January 12, 2021 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music]

[3:09] ryan's on chat for technical things and um sam you're going to start the meeting and pass it off to me is that correct that's correct yep i'm just going to read a quick website for where people can go to get vaccine information and then it will be all yours excellent [Music] hey heather long time no see yeah it's been like forever i don't like it

[4:08] okay i have six o'clock and it looks like everyone's here chris are we ready to go we are just about ready ryan if you can let alicia and debbie in that way uh they're here but other than that i think we are ready to kick off okay so channel 8's good i'll look to taylor are we good to go we're good to go over here super alright welcome everyone to the uh january 12th study session of the boulder city council tonight we're going to be talking about our work plan i just have one announcement tonight to kick us off we know that the vaccine for covet 19 is being rolled out right now in colorado we're getting the first vaccines in

[5:01] people's arms and for folks who are wondering about how they can get more information about when they might be able to access the vaccine for them or their family members i'm going to read a website and this is where you can go to learn how baltimore county public health is managing this and you can also at this website sign up to be informed when your group would be able to access the vaccine that website is https colon slash www.bouldercounty.org slash families slash disease slash covid-19 slash vaccines so that's just a reminder that this is moving forward right now the process is colorado is doing quite well with getting the vaccines distributed and that website is where you can go for more information and i will put that in the chat

[6:00] with that um i will turn it over to you heather thank you sam good evening council and all of the folks who have joined us tonight um tonight is sort of the kickoff conversation for the council retreat for 2021. i know um most i know all of council and i know many of you who've joined us as panelists i'm heather bergman with peak facilitation and my job here tonight is to just keep us on target and on task um as we do this sort of gateway meeting into the retreat um if you've seen the council packet or the agenda we have several things to tackle tonight and they're fairly straightforward in the grand scheme of things first we're going to hear from boards and commissions we've grouped them into four groups uh each presenter for beach commission has up to three minutes to tell us the juicy things that have been on their to-do list we've asked them to talk about what makes the border commission happy what has made them sad in the past year and what are they looking forward to going um forward into 2021 so we'll do that

[7:00] we'll ask you to hold your questions until we get to the end of each grouping those groupings are again in your packet and then we'll take questions by groups um after that uh we're going to talk a little bit about council's committee assignments as we always do see if you all would like to see any changes to those as you enter 2021 and the work associated with participating in those committees as you do somewhere along the way we will take a break let you stretch your legs maybe get a snack um and then we do want to check in on your homework uh i assigned you several things to do in advance of the retreat on the 22nd uh and 23rd so we'll see how that's going um and then we're going to hear a fair amount from staff tonight about the current status of the of your council priorities how staff's been tackling them with all the other things that they've been about in 2021 so we'll talk a little bit about that work plan again all in service of teeing you up for a focused and thoughtful conversation in your upcoming retreat on january 22nd and 23rd

[8:01] um as has been said if you're a member of a boarding commission we're super jazzed to hear your presentation you do have about three minutes i'm not particularly inclined to be real bossy about the time but if you get to four um you're gonna start to see me doing like all kinds of crazy things and if you get to five i'll probably jump in and ask you to wrap it up and um if you keep your cameras off until it's your turn that would be great and then put your camera on when you're talking to council that'd be lovely um other members of the public just a quick reminder that this uh council retreats in this time in particular is not um doesn't have an opportunity for participation but we do hope if you have thoughts about uh council's work or the work plan going forward that you would share those with council through the usual methods that are available to you on the website um so sam unless you have anything else for folks i'd be inclined to jump right on into our boards and commissions jumped in fantastic all right so we have four presentations from our first group of boards and commissions um in this order

[9:01] we'll hear from the library commission the arts commission the downtown management commission and the design advisory board so with that jane if you're with us would you please turn on your camera and catch us up on the things related to the library commission if you would hi good evening everyone um first of all i really wanted to thank you for including us um the opportunity for open dialogue is very welcome and i also really wanted to thank you for all your hard work in this um crazy year so for the library in 2020 i'd like to start off by highlighting the things that we'd like to celebrate first and foremost is the incredible work of the library staff an administration who weathered furloughs layoffs reductions in hours limitations in operations and cuts and acquisitions adjusting to the pandemic and budget restrictions they continue to offer service to seniors shut-ins

[10:00] and online help they adapted at lightning speed to organize high quality innovative virtual programming that reached more people than in person programming um the library also guided the design of the nobo branch through the regulatory process and obtained approvals from the planning board and the council and then in early 2020 they opened the gender neutral restrooms in the main branch this was about five years in the making due to funding challenges and aligns with the city's equity goals and was recognized by a wide range of people and the community of boulder while celebrating this hard work and innovation we do need to highlight how difficult it's been to see the deep budget cuts that the library has endured the library commission and community were eagerly awaiting a public hearing at the beginning of 2020 with city council it was an opportunity for the public to

[11:00] um have a hearing on adequate sustainable funding options for the future and unfortunately due to the first shutdown that was cancelled um and we feel it's incredibly important this be included on the council's 2021 work plan and not forgotten our greatest sadness comes from the budget cuts that the library has faced cutting 17 percent of the budget which has made operations difficult all around now while covert 19 has impacted the number of people and some of the functioning of the library without adequate funding it's been hard to do much of what they'd like to do at the very least we'd really like to see the restoration of the collections budget which was cut 13 from an already inadequate amount um the boulder city council has the opportunity to reignite the library district discussion 2021 and we hope that they take this opportunity so that we can look for adequate sustainable funding for the library and to alleviate some of the city's budget

[12:00] we're urging you to create a library district resolution along with the county commissioners in conclusion we'd really like to point out something that everybody knows but the library really is unlike any other space in boulder it serves everyone from the computers that allow people to do job searches and the support offered to new businesses to our five-year-olds who are learning to read and are new americans who are learning to read english to the vulnerable people who are relying on the homebound services especially now our goal is to start rebuilding to better serve our community and to provide bolder with the library that it really deserves thank you fantastic thanks james council if you have questions um for jane over the library commission if you'd make note of those i'll get you a chance to ask for questions after we hear from the rest of our presenters um kathleen are you able to turn on your camera and chat with council for a bit about the arts commission um this tells me i cannot start my video

[13:01] because the host has stopped it but let's try again kathleen let me help you here all right i think we're good kathleen try it now there you are here we are okay great thank you so much um thank you for this opportunity to appear with you tonight and just discuss the boulder arts commission we're delighted to have this opportunity to engage in dialogue with you and we hope that at any time if we don't answer all your questions tonight we that you feel free to call us email us and we'd be happy to chat um we were in 2000 um sorry in 2020 a very difficult year we were very delighted and grateful to receive a restoration of a hundred thousand dollars to the arts budget and we thank um city council for restoring this money we distributed that among our general operating support art groups uh 37 arts organizations for and

[14:00] for arts education grants and community project grants and that was very much appreciated by those groups another thing we're proud of is that a an overwhelming majority 86 percent of boulder voters approve the addition of two or more two additional arts commissioners in 2021 to help redistribute sorry to help distribute um the commission's large workload and to increase the diversity of representation from within the community and the commissioners and putting out feelers we hope to get some great candidates for that um for the two new positions that you will be interviewing for in february or perhaps march um another thing we're proud of is that despite kobit 19 restrictions and financial setbacks many boulder artists and arts organizations rose to copen 19 challenges and continued to make art and pivot to safer virtual or limited in-person formats for arts education music dance film visual arts and theater

[15:02] performances during cobid arts and culture organizations have worked hard to maintain the creative culture that we feel is so important to our community and our economy and we've also made great progress toward diversity equity and inclusion through our grants and public art programs you may notice a few new murals have gone up around town particularly one in the library of penfield tate ii and on underpasses and we're very proud of those another thing we're proud of is boulder's arts and culture community came together to advocate for itself like it never has before so there was really kind of a a critical mass of people that perhaps contacted you to request more funding for um arts grants and um we appreciate the fact that people are working for our common goals and that people have come together i think it's been very reassuring that we will do our very best to continue uh funding arts

[16:02] organizations so they will survive through coped um we are also proud that the nonprofit crate boulder foundation stepped up with challenge grants that's been very successful and we're looking forward to continuing that in 2021 some of the things that have been um unfortunate that we've been sad about are because of the financial impacts of covid and the continually rising house of sorry rising cost of housing and studio office education rehearsal and performance space it's increasingly difficult for our artists and arts and culture organizations to survive and boulder we've heard from many artists and arts organizations whose revenues have dropped precipitously because of the impact of cobid many have laid off the majority of their staffs eliminated programs because of city budget cuts um the office of arts and culture and the arts commission have had to reduce or eliminate

[17:01] support for several categories of art grants sponsorships and professional development we appreciate the hundred thousand dollars restoration of funding for arts grants but we um we our budget is very much um reduced this year so that is one of our that is our first ask is that we'd like to see a restoration of full funding for the arts budget uh we request we re request restoration of funding to um our 2020 level so we can fully fund the key grants and programs and restore funding for sponsorships professional development and additional artists and organizations who have not been funded this year even before covet arts grants in the past two funding cycles have experienced a gap of seven hundred thousand dollars in unmet needs for artists and arts culture organizations and this is because those organizations scored above in our rubric in our scoring movement they scored well enough to get grants but we didn't have enough

[18:01] money to give them so we'd like um this is aspirational inspirational but we'd like um city council to think about as the economy is bounces back in boulder that we think about funding more for um grants to artists we have thousands of artists in walder we're one of the top um arts and culture cities for um of our size and we would like to support this very important part of our economy it provides jobs for families throughout the city the second thing that we like is sustainable funding for public arts for our public art program we request that public art be given a focus of more funding from a ballot measure to renew the community culture and safety tax that we were requesting is to fund well one full-time office of arts and culture position and

[19:00] that would be the coordinator coordinator of programs for artists in the creative economy um this would be someone who would work with creative professionals we need support it would provide networking opportunities and create collaborations that benefit our economy um one of our big ass actually and actually something that could be accomplished i believe efforts are already underway is to expedite the public art permitting process we have had difficulty getting public art projects through the permitting process and there have been extensive delays and cost overruns and we have been actually have had to consider um canceling projects when they're well underway when we've been the city has already spent money to engage the artist and we would like an expedited process that we feel would be more efficient and more effective and ultimately save the city money so we i understand that efforts are underway

[20:01] with the planning and development department to work something out kathleen are you about to wrap up you're going way over here i'm going to my last point thank you thank you we also would like um to see more progress we understand that many affordable homes have have come to the market um for rental um for uh families in boulder households in boulder but we'd like to see more progress on affordable housing and workspace that benefits artists and arts and culture organizations we are happy to collaborate with anyone in the city on what that would look like for artists and arts organizations and we appreciate again um your attention to these matters thank you thanks kathleen again council if you have questions for kathleen i'll ask you to hold those while we hear from jerry and then matt jerry i saw you come on the video how are you great thank you so much um on behalf of the downtown management commission thank you for your continued leadership city council you guys are

[21:00] awesome and we appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback concerning your questions so my first uh comment will be about what has made us happy there's been so much uh really that has been accomplished by the dmc in 2020. for one there's been a smooth transition like you have to an online platform we've had great presentations an update by staff we've seen lots of discussions and opportunities for input by us on the zoom platform and that's been great there's been lots of prioritized work planning done by city staff and council priorities and paying attention to that and looking at resource availability and the transition to zoom has been really good it's been excellent work by all involved and it's a difficult time and we really appreciate how that has occurred we also uh have been really excited to contribute to the development of the

[22:01] community vitality strategic plan and appreciate how it has evolved over time and and how it has engaged many many different people and has paid attention to health emergencies effect affecting the downtown residents business and workers and visitors city staff has developed an admirable sense of urgency establishing guidance granting approvals and really making sure things happen to allow downtown restaurants and others to expand operations the public right away this was a lifesaver for those businesses and really attractive for the pedestrians and users to be able to access safely the downtown economy and experience the spirit of community and cooperation between the dmc and downtown boulder partnership the business improvement district and city staff has been encouraging during these times and you'll hear from me a little bit later but it can become much better

[23:00] it's been refreshing to see so many different members of the community working together for the downtown the rapid changes and short-term interventions by the city and downtown to provide enhanced experience via pedestrian access curbside access art and space for outdoor activities has been good we think there could have been a lot more but we loved some of the improvements to the jersey barriers and more on west pearl i think west pearl's been an amazing experience for all and i know a lot of people are really excited about it and we appreciate the successes that everybody brought to that so what has made our board or commission sad in the past year uh for one the ongoing city response or ability to address enchantment and crime related safety issues is still a difficult issue and we wish there would be more um activity and actions to really make

[24:01] the downtown area and the broader downtown safer for people particularly in the areas that do not have active sidewalk uses those areas really should become safe there's really this has been an ongoing discussion by us and we wish it would be activated in the city there's been little or no discussion regarding the broad future of downtown and how it relates to the whole city even though we're at downtown management commission has been limited involvement with the downtown retail strategy dmc requires greater involvement in these actionable transformation of downtown and we wish that um that we can have more engagement with all of these activities and we think um there's really limited creativity being engaged by all of us we could do so much more if we really pay attention to what the opportunities

[25:00] are in downtown to really affect everybody and to really pay attention to the broader city goals i think the downtown of stakeholder conditions and who those conditions are is somewhat fragmented and we can we feel that we can really enhance that condition so what else in terms of you're in about four minutes if you're pretty cool thank you so much i'm sorry for actually seeing of course we're upset about limited budget cuts uh that goes across the whole city i know and but we still want to be able to pay attention to the long-term impacts of the pandemic and how we really look at the future of downtown so what are we looking forward to in 2021 we want to have a meaningful process and dialogue exploring future downtown transformation that really strengthens the economy

[26:01] diversifies the user base and engages a broad diverse public to reclaim portions of the downtown uh we really do see that downtown is not only a great economic engine but it's also an engine for a social health of the city and we see us there's so much we can do to improve that social and economic health we see uh participation implementation of the ann's amps project really paying attention to the curbsides in downtown is really critical to how people use the downtown and we want to really reuse parts of the parking infrastructure city staff is really making great advances in that way and we see many ways to really transform infrastructure in multiple ways and we really encourage staff to really engage more of the other boards and other stakeholders with the dmc and we really think that that's

[27:01] really really important we have not done that effectively and we still see structured engagement with city council as being something we can do really well thank you so much sorry i went over a little thank you jerry all right um last presenter in this group is max presenting on behalf of the design advisory board max are you with us and if so would love to see your shining face i'm sorry it's matt not mac i don't know why i caught you max that's you're glad to be slow when i mess up your name hi matt that's great um so uh i'm gonna try and do my best to not get a red card from heather so let's see if i can i'm making a list right uh thank you all for your time for the opportunity of course to share some of our thoughts and experiences with you from the design advisory board uh my name is matthew schecksner i'm one of the more junior members of the board

[28:01] and i'm very pleased to be able to um represent the board tonight and speak with you i think generally our comments um and reactions over this interesting year uh can be categorized in in maybe three areas one is specific to our mandate um reviewing designs in the downtown area the second category a little more broadly is in housing in general obviously housing is a constant subject of our meetings and our designs and not only housing but site design more generally often has us talking about the the larger context of design not just specific to downtown but in our city generally and then finally um our comments have to do with engagement uh whether that's engagement with our

[29:00] counterparts in practice in the city and design whether it's engagement with staff or other boards or the council like we're doing tonight something we value and we have a collaborative ethos in the design advisory board and we often ask ourselves in the context of our reviews and i think in general is do better answers exist and we approach a lot of the topics with that ethos and i think um that's something we just wanted to to share with you so you sort of know where we're coming from and this year has been uh interesting emotional challenging um you know as a city and and we're of course in tune with all of that context as well so now i'm going to just kind of breeze through some of the highlights and be happy to reflect on more of these in

[30:00] more detail later but i think on a positive note for this year we did review a couple of excellent projects and with great potential some challenges but we love being engaged in some of these consequential projects that we'll be seeing in the next several years one particularly for the uni hill hotel um you know it it it makes uh it gives us a lot of satisfaction to be able to engage in those conversations we're very happy about that um and we hope we're helpful in those processes um we are happy with council's support of some of the ballot initiatives this year some of the covid related responses um those aren't specific to design advisory board but we do live in a built environment with people in the city and that the the overlap of those um issues do affect our conversations um and finally

[31:01] we are happy to work with um a new liaison from planning board who we're building a great relationship with and we love having that kind of direct engagement in terms of topics this year that if challenge challenged us i think we're always feeling like we have a lot of resources at our fingertips that we like to be more engaged with other projects just outside of the downtown area we know there's processes in place to make that more less possible in some cases but we always look for more opportunities to engage we also noted some disappointments with the housing issues whether it's attainable housing or people affecting homelessness um we know there are no easy answers there but we do look forward to being involved in those conversations in any way we can going forward

