January 19, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] take a couple of minutes here and and introduce myself and give some of the the priorities that that they have and then leave some time for for questions answers and some feedback um so I I came to RTD largely from the private sector this is my first public position so politics and public representation are certainly new to me um but I have started businesses run businesses that I've been hired into and worked at various levels of Technology leadership um I think like any entrepreneur I've had some things go fantastically wrong and some things go very well um and I've been always long interested in transit and in stronger more sustainable cities it's an honor to be here honestly with all of you in Boulder I commend you on on so much of what you've done in the city of of Boulder um I just strongly believe the United States could be doing a lot more to make

[1:01] our cities or communities and our towns stronger and transits at the very heart of that so I'm honored to be here I'm honored to be representing as Lynn mentioned I represent District I which is the rest of Longmont that Lynn does not have and and then Erie uh you know the part that's in RTD Broomfield uh and Lafayette part of Thornton and then some of unincorporated Boulder uh and weld counties in Adams County um I would say that some of the priorities that I have in joining here I think we have a lot of opportunities to really improve RTD moving forward I I commend my predecessors and and Lynn on bringing in CEO and general manager Deborah Johnson I'm very impressed with her and excited about the time of change um and in that one of my top priorities is to help Foster a culture of partnership I've heard many times I heard heard before being in it and I

[2:01] still hear it now that RTD developed a reputation of being an agency of no and we're a very large Transit area 2300 square miles 3 million people uh we can't do it all from one agency we have to be partnering with our our local cities and counties again I I commend Boulder on its involvement I think some of our cities have have more to do and they want to do more and so RTD I would like to see really build Partnerships we have a number of challenges in front of us and I think we'll only get through them by bringing our our cities and counties together with RTD um I also one of my top priorities is going to be bringing Riders back but not just back getting more Riders our CEO has been talking a lot about recruiting New Riders and I think that that's absolutely critical we have a lot of people who are full-time writers not necessarily by choice but we have many people that could be full-time riders

[3:01] that haven't been brought into the system and RTD can be a lot stronger the more Riders we bring in I think we can look at our past programs in Boulder and in other areas we've run what I would consider pilot programs that could be modeled for at the at RTD at large um and then finally we do have a many many challenges coming out of covid some of them started before covid related to our finances I want to see this organization become very financially strong it's not a short-term game there's no end point we're not trying to win a game we need to be here forever and uh RTD has a has areas of opportunity to grow and make sure we can accomplish all of our goals with the resources we have again I think a lot of that comes back to working with partners and building our system with more Riders so it's great to be here thank you for having me and certainly happen to happy to field questions and most anxious to hear feedback and ideas from you all

[4:02] great well thank you Lynn and thank you Eric for being here um I will invite questions from Council I have a few of my own and I will start with one and then we'll go to Mary um Lynn and Eric could you talk about the um the committee that's been appointed to talk about governance that Elise Jones is sharing could you talk about that and then I guess related to that talk about looking at the legislative session how RTD might figure into Transportation reform so that's a governance committee and then RTD in the legislature this year and then we'll get to marry sure um I will start with that I I as I said I represent the board to Troy Whitmore and I represent the board on the accountability committee and the accountability committee was appointed last July by the governor and the chairs of the legislature legislatures

[5:00] Transportation committees which are um who are Mac gray representative gray and Senator Faith winter there are 11 people on it and as you mentioned um our just recently former County Commissioner Elise Jones is one of the chairs is one of the co-chairs on it and they've split into three subcommittees Finance governance and operations and they're looking at uh there was a defined uh set of of uh issues that the governor and the legislature asked them to look at all of this is on both the the RTD website and the Dr cogg website Dr Coggins is facilitating uh the committee um and they're looking uh I think I think some of the main things right now um in terms of this legislative session they have recommended some legislation and it's all um changes to the RTD statute intended to allow more flexibility to RTD so for

[6:02] instance there was a requirement that our that 30 of rtd's revenues come from fare box recovery it was a not a very functional requirement anyhow because it defined farebox recovery as anything besides sales and use tax all our grants all of those things but they're the um the chairs Senator winter and representative gray will be carrying a bill that will be removing the fair box recovery requirement changing some of the parking requirements some of the Tod requirements um those sorts of things so it's kind of cleaning up some pieces that won't be major earth-shaking changes for RTD but could offer more flexibility as we go forward in the future and um so that's the main thing right now they have issued an interim report some of the other things they're looking at are structures as I mentioned to allow local governments to be part of some of the decisions the service decisions right

