December 8, 2020 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] set tomorrow but that's to be confirmed and clearly that story about head injuries in rugby is one that is extremely alarming too and we'll keep across all developments the prospect of a future enough for them to go and leave everything behind these ethiopian refugees are exhausted but they have one remaining hope to survive they're fleeing from death they're looking for a refuge for shelter food and water they didn't give me steel now so i'm really pissed off in this moving episode of reporters we look at the fragile hopes of the generations of ethiopians who were fleeing

[1:28] yes um but i was going to promote them all to panelists at the same time okay they were all had their microphones and video when at the ready when it's their turn okay that makes sense okay yes that makes sense um right and emily usually runs the timer so emily is it possible for us to have a two and a half minute timer at the ready sorry i'm just letting everybody in while i'm doing this okay i don't know if we have um two and a

[2:01] half minutes that there are videos that are already that for us because we're now using the regular council chamber timer right um so we're still using the video so i have a okay two minute three minute four minute and five minute so emily brenda i can run the timer here oh great thanks yeah and and is that what you said mary two and a half and and you do have that available two and a half i do it's just on my phone but i'll do it okay great thank you i'm just trying to get all of our applicants are we ready to um start promoting our applicants so they can turn on their cameras mary um i think we are yes okay great so

[3:00] applicants i'm gonna start changing your meeting status you'll see that you're leaving the meeting and coming back in as a panelist and at that time you will be able to mute and unmute and use your video when those things are requested of you so i'm going to go ahead and start that now i've renamed most of you so we know that you are applicants and there may be folks i've missed so i'll be on the lookout brenda there was a bit of a hiccup uh i'm not sure if i'm the only person in or we should begin or if everybody's joined um i'm sorry i'm not sure who was talking oh this is tim o'shea i think everybody's just joining there was a

[4:00] little bit of guidance uh when we were rejoining so i see we're all here sorry about that yep everyone's here together and and i think um mary young will be leading our way through the interviews so she'll let you know um what happens when all right um so welcome all of you um we are here at prior to our december 8th study session to have um our interviews with you all and um thank you for applying we are going to go one by one and um you're going to answer um a question um unfortunately we just have time for one question for um each of you to answer the same question and um we will give you each two and a half minutes to respond and um and we'll go through each of you in the order um that you appear on the

[5:02] the list which is alphabetical order so um we will start with allison bailey and allison if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and what your concerns are about the industry and why and um you will have two and a half minutes great thank you um my name is allison bailey she's hers i'm the program manager for the community substance abuse prevention program at boulder county public health um my interest in serving on the club is around promoting a providing a public health perspective to the discussions um my experience with working in boulder county public health and previously with the city of boulder have a great amount of respect for the

[6:00] role of boards and commissions in supporting city council and making balanced and informed decisions and supporting their goals of community engagement in terms of concerns around the industry i think from a public health standpoint our goal is to make sure that marijuana is used by adults who are making an informed decision to use and that folks who are underage are not using marijuana products one of the concerns that we have is around the normalization of youth use of marijuana and how increases in things like advertising or increased number of businesses may further normalize youth use of marijuana um another concern um that that i have is around the types of products that young people are using when they're choosing to use marijuana we know about 24

[7:00] of young people in boulder county have used marijuana in the past 30 days and that number has remained flat since legalization but one of the biggest changes that we've seen is the way that young people are using 60 of young people who have reported that they've used marijuana in the past 30 days reported that they dabbed marijuana so using a much higher concentration of marijuana and that's something that as a health department we are concerned about and what that means for those harms to young people in particular again we absolutely support adults making an informed decision to use a legal product our concern is around youth use and i think having that public health perspective on the club can really continue the success of the marijuana advisory panel that had such a balanced perspective from industry the school district cu and the health department as well as community members thank you alison um next i will call

[8:00] on um truman bradley and um so just tell us a little bit about yourself and then share what your concerns are about the industry and why thank you so much for your time my name is truman bradley i have a long history of doing cannabis work in the city of boulder i grew up in boulder and went to southern hills fairview high school attended cu for a philosophy undergrad and then started a vertically integrated marijuana company in 2009 with a grow facility based in boulder i did that during the day and then attended the leeds school of business at night to get my mba and specialized in learning how to be an entrepreneur with a focus on cannabis and so i'm very familiar with the original marijuana advisory board here at the city and um have worked very

[9:01] closely with former city council members as well as city staff and and i'm very excited for this opportunity i think when i uh so and in my current role i serve as the executive director of the marijuana industry group representing uh businesses and um licensees throughout the state of colorado when i think about my concerns about the marijuana industry i think it's it's multifaceted the first is continuing to prioritize the health and safety of our community so everybody from patients customers employees and certainly youth i think you know my current partner has three children ages 2 5 and 14 and it's near and dear to my heart i also think it's important for the club to to be able to provide the expertise to

[10:01] city council that it's seeking to bring issues forward such as social equity something that seems to be a little bit lacking right now in boulder i think those would be two of them but there are others that will come up hospitality delivery these are questions that will be facing city council and boulder in general i think sustainability for businesses and continuing to see an evolution in the businesses the regulatory bodies and the government officials to work together to get it right all right truman thank you very much um next i will call on via campbell and would you like me to repeat the question via no i got the question thank you though hi everyone my name is via campo and i work for vs strategies we are one of the main uh and biggest consultant cannabis consultant firms in the country and i want to talk a little bit about my

[11:01] previous position as well so you all can understand why i think that i'm a great uh fit for the club so until four months ago i was working for the city and county of denver at the office of marijuana policy so i have had numerous experiences with work groups uh not only as a member and a participant but also uh helping lead coordinate uh work on materials and things that those folks on those work groups need to know another thing that i would love to mention is i think we all know when it comes to cannabis in boulder what's the main concern and i think not only in boulder but in the state of colorado it's the youth component and how we protect our youth in the midst of this new legalized commodity um and i my background is in legal and policy but because when i was in denver probably because i was the youngest i was put on the youth prevention

[12:00] coordinating position in denver so i had the opportunity to work with denver public schools and denver public department of public health and environment and youth prevention and trusted adults so i understand very well what are both issues on the table from my previous job what are the regulations regulators positions what are the communities that are involved what are the stakeholders and also now that i'm in this current position why is this so important for also the marijuana industry to be heard so i think i'm gonna um i have this nuance of both sides of the story as well as in death understand of policy and then i'm going to shift to talk a little bit about that i think uh if you look at the current club membership uh you will see that we have an amazing group of amazing group of folks and we have you know uh data analysis and people who are in the marijuana

[13:00] industry and concerned parents and doctors but what we do not have unfortunately is a policy expert and i think that's what i'm gonna be bringing to the table uh i've been watching those meetings for about six months now uh and what i've seen time and time again is how sometimes there are lack of understanding of the state rules and how can those state rules impact boulder and both the residences and boulder businesses in our community as a whole so i think i'm gonna bringing this particular aspect to the table uh yesterday we had a club meeting and there were two or three questions that uh club members had that i know that i could have answered had i had the opportunity and they went unanswered because we don't have anybody with this particular profile that i do believe i bring to the table as far as the marijuana industry goes i understand that it's a fine line when we are trying to you know promote entrepreneurship and make sure that our

[14:01] businesses especially the businesses that have grown up in and made themselves in boulder at the same time where we are talking about a substance that is still federally illegal and how we need to prevent and uh take care of our communities so i do see this straight line i have navigated the straight line i think i have been a part of the first ever office of marijuana policy in the whole entire world in denver so i have built those regulations that uh have made denver what it is today and yeah thank you yeah thank you very much your time's up sorry about that we unfortunately have very little time um i'm going to call next on todd ellison and all of you i'll just go ahead and keep calling you as your name comes up and if you need the question repeat it please let me know so there can you hear me yes

[15:00] excellent my name is todd elson born in boulder most of my family as well um raised a few kids of my own i've got them from 14 to 26. i'm also an owner at marquis cannabis downtown boulder i've owned dozens of different companies in the cannabis industry and in the hemp space and i believe that my combination experience in those two spaces are going to help you greatly understanding everything from production extraction uh sales um you know and all the all the methods of all the different variants of those two topics precisely um but also homeless the young and and that sort of thing you know we had a foster home here in in boulder growing up myself so i'm very full aware of all of the needs for city of boulder's youth to be aware of what's out there and how to keep them safe from in that sense uh but i think that's where i can bring the most to the to the to the you know cloud group um you know it's something i don't see they have it's good information and i think i

[16:01] have that information that they need to fully understand all the aspects of edibles concentrates flour you know on both sides of hemp and marijuana so that's all i have thank you very much todd and next i'll call on jeff guard thanks everybody uh this has been uh a long road uh here in boulder i am a an attorney here in boulder i've been living here for 30 years um i'm best known to the council for my work in cannabis but i represent a wide range of of different types of businesses people i have a very diverse practice that i'm proud to say we've been voted boulder's best law firm on numerous occasions by the city by people in the city of boulder um i was one of three of the original cannabis attorneys in the state of colorado and helped actually propose and enact

[17:03] the colorado marijuana statutes that we work with today i've also been appointed by the state numerous times to work on cannabis policy changes and i'm also an advisor to the federal government on these issues um as council knows i've been here for the since the beginning and if you want status quo then you don't need me okay you need if you but if you want to continue with progress and progression it has been me and my firm that has advanced virtually every policy change for the better uh for everyone here uh i removed zero tolerance language i got rid of three strikes uh i allowed the transferability of licenses i restored due process hearings um i so mean that i know what what boulder needs and i think my biggest concern is that boulder is not uh in lockstep it is out of step with the state and all

[18:02] and we need to be flexible and we need to be progressive so that uh we can align what we're trying to do here in boulder with what the state's done with what our with our other partners like longmont boulder county aurora denver have done and we have not done a good job doing this which is why i proposed originally the map in 2015 and meeting with mary and others came up with the concept of collab to begin with so the club is currently mired in dysfunction uh it is not bringing bills forward to you the only bill it's going to bring forward this year is the hemp and cbd bill that i myself was the proponent of just like i was with delivery just like i was with hospitality just like i am with zoning changes advertising exchanges social equity these are all ideas that originate in my office in three minutes at a time i've made these changes since 2010. thank you thank you very much jeff next we'll um call on stacey green

[19:04] can you hear me yes we can all right well good evening everyone i appreciate you having us all here um i've also been a long time resident of boulder about 23 years also a graduate of cu for the past years i've been working as a physician here in boulder in a private practice i work both as a cannabis medical specialist as a portion of my more integrative practice where you know i help patients actually find ways to use cannabis as medicine but my practice largely focuses on mental health with a large facet of that dealing with addiction so i have a real balance in terms of understanding cannabis and how it both can be this wonderful agent but also has a you know significant set of risks um the youth risks are of course on my mind always but you know that's among many so my perspective is unique

[20:03] in being able to balance that i have worked in the industry as a consultant as well so i am very much understanding and able to take on you know the unique challenges that industry members face as opposed to the policy makers and etc so you know my biggest concern for cannabis and boulder is that we achieve some sort of balance um where we can really become a leader in the state but also on a national scale to show people that look these things can be balanced we can balance all these interests we can find a way to use cannabis medically speaking but there is also a way to have the recreational laws in a safe way that takes into account all of the potential risk and i think in order to achieve that balance we really need to focus on hearing the voices of all the different groups and um as was already pointed out clab has a

[21:01] good cross-section however there really isn't that perspective of a medical expert in cannabis albeit their physician members um however not with that background and so it's harder to achieve that kind of balance and understanding when you're not fully privy to those aspects having patients who've used cannabis on the board can help with that as well but my perspective allows me to see the risk side and really understand that even within just the case of a single patient there has to be balance achieved and likewise you know in a bigger scale with uh policy making in a jurisdiction like boulder so my perspective really can provide a unique approach in that way i've also been an advisor to cdphe on you know relating to medical cannabis and different aspects as far as its scientific use and

[22:01] research use in public health so really i would say my perspective will offer a well-rounded approach and most importantly i'll be able to act somewhat as a liaison on the committee to help the different members with different perspectives that sometimes may be out of line thank you your time's up thank you um next we have tim o'shea thanks mary and thanks to all the members of council and staff for organizing us this evening and a big thank you to all the other applicants a lot of great ideas are being discussed uh my name is tim o'shea i'm the strategic partnerships lead for integrated work a woman owns small business based here in boiler colorado for the last 20 years predominant line of work for us is facilitation and navigating complexities for different groups industries and organizations one of our primary councils with public health centers around the country i think i look at your question mary and

[23:00] the question before us when it comes to concerns with the industry i think that really begets a reflection on what our values are as a community but also recognizing uh the challenges we find ourselves in with this intersection of both industry growth opportunity a lot of varying agendas um but really where we want to go as a community and how boulder wants to embrace these challenges obviously there's a lot of complexity i think the city is above reproach with how they've navigated what's coming down from the states and certainly we're seeing more and more motion on the federal level my concern i think is that we balance the competing agendas with how we want to look at those complexities unpack them and choose the best paths forward certainly boulder is a leader in so many industries and with every new opportunity there

[24:00] become a greater and greater degree of uncertainties i think now is a point in time where we really can choose wisely for where we want to move and looking back at what we've seen in industries like our natural foods industry our tech and entrepreneurship biopharma boulder is an epicenter i don't think it's any different with cannabis and i think these challenges are navigable uh with respect to all the agendas that are uh here with us this evening i'm not really bringing one i think it's a conversation with the community and the advice that council needs is one of balance and one of perspective i hope that's something i can bring thank you very much tim um and next is uh natalie portman marsh hi everybody i'm natalie portman marsh yes my maiden name is natalie portman like the famous actress no i don't have the academy award but

[25:01] i'm happy to be with you all my background is actually in clinical social work and worked with runaway homeless youth for some time out here and then ended up working with schools through outpatient mental health in jefferson county during the time that columbine happened and i pivoted my career to more policy oriented system change work after that the learning that occurred from that incident i uh with some colleagues an evaluator and an attorney opened up spark policy institute where i worked in denver for about 14 years and about five years ago have hung a shingle npm consulting doing all sorts of fun system change work using in part a framework called emergent learning and it's an idea of constantly taking in the new information

[26:01] as we continue to learn grow and discover more information about our community and about best practices and figure out better ways to use that learning in real time to get to better outcomes as it relates to my concerns of the marijuana industry i think about i'm a mom of a 22 year old boulder high school graduate fort lewis graduate and during the time of recreational and initially i'm sorry medical and then recreational marijuana was legalized here in colorado really working through that with a high schooler as i'm sure some of you on the committee have also uh been doing and really thinking about the norms with which young people are seeing and recognizing marijuana in in

[27:02] at home and in our communities and considering uh that impact that that has on young people uh by experience on previous boards the national association of social workers colorado chapter as well as my current work with a school medicaid consortium here in colorado i think will help my role and process here on the committee thank you very much thank you natalie next up is ryan quinn sorry mary ryan quinn does not seem to be on the call with us tonight okay so we'll go ahead and move on to richard

[28:00] cybold is richard here brenda richard was here um but i am not seeing him now um let me just check through the list as well i am no longer seeing richard on the list all right um so we're going to move on to katherine thompson and then we'll see if um either richard or ryan come back in i'll keep an eye out okay thank you catherine yes uh thanks mary and good evening mayor and city council members um and other applicants my name is kate thompson i currently live in arvada um i thank you all for letting us be here tonight i want to open by saying that you all have a different difficult task to determine which one of these applicants is going to fit the bill for for that as we all have unique perspectives we all add value in our own right um and so i'll give you a little bit about who i am um i worked for the farm

[29:00] in boulder for five years um started off as an education and training coordinator um moved into uh the director of compliance role now um chief operating officer and then i was the interim ceo for uh six months currently i work as a regulatory analyst for a denver based cannabis software company an ancillary business to the industry where i interpret regulation from across the united states um specific to cannabis and simplify it into yes or no kind of audit questions and standard operating procedures to keep local businesses compliant um it's essential that we obviously regulate cannabis responsibly and maybe believe we do that through education collaboration and smart regulation i also have my own consulting company and a degree in criminal justice and anthropology as many of you may know i was on the marijuana advisory panel for the city since its conception first as an alternate and then as a member through its conclusion in 2019 my role

