughtful and thank you so much we have several council members with questions we'll start with sam i saw aaron was next then mark and then rachel so please go ahead sam you're still muted sam every night once um so thank you joey for the great presentation into the task

[40:00] force for all the work that you put in this is a really remarkable piece of work um and so i look forward to discussing it after the questions are over my first question has to do with the application process um it it indicated that barriers will be low and that um folks just need to indicate their interest through one of many channels what would what would the process be after that so one question i have would additional written application materials be accepted or will it all be based on interviews and if it's going to be interviews will the questions in the interviews be standardized so you can get those one at a time but i was just wanting more detail about how that application process might work sure i think the way the implementation team has proposed it is that there wouldn't be any sort of written application process it would be largely interview based um and that that was intentional we discussed um the idea of submitting resumes of

[41:01] submitting application letters um but they did not want to um and i want to speak for the implementation team folks if you guys want to chime in please please jump in what's that i i would say since you're all familiar with the process very similar to how this task force was created there was no formal application it was very much a letter of interest and in order to remove barriers we just didn't want to say that it had to be a letter if that's an obstacle then we could facilitate a phone application or something to this effect sort of open those doors for differently abled people and to add to that um councilman weaver just to add to that um we intend for that oral interview section section to be a very rigorous process you know it's going to be a very thorough process so what i think a lot of questions that might have come up in a written interview processes will come up in that oral review process to make

[42:00] sure that we get to know who those applicants are on a very deep level great and i'll go to the last point will the interview questions be standardized so one of the things that is the case with interviews is sometimes you've got lots of standard questions and then some answers bring up more questions and so i was just kind of curious what the thinking was about how to how to be fair and equitable um because you might have an applicant who's very good on their feet and very good in an interview process but maybe less qualified or have less lived experience than somebody who isn't quite as good an interview process who might interview poorly but might have a lot of experience would be helpful so maybe you don't have that all fleshed out yet but i think that would be a very important piece of how you put the um oversight panel together absolutely and i don't think we've we haven't actually talked about what those uh questions are going to look like but i i do i think it's fair to presume that it

[43:01] would be step there would be standardized questions to make sure that the the panel gets makes ensures that they you know uh do their due diligence on key issues but then as you said responses to questions can raise other questions and so there'll have to be a little uh room for give and take there and to ask questions that arise based on the person's responses and answers but i would expect that there will be a standardized set of questions to get at least get it started to make sure that it's fair as well very good thank you all and then my only other question is uh you mentioned that nonprofit organizations will be involved in the selection process have they already been selected or is that would there be a process for selecting the nonprofit organizations they have not been selected yet um that will that will involve a subsequent conversation um once the ordinance is actually passed then that and that's decided on that that will be the mechanism uh they will the

[44:01] implementation team will have to have that uh return to that discussion and flesh that out a little further great and are there any thoughts at this point about what the criteria might look like like what what are the because you've specified non-profit organizations i was wondering what the thinking was behind that and and what they might look like would defer to the implementation team to discuss having this in the ordinance and decided to stay away from that we had used the language had a history of serving the community and having serving ideally an emphasis on serving underrepresented groups so we didn't want to say you'd had to you had to be established for 10 years or 20 years because then one of them could have closed and another one could have opened so we would wanted to be a demonstrated history of serving but not necessarily have it be too finite to where we were going to exclude or yeah okay very good thank you that's one of my questions thank you sam i'm

[45:02] mark you're next okay thank you uh thank you uh all for that presentation it really was very very good um i just have a couple of sort of technical questions um uh the first is how did you get to 11 members as as the proper size of the of the board yeah i think we started off discussing nine i think that 1.12 was proposed it was really kind of discussing going through sort of the practicalities of it um i think it's it's probably best to try to aim for an odd number in case you have votes you don't have split votes um what with some of the other considerations and i think if i think if it would we talked about nine and if you know one or two people can't make it that week or that month then you're down to you know six or seven folks and so uh it just seemed like uh 11 was sort of the the right balance um i think maybe there had been some other

[46:00] panels that or some other boards that uh the team had looked to for the in terms of the numbers but uh it just seemed like after some discussion that that that felt right to the uh obviously i'm going to defer to you on that but uh it seems like a very large group and perhaps a little unwieldy um and are you sending to council the exact number of candidates for the board now we are we said are we ratifying or are we uh making any kind of selection and the follow-up question for that is if in the unlikely event that we said one candidate is is manifestly inappropriate for the position what happens then right so uh and then i'll take the second question first in that instance that individual would just not be placed on on the panel and the other members that would have been proposed and approved uh would move forward

[47:02] but would you send to us another candidate to follow yeah yeah absolutely that one would be rejected and then the the selection panel would have to meet again uh to identify another person uh to send to you and and my last question is is there any process of for resolution if there are differences between the monitor and the panel so the monitor could will communicate uh the monitor's recommendations to the chief separately from the the panel uh and so they could they can disagree um but i'll say this the there's a what is going to bring all these different entities that are making these recommendations to the chief uh largely to consensus is the department's adoption and the chief's adoption of a disciplinary matrix which is going to sort of lay out what these options are for various forms of discipline and so the the oversight panel will have that uh the i'll i will have that and so we'll

[48:00] all be sort of working from the same set of expectations okay all right well thank you that was very helpful thank you all righty thank you very much aaron you were next i'm not sure if you still want to go ahead i do yes thank you jenny and um thanks very much joey and todd and michelle for your presentations and uh for all of your work on this todd michelle you've been at this a long time really appreciate all the effort you put into this very careful thought and we're getting close to the finish line it's great to see so uh sam and uh mark asked several of my questions one remaining one is what allows the oversight panel to meet in closed session and this is probably a tom carr question tom i thought that all of our public or all of all the meetings in the city by public bodies had had to be public publicly accessible um not technically so the

[49:00] actually under the law the only body that has to meet publicly is the council as a policy matter we extend that to all boards and commission this is not a border commission under the charter so there really is no law or requirement they have to comply with the open meetings act and luis toro is also on the call and he's thought about this more than i am if he has anything to add i'd appreciate it yeah thanks uh we did look at that pretty carefully basically tom already laid out the the legal uh background and the the other concern though is that we're going to be discussing uh or the oversight panels we'll be discussing confidential personnel matters and that's something that we strongly believe should not be over the panel you know the group strongly believed was not appropriate for the public we they spent a lot of time balancing the the desire for transparency with the need to protect uh you know the confidential information of city employees so

[50:00] that's the compromise basically so the the the way it was written is is most of the proceedings will be public but when they're discussing specific cases and naming names that should not be public was the determination of the panel and tom already laid out that the um you know the the open meetings law and uh and our city charter provision about executive sessions for council don't don't apply to this group that's right yeah no i totally understand the rationale for why you would want to do a closed session so that makes sense to me just to understand that a little better is it really a matter of choice that we fully apply the open meetings law to our boards and commissions or is that not required by law choice and tradition yes aaron the the the open meetings applies only to governing bodies and those are clearly not um but because they're advisory to counsel and the tradition in boulder and the strong language and the charter that says all meetings shall be open

[51:00] doesn't say that about voids and commissions but we apply it great well i'm glad we do but i had thought it was a little bit more ingrained in law than that but that's i'm glad we do it um so i think that's it for my questions i'll just have a few comments once we get to the discussion point thanks thank you aaron uh next is rachel thanks junie you're doing a great job following along here i i'm impressed i'm a little stressed about that position myself okay um thanks to everybody for the presentation and the hard work um that's gone before this um for the whole oversight um undertaking i i don't know who this question is to um it may be to um tom or jane or council members who were on when we were seating the initial committee but i'm wondering why would council select and approve the panel it feels a little bit like we're getting into more hiring and firing than the

[52:01] charter um authorizes us to do i understand we do it with boards and commissions i'm not sure if this is in the same vein but it feels um a bit like we would be possibly micromanaging and i have concerns about politicization when we do appointments so i'm just wondering the history of why would we seat this with council why did that happen and and why would we want to do that should i answer that quickly the the council isn't just it is approving or ratifying um not necessarily appointing and the thought was the council should have some say because you're the representatives of the people but it sounds like from mark's question that if we say no then it's a no so it's beyond like we actually have the ultimate authority no i'm hearing correctly no yes yes and the question is do you want to delegate that to community members or have some counsel oversight and this was a compromise taking it out

[53:01] of the city manager's hand leaving it to council to ratify because we didn't we didn't want it in the city manager's office well the city manager didn't want it in her office one or the other um so it just seems like something that we don't we don't do day to day it doesn't sound like we'd be doing the the direct interviews or reading the applications we would be more ratifying other people's interviews and selections so it just seems like something that's that's not within our usual purview and i'm not sure that we have the expertise to do it [Music] to do it in just this one scenario in many ways this is a hybrid it's not a boarding commission it's not a purely community working group it's different they have a role in police discipline and the thought was that there should be some community oversight as the representatives of the community you provide that oversight all right i appreciate the hit the history there i will um circle back to it when we have discussion thanks that's my only

[54:01] question for juni sure do you mind if i call a queen on that um thank you so rachel i think you raise a question for me with that with that question which is um okay so council has this approval final approval role and and i understand the compromise that gets you there on what basis do we then make that decision given that it sounds like the primary um evaluation of these candidates is through interviews right like um it seems like an un reasonable expectation that council will go listen to many many hours of uh detailed interviews right so so what would be the basis that council would you know evaluate those those prospective appointees great question yeah i think yeah go ahead mission i think everyone's part in i'm not sure exactly this ordering

[55:00] usually works but that was something that we went back and forth on at length and were impressed based on city council's desire for input thus far that they want that and if we didn't include it it would just end up sort of this is the conversation would be having oppositely tonight if we didn't read that michelle sorry let me jump in that the connection was break it up a little bit i'm sorry um aaron i think your your question was um what will the the council members base their approval on uh if they're not in the interview right right because i do understand how you arrived at the council having a role but the question is how would we how would we base our decisions right so i i think there would be a written product from the selection panel once they've they've made their selections they would uh provide

[56:00] a write-up on each of the the members that they're proposing to you so you have something to go off of um and then you know you would have the chance in the um the approval process if you if the council wanted to i think question the person i think that that could be part of the process so i think a written document that you would receive explaining to council members why the selection panel selected that individual gives you a description of their background everything that you would need to know to evaluate that person [Music] and then yeah the panel would the council would make their determination i think this isn't necessarily articulated in the ordinance now but um if the council needed additional whatever whatever the council feels like they need to make that decision you know just let us know and and we can we can try to figure something out but that's a fair question

[57:00] so i would expect a written product and then whatever else the council would want in terms of doing their own due diligence okay thanks here we might want to pin this down a little bit more you know in the ordinances but we can discuss it a little a little later sure colloquy on aaron's colloquy only if i can colloquy back on it i just wanted to follow up i i was curious in michelle's response i i think i heard you know basically we knew that you all would want to be the final um hiring firing authority here for this panel um if if that hadn't been the case what might the um the oversight committee have recommended or what would your recommendation be who do you think should be doing the final decision making here and i'm sorry if there's background noise i'm in a hotel room with family and there's a lot of conversation so sorry in advance for that i apologize for coming out um originally we had discussed in its

[58:01] sort of infancy that it would be without that third mechanism it would be that the current community members and the nonprofits picked the following and then they picked you know on and on down the line the panel and the nonprofits that have agreed to sort of work on and todd correct me if this is a mystery representation but this is my recollection that it would be sort of more self-contained and not need that approval correct in our initial discussions um that's what we assumed and then we also counter assumed that council would want some say in that process so it would be helpful um for us as the implementation task force to kind of receive some guidance from council here as well thanks for that clarification thank you uh next is mary thank you juni um i think most of my

[59:01] questions have been answered i do have one regarding the um [Music] the seated panel and development of the operations is that would they be the ones that would develop the the operations manual for the panel is the as soon as the panel gets seated they would go to work on that yeah i think they would what i would imagine is they would probably need to form a working group a subcommittee that would then sort of focus more on that and obviously as the monitor i would assist with that and provide whatever resources they need i could get access to other cities operations manuals for for their boards and for their panels and provide them the resources that they need to to make to to determine their process so yeah yeah it would ultimately be shaped by the the seated panel okay great um and then um a question about um meeting frequency would it be like once a month or

[60:01] ad hoc or more when needed or yeah so right now so that they're going to meet minimum once a month um and they can meet more if needed okay great um just just add a little bit to that the um there will be i think the expectation is that there'll be a once a month uh public meeting and then as cases arise and the panel needs to meet to discuss the case then they have to be maybe several several other times during the month depending on on the case mode okay great thank you um and then um on in that and that flow chart todd that you presented um there were um two ways of initiating the the case and um is that is it limited to those two methods um right now the two methods are um you