[7:01] now they're working on a poll that I think RTD will be working on with them and uh and promoting to see why people have left um what what uh you know obviously most of that is covid but what pieces of covet is it safety is it that they're not working anymore so we can kind to get a sense of how to bring people back and um uh working on their coming up with recommendations around fairs and passes and things like that so it'll be an interesting year they're scheduled to finish their work in July although they could extend it if they want but I think that's most of most of what they have going at this point thank you Lynn Eric do you have anything you'd like to add uh Lynn is certainly the expert in that area having been with the committee but what I would just say about it is I from my perspective it is going to catalyze um and contribute to some of the change I think that um I'm excited that that it's it's going to release some of the restrictions on things like our Fair

[8:02] recovery on charging for parking and then looking at at past fairs I I think that you know we've we've needed a catalyst to go look at uh why our fares are what they are they're they're high they're complicated um and I think that's we're going to see some uh new initiatives coming out of this which will be healthy excellent thank you very much Mary yeah thanks Lynn and Eric for being here tonight um Eric I didn't catch your position at RTD oh I'm the director of District I so I'm Lynn's counterpart but here on the Eastern side of Boulder County and then Broomfield county and okay great thank you sorry I didn't catch that sure and first of all I just wanted to say that I'm pretty excited to hear that about the flexibility that is um starting to um evolve at RTD and especially the idea of recruiting

[9:02] writers it's always that that was always sort of a resistance to doing that and um but my question is about what is the most significant thing that RTD has learned in this time of covid with respect to better serving Transit dependent writers most significant thing you have you want to go first on that one Eric you have a thought um I would say from from from what I know um it is highlighted um the inequality I think not just and I don't mean that necessarily in you know who's in what situation but who who are our full-time writers it's really emphasized who our full-time Riders are because different routes were impacted in different ways and I know that in the early days when we were responding you

[10:00] know this is universal cuts and adjustments don't work we had you know with the social distancing and with um you know the situation that we were in we were having operators report that their buses were actually more full um and that they were having a hard time with distancing and you compare that to areas where you know the the buses uh or trains as the case maybe were empty so I know that we learned a lot and and I maybe wouldn't say learning as much as a reminder of um who our full-time Riders are and that not all of our lines serve the same types of people and and I think that was an important reminder for us as we plan going for forward where we need to add or change service yeah I I would agree with that I think that um you know RTD has we've done a pretty good job of really so surfing serving our core and uh our essential workers and our Transit dependent I

[11:01] guess you know the next challenge is how do we address uh people who who we also want to bring back part of our challenge of course is to get people out of their cars and um that's a numbers game as much as anything but um I think that's right we have learned more about our our core writer in the process thank you for that and just a final a comment about um you mentioned going back and looking at your fares and fair structures and things like that and I would just um just put out there that a couple three maybe four years ago now um there was the past working group that met for a whole entire year looking at exactly that and there were lots of ideas and a lot of thought put into the recommendations that came out of that so um just a reminder that all that

[12:00] information is out there and to make sure that um yeah we don't do things over again that have already been looked at so thank you for being here again tonight thank you Mary and I'll just say in terms of the past program working group that uh that is a good reminder I'd love to talk with you some more I know that you sat on that um and I've talked with with several people um who were not all happy with how it ended up I think and uh this is a good opportunity to go back and look at some of the ideas that weren't accepted at the time and I think we'll be doing that great thank you I'd welcome that opportunity great thank you guys thank you Mary Aaron yeah thanks Lynn and Eric for being here and Eric it's good to meet you and good to have you uh on the board representing the area so appreciate having you around um so there's a couple questions one is kind of a conceptual one right so obviously uh Transit ridership is way way down um I used to ride RTD all the

[13:00] time haven't been doing that much because I barely leave my house um so what is your view of so we get through the worst of covid the vaccines are widespread you know we're getting back to kind of more or less normal do you see RTD getting back to where it was before or do you see it Landing in a different direction or when you look in your crystal ball what is the post covered future hold for RTD in your opinion you know that's a really good question and it's crystal ball that we're all trying to look at um RTD had launched reimagine RTD earlier and um you know people from from up in this area and uh and all around the district that were part of the the committee that was giving feedback on that we stopped the process for a while and I'm hopeful that the process starts uh in a little different way and and can really provide some feedback and and help us figure out what people are doing obviously

[14:00] commuting may look different um you know people may start going back to the office but not as much all of those things there was an article in the Wall Street Journal I think yesterday about how Transit agencies are having to rethink you know even rethinking um some of the Eco pass and all of those things which is of course a program that you know we've we hold dear up here and that I love but uh it needs to be able to work for people who may not be going into the office as much and those sorts of things I think we are in a good place I think that this is as I said before our new CEO brings a wealth of experience and a whole new attitude about looking at these issues at fairs and passes and service and and Partnerships and all of those things that I think will serve us well there are a lot of challenges we you know money has been an issue for a long time and we'll continue so