[30:03] and contribution on the plant panel i think should be the largest piece of edited evidence as to why i would be an excellent candidate in addition to the board to help move things forward i've also been a presenter to the board back in august regarding boulder and state regulation to offer that perspective and the difference as well as kind of the interaction of the two um so what makes me the right person for this role um the ex-officio role um and for this board number one i think is that foundation of cannabis experience and knowledge um both legally and operation number two my adaptability and flexibility to fill holes and learn and lean into roles that are needed based on what is going on within the group three is my ability to see the different perspectives do the research understand the context ask the good questions find common ground to move the path forward so we can see actual change you ask about the biggest concern regarding cannabis and i think

[31:01] i'd flip it to our biggest challenge and opportunity which has been mentioned i think by others tonight is is that balance balancing the expectations and the needs of the community to balance the pillars of public health and safety and peace and order and to maintain and grow and improve our local infrastructure and businesses this means prohibiting youth access shutting down illegal activities educating the community and each other breaking down barriers increasing social equity and diversity all in a space that allows businesses to thrive um as we all know balance is extremely difficult um and this is a new and dynamic evolving industry that's not going anywhere it's essential and some of the largest challenges are in front of us i'm excited about the opportunity take on a more active role in the local community and appreciate your time thank you very much kate um did either ryan or richard come back they have not joined us

[32:01] okay well um we will go ahead and um close this part of our meeting and just by saying that thank you very much all of you for applying and taking the time to be with us tonight we will be deciding um next tuesday under matters which will be late into the evening and so um whoever gets appointed um can either stay up or um you will receive a notification the following day um just to remind you this is a non-voting exoficio role and um thanks again for applying we appreciate it thanks so much everybody thank you thank you thank you very much for the opportunity thank you everyone yes thank you all right um are we ready to move on for the main

[33:03] attraction or what what the first of the main attractions um which is um an overview of the parks and rec master plan and um do we go ahead and just let ali take it away or chris do you want to say something to precede her i'll just say something real quick which is to uh welcome our parks and recreation team and uh allie rhodes the director of parks and recreation is going to kick off the presentation uh and the team that will be delivering the info tonight so i'll turn it over to thank you chris and good evening members of council and we are really looking forward to talking to you and the community about the update to our 2014 parks and recreation master plan presenting with me tonight are our planning and ecological services manager jeff haley and our master plan project manager regina elsner who's a planner in our department

[34:00] i also i'm sorry ali i just want to interrupt for a second just to let my colleagues know that the way we're going to do this is there's three parts to the presentation and and we will pause after each section for questions so if you could hold your questions until the end of each presentation we will get to your questions then so thank you sorry to interrupt ali no that's great thanks mary you just made it a little easier for me uh so if we can get started with the slide show i'll start talking i also wanted to call out that the parks and recreation advisory board has a key role in the master planning process as our policy advisors and as you're appointed representatives of the community and so our chair raj seymour is here as is the prob liaison to the project tara weiner so they're both a part of the meeting tonight so um as mary pointed out if we'll just go to the next slide we have tonight organized into three sections i'm first just going to talk about the foundations of the plan

[35:00] update and a little bit about the process and timeline and then regina will talk to you about our plans to hear from the community and we'll pause for the first set of questions and then jeff's going to talk about the strategic foundation of the plan which are our key themes and we'll pause for more discussion and then we'll talk to you about the two emerging topics resilience and equity and then wrap up with questions so each of the sections we anticipate to be about 30 minutes and we'll work with mary to hopefully stay on track with that to get the input and direction we need from you tonight so we can move into the next slide so this master plan we are calling an update because we have a solid master plan in the 2014 master plan this graphic on the left side of your screen is what we call our master plan promise it's the cycle we go through every year where we revisit the master plan and understand what's been accomplished and what's most important next that master plan provided really clear direction from the community

[36:00] from council and the manager's office as to our role and so we've been hard at work since then to focus on promoting health and well-being through our parks facilities and programs um recognizing we have a lot of hard work ahead of us the accomplishments of this plan do put us in a strong position so i'm going to take just a few minutes to talk about a few key achievements i hope you'll take a minute to look at one of the links in your packet which is our five year progress report and it summarizes the accomplishments from 2014 to 2015. we don't have time tonight to talk through all of them but our team in partnership with the community and our boards and partners across the city has done a lot and we'll help you check it out so with that we'll go to the next slide and we mentioned the key themes really briefly the first three are at the top of this slide and our work has been organized around them they were identified in the 2014 planning process through a significant amount of community

[37:00] engagement through research and through policy direction from council the prab and other input in our work to ensure that health is our fundamental purpose and to eliminate barriers to participation we have worked hard to ensure that our limited tax subsidies are focused where the community told us to focus and that's on serving youth on serving people with low income and people with disabilities while our resources have allowed us to expand programming and financial aid to some the health equity funded requity program has provided action scenario level funding and increased visitation through those participating in our financial aid programs 340 over 2014. that program includes bilingual community liaisons to help us provide culturally responsive programming we've also focused on supporting our community members aging well by expanding access for many medicare supplemental fitness programs like silver sneakers at all of our facilities we're especially proud of our work to be a good partner and this is demonstrated

[38:01] through a significant growth in both volunteerism and philanthropy like the donations that supported enhancements in the playground in the civic area and at the boulder reservoir we see about 26 000 in a typical year not pandemic year we see about 26 000 hours of volunteers who are supporting the type of community they want to see in our parks and programs and since 2014 we've leveraged almost 1.5 million dollars in external funding to support projects and programs moving on to the next topics taking care of what we have and on the next slide is one of the themes we talk a lot about and it's becoming more and more city lexicon um that we're really proud of our asset management program has resulted in data-driven decisions that inform the investments in our assets with 15 neighborhood parks approved since 2014. in addition to that we've completed a lot of analysis to better understand our pools our athletic fields and assets

[39:01] across the system an example here is the urban forest strategic plan that council approved where we inventoried over 50 000 of our public trees and then accepted the urban forest strategic plan that help us helps us identify ways to protect the long-term health of our urban canopy at the same time these efforts have allowed us to be opportunistic when alternative funding becomes possible such as how the community culture and safety tax has allowed us to make key improvements in the civic area and at scott carpenter pool like the great picture you see on your right of the leisure facilities that we can't wait to celebrate next summer again here our parks and recreation and city resources have focused on improvements to existing assets while additional resources through taxes or philanthropy have provided an injection of funding to that action level scenario so on the next slide we have some numbers to show you while we love showing off the pictures of our beautiful facilities and programs the numbers really tell the story the focused and intentional asset

[40:01] management i mentioned earlier has resulted in a 41 decrease in our maintenance backlog program targeting where the community told us has resulted in an incredible growth you can see there for expand our award-winning program for people with disability and then a 400 growth in the youth services initiative this is largely through key partnerships we've developed with the school district with boulder housing partners and with the i have a dream foundation again here i'll point out that health equity fund dollars have allowed significant expansion of services the last two columns on the right demonstrate our efforts to make sure price is not a barrier to participation through ensuring that means able adults across our system are paying full price we've relieved subsidy to enhance our financial aid again here the general fund and health equity funds make all the difference in the ability to provide discounts for those who need it so i've shared some of the highlights there is a lot more in your packet and it is time now to look ahead to the next five to seven years

[41:00] and update our plan to make sure that as the community's needs are evolving so are we so if we go to the next slide you will see a high level project timeline this is a very typical master planning process although along the way we're certainly going to apply the lessons learned from recent city efforts um in a moment is going to talk more about each of those four key phases um but here i just want to talk about the big picture i want to highlight the very regular engagement with the parks and recreation advisory board we know that our success in implementing the 2014 plan is because of the prabhs rebel not only their involvement in developing the policy but in supporting the implementation of it they their support has allowed us to say yes to the community's priorities and no to other things that maybe have been requested there are additional touches with the planning board since our last master plan based on lessons learned from previous efforts that will allow them to see the plan before that it is presented to them for recommendation for your approval

[42:01] finally i just want to call out that there is a check-in at the end of each major phase with city council finally not on this slide but i just wanted to make sure council was aware that we will be coordinating closely with departments across the city and with the master plan coordination committee to make sure that this plan is not developed in a silo we have liaisons with the central finance office with the city manager's office and others to ensure that our plan aligns with and contributes to broader city goals and strategies so from here i'm going to turn it over to regina elsner our master plan project manager and she'll talk to you more about the process and engagement thank you ali it's great to be here and as she said my name is regina elsner i am a planner with parks and recreation and i am happy to be the project manager for this important departmental project first i'd like to take a quick moment to recognize the fantastic project team that we've brought together which includes design workshop as our consultants and our technical

[43:01] expert and content advisors for this project specifically becky zimmerman is the principal in charge and amanda jeter who is joining us tonight as the project manager for design workshop these should be familiar faces to you as they recently wrapped up work as part of osmp's master plan team next slide please community engagement is a critical success factor for this master plan update especially ensuring that we hear from a broad cross section of the community utilizing iap2's best practices in the city's engagement strategic framework the project team has developed an engagement plan that seeks to foster broad support for the final master plan update master planning and specifically engaging with our community during a global pandemic will certainly be challenging the project team intends to be flexible to adapt to our changing circumstances and how to balance the need to hear from our community with protecting everyone's health and

[44:00] safety first to that end new and unique methods for engagement will be explored to improve the quality of the feedback and input that we're receiving from the community throughout the project next slide please the master plan update consists of five phases of work after project kickoff the first major phase of work that we are currently in is research and trends the master plan update seeks to use the integrated input model that we use technical content and community engagement throughout the process during the research and trends phase of the project the project team will be focused on updating topical white papers and developing a system overview snapshot that forms the foundation for future discussions in the process the first community engagement window occurs during the research and trends phase and is intended to build awareness of awareness of and interest in the project as well as evaluating community values and the key themes that we will discuss shortly in addition to standard outreach

[45:01] methods such as print materials social media posts and web page updates the team will focus on unique and creative ways to engage the community one idea we have is to have a mask design contest focused on what you love about boulder parks and recreation within the first engagement window the project team will work to co-create specific engagement opportunities with various underrepresented groups specifically we're looking to work with youth through both growing up boulder and the youth opportunities advisory board as well as minority populations by bringing community connectors into the process with staff following the first window of engagement the project will transition into needs assessment next slide please during needs assessment the project team will be focusing on identifying needs for the department through an in-depth analysis of our facilities programs and service delivery we will also start the work of financial scenario planning that will facilitate

[46:01] future discussions around prioritizing needs and strategies this scenario planning will utilize the city's framework for budgeting that includes physically constrained action and vision scenarios second engagement window during this phase will include a statistically valid community survey to ensure that we hear from a representative sample of the entire community including non-users virtual stakeholder meetings an open house and an open house type event will focus on fully identifying the needs of our community micro engagements during this window will meet people where they are at to hear from them directly after we have identified needs throughout the department the project transitions into the next five phase the implementation plan next slide please the implementation plan phase of the project will focus on the hard work of prioritizing the needs and strategies previously identified recognizing that we simply can't do it

[47:00] all these discussions of community priorities will occur through multiple lenses including financial sustainability and equity among others the fiscally constrained budget scenario will focus on how resources are allocated to key services and priorities to provide the most value to the community with current funding the third engagement window during this phase will have two foci first creating activities that maximize the reach and breadth of our engagement this maximization ensures that the second focus discussion of community priorities is truly representative of the community the outcome of this prioritization effort will be the foundation of the draft master plan for review and acceptance next slide please the master plan acceptance phase is the culmination of all the previous technical content and community gained engagement into a draft master plan the fourth and final engagement window will allow the community to review and

[48:00] provide their input on the draft plan staff also intends to close the feedback engagement feedback loop during this window with a report that summarizes all the feedback received and how it directly influenced the plan itself celebration activities will both wrap up the master plan update and kick off the implementation of the plan's recommendations next slide please this brief overview of our project phases and engagement approach leads to our first question for council does council support the processes we've presented it and specifically the touch points with council all right thank you ali and regina and i'm looking for questions from council i don't see any hands so i'm going once going twice let's move on to the next section

[49:03] we have a second set of questions related to this more focused on engagement so specifically does council support the overall engagement plan and agree that we are geared up to hear from everyone and secondly does council have any input on the proposed methods that we've outlined in our in the packet in our plan and if capacity becomes limited which method should be the focus all right and i see um a question from aaron well my question is just uh should we answer these questions as they're presented to us are we going to come back to these at the very end of the presentation um so what we're doing is we're um asking our questions and they will be answered after each section um so if you have questions now go ahead and ask them and um and then we'll after all the questions are um have been asked for this particular section we'll move on to the next one okay and then we'll answer the questions

[50:01] for council at the very end i'm not understanding there's questions for council in each section erin i think are you asking if you have questions of to clarify anything we've said should you ask those after each section no no i get that we're supposed to ask the clarifying questions right now my question is whether we're answering your questions now or at the very end of all the presentation yeah our thought was after at each section okay all right i don't have clarifying questions but as soon as you're done presenting us with questions we can start answering them yeah sorry i think we're still not on the same page so the questions for council we thought you would all discuss them at each section so we're at the section now we would love to hear from council on questions one and question two there we go okay mary i can dive into that if you if you'd like since i've got the floor yes please well just i think you guys are absolutely on the right track um thanks so much for the work that you're doing and um

[51:01] so um in terms of geared up to hear from everyone i thought you did have a really thorough engagement plan i really appreciated that reach to youth and underserved communities as well as this kind of micro engagements i thought those were very successful in the open space master plan um hard to say what you should drop um if you run out of time and space um so i don't have a strong opinion on that one i might but i think hearing from from young people in underserved communities is very important so i certainly wouldn't drop those any other questions comments all right well i just have um some comments i don't have um any questions and i just wanted to comment on um i really um appreciate that you are planning on um

[52:02] conducting a statistically valid survey i think that's always a good thing when it comes to master plans and i also appreciate your focus on underserved communities and like aaron i really don't know what you should drop should something should things become tight um but i would suggest that if things start looking tight that you come to counsel and make some suggestions as to what you guys are thinking any other questions or comments all right we'll move on to the next section okay so this is jeff haley it's great to

[53:01] be back in front of city council again and uh i just want to take a few slides to dive just a little bit deeper into the building blocks and really that framework for our plan update as ali mentioned in the beginning we most certainly are not starting from scratch as you mentioned that existing plan we have has truly been the guiding light the mile post for our department over many years in fact some of you on council i think who have been involved in that plan throughout the years as well and can attest all the success and great work that we've been able to do in boulder um so we're definitely going to be building upon those key themes and the purpose of this slide here is just to really demonstrate how those themes are developed it really comes from a lot of work that includes the research that our consultant team will do our staff has done and really informing um the rigor of of who we are in boulder uh what our

[54:00] community expects from us um you know the mission the vision a lot of the overarching research themes that that go into making decisions and allowing city council and prabh to inform those themes and then similarly engaging our community through public involvement and outreach and so as you as we just talked about the engagement plan all of those tactics and methods are are so critical to this process to ensure that we have heard from everyone and that that's this plan truly is boulder's plan the community's plan for parks and recreation um and then finally um as city council is asked to review and consider the plan and the implementation strategies that's really where we get the policy directives um prabh you know is certainly highly effective in helping us right now even as we started this process to to inform um themes and their thoughts and ideas so

[55:01] we really are excited about this process um already we've had great success with working with our prab and anxious to kick off the first engagement window as regina mentioned and that's really where we'll start to look at these themes in much more depth and uh to make sure that we refine those to the current state in the current context so again as ali mentioned all the success we've had previously with the themes that's our goal with this process we believe they're still relevant we believe it's just a matter of refining those and really touching base with the community to see what's next for parks and rec and boulder so next slide please and i don't want to spend too much time going back through them but just one by one i'd like to talk a little about um what is the work that we see ahead with each of these themes you know so community health and wellness especially in this season of covet 19 and mental health challenges and physical health um

[56:00] you know constraints we really see parks and rec um our role and one of the great things we love to do is focus on the health of the community we do that through our parks our facilities you all are very familiar with all the great places and facilities we have for the community but again we really need to look at what is our true role in the community are there other private providers that could provide services that we don't necessarily need to or to duplicate do we have an equity lens and how we are providing access to those facilities and those programs um that's certainly on top of mind right now within our community and in our department for sure and then just how do we reach all of our ages and demographics um to really focus on the well-being of everyone all of our community so that's the health and wellness some of the ideas that we'll be looking at in this plan taking care of what we have certainly been a huge focus