[32:00] finally as a big positive to sort of wrap up with something that makes us happy is we'd love to see the re institution of something i haven't experienced but the design excellence initiative i understand that's been a program in the past that was a great way for the design advisory board to engage successful projects um that made it through the review process we'd love to see something like that establish again and we look forward to working with you in this next year let's hope it's a great one thank you very much thanks matt all right council that's the last presentation in our first group if you have any questions for jane kathleen jerry or matt now would be a lovely time to ask them so those folks can carry on with their evenings anyone have a question yep mary go ahead thank you all for being here tonight i

[33:01] have um a question for matt um if he could come back on hi matt um quick question um in reading through your letter and um and what you just shared with us um just now i have one question um you mentioned that you're gaining um cultivating the relationship with planning board with the planning board member that comes to design advisory board and so i'm wondering i'll give you three options and if you could just share with me which one might be the preference of the board i know you can't speak for the whole board but which what your gut would tell you about which one would they would prefer given that you mentioned some of this stuff in your letter so um would you prefer having the pb exophysio at dab

[34:00] um or have a dab exophysio ad planning board or to have joint sessions for concept reviews does he have an option for all of the above or do you want him to choose one of the three mary um he can say yeah he can say all of the above or one of the above matt what do you got well um that's an interesting question i think um my instinct and from the conversation we had is um we would love to be engaged in concept review we often find that when projects come to us after several rounds of staff engagement and planning board engagement there were opportunities that that may have been i wouldn't say missed because uh that's not exactly stating it properly but we feel like there were opportunities where we could have engaged sooner and maybe helped tease out some some public benefit in some of these projects

[35:00] so i would say option c would be a great opportunity it wouldn't have to be mandated or every project but where there's a need uh if someone thought we could add value that would be excellent as a second i think um having the board member in our meetings i think is quite beneficial i feel like our engagement in a planning board meeting might derail the specific agenda that planning board has so i hope that all right yeah no thank you matt appreciate it that's all i have thanks mary thanks matt anybody else have a question for one of the speakers from this first group all right i don't see any um so our thanks to jane kathleen jerry and matt you are off the hook for this evening and i suspect of council members or anybody else has questions for you they'll follow up offline

[36:01] with that let's move on to our second group um first up is uh transportation advisory board is it tyla it's kayla tila thank you hi tila hi good evening council it's such a pleasure to be with you this evening um i appreciate this opportunity to check in with you and i have immensely enjoyed my time on the board um so this year was a kind of a special year for everybody i'm sure you're going to hear that again and again in light of the pandemic but we did really have some good high points um that were very clear throughout the board and across the board we all agreed that one of them was the 20 mile an hour ordinance change um many communities spend a lot of hand-wringing i am very proud of you council for seizing the opportunity and proving we can do something that makes sense for the community that sets community expectations better where we want them to be and the sky will not fall i would say that the other very big high

[37:01] point of the year for tab and for the transportation department generally would be the new leadership you know we have a new director erica vandenbrandt a new deputy director uh natalie stifler a former employee who has come back to help us with uh with transportation and that has given us an opportunity both for a fresh look at how we've been operating for many years and decades and really has opened channels of communication among staff erica is very attuned to the tipton report and really paying attention to that to improve how the department works internally and has really opened channels of communication with tab as well have regular meetings as do other members of tab with members of staff that we didn't have before and has really helped us all work better together we are also incredibly proud of how staff has worked on the neighborhood speed management program in the last year um it continues to be a very popular program uh too many requests for services under it that you can

[38:00] satisfy um but it shows that there is a real community desire for traffic calming on speed management all over neighborhood streets and in particular there were extraordinary efforts this last year to serve a particular underserved community that generally has trouble interfacing with city government um so hats off to the transportation staff in particular ryan knowles for spearheading that effort that was really a remarkable demonstration how we can work to make the city better i would say the other high points i would characterize them generally as as showcasing our ability to be nimble um our covid response for sure um we managed to use some um limited uh funds to change how we're using streets um you know that that downtown streeters um we've also been doing some rapid build build projects under the busy zero innovation plan and we're looking forward to further planning and the micro mobility launch so just opportunities for nimbleness and instead of having this big juggernaut that um takes a long time to change

[39:00] direction we're seeing really positive changes in the past year and hopefully you're ahead the low points of our letter um i would say that this is sort of setting up the what we're looking forward to in the next year but they're basically two kinds of things that we're getting at in the low points and one would be how um the former siloing of staff efforts and city programs and money allocated different programs has turned into a trend for expensive but underwhelming projects that don't really serve the entire community in the past um and then secondly it highlighted a lack of attention to our corridor and arterial projects we know through vision zero we're gathering a lot of data we know where deadly crashes are we know where expensive crashes are and we know that these are the hardest main streets and so that means that we are looking ahead about being more strategic and opportunistic about how we spend our money and also paying attention to where we need to be spending the money to serve the greater community where are the problems where are the opportunities

[40:00] for um changing them that don't have to be huge corridor studies that are millions of dollars for you know tens of millions of dollars in 15 years in the making what are our opportunities for um being more nimble as we have shown that we can be and we really have a lot of confidence that with this new um leadership that we can be heading better in that direction i appreciate your time thanks tila um next up we have uh sort of back-to-back presentations from the boulder junction access district the travel management commission demand commission and the access district parking commission and i understand uh ryan is you're going to do both of those correct yeah i'll do one three minute run down for both fantastic combined yeah all right so thanks so much um for having us here today to to update you all really appreciate the opportunity so my name's ryan cook and i'm a resident representative in the bjet districts

[41:01] um specifically for parking but like i said i'll be talking for for both commissions today um obviously we did our best to to manage constructively you know the challenge that we all had in 2020 um and just want to call out um you know our gratitude to the city um council and staff for all the hard work that that they've put in um really one of the big highlights that we had this year um was an in-depth retreat process that we did ourselves as joint districts and the community vitality staff that that we work with did such a good job helping lead us through that um where we did lots of retrospective thinking as well as vision casting to try to create quality output and artifacts to help guide us through the upcoming years um one one part of that that was uh particularly um enjoyable for me was a walkthrough that we did in the district um if you haven't been by um recently the progress there is is

[42:02] happening really really fast and it's exciting to see i might encourage um a visit um like i said if you haven't been recently um another win that we had specific to the the parking commission is uh there's been kind of an ongoing multi-year saga related to the parking garage system um and it was uh great that we were able to finally get the gateless system installed there with our the other folks that we share that with and hopefully we learn a lot in the upcoming year about how how that gets used so uh throughout the year and in particular um towards the end of the year we identified kind of a main area of concern which was around transit access in the district i'm sure you're all aware of the reduced um or eliminated service from rtd in particular and that's affected us in boulder junction excuse me and so as we look towards 2021 a big

[43:02] question we're asking ourselves as districts is how can we support transit and other tdm offerings for residents and employees there and we would love input uh and support from you all uh and councils as on the best ways to ensure that we have rich transit options um of course throughout the city and and in the district um specifically just to briefly highlight a couple other um priorities that we're looking um ourselves to in the upcoming year um we'd love as districts to be able to participate and support the progress of the phase two planning for the tvap um process and are also looking at ways that we can help the district kind of enhance identity and branding so hopefully just knowing about those two things helps you understand what we're thinking is important and to the ongoing development and success in in the district so thanks so much and i'll do my best to answer any questions

[44:01] at the end if you have some fantastic thank you ryan all right next up last presenter from this group is cheryl um from the uni hill commercial area management commission cheryl are you with us hi cheryl i am hello hello and thanks for the opportunity my name is cheryl i'm the chair of ukmc university hill commercial area management commission so we all know 2020 is a really tough year but for us in many ways it's been really productive relative to our long-standing goals and objectives which is to become a diverse thriving clean safe district for the hill community and greater boulder so we really got there through the support of city council city vitality staff and planning through the council support of the hill hotel project which has already begun attracting new

[45:00] businesses to the hill we always thought that would be a great uh catalyst business for the hill and then through staff's dedication of resources for completing important hill projects um the alley trash enclosure pilot program grants for creating and programming coveted safe dining and entertainment on the hill this summer funding the landscaping plan around the new and removed ash trees in the commercial district and finally the installation of the new energy efficient light poles and then through planning's quick streamlining of the outdoor parklet permits and then allowing new businesses to open in the district we're really thankful for everybody's efforts there we've really moved the dial but we need to keep up the momentum in 2021 ucmc's most urgent work ahead is to

[46:01] continue preparing the district to attract more regular visitors and new businesses we currently have about 10 empty storefronts in what's a very small commercial district and then also to reassemble the hill reinvestment working group to help identify and provide financial analysis around the most useful investment of the pleasant street lot sale funds to ensure healthy and sustainable commercial district long into the future so finally i mean we look forward to supporting council on their 2021 priorities and want to strengthen our communication by reaching out to provide regular updates on our progress and to seek input and feedback from council as we move through this next phase of hill revitalization um and so again thank you for our

[47:02] support on the hill we really do appreciate it and feel we're making great progress fantastic thank you cheryl all right council that's the last presentation from this second group if you have questions um for tila uh ryan ryan um or cheryl now be the time bob please go ahead this is a question for tila tila um you mentioned in your letter tab did the nimbleness that staff had in closing west pearl and addressing the restaurant situation there and of course that continues to be closed will tab be weighing in on that as we go into the spring and consider what to do with west pearl in the future is that something on tabs agenda for this coming year one of the things that i've been uh struggling with uh is a little better interface between tab and community vitality it comes up now almost every meeting and that of course was a program under community vitality uh transportation staff did of course uh managed to get some money for some street closures um right towards the end of uh sort of

[48:02] the usable season it was mostly in october and there is um on the schedule a check-in and evaluation of how that went um i will continue to press uh hearing vitality to check in more with us but as far as i know they are not scheduled to come to tab um to assess whether to continue that program maybe that could be i'm just going to throw this out as a suggestion because i think the dmc would would they mentioned this in their letters well i forgot to ask jerry this question but perhaps there could be a joint meeting of dmc and tab and with community vitality staff to kind of guide council on that because that's a question that we're going to be facing i think this this spring and i really value input from dmc and tab i would be very supportive of that [Music] any other questions um for this group of speakers yeah adam please go ahead yeah i just wanted to say real quick to the ones we don't ask questions of um it's not that we're uninterested or anything we we're just trying to pick out all the

[49:00] themes and make sure we can address those um collectively when we have our study session meetings so i really appreciate all all the letters they're very comprehensive and super helpful in trying to pick out those themes that's a great clarification thank you adam um yeah uh any other questions fantastic um in that case um tila ryan and cheryl thank you for um your presentations you of course free to hang out or take off and do other things with your evening we're going to move on to our group three presentation um starting with the beverage licensing authority is it alyssa or lisa alyssa you got it yep fantastic alyssa talk to us about uh the bla please um real quick this is taylor ryman over here trying to run presentations the host has disabled um our ability to screen share so if the host could allow screen sharing we can bring up alyssa's slides yeah sure thing melissa has slides

[50:00] visuals visuals not as good as the christmas hat from earlier but i mean we're going to bring that back on a break don't get yourself all right okay taylor i have changed that to co-host let's see if that works taylor is ready did you change the presentation screen to co-host or my computer both are co-hosts now everyone's a co-host if there's any issues it's no no problem whatsoever we can move on without them um oh please animating my name oh hey look at that hey mo okay all right all right so first off i'm honored to be here thank you so much for hosting us

[51:00] this evening um and asking these just really wonderful questions um i'm pleased to be here so uh next slide please my name is alyssa lundgren and i'm the chair of the beverage licensing authority um and so i'm here presenting on behalf of the bla just for everybody's um information this is just a slide on our current membership we're a five-person board with five-year terms um and we're quasi-judicial hearing new licenses renewals and violations of liquor licenses next slide please all right so um as far as happy i'm a software engineer and so my you know my background really speaks to focusing on agility and speed and i think that that is something that has been exemplary from the bla and the licensing staff this year they've just been a shining example of this doing good for our community when it comes to the liquor licenses for example

[52:00] temporary modifications typically the city staff license uh processes excuse me five to six a year in 2020 they process 84 of those applications that's to allow restaurants to ex extend outside of their normal footprint that process usually takes 30 days this year it took seven days um so and then on top of that just thank you to the neighbors landlords the city the other boards and cooperating and supporting the restaurants and in their efforts this year we see that there was a great deal of creativity and then as far as going digital the city licensing staff started with one digital application this year with the goal of adding two more they actually have added 28 in 2020 um so now you can file and pay online for these applications and then additionally we're thrilled with the resiliency that we've seen from um the restaurant community uh we actually

[53:01] heard you know you would think that there wasn't much growth in terms of the restaurant industry this year we actually heard 11 applications in 2020 and then we were able to adapt to these virtual hearings and write emergency rules so we could continue to hold our hearings next slide please and then this is just a shout out to the staff that actually works on this stuff um and they made it all possible and they are all star we've got 253 liquor licenses in boulder and this staff handles all of them with kindness and grace next slide please all right so obviously the pandemic and kovid was a huge sad for us this year and no that is not a typo we actually think it's the 310th day of march and 2020 is it is it still march um and then we you know there was just huge impact on businesses this year uh the we've seen some of our institutions close down the restaurants

[54:00] such as the med and the brasserie uh rosary 1010 zolo and many more so we felt huge loss this year from our restaurant industry next slide please and then looking forward we're really just um you know gearing up for the vaccination which will hopefully lead to in-person hearings which we're excited about and then um not just growth you know new restaurants but regrowth and recovery for our existing restaurants um right now uh as far as recovery is concerned the temporary modifications expire in the city on 2 28 21 while the state rules allow that those um can be extended through october 7th of 21 so you know if we wanted to look at that that would certainly be something that we would we would be looking forward to um this is the recovery is going to be a several year process for

[55:03] i was needed i was that was weird well no worries so we just really want to give these businesses the opportunity to recover and not impose any additional restrictions that the state doesn't provide and then we're excited for out of town travel to return as well next slide please and then finally i just want to thank everyone on this call anyone who's on a board and and dedicates their time and donates their time to the city council to all the board members reps to taylor for her help um and thank you very much to the city council for asking great questions and listening fantastic thank you fantastic we'll move on now to the housing advisory board um charlotte we'd love to see your shining face and hear your three-minute presentation if you would anymore there you are hi hello do you hear me yep awesome okay perfect good evening

[56:00] council members charlotte here i'm chair of the housing advisory board thank you for having us i'll begin with um an overview of our letter which are bored unanimously unanimously approved in november so had had hopes of participating in what was called the addressing homelessness bus tour this year and also we had plans of arranging numerous community listening sessions but these goals were quickly derailed by the kobe 19 pandemic however before the pandemic hit the board hosted one listening session in february on the topic of tiny homes the session was rich in substance and successful in highlighting different perspectives and we're very excited to host another listening session in march on the topic of housing insecurity um this year we also kicked off the unhoused joint committee with the human relations commission which consisted of two members from hab and then two members from hrc um the committee not only

[57:01] delved into scholarly research investigated precedent for safe parking lots and tiny homes but also conducted stakeholding research within boulder and boulder county and we appreciate as a board we appreciate council's commitment towards the city's affordable housing goals and hope that council will explore new funding sources to service the city's working class moving forward um our letter also expressed some concerns with the relationship between our body as a board and city council you know even though we are tasked with advising city council on housing issues facing the city we feel marginalized because of political considerations and you know our board offers perspectives that may differ from traditional and privileged members of our community who often dictate the discourse around housing issues in boulder um but it is for that reason that we should be you know able to work with council and

[58:02] um you know that's the reason why we believe that council should rely upon us and our expertise passion and energy and then our letter concluded with some suggestions for the 2021-2022 2022 housing work plan this included the revisitation of residential occupancy limits um the examination of cooperative efforts with non-profits faith-based communities to implement safe parking lots and consideration of reallocating funds from law enforcement to boulder housing and human services housing first initiatives and i'm happy to elaborate on any of those and i look forward to answering questions um as they arise that's all i have it's very efficiently done thank you all right council if you have questions for charlotte we'll take those here after we hear a couple more presentations um next up is jill on behalf of the board of zoning adjustment hi jill hi i'm excited because my husband got home

[59:00] before this started the dogs were going to bark so first of all i want to thank everybody i echo the remarks of gratitude of all the previous speakers for the agility that um with which we had to move whether it's our board meeting and zoom meetings and everyone else meeting and zoom meetings it was pretty impressive um you know we're a small board we meet monthly is needed to address questions of zoning variances when they occur we addressed things in terms of our positives and it reflected that in our letter that again the quick move by staff to get us into an online position so that we could hear citizens cases as they came up uh that made a great it was successful in doing that and communication around that is very