[61:00] can either file a complaint with the boulder police department or with the monitor and those are the two methods as of now yes okay great um and then um we do we do hope to create a multitude of avenues for people to file complaints so be that a mail-in or maybe a text line or something we've discussed a variety of ways for people to get the word to where it needs to go versus just having to go to the monitor or the police department so we do intend on expanding that great okay did you consider the possibility of having folks come to a member of the panel since i've been here did that come up on the committee on the implementation team before i was here i don't believe it did but i don't believe it because it came to the panel they would either have to route it to the monitor or the boulder police department um and

[62:02] i think actually we did have those discussions and then questions came up of well if someone you know if you brought the complaint to the panel with the panel member who received that have to recuse themselves once they received the investigation and so i don't think we intended for the panel to be um okay yeah all right right i think what will probably end up happening in practice um the panel you know will be assisting with community outreach it won't just be the monitor going out to do uh community engagement events and so members of the panel will be coming in touch with members of the public in these settings and so you probably will have community members come to a board member or excuse me a panel member and say hey i have this issue i want to talk with you about it um do i file a complaint do you think i should file or maybe say i i already know i want to file a complaint what is the process at that point the panel member would just direct them to the process to file you know they can i would encourage the

[63:02] panel members not to discuss the case too much because exactly the reason that todd said you may back in have to review that case but uh you know they would need to direct the person either to the monitor to file the complaint or to the police department okay thank you um then um previously before we got going on on the task force and a police oversight panel we had independent investigations that would happen such as what happened in the zade atkinson case is there what kind of role would there be for an independent investigation would that still happen is that off the table how does that integrate into this process right so um as proposed the the ordinance does not have an investigative role for the monitor precisely because the monitor's main role in this ordinance is to conduct audits and reviews of the

[64:01] investigations so if you had so in a sort of general sense on a day-to-day basis you know that would be putting the monitor in a compromise to to have to review the cases that they participated in as as as an investigator i think in association yeah michelle go ahead that's correct uh the role of the monitor but we did in our last round with city council be sure to include sort of a clause for there to be this option for an independent investigation so if something like what happened happens again and for whatever reason the members of the community feel that both in this case you and the community panel have not come to a just conclusion they can petition city council city council can decide we are going to go ahead and move forward with an independent investigation and we as a task force have identified

[65:00] some of the most qualified bodies to do such an investigation so that was that was left in indiana okay i didn't okay great thank you um and then oh let's see the the panel so the the as i understood it the monitor presents cases to the panel and then the panel decides whether or not to take a case um under what criteria does the panel do that so the when the panel is formed and they kind of create their bylaws codes of conduct book they would establish regulations um that would help them determine why they would accept a case and why they would not accept a case okay so that hasn't been fleshed out yet it's still part of the operations yeah the language coordinates um says directs the the the panel once they're seated to do

[66:01] just that to create that okay great thank you um sorry there we go um in the ordinance um there there was a the term critical incidence was crossed out but then later in the ordinance it's actually referred to so it was crossed out in the definition but then referred to later on why is that yeah so that was around uh the issue of having the monitor called out to critical incidents and so we kept the language what ended up happening was there was multiple different definitions of critical incident and we didn't want to be too specific in the ordinance to define critical incident in one way that would then either be inconsistent

[67:00] with another definition in the city like within um within another uh institution within the city uh and so the decision was made to um i'm sorry i just just repeat the question for me one time i just want to make sure i'm fully answering it for you yeah so um i think you got to the answer um because because the the term critical incident was um it was crossed out but then it was mentioned later in the ordinance so the the way we decided to resolve that was to sit to keep the reference to critical incident but then have language that said the the chief and the monitor will work together to identify the protocols and the types of incidents that the monitor will respond to so we didn't want to tie it become too specific and then in the ordinance and then realize down the road oh we need to add this other element and so keeping it out of the ordinance allows the chief and the monitor to work together

[68:00] to figure out what uh incidents that should be and it's it's we've already started those conversations and you know they're completely open to it um it's just it is a question of what is the trigger for the monitor to go out to to observe a scene um is it a is it a call from an that an ambulance responds to the scene is it a particular level of injury uh and so we decided that we didn't want to write that level of detail uh into this ordinance and trying to could just cause problems and so we we just got rid of the definition kept the the spirit of it and the language that said that the chief and the monitor will work together to to accomplish that so will that be accomplishing that will that be part of the um once the panel is seated and things are going that will be defined or i i'm not sure more um that those discussions have been more between the monitor and the chief and the department um in

[69:00] terms of what would trigger but the the um i guess what that will probably we'll have that in fully in place before the implementation the um oversight panel is seated but once they're seated if they want to expand that or define that more specifically if they don't think we're doing it enough or they think we're doing it too much they could give us some direction on that theoretically [Music] okay great thank you and then i think i have one more question um so what part of the part of the the mission of the panel will be um to monitor um trends and and new things statistics and things that are coming down the pike and um and basically it's it's for continuous improvement of of the

[70:01] whole um justice area of of the city so who will how will those materials be identified i'm sorry materials for review and what statistics i mean is it going to be any member of the panel can be reviewing journals and bring it up or is it is it just kind of wide open as to what can be brought to the discussion so i think they'll be the way it'll work in practice the panel will begin to review individual cases and then they may start seeing um patterns in the cases they may start see an issue that just keeps coming up in multiple cases and then they can sort of flag that for the monitor and say hey we've been seeing this this particular allegation in a number of different complaints can you pull the data for us on how many complaints we've had like that what's been the outcomes of them

[71:00] and so then i would pull all that data forward put it into a package form present it to them and then they would determine what they wanted to do with that if they wanted to do further investigation or further auditing or make some recommendations to the department to address those issues so the the trends and statistics will be related to um cases that have happened not so much as what's going on out there in the world it could be necessarily the panel could kind of identify areas within the department itself and say we find this interesting we think this is an area where we can you know push a reform agenda and then working with the monitor and then working with the police chief they can start that process so it can be the monitor doing that and it can also be the panel doing that as well okay great um and could it also be you know we're in the process of um of police reform and so is it something is that something that could be looked at as well as could the chief for example say um

[72:03] there's this area that it would be great to get your feedback on is that something that could happen absolutely yes absolutely that would be an ideal outcome if if we got to get to that point where where the chief is coming to the panel and saying hey i want your input on this okay great um and i think that's all i have thank you thank you thank you mary uh the next person is sam well councilman thank you i was uh gonna call a queen on rachel on aaron's conversation but it was getting confusing so this is kind of returning to the appointment question um how will the public have a chance to weigh in so there's two parts to that will the interviews that the panel holds with applicants be public and will the public be allowed to have comment there second part of the question is in the way that it's been presented where council would do the final

[73:01] ratification was it intended that there would be a public hearing before the council moved on to discuss uh the implementation team has not set it up as a hearing but you know now that we've now that the team has presented this uh to the council the ball sort of in the council's court to um to uh either accept or to add to that process um sorry your first question was is the intention of the interview so when we do board and commission interviews that's done in public so the question is was the intention of the interviews for panel applicants to be a public process so that the public could watch the interviews that has not been discussed since i've been here but i'll i'll defer to the the team i don't think that has been considered todd or michelle is there anything to add on that it has not been considered to this point but we would be very happy to consider that at our next scheduled meeting

[74:01] yeah the reason i bring it up is in the context of just imagine a scenario in which one of the potential appointees is very controversial and so where would it be that there would be that public input that would identify that as a controversial potential appointment so if it were going to come to the council for ratification i would imagine that we would do it as a public hearing in the sense that we would open it up for any kind of input or comments um if we don't have that role but the public still wanted to have comments so you know part of what rachel and was hinting at was maybe the council would over politicize it and shouldn't be involved but it would seem like we want some route for public input on the final um selected candidates just in case there's you know a a controversy or you know some kind of um deep concern that wasn't fleshed out

[75:01] in the interview process so i was just raising where in this process would the public enter whether or not council approves where is the public going to get a say at least at the level of the the ones that are being recommended for approval and if council isn't involved then there's got to be a step where you've got a list of people who are intended to be approved and the public needs to be able to weigh in to somebody right yeah go ahead michelle okay i think that's an excellent question and we had not quite gotten to that level of alternative because we assumed based on a lot of um we had heard that council was gonna want that pe so we really hadn't fleshed out what the alternative would look like but if that's something we'd like us to do we can definitely do that and bring it back for further consideration great thank you that's all jimmy thank you sam uh next is rachel yeah i just had um one follow-up

[76:01] question for michelle um i sat here sort of reflecting on on sort of the recommendation including what you all thought council was going to um really want to to do with the um seating process and i'm just wondering is there anything else that is in the recommendation or proposed ordinance that is maybe not as as the um committee wanted or was sort of pre-screened because you figured council is going to want it is there anything else that you're not todd or michelle or joey if this uh applies to you as well that you would you would wish were different but it's presented to us um because of maybe what we asked for a year ago i just wanted to open it up and see if there's anything else like that thanks i actually have a thank you for that question it's very helpful i have a question for council based off of that um i know that in previous update hearings that we've given council

[77:00] expressed a desire for there to be some type of restorative justice program to be included in the ordinance is that something that council is still interested in is that your only question or you have more well i i did the restorative justice pieces i don't think uh to me but that's my only question um just broadly wanted to invite todd or michelle to to let us know if there was anything else that they would maybe tweak before we um have our discussions and i don't know the answer to the restorative justice um i personally am a fan of restorative justice i don't know what the conversation was though that that um teed that up before i was on council that would differ and beyond that i don't think there was anything else that um the task force thought that council wanted so we kind of structured the decision around that that was all did the task force not want restorative justice woven in that would be a

[78:01] misinterpretation misimpression we were not against it we he's just following he's circling back on question that came up previously that we had not had time to really incorporate nor did we choose to put it into the sort of legislative piece we would like that that's definitely an option for the community panel to engage in and then to echo todd i feel like that was really the only piece that we had sort of written for counsel so to speak the rest of it i think we were pretty firm and um pointed on what our desires were there awesome thank you thank you rachel oh they're married go ahead mary yeah i just have one more question um we can well with respect to the restorative justice we can make that part of our discussion um but one more question is um for todd and michelle did the task force discuss

[79:01] um a name for the panel other than police oversight panel i believe now the name is community oversight panel okay but beyond that i don't i think that was kind of the consensus that we arrived at that we were comfortable with great thank you that's all i have okay great thank you um i wanted to weigh in before i summarize some of the points or questions or concerns that you have i spoke with sam earlier today about the concern from the naacp about the ordinance and i wonder if sam wanted to make the comment about whether the or monitor can should be part of the selection process or even the removal process of the panelists well junior i would say that that was

[80:00] your idea which i agree with i think to have uh independence of the selection process i think probably the monitor should not be part of selecting the members of the oversight panel because part of their job of course will be to report on the performance of the monitor themselves so i i thought you made a great suggestion and i agreed with it so if you'd like to speak more about it i think that'd be great okay thank you so uh that's up for discussion with council i suppose uh is that i had a conversation with joey or monitor after um i read the review submitted by the naacp and after orlanti discussion you know he mentioned that he's eager to take on the role but at the same time he understand that as the monitor it is not necessary that he's involved

[81:00] in the selection and appointment process and i mentioned would council be interested in adding that part in the ordinance explicitly saying that you know that uh the monitor would not be part of this selection and appointing process for the oversight panel just so that we keep um because i think part of the issue or the concern that was brought forward by the naacp is that there might be some conflict of interest which i don't believe might be there but at the same time to keep the public to keep the idea of transparency just having it there and the ordinance would just solve that for the future as well so absolutely i would just add that this question came up um in our discussions with the in the implementation team's discussions and i think at one point an implementation team member either presumed or sort of suggested that i was going to be on the implement on the selection panel and i actually said no i should not be on the the selection panel because that is that group of folks will be evaluating me as the monitor

[82:01] and so this would be sort of codifying sort of something we've already identified and agreed to so i would have zero problem with that and i think it would be actually good because it would protect me from any such allegations if if we ever found ourselves in such a situation thank you thank you so much so from the discussion here's what i heard from from our fellow council members in or mayor is take into account the standardized questions for interviews to ensure equity and also our council member rachel mentioned the concern about the politicization of the oversight of firing and hiring and we should be careful not to micromanage and also aaron mentioned he worried about evaluation of final selection so i think sam also talked about that as well he mentioned access to the public in public input is very important so that's a gap in this presentation that we definitely

[83:01] have to make sure that we um we try to bridge and mary as well mentioned having complaint come through the panel members and i thought that was a great idea because i've worked for the un before and when we talk about human rights every person who works in the u.n is their job they have a responsibility to protect and promote human rights so when mary mentioned the idea of having panel members accessible or just letting them know that yeah they're role as well is to protect and ensure safety of everyone in the community so so that they are somehow a vessel and i thought that was great um and rachel mentioned um the restorative justice piece i that's a discussion i think we definitely need to um to continue and that's about it unless there is another question that i didn't cover and someone felt that i should have go ahead