[57:01] i think one of the key areas for taking care of what we have is really integrating an equity lens into that and you'll hear regina speak a little bit to that in a moment but how do we prioritize investments how do we focus on those capital improvements and making sure that we're focusing those um with equity in mind um and to to ensure the long-term viability of our of our parks and facilities and then similar to that is our overall financial sustainability so kova 19 has certainly impacted all of us financially um but as we recover and move forward we also want to ensure that we have that long-term funding in place to focus on those core services um core facilities and parks throughout the system so we'll be taking taking a deep dive into our financial situation and really looking at the forecast and the trends and to to allow council and our parks and rec advisory board to to join with us partner with us as we as we look for that long-term financial um sustainability so the next slide

[58:03] um the final three themes building community relationships again right now is a great example of just our holistic approach to supporting our community um we need to address social and cultural inequities that we might have um and and how folks access our programs our facilities our parks we've seen a huge increase obviously just currently in coven 19 with the mental health challenges and how we can partner with other agencies and organizations to support that so that'll be a lot of the work we do we did a special program with our 2014 master plan with we called it pathfinders and i think some of you may have participated in that as well but truly reaching across all sectors of the community to understand who our partners are so that we at the end of the day can truly serve the residents in the best way possible and probably as as important as anyone is the youth and

[59:01] how we serve those groups so our youth engagement activity we're partnering with growing up boulder we're continuing to support yoab the youth opportunities advisory board and looking at a variety of ways to serve the youth in our community and the children as you can see in some of these photos and again that's the highlight of the work we do little kids on striders swimming in the pool um and so that's also an area where we're going to do a lot of benchmarking analysis and updating that that framework to make sure that we do have adequate facilities programs places that that truly are engaging to youth um that are what need that youth need um and so it's about all the the kids and the teenagers in the community as well and then you know the foundation to all these themes is really our organizational readiness how do we ensure that our staff and our teammates um and the folks that are truly the

[60:00] face of parks and rec are are set up for success um that's been a huge part of this year 2020 is is how do we retain and attract um and keep staff along that that we know are passionate about this work parks and rec is one of those departments um one of those areas within our community that it is passion just like many of our city staff and so that's that's a highly effective team that can do great things and this next plan really we need to set that up so we can continue that great great work with our attracting and maintaining our workforce um so the the la the next slide that i'll have here before i ask the question um obviously these themes have been in place since our 2014 plan but um obviously there is a new context um that we want to strive for and how we approach this master plan um and so we we've done some good work

[61:00] so far with our staff as well as the parks and rec advisory board and basically just ask the question you know what is our focus what is out there in the community that we need to be looking at through this plan update and so we have seen a few emerging priorities and trends that prabh has certainly put on the radar for us our consultant team is certainly acknowledged and so as we prepare for the the uh the planning process as we're presenting tonight we're going to be looking at a lot of these these items climate emergency the environmental and ecological sustainability financial sustainability as i already mentioned we really see those kind of bundling and rolling up into an overall category of resilience and certainly council is very familiar with resilience as we've been working on that over the past several years and then equity as well as we talk about equity and regina is going to share in just a moment about these two topic areas in a little more detail but

[62:02] ensuring access to all of our programs all of our services that's through affordability understanding demographic changes and how do we reach um all in our community and especially homelessness and how we can continue focusing on that and understanding that's a a major focus of our of our entire community right now so those two areas will um regina will mention in just a moment that we're we're certainly aware of and kind of threading those into the process and so that leads me to uh the next question that we have if you can go to the next slide and it's really about this comprehensive update and understanding this foundation of the themes and and really the question is does council agree these themes are still relevant and should be the starting point for this update and so we we want to you know just um make sure we're in alignment with city council with each of you

[63:00] and at the same time if there are some subtleties or some things you would like for us to know about or for us to hear from you as we approach each one of these themes and and the work that i laid out now's the time we'd really like to hear from you so i'll go ahead and take feedback and hear any questions and comments you might have thank you jeff um we have one hand up uh mary uh bob jeff that was helpful um i actually have two questions around access to affordability when i was on the parks and recreation advisory board and we did the last master plan around 2013 2014 and i know there's a couple things we struggled with and i'm just kind of curious you know if your thinking has evolved in the last six years or so since the last master plan um and regardless of the evolution you know how you're going to tackle these kind of i guess perennial problems one challenge is of course is is on access and affordability is how do we make um distinctions between

[64:01] residents and non-residents when it comes to our fee structure right we've got a fee structure for our programs we have a fee structure for our rec centers and and one of the things i know that prab always struggles with is who are we meant to serve are we meant to serve residents are we meant to serve people who work in boulder are we meant to serve all comers and and as you guys develop the master plan how are you going to strike that balance and what um i guess measures are you going to use or inputs are you going to use as you determine um the balance between um you know residents and and others who have might have connection to boulder but don't happen to live within the city limits that's a great question i mean we'll certainly be looking at that um as we as you mentioned as we did previously in the plan um ali would you like to add or kind of touch on some of the work we've done already since 2014 and then how we might thread that into our current process sure one of the things that's happened since 2014 bob that i think many of you will appreciate is we worked with the school of public affairs at the

[65:00] university of colorado denver and actually did a research brief on resident non-resident fees in parks and recreation and what are the leading practices how do other people do it and are we are we doing it in a way that makes sense and so um i would say we know a lot more today than we did in 2014 and we do have a sound strategy for when and where resident fees and non-resident fees are appropriate and when and where like for example we have costing definitions that we didn't have in 2014 and you know when is capital when do you try and address capital expenses and fees typically never because anyway that's a big old rabbit hole but we have done a significant amount of work we are in a much different place as far as how we consider fees how we recover them the part that is very relevant is how do we consider who is a stakeholder who do we consult with in determining what services we provide and as jeff mentioned that's absolutely part of the conversation thanks alex you actually started to answer my second question of the two on which is which is a wrong fee recovery i know there was a

[66:00] there was a big push when i first got on the park sport back around 2009 2010 of course we're coming out of the recession back then around fee recovery and about around eliminating or scaling down programs that didn't kind of pay for themselves and of course other programs more than pay for themselves and has your thinking over the last 10 years evolved on that in other words is it appropriate to have programs that are you know cash cows that that bring in a lot of money like the golf course um subsidize those programs which don't or does each program need to stand alone and pay for itself and we have to have full fee recovery um from every participant yeah that that mary mentioned earlier the value of a statistically valid community survey in 2014 we asked the community members that question and their feedback then was that for programs that benefit the community the community should pay through tax dollars and other things and so that's where we've been super intentional about the fees and that you know if something does merit subsidy it's coming from our general fund dollars from health equity fund dollars that's a question we believe

[67:00] is still relevant and will be repeated in this next survey so my shorter answer is we're going to ask the community that's a good question great thanks ellie and thank you oh i'm sorry mark i would just add we do have a consultant on board similar to 2014 that will do a full financial analysis i think um the overall question of financial long-term financial viability is a a huge portion of this process and so everything with programs fees you know the community's input will all go into really understanding how can we remain um financially feasible throughout the long term so thanks jeff that's helpful all right and next we have um adam thank you mary um one of the things i'm interested in is some of the intersectionality of the issues that we experience within the city and how ultimately they affect the

[68:00] long-term budgets of park and recreation so like if we have major fires or major trail issues um when we're dealing with cleaning up um campsites from people experiencing uh homelessness things along those lines that i think you know they they kind of get spread amongst different budgets and we can't really pin down the full costs of them and how they interact with every single uh part of our city and each city's uh department's budget i would really like to try to capture those holistically so we're not just looking at one part of the city individually um but you know if we could address each problem um then what savings it might have for every part of the city that actually uh is affected by it i realize that's a pretty big uh thing to ask for but you know i think

[69:01] that's if we're not gathering this data and looking at it holistically we have this problem with our master plans then we won't truly know when we're helping everyone by solving one problem yeah i think that's a great point and certainly a feedback that we'll take forward with this planning process i can say already as ali mentioned i believe we do have a city-wide master plan coordination committee and the role of that committee is basically staff among all the different departments where we bring some of these topics that really span all of our work and bring those and make sure we're all kind of looking at those holistically comprehensively whether it's resiliency and how do we address ongoing you know climate change and some of the more extreme weather events and

[70:00] the impacts of having it's having on our you know resources and infrastructure to um some of the behaviors and how folks are using parks and uh trail corridors and those sorts of things so it's i would say um again at a high level as we're just kicking off this process we've not done a lot of that work yet but we have a huge staff team where we have folks kind of in the seats ready to start that collaborative work and as we approach those topics and again threading the community input as well and um making sure we understand the community's desires and and goals for our department and all departments in those different realms um that's where we really see those um those themes coming together so that's kind of a long response to the question but i i think that's well noted and and if ali or regina had anything to add um but but yeah what what i hear you asking for is just that integration of all of

[71:00] our services and how do we um spread that across our whether it's our budgets our work plans etc yeah thanks for that jeff it really is just seeing you know if i were to look at each master plan i know there's a lot of issues that would spread as a through line throughout all of them and sort of seeing one approach from every department uh that's that's shared would be really cool in the long term i think that would be helpful to solving some of the bigger issues and making sure we're attacking it from every department yes i agree thank you thank you adam um any okay rachel hi everybody um just one question i noticed on the last slide um it mentioned individuals who are unhoused and i wondered if there's going to be some like what the outreach looks like there i've been sort of surprised in my time on council how much parks and wrecks overlaps with um issues around homelessness

[72:00] um like where we have restrooms where we have sanitation access um where people are sleeping so i would think that they are a um an important stakeholder and that people with lived experience would want to hear from them so just wondered what that if there's a plan or what that looks like yes certainly and yes and that's a huge topic on our minds and i'm sure the community's mind as well as we start to our engagement um and it is something that we already collaborate a lot with um all of our different departments whether it's human services um public works and others as we work through the topics and those issues in our community we'll again similar to the previous question we'll be reaching out to a variety of staff and then service providers and organizations in the community on these key topics and focus areas um a lot of what we do you know we refer to them as white papers where we do basically these research studies really gain all the information and and topics and kind of

[73:03] feedback that we've we've gathered and then use that to really seek solutions and and again work with other departments to to inform that as well um ali did you want to mention anything specific to that topic as we we've kind of been approaching that here recently as well i was just going to add two comments one that one of the other benefits of design workshop our consultants on this project is they have significant experience on this topic and they've worked with other communities to develop strategies and responses that are responsive to community inputs around um homelessness and serving the community members that are unhoused and so while jeff shared and this kind of dovetails with adam's comment this is an integrated city you know city challenge that i know council is very aware of and how we are addressing it and so it will be coordinated with the city coordinating with service providers and then to your question specifically around will members of the community that are

[74:00] unhoused be considered stakeholders and will we reach out to them i think the answer is yes how we'll get there is not you know we haven't fleshed out a lot of those details but we hear the question and i think you'll hear more the next time you come back we come back to you awesome thank you both bob is that a raised hand left over from before or it's left over okay um any other questions all right i see no one i'm going to jump in with just a couple questions first i'll just start out with a comment on the questions that both adam and rachel asked and just mentioned that one of the things that we on the budget subcommittee have realized is how much of a challenge it is to do that integration holistic approach when you have dedicated funds so that's

[75:00] one of the things that i know the budget subcommittee is thinking about and i think that might be something that's worth considering as we move through the the update um and then um i have my two questions have to do one is with um resilience um the slide that you had in resilience and you had um climate change and environmental and um i forgot what the third one was but um there was no mention of public health and um as we it was not i'm not i shouldn't say no mention of public health but it was not we had um climate emergency environmental ecological sustainability and financial sustainability and um how i guess my question is how um does public health and the um the effects of covet for example um fit within that resiliency

[76:00] category and and how can it be addressed yeah i think it certainly fits within there um and that's you know we'll certainly be adding that into that topic and i don't want to speak too much because our our actual next section of the presentation here is regina is going to dive into just a little more detail on resilience and equity but i think one of the key things as ali mentioned our our design design workshop design workshop our consultant team has a lot of experience and work within the area of resilience and working with communities similar to boulder our peer communities and how they've threaded resilience into all the different aspects of the department looking at like health data and information related to different areas of the city or different demographics and how that those health impacts and health outcomes inform some of the priorities and the

[77:02] actions that we might have to address resilience um so that's certainly one of the areas with public health and the 2014 plan we did work a lot and certainly anticipate to do that now with the county public health department as well and exploring all the different areas that overlap among you know parks and recreation facilities places programs and how we can incorporate that into the overall resilience of the community looking specifically at the health outcomes so um i guess mary if i could and perhaps ali or regina want to say more but the next few slides we're going to go into a little more information about resilience and equity so it might be good to hear that and then um can continue that question um after those slides as well unless ali or regina want to add anything at this time i was going to say exactly that that regina had some moments on community health and

[78:02] how it impacts resilience and certainly that piece around we recognize that racism is a public health crisis and so you know and so it ties with not just resilience but equity and so you're going to hear more about both of those topics from regina in just a moment when we wrap up this question section all right thank you and i appreciate that um so my next question um has to do with equity so perhaps i'll just hold that question for after regina's done um and i'll ask for more questions if anybody's got any um comments or questions seeing none um regina take it away great thank you all right so thank you all for your questions and um participation in that

[79:03] last section as jeff and ali both mentioned um throughout the planning and initiation phase of this project the project team has asked staff and prab for input on new topics and trends that we may need to explore as part of the current update process and from that exercise two key focus areas were identified for additional evaluation equity and resilience and we've already started kind of talking about those two pieces and specifically related to equity starting there we are as a project team working to ensure that both our process is equitable and that our outcomes address and support equity in all that we do to create an equitable process staff is really looking to implement the racial equity instrument to help us identify desired outcomes as well as strategies to achieve those outcomes and the metrics to measure our success really as a framework for ensuring equity in the process we're also engaging with our community connectors early in the process to

[80:00] co-create engagement opportunities that are really culturally relevant and appropriate for them and we've started to identify some potential ways that equity may show up in the outcomes of our master plan some of those ways could include improving the overall use and access to our facilities and programs by the entire community continuing our work to develop culturally relevant offerings in our systems through both facilities and the programs that we offer as well as identifying specific metrics that help indicate our success and also where we need to prioritize investments in programming to work towards more equity within our department next slide please to better understand equity specifically in parks and recreation the project team has been looking at examples both nationally and internationally and these examples of equity in parks and recreation provide us lessons learned and best practices to help incorporate into our own work

[81:01] one example from vancouver british columbia incorporates spatial data to identify areas to focus additional resources to address the equity issues within the city we recognize that in boulder historic inequities may disproportionately impact non-residents and we will evaluate how to ensure benefits from parks and recreation or equity equitably distributed among all of our community members that contribute within the city next slide please another good example of equity in parks and recreation comes from asheville north carolina in asheville the parks and recreation department specifically has developed an equity action plan with five goals that support the ongoing internal transformational change related to racial equity these five goals address issues from organizational readiness inclusive engagement as well as service delivery through equitable investments and program provision each goal is then tracked

[82:00] through a set of specific indicators and performance measures next slide please similar to equity the importance of resilience is amplified since the 2014 plan 2020 has undoubtedly been a master class and resilience for both the community and the nation from the global pandemic to devastating wildfires locally nationally and even internationally how we react and adapt to change is even more important now than it ever was before there are many lessons that we as a city have learned from the 2013 floods in 2020 that can inform our department on how to best create and provide resilient facilities programs services and organization to best serve our community to be resilient next slide please parks and recreation can be on the forefront of creating and sustaining community resilience overall as summarized by kofi boone a noted

[83:01] professor of landscape architecture at north carolina state university parks support overall community resilience resilient spaces and facilities that welcome all community members promote the rest recreation and connection to nature that is critical for mental and physical wellness and health and parks in particular assists the surrounding landscape absorb the shocks and stressors of a changing climate by supporting urban ecosystems being a home to our urban tree canopy that mitigates heat island effects and promotes carbon sequestration through natural processes throughout the community the project team intends to make the focus on equity and resilience more explicit in this master plan update than it was in the previous 2014 master plan next slide please so i think as such we are asking council if you have any additional input on how the team has

[84:00] very briefly proposed to include and address these two topics as well as are there any additional topics in addition to equity and resilience that staff should consider as we embark on this update thank you regina council um do you have any um questions or um comments erin yeah thanks so much for that jeff and regina um i absolutely agree with adding these two and i think they're the perfect additional focus areas uh for this master plan um you know so 100 support you in that just one specific comment on the the equity side as just to like one of the your bullet points there was access um which makes a lot of sense right to do our different community members have equitable access to parks facilities