[60:00] successful as well so i'm going to be brief for everybody here our shortfalls in 2020 coven 19 represents a huge disruption and represented a huge disruption in the working processes of our government at all levels and it's no different for those of us who take in you know where we're dealing with people who are concerned with trying to get something done in a city whether they're an architect a builder or a homeowner there are challenges in reaching people and hearing communication back from people there are long delays we certainly are hopeful that those things will change in the future um we asked council to actually give us some feedback so i'm really liking this because we in the past have heard nothing about after we've given a letter so i appreciate the opportunity that you to actually say to you some of the things that we know you read but you're

[61:01] busy and have many other things to deal with so we'd like to suggest once again that there are some things that the staff can approve that we'd like to see council find a way to finesse so that they can make those approvals without forcing people to go through a variance process a quick example of that is for replacements for existing non-compliant conditions their grandfathered in we had a set of stairs for example they're being replaced with the same set of stairs but they had to go through opposite compliance because they're out of compliance with current code so that's an example of the kind of thing we'd like to see and we'd like to encourage some form of subcommittee that would be able to work with somebody on council to try to develop direction to improve that and we ask that every year so we've developed the idea of using subcommittees as a way of saying can we actually address this likewise

[62:01] that would also go to one of our looking forward to 2021. so as i we mentioned in our letter the issue around adus so we hear from people we don't know if you hear from people that the adu process has pluses and minuses and issues that are coming up the expenses are very high relative to low you know the the amount people can charge for rent if they're doing it affordable there's some idiosyncrasies that we think could be improved and addressed and still meet the intent of the ordinance so we continue to halt the council and planning staff will produce historical data-driven information regarding the adu process we really want to consider what's working and what is not working based on that collected data and work with someone on council or a delegated person on staff as a subcommittee to again try to come up with and address that that was stated at the

[63:01] time the ordinance was developed that there would be that process and there's probably enough data out there now despite kobits that we should be able to make some progress with that so appreciate your time and i'm really glad we have zoom it's the best thanks jill all right last speaker from this group is tom representing the cannabis uh licensing and advisory board hi tom hi let me make sure everybody can hear me yep and i'm coming to you from the tea house well not really just i was impressed with alyssa's um slideshow and i did not do a slideshow so sorry about that i'm gonna try to be as brief and concise as possible trying to respect everybody's time thanks uh to all who are here tonight i'm i was honored to be chosen to represent excuse me one of boulder's newest boards the cannabis licensing and advisory board which is better known as cloud because nobody wants to keep

[64:00] saying the other the long version um uh what has made our board our board or commission happy in the past year uh we think that council put together a very well-balanced group of seven members who brought a wide range of opinions uh everything from industry to parents to uh educators and and i myself am a physician um we um as opposed as compared to all the other boards and commissions we've never met in person uh at least not uh as a board so we had to like everybody else but we didn't know we didn't have a template or we didn't have a pre-existing uh set of meetings to fall back on which is it's uh we did quite well in a virtual setting but it's a downside too um so uh we think that um one of the positives is that all the

[65:01] board members brought a broad broad perspective to each topic that we discussed we some of us needed to um or we had a wide range of speakers that we learned quite a bit about cannabis from i think somewhere between eight to ten speakers some of us knew more than others but now all of us are equally educated on the topics um [Music] we especially appreciated the staff and i want to give a shout out to i think some of the same staff names that alyssa put up on her slide they've been great been very helpful what's made our commission sad we had a some transitions during the year we lost one board member who was a very strong patient advocate and uh we're hoping as you choose a another person to fill that spot that you keep that in mind and we are i forgot to mention that we're very appreciative of the

[66:01] two new ex officio members there have been they've hit the ground running and they've been a real benefit to the board so far as with everybody else we missed when when public speakers come on or even just when we're talking amongst each other it's hard to tell on zoom i mean you can see people's faces but you know it's hard to really read someone when they're not next to you are in the same room with you [Music] some of the things that we're looking forward to in 2021 uh we're looking forward to having once again a full constellation of board members we're looking forward hopefully as is everybody to meeting in person uh we're looking forward to hopefully reaching resolution on some difficult topics uh and that brings up probably the most important thing is that we're looking forward tonight or at some point in time in the near future to hearing the city council's position on some of the more difficult topics that we've

[67:02] been facing and i'll just mention a few of them especially two of them um recreational cannabis delivery uh there's currently medical delivery but expanding to recreational deliveries is a topic facing us and then cannabis hospitality sites and that's been approved by the state but it's a it's a you know controversial topic some of us including myself didn't appreciate the polarity that some of these topics uh engender and then lastly you know we want to make sure that uh we protect uh the children and youth of our community we want to keep cannabis out of their hands um cannabis is fine for adults but i mean i'm a pediatrician so it should be it should not be used or children or um adolescents whose brains are still

[68:00] developing and uh so look forward to hearing from you um and uh getting some insight fantastic thanks a bunch all right council let's hear questions um for uh alyssa charlotte uh jill or tom and bob it looks like you've got one i've got one for jill jill well thanks to all of you for your presentations these have been really great and i'm glad that we've moved to these live presentations um this is a a new thing as as jill or somebody referred to it used to be just letters that came in then was letters that came in that were read by council and now it's just great to have you guys present your own materials so i think this is something we should do going forward jill um you mentioned edu's and you mentioned in your letter briefly um um you're absolutely right when we made the major adjustments to adus about two years ago maybe a little bit more than two years ago we committed to revisit them look at what was going right and what needed to be changed does um does your board have a list of recommendations on that or is that something you would need staff support

[69:00] on to put that together to send it to council because i'm a little bit blind as to what those i'm sure there are there are things are going great some things are that need to be improved i'm just not aware of what they are i think i'd like you to clarify for me are you talking about specifics within the ordinance that people find as a challenge yeah well any changes that you recommend i i was thinking of the ordinance but but if if there are if they're just process problems as well um you know council can only do so much on process because that's staff led but certainly with respect to ordinance if there are things that we need to tweak in the ordinance that having lived with it now for a couple of years you think we need to adjust it would be great to hear some specifics around that right now or from us no no no just in in the future if you guys could put that together and send it off to us that would be great so we can as we put together our work plan we have an idea of you know is there a lot of things that are broken or are there a few things that are broken how do we prioritize those thank you there probably are a few things and not a lot of things and we were looking for feedback

[70:00] to find out what people were experiencing as well as what we were hearing and what we observe so i think i will bring that back to the board and ask them we'll develop a letter and we'll still need the historical data so they may need direction from not sure how that works where staff needs to prepare that historical data but yeah great thanks so much jill thank you erin yeah thanks so much uh for those uh presentations and for everyone who's uh done them already um i had a question for charlotte um charlotte i hear your um request for the housing advisory board to be involved more often in conservation of housing issues do you have any specific recommendations for like the best way that we could loop you all in on topics um or is that just sort of a general point yeah no that's a that's a really great question it's something that we've discussed as a board

[71:00] um and we've discussed um you know potentially engaging with one member of of council that is potentially like a liaison i know adam you've you've attended a few of the joint committee meetings um uh between hrc and habb so i don't know if that would be your your role but um there there seems to be an opportunity for um have to be more proactive when council is looking at different housing issues rather than um you know hearing about the council meeting and then discussing what was discussed at the council meeting and so you know the board is filled with you know passionate people who you know spend a lot of time you know thinking about these issues and so um potentially you know there is you know some sort of liaison between council and our board um that's just one idea um and that's it's definitely something that we'll want to just discuss more as a body and you know if if you um as

[72:01] council members have any suggestions there about how to you know better bridge what we do on our board and you know the policy decisions that you all make um as a body you know would love to engage with that more okay thanks i appreciate that and then uh just one other thing i'll say to jill's point that um about the you know how you sometimes the writing council letters can feel like sort of firing off into the void um i do really appreciate this in person um aspect here uh but you know jill where uh we mostly are not giving feedback tonight we're just asking some questions but i look forward to considering the recommendations uh when we get to our retreat so thanks and i will just say in every year i we read them all you know we very much value the board excellent rachel you have a question yep um charlotte you don't have to return your camera on but i was also going to invite your feedback on tips for improving the relationship that you

[73:01] mentioned between have and counsel doesn't feel good from hap's perspective so um if you have further thoughts you know as well as aaron's question of how come you'll utilize the board better i would invite you to maybe email them great yeah absolutely well and we have a meeting tomorrow so um we'll be rehashing this and um we'll definitely follow up okay thanks thank you um and thanks for the presentation i also had one question for alyssa um and the beverage licensing yeah and thanks for that great presentation i also enjoyed the slides and um also just you laying out like where people were in their tenure on the board that was helpful so especially as we lead into um board you know picking new members but my question and i understand that the state changed things that allowed us to do things differently this year um but we often hear a lot about like cutting red tape and you spoke to agility and efficiency are there things that we should be looking at

[74:01] making permanent or changing that you like lessons learned from pandemic that we could do at the local level that would allow us you know you mentioned at the end i think you want it would have been better to have more street closures and so just wondering i wanted to invite you to let us know if there are things that you think we should be making permanent that are within our jurisdiction okay um well let me go back to my board and speak with them about that and then if we could follow up also by email but i i appreciate that offer very much perfect thanks thanks rachel mary what's on your mind um i have a question for [Music] tom so you mentioned the the looking at some issues that have been allowed by the state and you mentioned hospitality and delivery what kind of

[75:03] direction or specifics specific issues are you looking at within those two items that you could use council direction on that's a great question and um i guess to be frank i guess i would like the city council to decide whether you know the world of cannabis is changing nationally maybe internationally um it's becoming more accepted more approved across the country boulder historically in some ways has led the way um for some aspects of cannabis do we want to continue to do that um or do we want to let other places try something first and learn from experiences of others rather than necessarily leading the way on it does that make sense mary i mean

[76:02] we could be on the cutting edge which is you know some of these it's not really cutting edge the state has approved it uh the city of aurora has uh approved recreational pot delivery uh but do we wanna do we wanna like put some brakes on or do we want to push forward and be you know like a leader that everybody looks at across the country as as pots getting legalized across the country does that make sense yeah it makes sense and um i think that like um the other boards it might be helpful to get some more specifics um as to you know why would it make sense to wait and learn from others and what you know what's what are the pros and cons and um so that um you know we can make a better informed um

[77:01] um set of directions so that would be helpful well even on the issue of hospitality there there's really two places in the country there's a coffee shop in south denver that you can smoke pot at but you have to bring your own and then there's supposedly a place in west hollywood but there's not a whole lot of experience out there on hospitality businesses that i understand um and we've had a lot of speakers to educate us about it so yeah so just you know a little summary and on you know that that's that's very helpful um but just what are the pros and cons of you know figuring that out ourselves or just waiting for somebody else to to to learn from others mistakes so um yeah yeah we'll we'll produce that and move that you know for the city council to discuss will produce pros and cons for the

[78:00] council to think about great thank you tom thanks thanks mary adam yeah i just had a very brief comments um to jill's point about adus i did see that on page 75 of the packet for tonight it is one of housing and human services top five priorities to look at adus again see what those um successes and failures are so that may be a place where there's synergy between housing human services planning and boza so just a heads up there jill um as for uh charlotte your request to sort of maybe get out ahead of things a little bit better i may suggest that you get a copy of the council agenda committee minutes from your board liaison um to housing and human services as that usually has the the most up-to-date information about what issues are coming

[79:01] up and then you can quickly scan that for housing issues yeah thanks adam and um that's something that we're looking at and you know we look forward to you know collaboration with council as well not just you know handing it off and then you know it's kind of like a one-way street or um you know let's just like give it to the give the item to the crying kid in the corner like who wants to engage we really do want to collaborate with with council and look forward to doing so thanks charlotte that's all i had thanks heather thanks adam mark yeah um my question is for charlotte you made the comment about marginalization of hab uh is that based entirely upon the uh perceived lack of coordination between have and counsel or there are are there other elements to that that we need to be aware of i think thanks for thanks for asking

[80:00] that mark um that is that comment you know goes back to the letter and you know responds to um you know the fact that you know hab may may approach issues differently than council um is you know should be welcomed you know as a part of a rich diverse conversation of potential policy solutions and um as the board we unanimously agreed that we just haven't been we don't believe that we have been utilized to our full potential and we're here to serve you you know as council members and so um we just want to be better utilized by you to help you know craft creative solutions to address you know urgent issues short term and long term so um you know throughout the year looking at different housing issues you know issues related to housing homelessness um you know tiny home villages safe parking sanctioned encampments all these

[81:01] issues have been brought to councils played in one way or another this year through study sessions and you know open comment and you know things that you know topics that you know council is aware of and so we just want to be brought to the table to you know engage with you as you as you craft solutions i hope that makes sense this kind of long-winded way all right council any last questions um for this group of speakers all right then um our thanks um to uh alyssa charlotte jill and tom y'all are off the hook now as well again please feel free to hang out if you feel so inclined as we move on to our next group of speakers um council i'm inclined to take these next two groups and then take a break if you feel strongly to the contrary i need a break more urgently shoot me a little comment in the chat if you would um in the meantime let's uh jump into group four and group four's first speaker is justin from the environmental advisory board hey justin catch us up on

[82:02] the eab if you would great hi my name's uh justin brandt i'm the chair of the environmental advisory board and like everyone else thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight um eab's board letter this year we really tried to focus on sort of priorities moving forward i won't go through all the details of our full letter but instead want to highlight a couple of the specific topics that are of highest importance to our board first you know with the settlement agreement between excel and the city and the approval of the franchise agreement by the voters um you know it's a exciting time in the you know process around reducing emissions and the city's municipalization process so i think there's a lot of interest from our board as the city works to implement this agreement in collaboration with excel um that work you know the city has continued to prioritize policies and

[83:00] strategies to meet its goals of 100 renewable electricity and 100 megawatts of local generation by 2030 which are slightly different than um some of excel's state mandated goals um and we know this is a high priority for staff but um and council but you know think as the if the city the city has aggressive environmental goals and we think it's important that we continue to prioritize them um we also you know urge council as you're working to implement this um new agreement to include on ongoing transparent community engagement um including engagement with boards while the franchise agreement is highly visible over the past few years a lot of the other things the environmental advisory board has tried to focus on or what you know we've sort of think of as orphan issues trying to identify some issues that are important for the city we believe but have fallen through the cracks for you know any number of reasons and i want to

[84:01] highlight two specifically one relating to air quality and the other the urban heat island effect so historically in monitoring communicating air quality issues has been one of the roles of boulder county public health and the city hasn't taken much of an active role but i think eab thinks the city should be more proactive in this area we're encouraged by steps that have been taken this year to increase coordination between the city and boulder county as well as coordination with denver and fort collins longmont some other communities in our region who are sort of doing a good job of leading in this area some recommendations we highlighted in our letter are updating the city's website to provide information related to the health impacts of ozone to the community as well as linking to state and county resources and then in addition there's the city currently has no plan related to smoke management i think as we all saw this summer um you know

[85:01] the the impacts of wildfire smoke can be huge in our community and we expect them only to get worse on the coming decades um with the impacts of climate change so we think uh we recommend adapting some sort of smoke management plan for the city over time would be an important first step this could identify monitoring needs related to particulate matter so the community and public health officials can have more up-to-date and granular data about the impacts of smoke on public health could be things such as providing public buildings with filtration opportunities for citizens and distress as well as education around public health and tools to protect the community and then finally another issue that is the urban heat island and this is a topic again that we expect to get more and more important as we start to feel the full impacts of climate change

[86:01] the number of days over 95 degrees has almost doubled in the last 15 degrees and on respect by um in the next 15 years they're going to see you know 20 days over 95 degrees a year with over half the summer by 2050 being that hot so a number of leading communities have really been piloting good relatively simple strategies to try to mitigate the impacts of the urban heal island things such as the use of cool materials such as roofing tree planting reducing the amount of impervious surfaces and increasing energy efficiency have been shown to reduce temperatures across the urban landscape by five degrees or more so there's a first step but you know we've suggested trying to assess the impact do a heat island assessment in the city to try to identify sort of the the hot spots the most important areas and then over time work to develop a plan to mitigate those high uh the risk in those areas so again

[87:00] thanks for the opportunity to present happy to answer any questions uh and appreciate the opportunity thanks justin all right council if you'll hold any questions for justin while we hear from our next three speakers next we have kurt brown from open space board of trustees hey kurt where are you thanks heather hi there hi there and uh hi to council um and i'm not gonna go through the whole letter i'll just try to touch on uh kish's first the board really wants to thank the open space leadership and staff for their extraordinary dedication and service this last crazy pandemic year um on top of everything else dealing with a record increase in osmp visitation um and then also on top of that a record-breaking fire season so thanks to all the contributions of staff and leadership who always kept a very positive outlook

[88:01] in spite of all the difficulties the board also wants to thank council for their help this last year particularly supporting data-driven consideration of two very difficult issues the first being the consideration and approval of open space plan for management of irrigated lands and the present prairie dog presence of prayer dogs and then the second one supporting the board's request for consideration of further analysis of the upstream option for flood control on south boulder creek and in that regard particularly mayor weaver and council member friend uh for the roles they played in guiding that effort and then also thanks to all the additional work that utilities staff and leadership put in along with open space to analyze that option so we thank you for that support i also want to give a shout out to all the staff that helped our board do all these zoom meetings

[89:00] uh without their help i would have been completely lost so thank you for making it manageable in terms of key issues for 2021 i will just go through each of them quickly um prairie dog management this was the first year of implementing the plan on managing prairie dogs in the presence of irrigated lands um we held our first public briefing on that plan's implementation in december i also want to note the shared learning collaborative that's emerged among many stakeholders looking jointly at the feasibility of various types of agriculture in the presence of prairie dogs and that effort is also being supported by osmp staff the second item recreation use increases in recreation use and i want to note there is a an error in that paragraph the doubling of visitation occurred over 20 years from 1996 to 2016 not 15.