[84:01] well juni thanks for that summary just to clarify i was just asking questions i wasn't trying to bring up points yet i was waiting for the discussion phase to do that so i got a few other things to say when we get there perfect thank you aaron um then we should move on to discussion unless there is something else staff or someone else thought i should have mentioned and didn't your hand is still up aaron is that you that was the comment i just made uh who's uh will be the first commenter or i could just start here okay well those were really excellent questions and i think you all have done a a phenomenal job in putting all this together you know i think the original ordinance that we passed last year uh was absolutely on the right track and i think the additional revisions and refinements that you've made are generally also uh really on the

[85:01] right track as well so i i'm supportive of the direction that we're going for sure and i i think my kind of fundamental additional point i would make is that i think it's fine for uh there to be a fair amount still to clarify um after the ordinance has passed kind of in the writing of rules and procedures and things like that but i do think we need a little bit more uh written in at this stage to kind of help make sure that that we're codifying kind of the direction that we're moving in and i'll just i'll mention a few areas where i felt like it would be helpful not not necessarily to pin down exactly how it's going to work but at least to provide some direction that we would be going in and i'll just list these you um one of them is the how the nonprofits get chosen i think having some intention around that at this stage would be important because that could become a an area of real attention or if it's working great or if

[86:00] it's not working perfectly um i think people will focus in on how that's done um i think having you know i i read the naacp's letter with interest and um personally i feel like having uh joey uh have this participatory role in the creation the ordinance has been fine i seems like a man of of real integrity and the panel seems to be able to uh operate independently um but i did feel like uh the point that uh juni raised was was a good one about writing in explicitly that um that the monitor would not have a role in the appointment of the panelists would be good and also maybe to add a little bit of additional information about what the panel's review of the monitor might look like because i think right now maybe i missed some detail but right now i feel like it's just uh it just states that that will happen and maybe a little bit more information about what that might look like or some minimum standards about what that um that review

[87:01] might look like um i had i thought sam's points about the public interviews uh being public having a public role with the selection process was important i'm personally fine with council having a role in the approval of the members um i think the public needs to have a role basically and so we we function somewhat as the public's representatives because we're their elected representatives and then we take public input and channel that so i think that's useful if the will of counsel was to not have us have a final approval role i think it'd be really important to incorporate public feedback in other ways and then i'll just throw out one if people feel like we shouldn't just approve it you know one option would be that we could um have a call up option uh for the for the appointments uh rather than the line item approval um so that's just

[88:00] i'm not saying that's the best way to do it i'll just throw that out there as one thing uh to think about if we are doing uh the uh approval if we are having an approval role i think calling out a little bit more particularly what happens if council does not approve someone would be important you know i think mark asked that question i think that was an important one to at least mention um how that would work as well as a little bit about how the panel would report out to council why they were recommending um those particular people for approval so there i just talked for a long time but the just uh just some ideas about how to maybe get a little bit more specificity in there and then maybe there's a some additional catch-all statement about um what the next steps would be for uh when the panel is formed how it would write out its rules and procedures and and who would approve those and how they'd be modified

[89:00] you know just because we have there's a lot of details that'll get created as this process moves forward and having something in there about how that happens i think could be helpful all right i'll quit talking thank you thanks for all your great work thank you erin our next speaker is mary thank you juni um so i agree with what all of the points that aaron brought up and um one of the things i just wanted to point to is in in terms of the documentation that accompanies the recommendation from the the panel for panel members it was um during the task force selection we had um a matrix that accompanied each person um because there were certain criteria for the potential members um and then um

[90:01] and whether or not each member met these criteria so there there was a matrix that accompanied the information so that might be a helpful thing to include um in the package that comes to council prior to ratification and then um i think as far as a member of the panel being able to accept a complaint i do recognize that it's important to not know too much about the case ahead of time so if a community member were to come to a panel member because they felt more comfortable coming to a panel member rather than to the monitor to the police that the recommendation be that it has to be given to them in a in a closed envelope that the panel member can then hand over to the monitor or to the police um if the person um chooses to they could also present it in some sort of a of a

[91:00] recording um in other words make it so that the the panel members can accept complaints but maintain their impartiality in that in the process of that acceptance so whatever you need to do to make it so that the panel member does not have to recuse themselves i think um i think that would be a good um route for a community member to submit a complaint the i think it's okay on the critical incident to go ahead and flesh that out and perhaps include it in the operations manual but i think it will be important to pin that down because it can't be varying from case to case so it will need to get pinned down so i think that's a real important piece um i as an alternative for the selection of the panel one

[92:01] suggestion for consideration might be to include two council members that was done with the selection of the task force it's just i'm just throwing that out there as a potential of consideration i do think that it is important for the council to have the final say as aaron said um we're the elected officials and we need to be the ones that have the final say in terms of we're the representatives of the community so um mary may clarify that yes please so this is coupled with the sort of intersection packet you were referencing before is that so like submit these sort of letters of intersectionality to two council members as opposed to some sort of public hearing or public interview no i'm sorry um yeah no i was thinking to be part of the selection

[93:01] um committee just as it was for the task force and then there would be just as it was for the task force there would be two council members who um participated in the process um so i'm not saying that's how it should be done i'm just saying that's an alternative um so that when it comes to council there is one or two council members that have been through the actual process just a thought um the restart of justice piece i think that that can also be part of the operations manual but um that that's i think an important um option for um outcomes of this panel so um i'll leave it up to you guys to incorporate it later and then um finally i um i like that you um have changed the name of the panel to the community oversight panel

[94:01] um i do have the the term oversight sort of um i i find a little bit troublesome and i and here's why i have been reading some history of uh policing in our country and um it it has its roots in um enslaved patrols as probably many of you know and how um the police was basically lording over slaves and so a lot of that kind of um of um history has carried forth into our current situation um i won't go into all the details about this but um i do think that the idea of a group to me oversight brings up conjures up images of people lording over other people and i find

[95:00] that a little troublesome and the the role of this panel is more than just oversight it is a role that will bring about continuous improvement of the police department and our justice system to um always be improving it and um and it's more than just the oversight as as mentioned in the title right now so i came up with a name but it's just a suggestion and you all can um discuss it you all that the the committee can discuss it further amongst yourselves but the the title that i came up for it was um community panel for justice in policing and eliminating the term oversight again that is a suggestion just thinking about the role of this panel which is more than just oversight it is doing outreach to the community it is working with the police it's about collaboration

[96:01] um so and that's all i have thank you mary i receive a request from one of the task force members before i we go to the next speaker she's wondering if it would be possible kindly for the other council members who are quiet or who haven't raised their hands to just make a comment and let them know what you're thinking and whether they're going in the right direction so they just want a little bit of encouragement thank you so our next speaker is mark i think they're going in the right direction um we're just making some comments i i want to thank aaron i think he nailed almost every possible issue on this and it was very complete and i agree with him on everything he said i would hope that the the panel the board um you may have already done this but i assume you will formulate um

[97:01] some conflict standards for yourselves um in terms of when it's appropriate for a panel member to recuse himself from consideration um uh i would urge you to to undertake the restorative justice uh task i think that there's a great contribution to be made there uh and lastly i would also um support continued uh council um approval we are the ultimate uh legislative body in town and we are the representatives of the people and i would not want to treat this uh entity differently than we treat all others where we do have some approval rights um uh i don't think anybody's gonna have much taste for micromanaging but ultimate approval is is a little different and i think that's that's something that's important for us to maintain

[98:01] and that's it thank you mark our next speaker is rachel he's juni um yeah aaron uh and mary covered most of what i i would have thought important but i do want to circle back to selecting the panelists and um how it's so important that we get this right and i think what i'm hearing is that everybody um understands that we are the uh ultimate elected um decision makers for the city and so their air force should have oversight but there are so many um important positions that we do not exercise um input uh or screening for positions so i don't understand why we would be doing it here when it's pretty different than the boards and commissions where people send in an application and we ask everybody questions this is going to be pre-screened and it just seems like it only leaves room for politicization so if somebody is

[99:01] maybe um not liked by the majority of council because they've been i don't know upsetting on a different issue but they'd be really great on this they could still be knocked out and i don't think that's in the community's interest so i don't see for that reason why we would want to get down into the weeds on on this particular hiring and seating of the panel so i'll just be on the record i don't think it makes a lot of sense for us in terms of pitfalls and also i don't think we really need the extra work and to do this right i think we should be having the interviews and and if we really think that we're the best people to make the decision on who to seat on this panel or who to fire from the panel then we should be in the weeds and we should be doing it well and if we don't want to invest the time then i think we should trust the experts to do it and and not put a rubber stamp on it anything if we're saying it's not a rubber stamp then we're doing it if we're saying

[100:00] we're not doing it it's a rubber stamp but i think either those scenarios makes no sense to me that's all i got thanks thank you rachel and our next speaker is sam great well um i want to thank the the implementation panel again this has been really great work a lot of food for thought here it's very complex topic and so thank you for all of your hard work um i want to address the issue head-on that rachel brought up and there's two points i want to make politicization is one thing but public input is another thing and so i feel like not only are we the ultimate approval body but the pre-screening is going to give the rationale for why um the panel itself thinks that that these applicants should be the ones who are appointed so i believe that we need to keep faith with the public and let the public have input an example would be that there's somebody who has made it through the screening process but unbeknownst to the panel

[101:01] recommending there's a lot of objection to among a certain segment of the community and if we have a public hearing before we we ratify i doubt we would discuss each person on the list but if we have a public hearing that would be the opportunity for the public to express their concern i kind of like mary's idea of having council members on the selection group because that would potentially flag those things early maybe not but could be but i really really do think that council needs to do the final approval um in order to give the public a route to have input we won't be doing interviews and we'll be probably 99 of the time trusting um the recommendation of the panel but there could be uh times that would arise where we would want to step in and maybe yes knock one out but ask the panel to consider the reasons that the public was upset with one or

[102:01] another of the potential appointees so on that i will weigh in that i think council does need to do a final approval i kind of like mary's idea so i'd love to hear what the [Music] implementation panel thinks about the possibility i'm not wed to that one way or the other but sometimes council members can see something coming just because of what they've heard in the community i want to return to something and just flag this to the uh implementation panel members 11 members can really be unwieldy um nine members can be unwieldy so i've served on boards with seven and nine in the past and 5. i think 5 is too small typically i think 7 is about right and i think 9 can be too many so if the intention is for more breadth i can certainly see an argument for 9 but i will just put out there that in practice 11 can be difficult to manage and difficult to give

[103:00] everyone time to express their opinion i i too support the restorative justice piece so todd to your question i think that's a really important component of this i don't know that it needs to be in the ordinance but i i think it is a really you know having a restorative justice component for discipline i think could be really useful um and then i agreed with everything aaron said we need to figure out how the non-profits are selected um agree juni that the monitor should not be part of the appointment process i agree with mary about the name of the committee i i would suggest a slightly shorter name but this this would be for the implementation team to come up with community panel for just policing eliminates a word and shortens one but any i do agree with mary's idea about how to focus it um

[104:01] and if the panel decides to recommend the council not be the final approval body which i i don't think would be the right thing but if that is a recommendation there i think has to be a route for the public to have input and so i imagine that the interviews would be private the decision would be made there'd be a recommendation passed on to council and then it would only be if the public had a problem with one of the members that we would even take it up to talk about it but an alternative would be that all the interviews are public and um so i think that's a meaty uh subject for the panel to take up so that's all i've got but thank you all again for your great work thank you sam our next speaker is bob thanks i also want to thank the implementation committee and joey for putting together a very nice product and making our lives very easy you guys are making us look good here so i appreciate that very much

[105:01] i'll explain in a couple of things i've already been mentioned um with respect to the panel appointment i agree with sam and some other people that i do think the buck stops with council and we are on the people who are um elected by the community and who have to be ultimately responsible and held accountable for um these things i believe that virtually every resident committee or panel that we have is either appointed by council or in a few instances is appointed by the city manager at council's direction i'm not aware of a a residence committee or panel that we've delegated that authority to outside of the city infrastructure so i do believe that should be ultimately council selection i do agree with the observation that in most instances council will um adopt the recommendations of the um of whatever nonprofits are making them i do like mary's idea if council members are willing to serve on the committee um to so that that they can be conveyed

[106:01] to their counsel and colleagues um input from the interviews it's a that's a heavy lift there's two people on a volunteer for that that's great an this is not an alternative but it's it's maybe a supplement to mary's suggestion i think um it would be helpful if if if there's a group of candidates that are forwarded to council for ratification it might be helpful to have a couple of alternates as well because it would be awkward if only 11 candidates come forward for 11 positions and counsel for whatever reason determines not to appoint one or two of them then we have to send it back and um other uh alternates have to be identified so if if the if alternates can be identified in the first instance then it probably um avoids that twoing and throwing i do agree with sam's comment that 11 seems like a really big number um i don't feel strongly about that if if if the implementation group feels that 11 is the right number and that's what's necessary for a broad diverse um perspective that's