[85:00] right across our community and but if if we can make sure that there are kind of subtleties to that to say like community members of you know different ages and different incomes um and um backgrounds you know what facilities do they have near them and are they fully available are they public parks or um or are they technically you know technically not allowed to be there or so just if we can make sure that we're providing kind of the the facilities that each individual demographic is really looking for um with that with a strong focus on the underserved members of our community hopefully we can get some some great analysis as part of this master plan into where the gaps are i know you work on gap analysis all the time but maybe with some additional layers of analysis to it this time around thank you aaron um sam great well thank you all i decided to

[86:02] hold my few comments until the end um i guess i thought i would start by saying that you're not hearing a lot of comments at the moment because i think um we all viewed the existing plan as a success in the sense that it was well thought through and it's been a guiding document that's worked well going forward so i think we expect the results will continue to be as good as they have been so far um i think another thing that came to mind that i think is really important to note is i think it's a great testament to um the community's support for the sugar sweetened beverage tax and the health equity fund that you've been able to increase like youth participation so much and outreach so much and scholarship funding so much so i think we're starting to see the payoff and all the work that was done by the community both to pass the tax and then to figure out how to distribute the funds so that they make the most positive

[87:00] impact in our community so i think we're we're seeing that in the results that you presented between 2014 and now as far as the additional access that people are getting so i think that is fantastic points to make one is i think it's very i think it's great that um resilience and equity are our focus area and are being a big part of the conversation and a big part of the analysis that you're doing on how the plan is serving the needs of the community i will note that we've long had at least since i've been on council a sustainability framework which analyzes everything through the the prisms of economic impact environmental impact and social impact i think it's worth taking back to the group that looks at all the master plans and coordinates them whether we want to add resilience and equity as part of the sustainability framework like as far to the overall concept equity to some extent

[88:00] fits within social and resilience kind of touches all of them but i think it's interesting to see that the climate mobilization action plan and now this master plan and its formative stages the update are starting to touch on that and it seems like we might want to as a city speaking atom of holistic approaches make sure that we're integrating those which are kind of emergent frameworks into everything so i think it's great that it's here i think it's also something that we might want to look at more generally and then it brings me to two questions that weren't exactly touched on i know that we're not talking about um capital allocations here per se but two of the big um potential future parks developments are around belmont and the land that's owned by the city and the belmont park part of it's been developed part has not been and what what are the future plans for that and how will that be incorporated into this planning process and then another

[89:01] um similar type of thing is the planning reserve so part of the city lands in the planning reserve have always been intended for parkland and when i started having thinking about the planning reserve and the context of cu south and what could be done there um one of the the pieces of feedback i got from staff was well a lot of that was intended to be parkland potentially a regional park and so i guess two of the big forward-looking questions that i would ask um are how will we be addressing belmont and the completion of belmont and how we'd be looking at the planning reserve i would predict that before we get in to the end of this current plan that there will be significant community conversations about the planning reserve and potential analysis of bringing that into the city so i think that's going to raise that priority as far as the parks planning goes i think that's all i've got to say this

[90:00] is a great start to the master plan update i think it's wonderful um and i like the way it's it's going forward and so that's all i've got but thanks for this thank you sam um rachel yep that was a perfect segue sam um as i was sitting here thinking of parks from a bird's eye view i was just wanting to check in um we're we're in the middle of community engagement for cu south and part of that will entail maybe asking cu for certain amenities and i'm just wondering has perks and rex been asked to say what you know from the bird's eye whole city view we might want to push for there have you all been invited to weigh in yeah yes absolutely um and that's a great question because we do look at cu south and that property as right now in a lot of respects um our community sees that as one big part to some degree

[91:00] there's uh running there's uh it's like a large dog park for a lot of folks right now so yeah we've certainly been uh working with um phil chrysler and several other staff as we work with um cu representatives in fact we just had a meeting probably a month ago where we continued the discussion about what are the the areas that could be developed there and what we see as community needs that could be supported in that area so and see you you know continues to uh collaborate and work with us on those and understands those needs as well so quick answer is yeah we're certainly at the table and working with them on that perfect just wanted to double check thanks you're welcome all right any more uh questions or comments all right i have um well i'll ask my question from previously but before that i'll just comment on sam's point regarding the sustainability

[92:01] framework and it's actually one of the suggestions that i have for the next topic but it applies here as well the sustainability framework does need to be updated itself and sort of reorganized with resilience and equity because it really is difficult to find within the existing framework so i i also realize that that's a comprehensive plan kind of um update and the next uh plan update is not until 2024 or 2025 so um just something um to begin to think about um so and aaron touched on this question as well with respect to um access and um inaccessibility i brought this up before that there's several dimensions um that make up the the term of accessibility of

[93:01] providing complete accessibility and you touched on the affordability piece but another piece of it is the availability and that was also touched upon somewhat by bob and his question and who's who's part of our community and there are a lot of people that contribute to the vital organs of our community in terms that they they really make our community function and contribute to the success of our economy so how do we um include them as well so i think that was an important question that bob asked um and and adding and thinking about accessibility for those folks that contribute and what what how can they benefit um because they really are part of our community um all right any other questions or comments

[94:02] great well thank you all um jeff and regina and ellie for being here and it's this is a great start and this is always um a great um it's always great to hear from parks and rec and um we appreciate and it's nice to see you amanda and um and tara and um raj thank you for being here and um we appreciate y'all yeah thank you all so much i'll just wrap up by sharing that our next touch with city council will be at the wrap up of that research and trends phase where we start talking about that snapshot of the community and it really will answer some of the questions you've raised just tonight we hear the comments about the sustainability framework and i see you know chris ready to chime in and i think that that's well said there's many things that have been implicit in the organization in the sustainability framework that really what we're seeing is the need to make

[95:00] them explicit and i think i think you'll see that in this next plan and certainly in city-wide conversations hopefully i'm not putting words in chris's mouth you know oh that was great ellie thank you yeah all right thank you all very much very helpful thank you we look forward to your next update thank you thank you for your time all right chris yes we're on to our second item for this evening um which is a review of the draft racial equity plan for the city and this is an item that uh myself and i know many of our staff are excited to have this discussion tonight um so we're going to welcome several uh folks here to um the meeting for um the presentation as well um and this is really an important step in a journey that we've been on as an organization as a community and we we know the plan isn't perfect that there are areas of refinement of change and then

[96:02] continued evolution as we continue on this journey so um i'm excited for this step and i believe to begin the presentation this evening i'm going to turn it over to amy kane uh our equity program manager to kick off the presentation and i'm looking it looks like amy might have just disappeared i'm right here thank you um thank you so much chris and good evening council my name is amy kane and i am the equity program manager with the city of boulder i just wanted to thank you all so much for having us here tonight as we present the city's first draft racial equity plan it is such an honor to be bringing this work to you before you um with my esteemed colleagues who i will ask to go ahead and introduce themselves ryan

[97:02] good evening council thank you for having us my name is ryan hanson engagement specialist with the city i'll turn over next to a few of our working group members who are joining us who participated in the racial equity engagement working group uh first i'll pass it over to nikhil please yes hello i'm nikhil manches i'm on the glacial equity uh working group with the city and uh past two time children of the city's human relations commission and we will go to my fellow uh committee member lilia you unmute sorry good evening and everybody this is maria murico a city of boulder and member of the working group for the engagement of the racial equity plan

[98:00] and now i pass it to inquiry like zoom just here thank you mira maria we do believe ingrid has joined us ingrid it may be under a different name but you should be able to mute yourself thank you ryan this is ingrid castro speaking and i have been part of the working group as well wonderful thank you if you could advance to the next slide please so before we begin this evening as somebody who identifies as a white cisgender female i want to make sure to take the space and acknowledge and recognize that while we're meeting today via zoom and we are also each of us coming to you tonight on stolen land if you are in the boulder county area we are within the territories of the ute cheyenne and arapahoe people 48 contemporary tribal nations are historically tied to

[99:00] the lands that make up the state of colorado i want to express my gratitude to the land itself for sustaining us and to the native people who have stewarded the land and continue to fight for the sovereignty and health of the land please join me in a moment of quiet reflection next slide please so here's our agenda for this evening um tonight we'd like to give a little bit of history about how this plan came into being hear from members of the racial equity engagement working group and the roles that they've played in designing the community engagement for the plan the community engagement process and the results of that engagement and then run through the overarching themes an overview of goals with the strategies identification of work that is already happening and then run through some next next steps and then we'll have some time for questions at the end um so while tonight's presentation is

[100:01] about the draft plan and its goals and strategies and actions i think it's helpful to remember why we're here and that is to support people this is about people who have been historically excluded from our democracy and this is an opportunity to listen and value those whose lived experience and to change that experience for community members next slide please so race is the greatest predictor of one's access to success measures in our current systems i don't think we're on the right side if i could get that advanced a couple i'm looking at a couple different spaces i'll just keep going so race is the biggest one of the greatest predictors of one's access to success measures there we go in our current systems and is embedded into government at all levels by focusing on advancing racial equity initially we have the opportunity to introduce a

[101:00] framework tools and resources that can also be applied to other historically excluded groups based on ethnicity gender sexual orientation ability class and age among others so if one of us is suffering we are all suffering as members of a democracy and people who work in the system it is up to us to ensure that we do everything possible to ensure we don't continue to exclude community so if you think about racial equity that's closing the gap so that race does not predict when success while also improving the outcomes for all and to close those gaps we focus on communities of color to support those who are unjustly burdened by racial inequity equity versus equality when you're thinking of equality you're treating everyone everyone the same regardless of their circumstances or whether their outcomes remain equal whether they start from the same starting point equity acknowledges that different people start in different places due to racist historical context

[102:01] and societal circumstances and this levels the playing fields for everyone to achieve success equally so if i could have the next slide please to set the context of our racial equity work we must acknowledge that the history of our city which was outlined in the draft plan this history like most others in the u.s is one of colonialism and racial oppression while white settlers began to prosper in boulder county racism reared its ugly head in other forms including through the kkk and other racist organizations throughout the war and post-war decades segregation existed here as elsewhere in the nation and disparity gaps widened those disparities still exist today our city human services strategy references several ways in which historically excluded community members are experiencing disparities in income affordable housing health and education just to name a few

[103:00] this graphic that you see is a race dot map and it shows the city population as a different colored dot for the various racial ethnic groups blue dots are for white residents green for african american and black community members red for asian americans orange for the latinx community you can see here that even though the city doesn't have a housing segregation policy it's easy to spot where the manufactured housing communities and other housing areas are by where non-white community members reside we've also heard frequently that community members of color share their experiences of daily racist actions and microaggressions to our human relations committee and to city staff through nonprofit organizations the universities schools and in the media next slide please so there's three different types of racism it manifests itself as three different levels which interact as

[104:00] cogs in a complex system that perpetuates racial disparity so structural racism how the lack of yeah real quick i think we need to go back one slide to get back to where you are there we go okay like who's the dancing um structural racism that you see here is the whole structure and how the lack of affordable health care and access to affordable healthy food options coupled with higher exposure to toxic chemicals and other forms of pollution coupled with job discrimination and housing segregation process this all produces greater health problems shorter life spans lower wages and greater greater levels of poverty for communities of color our racial equity work is focused primarily on institutional racism primarily in the institutional and the structural racism but that requires us to go beyond addressing racism at the individual level so you'll see that in the plan the majority of our work really focuses on

[105:00] programs policies and then also where funding is allocated that being said at the interpersonal level we are also working with our colleagues and you as members of council our boards and commissions through our new bias and microaggression workshop which started being rolled out to our colleagues at the city organization this fall so next slide please in 2018 the city of boulder became members in partnership with other communities in the government alliance on race and equity and this is not new to all of you but this is known as gear and gear is a national network of local governments who are working to achieve racial equity and advance opportunities for all there are now over 200 cities across the united states who like us focus on institutional and structural racism with the belief that local and regional governments have the ability and the responsibility to implement policy change at multiple levels and

[106:01] across multiple sectors to drive larger systemic change i could have the next slide please gare's theory of change centers on the visualization of racial equity through a cycle of normalizing organizing and operationalizing the racial equity plan fits into the organization stage of this cycle and it's outlining policy and culture transformation through its goals strategies and actions as you can see this is an iterative process and this is the very first racial equity plan so we're hoping to be continually evaluating and adapting the plan over the next three years so if i could have the next slide please as mentioned in your memo the racial equity plan the draft plan was really shaped by community engagement and community input over the years so in 2017 the inclusivity community perceptions

[107:01] assessment shared courageous personal stories um from community members and more recently in sessions that were hosted by the human relations commission and to city council this was also shaped by frequent conversations with organizations that work with less connected communities as well as participation uh in the cu diversity summits at the university of colorado boulder and just with the courageous stories that we've heard from colleagues and community members as we've been building relationships throughout so with that i would like to hand over the presentation to my colleague ryan hansen who will continue for a little bit talking about our community engagement process next slide please thank you thank you thank you amy and thank you council for your commitment to to this vital work especially our racial equity guiding coalition thank you working group members who have been participating over the

[108:00] last year and especially folks who are here this evening i'm going to share a bit of framing and context before i get out of the way i'm eager for our working group members to share a bit about their reflections and and their experience next slide please so the purpose of this racial equity engagement working group was really to focus on designing meaningful and inclusive engagement to expand the city's outreach so that community members could weigh in on the draft outline of the city's racial equity plan and the working group consisted of seven members a majority of them being people of color through an application process for six folks and one that was uh serving as a liaison to the human relations commission and the city staff wanted to ensure that group members had clear ties to the city and or demonstrated ability to work with partner organizations

[109:01] that serve communities of color and you know the the working group was very instrumental in ensuring that city staff were able to develop best practices and a timeline for community members to share their input about a draft plan it was also identifying partner organizations to expand our reach and include a wide range of voices and participation in engagement next slide please so here i want to make sure to give a thank you to each and every one of our working group members we are thrilled um for for their commitment to do this work i also want to acknowledge uh that magnolia land uposus was our facilitator for this event and has worked with the city in partnership before and is just an expert in inclusive engagement and facilitation also thank you to a number of city staff who supported this this work group uh

[110:01] amy kane sarah huntley and shannon holla next slide please so a bit of an overview of of the nuts and bolts of this the working groups time you know the the working group launched in november of last year and then spent 16 hours together over six sessions uh over the next over the course of the next year and um there there was a wide range of things that we made sure to to focus on and you know part of that is is really focused on some background and context around the city's racial equity work the racial equity plan outline the content itself and the city's engagement strategic framework uh discussion of challenges in in reaching underrepresented community members of color uh determination of outcomes for successful engagement and what that looks like a discussion of

[111:01] co-creating sessions with community partners or organizations you know discussion of stakeholders and you know which partner community organizations would be best to reach out to and partner in this way um a robust discussion of how we talk about racial equity what are the ways that this may most connect with community members and you know then identifying some of those keystone questions uh to prompt community feedback and you know some of those questions really focused around you know when sharing the plan what resonates with you what action steps are are on the right track what's missing what action steps did not go far enough uh how will this plan impact me and my community right what would meaningful change look like or feel like how may that be measured or experienced and finally working together what can we create or inspire and you know i do want to note that we you know made an intention to ensure that you know working group

[112:01] members were able to support in directing the well direction of the working group um and you know this this brought some requests and um you know ensuring that we had some open dialogue time during our sessions to focus on sharing updates to talk through ideas or situations that came up and kind of discuss the broader context of this work we also took to heart some some comments from our working group members to slow down and and devote some more sessions for covering this this really important work and now i'm i'm thrilled to be able to turn it over to a number of our working group members who are here tonight to share a bit about their experience as as part of the working group and i'll turn over to nikhil first please next slide okay thank you brian and just give me a nod if my voice is coming in okay

[113:02] we can hear you thank you okay thank you um yes my name is nikhil mankaykol i'm a member of the racial uh equity advisory working group and also a past two-time chief of human relations commission uh and uh sort of in a number of non-profit boards and and uh long time uh i'm an uh a native of uh of bolu born and raised and uh just an active community member i'm also an indian and sikh american of south asian descent and i have family throughout india and southeast asia and i bring those perspectives and all of that lived experience to the tables i'm at and i was happy to be given the opportunity to bring some of that to this working group i guess i'll begin with um a bit of background of uh community engagement uh regarding uh race and equity in the city um