[90:04] this is all about using your resources efficiently to keep your system uh in good repair and accommodating increases in visitation i just want to note the great advances that open space has made in asset management and tracking and the systems for integrating the master plan priorities into the annual work planning i think these greatly have advanced the ability of open space to be very efficient with its management resources something that increases the need those we need to increase that efficiency every year in terms of south boulder creek flood control and as i mentioned thank you for supporting the analysis of the upstream option i think everyone recognizes that having two parallel processes cu south annexation and south boulder creek flood control and keeping them coordinated is going to

[91:01] be very challenging i think everyone is very focused on looking as ahead as much as we can and understanding when data will be available when decisions will need to be made i know there will continue to be close coordination between open space and this board and utilities and planning the last one is climate change i think open space has a very good start on soil health assessment and testing methods for improving soil health the big issue as we all know a growing issue is fuel loads management both in the forest and the grassland areas even before these last this last crazy fire season there was strong interagency collaboration in these areas and a lot of ongoing fuel loads reduction and tests of the efficacy of fuel load

[92:00] reduction um if there's one area where we could continue to see growing need for investments of the things i've mentioned gosh you know deciding how much you should invest in wildfire mitigation is sort of like asking how much we should invest in avoiding a future pandemic um so i think a lot of clever uh thinking we'll need to go into how we're going to manage that issue thank you thanks kurt all right raj if you turn on your camera and catch cancel up on uh prab if you would hi there hi good evening members of the city council my name is raj seymour and i'm here representing the parks and rec advisory board thank you so much for the opportunity to provide our thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of the current year or the previous year excuse me and recommendations for the current year in discussing what has made our board

[93:01] happy this year we are really just in awe of the resilience of the boulder parks and rec staff um their ability to constantly change with the dynamic with coven 19 and all the adjustments that were able to be made some things i want to highlight are establishing the covid recovery center to provide shelter and help address the urgent needs of our community creative solutions to address a greater demand for the use of the reservoir and the outdoor pools which included adjusted hours for staffing and developing new and expanded schedules prab received numerous emails from community members that were extremely grateful for the time and effort that went into creating these new recreation opportunities also after the early september snowstorm and and the havoc that was caused by all the downed trees parks and rec staff

[94:01] coordinated a huge cleanup across several departments took a while and uh and they really got the job done so we appreciate staff so much for all they've done now the sad as council knows the changing fiscal situation and resulting budget cuts have disappropriately impacted boulder parks and rec department um there's been staff reductions programming cuts it's been extremely challenging year for for the boulder parks and rec prab understands the budget realities and we are hopeful that council can help ensure that the parks america department can continue to maintain and provide beautiful safe and clean places for boulder residents to visit and enjoy another urgent issue that concerns prabh is the ongoing challenge and difficulty in addressing the unhoused and the impact on our city's parks and open

[95:00] space in particular outdoor space excuse me while we have been briefed on the work that the city council has done around these issues prab wanted to highlight our concern about the increase in the number of community members who are reluctant to visit some of our parks or facilities in part because of this issue prab has identified three specific concerns as they relate to boulder parks arising from the unhoused and in cat encampments in specific one is hazards to public health and safety mainly needles human waste glass number two is cleanliness and environmental values trash degrading stream sides creek and three physical safety both assault and threatening behaviors while we recognize that this issue is extremely complex and challenging and the city's approach will take a sustained effort to make progress it is clear from the input we have received that the

[96:01] current conditions are not acceptable to a broad swath of the community all right let's get back to the good there are a number of things that prabh is looking forward to in uh in the coming year uh most importantly properly celebrating two recently completed amazing projects uh we're really looking forward to the full opening of scott carpenter pool with the lazy rivers and the slides and the climbing walls we were able to access the the lap lanes but really to take in the entire experiment experience for the community will be an incredible thing to celebrate also the the brand new boulder reservoir visitor center which has an unbelievably beautiful boardwalk incredible views and soon to be an indoor outdoor restaurant with an amazing menu i'm sure these two facilities will be incredible resources for boulder residents and

[97:00] visitors for years to come we are also looking forward to continuing work on the parks and recreation master plan particularly on the issue of resilience so whether in dealing with an unexpected public health challenge or in adapting to long-term environmental challenges such as climate change and of course we are all looking forward to seeing gatherings at our parks and open spaces and the full reopening of all the boulder parks and rec facilities as soon as it's safe to do so i would like to thank all the members of council for inviting me to represent prabh and present this update to you i'm happy to expand on anything or answer any questions thanks raj all right the last speaker in this group uh is kirk and uh from rabb hi kirk hi thank you council for this opportunity to speak tonight i think this is a better way to go than the letters

[98:00] in the past the water resources advisory board has answered your questions about last year in outlying form which is shown on the screen and you can read that for yourself because i felt like that i should talk in general about what i have learned during my five years on rad including the four reasons why the water utility bill keeps going up the boat the boulder waterworks is in pretty good shape in many ways compared to both local and national piers the water rights portfolio is excellent as is the reservoir storage volume and all three water treatment plants have excess capacity this is the result of the impressive historical legacy over the past 147 years where the guiding principle was and remains to hand off things to our children in better shape than we found it recall that in 1859 a claim was staked for the boulder city town company which was recognized by the territory of

[99:00] nebraska and consisted of 20 city blocks and about that many residents initially the residents had to fetch their own water from boulder creek irrigation ditches and a few people had hand dug wells that was acceptable for about 15 years pollution and the need for fire suppression ultimately caused a change boulder creek had become fouled with or mill tailings from upstream and ditches are hardly a sanitary means of water conveyance it all came to a head in october of 1874 when council called the trustees at that time voted to float a bond to pay for the first drinking water reservoir located uphill from pioneer cemetery and leading to the formation of the first two city departments water and fire to pay for that each parcel within the city was required to pay what we now call the water utility bills and amounts the amounts were at this point seem

[100:00] laughably small for example in 1909 a typical single-family property paid eight dollars per year for all the water the customer wanted so inflation is one reason the water utility bill keeps going up a kitchen sink with a faucet along with a traditional outhouse was acceptable for about 50 years until growth and public health awareness caused a change for example a certain downtown hotel was built with bathrooms and the wastewater was directed to an open cesspool which in addition to the terrible smell was thought to exacerbate the typhoid epidemic that was going on in the county at that time the city wastewater department really got underway in the 1920s but a contemporary problem however is that clay tiles were used for the pipes and they were used for many decades to construct and the sewer drains and those pipes are

[101:00] still in use and are showing their age fortunately in 2014 council approved a substantial one percent increase uh in in rates aimed specifically at repairing or replacing all city-owned grain pipes this is an example of the second reason rates go up aging infrastructure the remainder of the 20 uh 20th century involved building out the portfolio for example the three water treatment facilities were built in the 1960s and those have recently undergone major repair and modern modernization at great expense in addition the storm flood utility was formed in response to the destructive flood of 1969 reducing flood risks could be thought of as increasing the level of service that the city provides the residents and it's expensive so that's the third uh reason

[102:00] and the fourth reason is that the water utility bill keeps going up is declining sales for the past dozen years or so water and wastewater utilities have experienced a reduction of income of about two percent per year that is the bitter pill of water conservation pay more for less is the result thank you thanks kirk all right council um i would be delighted to hear your questions um for this group of speakers justin kurt raj and kirk yeah sam please go ahead thanks a bunch to all of you and i want to echo what we heard from a couple of the speakers just now about the hard work that staff has put in this year so i'll take this opportunity again to thank staff for how flexible and responsive everyone has been in this very challenging year specifically i wanted to ask about a couple of things related to

[103:00] the eab so if we can bring justin forward we have received a few emails and i think we're going to hear more about building electrification and the context of san francisco having adopted um regulations that are in the future near future going to require new builds to not use fossil fuels so one question i have for you is i didn't see it in your letter um do you does eab have any thoughts about the beneficial electrification work uh yeah i think that's a great question i guess i don't know that we specifically um discussed beneficial electrification as a board um you know i guess personally it's an issue i work on professionally um and i think you know the the model all the modeling i've seen to meet our climate goals shows we need to electrify everything we can and then run that electricity on renewable energy

[104:02] um so well i don't know that i can speak for the board that it's important right now you know i guess personally i would say um be supportive of the city um moving forward with any policies that support electrification including you know trying to move towards net zero long-term all-electric codes yeah and we're on the pathway to do that i would just flag that as an issue that you uh eab might want to take a look at and equity and cost or a big portion of yeah no absolutely and um yeah i will take that back to the board and appreciate that guidance very good and then just a a bit of information on that regard there there was testimony that staff has given and i actually gave a little bit to to the aqcc so i think that focus on air quality dovetails pretty nicely with what's going on at the metro mayor's right now and generally the intersection there with beneficial

[105:00] electrification so and i guess i'll comment also that i think it is very um forsightful to be thinking about um ways to protect air quality for people who are at risk and what the city can do for that so i think that's great and then um osbt so kurt i just had one quick question um i thought that some of the conversations we had about the shared learning collaborative um or that came up during the um prairie dog discussion but really focused on soil health and so on i would just ask kurt do you have any plans from osbt to bring a report back to council or some kind of feedback on how that shared learning um collaborative is going because i i at least i think others have a big interest in that you know sam i think i should say that

[106:00] we don't manage this collaborative it started sort of organically and uh i mean i think i would say staff is coordinating with those folks including on soil testing and things like that that's been presented to us but i don't want to say that we're going to be bringing back a report on the collaborative itself because i think our role has been to support it but not manage it very good and i'll just comment that maybe that we may need to find a group or department that is responsible for coordinating information there back to the council because it also overlaps with um some work from the climate group that's all i had thanks heather thank you sam bob what's on your mind sir this is a question for raj raj your comments about um keeping the parks clean obviously are pretty timely since we're going to be taking that up next week one of the recommendations in the staff

[107:01] memo that we'll be considering next week is that the parks department bring in-house some of the cleanup work that has historically been outsourced is that something that prabhas i know that's come up pretty quickly so you may not have looked at it but i'm just curious whether prab has had a chance to take a look at that recommendation from staff and if so whether um prab endorses them thanks bob um actually we we've not uh officially spoken of that but um and so this is just me answering if staff were to bring that up it would definitely uh be something to consider something that i think about when we talk about cleanup though is that it's not cleanup of of simply trash like um a normal cleanup it would be hazardous waste it would be needles it would be um things that that there would be frankly more um more involved than just picking up trash and so depending on funding and and all

[108:02] that you know it's definitely something we'd consider either knowing that we haven't heard from it yet and prabhu hasn't talked i i don't really have much more to add though thanks rush okay thanks bob council any additional questions for this group of speakers yep adam i just want to give a quick uh thank you to kirk for that very brief but very informative um piece of understanding about our our water um i think that goes overlooked and thank you for your service kirk thank you fantastic all right um friends justin kurt kirk and raj you are free to carry on with your evening i appreciate your time new contribution to our conversation council we've got one more bunch in here for you um and so we're going to hear first from harman uh regarding the planning board harmon money hey there

[109:00] good evening everybody good evening council mayor weaver thanks for having me again second week in a row it's uh kind of amazing um i'll just jump right in and i guess you you asked questions of the whole group at the end so in this year's letter we focused on the planning board's role in serving the city and with one exception all of our thoughts fit generally into the themes of equity and innovation so starting with the positive equity results and trends planning board noted the city's acknowledgment of social racial gender and economic discrimination and inequity particularly in dedicating a new staff position related to equity and recognizing the capital improvement program finally as a tool to advance equity and resilience we need to confront and dismantle racism and other inequities which are often codified at the local level the successful year we have had in developing affordable housing projects was another positive equity result

[110:02] and the annexation and redevelopment of the ponderosa neighborhood we saw as a model for increasing homeownership and for uh especially increasing homeownership for underserved communities now turning towards innovation uh positive trends we were pleased by the work of the use table subcommittee which is bearing fruit in the form of creative ideas for expanded housing opportunities protection of the city's industrial zones 15-minute neighborhoods and revitalization of neighborhood centers we were also pleased by the east boulder sub-community plan working group project as an innovation um now turning to negative equity results in trends planning board noted the continuing housing affordability crisis and the need for the city to accelerate achieving affordable housing goals and developing new tools to make progress the board is also looking for new tools to advance environment sorry environmental climate action and equity goals

[111:01] turning to negatives related to innovation we noted that the land use code update's been slower than we'd hoped and needs more innovative ideas to expand housing options encourage walkable neighborhoods incentivize community benefits and encourage vibrant neighborhood centers we also um we were also unhappy with the lack of housing diversity and the need to and and talked about the need to incentivize affordable and non-luxury housing smaller homes senior cottages multi-generational living etc now one negative that stands out and is generally outside of this equity and innovation framework or lens that we created for the letter is staff morale and we agreed that we need to improve the work environment support and appreciate staff more and create an outstanding work environment to attract and retain talent to the city finally we dealt with the question of the city's planning priorities for 2021. the equity priorities are an ordinance

[112:00] requiring notification of all residents and businesses not just the property owners of nearby proposed projects i think planning board's been mentioning this in our letter for several years now to prioritize the capital improvement program procurement of goods and services from local minority-owned women-owned and disadvantaged business enterprises in the name of resilience and equity and sustainability for our city and its community to moderate the current trend towards upscale housing and encourage development of affordable for sale housing to protect industrial land and zoning in the name of increasing the city's sustainability and resilience and to tackle the affordable commercial space discussion in light of the community benefits program and we heard about affordable open space in last week's council hearing the innovation priorities are to complete the use table and the code updates to foment the positive land use impacts that i've mentioned before to prioritize a neighborhood infill

[113:00] project as provided in the comp plan and to use area and or sub-community planning to cultivate community engagement and coherent planning particularly in the three neighborhoods of east boulder gun barrel and the diagonal plaza thank you thanks harman again council save your questions we have a couple more speakers in this group next we have john decker from the landmarks board hey there unmuted i'm john decker uh current chair of the landmarks board and i'd like to say first good evening to the members of council and all the other participants we appreciate the opportunity to make this presentation instead of writing the conventional letter we decided to make a video and the video was kind of an exploration

[114:01] in video communication as a tool since one of the things that we're interested in doing in the coming year is more public outreach and construction of kind of video brochures about historic preservation um the video was structured in three parts and the three parts kind of loosely related to the three questions the issue of what made us sad was in the first part um abby talked about the things the the loss of human connection and human con direct human contact in our work we're a very interactive board um collegial and we like to be involved with the projects that we review and interactively resolve some of the problems as they occur however we were able to manage and maintain our workload and a lot of that thanks goes

[115:02] to the city staff and the way the city orchestrated digital process in the second part we answered the question of things that made us happy we had quite a few successes last year and or at least what we consider successes um successful preservation um actions and the tea house was kind of the capstone it was an interesting one because of the challenge of protecting the interiors as well as um the rest of the building in sight and then the third part um ronnie address yeah he addressed the issue of our coming year and the thing we're really excited about we've come into the time where mid-century modern types of architecture are in our purview and

[116:00] so we are excited about the idea of developing guidelines for mid-century preservation and appropriate um i guess adjustment and use of these buildings as time goes on and will be hopefully engaging with council in this process um there's three other things i wanted to mention quickly that were not included in the video and may have been included in a written letter these are issues that we kind of cross section with or cut across in our work in the context of historic preservation we encounter quite a bit of demolition and the process of change we also are encountering issues associated with sustainability and resilience of buildings in the context of historic structures and then we are