[107:02] fine but i think seven or nine is probably quite a bit more manageable and then finally i do agree with mary's uh observation that oversight is not a great word to use in the title i do like mary's title sam's amendment is fine as well so i think something along using the words justice and community and policing and some sort of combination without the word oversight would be good thanks thank you bob and our final speaker is adam thank you judy um i really appreciated this is one of those things i know less about since i wasn't involved in the process as long as my other council members so i let them take most of the lead here um i really do like the direction that we've been going um and i'll try to just speak to the sort of crux issues uh i also agree that the final approval should probably land on council but i really liked aaron's idea of it

[108:00] being call up based um i've noticed call-ups only tend to happen when there's really really deep community interest prior to the call-up happening so um that would indicate that if someone was being called up there was a really strong sentiment uh for some reason that that person should be reviewed further um and if we're trying to find something to make everybody happy maybe we could talk about the number of votes it would take to turn someone down um get into that so maybe it's not you know you get to the number of votes where it's not exactly possible to be political um that that you know may be something to look at uh i also agreed with maybe a change to the name if the committee is open to that and um the 11 board members i would say too having served on two different boards um just for the sanity of the the committee members themselves and the length of the meetings

[109:00] um really really try to dig into what you're going to get out of an additional two members that you might not get out of nine uh simply because you know if you can still take um that amount of time um that's totally fair and it's an important issue to take time on but meetings really do end up going a lot longer than you think they do so um those are the bulk of my things that i'd like to weigh in on and i really do appreciate the work it's really awesome to see um this happening in our city um and it was more than a long time coming so it's cool to see it finally happen all right thank you for all your comments and i feel like all of you have already given all the comments and i don't have much to weigh in beside everything that's been said aaron mentioned

[110:00] how non-profit gets selected and the source of tension that's something that the team needs to look into and also the appointing and removal of panel members as well as something that we have to look into um also i think the very most important thing is rachel's concern about um the selection process and from what i'm hearing is that there's eight of us here most of us are in agreement that council need to have a voice and i don't think we need to take a struggle on that sam would we need to do that okay no no just just you think you heard yeah perfect yeah i i agree with the rest of council with with um with the idea that council needs to have a voice and i think it goes back to what mary said because i believe rachel's concerns are valid but i think with mary's idea of having

[111:02] two council members involved i think i think that might be a good idea um adam mentioned that final approval through collapse as well color base and those are some of the alternatives um from what i hear from mark wallach and sam mark mentioned nine was too much or too many people and i agree it's a lot of people to manage or a lot of people within the process and that's something to look into and bob mentioned you need more than 11 people to have some alternative candidates just to ensure the process so that you know if people drop out is there anything that i'm missing out of this i know what mary mentioned fleshing out the critical incident and

[112:00] what it means and i think the restorative justice is something that the council most council members agree to or voice there and are in favor of the name enhancement i agree with mary with the name i think that's a great idea and i don't think there is any other any other feedback unless mark do you have a question mark or you have any feedback another question just just a short comment also want to support mary's suggestion you know when when we appoint people to boards and commissions we select them uh i don't think anybody has a lot of appetite for rejecting people it's a very public process i think two members of council on the selection team um could flag issues before they arise and and you know put us in the difficult position of saying that we're actually going to reject a particular

[113:00] individual it's a little awkward for us it's certainly awkward for them and to the extent that we can avoid it by having a little early input by a couple of council members i think that would be beneficial for all parties thanks thank you um mary you have a comment yeah i just wanted to thank the task force and staff that have i mean your your dedication to this has been so exemplary and your product is so um impressive and you know you're you've dedic you've given a lot of time and it's really really appreciated and i hope um that you continue on um some of you and um thank you very much this this has been hard hard work and and i appreciate that any oh aaron you have a final comment

[114:00] yeah well i'll i'll echo what mary just said absolutely thank you for all of your work um and i guess it's it sounds like a lot of where councils may be disagreeing a little bit or having different thoughts is about how the appointments get made and that is a tricky question right so i guess we'll we'll see what you all recommend based on our discussion i personally i probably would not go to having council members on um on the appointment committee uh you know actually i felt like that worked out pretty well honestly when mary and i did it for getting this started but this is that was a sort of extraordinary one-time uh experience and this is going to be a year by year uh thing and you know it's it's often the case that um committee members tend to be differential to city council members and so i feel like we the council members might have a little more influence and it might be good to leave it more in the hands of the other committee

[115:00] members and the non-profits so i'd probably lean lean more towards that approach thank you aaron for your comment we have our beer yeah i just wanted to come back to what aaron just said and i kind of agree with that i mean there's pros and cons to having council members on these kind of committees and in this case perhaps it would be best not i'm still focused on the public input component of this so if we the one thing adam that i i wasn't so in favor of a call-up um mode for is because um it would it wouldn't have the public input at a public hearing because i think what's really important here especially for the first one right is we're establishing this and i think we need to hear the feedback and we need to be real deliberate about hearing the feedback it could be really easy it could be all positive or there could be

[116:01] issues that the public will flag for us that we may not be able to get so regardless i just advice to the implementation team regardless of what your final recommendation is my suggestion is that you think deeply about how we would take public input and how council is involved with that thank you sam michelle has a comment she would like to make before we we're done with this uh section go ahead michelle thank you again everyone i don't want to be labor but i just want to respond um to the renaming not necessarily that i'm opposed i definitely think all suggestions are worth considering and we'll bring it to the group but the first thing that came up for me was that that's also part of the name of the activation we're talking about and community members is the same for

[117:00] the word officer as overseer so i'm not sure if any of you are familiar with that history but it might be worth a quick read and then just thank you all for your input we've definitely considered restorative justice and thought that for the timelines requested that it would be a lot to really draw out in detail what that would look like and because restorative justice practices are fluid and constantly growing and changing that while we do want to include that it may not be necessary to legislate at this point so thank you again i don't want to keep you here later than you need to be but i do appreciate you all and i hope you have a wonderful evening thank you for your comment michelle if there is no more comments from or council members we will move to the next presentation i'm sorry just very quickly i just wanted to say thank you to all the the council members uh for engaging in this process and identifying areas that you needed further clarification on all those were you know very reasonable concerns

[118:01] and we'll take that back to the team come back with some uh some good recommendations for you all and uh thank you again really appreciate your your time and input on this really appreciate it thank you very much joey for your presentation and we we passed the baton to jane for the next presentation thank you so much thank you juni and our next presentation will be uh made by kurt fernharber the director of housing and human services on severe weather shelter for this upcoming winter season kurt uh good evening uh councilman joseph and and others um i assume you don't want to take a break we want to keep going just want to confirm that okay good so i'm going to give a very brief introductory [Music] statement before we start the

[119:00] presentation to help uh frame the the conversation and and why we're here this evening um so if we go back um five or so years um the programs that we were running in the city and when i say we it's it's a number of partners it's not necessarily the city it was really focused on and emergency services which which is what we're discussing tonight um the boulder shelter was open only during the winter wasn't open year-round um there was um two shelter locations and as some community members have mentioned this week there was upwards of um 400 beds that grew from about 200 to 400 over time um and during that time in the last couple of years there was upwards of over 2000 individual

[120:00] nights that were turnaways from shelter and so that created a lot of challenges for our community also my department of housing and human services at that time wasn't putting a dime into um housing um individuals who were homeless none of our resources were going there and the number of individuals that were being housed each year you could probably count on on one or two hands then some things started to change bridgehouse opened their program their ready to work program [Music] that started off as a great success and it's continued to really have a ongoing sustainable approach to getting people housed the the shelter then opened up uh lee hill and um those were some of the first permanent supportive housing vouchers um

[121:02] in a dedicated site like that um and then then city council adopted a homeless strategy about three years ago and that's when our focus really changed to a housing first focus we started investing a lot of money in housing and housing vouchers units this year we've already housed or helped 174 individual individuals exit homelessness one of the criticisms we often receive is that we're we're focused on permanent supportive housing and yes we are but that accounts for about half of those who are exiting homelessness we also have individuals exiting homelessness through our diversion navigation programs and it's it's a it's a tapestry of

[122:00] partners it's a it's the bridge house ready to work program as well as a master lease program that we started with them last year that helps their graduates get into market housing after they've gone through their program it's mental health partners it's substance abuse programs that individuals get referred into and it's the housing outreach team the hot team it's the court navigators um and every homeless individual who touches any of our programs will be exposed to opportunities that are offered to them to help them exit homelessness so however um yeah so i i also wanted to mention um an email that came in this afternoon um from uh emily trozy i hope i'm saying her last name correctly and at the end of that article

[123:00] or end of that email she had an article from the guardian um about how finland um has addressed their their homeless issues and finland had lots of shelters throughout the country they took one of the first homeless first approaches and they essentially shut down their shelters and really focused on getting individuals into housing and they've had a lot of success with that the difference between boulder and finland well there's there's many differences um but one is that they're a country and we're a city and we're while we're making um great approaches um and innovations as a city and even a county um we don't have a national strategy we don't have a state strategy where every community has the type of focus that we have in boulder

[124:00] so tonight we're not going to be talking about housing first but housing first interfaces very directly with the question tonight and in july we presented the severe weather shelter plan to council at the at the end of that discussion council asked us to come back with a an approach for additional severe weather shelter nights on particularly cold nights so we are going to focus our presentation on answering that question and we will also bring in um a couple of other items um that you didn't ask for that we we believe also relate to concerns that that you brought up earlier so with that i will introduce vicki ebner who you know is the homeless policy

[125:01] manager and she will be guiding us through this next piece thank you thank you council i'm very happy to be here to discuss this very important topic um if you could switch the new next slide please so we wanted to focus on three questions and really gather council's input on our overall severe weather plan our proposed overflow plan and the criteria that we've set aside for the severe weather shelter usage next slide please i thought it would be helpful here to start with a couple of definitions the severe weather shelter thresholds that we're currently using and have been in place for at least two years are the ones at the top so these are all predicated on national weather service forecasts with certain warnings and watches of everything from extreme cold

[126:01] to heavy snow or temperatures of 32 or below fahrenheit if it's dry or 38 below fahrenheit or below if there's a likelihood of precipitation as kurt mentioned at the city council meeting in july we were asked to come back with a plan for how we would um address overflow on significant nights so we defined those significant nights as critical weather conditions that would be with a temperature below 10 degrees fahrenheit or below and or there are six inches or more of snow this is also aligned with what the boulder shelter for the homeless currently uses for their daytime triggers so if they if the weather is particularly bad they will keep the building open all day if if the weather during the day meets those criteria and that has been an established practice for a significant amount of

[127:00] time um and it also ties back with some analysis we've done over the last six years of weather patterns and that correlates to basically the 30 coldest nights of the year or 12 of the nights that we would be open for severe weather shelter and those 30 nights had a low average low of 9.3 degrees and the majority of them did include some sort of snow event next slide please so this is the plan that we are working to go forward with uh the first line in orange is our standard severe weather shelter this uses up to 140 beds at severe sorry at boulder shelter for the homeless on the shoulder parts of the season so october 1st through november 30th and march 16th through the end of may the shelter beds would be used for year-round programming and then would be

[128:00] the unused program beds would be allocated for severe weather shelter when those traditional weather shelter severe weather shelter conditions are met between december 1st and the middle of march we would be open every night for uses including severe weather sheltering in addition to the severe weather shelter last spring up until approximately middle of june and going forward in the fall we were able to place 20 people in a local hotel who were considered to be at risk for covet 19. we do plan to make that go forward for this fall so that's the gray bar that is on this chart in addition we know that there will be usage of the crc or the covid recovery center and we expect this usage to go up as the winter progresses and this includes serving our

[129:02] populations in an effort to keep the whole homeless system and all of our people experiencing homelessness safe and healthy and so we expect it to peak around 15 beds and we think that's aligned with when we hit some peaks in the spring and this is going to allow us to serve people who are symptomatic of covin 19 or have tested positive and one other thing to note is the symptoms of covet 19 also mirror flu and we expect that flu cases will be up also in the fall and in addition to those resources we are looking at an expansion plan that would include making an additional 20 hotel rooms available on those critical weather condition nights and then in addition to that

[130:03] we are looking at extended day hours so morning services at boulder shelter for the homeless are currently being offered and this is um early morning where they can come in and get shell showers and food and this would still occur up until december 1st so time with where we're opening the shelter every night we would also extend our day hours to 11 30 a.m um just like in previous system um seasons and more particularly when we were dealing with covid last spring even when bridge house was open during the day they were not open the entire day we do need a certain amount of hours where we are closed we can give the facilities a thorough cleaning and we can keep it from being a 24 7 congregate situation which is not conducive to public health