[15:00] thanks thank you yeah I would it's a great question if you find that crystal ball let me know I mean it's it's it is one of the questions here is is how quickly we'll come back and and to what you know what will we look like when we do I think from my perspective you know number one I think we've just learned how much we need to be engaged with the local communities with an area this large and so whether it's as outlined in the accountability committee as uh in that their draft report is Lynn uh alluded to earlier with having some Regional councils or you know regardless of what form that takes I think having some formal engagement of our local communities and planning is one thing we've learned as I mentioned before it became clear that you know our office our headquarters in Denver can't possibly know the characteristics of all of our lines and where the core and full-time Riders are so I think coming out of kovid we'll we'll see we need to increase that involvement and think a little bit more locally not necessarily

[16:02] smaller but more locally and I think the other thing I would say is with commuting speaking as someone from the the business community in the Tech Community I think we will see a lot more flexibility in some of the the tech jobs that we would see in Boulder or up north um but I think people will be returning to offices and I actually think there's an opportunity for transit in this if communicated well if people are driving less and commuting less to work uh you know we can look at the types of hubs and shared office spaces and flexible spaces and try to involve more Riders you know do does your family need to own two cars if um you know you're not commuting every single day or might you be able to hop on a bus line and make it to you know a hub three days a week so you know I think we have to think you know very carefully about how much we commit to changes before we really know that they're there but I also think there's opportunities for us to be Innovative

[17:00] and creative when we try to recruit new New Riders even if part of it's just marketing of hey if you've if you're on a 322 schedule with which some people are thinking of here take your three days and ride the bus rather than have a car well well thanks for that those thoughts I mean none of us know what's coming but you all are experts here so one more just targeted question about the future and then I'll be done um so as um as uh changes come uh Revenue comes back ridership comes back uh you know do you have targets for how to phase back in higher levels of service to replace some of those tough Cuts we've had areas like Boulder Junction and Gun Barrel is it kind of a day by day planning thing or do you do you have a vision in mind about how that's going to ramp back up the division is um being addressed very very quickly right now you know the the money we we learned we would get money in December but we didn't know until just in the last couple of weeks how much

[18:01] um the uh the new act the new covert Relief act is is basically intended for operations and payroll it's intended to keep our employees on so we had laid some off and we're bringing them all back on the front line workers um I and to do that I know that uh staff has been working on you know service and and how we we may need to do another service change even before the the usual May service change um those two that you mentioned are are on my radar for sure the um Boulder Junction um you know it's a it's a wonderful Tod transitory in the development but um as staff says from time to time there's not much Transit there anymore um so that um I hope we can change that I know that Heatherwood has um had some issues and I'm hoping that we can we can work something out there it may be that some places like that would be better served by a flex ride program you know

[19:01] something smaller than the huge buses and I think that that may be part of rtd's future too is how do we look at um you know other options Boulder County has had started a taxi Voucher Program up to lions because during the pandemic the Y bus was completely cut between Boulder and lions and Boulder is going to share the cost of that taxi voucher program this year so I think that's a good example um of uh the kind of things that we may see more of out of our TD in the uh in the coming days hey thanks for that great well um so to other council members uh please hit me up in the chat if you'd like to ask a question we need to get our directors out here shortly so they can go to the Lewisville city council meeting but I do have one last question it seeing no other council members there

[20:01] has been some talk about changing the RTD board so some of the conversation that's been around appointing directors and then a parallel conversation around that has been board size I think you guys are 15 now and there was some questions about going to a smaller number so do you have any like preview for us where you think those conversations might go I'll take a first shot too here um uh the accountability committee has raised it their they have not reached any conclusions or or they've talked about various options smaller numbers um adding some at-large members which um I guess it remains to be seen I think that um people who've worked with RTD for a long time are lobbyists and others have said that last year's board was the best board we've had in years and I think we

[21:00] got great new members this year so I really feel like we've got a good group right now and and uh you know we're making the changes that need to be made one of the big changes that needed in my opinion and the opinion of many others to make was to go to smaller committees we've been doing anything with Committees of the whole and it's very hard to delve into issues and really get into the nuts and bolts of you know how do we make our fares more affordable and more consistent and less complex for instance if you're meeting with 15 people in a committee in a you know a formal setting so I think in the next in the very near future that we'll be going to smaller committees and we'll be able to really uh really make be more effective that way I can't give I don't know where we'll end up that's uh the accountability committee is you know a big piece of that one okay here can you last thoughts yeah I mean I I you know I I would Echo what Lynn said

[22:01] it everything that I've heard on the matter is it's it's just early with that and um that the the bigger Focus has been the committee structure both you know what the Committees are how they're sized their governance and um the side the membership so that's that's probably what we have the most insight to and that we'll see some movement on the next couple of months I think but yeah agreed with Glenn that the overall change to the board is premature and down the road a bit very good well I want to thank you both again Lynn and Eric for being here with us it's uh RTD is really important to Boulder obviously and so you're always welcome to update us if there are big things coming send me an email send staff an email and we'll schedule another one of these updates so enjoy your Lewisville city council meeting thank you so much for having us bye take care bye-bye okay quick note before we move on to our