[114:02] so before the formation of this group and uh the initial development of this racial equity plan the beginning beginnings of it throughout 2019 going back through my community involvements and human relations commission we had initiated a community perceptions assessment study uh in uh and in 2000 so throughout 2016 and 2017 um extensive and robust community engagement with uh diverse and underrepresented populations was held um at the time we didn't we have a formal um engagement department and staff in the city so um a lot of that um i was uh involved in a lot of that with uh consultants from out of state hired by the city uh and uh so met with them while he was in town taking them places in the city uh and facilitating uh over 20 some

[115:00] uh focus groups with a wide range and a loose range of of uh different communities in minority communities that uh i uh could act and and welcome between to to help facilitate that feedback um this was a uh fairly comprehensive report i'm sure some of you have seen it and i'm glad it was included as foundational in this plan because there was a lot of honest and good engagement and feedback provided to uh by so many community members uh especially about the lived experiences on uh how well you know on their experience of how welcoming inclusive and safe they feel in boulder um in uh and then in addition to that um at the finish of that 2017 and 2018 the human relations commission hold it um in addition to public participation at meetings hosted a special community speak out in which uh similar experiences of people of

[116:00] colorado and communities talked about the lived experiences of race and racism in boulder in addition to the capturing of that in 2019 after the police incident with community members said atkinson that was city council hosted a town hall on race in march of 2019 and that was full of feedback and captured from the community all of that was included as foundational to uh this racial equity plan and the community engagement that we're doing with it throughout that time i was lucky to have been meeting with members of now the staff team on this group so from the time lion hansen uh engagement specialist uh joined the city to and throughout that process we had been meeting and talking about things and it was great that it opened a door to uh conversations about um uh challenges of engaging with um these revolution populations and uh really what came into this working group around um over engagements of certain

[117:02] populations and people feeling that they've provided enough feedback and shielded trauma and stories and they're just not seeing uh the kind of action and results they need and so we're gradually checking out of each subsequent um engagement process so that was something that it was great that the staff was really responsive to and that we could be open about that in our working group meetings um so that some of that historical context and uh mitigating those challenges and knowing how to engage with populations with uh who may have been an illusion of trust and bringing some of that perspective to it uh was uh i think something i looked forward to bringing to the table in the uh in the glacial equity advisory looking group and so we talked a lot about uh communication um you know different uh ways of engaging in intercultural communication that could be helpful to the city uh trying to get feedback on this plan when already so much engagement had been done and there was a lot of fatigue in

[118:00] the community um so lastly i will talk about um just my experience myself on on the working group um and i think uh i really enjoyed being on this group i think um over the course of this past year we um really built uh just such what sticks out to me is such a deep um respect and trust in each other among the uh the committee members and uh uh i just you know i just really value each and everyone's um who's to be on a group with them and to get the perspective uh so special because throughout this process we all continued on community involvements and and we're going and then each time we would reconvene as a committee we could bring those perspectives back uh to the group um and i'll say that you know um for me in this group it's it's it's interesting when we talk about racial equity in the city of boulder and the challenges um i think of my own experiences you

[119:00] know and i was able to uh speak to growing up in boulder as a as an indian as a sikh as a first generation immigrant of my family's experiences um throughout the school system and then just in the community at large and in uh interactions i guess with uh government nonprofit and business organizations um to me i guess what i'd like to share with the council is um there's not a lot of um there's many uh majority minority populations that definitely have engaged a lot with the city and given a lot of feedback but oftentimes i think you know for me i i felt good that this the staff and the committee were open to my perspectives um as a sikh and uh you know that ryan and amy and uh huntley uh were so receptive to the um the kind of process of community engagement and you know what what background i have in it which really is informed by um that

[120:00] my own culture and so as you know as indians and sikhs i guess i would say that something my dad always emphasized to me about india and indian culture and issues of cultural appropriation throughout the world is uh the concept of cultural grounding and the importance of that uh and uh you know the idea of studying science in your own language and uh studying math and sciences and stem topics in your own language and how that changes things changes the evolution and creativity and contributions people can make um but to me as as a sikh and as someone who has family throughout southeast asia what i'd seen in southeast asia is that there was just such a wide variety of people and cultures and um the way that uh government and community interacted with them and that there wasn't um an adversarial as much of an adversarial relationship with them it was this more respectful multicultural

[121:00] community um it's something that really informed me growing up and i wanted to bring to not only everything i i do that you all know me for in the city but also this process and how we can reach many diversion um uh populations so that to me it was a positive experience and i was glad to to lend that perspective to it and i appreciate the staff and my fellow committee members uh greatly thank you thank you thank you we we do really appreciate you uh sharing your perspective as as well as the dedication over the years and that you've given to to this important work in our community thank you thank you over next to maria please okay hello again this is maria mulijo so i've been a citizen of boulder for over 20 years

[122:00] and originally from venezuela so i'm hispanic i grew up there and then i came to cu for grad school and every opportunity that i have i always have been trying to address inequities and try to help people that have been displaced or no involved as much as i wish they would so starting at cu me being a single mom with two little kids they grew up here they were just preschoolers and i was part of a big organization within the university that tried to address the iniquities regarding students like myself that had children and were in already in a big disadvantage with the other people that were just a student so i started right there and was very involved and then also as a parent in the boulder valley school district for so many years i participated in many parent organizations

[123:00] within schools within the district representing latino parents but fighting for everybody's right and access to sports to advance classes and all those things so that's been my forefront i have tried to engage latino kids to an educator and an administrator in the district also for a few years now so i try to push my the students that are also usually this mystery presented to go into stem careers so i mean trying to help that so this has been my my passion for so many years and i was really thankful and i appreciate that i was picked to be one of the working group members because this is so important for me i have my children even though they grew up here they now prefer to live in europe which is not even a country of origin but they feel the diversity there the inclusion

[124:01] it's different and they feel more involved and integrated to the communities there so i'm fighting for them to come back and they're here temporarily just because of it but uh i mean showing them like and they're very impressed like wow city council is talking about race this is a new boulder so i'm really glad that this is happening and i that's one scene i really want to say that it i find that it is your job to make sure that every citizen in your city it's appreciated acknowledged involved and respected but not all the elected officials always choose to do the right thing so i really appreciate you guys have been putting the time and effort into this it's really important and i really appreciate that you are considering this to be an important step and so working with the group i was very pleased to be part of it but also i like the diversity within the group how

[125:03] whoever made the selection i suppose it was probably ryan amy sarah and that group from the city they did a great job in selecting the group of us to being very diverse in ideas and background culturally so we could all pitch in and give different opinions and different suggestions and they were all very patient with us too they had a stray line for us to walk through but that never happened so i really respect how patient and concerned you know considering that we were all different and they were allowing us to kind of sidetrack a little bit every once in a while one scene i did not enjoy because we very politely invited them to come and spend a night or a time with us go salsa dancing brazilian dancing or something like that so integrate with the community

[126:00] and still waiting and hoping that when we come back to normal and i invite all of you too in the city council you'll see how lively and delightful the nights are at the sun julian so come by anytime when they open again and so by coming going back to the racial equity plan uh like it was mentioned before we didn't really work on the racial equity plan myself but engaging the community to get feedback and like i said i mean this is what's very important to have people like us as a community bridge in some ways to get an idea because it's so many of us are like you're not on the forefront of many of you and that has been quite the case for many many years even for myself there are some communities out there that i started to learn more about them with this group so and really i mean it was an enriching experience for me myself and so i think that was important i like

[127:02] to see i'm thinking about like just uh the plan is supposed to be for the city government itself but we talk in the group how this should be expanded to the city itself and we understand that not everybody is ready to embrace things like this but we talk about this and they don't have to i mean just like we have an anti-discrimination creed in every office and people have to abide by it i mean we have to come with a lemma or something like we have 20 is plenty well let's try says racial equity is integrity or something let's come up with something like that so everybody in the city every store every business understand that this is the way we do business here in the city of boulder not just in your government offices but outside in the whole city and i was really pleased to see part of the parcel and recreation

[128:02] presentation and and that's great because that's a big part where everybody kind of experiences the city in different ways but it's an important scene and i was really pleased to see the big effort that was put by the group from city that was working with us in the group not just us as the working members and we love to volunteer and we offer to keep volunteering whenever you need some more help but we also talk about the importance of involving maybe a couple of citizens and i'm sure ryan especially probably and amy too could give some suggestions about who are good connectors out there with these different communities and offered an opportunity to participate and give you some more feedback how's the plan actually going once you started fully implementing it and but then at the same time recognize that

[129:00] many people i mean i was happy to do this in a volunteer basis but many people strolling there with money time and all of that so it'll be great we say too if you find those community connectors to recognize that it's important their labor and maybe think about compensating them for helping so that one works in some ways and for me it's totally fine do it voluntarily um so let's see what else i have in mind it's like let me see my notes quickly and i think it was good that it was just three of us here because you don't want to hear us talking and dividing attention which happened a lot in ours but please just um anything that comes up and if you have questions

[130:00] and we talked to ryan and amy we definitely here and anytime i was part of that town hall that nickel mansion and i felt like when that is even happened with the police and then europa students that it was a big wake-up call for many and sometimes like i said some some of us are not in the forefront and people don't even think like any presenting like the median salary is like wow that's such a disparity there but people that are not affected by that you sometimes don't realize that this is the truth and this is happening in our city so i felt really hurt that that incident had happened i was one of the presenters in the town hall and i talked about experience experience of my children and but i was really pleased to see the city council sitting there listening to all of us and taking action

[131:00] so again i mean that's sometimes what needs to happen it's you get a phone call from the doctor that something is going wrong and then it's a wake-up call and then you fix it or do not don't fix it but you the city council and was very happy to see that we're taking action and we are trying to make things better for every citizen of boulder so again i really appreciate your dedication to this and i guess i will stop there and pass it on to our colleague ingrie that also work with us thank you gracias good evening council members it is my pleasure to be here tonight and have this opportunity i have volunteered worked and enjoyed living in the city of boulder for the past nine years i'm originally from central america and i am a proud mother of a bicultural

[132:02] teenager and a concerned community member my experience in the working group i think it has is is very layered on a personal level i think it relates to all my identities um including that one of being a regular human being and the only reason why i want to like break it down that way is because the sense of belonging that i feel everybody who lives here deserves is something that sometimes we give for granted and i believe that the working group was itself almost like the equity engagement in action so if you look at a plan where each goal has different strategies including leadership including holding

[133:01] um staff and community members accountable talking about participation engagement and decision making processes we we all went through that process while working during the um during the working group and looking at the engagement in the outline so i believe that it starts there how as a community member i engage in the group i'm hurt and i'm seen and that enhances my sense of belonging to the city um also it tackles or taps on my identity as a minority of being a latina woman in boulder and um and as a citizen of of of boulder um i think in different roles uh whether is the advocacy role um that i strive and i'm honored to take on it also had an impact given that

[134:02] [Music] there's something to back up the work of many advocates and cultural brokers who are out there so yes the city is interested on implementing improving challenging systemic racism and that is something that as a community member and several people who are out there doing the work can fall back into like feeling the true support in genuine interest of the city and i think that at every single step along the way working with the group looking into the plan there was always that intention in genuine interest and i'm sure that my fellow work group members can agree on this that we truly felt hurt seen and appreciated from a asset point of view um

[135:02] which is what changes the narrative on minority groups right it's not being looked from the deficiency lenses but from the added value that we all have for being part of the community um i also think that um [Music] on a higher impact those changes and challenges how we operate and i mean we because i believe that i'm an active i have an active role in the city that is not only city council it's not only the city of boulder staff is ingrid as a resident of the city of boulder who shares that responsibility on challenging the status quo and really doing the work working the path and also embodying equity in every single decision that i

[136:01] make as an individual or as a professional in a professional level also had several impacts that work with the working group and is is exactly that how to integrate equity into into my professional life and i think that is something that a classroom could give me in a very non-practical way in a very theoretical way but doing the work feeling that connection with other um community members and the city that i live in has a greater impact and ultimately will have a longer lasting effect on how my son experiences his own sense of belonging and the songs and the kids of everybody who is working so actively into making city a more equitable

[137:00] community um and lastly i think that professionally you know like how we further this work and how can we share and be really stewards of that good intention that good plan that work that the city is doing has been really impactful so last year on the cohort of 2019-2020 leadership fellows i was part of that cohort and i was also motivated with a fellow from this working group to bring a feedback session to this group so i have the experience to again co-create lead organize and work with the organization's community the boulder community foundation

[138:00] and also the chair of commerce to be able to host a feedback session with leadership fellows participants and former participants of that program so we did held that session i believe it was late summer where we had um this session for about 18 participants were forming leaders and current leaders had the opportunity to look at the outline and give feedback to the city so it was a great experience to be able to take the work that the working group is was looking into and being able to implement that and being able to have the opportunity for other leaders in the community not only to learn about the outline but also being able to share and keep

[139:00] in touch with the advancement and implementation of of the work group and the outline itself um i believe that the bark the value of the working group is that um truly experienced that equity engagement in action as a very small group and it just kept us like um being able to share it with those who are super open-minded caring individuals pretty cool and who continue to work on a personal level and build relationships with the city build relationships with other community members and being able to continue this work as well so i think that [Music]

[140:00] my voice in this group was always appreciated was always respected and um coming from a cultural and political history of oppression where citizens do have a place in civic engagement but is usually not on a local government level i think it has been a almost like a healing learning process for me where i can engage shoulder to shoulder shoulder look eye to eye to fellows who are doing this work and to leaders in the community and decision makers i believe that that's very hopeful and i hope that as i jumped in and was selected in in this working group i was able to experience

[141:02] the hope in that um brighter future that as a latina in living in boulder neat i just really need it so i think that having this experience of hope is something that i appreciate and hope that several of our community members can experience thanks to the implementation of the engagement racial engagement engagement outline i think that's it i'm not going to go back to my notes thank you thank you ingrid you're welcome ryan thank you for yeah for such thoughtful remarks for for your participation on the working group and um you know it's it's it's truly an

[142:01] honor to to work with you and maria and nikhil and the rest of of the working group um maria thank you for for your sparks of creativity and yes i can't wait to you know at a point where we can be salsa dancing uh please call us dancing so thank you all i'm especially grateful and that you're taking the time this evening to share um your experiences and and to open up and really talk through you know what what this racial activity plan means for you what this work means for you um and we're we're so grateful to the contributions that each of you have made to the working group and the community thank you um could we move to the next slide please and so part of what this instrumental working group was focused on is really looking at you

[143:01] know co-designing this community engagement process and so together we we set out with these um specific objectives here really making sure that you know during these community feedback sessions we were sharing progress in developing the city's racial equity plan as well as connecting with me members to understand what's on track what's missing how to increase the effectiveness of the online strategies and using the city's engagement spectrum we were clear about that the level of engagement this would be consult right and that promise to the public was we will keep you informed listen to and acknowledge your concerns and aspirations and share feedback how public input influenced the decisions we'll seek feedback on drafts and proposals and we did want to to really make sure you know as was touched on that we were making sure to close loop with with communities and to let folks know you know how how their

[144:01] feedback will be used in this process and so part of that was you know collecting that public input together sharing with participants upon completion of public engagement and you know that feedback would help to shape the content and action steps for the city's initial racial equity plan next slide please and you know as as we heard also loud and clear in the 2017 pre-perception survey you know there there was such an immediate and obvious impact on community members of color and that you know in in line with recommendations from the racial equity engagement working group um you know staff primarily focused bandwidth and funneled resources on ensuring that engagement specifically reached me members of color and included their perspectives thoughts and lived experiences and so um you know primarily those were

[145:01] the feedback sessions we had many that were in person several more that were on zoom and we we did have the plan available uh two participants ahead of time so you could take a look through the plan in english or in spanish and you know those the sessions were about 90 minutes uh each where we shared two staff members were able to share a bit of context and an overview and then really taking the the bulk of the time really focused on participants community members sharing feedback getting into any questions and discussion and we also wanted to make sure that this racial equity plan was available across the whole breadth of the community and so we included engagement on behar boulder and so online engagement for for folks and really reached out you know through a racial equity list serve that we've developed over the years the the city's bi-weekly

[146:02] newsletter and and also citywide next door posts um you know to to be frank well while we did hear um you know we did you know see that hundreds of community members were reviewing uh the project on behar boulder there were only a handful and were active participants in in that and so we did did find that the feedback sessions you know in person or or over zoom um in a smaller setting were really the the way to focus our energy um two two uh quick snapshots that we want to share here kind of what this work looked like um on the ground um you know the the first tier is is from an in-person engagement session where you were able to print large posters of each of the goals and following strategies of the racial equity plan outline and community members were able to share