[117:00] encountering a lot of issues with energy performance energy upgrades and so on and those are all things that we think need more global address at the council level but also with some specific focus on how they affect historic preservation and how historic buildings can accommodate the types of change and adaptive reuse that are necessary and just one final point is it's kind of interesting to be almost last in this process because i get to see what all the other boards are doing and the work the breadth of work that happens in this city and and it's um a great opportunity so thanks thank you john all right last but in no way least is lindsay representing the human relations committee thank you and thank you for having me

[118:02] appreciate your time and your work um and um yeah i i'm going to speak tonight in terms of successes so things that make us happy and things we appreciate and ongoing challenges um things that make us sad and then um you know looking forward um well to the year that we're in now 2021. um uh can you advance please thank you um so um first want to echo what a lot of folks have said some appreciations for staff particularly our staff liaison and administrative specialists who support us in meetings and day-to-day

[119:01] work and facilitation some other successes despite a lot of covid 19 impacts especially because we have a fund with hrc that funds events we were still able to fund a number of digital events i'm unsure if the person from boulder arts commission is still on but our collaboration that we had with boulder arts commission increased it increased our capacity to do that we collaborated without boulder to gather a letter um for support um for transgender sheltering um so specifically for people to be able to shelter in boulder according to the gender they are and um uh despite um you know many of you will notice uh guidance from hud that was problematic to that and also we formed a working group with the

[120:01] housing advisory board and provided you all with a corresponding report on sheltering alternatives more appreciation so i separated these because these weren't necessarily the work of the human relations commission but they're um they're items from the city's work that we appreciate um of course increasing affordable housing and units for people to exit homelessness i'll talk more about that later gare the government alliance on racial equity and the working group on racial equity also the city's coven 19 response made it easier for a number of people to live right now and we appreciate that um also and again thanks to our staff please i'm an administrative specialist uh next slide please so some ongoing challenges um we have

[121:01] corresponded about this already um you know of course well you know council members if you talk to a number of people you're going to hear a number of different things about this from our perspective based on what we've heard from the public who will come talk to us about human rights concerns advocates from research from talking to people who are experiencing homelessness themselves we believe that although you know it's worth it's definitely a thing worth celebrating that people are getting housed and that we prioritize that however from our perspective and our experience there are a lot of boulder like boulder rights experiencing homelessness who are underserved um un unserved and over policed and here i'm talking um about uh the displacement of the encampments also called sweeps

[122:01] um another ongoing challenge um is we appreciate the advancements we mentioned gare and the working group on racial equity and then an ongoing challenge is the actual implementation of these policies and recommendations is really hard um and um meaningful policy change is i think unfortunately you all already know and have probably experienced is going to be unpopular um when we come to find out that a lot of our policies and practices in housing in land use management in policing is actually racially inequitable which is the case you know and what what are we what are we going to do about that in 2021 um and that is one of the things that we're looking to collaborate with you on in an advisory sense and then of course there's covid19 which is dramatically impacting the

[123:01] lives of a lot of people of everyone and has a particular a particularly hard impact on people who had a difficult time living and existing in the city prior to the pandemic next slide please so in 2021 we look forward to you know like in many ways continuing the work that we were already doing representing the human rights concerns brought to us by the public like we said in our letter we hope you'll take up racial inequity enhancements and recommendations provided by your working groups and then also a number of homelessness policy reforms that we mentioned in our letter and then we'll also be working on our own work plan separate from that and i believe i'm about out of time so i just want to thank you again for your time and happy to answer any

[124:00] questions thanks lindsay all right council i'm happy to entertain your questions now for this last group of speakers harman john and lindsey any questions yeah junie please go ahead thank you heather and thank you for this great presentation i have a question for lindsay but actually i was just listening to the presentation and i seem to have quite a lot of questions and i suppose all of them doesn't have to be answered tonight but or maybe we can follow up i was thinking you mentioned racial equity is hard and i was wondering what does that mean because again i just wanted to hear your perspective on how is it hard yeah as a member of the board yeah what i mean what i mean by that is it seems to be a thing that ostensibly everybody wants to do and everybody wants to

[125:01] practice and then the action steps and the policy changes that are going to get us there are going to be really difficult i think for a lot of people to come to terms with and be willing to accept and they're going to be very unpopular and i mentioned i mentioned three things in particular um where i think that's especially going to be the case and i think you know when you've when you've heard um from from your working group on racial equity you've heard heard some of these before and not others but um from my perspective as a member of the of the human relations commission i think they're really going to come up for you in housing in land use management and in policing yeah no thank you and also i was thinking exactly where you were heading because again as you mentioned i think with your colleague and have she mentioned how she's not heard and she hoped that she would work much closely with council but i think part of it as well is working within the constraints of the

[126:01] regulations that we have again you know you mentioned working with the planning board i don't know if that's something that you do you work closely with them and also working with housing and human services as well because you know i understand it's so easy to just draft a policy and proposal and send it to council but i i know your board probably take you you do take a lot of times you know weighing in the balance the different issues but nonetheless it's so crucial to work with these different bodies to come with a strategy that is that will get you closer to where you need to be if that makes sense you mentioned something i wanted to you mentioned transgender sheltering which i thought congratulations and being able to do that and also i wonder maybe if there's opportunities um as part of your work plan have you been looking into sheltering for you know um

[127:00] alternative sheltering for couples and people with animals we have yeah and i i think you know a lot of um i i want to uh just point to um what we did there was we collected a letter of support for towards that end with without boulder and there are agencies doing um really important work towards that end um like transgender relevant sheltering providing those services um uh under the organization mother house has a program called the lodge and that's what i'm referring to um and then um the can can you repeat can you repeat your question at the at the end juni goodness i don't remember it but um but i just i just asked about uh sheltering for couples and people with animals because that's an issue yeah you know it's a gap it is and um i i think that um you know

[128:04] there is potential um there with um with with sheltering and housing alternatives like some of the uh methods that we proposed in um the report well i shouldn't say we not not the human relations commission but the the joint working group that hrc was a part of with hab um the state parking lots i think is um one that is immediately relevant and that we were able to provide a great deal of rep of detail on and then safe encampments is another possibility that other that other groups are gathering information about and researching and determining how that might be how that might be feasible

[129:01] and i think um also um tiny homes has another is another possibility and we've provided those you know informational reports for you know you all um to weigh the possibilities of and consider well thank you for this and uh and i think it's great and i've seen you know the previous report that was sent to council about the safe parkings and encampments and i think as well part of it is looking into you know the source of funding as well right because i think it's it's we have a council that is very progressive nonetheless i think you know some council members are thinking about the cost as well so i think uh bringing forward you know like uh solutions but also solutions that comes with either a budget or at least an innovative way of looking at the budget so that we can come up to a better solution and i think lastly i just wanted to make one last comment heather is that okay yeah thank

[130:00] you and i'm thinking um i don't know um and i'm sorry if i don't know do you have an annual report does it um hrc put out an annual report we don't okay well i was just thinking i mean to educate us the council about the work that you've done throughout the year i think that might be something to consider moving forward into the future thanks thank you judy thanks juni council any other questions for this group of speakers all right um so our thanks um lindsay to you and to john and harman for your presentations on behalf of your boards and commissions and to all the speakers tonight who brought this much more dynamic conversation with council with the boards and commissions fantastic information council of course your job is to be mindful of what you've heard today and bring any thoughts that you have related to these ideas um to

[131:01] our conversation on january 23rd um so you might want to make some notes so you don't lose all the juicy bits they came out of tonight uh the remaining items on our agenda are um counsel for you to check in a little bit on your council committee appointee appointments and then um do a check in on our uh cancel homework and then we're gonna hear from staff on the work plan do you want to take 10 and stretch your legs before we jump into those last things i see nodding a little bit nodding fantastic um great so it is 807 if you could come back as close to 8 15 as you can and then i know how you are we'll round up to 8 17. i i i see you um but let's try for 8 15 so we can stay on target and not keep the residents up all too very late because we do have staff coming here at the end um so great start to our retreat before the retreat and uh go stretch your legs and freshen your snacks see you in a minute heather i'm gonna jump in briefly um

[132:02] staff has put together a slide with the uh website for vaccinations and so hopefully that could be put up while we're on break perfect thanks to staff for reacting quickly to that request and thank you heather awesome there it is fantastic great see you in a minute [Music]

[135:00] so [Music]

[137:33] so [Music]

[138:22] my do [Music]

[139:26] there they come [Music] one [Music]

[140:08] hmm all right we need two more of our council members to be back and then we can get started hi julie heather i'm here i'm just eating oh fantastic great because you're classier than me i'm just eating on camera like just you know trash that i am all right cancel we got things the next item that we have um is to

[141:00] check in on the council appointment uh changes and um you all should have in your packet yield list of all the things um and unless anyone objects i would be inclined just to see if anyone is on a committee currently that you are serving on that you would like to change either um you're on one you don't be honest this meeting schedule doesn't work for you or someone else has a really sexy one and you'd like to be considered for going forward um bob is that right the right way to tackle this or did you have a different vision it is um we might also uh reflect some changes that have occurred during the course of the year that should be reflected on this too so i'll get started with with those there's four changes that affect me that have already happened um first on the mile high flood district um juni as mayor pro tem um has replaced me effective this month okay um i've dropped off the inter um government affairs committee and i think

[142:00] somebody else did but they can speak for themselves the alpine balsam county participation subcommittee exists no longer we did our work and disbanded [Music] and there is a new subcommittee that judy and i are on the police master plan process subcommittee which council planted junior eye on to uh i think in the fall so that should be added to the list those are the changes that i'm aware of fantastic thank you sir rachel what do you think um first is it possible to put that on the for those of us who don't have it right in front of us on a screen for us all to look at taylor can you magic that up for council i'll just notice not in fact in the packet but it was emailed out to us today thank you okay that's right yeah i can work on that if you'd like me to pull it up just um okay thanks and then there was one where i think i'm a sub for mirabai on um i want to say something to do with transportation and i'm never gone and i just wanted to make sure that that's um working okay like a backup who doesn't ever

[143:01] back up yeah i've never been called up so i just want to make sure i'm not breaking on anything no you're not rachel i haven't even heard a word from them so perfect so good news bad news they're not clamoring for you want to be clamored for sometimes um and then i'm the other person i think along with bob who dropped off the um the state legislative or the legislative committee taylor i just found that sitting right here on my desktop so i went ahead and popped it up um okay that works for me go ahead juni go ahead thank you also there is a transition for bhp from mark to me back in i guess december from which one bhp got it [Music] from mark to juni got it okay

[144:02] anything else on your list jenny oh that's cool [Music] okay nothing else i think it's fun to watch you look for the mute button i don't know why but that just abuses me because you seem surprised to find it in the same place every time bless your heart sam how about you so i wanted to raise whether or not the rocky mountain greenway scaring committee has met so nearby has that met or have you heard about anything from that i have a full mouth but not that i've heard of i could have missed an email for sure because we get so many but i haven't seen any so so i just turned to carl i think we'll take this to carl and see if that's still real um i've been essentially i'm doing a little bit of that as part of the rocky flat stewardship council representative but i don't i haven't heard anything about that committee at all so i would

[145:01] question whether that's a real thing so that's one thing another is the us 36 mayors and commissioners coalition has been renamed the north northwest mayors and commissioners coalition so we might reflect that here and then i would also check in and we have to do this now but we have lots of people signed up for national league of cities i don't know if everyone is still interested in that or not um that's all been virtual of course um there is a deadline coming up for people who want to register for the march meeting so if any of you who are on this list don't want to do it anymore we could adjust that now i think that's all i had and just while we're on um nlc uh sam you want to remain part of that one yes okay cool bob one other one that's not on here maybe it was formed during the course of the year is rachel and i are on i don't know

[146:01] exactly the name of it it's it's the engagement committee the council engagement committee okay or maybe it's the community engagement committee okay it's unfriend all right um so any other members of council either want to take sam up on the invitation to um step down from the apparently big fun party that must be nlc given how many people will be on it um or any other suggestions for change mary go ahead yes i want us i want to take sam up on his suggestion um to uh step down from nlc all right and any other changes for you to your assignments as you see them um not that jumped out at me okay and i do want to make sure that everyone sees it if i page down uh we have one more just a sister city subcommittee is there at the end it's all sad on its own little page there um

[147:02] adam what do you think yeah i'm also uh not planning to re-up on nlc okay and otherwise you're cool with your other assignments yeah everything's good to go fantastic all right council any other changes suggestions surrenders of the committee assignments sam super small item mark is shown under wallach under the financial strategy committee with the term to 12 of 22. um i hope mark runs again and gets reelected but that is past the end of the current cycle so i i don't know if we want to say anything about that mark give me thoughts can i be re-elected by acclimation that would be easy wouldn't it yeah well that's what trump wants um [Music] um i really don't care how we

[148:01] characterize it um uh i am i am good to go i just wanted to flag it i don't care either um just just a heads up that that goes beyond the end of your current council term okay i know i understand that um we shall see what the year brings that's it let's take that up next year and uh see if uh if we need to make any change at all i'll just also throw in there that um i don't want to speak for mary but i believe mary has said publicly that she's going to be um to pardon us at the end of this year we might um need somebody to think about joining the retreat committee um i'm happy to be replacing the retreat committee too so i don't presume that i'm going to stay on it but we need at least one person and maybe two and it's really fun we laugh it's a very joyful committee i'm just saying mary it is a joyful committee um yeah thanks for bringing that up bob and

[149:02] um which raises the um colorado chautauqua association yeah so we'll need a replacement um so probably it would have to be some time i'm going to have to bring that up the next chautauqua meeting because shitaka's board appointments are in august and um and so there would be a lag if some of a couple months if somebody doesn't get appointed until um january of 2022. so um anyway um i'll bring that up with chautauqua and see what the feeling is um unless somebody wanted to who's going to be on for another couple years wanted to take that on um

[150:01] i can certainly stay on until november okay any members of clan uh council clamoring right now to join the chautauqua rachel i'm not exactly clambering or non-clamoring but um i'm happy to to go to some meetings with you mary just to make sure there's a bridge because i will still be on that make sense yeah i mean i guess there are places where we need bridges like that on retreat um i would happy to just have you um be the bridge how kind of you um congratulations rachel on your on your bridgetude thank you all right uh yeah you can pencil me in for that okay um i didn't hear anyone step up with much enthusiasm yet for the retreat committee i'm not sure you heard the part about fun and joyful no it really is fun you get to yeah you

[151:02] get to come up with um oh you know dream up crazy things like you know how we're gonna do icebreakers and the um yeah happy sad for commission letters i mean it's just fun what's a who adam what do you think oh go ahead i would love to volunteer but i think it kind of has to be someone who's guaranteed to be here so we might have to lean on our for sure tenured concert with council members maybe we could put adam on the maybe list pending i'll do it and then adam can have it if he is here how's that sound okay so rachel unless adam continues on in which case adam fantastic all right yeah i'm fine if i continue for sure awesome it was the fun that got you right adam it's the fun it's the talk of the fun no i hate one it's that's that's not what i

[152:01] want at all oh okay well we'll talk about that after class too anybody else yeah i got a quick comment mary and i are the current employee evaluation committee and we will both probably be gone at the end of this year so it would probably be useful to have somebody else on the committee this year so that they can get familiar with the employee evaluation process uh and can pick it up afterwards or two people um mm-hmm i was going to raise my hand for that bob okay okay super that's great anybody else all right i'm going to put the kibosh we're not going to say anymore that that but people aren't going to be here anymore because it sounds like you're going to die which i'm not cool with so it will not be on council anymore i hear that aaron did you want to jump in on that one oh i just i've got a full complement of committees that that i feel like i'm

[153:01] happy with so i feel like i'm i'm doing my part and as much as i'd love to join the retreat committee just to push the start time on saturday back to 10 a.m i'll let other people do it and i think if we have bob on the evaluation committee he'll get the institutional knowledge and carry that forward so okay that'll be great right nearby i'm sorry i i think what's hard is a lot of there's like five council members whose turns are up at the end of this year and so it's hard i i don't want to you know step up for anything it's hard so it lands on four of our council members so i think it just looks kind of heavy sided right now but i'm just making this aware for people well and the other thing we can recruit from amongst the newly electeds in november for several of these rights so you know that you you get them while they're fresh they've just been elected a couple weeks before and you're like hey guess what you get to volunteer for this committee before they get them before they knew about they know about it i did all i