[131:01] next slide please so when we were looking at the plan uh one of the things that we did want to do is look at how many uh beds we would be offering for total sheltering including both year-round programming and severe weather shelter so this can range between 140 beds well i'm sorry the the capacity at boulder shelter for the homeless starting in october is going to be 140 beds and you may be aware that they can hold up to 160 beds but in walk throughs with boulder county public health um they've been uh asked to reduce the number of uh beds so that they can more adequately speak to people in a congregate situation um with reflecting the different i items that i touched on on the last slide you can see that that's going to make our available beds range from 165 beds up to 195 beds on really cold

[132:02] critical lights our standard program still provides between 145 and 175 beds next slide please so one of the things that we thought was important to show is our forecasting on what that would look like and how we came up to what beds specifically for severe weather shelter would would provide us and so this chart reflects not only our estimates for our year-round programming including both navigation and housing focus shelter the number of people were expecting to be utilizing the kobit recovery center and our hotels that still allows for between 30 and 63 beds on any given night that could be used for severe weather shelter and then of course on those critical weather condition nights it would go up an additional 20 units

[133:03] so um you know one of the things that is is really important to us is that we're building a system in which we're using shelters as a tool in order to engage people through our different housing diversion and reunification programs and so um this shows that we are trying to level and and really work through the different bed configurations next slide please so uh one thing that kurt mentioned at the start was that we do provide different types of services to help people exit homelessness and that we had actually exited 174 people between january and july this just gives you an example of the different factors and the different functions i will say that the first few months of covet response housing people

[134:00] particularly with permanent supportive housing conditions was a tough tough thing and our agencies really stepped up to the mark and you can see that our trend really didn't lose a lot of steam and so we're really proud of those exits and we think that that also has an impact on what bed space has been made available at boulder shelter for the homeless next slide please so um i know that this is a topic that comes up quite frequently and that is um how we use the facility so this reflects um the navigation program nightly average monthly night average night we census per month um for the past two years the navigation program was provided at bridge house prior to this june

[135:00] um at which point it was taken over by boulder shelter for the homeless but this gives you an idea of where we believe not only where we have been on our census but also where we expect to go from september through next may um a couple other tools that are out there um i would be remiss if i didn't mention that the municipal court was just awarded a grant which will help us bridge people who are close to who are close to being housed who are also high utilizers so that will take off some of the stress on shelters and persons experiencing unsheltered homelessness so that that is a really exciting piece of news and um again i would say that we couldn't have gotten to these levels at the shelter without uh some really concerted effort from

[136:01] both boulder shelter for the homeless and bridge house in providing those home exits we are also working with the county and our partners to look at different housing options that may be needed as we have some concerns about people entering into new homelessness as a result of the economic conditions caused by cobit next slide please one of the other things i wanted to um this is one of our extras um that we wanted to let everybody know that the county is establishing a dedicated demon we'll be providing testing and vaccine on a regular basis for our own house population and this will begin in mid-october they will be doing asymptomatic testing and in addition they will be providing flu vaccine clinics both of these things will be offered not

[137:00] only in our shelter systems but also in places that are frequented by unsheltered persons next slide please so returning to the questions uh does council have any input on severe weather shelter plan our overflow plan or our criteria for severe weather shelter day stays one thing i will note before the discussion starts as i was i did not mention that there is a requirement that we're setting up this year for a severe weather shelter entry to require a coordinated entry screening process to happen to be able to use the severe weather shelter as with all of our other programs the any person that has not yet been able to go through ce will be provided a grace night and will be asked to go through coordinated

[138:00] entry the next morning and for those of you who don't that may not know exactly what coordinated entry is it is our front door to our home our single adult homeless program and that provides um us the opportunity to screen people to figure out what their particular needs are and where their best program alignment is and also allows us to uh provide diversion services for people who could possibly be diverted from the shelter system and long-term homelessness and with that um that concludes my presentation be happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you vicky does council have any questions or first speaker is rachel thanks um junie and thanks vicky and kurt for the presentation there were a couple things that were confusing to me so i wanted to clarify um the critical weather conditions versus severe weather shelter

[139:00] i found um just new terminology i guess so i wanted to clarify what the critical weather conditions apply to is the 32 and 38 degree um threshold still relevant to any of our services so that's kind of question one what's severe weather shelter versus critical so can i just jump in for a second and before i answer that i also wanted to mention the council members that that greg harms of the boulder shelter is on this call as well and he can answer questions that you also may have vicki do you want to answer that or you want me to go for that or sure um the short answer is yes they are still relevant the 32 and 38 are what we're calling our are established or standard severe weather shelter criteria the critical weather conditions are those 30 cold estimated 30 coldest nights of the year so that's 10 degrees or below

[140:00] and or six inches of snow so it doesn't necessarily impact um what it impacts is the capacity and the capacity would increase on those nights okay so in terms of like when day shelters open and when severe weather shelters open those are are not necessarily tethered to the critical weather conditions other than we may get some extra beds on the nights that those kick in that's right accurate and there is a time period between december 1st and march 15th where severe weather shelters open every night regardless of temperature thank you and then so right there's no triggers for the the middle months but then on months on either side there are weather triggers which are still 32 and 38. yes ma'am okay i think i'm hearing aaron maybe one of colloquy well just to clarify right so i think you just summarized it well but the the is it the critical weather events

[141:01] that triggered the all-day shelter and is that it triggers the all-day um um it triggers when the shelter would be open all day it also triggers the additional 20 um hotel rooms that would be added right so those additional rooms are only available on the critical weather thresholds and that's also when you get the all-day daytime shelter and both of those things would be true throughout the entire sheltering season is that correct yes okay but then um it's in that december to march december 1st to march 15th that the the basic number of beds are is available every night and then the rest the sheltering season is with the 3238 threshold and aaron the reason we decide to go in that direction of opening every night is because in reality um it's open like 85 percent of those nights anyways

[142:01] from a planning perspective as well as um just simplicity and understanding it uh for the clients who would use the system it seemed to make sense yeah i appreciate that and just while you're talking about thanks for doing that and i think you know council did express a desire to do that back last um in the late winter as well so thanks for being responsive all right sorry rachel it's okay i have a couple more questions um so i wanted to clarify that and i um i'm sorry i can't pull up the presentation so i wasn't able to go back um and confirm but in terms of the number of beds last year for the versus this year um can you just really cleanly lay out here's the max beds we had in a 2019 season uh and here's our max beds for this season as well as how many of those are unrelated to covid like if you took if you took the coveted beds out because somebody doesn't have

[143:00] cobid what are the numbers of beds available now versus last year shelter beds so i think last year uh vicki if i'm correct we had 282 beds this year it's about 195. if you take out the crc that goes down to 180 however it's it's also worth noting that the crc has worked very well as a place of respite um you'll know that actually the majority of individuals that have stayed at the crc are actually not covered positive um and um we've had even individuals this summer who have come out of a surgery or some sort of medical condition and they've stayed at the the crc for their recovery those are actual individuals in our community that if the crc was not there they would actually be going to the shelter to stay there

[144:02] thanks for that clarification and i i do appreciate that feature the crc it seems like a really good community benefit um okay so then my next question um well the next question is kind of a larger and maybe trying to understand philosophically so it sounds like formerly severe weather shelter did not require coordinated entry program commitments right like you could just show up and get a bed without any ties to coordinated entry do i have that accurate yeah i think i've seen kurt not nod um and now we have it that you can have one night without coordinated entry and that's it for the season without using coordinated entry for severe weather shelter is that accurate that's correct um so um does everybody qualify for coordinated entry um i know

[145:00] there's a six-month um window for for something so i just want to figure out by adding in coordinated entry requirements just to make it very transparent and clear what does that mean for people who want shelter from the cold on a cold night assuming that they they want to go through coordinated entries and anybody ineligible for the second night or the tenth night yeah i you know one of the things i think it gets misconstrued in the community is what ce is it is a screening process so you are either screened to a diversion program navigation or housing focus shelter we're not requiring for use of severe weather sheltering but we're not proposing to require that you have to be engaged with those programs we're merely asking that you go through that screening process and the idea behind that is to hopefully and ultimately get somebody into one of

[146:02] those programs and engaged so um is is anybody after they go through coordinated entry not going to be eligible to stay in this fear by their shelter like because of time in the community or i don't know they they did it three months ago and they're not eligible again today to go through coordinated entry are there any blocks by saying we're going to require coordinated entry no because once you've gone through coordinated entry screening you've gone through it have a lack of a better word credit for going through it um for those of uh i think you're you're getting at the people that maybe aren't meeting our six month criteria um those are are people that well not all diversion clients are people that have been here less than 30 days i'm sorry less than six months all people who have been here less than six months do qualify for a diversion so they would still be allowed to stay

[147:00] at severe weather shelter it's not a barrier okay um and and just to make sure i i followed the other point you made if somebody went through coordinated entry in like right now and then they come for several weather shelter in two months even though they maybe didn't pick up any services they can still stay at the shelter because they did the the screen within ever or within a couple months or what's are there are there there's no time limit on expiration dates yeah we don't we don't actually expire those those dates um what we do is if somebody has been in the community for over two years and there's some reason why we need to change what where they were screened too we can reassess them um but the um it's hard to use 1920 severe weather shelter data because of covid it skewed a lot of our our thinking and a lot of our data but if you look at the

[148:01] 1819 numbers um over 85 percent of the people who actually used our severe weather shelter at 30th street had been through coordinated entry and um it broke out about half and half of people who were um sent to or referred to housing focus shelter or navigation services because at the time we didn't have diversion services um but it did break out half and half and it was the vast majority of people that were using the service and the only caveat i would give with you is that um back then we didn't have the six-month requirement so i think you would see a different mix of people going forward but it would be everybody but the majority of the people that use the shelter would have been through it okay so if i'm following you correctly somebody can just go through coordinated entry the screen

[149:00] um and there's no required follow-up or rules that they have to follow or you know a prescribed program that they need to be compliant with to stay nights 2 through 30 in the shelter is that accurate that that is true of course we would prefer that people do engage with our services so that we can help them in their homelessness um however it is not a requirement the only requirements and and greg may be able to talk to this a little bit better they only would they do have to of course comply with shelter rules but um no it wouldn't impact anything else and are the shelter rules thank you for that clarification are the shelter rules different than they were at bridge house when when we had severe weather shelter over on 30th bridge house had rules that were related to public for the safety of the residents and the staff and they're very similar to what boulder shelter for the homeless provides

[150:02] boulder shelter has a little bit more structured plan on how they actually um do any kind of response and i would defer to greg on those questions um so rachel can i add one more thing one more important point um it was actually in on one of the slides of the presentation but it we didn't speak about it um so another of the recommendations is that those that go through severe weather shelter would have 30 days of severe weather shelter through the season so again that's encouraging them to get into services what we found in looking at the severe weather shelter data over the last couple of years is that the the median [Music] individual who goes to severe weather shelter stays there about three and a half or four nights in

[151:00] season um however there are individuals um that stay much longer than that who are part of our community and use severe weather shelter you know as their shelter on any on a more ongoing basis okay um thanks for that clarification um just in terms of the different rules possibly it seemed like there were different um times that people could arrive for the shelter versus bridge house is severe weather shelter allow you still to arrive later currently that's that's correct however i i think it might be helpful for greg to answer that question we don't want to speak for for the shelter on their rules is greg here yes he just needs to mute himself yeah this is greg um boulder shelter for

[152:00] the homeless um our our normal curfew times would apply for all of our programs this winter so that means check-in time is from five to seven pm okay and at bridge house what time how late could people arrive is anybody i'm just wondering what the what the change might be and if it's they they used to not have a curfew but in the last year they did establish a curfew um i believe it was originally nine o'clock and then it moved up to eight as we started working on um the transport between uh bridge house and the crc and boulder shelter so they they did bump it up um traditionally they also found that by about seven seven thirty they were fully booked in rare occasions where the police officers might bring somebody um but generally for getting

[153:02] people voluntarily coming up it they're going to deal with it earlier in the evening if i could also add there's an important component this year that we haven't had in previous years which we started this spring on in the middle of march and that's to um look at look at each individual as they go into every shelter and screen them for covet symptoms and if we leave that open from five o'clock to ten o'clock it's very difficult to run that process over five hours so having to define works for the shelter last year and it also worked for for 30th street um at the time um that covet became a challenge in our community thanks for that clarification too um

[154:02] i'm almost out of questions here junie so i promise won't be too much longer um for the daytime opening for the shelter at 10 degrees that just seems a little um well it seems very cold to me given that the a lot of the library spaces aren't still open have did was there any thought given to the reduction in daytime spots around the community due to covid and how we're counterbalancing that so i think the daytime services were put in place um to to respond to the lack of public facilities the shelter normally didn't have daytime services and greg may want to speak to this but they were looking at how that could be structured within their staff as well as having a few hours to be able to clean the facility at 30th street this spring