[147:01] feedback their thoughts um on different post-it notes there that were later compiled and on the on the right here we have uh something excuse me the slide needs to be advanced there we go oh perfect thank you um um a snapshot on the right here that is um one of our our zoom uh feedback sessions um in action and you know a quick reminder of those questions and that we did ask folks you know was was really focused on what resonates with community members about uh this plan outline what action steps are on the right track what's missing what action steps don't go far enough how this plan may impact me and my community what would meaningful change look like or feel like how could that be measured or experienced and lastly working together what can we create or inspire next slide please

[148:03] so we are tremendously grateful for for the the wide range of community organization partners who worked closely with us to do co-host sessions and co-design what they looked like um you know held from past november uh through through last month and so the the first of those um you know i think believe it was the very first one i was at the cu diversity and inclusion summit where we had a range of administrators graduate students undergraduate students and staff who shared feedback we presented and heard feedback from the human relations commission that was one that was last winter as well uh working closely with a community connector on the karina we were able to host a spanish first session with latino community members and you know this is something that we we wanted to to make sure removed

[149:01] barriers from participation and so we did have that english or sorry we did have interpretation there for english speakers staff as as nearly all participants were monolingual spanish speakers and you know this was also one where the the co-designers recommended that we provide a small stipend to participants to really honor their time and their commitment to sharing their feedback the the leadership fellows boulder county was the one that ingrid mentioned earlier and four four follows and an alum one that we hosted this summer the naacp uh feedback session with boulder county was one of our our largest sessions um and that was what this this past spring that was in in march and i we also worked with a community connector dinesh uh who was able to co-design and co-host

[150:00] with us a session specific to nepali community members and you know this is one that i'd i'd like to pause on and and to use as a helpful illustration of um you know what that inclusive engagement you know may look like and dinesh and i have been working together since march uh he was was really active in the emergency response connector work uh in addressing the covet emergency and was was introduced to me by a former community connector uh who who recommended nash as someone who'd uh really be able to connect widely in the nepali community and previously we had heard you know from from the nepali community connectors that culturally you know participation in a large event would would not be the first choice of community members and so really having something that was specifically designed for nepali community members something that was co-designed with with community connectors who sent

[151:01] i hope the invitations uh to their friends and to to their neighbors to their colleagues um and you know the the trust that it took to to build to reach that level of partnership um you know i think this you know this one feedback session you know may well have been nine months um in the making here and um you know was was a really incredible um to to be a part of that feedback session and hear uh thoughts from community members many of whom had had never engaged with city government in any way before mentioning another session here uh recovery equity connectors and as folks may know this is a team of community connectors that are specifically uh devoted to reviewing rapid response racial equity assessments uh and giving a racial equity lens uh to the city's decisions around the recovery process we also had a professor at cu sabrina sedaris who was able to walk through the

[152:01] plan and collect feedback from her class at cu we partnered really close with summa in boulder county to to engage cultural brokers who are able to share feedback on this plan as well thank you to guillermo and then also the youth opportunity advisory board it's a diverse group of youth who were able to share feedback um on all aspects of the plan and so again we are just tremendously tremendously grateful um you know for for all the the partner organizations who stepped up to co-design and co-partner and i do just want to briefly mention you know that there were um you know some other organizations that were recommended by working group members and you know we had some of them were planned uh but really reflecting the coveted emergency you know many feedback sessions needed to be postponed uh cancelled as organizations moved a shift uh to to meeting the basic needs of of

[153:01] constituents um we're ready for the next slide please and in a in a moment you know amy will begin to dive into the content of the racial equity plan and just at a high level i want to share you know a few things that we you know did hear from from community members of color throughout these these feedback sessions kind of three high level themes that we did here you know number one um that the goals and strategies did resonate you know they they yes they did reflect reflect previously heard community concerns and are headed in a positive direction and um i think there was clearly an acknowledgement that you know yes this is heading in the positive direction there is definitely a lot of work ahead in in this work and

[154:01] you need for more definition and clarity you know we heard this again and again that okay sure you know it may be headed in the positive direction but we really need some further detail around around these goals around a timeline um really looking at what progress on these goals look like and that a plan on paper is a good start right but it's only that right it's only a start that to truly be successful we want to really be looking at you know how we're ensuring effective accountability how we're looking at evaluation you know how this is is moving outcomes and you know to to making sure that people are are experiencing the the plan as it's enacted and i think you know on that note i think frankly some some skepticism you know about translating good intentions into effective life-changing policy where we're surfaced and i think that's

[155:01] something that we are directly working to to meet and ensure that this is is effectively implemented across our community and i'll turn it over to amy to begin walking through the plan thank you for that ryan um if you could go ahead and advance to the next slide that would be awesome yep the racial equity outcome go back one slide yeah thank you um so the outcome of the overarching plan um is really that the city of boulder will advance racial equity by ensuring that its policies programs and practices are free from institutional and systemic racism we pledge to work collaboratively to support a high quality of life and access to opportunity for community members of all races and ethnicities and so we did hear some um feedback from the community on what our initial

[156:00] feedback was uh what our initial outcome was and i'll turn it over to ryan if you could advance to the next slide to talk about what communities stated about this particular outcome thank you um and so a few things that um participants shared you know about this outcome and really you know what well how this may be experienced right a successful outcome you know first that you know a reaction of wow i didn't know that or what i can't believe that happened and it's dead reactions of acknowledgement honoring the experience validate the experience and awareness that this is a person of color's lived experience on a daily basis a sign that the plan is working when diversity becomes the norm in boulder and one black person does not get stared at when walking into a restaurant that people of color would feel comfortable enough to move to boulder and that they could afford to do so

[157:02] and comfortable with being themselves and the people of color would be treated the same as everyone else back to you amy thank you so in order to do that we created about five different goals um to really help us reach that outcome and we intentionally tried to be a little pithy um in our kind of short goal and then had an explanation of the goal behind that so the first goal was really everybody gets it and that's really what we've been doing all along is normalizing and operationalizing within the city government the understanding of institutional and structural racism for the people who work for and or represent the city of boulder and that includes our city staff you as council members our boards and commissions and then also in the future our ongoing volunteers so we created three strategies around that that you can see here on this slide and then broke it down even further

[158:01] to what you saw in the racial equity plan has the the logic model with very specific actions and so a sample of an action that would be in support of this goal would be um an activity that would support it would be the robust equity trainings that we've been rolling out to all levels of the of the organization including to you all as well as now some of our boards and commissions are participating in that work so if we could have the next slide oh sorry yep next slide and then uh ryan will give you some feedback on what the community had to say about this initial goal thank you uh you know really initially uh the community members uh shared feedback that you know yes the trainings are effective um again a good place to start and you know new staff you know you know coming back to you know some of those comments maria made right like this is this is just how we do business in the city right and so making sure that new staff um come in

[159:00] with that training um and that includes a focus on microaggressions and an implicit bias um you know and and that we don't stop at trainings right the trainings are accompanied by scalable actions for staff to really take action uh after trainings and that carries over right so to programs to policies um the community shared the importance of accountability and that follow-up to to trainings and and lastly that you know proposed racial equity teams really resonate as a way to make move this work forward uh that multiple people people working on a team will help to follow through on the plan next slide please so this next goal we tried to have a little bit of fun with um you'll see it's justly do it get it just just do it kind of fun um so this is really the city taking action to end racial disparities in our city services this is where we really start to

[160:01] dive into the actions of the plan and operationalizing the racial equity instrument that so many of you have heard a lot about you can see the strategies on this slide really support that operationalizing process and so an action item example here would be the work that the some members of our racial equity core team have been doing they've been starting to host workshops on how to utilize that racial equity instrument and they're also working on a process to identify specific projects in 2021 where we can generate case studies such that we can help that support employee learning and also bring back to counsel of how this instrument is being utilized and in the work that it's really really coming to bear and how it's changing things so i think ryan's going to talk about what the community felt about this particular goal and some of the strategies around it thank you amy a few thing a few themes

[161:02] uh that came up around goal two was that this is a very important piece of the the racial equity plan and following that up that that transparency in this work is is clear and funding uh needs to be dedicated towards these initiatives um you know folks we heard from community members who were really intrigued uh by the racial equity instrument and wanted to know more about that racial equity instrument you know what those steps looked like what those trainings looked like and kind of what the rollout of that looked like you know as well as you know there's there's a importance of the composition of teams that are assessing programs looking at policy and and that really matters um you know i think another piece here is is you know a need for multilingual community education around services or programs that can be members may benefit from and i recall one of our feedback sessions you know we were talking about this goal right the the city will take action

[162:00] to end racial disparities and city services and someone raised their hand and said what are city services right and and and making sure that we are meeting community members where they are and talking through um you know that civics education talking through uh the city and talking through you know what's what supports or what benefits or or what programs um are there for community members is critical back to amy please and next slide so the next goal is around community commitment and so this is how we plan to strengthen our partnerships and also collaborate with community members and organizations who've demonstrated a commitment to ending racism there's a lot of really great non-profits large structures universities the school system they're also trying to advance this work and as we've talked about a few times this tonight is that it's about people and it's about all of us

[163:00] and it's not just about city of government operations but how do we partner with community that are also trying to share in this work such that we can all really advance this and be better together so an example of an action that supports this goal is really understanding our history and ensuring that we learn from that history so we can do better and so that's why we were really intentional to to embed some of that extensive racial history in the beginning of the plan um so we intend to continue this practice through our future work there's a lot of history that's yet to be uncovered but here's what community had to say about this particular goal ryan did you want to take the next thank you yeah and you know several of the themes that came up um you know many community members mentioned that you know it's important that this work not solely lie on the shoulders of community members of color and that you know many experienced crew

[164:01] members of color are tapped out and people of color and organizations need to be paid for their involvement and their consultation we heard encouragement to include support and acknowledged community organizations who are already doing similar work and advancing diversity and equity goals as amy mentioned a focus on engaging youth making sure that youth have a voice in in this work and you know ensuring that we're honoring and understanding other cultures as well as partnering directly with communities to learn and participate in cultural activities you know as as we heard come up earlier tonight as well so thank you and next time so goal number four we called power to all people and so this is really built around the intention of main building and maintaining the trust and then expanding the influence of community members of color through inclusive engagement and inclusive and responsive engagement so some strategies around

[165:01] here is really improving the access that we have to decision makers so some of the the stories that you heard tonight from our colleagues from the racial equity engagement working group this is an example of that kind of goal really coming to life and playing out in action another action that really supports this goal is the the hiring of the city's first language access coordinator this past year this is an example of ensuring that we have dedicated staff who can coordinate and lead the strategies and the work efforts across the organization because as i've mentioned a couple of times that this isn't about one of us this isn't about the work that amy does or that ryan does this is the work about that we all need to do and we all need to make sure that we're allocating the critical resources not only financially but also personally to accomplish this work and so what the what the community have to say about this goal ryan you amy um overall it was really encouraging to

[166:00] slow down right that that change happens at the speed of trust and you know that that this work does resonate you know as described in in goal 4 that it does resonate with community members right just that more details and concrete steps are are needed and you know and acknowledging there's a lot of important information that comes from from the city and that comes from from the community and really listening to community input you know especially from underrepresented communities is essential one one thing that really stood out in the feedback session we had was human remember sharing you know how how much expertise and valuable insights that our non-english speakers have to share with our community um but there's you know this is just untapped potential and that you know we're eager to dive further into the language access program and and that excellent work

[167:00] to to make sure to remove those barriers um you know also an imperative to keep maintain trust um you know by remaining open to feedback talking through the decision-making process and being clear when we're closing the loop with committee members as well as uplifting the voices of community collectors to be at the table and to share direct experiential examples from themselves from their communities in informing decision making and amy i'll pass it back to you all right thank you so this is finally where we are with our final goal um and this is that representation matters uh the city will eliminate barriers and create opportunities to build to build a diverse workforce across the depth and breadth of local government including our elected officials boards commissions and working groups and so often times when you're thinking about diversity and inclusion and equity goals what people are really thinking about is

[168:00] internal workforce and for us as holders of democracy it's very important that we're also engaging community and making sure that we're not just focused on our workforce it's critical it is absolutely critical and that is part of the work that we will be doing but it's also really important that we ensure that our city advisory boards our commissions and our working groups have the least amount of barriers for the historically excluded people who have not been able to participate and so this is very similar to how the police oversight task force was put together and the upcoming police oversight panel that we are going to be starting to recruit community members for and so the community feedback on this one ryan if you'll take that thank you a few themes you know revamp position descriptions and an outreach to focus on competency instead of credentials uh making sure to integrate diverse representation throughout recruitment and hiring processes you know that recruitment is effective

[169:00] but that you're beginning earlier right beginning with with youth to help build an understanding of what fields and positions may be available you know one one comment comes to mind where um you know a latina community member was talking about you know their child's involvement in girl scouts and kind of talking through how to frame on a resume right they put girl scouts and you know they noticed that you know some of their their white peers were putting entrepreneur or social marketer or really being able to frame those experiences in a really different way and um just the the skill set that is necessary for that and working to remove such barriers and really looking at valuing the lived experience and other competencies gained right not just formal education looking at how we build a diverse leadership pipeline and include cultural proficiency as a necessary skill for managers and and lastly you know

[170:02] once people of color are included on in larger numbers on boards and commissions and working groups to really focus on retention and supports to make sure that they are successful in those roles and i'll turn over back to amy for what's happening now all right so if we could get happening now there we are all right so all of this work's been going on over the past two years without a plan um but this plan we i mean we've been focusing on our training we've been trying to guide strategy and then we've also been working to build data and tools but this plan is really an opportunity to help us shape our outcomes and so as you saw in the plan we had short term midterm and long term outcomes so we can really measure our work and then we can establish where we need to continue focus and really be more intentional on the work that we're doing so the leadership support of this council really helps

[171:02] support the commitment that employees are already making and it will also help you all as policy decision makers on behalf of the community and so next slide the hope for next steps is that this plan will be updated in three years but we'd like the opportunity to come back to council annually to provide an update on the progress we also plan to come back with after tonight's session and some feedback from you all about what would be helpful to include in the plan moving forward we're hoping to come back um on february 16th for adoption of the plan so next slide our questions for you are what questions do you have about the plan is there additional information that we could be incorporating and is there in additional community engagement that would be helpful for you so with that i'm going to [Music] in all of us ryan maria ingrid and

[172:02] nikhil are all open to answering questions what you got thank you amy ryan nikhil ingrid and maria we really appreciate all the work that you've done and i am looking for questions from council and i forgot to mention amy and amy thank you i can you're welcome happy to answer questions as well adam hey adam thanks mary and thanks amy and all the presenters really awesome awesome work um i don't really have any questions so much as a comment i thought uh when i was looking through everything the community concerns really were this pretty much my same concerns too so i think the community did a great job of

[173:00] pointing out you know we need to see the accountability we need to see the step-by-step um how we're reaching the goals um because otherwise the the plan doesn't much matter if it's if we don't have accountability for it so i think that is the part that you know the community is really really looking for is um measuring and seeing how this plan is helping improve the community overall so um again i don't have any further feedback but it's it's really awesome really comprehensive and i was happy to be part of the guiding coalition for at least a short time so far and look forward to continuing to improve this along the way and i know the rest of council is too so awesome work everybody really really great thank you adam can i ask a question of you absolutely do you i was just going to ask it anyway

[174:00] do you feel like um that logic model with the short term midterm and long-term goals is helpful is with that accountability measure because when we were taking that to community we didn't have that element in yeah definitely um i think that's that's going to be super helpful yeah like i said i didn't have any super further feedback just happy with what i saw awesome thank you for that thank you so much we've appreciated having you on the guiding coalition as well thank you adam um rachel okay i think aaron might have been in front of me but if he's oh i'm sorry yes aaron is um ahead of you sorry about that rachel i i see the floor you go ahead i'll go next okay um all right i'm trying to toggle screens here so pardon me if i get a little bit lost but um thanks for all the great work um everyone who's been involved in this project and

[175:00] um the the um really authentic shares tonight was also um helpful to hear and good perspective for us so thank you all um a quick question there are some maps on in the um plan around page 35 36 that are like percentages geographically of where people live and demographics and so my question is like some of the areas um i think you know look like they may be more industrial or um lower population just in general so would it be possible to just get the raw numbers that we're talking about in those different plots i can certainly look into that the the one challenge i will or you're talking about the the scorecard um those the race by census tracks um those are also old data unfortunately because we don't have the 20 the latest 2020 census data but i can