[154:00] fall into that trap all right but there are so many great committees and they um appreciate your your contributions and your participation all right um anything else related to our boards and commissions um your i mean your your committee seats i think we're good eeny meeny miny cool all right i can stop sharing that then fantastic um so just one more quick thing before we jump into i'm hearing from staff and that's just i wanted to check in with you on your homework um you of course recall that i have assigned you pairs to chat offline in whatever venue and format is comfortable to you um talking about any specific changes that you'd like to suggest to uh council's rules and procedures or the overall council approach um as well as some of the survey information where we just checked in about how you all think things are going with counsel um so can i just get a show a visual

[155:00] show of hands who's already had their buddy their buddy meeting okay looks like um bob and adam y'all got a date you need to set there and that's forthcoming and scheduled yeah fellas yes it's noon on friday excellent um does anyone have any questions about what we're expecting from you at the retreat coming out of these pairs yeah can you could you just tell us briefly are we reporting out as one of the pair reporting out for both are we reporting on each other how's that going to work i defer to you and your pairs to decide what is most comfortable for you if you want to choose an ee meeting money mo speaker fantastic if you each want to tackle a little bit that's fantastic whatever works for you works for me thank you anybody else questions yeah mark um can you just briefly go through what you're expecting from us in the context of these reports um so again i'll i'll largely defer to

[156:01] you um what we are what i'm hoping to hear i'll let mary and bob speak for the retreat committee if they feel otherwise um one is just generally like how how did your conversation go did you learn something new about one another just a general kind of wow this is a new person never spent that time with that person what have you but really the focus then is did in your conversation um about the challenges and over the year in council do you have any specific suggestions for change to council's rules and procedures or your overall approach to anything community engagement to how you talk about stuff and then we'll spend some time processing any specific suggestions to see if there's a will of counsel all to do the things that you suggest or not um relatively straightforward but uh you know i've also asked you some other questions in that survey that i would encourage you to you know chat about and if you have takeaways from your conversations um that relate to that some of that stuff i would be delighted to hear it to

[157:00] the degree that you're comfortable sharing it okay mary bob anything to add okay cool all right any last questions fantastic uh i'm not sure it's everybody else's favorite part of the retreat but i love it when you guys work in pairs and then you come to the retreat and you talk about what you learned it makes me so happy makes my little nerd hearts swell so with that chris can we come to you to talk a little bit about the status of the council's work plan and priorities and all the things 2021 sir sure it would be my pleasure to do so and well uh taylor pulls up the presentation and i just want to kick off with echoing much of what many of the boards and commissions shared which is uh just the the thankfulness for staff and uh here in the meeting today are uh many of the staff members from each of the departments uh so if there are some some key quick questions

[158:00] that come up we can we can answer those but i'm going to go through the presentation covering council's priorities key actions and what we anticipate also coming forward on the 2021 work plan and there were a lot of accomplishments in this last year despite how challenging covid was and so in the uh packet for the materials for the retreat at the very uh the last attachment is many of the accomplishments uh that that were achieved this last year so if you haven't had a chance yet i encourage you to peruse that um it's a good reminder of despite how challenging the year was uh some of the amazing things that happened so what we'd like to cover tonight again is recapping council's major priorities uh for this two-year time period and then checking in on the status of the key council actions that were identified and then i will walk through uh the top three to five priorities for each uh department as well as each department's

[159:01] uh capacity for this coming year so uh as you can see here on this slide uh these are the council major priorities that council identified as a part of the retreat last year and are for uh the 2020 to 2021 time frame so this is our midterm check-in on these major priorities and i'm going to walk through each of the the key council actions that were identified as a part of these priorities and this was a little bit more detail than council has gone into in the past in terms of the key actions uh and so my hope is that this will be helpful uh in kind of tracking where we are and our progress so i'm jumping right in related to the priority around advancing racial equity the key action that council identified was to adopt the racial equity plan that work is on track and scheduled for adoption in this quarter of this year quarter one

[160:00] uh the the second priority here actually uh we have retitled based on the uh the outcome of the election uh and the the new excel energy partnership this used to be the boulder electric utility uh development uh priority and so the key action is launching the partnership which is currently on track i put quarter one to quarter two here just in terms of the launching period of the the partnership uh but obviously that work will continue for many years to come the next is the climate mobilization action plan um this is one of the uh actions that was impacted heavily by kovid and is now scheduled for uh consideration closer to quarter two of uh actually that should have said 2022 i think if uh i got that time frame right not 2021 that's my typo um the next is community benefits and phase two of that work um that work is on track and scheduled for uh adoption in quarter two

[161:02] the next is the east boulder sub community plan uh and that work is on track and scheduled for the plan coming forward in quarter three of this year uh next is the financial strategy study committee with the key action being to launch that committee and that work is complete around homelessness the the key action that council identified we're proposing just a small rewording around that related to both evaluating and enhancing services um and that work uh is on track and we have a conversation around encampments scheduled for uh next tuesday related to housing there were two key actions that were identified related to housing the first is to adopt ordinances related to the manufactured housing strategy um we do have some proposed language on that um to to modify um we also this is on track scheduled for adoption here in

[162:01] this first quarter of this year the second action was uh to um bring forward uh the middle income down payment assistance program that was approved by the voters that work was put on hold due to covid and so it's been removed from a key action uh for for this time period the next is police oversight with the key action being to implement the police oversight model and that is on track with the panel being scheduled for final appointments here in this first quarter of this year the next is related to south boulder creek flood mitigation and cu south with two key actions that were identified first related to the annexation framework and second related to the flood protection and flood mitigation both of those are on track the use tables and standards project um the key action being adopting the the second phase of that work um that work

[163:01] is slightly off track based on our original time schedule and is now looking like uh quarter three or quarter four um due to uh um delays due to covid and last but not least is vision zero with the key action that council identified to review the residential speed limit and of course that work is complete so next i want to actually before i go to that uh there is one item that that you'll see in the packet that we are recommending as staff which is to add one key council priority which is covid response and recovery i think that is uh informally become a priority obviously um so we believe that it'd be helpful to go ahead and add that as a as an official priority uh for for this coming year as we continue to work through the pandemic so next is to transition to department work plans and capacities and as a part of the discussions with the retreat

[164:01] subcommittee one of the one of the requests that was made was for uh for us to characterize really the capacitance uh for 2021 recognizing that due to covid the city experienced pretty significant reductions in funding in and staffing so um we have we we've characterized that in in kind of a red yellow green um in terms of no availability in terms of capacity limited availability if it's yellow or if if we believe in that department there is some availability it's green um so uh we were also asked to be honest in that capacity um so as you'll see here on the chart the vast majority of departments are red in terms of really no capacity for significant additions to the work program so it's just something for us all to keep in mind as we talk about uh any adjustments to the work plan uh

[165:02] what that may mean is as we discuss those um it may mean a trade-off of slowing something else down or taking something else off the work plan uh in order to accommodate that so folks will be able to chime in more if you have questions on that and so as i go through each department quickly you'll you'll see that department capacity up in the corner of the slide as well so if it works uh for council i'll go ahead and kind of run through the top priorities in each department and as uh i think adam was the one who maybe uh daylighted this uh some of the items that you heard from boards and commissions you'll see on these slides here as as i walk through them so first in the climate initiatives department the top four priorities in in climate initiatives first is to implement the excel energy partnership uh and there's lots of work underway um in terms of

[166:00] launching that partnership and developing the the staffing as well as the initiatives around each of the aspects of the partnership and we're scheduled to give council an update on that uh i think in in march is when that's going to be coming forward um the next is related to the climate mobilization action plan uh and continuing to um kind of update our our climate action plan and really what are the key areas of focus for uh for the next time period the next is around materials and resources and this is really building on the circular economy work that was done back in 2019 and is everything from uh exploring partnerships to um equity focused repair and reuse out at 6400 arapaho in terms of an innovation hub and all the way to some of our regulations around deconstruction and redevelopment

[167:02] the last area is around ecosystems and this is really um the work that we've been doing around carbon sequestration both on agricultural lands and open space lands uh and um a lot of kind of the recarbonization work that that we've talked talked with and this will include some of our work with uh with usdn as well so sam i saw you raised your hand you want me to pause here uh for questions yeah if it's okay it's really quick um when we're at the retreat i'll have questions about cmap and the timeline and then the other thing that i will probably ask at the retreat is where we are in the iecc cycle i know that we adopt energy codes every three years and given the building electrification requests we're getting i just will have questions about the iecc timeline so just wanted to flag those that's great that's really helpful thank you

[168:01] anything else related to climate initiatives mary thanks for noticing my hand i was trying to raise my electronic hand um one of the boards brought up the question about the collaborative um or it was open space that brought up the collaborative effort going on in um addressing the um agriculture land so um anything that you we'll ask that question to see how that can be circled back over to council to get an update i we unders as we understand that it's kind of an organic group but to get information on the occurrences of that got it thank you yep anything else on this slide council okay

[169:01] okay for the city manager's office the top priorities are coveted response and recovery coordination the police oversight implementation and continuing continuing the work around racial equity the last two are around integrating the city clerk's office and central records into the department so we've moved um the city clerk's office and central records back into the city manager's office and so we're going to do work around improving some of those processes and and integrating those teams and then of course work around supporting the onboarding process for a new city manager whoever that is that is hired so any questions on city manager's office priorities yeah i'm just going to ask a quick question now just because i don't know where it fits in but anything related to ballot items that uh are brought up by

[170:00] council what does that technically fit under that's a great question adam and actually as as we go through you'll see in a few different departments where potential ballot items might pop up so it kind of it across the board depending on what the focus area of that ballot item might be perfect thank you okay mary yeah thanks um one one thing that came up with um some of the boards in their letters um was and i've had conversations with other council members as well on this is um onboarding of boards and commissions um so just to um kind of chat about where that would happen and um what kind of changes might be planned on that so um yeah just uh just a question about where that would fall if that were to come up at the retreat i think that'd be a great conversation

[171:00] to have at the retreat uh and whether we think that's a a friday process conversation or a saturday work plan conversation i know i've i've chatted with several uh of our department directors uh around that topic as well okay all right anything else okay okay next is uh communications and engagement top three priorities uh obviously continuing support related to cobit related messaging and and partnership and also what that really means for from a post-covet engagement standpoint the second is around increased support for inclusive and bilingual communication and engagement by the end of this year our plan is to have a language access strategic plan to continue to further this work as well as the um what have been the the equity

[172:01] connectors that are now the connectors and residents we're going to talk about that more on on saturday at the retreat and then lastly is completing the transition of uh the content on the city's website to uh to the new website and then updating our associated style guides related to that counsel any questions all right okay community vitality uh the economic and business response and recovery as we make our way out of covid is a top priority for community vitality and as council has seen this is a going to be a critical work area for this coming year the next is related to the access management and parking strategy implementation with the two areas for focus and this year being neighborhood parking permits and parking pricing and we have a study session on that coming up here in uh

[173:02] just a few weeks and then the third area is around our parking access system upgrades and efficiencies so both the the capital infrastructure as well as the uh the way we're able to help support our customers uh from an online standpoint is the the third area of focus for community vitality any questions or comments on that counsel all right oh aaron sorry took me a minute to find the button so uh what about i think community vitality has been dealing with ongoing code response along with like the the restaurant um sos program and the the shared streets and such like that so i guess that's that's all going to be bundled into number one right like with the consideration of like what we do with west pearl in the longer term we just want to make sure that that's where that's fitting i would see that's where it fits but yvette do you want to add more to that

[174:01] good evening council thank you for your question councilmember brockett um it does fit under those areas as part of a larger economic response strategy so those would be more tactical issues and we'll do that as part of a larger strategy around economic recovery with our alliance partners in the university and the light i would say that especially as it relates to the right of way and any permanent it really is something we have to coordinate with the transportation and mobility department and obviously um planning and pnds and those other functions would be involved there are concurrent programs related to this um but yes to answer your question great and i don't know if i get to make this comment tonight but i'll give it a try anyway that just fresh in my mind is that the question that bob asked tila about the transportation advisory board being involved in those questions so uh i just encourage them to be involved so they can be part of that conversation once we get there

[175:01] of course um we always collaborate and um you know we'll do a better job of actually working not only with staff but coming in person to listen to some of that feedback we are working collaboratively on this amps implementation project so i'd imagine that be more than possible and i don't want to leave out of course for all of this stuff that we'll be working with alliance partners and the community so it's a little bit more than just a tab but i appreciate not natalia's input but that that came from uh beverage and licensing as well i've been listening hard and looking to collect with everybody who's super interested in thanks so much event thanks thank you counselor oh i did want to say one i'm sorry heather i want to say one thing about the um the current program as it exists um and you council should expect to hear from an internal staff meeting before retreat

[176:01] okay fantastic thank you all right i don't see any other questions or comments from council on community vitality let's proceed okay um the facilities and fleet department the top three priorities first is alpine balsam implementation uh and continuing the work there uh implementing the area plan uh we've got an update scheduled for uh the study session on the 26th the next is the facilities master plan and continuing to move forward on uh our first ever facilities master plan comprehensive across uh uh all of our different facilities and i think our experience through covet is going to critically inform the way that we approach our facilities master plan which really feeds into the third priority which um is shown here under facilities in fleet uh but really actually um touches across every department in the city which is um

[177:01] what we're calling workplace transformation which is recognizing that as we come out of covid and and folks start to return to working in person the way we do that is going to look very different than uh the way it did before kovid um and adopting a more hybrid approach to our working environment um as council is aware um we have terminated the lease on some of our office space and so um the way that uh staff work in person for those that are currently remote will look different um and the way that our in-person workers uh are supported um that's part of the transformation work that we're underway on um and part of that will include physical changes to um some of our workspaces for our employees and so that'll be a big work effort for our facilities and fleet department preparing for uh when we get to uh actually start to return in person so those are the top priorities for facilities and fleet

[178:01] alright question yes i do thank you um chris on the facilities master plan will that come to council at any point it will and i'll welcome joanna korean our director of facilities and fleet to add more oh that audio is terrible you're a robot joanna right now no no oh that's like soul crushing audio joanna it's terrible well i'll do my best joanna to chime in and then we can correct anything here uh uh later but uh mary it will come forward just like all of our other master plans come forward and we started to um kind of scope how that would look

[179:00] and if council will recall we we did kind of a quick deep dive as it relates to the facilities at alpine balsam and now we've stepped back to the broader view and so um that project obviously due to covid uh we've we've slowed down a little bit but we'll be re-engaging on that work uh and we'll be updating council and i just don't remember exactly what the timeline is for that next checkpoint how'd he do joanna thumbs up fantastic oh no please oh thank you thank you thank you for trying joanna it's nice to see you cancel anything else on facilities in fleet fantastic all right carry on uh next is finance uh and top five priorities within finance for the net this next year the first is uh implementing our budgeting for

[180:01] resilience uh for both this current year's budget as well as um further integrating that into the 2022 budget development process uh and so um we've given council an update on kind of that broad framework uh and now it's time to move that broad framework actually into uh our budgeting process the next is around the um ballot initiative um known as no eviction without representation and the new tax that's related to that and creating the the mechanisms for that tax collection as a new tax the next is you'll see this in three different departments is the workday implementation which is our hr and payroll software this is a also known for those as a human resource information system or hris this is a software system that will support all of our hr and payroll processes so it's a really big

[181:00] implementation and something that will vastly improve our ability to to support our employees from a hr standpoint um so you'll see that as a priority in several departments the next is uh related to developing an underserved business program for procurement so actually um the planning board chair harman zuckerman mentioned this in in their letter um so this is um work that is underway um that was uh recommended as a part of our purchasing initiatives and and we're we've reached the point of getting ready to to implement this um to help support uh um some of our underserved businesses that are in the community and then the last is um the capital tax renewal or the community culture safety tax uh and so that'll be coming forward for uh a check-in and the financial strategy committee has been working on on this potential tax renewal

[182:00] sam yeah thanks chris um under finance at the retreat i think it might be worth touching on uh like you have a tax renewal here um i know that we'll be talking about library district and and uh i think juni hinted at the possibility of discussions regarding um how to fund human services um that that may be asked for from the community so the question will be is there a plan to look at revenue and how we can best collect that revenue i assume that the finance committee would be a place to start that conversation but one other question that i'll have is um we do everything based on sales tax with a little bit of property tax and are there structural barriers to having a conversation around the balance between property and sales tax

[183:02] so don't have to answer it here but when we're at the retreat that will be a subject that i want to at least touch on and hear a response to great mark how about you yeah um chris with respect to the newer tax collection we've had some previous discussion about being able to advance funds for rental assistance and eviction prevention support in advance of tax collection uh will that be looked at in the in the context of this item yeah and we we actually uh have an update scheduled for council on uh this initiative for the january 26th study session where we're we're going to be able to share more of those details of how we're uh being able to launch things before we have the text collection uh fully implemented