[155:01] they opened um in the middle of the day for i think it was three or four hours and then it had to be cleaned afterwards um the shelter is recommending that that it would be cleaned once a day and and that's why it's it's structured that way but i'll just hand it over to greg to see if he has any additional um inputs on that um thanks kurt just to be clear what we proposed is being open uh normally we would close at 8am and what we're proposing is being open until 11 30 a.m during the severe weather shelter season which is the december 1st through march 15th time period in addition to that we would be open all day when those really critical weather conditions are met

[156:00] the 10 degrees or six inches of snow so both of those things would be in place for the season thanks greg um i guess i've i've i'll save most of it for discussion but i um it's it would seem to me that 10 degrees is pretty pretty cold for critical and i would think that um there are health hazards at a higher temperature so maybe and i understand you said that 10 degrees is the long standing day shelter opening threshold but again given that a lot of the places that people might go ordinarily are are not available now is there a room or was there discussion about raising that temperature threshold higher and and if i could maybe clarify uh the core time period heat that greg is talking about between december 1st and march 15th those would use the

[157:00] those would be open every day regardless of temperature until 11 30. so it doesn't have to hit 10 degrees to be open thank you and i did understand that i guess i'm just thinking if it's 12 degrees and i have to leave i don't know where i would go and and i would think that's that's a a low temperature to be out in the cold so that's i'm just trying to figure out how we where where people will go um and if that's the right temperature but again i'll i'll save that for discussion i think that's all i have for now i really appreciate your responses thank you rachel adam you're next thank you judy um i had a couple of clarification questions as well uh first of all on the the first slide you have the 38 degrees plus precipitation what is the actual chance of precipitation that triggers um that requirement so is it 30 40 50

[158:01] it's 30. 30. okay thank you for that and um my other is i don't know if this is going to be for greg or not but there are still obviously people who cannot be sheltered in severe weather shelter people with pets i believe um i don't know people who are a couple um that want to be sheltered in the same place if that's still against the rules but there are those groups that regardless of them being in coordinated entry or not they could not access severe weather shelter correct um yeah there are always people that we can't serve for for a number of different reasons some people who don't want shelter or some people who can't stay in the shelter for a myriad of different reasons um two of them that you just highlighted one people with pets um of course we we

[159:00] permit service animals but not pets and we do serve married couples or couples but of course they have to stay in in separate dormitories gotcha i just want to make sure that i understood that um while we're discussing later on those are my two main questions thanks rachel you asked a lot of what i watched asked too so appreciate that thank you adam aaron you're up thanks uh thanks for the presentation and the information uh folks and uh rachel covered almost everything i would have asked but i got a couple last ones for you um i think you mentioned a grant which sounded intriguing could you tell us a little bit more about what that's going to fund and what how that's going to help us out so can i interrupt there for a second vicki um so so judge cook and i actually had a conversation about this today and she would prefer to give the information and details on that grant

[160:01] while we know those details it was written by the court navigators and um um i prefer that she give the information on that because that's what she requested i always like to have something to look forward to so i'll take that um okay so i guess my other question um so we had been i i had raised the issue about what overflow would look like during this sheltering season right and so it's as i understand that the answer to what overflow looks like as proposed is that on the critical weather nights we will have 20 additional beds available in hotel um hotel rooms for i guess individuals who've been around a little bit longer who would then um make space at the shelter for 20 additional people so is that a fair summary uh i believe so yes and what do we do if there's

[161:01] you know if it's like that not a critical weather night you know it's 12 degrees and not 10 you know or it's just a regular cold night and and we get more people um who are looking for a severe weather shelter than we have beds for um so i've got a couple things that i'll mention around that um first of all that that that situation can happen no matter what our triggers are sure and how many beds we have um there's always um that that risk of of turnaways um so and i've mentioned this many times um before but um the communication for a lot of individuals who are homeless who um who travel it's important for them to know what the capacity of the community is for us to hopefully prevent that when

[162:00] there was a number of uh when there was almost a third more beds or twice as many beds a few years ago that was a real challenge um the thing i will mention and i if you could if you could remember back to march and april when um about every two weeks we were giving an update to council um on things that we were changing or implementing or expanding um because of covet i would ex i hope you don't have to do that every two weeks during the season but we will certainly be monitoring how this is working and we won't be waiting to schedule a time with council probably to discuss something if there's clearly challenges that need to be addressed but we would

[163:00] um but we would also look forward to giving you updates um as ips or whatever on a regular basis or we're in alignment with your regular um covet updates that you'll probably be receiving through the season yeah and updates would be important but i'd curt i don't think you answered the question though about like you know when we if we get more people if we get three more people than those you know 140 bets you know do we have any options um well first of all it's 160 beds um we will always have well for the main part of the season well even for the majority of the season we have 160 beds um not including the crc okay thanks for the correction but the question still stands sure um so um greg can maybe give a little more history here um about this how the seasons normally

[164:01] um play out but um uh normally in october there will be a couple days or a day of turnaways which um it's important for that to happen before it gets too cold um we we probably would have some flexibility um to increase over those 20 beds um in the situation that you've um defined um however in not defining the number of beds you also end up with the situation of expanding the turnaways sorry by not i didn't follow that last statement yeah so if you always provide a bed for everyone who comes every night and you keep expanding um in that way it does increase the number of individuals until you get to a point where you can't expand anymore which is what happened a few years ago and then you have a huge number of turnaways

[165:01] okay all right well thanks that's it for my questions that we can discuss a little bit more when we get to discussion thank you aaron mark thank you thank you kurt thank you vicky um great presentation uh just a couple of quick questions um how do our weather triggers compare to those of other cities longmont fort collins or denver in terms of accessing severe weather um shelter or critical weather shelter so i'll i'm going to hand this over to vicky but before i do i'll just say that longmont doesn't have severe weather shelter many communities don't particularly if they're a housing first approach but we did that i don't have it in front of me now but we did that research um i think last year um at that time

[166:01] the city of boulder's weather triggers were at least 10 to 15 degrees higher than other communities that have weather triggers but vicky do you know what the triggers are in denver right now or um and one caveat i would give is that every neighboring community is going through some sort of reassessment of whether providing for severe weather shelter in a coveted environment but my understanding is that denver has probably the most generous number they use 40 but they don't have their beds to population demand is significantly lower than ours and however if you look at adams county jeffco broomfield they use 20 degrees or 32 if it's raining or snowing um my next question is

[167:00] just i'm curious what tends to be the the resistance factor with respect to people who don't want to participate in coordinated entry and to get you 30 days of shelter um why is there resistance and and who who generally is resistant to doing that so um it there there are a number of reasons why people may be resistant some of it um is mental illness and there's a distrust of systems and and there's sometimes a fear factor of being in a congregate setting there are cases where um as councilmember member swetlick mentioned that they maybe have something um that precludes their use of sheltering ongoing so something like a pet um so there really isn't any difference

[168:01] between severe weather shelter and ce as opposed to year-round programming and ce um the the barriers are pretty much the same okay and my last question is um how quickly can you be responsive to an extreme weather event if the need were there to go beyond the 195 beds that are presently the maximum and you saw a weather system coming in and it was just going to be so brutal that that you needed to make uh a quick accommodation how quickly could you turn that around and what would that look like so there we've had lots of practice of that this year in this past spring um so you know i would say our our nonprofits and particularly our partner with boulder shelter for the homeless are very reactive it's a matter of staffing and and bringing in additional staff as needed

[169:00] because even if we place people in hotels we do have to have people that are checking on them and making sure that everything is working for them and it also is a factor of on those expansion nights how many hotel rooms are available at the hotel and so boulder shelter does talk to some of the other area hotels to to see if we have some backup options and if it were to get extremely bad where there was a talk of needing to open a secondary facility that gets a little bit more problematic that takes a little bit more response time in order to get all the things that go into it um we set up the crc in four days but generally expanding to open we can do within a number of hours mark could i just add one more thing well so we we could add a few hotel rooms um with relatively short notice

[170:02] um however a different facility is um that's a huge lift and first of all there's very few facilities in our city where you can actually sleep individuals um because it requires fire sprinklers um we were able to move quickly on the crc because the east boulder community center actually is sprinkled but there's not a finding a facility in opening it in hours or even days is is very difficult understood thank you guys thank you mark sam you're uh you're you're muted twice tonight um so i just have one question on slide eight you have the census comparison and starting september you have an estimated and it looks like the estimated number

[171:02] of folks and housing focused shelter is expected to go up by 20 or 30 or so is why is that what what happens at that point to raise the number of people well during that time of the year um we off often see a trend in that direction um but what we did for our estimate is we also took that trend and we added five percent to it um to be conservative but during the winter season [Music] those numbers typically go up okay i guess i can see it in 19. i didn't see it before then so okay thank you thank you sam rachel um thanks just a couple of follow-up questions so um finances wise if we reduced capacity by a hundred

[172:00] beds roughly do do we have a cost savings from that or where did the money go and obviously putting the coveted beds the crc aside because i assume that's being paid out of um covid's specific funding or hopefully getting reimbursed for that what did what how did that impact our budget so we increased our funding into housing um this year um if you remember part of the approach was to continuously work at getting individuals housed um out of the shelter to make room uh to accommodate the severe weather shelter um so those those resources um i mean 30th street was relatively expensive because it was who were renting a building and it was a whole nother set of staff required to work at 24 7 approach so those savings went into different vouchers

[173:01] to get additional individuals into housing this year so we we increased the number of people going into housing as a result of reducing was it like a one for one like are there a hundred extra people housed as a result of that uh it's it's not a one to one um the um i'm gonna i believe it's about um two or slightly more two to three people that you need to house to get a sort of a permanent one-person reduction at the shelter um i think it's about to but um we would have to come back with you on that exact number but it's in that ballpark okay um thanks and then just something that you mentioned about communications just raised a couple more questions for me so one is what is the communication strategy facing out towards people who will need

[174:00] severe weather sheltering um a couple weeks ago where we hit the cold snap or however long ago that was there was some question about like these are you know it's new information going out and do we have it on our website and what time is it getting there so i'm just wondering if there are updates on sort of how we are going to get information to people who may need it so i'll let craig uh respond to that one um we'll be we'll be using very similar approaches to what we've done in the past um you know in the past some of that was done by bridge house and we will have to pick up that mantle for that communication we we will make the call 24 hours in advance when we're in the weather triggered season but unlike last year will be open every night for sws from december 1st through march 15th so the actual need for communications during that time period will be significantly less there'll be far less uncertainty for our clients

[175:01] they'll just know for sure that we're open every night so hopefully it will actually be a much easier task than last year yeah um thanks for that greg and will the city's website include that information at all like we have a severe weather shelter page will we also get it up ideally 24 hours in advance it will but um i don't think people actually use that website um for that information um so the shelter has a website um but predominantly people hear about it through the services um first of all when they when they leave that day they already know if it's going to be open or not because that announcement has already been made but also programs like community table and harvest of hope our hot team to be there team all those individuals or programs would be um a place for communication as well

[176:02] which is also something that happened um last year and um thanks for that so like during the last cold snap some people reached out to me and and didn't know where to look for the information and also said it was um you know didn't want to trek all the way north to find out that the shelter was at capacity so will there also be information you know at five six and seven o'clock maybe updating the numbers that are available so that people know whether it's worth their while to enter the lottery or try and get a bed i'll let greg answer that thanks um we we have not done that in the past and i i don't anticipate that we would it's very difficult to do um because we can have 20 or 30 people show up at a quarter of seven so um it

[177:02] that that's just really challenging and i'm afraid that we would mislead more people than we would help if we tried to do that a couple last spring to to get information on whether we had reached capacity and um i would think as well as we're going into this new sort of hotel voucher system and all the different you know covered crc beds and covid related and hotel level one and then the extra level two triggers could we get those updates again so that we know and you know if we have to rethink or make decisions we can do it more in real time yes we can certainly do that awesome thank you that's all those are all my follow-up questions thank you rachel bob you're up i just have one question it's really a follow-up to the questions that aaron and um and uh mark asked if we were if we were um just

[178:00] a couple two three beds short on a particular night um do we have kind of a kind of a mutual aid agreement or just an understanding with some of the other shelters like for example in longmont we do as a matter of practice if we were a couple of beds short do we call up there and say hey guys we've got a few extra guys here um can we um take them up there for the night if you guys got some extra beds does that happen so um as kart mentioned the longmont 8 doesn't actually run a severe weather shelter i realize that but they have beds though right right but they do do something called emergency shelter on cold nights so they're basically using all of their beds anyway so on a situation where we would be approaching an overflow situation they probably are too um but we have in the past matter of fact last spring there we set up a program