[176:00] see about getting that raw data for you yeah okay to the extent that we're going to do anything with those maps like i think it would be helpful to know um the numbers of people that we're talking about in each um okay and then also on also on those maps for people who are unhoused and don't have a physical address where where would they show up it's a great question it does tend to be um more people who are non-white who are um unhoused so just wondering we can look that up for you as well okay thanks and then um last thing there's a little acknowledgement or an acknowledgement um towards the top i think that mentioned jane and tanya yeah their contributions and um it's unfortunate a little bit that this is coming to fruition after they're both gone because my understanding is they've been so instrumental in lifting up this work so i just wondered should like my name's in the document a number of times and theirs is only in

[177:00] once and you know i've only been on the guiding coalition for a year and that feels like um i don't know just is there more that we can acknowledge their particular contributions and that's all i got great work awesome thank you so much thank you rachel um um aaron yeah well i'll just start by echoing the very positive feedback i think the plan is extremely well put together and i'm so appreciative of the work of city staff amy ryan and all of your colleagues and um and the the committee that was working on this so maria and england and nikhil and others who aren't here tonight and thank you for sharing your stories um and your personal experiences that is very meaningful to hear so so my um my one sort of question is uh so that you do have the outcomes the logic model section now

[178:01] and is it i think it is important um about that feedback that we got about how are we doing like how can we demonstrate how we're doing so that um that section talks about a lot of different things that we could measure um and so that's one thing that i think it would be helpful maybe to flesh out a little bit for the the final plan would be to have those you know maybe in a little bit more of a readable list of like how are we measuring that we're being successful or not being successful it's and so if we're able to maybe address that a little bit more concretely um and and then that gives us something to kind of keep track of over the years i really like your idea of the annual touch point uh where we can check in um but having that tied back to measurements you know maybe we have a website that has some we have some great dashboarding on on the website but anyway so if we were able to flesh that out a little bit more i think that would be helpful so that we can make sure

[179:01] a lot of that community feedback talked about we want to make sure this isn't just talk it's not just good intentions but that there are actually things happening that are making real change happen right so how can we how can we demonstrate that keep track of them does that make sense that makes sense to me yep great thank you so much yeah can i add something to that um so i think that in several of our sessions the measurements came up and a lot of what it was shared on the table was the fact that well qualitative data is often um underappreciated i mean we have the quantitative data which is so valuable and there's uh culturally there's a lot of weight on that kind of data right but being able to complement it with live experiences and quantitative qualitative data is just as important so i just want to

[180:05] make a remark that that was heavily discussed and and it came up as culturally there's differences as well on how um some things can be measured and shared it thank you so much for that point ingrid and that so that the point being that it's not just about numbers right that there are there are other things that need to be kept track of that aren't just you know numbers on a graph in terms of how things are going um and so that it's a little less straightforward to measure that but that doesn't mean it's not important it shouldn't be measured that's a great point the the one other thing um that i wanted to bring up i did i spoke with uh marina la grav earlier today one of your other committee members and just one point that she brought up that i thought was really worth passing along was you know the need to have a particular

[181:03] outreach to immigrant communities in town so she pointed out that there are specific needs and issues that immigrant communities have that that may need some special attention so pointing out for example that during the covet crisis how the existing inequalities in our society and our community have become exacerbated and she pointed out that one of the ways that that happens is concerns from from some folks in the immigrant community about whether if they access uh health cert public health services if that then their information gets out to immigration or if that then qualifies as some kind of welfare that they're participating in that could hurt chances of getting a green card and and so fears that are maybe preventing people from accessing services uh that that other folks don't think twice about accessing so um so that maybe that's it's worth including some words

[182:01] in the plan about uh making sure um that that folks who are immigrants are have some particular needs that we're watching out for to prevent inequities from getting broader thank you for that thank you for sharing maria's or marina's comments absolutely all right that's all i had thanks so much everyone thanks erin thank you aaron um and next um we have junie joseph thank you mary and i just wanted to thank the team for this presentation it's really wonderful very thoughtful and very thorough and when i read the agenda as well it was just you know a lot of information that was really well thought of and put together and i just wanted to mention even in my own personal experience based on what i believe um aaron just mentioned

[183:03] as someone who's an immigrant myself who grew up in a community where people didn't speak english there is that fear it exists and i've even heard my own friends my own family said oh we would not ask for any type of social services because of fear of that information being used and you wouldn't you fee they fear that they're not gonna get a green card because of that so that's real and and immigrant communities and anything that we can do to dispel that fear is very helpful because we are there to support the entire community so i really appreciate what aaron said and i just wanted to add with ingrid and when you talked about qualitative and quantitative data i think that's very important and i think part of it as well is distinguishing the data for who and for what purpose right because we can use data for to inform the community but also to dictate the policy formulation and implementation

[184:01] right so i think we have to do a little bit of both and i think when i was going through the agenda you know i think part of it you know access to some of the demographic statistics how will this information be shared with the community and that's very important to me aside from being here on council and talking about it because it's so easy you know we appreciate those type of conversations but once it's once it happened here we got the information there are so many community members who are not on zoom who are not watching channel eight so they don't really get that information and i think um aaron also mentioned a website that might be a great starting point to have a website and also maybe have some type of a road map because i think you offered a lot of information to us today which is great but i can assure you in a week or two we won't remember that information but so if there is a dashboard or somewhere

[185:01] where that information is accessible i can just go and quickly checked i mean i think that would be perfect that would be great and i think i welcome aaron's idea about the data flush flesh out i think that's great as well it's so important to have the data disaggregated and also i think from my own experience from being on council and i know that's a bit critical after this great presentation that you just give or maybe i just don't know where to find that information i think in strategic point five strategy 5.1 address boards commission working group and you talked about diversity which is something that is very very important to me and when i got on council i was like you know i'm constantly thinking on how what can i do as a council member to ensure that diversity and i think having that data would be very important and i have not seen it it could be because maybe i have not looked and i've not asked you

[186:02] it doesn't exist there isn't right and so that's part of the systems that we need to really work on is how we're collecting data where we're collecting data because that's a huge gap and and ensuring that we have the staffing to the the the staffing to do it and how to understand it thank you so much i really appreciate that because i remember last year this year when we were doing our boards i did asked about that and and i didn't get an answer so that's the reason why so i think that would really help inform the decisions that we make and that would really be helpful so i i think you are on a great path and i think the work that you're doing is amazing you and your team and i look forward to seeing you know as we grow together as a community and ensuring this work thank you thank you for that juni yeah the boards are that's a that's a big process to to really look at and unpack

[187:00] so it's one of our projects thank you thank you juni um sam great thank you mary and thank you all for the great presentation and for all the work that went into developing the plan with the community and with the staff um and with council members who sat on the um oversight group so thank you all for the hard work and it's great to see this plan come forward um and i'm going to have a few comments i'm going to start from smallest to largest um one trivial comment i'll just mention it now is change happens at the speed of trust in the document as well as in the presentation change was presented as chance so that's a trivial one fixed chance to change another trivial one but i think it might be getting a little more important is summa was mentioned in the presentation and i had to look up what summa was not

[188:01] only what the word means but what the organization was um so a little explanation of that and i expect that the actual cultural connotations of suma go beyond what you can look up as a translation online so i thought that was a really cool name and i think that would be something to call out and to direct people to as to what it is and what services or connections it provides so those are two small things um i thought ingram made a great point about data we're all a bunch of data walks and that's just one of the things that we tend to do but one of the things that kurt fernhopper has been doing whenever we get a report about um housing and human services is adding a story in right so we spend a lot of those conversations talking about cost of housing say and access to housing and so on and i think those stories are really important um to illustrate what's behind the numbers

[189:00] so even when we talk about wanting more data i really do think the stories and the personalization of that data is really important to people being able to make a connection to the numbers so i'll just put that out there i want to emphasize what ingrid said um and then two more that are a little more um substantive perhaps is i agree with the comments about um the wanting to bring concreteness to this so not only in the timeline i mean getting the trainings out in the staff is concrete and with council members and boards and commissions that's a concrete step a lot of the um points that were in the plan were goals and aspirations which you have to start with before you can get concrete but i and and i do agree that the kind of logic um tree is a good way of getting at that i just think that will be one thing that people will ask for and um one of the the things that i

[190:01] caught in the presentation that i think has been around for a very long time in this area and which would be concrete and which does give a goal to work towards is a cultural center so i've been hearing about a cultural center in boulder since long before i even got involved with the city and i think it remains an aspiration of many in the community to be able to have a cultural center which would span many cultures that are represented here in boulder starting with the native american culture and moving all the way through immigrant culture which all of us are in one way or another so i really thought the cultural center would be an aspiration that could be brought forward as a concrete outcome that is just part of this equity work that we're doing it's hard to find the funding for i understand it's hard to find the land and the building for but it should be something that we continue to press for because as i've looked back through not

[191:00] not for this but previously looking back through previous council packets and so on it has been something that's been around for a long time and with this kind of renewed focus on this work it seems like something that could be surfaced and you know juni talked about what people know or hear from these conversations there's not many community members who are on this zoom goal um but i think that is something that could be talked about more broadly and see if there is buy-in because you know is a cultural center a right thing is it a good thing is it helpful within the context of this plan i would think so but it would be something to talk about and i caught it as a bullet point so again thank you for all of this work that's gone into this it is a very important subject and sometimes leads to difficult conversations but by and large it's definitely worth it for all of us so thanks very much thank you sam thank you for that thank you sam um

[192:01] next we go to mark wallach thank you um i want to support my colleagues in their praise for the uh for the report for the comprehensiveness of it for the hard work that's been put in by all the committee members and i am fully supportive of let's say 99 of what you have written in the draft report i do want to point out that there's a section on page 15 does concern me greatly the committee singled out certain programs in the city of boulder that are identified as governmental programs promoting racial inequity one of them is gentrification and i would first point out that is not really a government uh policy if you pull most of the members of this council you will find many of us have been gnashing our teeth over uh the issues of gentrification but in a system where people do have

[193:01] private property there are limited tools available for dealing with that however two of the other programs that you identified as government programs that have strengthened and increased racial equity were the city's height limitations and the policies uh behind the boulders green belt so i have the following questions with respect to the language that you've used and i'll do them in series first this language was accompanied by no supporting analysis and i'm wondering is there any uh or is it simply characterizing any policy that could have an adverse impact on housing prices as fostering racial inequity number two if that is the case i would ask why um none of the many other policies that have adverse impacts on housing prices were discussed or enumerated particularly the policy of boulder to be a regional job center which is probably

[194:02] the greatest driver of the jobs housing imbalance and therefore the cost of housing prices other policies such as uh you know various development approval processes which in order to achieve our environmental energy environmental energy conservation and design goals also lead to higher prices and lastly listing these policies as essential contributors to racial inequity implies that we should have a solution to that problem and so i'm asking is the committee therefore suggesting what that solution is do you have a policy recommendation for us and if you don't i guess my question would be why not since this is a you're identifying these policies as primary sources of governmental sponsored racial um inequity frankly i i find the language to be a bit misplaced and unfortunate and i would urge you to reconsider its

[195:00] place in this document but other than that i don't want to make more of it than it is because i think by and large the work product is terrific the thought process has been very careful and uh i commend you for your efforts but that is my complaint okay i appreciate that mark i would like to respond to that so the history the racial history of boulder was put together um by research done by city staff who were on the racial equity core team and so that's where this information came from um and i think what you'll see is that those particular well one there's and i'm surprised you didn't point out that there is a typo on height restrictions there should be a t there um that was one of my complaints about it um but the other uh complaint also is that this is some ways city government has strengthened and increased racial inequity um and so may these may not have been

[196:00] intended to create racial inequities as explicitly as like the previous space where it was talking about pushing out obnoxious industries to the outskirts of boulder but these impacts are shown to limit access to people of color based on often they're being ties with low income low income inequality and race um so it's in the plan as a demonstration of good policy that leads to disparate impacts and so as we're moving forward collecting data in advance and engaging those who are most impacted really is what can help position boulder to look at innovative solutions that protect the things that we love about boulder but also um giving us an opportunity to provide access and and create a more um diverse community as well two quick comments one i really don't think the language reflects the comment you just made that as an illustration of good policies that might lead to um unfortunate results in terms of access or

[197:00] housing pricing and and i think if it i think that would be appropriate um and two um and we may simply agree to disagree on this um i i think boulder in effect can walk and chew gum at the same time i think we can maintain both a progressive environmental value system and continue to strive for racial equity on all fronts and this language does not really reflect but that viewpoint and and i i think it's unfortunate um again i don't want that to uh detract from my general approval of what you have done and my appreciation for what you've done um but i i don't think that language as it exists would be the way to go thank you for that recommendation i appreciate that thank you mark um and um aaron you wanted to weigh in again

[198:01] please yeah well if you don't mind uh i just wanted to respond to mark to your comments there amy i appreciate that response i i would um i think it's it's good to have mention of this in there i i think there's a couple pages of history of the city of boulder with respect to our racial history and it had uh called out some uh difficult and negative things that have happened in the past like um you know their former mayor penfield tate not winning re-election they've almost been recalled uh first african-american mayor boulder and i think it's it's important to have an acknowledgement of how some some of the policies that the the city has implemented that while they have been very successful and positive in certain ways uh you know have contributed somewhat to racial disparities so i mean i think maybe amy if you might con my my personal take on it would be that you know you might consider adding some of the wording that you

[199:00] explain to some of the words you use in explaining the reasoning to mark uh some of that stuff sounded really good but i think i think it's you know it's important to have the full history in the document can i can i colloquy with you on that of course i have i thought the the history of um uh racially inequitable policies uh in in in boulder's history was terrific um i and quite comprehensive and a little bit dismaying obviously the issue here is a little bit different um i think uh and yes you know there are policies that can raise the cost of housing but there are many values in boulder and one of which has been for 50 years that we um highly value um on an environmental basis our open space and and i i just don't think it the way it was phrased is this is a policy

[200:00] of the government that strengthens uh racial inequity and it is i think you need to make a distinction between policies that are intended to strengthen racial inequity and policies that may have a side effect of raising housing prices but you can't simply say that if something raises housing prices it is therefore automatically transformed into a policy uh intended to promote racial inequity i just think the language here uh if they want to keep it in that's fine but they need it needs a great deal of revision to i think be accurate and reflective of the reality certainly the issue of gentrification being listed as a governmental policy uh i mean we've all you and i may not have a whole lot of hair to tear out but most of us have been tearing our hair out over gentrification issues for quite a while and that's not a government policy that

[201:00] that's an impact of maybe of other policies but it's certainly not something that that the city of boulder is in order to promote racial inequity if i can do just one last call of queen mary if you don't mind um just that um i i don't the the document doesn't state that it was done with the intent to create racial uh in inequity and um and i think that they're um realizing how some well-meaning policies do uh end up uh resulting in more racial inequities an important part of acknowledging our history so i am you said that there was this was based on staff research and so maybe um if we get more backup materials you know that um that that might help kind of explain where this is coming from but that's an excellent suggestion thank you for that thanks to you both thanks all right um thank you and i think i i

[202:00] sam is next yeah i just wanted to jump in here and say this is a long-standing boulder debate about what causes high housing prices um we know that and i guess i would say the one part about what my mark mentioned that i'm in complete agreement with is that the list is incomplete so if we intend to put in all of the unintended consequences that have arisen from governmental policies in boulder that have raised housing prices what i would say is we need more on the list if that's what we're going to do and i would agree with aaron that the um documentation behind it what i really like about the page before this which is the history that we put in i believe resolution 1275 was that this history is well researched and footnoted and so should we choose to put in and i will also point out that each of these four bullet points

[203:01] reference affordability of housing as the main negative consequence so being a regional job center um when height restrictions were put in we were at about point five jobs to each resident here now we're at about one job per resident so no matter how you slice it the fact that we have increased the demand in boulder by increasing the number of good-paying jobs is another unintended consequence of that conscious decision to position ourselves that way so where i think everything else before and after these four bullet points is documented with quotes or notes from where they came from or on statistics if we're going to go down this direction and i think it's debatable as to whether this actually serves because nothing in the policy suggestions really relates to land use policy or comp plan development which all of these are related to if we want to go down that