[184:01] okay thanks chris and adam yeah i'm just gonna follow up sam um it's pretty clear that based on the uh staff availability for the work plan in general that we need more funding and maybe taking a more comprehensive look at the ways that we collect taxes in boulder would provide an opportunity not only to sort of make sure we don't have these pitfalls like we had with covid but also increase our ability to get things done comprehensively so i think it may be worth having that taxation discussion a little bit more broadly during the retreat great great and if i could just colloquy obviously i agree um i don't know how much we'll get be able to get decided at the retreat right but for sure framing it up to go to the finance committee um and then oh oh i just wanted to state

[185:02] well we're on newer that one update that we got and as we'll just say it here from tom carr um was that at the first eviction court hearings that have occurred since the um i guess the courts reopened that uh the city was able to provide attorneys to represent um tenets so i just wanted to say that because work has already started on that and i only know about it because it came up at cac but i think that's good news and i'm sure we'll hear more about it on the 26th right chris yeah tom anything you want to add at this point yeah i should say that it went beyond attorneys we had uh other study staff there who provided help with rental assistance mediation uh there were eight people on the calendar and they provided assistance to all of them i believe nice cool and it's phenomenal yeah tremendous staff from the hhs department

[186:01] all right chris i think you can carry on okay moving on to fire rescue the first area for priorities for next year is related to advanced life support and patient transport um our our contract is up for uh a re-bid in that area and um this will continue to build on the the conversation that we had as a part of the um fire rescue master plan uh the next is related to um our regional response agreements for specialized response um so uh as council probably will recall for some of the more specialized response there's a there's regional teams so things like water rescue or technical rescue or wildfire and continuing to to work on those regional agreements the third area is around home wildfire assessments our wildland team has continued to do

[187:01] work and they have a goal for this year of at least 10 percent of the the homes that are in the wildland urban interface have a detailed home assessment related to strategies around wildfire risk reduction the fourth area is related to fire station three which council just saw the concept plan uh consideration for so that will continue to proceed forward this year and then the last area is the international association of firefighters local 900 their labor agreement is up for um for renewal and renegotiation this year as well council any questions on the fire rescue work plan items at this time all right all right moving on to housing and human services um the top priorities uh is

[188:00] the implementation of the ballot item um and what uh you'll hear more about here shortly in a few weeks on the initiative around keeping boulder housed the next is implementation of the behavioral health co-responder program that was funded in this last year's budget um so that'll be a big implementation effort to bring those services in house the next is continued work around ponderosa community stabilization uh and starting to move forward with um the completion of the infrastructure and now the moving into the modular housing construction and establishing a facility to be able to do that here in town the next is as was raised tonight the evaluation of the changes to the accessory dwelling unit ordinance um that were completed back in 2018 uh and we committed that we would do uh uh an evaluation on that so that is on the list for this next year uh and then continued work around

[189:01] reasonable regional housing strategies and the possibility of a ballot measure um related to this okay sam just chris on number five it seems like uh we'll touch on this at the retreat but number five is obviously something that needs to go into the finance committee thinking about how we're going to look at funding because we have both the short and long term and short means a ballot initiative this year or more so okay great cancel any other questions or comments on the hhs work plan items okay all right for our human resources department uh in addition to the um labor union negotiations for iaff we also have our two other labor unions up for collective bargaining agreement negotiations and that is with the boulder police officers association as

[190:00] well as the boulder municipal employees association so all three of those uh uh will have negotiations this year the next is around implementation of the city's new compensation structure and classification system for positions uh and uh then the last is the the work day implementation as as i mentioned before uh that you saw in the finance section okay counsel questions or comments all right fairly straightforward in innovation and technology um the first area of focus for this next year is uh what what's titled is the enterprise data platform design and implementation and what this really is is around in a city-wide data warehouse as well as uh kind of data management standards and so this is some of the foundational work as we continue to um

[191:01] to increase and accelerate uh much of our data work we've reached the point where we now need to kind of move into the next level of data data support and this will also be critical to some of the work that you've heard from chief harold from the police department and so this will be a key area the next is again the workday implementation um with the the three key departments being finance hr and innovation and technology the third area is related to community broadband and as council knows we're in the process of constructing the fiber backbone for the community and as that construction continues uh this year is the time to start having the conversations around uh once that fiber backbone is complete um what's next in terms of the next phase of that work and so that that work will start to kick off this year in terms of planning

[192:00] and then the last is around the continued transition of many of the applications that the city has uh as well as uh file storage from being on-premise storage to transitioning to the cloud so that's uh well not maybe exciting uh is part of that key uh you know um background and foundational work for uh supporting um that can the city's continued work council questions on those items all right all right in the area of library and arts the top five priorities include the library district discussion which will be coming forward this spring the construction of our new north boulder branch library the next is an item you did hear about tonight as well um related to public art permitting efficiencies um and being able to have clarity around on both how

[193:00] public art is regulated in public spaces as well as the all the aspects related to permitting also within arts and culture related to the first phase of public art around alpine balsam and the the community engagement related to that work effort as well as continuing um uh the work related to um the covid pandemic and recession relief for local artists so that initiative uh will continue through this year as well rachel yeah just a question um the the library board and commission representatives advocated for us to make sure to prioritize the library district discussion and lift that back up i just wanted to make sure that looks like it's already happening it's already on our i think sometime in quarter one it's in a meeting so that doesn't really need any advocacy from council is that accurate that's correct it's scheduled for a

[194:01] study session i believe february 23rd uh and then uh that would come back for a public hearing i think we have it penciled in for april okay perfect thanks i helped you with that one sorry i wasn't supposed to be a mute i i raised your name all right go ahead chris all right yeah for municipal court uh as council heard um we received the um community court grant for implementation of a community court so that will continue to be a key initiative for from union court this next year okay all right moving on to open space and mountain parks uh all five of the the strategies uh or i should say priorities for this next year are related to the new open space and mountain parks master plan and the key strategy areas so the first is around taking care of what we have

[195:01] so that includes the work around maintaining and stewarding the open space system uh and that that includes things like um forest health and fire mitigation um to addressing issues around a new zealand mud snail that's been discovered in south boulder creek and irrigation infrastructure on some of our historic agricultural structures and major maintenance at a few trailheads the next is around preserving and restoring important habitat blocks in corridors and so this is both things like the tall oat grass control strategy in the south part of town to improving habitat for amphibians and fish and wetlands to including some of the areas around social trails in the system as well as improvements to the gun barrel trail complex

[196:00] the next is around reducing the trail maintenance backlog um and there's a few key areas that we're gonna focus on this year that include uh the royal arch trail reroute um and as well as the repair and and construction for the anemone trail loop um so that's that strategy the next is related to agriculture and prairie dogs and soil health and resilience so that will be continuing implementation of the direction that council gave in that area and then the last area is around the strategy of welcome diverse backgrounds and abilities and so some of the work around this is the long-term planning process for the fort chambers poor farm property uh and then our continued leadership and and engagement in terms of tribal relations as well as then work around connecting youth and diversity of youth to the outdoors through um some service learning

[197:00] opportunities as well as improving the hiring practices for our junior ranger program to try and increase the diversity in the workforce of our junior rangers so those are the the initiatives for open space and mountain parks sam yeah um chris i was wondering if cu south should be on here i'll let you take that back to staff and think about it but it seems like it's a big issue that's moving forward and it seems like open space and mountain parks has a park to play in that yeah i appreciate that sam and it's actually part of what we wrestled with when we were putting these together kind of the ask that we put out to departments was identify your top three to five priorities and some departments included those priorities that are also identified as a top council priority and key action um and included those on the list and others um because that was already on the list they they added the kind of the next top priorities um so i know that

[198:00] that obviously is a priority that's there uh and we're happy to chat about it more as as we get to the retreat thanks any other questions all right okay for parks and recreation top three priorities the first is the master plan update that you just heard the kickoff for um so that will continue throughout 2021 and into 2022 the next area is is around responsive and equitable service delivery so this is really focusing on as we restore and um continue to create services that can be delivered uh safely during covid and then as we come out of covid um how do we make sure that we're being responsive and flexible as well as equitable in in that service delivery the next area is around resource allocation and so again as parks and recreation being one of the areas that was most significantly impacted by covid

[199:02] as we start to restore services how do we do that uh in a um uh in a resource allocation way that um continues to stay consistent with um the equity goals of the department as well as those that can be aligned with the current staffing levels of the department i don't see any questions on that item so next okay next is planning and development services uh and the east boulder sub community plan use tables and standards and community benef benefit and site review criteria being top council priorities are are on the list for planning and development services the next area is around the pnds business improvements business process improvements as well as the pud rectification project together these are are kind of known by

[200:01] by staff as the big project which is this is really the work um to take all of the the analysis the recommendations from the insights and implications report um from tipton and starting to now make the on the ground improvements to on the department's processes so this is a critical area of work for uh for the department and then last but not least of course is um parking code changes that have been uh a topic of conversation at the last few retreats uh and uh how that uh work will continue to move forward in support of on the the amp strategy that we talked about earlier sam um so chris thanks for all that uh number two use tables and standards what i saw in the memo was that there's a concept of doing a few different chunks of the use tables uh and so maybe

[201:01] at the retreat we can talk about what those are and what might get done this year what might get pushed off but it seemed like there was more granularity to that yeah great okay rachel yeah just um in keeping with sam's last question about c south for uh open space it this one clearly is including some current um work plan items east boulder sub-community planning use tables and i i think this is the year that we're doing annexation so i'm just curious why c south is it on this list i think that's a a fair question and similar to sam's question it is one of the top council priorities so it is a priority and uh jacob and i had a conversation around uh can you go past five can you have six uh and uh so we we felt like since it was a council priority identified already that uh he didn't we didn't include it on the list for for pnds even even though it it

[202:02] is kind of on the list well and they're including other ones that are already on the list so that that there's a little disconnect there for me got it creative accounting all right mary um chris on the big project um i remember that kicking off last year and in terms of how that's been affected by covet is that on track off track um yeah how much progress has been made yeah i'll uh invite jacob to jump in and share a little bit more detail on that and the timing thank you chris um could uh could the council member repeat the the question about which item that was the big project oh right of course so um this is a very significant project which entails a number of changes to internal processes um that ultimately are going

[203:00] to to benefit our many customers as well as give clarity to the roles and responsibilities of staff and this has really been going on for over one year so far in coordination with uh with tipton our consultants and the projects right now the project right now has been broken down into a series of sub-projects that are beginning implementation and this next year 2021 is what we are referring to as a bridge year that will ultimately lead to implementation of the vast majority of these items so by the end of this calendar year we expect full implementation of the big project with the pud rectification project being the one with perhaps the longest timeline thank you for that jacob that's that's good news um yeah appreciate it fantastic cancel any other questions all right i'll just give you a shout out for the clever gaming of the big project well done

[204:01] you know i i kind of like it too you know sometimes you just gotta call my cousin it is it's a big one so uh moving on to the police department the police master plan update is a top priority for for police as well as continuing to work around accreditation and a lot of that includes the more of the detailed work around policies procedure guidelines the next area is around homelessness and encampments and again we're having that conversation some of that conversation next week and then uh the last areas are on technology integration and the data portal development and and uh i mentioned some of that before but uh for um police uh specifically and and chief harold has talked about that in in her last update but this is really around um being able to have a more detailed and real-time understanding of things

[205:02] like traffic data crime and disorder issues um having the ability for a spatial analysis capacity within the in within the department and and real-time dashboards for both the department and the community uh and um so this will be a big area of work that'll continue throughout this year rachel so i'm a little bit um maybe concerned or confused about having homelessness and encampments fall maybe it's on other slides and i don't remember it but just on the policing slide i don't remember if it was under hhs um you know we're looking at creating a utilities department staffer to be sort of in charge of reclamation i think of public spaces and there's a lot of concern of about over policing as hrc said so it just it strikes me that we have homelessness and encampments under policing and maybe nowhere else and

[206:00] just wanted to flag that yeah i appreciate that and um as we've tried to identify in each of the priority areas for many of these they involve lots of other departments in the city uh and so uh i i'll i'll take back to the team you know that note that you've made of just how does that relate to uh the the work of other departments sam i agree with rachel's point um on homelessness and encampments it probably does belong here but also somewhere else so how we do that and i just wanted to mention police oversight i don't know that it belongs here because it's in the city manager's office but that is something that's ongoing related to this so that's kind of a similar thing where if people were just looking at this they wouldn't necessarily catch police oversight which is somewhere else so i don't know how we want to do that but it applies to

[207:00] both homelessness and the police oversight okay anything else anything to add on that maris no i uh fundamentally agree and um we could we can put them in a lot of different departments uh so i fundamentally don't agree fantastic thanks and and chris just it could be as simple as here saying also like under police number three also involves x y and z if it's cross-departmental and you just want to list it once it at least would help to reference the other places like police oversight too it's not a police initiative but maybe you reference something in where it's referenced so involves the police department as well under the steam manager's office so you got it okay next okay for transportation and mobility the first being a priority

[208:01] being around vision zero and continuing work around the vision zero innovations fund as well as um the neighborhood speed management program that you heard about tonight as well as shared streets and some intersection improvements the next area is around smart city implementation related to transportation i think we we may have sent i think it was a heads up that we sent related to a fairly significant grant that we just received recently um to continue to connect our signal infrastructure um to uh the fiber optic system to be able to start to then implement um the the smart smart signal technologies i think the official title is the main street advanced detection and monitoring equipment um but that will really i think um be a a key investment for this next year um related to that then is the next priority around infrastructure improvements um and some of the key

[209:01] projects that are happening this this next year are um work on the north stretch of broadway on the 30th in colorado intersection 19th street uh as well as protected bike lanes being considered along folsom um during the resurfacing project that's coming up this year and then engagement on uh future future projects and and the process for grant funding the next area is uh around what what we've kind of termed is keeping the lights on which is really the the core functions of transportation and transportation maintenance so things like snow and ice removal potholes traffic signal maintenance uh signal signage street sweeping um and um the key work that happens around the department in those work efforts as well as then are our continued coordination with partners across the region um like rtd as well as um the work around

[210:01] micro mobility and transit and then the last area is titled as kind of design the future which is continuing to implement the recommendations that came out of the public works assessment that was done with tipton um around process improvements within transportation and mobility uh as well as uh the organizational change effort that that you heard some positive feedback about uh tonight sam just a quick note um aaron and i got a little bit of a debrief on some of the um stimulus funding that might impact number three maybe it's worth 30 seconds to talk about what impact that might have on timeline and so on so right now sam are at the retreat no the retreat i'm sorry just when you went over that project list and if any of the stimulus funding is going to impact those positively it'd be just good to have counsel here at all

[211:00] right cancel anything else all right okay and last but not least in alphabetical order here is public works utilities and the top three priorities uh identified are continued work around the aging infrastructure and capital improvement projects for utilities our r3 utilities combined is 1.7 billion dollars worth of assets across water wastewater and storm water and flood some of the key projects for this coming year are continued work on the the barker gravity source water pipeline uh that helps carry source water to uh the treatment plant as well as replacement of the wastewater trunk sewers and the interceptor and the the interceptor is the largest diameter pipe that carries wastewater out to the wastewater treatment plant um that was exposed some significant vulnerabilities

[212:01] after the 2013 flood and as a pretty significant re-wrap project for the for that as well as the continued design and permitting for south boulder creek uh the next area is around the comprehensive flood and stormwater master plan update and that will kick off uh this year and will continue into next year and then lastly is uh it's time to update the city's drought plan um and this is uh how the city will respond in in those times when we experience significant drought and part of the focus on this update is going to be around how do we look at strategies for a more equitable response related to either water supply gaps or some of the financial constraints that occur so that'll be really the key focus for the update this year okay aaron

[213:01] so i don't have a utilities question but i've just been waiting for you to finish all of them to ask a more general question uh chris so which is that you know we heard from the the boards and commissions tonight and and a number of them are interested in in particular projects right and some some of them you know may start out quite small you know or require some leg work before it would become a bigger work plan item or get to council so you to what extent would we have the ability to request that some things go ahead and get referred to boards and commissions kind of as part of their regular work plan uh understanding that it would take some time to bubble up to us and and wouldn't have to necessarily impact the 2021 major work plan yeah aaron that's a really good question and it actually is it uh popped in into my head while i was hearing the discussion earlier tonight as well so i think that'd be a good thing for us to talk about at the retreat um and i tried to take some notes on some of those that i heard um