[179:00] where we moved people between bridge house and bsh to better utilize beds um you know so if that's if that is the will of the council we can certainly talk to some of the other counties and see the i will we we've had similar conversations with some of our partner counties and um i will stress that transportation becomes a problem um if you're talking about an extremely bad weather situation getting people up the highway in place other places gets very dangerous okay thanks are there any other questions i see your hands is still up sam no okay thank you i did have a follow-up question to rachel's question earlier about impact of the severe weather shelter on coordinated entry and i was a bit concerned as well with

[180:00] the fact that it might impact it so i would like to know if maybe kurt if you would be able to keep stats on on on that information just for the severe weather shelter uh so you're you would be asking for some sort of information on how many people um declined to go through coordinated entry or who declined its service because of um going through that process um i think we could probably um see it see a way to do that yes thank you and i think i just wanted to follow up with um i think part of the question it was asked by mark and rachel and to me it wasn't clear enough for me i was just wondering is there a penalty for instance let's say i come to the severe weather shelter and you wanted me to go to coordinated entry and i said no

[181:00] i just went out i just want a bed to lay my head what happened do you get turned away or what if that happened on the second day you don't get turned away um they'll what you will be told though is that um if you want to stay additional nights you'll be required to go through coordinated entry and coordinated entry will be avail available for you the next day you don't actually have to do it that evening so the next day if you don't do it you can't really stay at the civic weather shelter basically that's correct the other thing that i'll note is we're opening a office downtown um the very beginning of november at 9th in arapahoe and it will be in office in the in the downtown area for coordinated entry so it will be another point for individuals to go through coordinated entry um as well as diversion services

[182:02] that will be run all day monday through friday and if you went through coordinated entry that afternoon and went to the shelter the shelter would know that you had gone through coordinated entry thank you and i think i just wanted to follow up with 10 degrees 12 degrees threshold and it just dawned on me that we've been talking about homeless services you know since i've been on council which has been 10 months but part of the discussion is that you know with people not having access to shelter unless it's 10 or 12 12 or 10 degrees is day services are there a lot are there day programs for let's say someone cannot stay at the shelter because it's not below 12 but let's say it's 15 or 20 are there places you know homeless people can go or people who are in homeless situation they can

[183:00] go to just you know spend the time until the time to go back to the shelter and sleep so basically from 12 o'clock to 5 o'clock we wouldn't have those that facility open or 11 30 to 5 o'clock we wouldn't have that open so there's no programming basically from any non-profit or other organization do you know or no vicky do you want to respond to that um not as such um i believe community table starts a little bit earlier at like 4 30 um but they are not the last time and this could have changed but the last time they communicated to us they were not planning on having day services yeah question quick question if i may call colloquy or just follow up on this um what about harvest of hope i thought they were open during they are yes they are

[184:00] and and the reality of shelter life is you leave the shelter you head back downtown you go toward you get your lunch at harvest of hope you head back to get in queue up for the night service with some activities that happen in the you know other things that you want to do during the day but typically people who are utilizing our shelters do have sort of patterns of behavior and they have figured out ways to make things work um harvest of hope um as with everything else is very limited in the amount of time you can be in there so it's really more of a picking up of picking up food and leaving okay well thank you so much do you have any other questions mary or anyone else has any other questions okay well since no one else has any other questions we can move on to the

[185:02] comments section which is talking about input plan for the severe weather shelter and two on the overflow plan and three input on the severe weather shelter state criteria so who want to kickstart rachel uh well i haven't been too quiet so i'll go ahead and kick us off um i'm pretty concerned about the the day shelter situation given that the libraries are closed and um my understanding is that's a a natural fit for a lot of people given that we don't have day services so i i don't know what the solution is but that just seems too cold um and i would i would like us to talk about um having day shelter somewhere um be available um i don't know what the right threshold is

[186:00] but uh 10 degrees is it doesn't seem right um so that's one just thing i hope we'll talk about um it it seems that if we are requiring coordinated entry screens to stay at severe weather shelter that that's a change that should be intentional so i would think that council should dialogue about that and talk through what the benefits are and also consider whether that would maybe make more sense to do not in um 2020 which is already such a um difficult year so it's an extra hurdle it seems like and i just wonder is that does that need to be done and especially this year um and then um how did we get to the cap at 30 nights does that make sense um to counsel and the fact that we have reduced available beds by a hundred um

[187:01] it seems like like a significant number to me so that also seems like it should be intentional um and so i just want to flag that as hopefully things that we will talk through tonight um i think that i i don't tend to be in the majority of council on on this subject so i'm not sure it's that important to say what i would like to see happen um but i again i think that the the 30 night cap that switched to coordinated entry the reduction by 100 should all be really intentional by this council um and and should be talked through and i will say i think for the 10 degree threshold that that doesn't seem um that doesn't seem right so that's my kick off thanks thank you rachel can i just give one clarification to rachel the 30 days is not a cap it's um when we look back over the last six years it's been about 30 days per

[188:00] season so i must have misunderstood that um so maybe just a follow-up so if could somebody stay in oh i'm sorry i'm getting the 30 days mixed up i thought you were talking about the the critical weather nights okay i think you can only stay at severe weather shelter for 30 days in the season right that's correct that's your cat yeah so that's right again just think we should be discussing an intentional thanks thank you thank you rachel bob can i agree with rachel for a second please um actually rachel i i would be most interested in and hearing what you would like to see happen i you know we're always looking for solutions and you know i i would like to know agreed oh um thanks mark for your interest um i would say that uh i would i would not uh have coordinated entry be a requirement maybe consider it in a future year but especially while we're dealing with

[189:01] covid and just a lot of the upheavals of 2020 um and and we know that it is an extra burden for some people i would just probably not ratchet that up this year so i would and i understand that kurt and vicki have good reasons for wanting to connect people with services and that is our housing first model and it makes sense um still wouldn't do it this year and in terms of the reduced capacity by a hundred um i that's part of why i asked about the budget like do we have some extra money or is there some finagling we can do because that just seems like um a sharp reduction and what we've seen around town this year doesn't lead me to believe that we're gonna have uh just you know a precious few people seeking shelter on cold nights i think we're gonna um my my prediction is that we will be turning people away um and and reaching capacity and i would

[190:02] like for us to have um a more robust plan and fewer fewer if any beds lost when we were we were already turning people away last year with an extra 100 beds um in terms of the 30-day cap um i feel like i need more information on that like how did we arrive at that number is that a irrational um way to approach this and then to adam's point about like there are people who just can't stay at shelter um i think that gets to some of the other issues that we've been struggling um including safe parking and right to rest and and what do people do on those cold nights and and how do we treat people with dignity and compassion um especially when it's lethally cold out so thanks for asking i appreciate it thank you rachel bob

[191:01] um yeah a few things uh first let me just i'll make a broad statement i endorse um the staff's recommendations and the approach the staff has taken so i appreciate that and i i would not propose any changes to what staff is recommending with respect to coordinated entry and specifically um we have experimented with that we we tried last spring to um to take all comers without requiring coordinated entry and it was a mess because if you don't have to go through coordinated entry you won't if you don't go through coordinated entry we can't give you stable housing so i think that is not it's coordinator entry is just a registration that's all it is it takes a few moments it doesn't require you to do anything other than give your name and your background and so i think coordinated entry after that first night is an appropriate thing and lets us get folks teed up for what we really want which is a stable and permanent housing we've experimented with a lot of things over the years we had boho for a while that ended up actually hurting more

[192:00] people than it helped or at least hurt a lot of people we tried some experiments recently about taking off the weather triggers and that ended up being a bit of a mess as well so i think we've kind of wandered through the wilderness here and i think the staff has arrived at a good solid place we've also looked at best practices in other cities and are applying those and i would also finally observe that our temperature thresholds at least the ones that staff presented to us last spring sounds like vicky indicated that there's maybe some um adjustments going on i'll be interested to see where were those heading but at least as of last spring uh boulder was significantly higher than most of our peer cities that had temperatures uh significantly lower than our thresholds and of course when that happens people tend to migrate to boulder because if we're the only place open uh they'll come here and we we um mathematically we can't take all comers um and so we have to have some sort of guardrails on what it is that we'll do

[193:01] i would have three requests of staff however i i will endorse the staff recommendations i do have three requests number one i'd like to see some periodic reporting i'll leave that up to curt vicky as what that looks like whether that's on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis but relatively frequently it'd be nice to have just a quick ip maybe a system paragraph or two um you know we get a west nile report in the summer time that comes on a weekly basis but just something from staff or from the shelter that indicates some of the things we talked about tonight as far as how many people do we serve how many beds are extra do we do we have to turn anybody away i think one of the council members asked for uh some information on how many people declined to participate in coordinated entry after that first night so whatever information you think would be helpful to us i think it would be nice to have a periodic report during the course of the winter so we can kind of track trends and see how things are going second along those lines i i'd welcome an

[194:00] opportunity to have curt and vicki come back and i'll call it the early part of the winter i don't know if that's the last meeting in december or one of the first meetings in january but before we get too deep into the winter perhaps cac could schedule an update of this meeting oh 30 or 45 minutes to hear how things are going in the first few weeks of the winter and then we can decide at that point if we need a midwinter update as well and then finally um i think it'd be hell i don't know what this looks like i'm just going to throw it out there would be nice if we could have a little bit of optionality i think the numbers you've pegged based on our past experience feel right to me but we don't know right and um you know to aaron's point it'd be a real tragedy if we came up three short on a particular night um and so what i don't know if that looks like mutual aid with longmont or whether that's some extra hotel rooms that are kind of on super standby obviously if we have 50 or 100 people show up more than the beds that we have then we have a completely different problem we have to

[195:01] address but if we're just a couple two three beds short on a particular night i'd hope that we would find a place whether it's squeezing people in or opening up a rec center or having a hotel on on double standby or something like that just so we have a little bit of a safety valve if there's just a couple two three people that are um that are without housing on a particularly cold night so those are my three recommendations but i think generally speaking this is a good plan and i'd like to check in very frequently to make sure it's working thank you bob aaron yeah so i'm going to i'll echo some of rachel's concerns here that i we are looking at many fewer bets this year and i appreciate the overflow option with the hotel rooms um but i'm concerned that we're going to fall a fair amount short um on the need that exists kind of within our own community so you know last year we had um the path

[196:02] to home facility uh as well as um the boulder shelter and obviously there was more beds but it also provided for backup and reinforcement options and and i thought everybody did a fantastic job the shelter and bridge house in the city and kind of uh being able to to move folks around to make sure that we had a little additional capacity on on the toughest nights so i'm really concerned that we've lost that ability and you know like bob was talking about with uh you know if we're falling a little bit short right if we're if we find out that hey we've we've almost got it right in terms of uh the need in the community and what we're providing but we're consistently three or five or eight beds short um i i just i really don't want to see um those folks turned out into the cold kind of night after night after night so i'd really i get that you know we can't serve you know 800 additional people you

[197:00] know that our resources are finite but i just really hope that we could have well not just hope i would very much want us to see you know some flexibility some backup options that so that we can deal with you know small um or moderate additional needs um i do like rachel said i'm i'm concerned about the the day options as well because of we don't have the public spaces available in the same way so i appreciate that the shelter is planning on being open during the day some days that's great it hasn't generally been the practice so thank you for that flexibility but the the threshold is at such a low temperature and and if that it's not open i don't know what other options people are going to have on those coldest of days so i don't know if we can change that threshold or have some other um option available um during these extraordinary times

[198:00] when the usual resources um aren't available and and just in terms of coordinated entry i'll say it it does make sense to me to have coordinated entry be involved here because that's how we connect people to services and and it is it is a fairly doable thing to go through coordinated entry i think that one night free is important so when people show up they get a night it doesn't matter but the next day i think it's pretty doable to to get to the coordinated entry facility so i'm fine with that um but i so i'm just i'm i'm concerned about those those the overflow needs and and about the the day needs um during these times so uh appreciate the the thought and care that you put into the this plan for sure so um thanks very much for that and for all that that you all do but that's that's where i'm seeing issues from my perspective thank you aaron adam thanks judy um yeah i'll start

[199:01] pretty broadly you know this conversation is always a really tough one to have um and i understand this is not a criticism at all of our city's work but to have a lottery system it feels very hunger gamesy to me you're essentially choosing who gets to survive any given night that's pretty crazy that we have to live in a world like that and i hope that both our state and our national government will step up at some point so we can actually address these problems at their core um again not a criticism of you guys it's just that's a tough conversation um and when we're looking specifically at this i do share a lot of the concerns that rachel and aaron have put out there um i did really like bob's idea you know i think we've all come to the conclusion that this is a regional issue so if we can coordinate regional beds in any way possible i understand that's very difficult on a

[200:00] severe weather night but that brought me to the idea of hey you know if we rent a school bus and it has a heater in it the chances of someone surviving staying in a school bus with a heater a lot higher than if they're out in the cold so um even if we had the transportation system um that itself is maybe more survivable than nothing at all um so uh yeah i'm not gonna try to go and net pick too much what's already been said but um surviving over just over 10 degrees even during the day i think is a difficult task um and also i think bob made a few good points about um what type of data we should see on a regular basis and something that i think is important is we started getting turnaway data on a regular basis thank you kurt and vicky for getting that um upon request last year i still think