[204:00] um and if we want to have um land use be included in this document as one of the mistakes in the past i think we at least have to be more thorough and balanced and um specific about it because there's a big debate in boulder it's been ongoing for as long as these policies have been in place and if if we want to touch that debate we need to at least tread with care rachel yeah so i think it's good that we sort of um daylight that it's this issue and i'm glad mark that you brought it up um it is a long-standing debate from what i can tell and and i think that the historical context is important amy as you're doing the um i guess the background and maybe it sounds like expanding on it and bringing it back to us that you know we did have the history that you went into with the kkk activity and us you know showing people the door on the way out of town and driving

[205:01] certain types of jobs out of town that hopefully um would take people with them in a pretty inhumane way and then federally we had redlining and so at the time that we put in things like height limits and a blue line and slow growth policies people hadn't really had a chance to move here so we were kind of locking in to some degree and then exorbitantly raising prices on what is here and so family wealth and things like that could accumulate up to that time so i think that it would be good to to get this all on the table and to have a real dialogue about it so thanks for including it thank you thank you rachel um i will weigh in here and um here's my concern with this as as we can see this has sparked quite a debate on um on council and what i would like to have this document

[206:02] do is to bring people along and to bring people along and unite us around um addressing racial inequities and if we have a section in the document that is not footnoted as our as is the the historical piece right above these four points we run the risk of alienating um along the division of this debate and and losing the support of a lot of people in this community and um that would be a real sad outcome of um including this without adequate research and footnotes and so i want us to have as many members of the community behind

[207:01] this work and behind this document as possible and if it turns out that this document basically divides us and loses support along the divisions that we have experienced for so long um it would be a really um mis a real missed opportunity so um whatever we can do to back this up i you know i agree the the section right before it is very well researched and footnoted um this section wasn't quite that way and if we can get it that way um then then i would be supportive otherwise i just fear that we would um we would just lose support of a lot of members of our community and not address these issues so that's that's my concern um i um i see there's a couple of folks

[208:04] um that are on the um were on the committee and that would like to weigh in i would like to weigh in but i'm going to make an exception and i'm going to go ahead and call on the committee members nikhil has had his hand up for a little while and then ingrid would like to weigh in as well um we don't usually do this um and members of um committees are not usually promoted to panelists and but in this case i i think it's appropriate to make an exception so um and i will want to weigh in after um ingrid nikhil please thank you um yes i just i had my hand up for a while and i just wanted to actually kind of do it all in the middle of this uh discussion but

[209:00] piggyback on on uh uh a committee member mourinho's point that alien showed about access and just and this may be getting into some of the implementation of the plan but also there might be a way to include something in this plan um around emergency response and i think that's a a particular concern that has come up throughout um the the history of the the different engagement um community engagement things i've been involved with in the city including this one and so if you think back to the floods and uh what we've learned about how do food communities might respond to public safety and oem in that situation and then also we see it now with the the wildfires and then also with uh say covet response and public health as well um it's you know understanding that difference that people may um if you know if you see a a vehicle with with lights and flashing lights on top

[210:01] and someone knocking on you towards you know not all community members might feel like that's someone who's coming to help you um warn you you know provide some kind of uh public service in a disaster type of situation and so it's something that's that it does get talked about a lot in council meetings and things but i think given um this pandemic of the pastor and what we saw in the wildfires and what we know from the uh the floods that uh this is one of the um the other inequities in the community i still think we you know we have a ways to go in uh figuring out how to address so and i know you have like police master plan update and things coming up so i just think that those critical emergency services there's a theme overall in the plan about really this is about people and building trust and um building trust in that way is one way to mitigate inequities in practice um so that was just just that comment on the other comment um

[211:00] was uh what juni was talking about on on the website and i think like all of us who've had some kind of involvement in the city who've been on a commission sometimes we're looking at you know and trying to navigate site and find documents and council packets it's it's pretty challenging i think for community members and that's been feedback that we've even gotten at public comment at the human relations commission as well um just people trying to find stuff and so finding what they need and i know that i believe that there's been some long-standing planning uh around updating the the website and looking at accessibility and dashboards and things so just from an equity standpoint looking at how do we communities access um uh websites you know and that could be for what devices and it could be by age and it could be um by what um underrepresented group they belong to those things are differences so just things to keep in mind as as you're doing the um this work going forward so i just wanted to plug those things up thank you nicu in the discussion

[212:01] thank you so much thank you thank you nikhil um ingrid thank you mary and thank you nikhil for that um remark i do want to share that um i think it's the conversational housing is so valuable that it will be super important to look into who's participating in those commun in those conversations about housing and about land ownership and home ownership overall looking into what is the housing mobility opportunities that people do have in the city and looking it at it through the racial equity lenses i think it will be well the foundation work and the history is so important on having a deeper understanding on the consequences and the reality it

[213:02] really serves as a foundation moving forward right and what looking at the opportunities that are available to people of color in baltimore county to step up into their own housing mobility and housing ownership that's all i wanted to add thank you ingrid mary you're muted thank you i'm going to um weigh in and then i see that juni has her hand up and so um i will um we'll go to juni after i ask some questions and um and i have some questions and comments one of my big questions is um where is this work

[214:03] going to live organizationally so right now it stems from our city manager's office with me leading the work um and then it's something that has to live with all of us across the organization so that's where you see that there's the the goal and um strategy around how do we how do we resource this appropriately right how do we ensure that we have the staff members who can do this as part of their work but also the expertise and the funding resources so that we can support the work but right now it is housed in the city manager's office and that's where i think it as you know the top leadership in the city departments i think that's where it should remain okay thank you and um i do hope that it remains in the city manager's office i know that there was a previous effort

[215:01] about five years ago that was not in the city manager's office and i think that was part of the reason that it did not succeed there were other factors definitely for sure um but i think that was one of the factors that um managed to not make it a successful effort um i also had um a question well just yeah a question in the logic model in the section where it talks about one of the by the way i think that the short-term medium goals and long-term goals are a perfect way to um set it up so i really like that but i did have a question about one of the goals that talks about um and i can't see it and i know it's so small i'm having to blow it up too this is my witching hour y'all keeping me up too late okay it says um students remain in the

[216:00] city of boulder post graduation for five years um how has five years arrived at and um yeah that's that's my question yeah a dart board you know it's some of this work we have to pick a number i'm joking it really wasn't a dart board i'm terrible at darts um but you do have to with some of this work especially when you're looking at more of the mid term outcomes and the long-term outcomes you know we don't know what we don't know at this point and so that's why we're also saying let's do this as a three-year iterative process so that as we're moving along we can really move things and make sure that we are changing as the times change and as we see what's being successful and what's not being successful so really some of this when you're really trying to determine short-term midterm and long-term outcomes is like you have to pick a number particularly when we're working in a space that with bureaucracy we want

[217:00] those qualitative numbers right so so it was pretty arbitrary okay you want to make it more less well i um well i was curious about why and i could see that particular number not being a real accurate measurement um because someone may graduate and just decide i'm gonna stay here and um and then a job opportunity comes along and um and they just leap or you know or they decide i want to stay here for five years and not really work in my area of um my degreed area and um work in a coffee shop and they may stick around for a little while and then they say okay done with the coffee shop i'm moving on um i don't know so um i guess i would like

[218:01] it to be a little more um either replace the the metric or um or something that is um or put a little more um um research behind it footnote it yeah i like the notes in the same thing in the logic model where it talks about data um and it is um actually it's it we talk about data in a couple of places one is on page um when it is on page 15 um where it's talked about and then there's another place within the logic model um and that is um well there's a whole section that's about about data yeah and i if we could again um agree with what um i believe it

[219:00] was juni that talked about disaggregating data um and collecting the right data i think those are real real important things we've seen um with covet how the lack of collecting demographic data at the right points and time can really cause harsh inequities and yeah and i and i don't i want to make sure that we set ourselves up in a way that collects the right data so um if we could just say collect um gosh i did this again so we say collect and analyze meaningful data yeah and and i um if we could say collect meaningful and collect and meaningfully collect meaningfully disaggregate and analyze data i think you have to have all those four things in order to actually get at something

[220:00] and you then have to cross tab it in a way that really drills down and i know that the data experts know all of that but i want to make sure that we capture that and that we're really cognizant of collecting um the things that really matter um so collect meaningfully just segregate meaningfully disaggregate and analyze data okay thank you um so that's um another one in um and then just another comment on this is on page 15 as well where you talk about the the comment about across the united states a person's race remains a key predictor that's a real important paragraph and i think that given two contexts one is the the resolution on racism as a public health crisis and the

[221:01] other one of course the the covet pandemic if we could use that that example um the the the way that the pandemic has so harshly illuminated inequities and reorient this paragraph towards the pandemic and use that data because that i think really drives it home and i think that everybody can really understand it and it's been so stark that it's just hard to look away and what paragraph are you on um i'm on page 15 um and it is the second to last paragraph on page 15. okay thank you um i think that's all i have and um so juni

[222:03] thank you mary i think i'm going back to a more difficult part of our conversation and i just wanted to um to just offer some feedback as well um when mark and aaron was disgusting um discussing discussing the history when i first and i actually did mention to aaron prior to the meeting that i did find that um just that history was very hard to read it was not easy um for me to read and i think the wording is very important right because at the end of the day we're going back to what mary said we are trying to breach a gap so and then you know and i think really the conversation just tonight is that we all look at the world through different lenses and we want to remember and acknowledge the past

[223:00] but not in a way that is inflammatory and further divide us and i have to say it was very difficult for me to read um that history and i think it wasn't difficult just because it's a difficult history i think it was difficult because of the way it was worded um and i think maybe as well i was wondering when i was reading it it just felt like here are a bunch of bad things that happen what opportunities and lessons have we learned from these quote-unquote neutral policies because i think that's the discussion that we're having that some people believe that these policies were neutral so how can we bridge that gap and say hey yes okay i understand these policies may have been neutral in your eyes but they disproportionately impact certain members of our community so i think having a language that really bridge that gap between

[224:00] where people stand and of course some things are hard to explain but nonetheless i think it's very important to bridge that gap so that we can um we can you know we're a community and we have to move together we can't leave certain people behind just because um so i think it's very important that we do that and i think that brings me to a different part of um i guess overall when i was looking at it the process of integration and men's streaming of the process because i think when i was reading and i think it's 2.1 because you mentioned in the history you talked about you know you talked about um housing and you talked about zoning and you talked about the green belt and in 2.1 it was just so gener generic that to me when you mentioned all these facts that were really negative in the history of or city i think it would be important to balance

[225:00] it out and say okay here's what we've learned and here's here are some of the things that those departments are doing to ensure you know um to change that and i think that's probably what's what was missing and that's why it was so hard to i guess i guess to just palette to just and i think i i i miss that part where um what is the ownership process when it comes to other departments earlier osmp um when we were discussing the previous presentation they did mention actually the racial equity tools but i didn't get a sense how effective and how these tools will be utilizing these different departments if that makes sense and i think maybe some concrete example or somehow may bring that forward a little bit more that would be very helpful so how are these other departments are involved as opposed to oh yeah this is the project coming from

[226:02] the guiding coalition as opposed to a mainstreamed you know integrated system so i i know that mary just mentioned something about you know having it being within the city management office but at the same time i think this is something that needs to be vertical and also horizontal it cannot just be coming from one department because as my understanding if it's coming from one department it's not going to be well integrated enough where we can really make changes for our community excellent thank you judy you're welcome thank you juni um bob yeah thanks i want to touch on the the land use um clauses as well i i shared the concern that mark and others did about the fact that they seemed to be somewhat gratuitous were unsupported and were incomplete as sam observed there's dozens and dozens of types of land use changes

[227:00] or land use decisions policy decisions we're on land use that we make i i was a little curious that just these two or three were picked out of the air and in in the other dozens of decisions policy decisions around land use were ignored so i i do agree with mary that i think this is a dangerous path to go down if you really really feel strongly that you need to call out land use changes i would either do it more generically and say land use decisions have consequences um without calling out specific ones if you really feel like you need to call it specific ones and i call out all of them then which is a really really long decision right there's lots of decisions that are made not only by the government but by our community so for example the the decision on high limit was was not a policy decision made by any city council that was a community decision based upon a petition and a community vote so i think

[228:00] i think it's dangerous um certainly the way it's framed right now and i agree with mary that i think it runs the risk of um alienating potential supporters my vote would be to take it out entirely if you need to make a general statement that says something along the lines of decisions have consequences that's great but if you start to enumerate them i think you're going to go down a hole that you probably don't want to go down thank you did you have other comments bob that was it okay thank you thank you bob um all right um any other final words i see bob's hand up but i think it's the leftover um aaron um all right well i guess just one one more uh statement about the the

[229:00] this one passage that's exciting some discussion here in the plan i obviously are getting some different feedback here amy i would hope that we could find a way to include the substance and the intention of uh what you've your group has incorporated here with maybe some uh with some uh backup and you know footnoting and etc etc and just the point i want to make is that when you're dealing with issues of racial inequity and systemic and institutional racism you um having some people be uncomfortable with where you go should not be a disqualifier uh these are tough issues um we've got to be willing to have the hard discussions so let's continue the discussion i guess that's my fundamental point thank you aaron and i would just say um thanks for that aaron and i would just add that um i still say that we run the risk of

[230:02] alienating a lot of members of the community and perhaps we start the discussion um this this work is real important to me and i just i don't want to see it disregarded by a whole lot of members of the community because of this particular section so perhaps as we gain more understanding as a community we could add things in um it's a thought um but and i agree that these conversations are difficult um so um if we can footnote it properly and um you know another thing i would say is that um as bob said let's add in all of the landy's decisions if that's where we're going to go um and then you know

[231:03] yeah so that's my final co um rachel for serving your final comment um i appreciate that mary and just wondered if this is something that we can take up in the uh guiding coalition if we could maybe have a meeting devoted because we've got aaron and i and mary and junior and adam all um at those meetings maybe we could dig into this there and then bring it back i don't know if we need to bring it back before the final draft but um is that a way that we could dig a little deeper yeah i think that's a fabulous idea um that's a good place for the discussion um and um thank you for that i think that's a great idea so amy tee it up for our next meeting that will be january unfortunately our next guiding coalition is end of january so we may have to do a a convenient convening earlier than that

[232:01] okay we can work in a special meeting okay we'll do a doodle poll that sounds good excellent um all right i um did you get what you need staff um would you like me to summarize i can try and summarize um i took some notes but if you'd like to summarize i would well i okay okay i will i will attempt to summarize you're gonna go and i'm gonna ask my colleagues to kind of fill in my gaps um of which there may be many um i'm sure there are many um okay so um i think what um the the the item the issue of accountability being a real important piece of of how this gets carried um out is real important um and then uh rachel had asked for the raw numbers as

[233:01] they pertain to the heat maps or the cold maps because they're in blue um and then um there's um a request to give further acknowledgement to um tanya and jane and um to pay um give more thought to how um the immigrant population works into um a racial equity plan because it's not it's not necessarily um well um yeah include the immigrant population and then um the the comments that were brought up by juni and um and ingrid kind of weighed into um to balance the quantitative with qualitative and um and then sam as related to that sam brought up the stories behind the numbers

[234:02] and i think that's a a really great idea is to use that the stories behind them in fact call it that stories behind the numbers um and then um informing the community is going to be real important to create the right kind of communication create a road map on the website and perhaps a dashboard we talked about data disaggregation i think that's you know personally i think that's a real key and then making sure that we start collecting data on boards and commissions that was another item and then um correct the typo chance to change there's a couple at the team there's anyway we may not need that um explain zuma um let's see uh make sure that we

[235:03] uh take concrete actions and i think that goes along with the accountability piece um sam brought up the the cultural center which i think has been has been discussed in the community for a very long time i can see upsides and downsides to that um and then of course we had the very long discussion of the section on page 15 and that is the summary and i just wanted to say wow thank you and thanks everybody for working so hard on this and i remember when i first got on council way back in 2013 um there was a group of folks that i was meeting with that were just so amazed that in 2013 or shortly before that um austin had passed the first racial

[236:00] equity plan i think it was in the whole country and it was like i think i sent it to to council or i sent it i shared it with council on the hotline i don't remember but it was it was such an amazing document and now we have our own or we're going to it's not approved yet but uh anyway thank you it's it's been a long road and it will continue to be a long road and i just want to remind us all that this is work that never ends um and this is work that um starts with each of us and it is work that is hard work and um yes aaron uncomfortable work and i appreciate all of you for your comments um your brave comments and um let's go do it let's go justly do it thank you thank you thank you so much for all of you having us tonight thanks everyone have a good night all

[237:01] right yeah everybody have a good night thank you thank you nice to see you all good night [Music] you