[214:02] and so between now and the retreat we can have some conversations uh across uh the team as well of um uh what were some of those things uh that make sense that could be referred to a board um that that wouldn't wouldn't at least initially be a significant work effort or those that may maybe um uh and those that council sees that might be really helpful in terms of informing uh future work plans as well great well yeah i'll just say that i'll be interested in taking that up at the retreat um i won't mention any specific ones right right now but with the thought that you know because they might explore something and say you know what there's not really much here and so it never hits the work plan or they might come up with a great idea or set of recommendations that would require some council action and then we could consider them at a mid-year or end-of-year work plan consideration meeting [Music] rachel yeah i wanted to kind of colloquy on

[215:00] that because that was a general question i had from tonight too is sort of how and and i brought it up recently about hab looking at um i think ordinance we were getting ready to pass so just generally how do we use boards and make sure that they're weighing in on topics that they're experts in i've heard a couple times tonight people have said like hey you all should look at blah blah blah and and it doesn't seem like we have a really good systematic way to ensure that boards are weighing in appropriately it's like um you know if they have to watch our meetings and and look at our minutes and stuff like that doesn't seem like a good system in place like somebody maybe i'll see it and catch it like we're trying to get them to to weigh in on things that would be helpful so um and as an example just while you're thinking about how to tee it up at the retreat like when the environmental advisory board was speaking tonight like i don't think i've heard from that board at all in my year and we every project we have or we do probably has environmental ramifications

[216:02] um we've talked about uh tab not weighing in on land use or planning issues unless they're invited like there's and yet they're probably you know so we hear from community cycles like hey you all should know like this trail could connect you know through that planning project and so it's like coming down to a community partner and that doesn't make sense so i'll be very interested in hearing about that at the retreat too and then a broader question maybe for heather or my colleagues um we probably all have retreat lists and last year you know we sent them in advance of the retreat and they were typed up and i realized this is an off mid-year retreat but i thought i saw something two years ago as as just a community member and wondering like what when are we going to sort of put together what we hope to see at the retreat or personally like things that we want to bring up i'm happy to take a stab at that unless uh chris or mary or bob want to take a run at it first [Music]

[217:00] any my crickets okay um so the way that we have structured the retreat on saturday uh rachel you all will have a um a presentation um in the morning about racial equity and how that uh going to show up in the council work plan so that's the the first thing there and then the rest of the morning before noon like we're just a half day um but the rest of it is about the work plan um so you'll have an opportunity then to share what you think our potential additions to the work plan if you have them um so a couple things about that one is we've been looking at a bunch of yellow and red circles um here in the top right of these slides so we'll need to be mindful about band staff bandwidth and capacity as chris alluded to earlier you know if if you have an idea that ends up being work for a red circle group we might have to talk about how to slow down or take something else off of their um their work plan and the thing that and chris alluded to this earlier as well that seemed to have

[218:01] helped a lot last year is when we asked you what your priorities were we didn't just invite you to share your general nouns um but also ask you to really think more specifically about what success looks like what's the outcome or the deliverable or the you know the progress that you want to see on that thing um so would love to have you if you're planning on bringing some suggestions for additions to the work plan to have you think about specifically what is the work as opposed to what is the noun and so we'll do that in the morning uh first thing after the racial equity thing and then we'll talk a little bit about i'll give chris and the rest of staff a chance to say hey rachel that's such a cool idea great news we're already on that in this way just like we did uh last year okay that's no one's on that that's a totally new thing um and then we'll talk about what success would look like again what's that uh what's the work there and then see if we get nods of five for adding things to the work plan is that roughly helpful enough i think yes that's all helpful information but in in last year and i think the year

[219:02] before uh people submitted that and it was put into like a you know one document that we could review before the retreat so that we kind of knew what everybody was going to bring up ahead of time and we had things kind of sorted into you know these five people want to talk about this aspect of transportation or whatever so that was a little bit helpful for preparing for the retreat and seeing kind of if several of us had items coming and i imagine it probably helped staff as well to be able to respond you can cross that one off because that's already being done or something like that so that was my question is are we going to do it in advance of the retreat give each other notice of what we're bringing i don't think that we had a plan for that um largely because as you said it's a media retreat and we're not anticipating a whole lot of additions um to the work plan i would look to mary and bob if if you want to given that there probably are some ideas do you want us to take a run at that same kind of an effort or other members of council if that's useful to you um you know i think the challenges what

[220:00] we don't want to do is create an environment that suggests that there's a lot a lot a lot of opportunity for a lot a lot a lot of new things and so part of the way we're you know driving the exercise is to not overly open that door given that as you've heard staff is doing a lot of things but bob did you want to help um yeah i guess i'd say if um if there are several council members who have new things then what you suggest rage will probably make sense to give get a list together and that listing not includes the nouns and the verbs but also what things you want to take off in lieu of the new thing um if there's not many council members who are wanting to and i'm not wanting to add this looks to me like three years worth of work that we're going to do in the next nine months um so um i i think maybe if there's only one or two council members who have new things maybe they can simply post it on hotline that'd be my suggestion maybe i'll pull cancel here in a minute and see how many of you have do things mary do you want to add something before i go to mark and aaron yeah i did and um

[221:03] the having been through some retreats and i i think some of us um will recall especially you heather will recall a few retreats even mid-year retreats where we were tucking in and squeezing in and there were just so many things that um folks wanted to add and i think that bob and i really try to set up the retreat in such a way that conveyed staff's ability to take on new projects and as heather said um watch out for the red and yellow dots they're mostly red dots at um in all of these slides so the things that could be added could be

[222:01] in my view really minor things um and um and then again it would have to be the the knot of five to add it and um but i think we need to be really really mindful of um staff's current workload you know and we always talk about the tipton report that comes up a lot and i think that here's an opportunity to um to live by the the the reference that references that we often make to the tipton report thanks for that mary all right let's hear from mark and then aaron and then sam and then i would just i'll do a quick poll of you and i'd like to hear how many of you anticipate proposing new additions um mark what are your thoughts well mike i have a question for chris which is apart from new additions to the work plan and keying on bob's comment that it looks like we've got three years of work

[223:00] for nine months are there items that you would like to see deleted from the work plan um simply because you're not going to be able to do them well given the resources and the stretched out nature of staff at this point do the goals that you have shown us tonight act actually represent what you are capable of doing for the next year or if you had your choice would there be a few that you would simply say put it off for another year sure i appreciate that question mark and uh i think what we've presented tonight is what we do anticipate as the top priorities in each of the departments for this year so it is what we're anticipating that we will work on recognizing that some of this work are our multiple year work initiatives um and this is obviously just the work that's in addition to

[224:00] um the kind of the ongoing operational aspects that the city does so um we've we've heard uh jane refer to this a lot in in previous conversations of there's kind of the 80 percent of the work that's the ongoing work of the city and then this is really just about the 20 of initiatives that come forward and rise up to a more of a policy level for council so um uh i will i will take that question that you asked back to the team as well to see if there is anything but uh this work plan that we've put together is what we do anticipate with our current resources uh what we can achieve and during the course of the year if it turns out that you've been overly optimistic about your capacity to do these things can we count on you to come back and and simply say you know we cannot proceed on the kind of pace that you're anticipating or that we anticipated uh because we are constrained yeah and i think that's part of the the

[225:00] um important open dialogue that that we need to have and i think a good example of that is what we did with kova this year uh back in may when we had that work plan check in and adjusted timelines for several of the projects or scopes uh or uh even put a few things on hold okay thanks and chris you're anticipating a mid-year um similar check-in on the work plan as well this year yeah if if that's uh council's interest um i always think that's at least helpful to give uh a mid-year check-in on how things are going and anything that uh especially for the key top priorities if there's any any changes uh or a little bit more of an update on on the timelines for those projects as they come forward for decision making okay fantastic aaron yeah well so just one thing that i wanted to mention is i i i totally understand that departments that have a red status you can't add new things on without them

[226:01] shifting other projects at the same time but my understanding was a few months ago that council uh agreed that we were interested in looking at occupancy limits and what uh changes we might make to those and that we were the council as a whole as the majority was interested in tackling that and seeing what modifications we might be able to make to that so um i didn't see it come out anywhere on on the the staff's priorities so one thing i do want to discuss at the retreat is whether we could um add that in as i thought council was interested in and uh delay or work that some of the other planning projects so i'll just put that out there for i'm interested in having that discussion just double checking chris that that was not an oversight that's not currently on the work plan is that correct it was not an oversight uh and we we would anticipate and look forward to a conversation about occupancy at the retreat

[227:00] and it sounds like maybe give some thought to uh if you're going to add it what would need to be slowed down or taken off in order to make space for it cool sam um i just comment on occupancy that i think one one of the things that will need to be feathered into that discussion is what would happen otherwise so that i'll just put that out there as a preview for that discussion but i wanted to also say that not everything that we might want to see done over the course of a year or two has to land in staff's lab so for instance some things can turn into ballot initiatives so that would be occupancy it could also be things around electrification where staff gives feedback or counsel gives feedback i would say another thing around what i'm thinking about for funding i don't necessarily expect anything to land in staff's lap at any particularly high work load level but i could see that being

[228:01] council work so in other words we have a finance committee and part of the idea for that committee was that it would uh work out and and think about and do some leg work on issues of this type so um i would say just thinking about initiatives that people want to undertake city staff is one route to get to those but other routes include our boards and commissions as well as our council subcommittees fantastic um now i'm thinking about maybe just to get to rachel's earlier question maybe there's a way to frame this so that it is a very focused conversation um rachel go ahead and then we'll heal from mary yeah just um kind of following up on on what uh sam just said i guess that when i asked my question about are we giving our thoughts in advance it wasn't necessarily that we would be adding huge things to the work plan it's you know i've heard tonight some people want to talk about the you know sales tax versus property tax and sort of the broad um

[229:01] economic structure um and funding of the city heard about advisory board roles hill occupancy limits that aaron just brought up we talked about um gun barrel being looked at for uh sub-community planning we talked about c-map and new build electrification so it just seems to me to be most efficient with the retreat we would want to know what all we're going to be looking at rather than getting it for the first time on saturday afternoon and then getting to the end of saturday noon and saying oh those are that's a lot of ideas and none of us have thought through it so i'm i guess i don't understand why we wouldn't have advanced notice of what we're going to be talking about cool mary thoughts on that or something else yeah um kind of to to to sam's point about feathering some information and i think it would be helpful for the occupancy

[230:00] discussion to know what the petitioners are thinking if that's going to come forward again that may have some impact on our discussion um if they're not you know whether or not they are whether or not they are affects how our discussion moves forward and what um what that work item may or may not look like i thought your question was going to be about feathering in and does that relate to tucking in which i think we agreed we weren't doing but maybe we are we're okay to feather but we're not okay to talk is that right sam no it's about getting information maybe it's just what i was saying for feather anne was information from the community to feather into our conversation uh new work items to feather into staff sorry overburdened love all right um so in order to get a sense of an answer to rachel's original question uh

[231:01] which we should get sorted out tonight i would love to see a raise of your visual hand if you're a member of council and you plan on suggesting um some additional things uh priorities or work plan items either for council for the boards or for staff little show of hands if you got a couple of couple of two three things one two three four five okay um i see five of you and just in the off cat chance that it does create efficiency they each have one that's five things but you each have three that's a lot of things so um uh chris maybe i'll come to you do you think it's most efficient to have folks send those to me so i can organize them in advance uh you see i love it when i haven't even finished the question he's like yes let's do that that sounds fantastic um and then i'll coordinate with you and staff to see if we want to do anything any any pre thinking or planning at the very least i can do exactly what rachel suggested which is just create some you know clusters of of like minded things and name them so that we know who to

[232:01] check in on those things does that sound like the right next step chris yeah i think that would work great okay cool and then for those of you who have them i really was interested in what sam said and you might just want to give some thought to not just what's your noun um but what's what's the work and if you if you want to suggest a way to get it done that that doesn't add to the to the um staff workload to you know kick it to a boarding commission have it be council work or whatever that is i would welcome any additional detail that you want to share um with those ideas uh mary yeah i just have a question about um these ideas and um does that and what we're going to send you does that include process changes like one of the things that we talked about um as the as part of the board and commission feedback was the idea of um onboarding for boards and commissions is that a work plan item um i mean how

[233:01] i just want some clarity around that so i guess what i would say is things that came up in your pairs i i don't know that we need to see those in advance um if you want to share them in advance i'm happy to if that's just if that's useful to counsel and it sounds like it might be to some just to see the list in advance i'm happy to have you send me that list in advance of the process items um otherwise i'm happy to have you all just share verbally what your suggestions are related to process changes um just from the survey responses that you all sent me the list there was not overly long it's fairly straightforward there weren't a lot of things there so in my mind for the process changes that we've already identified through the survey i think those are solid new things like onboarding of new boards and commissions mary that came up tonight maybe you want to add that into the list that you email me so kinda i guess is my answer to your question oh

[234:00] um here's what i'll say if it's on your mind and you want to make sure it's covered and the council knows it's coming at the retreat just send it to me i mean when in doubt give me more information than less i'll be fine um and then i'll sort it out for you and we can tackle uh tackle it at the retreat again the things to be mindful of is we only have a half day on saturday and some of it is already committed to the very important conversation of racial equity um so a whole whole bunch of bunch of bunch of stuff probably not the best plan um chris folks have given you some heads up on some questions they're going to have so we can prepare that and be fairly efficient about those things you all will send me your things again the more information you can give me is just all the better so we can try to be as as focused on these uh items as we can and then i had i just had a quick question um chris tonight several council members just on that list of the current priorities from the different departments had some suggestions like

[235:01] homelessness was only listed here and not somewhere there maybe you could make reference to this is also happening in you know coordination with that other department um i guess my question just in terms of next steps is does that doc does that powerpoint have a life after tonight and so it needs these these additions or is this just a clarification among us all here and with the community that these are cross-cutting issues that that that bridge departments yeah they are cross-cutting initiatives that bridge multiple departments and uh our our primary intention of sharing uh additional information on kind of priorities of each department was really um to to go beyond just the top 12 council priorities and show what some of the other things that are are coming forward um so i think uh the feedback that we heard tonight i think is helpful um if if we continue to display any of that information uh going forward i think we'll think about uh what's the

[236:01] best way to present it so uh it doesn't look singular in terms of one department only that sort of thing um so that feedback was helpful but i don't anticipate uh that powerpoint that we presented tonight to really have much of a life beyond uh this presentation and the retreat very helpful thank you very much um so the things that do have a life from tonight um going forward again are those specific things that folks flagged saying i'm going to have a question about this at the retreat um and so i would encourage um if you have follow-up questions for the council members who did who raised those things to make sure we can really answer it efficiently that you would follow up with them individually samuel who is on my staff who's been listening in he'll write our summary samuel i'll ask you to call out those items from the boards and commissions where they talked about issues they might want to lean in on uh either with council or with another board and so we can get those to staff and you can prepare some thoughts around that in advance of the retreat as well

[237:03] and i think those are the key action items so the only thing we don't have is a deadline for your emails to me with your things um the five of you who said you might have things um today is is tuesday um can you get under me by friday i see nodding nodding nodding nodding i could do sunday night fantastic let's have the deadline to be in my inbox at 8 a.m on monday morning and if you haven't thought about or written it down by 8 am on monday morning it can't be that important how about that sounds good cool all right um fantastic uh do you need me to send you an email um reminding you of the task or do you all got it in your head and you'll just send me the things i mean email's always helpful i leave okay cool all right i'll take care of that thank you for offering heather my pleasure um i just want you guys to have a great retreat and i'm happy to do whatever i can uh chris any last questions or thoughts

[238:00] for council in preparation on the staff side for the retreat no this discussion was really helpful fantastic and bob or mary any last things for council from the retreat committee before we um set them free no fantastic um then council thank you for a lovely conversation tonight i want to thank again all the folks from our boards and commissions who really brought some life um to what hasn't always been the most lively part of our pre-retreat conversations it was just excellent looking forward to hearing your ideas about all the things on the 22nd and the 23rd i will send you an email you will send me your ideas i will organize them as soon as i can after i get them from you and get them back to you so you can noodle on the things in advance at the retreat if there is nothing else i want to jump in here and say thank you to you for hurting the cats we are all cats we have our own ways of doing things and what we want to think about so appreciate you coordinating all this i want to say

[239:00] thank you to staff as well as the boards and commissions for all being here and for helping put together this overview which is super helpful to all of us so thanks to you heather and thanks to staff and thanks chris for putting it all together absolutely absolutely and sam do you need to formally adjourn us as the formal adjoiner of things i think maybe his study sessions over see you all next week fantastic have a lovely evening good night [Music] all together 200 french artists signed a

[240:02] letter in the parisian newspaper saying they're ready to be vaccinated actor lone bear wilson says they're hoping to set