[201:00] that's an important piece just so we can recognize what turnaway rate we have um and also i think it's kind of important that we know what the amount of deaths from hypothermia and cases of frostbite we have on a consistent basis are because those are measurements and they're horrible things we have to measure but i think it's our responsibility um as as the leaders of this community to know exactly what's happening and even if it's terrible so um those would be my requests thank you thank you adam sam yeah and thank you to staff as always for the hard work on this i have to comment at how much more sophisticated and layered um this approach is today than it was when i got on council in 2013 when pretty much everything was done by lottery so there were no shell housing focused shelter beds there was

[202:01] no navigation there was no set aside for the crc and we didn't have hotel beds and so this is a very very different um plan and staff has got a lot of nuance in the thinking about how the housing focus shelter approach interacts with severe weather shelters so i appreciate the deep thought that staff has put into this and also the coordination with the county effort so generally just answer the questions i i think this is a good place to start um it's never going to be good enough so one of the things about this conversation that i think everyone has to realize is i'm going to quote greg harm's probably not exactly here but we cannot solve regional and national problems with limited local resources so we always have to try and make it better but there will always probably be people who are falling through the cracks

[203:00] so we should try and seal the cracks up but um we have to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good in the sense that we have to serve as many people as we can with the resources we have and we have to do it as effectively as we can towards that end i will say that the coordinated entry has been a huge huge advance for us because we can answer the questions like adam just put out in the past it was very hard for us to know who came to access services when it was just a lottery you know it was it was guesswork and and who you saw the most often so i think this is a good start i have to agree with aaron and bob in the sense that we we need to have a little elasticity um when we have you know on the on the coldest of nights on the critical nights is when we need the most elasticity i think um input on the overflow plan it's a start it's good uh you know it has both the

[204:02] crc and the the hotel beds involved and i think that is um positive and it's different than what we've had before when the overflow plan was kind of ad hoc and it became a um that boho often was the the place of choice for folks to go they didn't have to go all the way north and there were no rules necessarily or at least a smaller set of rules and so the other piece of course about coordinated entry is it does direct people to services and the goal here of course is to keep people from from suffering in severe weather but that's not an ultimate solution that's a that's what you do for the night and the day when it's super cold and people are are in need of shelter but the long-term solutions have to look to you know with the long-term problem and so yes we need to shelter folks but i really do think that the long-term

[205:00] shelter is is where we have to concentrate on this um input on the criteria for severe weather shelter stays i think it's interesting this year that we have a difference between severe weather shelter which we used to be weather triggered and now that those triggers are just it's open all winter mostly and then we have this additional critical weather so that's a a new uh trigger and it it it expands the system which is one that most needs to be expanded so i think the staff plan is is a really good start um you know as far as the 30-day limit and all of that goes um the number's never going to be perfect until we have an infinite number of beds and we're not going to have an infinite number of beds anytime soon so i think it's important for us to realize that one thing that has happened um over the last four years is the number of people who were going

[206:01] through coordinated entry in 2017 about 21 of them had been here for less than six months about 41 had been here less than six years and now in 2020 61 of the people going through coordinated entry have been here for less than six months and almost 70 percent have been here for less than one year so when we have to make tough decisions about who to serve with limited resources i think we want to start with the people who have spent the most time here and have the most attachment to our community those are the ones that we need to focus on first and adam i'll come to your point about the lottery i i've been against lottery systems for as long as i've been on council and this lottery is very different than the lottery that was in place when it was 2013 because we are actually using a method to prioritize the most

[207:00] vulnerable because people have these these housing focused beds and those are people who have gone through coordinated entry and who are trying to get into housing and then we have people who are going through navigation services and the you know i think greg could speak to some of the policies at the shelter that that focus on the most vulnerable first but this lottery system is now the last thing being used for the walk-up as opposed to the only thing being used so i i think this is a very very good start from staff i look forward to thinking about how we can bulk up everything else but i will also say that in the past there were no day services you know there was nothing to offer bridge house was one of the first organizations that offered day services that's how they got started and their foothold here in boulder was the carriage house so the situation is better than it's been uh we do have less beds than we

[208:00] did last year and there is covid and both of those are areas of concern so one of my thoughts to one of bob's suggestions which i thought was good about getting periodic updates is we could create a dashboard um that we could look at at our will i mean it's nice to get ips but those often go by pretty quickly the dashboard that we have up now is how i got the numbers about how long people have been here um and so an idea might be if you're going to collect the data the council's asking for may put it in an ip but i think having it on dashboard would be great because then rather than you having to do an ip every you know two weeks or four weeks and get it to us if the dashboard was updated once a week we could go check ourselves and then i agree with with the idea of having you come back in the last meeting in december so we can check in on how things have gone and if if things aren't going well we can schedule another one in february

[209:01] or something like that so you know not to say we're we're there yet but i do just want to emphasize this this is the most sophisticated approach that we've had so far as far as i can tell and we need to keep our eye on it but we've added services and we've added pathways out of homelessness that haven't ever been here before so i want to thank the staff for all the work that you do on this you don't get thanked enough you get criticized quite a bit and i think you probably knew that when you stepped into these positions but it doesn't make it any easier so i appreciate your hard work and this problem is one that we wrestle with every single year and through the winter we typically wrestle with it two or three times i just want to appreciate everybody who's continually trying to make it better that's all junie thanks thank you so much please um i i agree actually with sam i

[210:00] think the dashboard is fantastic and it's been a great tool we've had it up for for three years now it's a place i go to all the time for information and i appoint community members to that as well my only criticism of the dashboard is information is often stale right now the most current information you get is the end of august and and for a while there we were actually several months behind i suspected to do a staffing and just availability of people didn't put that data um but i agree with sam rather than having you guys have to write a weekly or periodic ip if you could just update that dashboard once a week that would be great that's all the information we could possibly need so if you want to use that tool rather than writing a separate memo as long as you can keep it up to date that would be preferable can i just give an input uh judy to that so we we had one of our um data we had our department had two data um folks working for us um one um uh was on furlough the other was working on other things within our departments we were actually

[211:01] down to zero data individuals for about a month and a half we've just hired a new data individual and they started i think two weeks ago and that's actually why it's updated to august um otherwise we wouldn't be there um so i'm very thankful for that but that that certainly will be a priority um and um we have confidence that we'll we'll be able to do a better job in keeping that up today great thanks chris it's a great tool janie can i call equate as well into sam's points may i or sam um just the first on the day sheltering and that this is a you know an improvement because we didn't used to have it i would just sort of gently counter that i think the reality is that we have had it sort of de facto at the libraries and that they're largely closed and so i think this year is a step down in terms of day services because when it's

[212:01] really cold out and and the libraries are not open or have significantly reduced capacity people won't have a place to go so that's a big issue i see for day services that's that's i understand not everybody's seeing it the same way but i would ask that maybe staff and and greg at least look at it through that lens and see if there's more that's needed and then second on staff's on on sam's point of appreciating staff i just wanted to echo that and say that i i also um appreciate all the work that you do and um think that we all have our heart in the right place and we're all trying to make this a better um situation for the the people that we're trying to help and serve and i think sometimes we or the community sort of make things personal and maybe don't trust each other's intentions and

[213:00] so i realize it is a hard job and um and that you are all acting from the a place of of wanting to help so i appreciate it thanks hey rachel well thank you colloquy on your colloquy and thank you for that um one of the things that we have done successfully in the past has used members organizations of our faith community to help us out and to the day services point um we do need to clean the spaces where people stay in the evening it might be it might be an interesting thing to approach some of the folks in the faith community because they've reached out to me in the past saying what can we do to help you know how can we make this situation better and in this year they may be even more inspired to do that than usual so it might be worth reaching out to some of the organizations who used to support boho and who have expressed uh interest in being helpful

[214:00] and see if we can use them for day shelter because i do agree with rachel's gentle reminder that the libraries are often a de facto day shelter and they're essentially not available this winter so it might be a time when we can call on some of our other partners to help out thank you rachel thank you uh is there mary you're next so um thank you everyone for your comments and especially staff for all your hard work um one of the things you know sam mentioned how different things are from 2014 when we first started down this path and one of the things that sam um didn't mention was that at that point in time we weren't housing people and now there's a lot of people that are housed and and i think that's a real important point um

[215:00] this afternoon greg and i um greg harms and i exchanged some emails back and forth regarding the lottery system and i was trying to understand it i think that the slide um that's the census slide that has the blue and the orange um if you could bring it back up i think that answers some of the questions because in the conversation that the email conversation that greg and i had um he was saying you know i expressed the same concerns that others have with the lottery and i think the reason that greg is confident that the lottery won't even be necessary is because of this um graph here and is the way i'm reading this is that the navigation went down because both the navigation and the

[216:02] housing focus shelter have gone down and so that provides a little more space in other places and is that is that a correct assumption um could somebody does the thing nothing that i would add marries all the individuals who are part of that graph will not go through that um uh lottery system it's only people that would be above that graph okay okay your weather shelter folks all right so i think that this is the graph that tells us that that provides some level of confidence that the um lottery will be not be used will be used very little if at all that's correct it would only be used on those nights where um they think they're going to reach capacity so it's for those individuals on those handful of nights okay um so that's one point that i wanted to make um

[217:01] i also with respect to the day shelter um i like the idea of reaching out to the faith community and seeing if they can provide that gap sheltering between 11 30 and 5 p.m there's also potentially another place that's much closer by and i'm wondering if that might be available which is um doesn't lee hill have a fairly big kind of community room and i'm just wondering if that's not something that could be used for those five hours on those days that it is 10 degrees or below or or some um cold weather trigger because i i do think that that it there is a gap there that from 11 30 to 5 there is definitely a gap that needs to be addressed um and then um i agree with the points made regarding the the two to three um the elasticity as sam referred to it

[218:01] um i also agree with bob's requests and then the idea about the the dashboard um i think that's a perfect solution especially now if you have that you have a um a data person and then um with respect to the coordinated entry the coordinate entry is what we can attribute all of our housing successes to without that people wouldn't be getting permanently housed and ultimately that's the solution that we're looking for the 30 days is is a rational um conclusion based on the fact that most people and i forgot the percentage uh most people stay three to four nights um if that and so there's very few people that even stay the 30 days so i think that is that is based on data and and past

[219:00] experience um i think that is all i have um and i agree with with coming back sometime um before we get too late into the winter um to just just a quick update um and in lieu of coming to council every other week the dashboard will suffice thank you thank you mary our next speaker is rachel that my hand must still be up i'm sure you've all um heard enough for me tonight but i don't have anything else thank you mark you're up yes very briefly um i thought the program put forth by staff is excellent um i think it's nuanced i think it's addressing the problem as as best that we can i agree with sam's comment we will never have the resources to solve a national

[220:01] problem at the local level um but we have to do the best that we can do uh i do share a little bit of aaron and rachel's concerns about the uh temperature trigger for the critical weather standards and i would have no objection if you wanted to look at that again and perhaps nudge it a bit higher um but other than that i i think it's a good plan i agree with the concept of outreach to our faith community to see if they can provide some additional resources particularly for day shelter and i agree with most of mary's comments uh as well um so not to belabor it those are my comments thank you mark and thank you all for this lively discussion just a quick recap is

[221:03] i do agree at first i did agree with rachel with this idea of um i was concerned about the coordinated entry through the severe weather shelter but after hearing from aaron and how it's just a vehicle to get people housed and it's not a heavy lift i think i i agree with it as well if you know the idea is to get people housed i think that's heading in the right direction but i'm still very much concerned about the day service issue i've been concerned about that since i got on council and i'm still very much concerned about it and i think it goes back to what aaron mentioned it's either the threshold is too low at this moment it's either we raise it or we find services for people and i think this idea of outreach to the faith community is is a great way to look into closing that gap

[222:01] and then now we're moving to bob's suggestions which is the periodic reporting but i think we decided that the dashboard would be better to track trends and he mentions cac update in the first week of the winter and also if one's for our critical weather services time if there are a few people that are being turned away whether we can have either the rec center or hotels available for people and that's basically what sums up our discussion unless someone thinks they think that something please uh chime in if not i think um i'll just thank kurt for his uh presentation is there any is anyone have any question or comments no okay perfect well i would like to

[223:01] juni i'll make a comment you did a very nice job tonight thank you very much definitely nice job awesome job well thank you so much i would like to thank the monitor and the task force or housing and human services director and all involved for the great work that they've done and to my fellow council members i hope you have a wonderful evening and this meeting is adjourned thank you so much thank you jenny thank you everyone all right and greg thanks for being here good night [Music] to take advantage of it