[23:00] next item um some of us don't have a raise hand button um with this particular Zoom update and the flavor we're using tonight I don't have one for instance Mary I think had one because she raised her hand successfully so you can either chat to me directly in the chat window or if you're using a Microsoft PC it seems like alt y we'll raise your hand and if you're using a Mac it looks like option y May raise your hand I see Aaron's hand just went up and down so maybe these things that Chris's hand just went up and down so okay very good so you guys know how to do that and with that I will turn to the next visitor guest that we had tonight Patrick O'Rourke and maybe some others from the University of Colorado to update us on the plans for the spring semester Patrick so thank you mayor Weaver and uh thank you to all the other council members um I think I was last with you in

[24:00] November and it's nice to see you in 2021 and hope that your New Year is off to a good start the last presentation that you heard was actually really interesting uh for us to hear as well because RTD is one of those Partners in the community that certainly had to respond to covid as has CU and I'm really happy that we have a chance to be here tonight to update you on our spring plans and how we want to continue to be a covet aware campus and a good member of the community we really appreciate the partnership that we've had with you with the city managers with our partners at Boulder County Public Health and the other agencies in the community because addressing covid really has been a community effort so thank you for giving us that opportunity um we began our spring semester last Thursday and we did it remotely

[25:02] um some of our students and families were disappointed that we had to start remotely but we made that decision because of where Boulder County was in level red on the state covid dial back in November and December being at level red meant that not only were the infection rates in the community high but the way that it works in terms of the restrictions both on what the learning environment is as well as for personal Gatherings it would have meant starting with restrictions that aren't conducive to a strong student and educational experience we work closely with Boulder County Public Health last fall to address the outbreak in the 18 to 22 year old population saw those infection rates normalize when compared with other age groups in the community but that when those orders were placed in in the fall it had disruption in our community and I know it caused the community itself

[26:00] concerned our goal is really to be able to resume in-person instruction and proceed into the same uh into the spring semester without the same degree of anxiety and certainty that we saw both as a campus and in a community in the fall semester it was shifting back and forth from different types of educational experience different expectations about what was permissible both on and off campus that I think really created some frustration and anxiety when Governor polis moved Boulder County to level Orange in early January we made the decision to stay with a remote start to the semester because we believed it provided opportunity for any post-holiday cases and the spike in cases to be addressed the infection rate in Boulder is currently below the 350 per 100 000 that would ordinarily be the rate for level orange which is great and we hope that the infection rates will

[27:01] continue to Abate in the weeks to come before we return students to the residence halls and being on campus and also to the in-person instructional setting we are looking forward to seeing our students when they're able to resume in-person classes on February 15th not all of our instruction is going to be in person obviously as long as we remain on the coveted dial it means that we're going to continue to be offering a good percentage more than 60 of our classes are going to be either hybrid or remote we don't have the ability to offer large lectures due to the social distancing guidelines but we also know that our students value the personal interaction with each other and with their faculty and plan on being able to provide an improved on-campus student experience in mid-February when we are able to offer those in-person instructional offerings

[28:01] as we work to keep the infection rates low we will also try to provide a stronger student experience we learn many things last fall and one of the things that that we found is that we actually did a a good job of being able to pay attention to the physical environment to be able to provide PPE to be able to provide ventilation in the classrooms and to think about social distancing where we are continuing to work is being able to think about what is the overall experience for our students to be able to look at how we partner with are the other agencies in the community and to improve that experience with more opportunities for engagement as we move forward on February 15th we're going to shift to that mix of in-person hybrid classes as well as remote classes students will be able to begin moving into residence Halls by appointments beginning February 7th until then we've encouraged the students to remain at home until their

[29:01] residence hall move-in date or shortly before their in-person classes begin any of the new and returning residence hall students are going through a check-in process which includes a covid-19 monitoring appointment before they return to the residence hall and we're also going to be making some other changes as we move forward into the spring we've changed our calendar somewhat um including that we have not uh well we've decided not to hold uh the 2021 spring break uh to be able to prevent travel um and the type of gatherings that would bring people around the country into into contact with each other and then having them return to their campus communities our traditional spring break has been replaced in favor of starting the semester a little bit later than we originally planned and then adding some midweek break days during the course of the semester those days are on February 17th and March 25th in which there's no

[30:01] classes but the university itself will continue to be open we're also continuing to expand our testing capacity and requirements and that we're going to continue to have measures such as face coverings on campus reduce density in buildings social distancing in the classroom and in-campus buildings we worked with Boulder County Public Health over the course of the last semester and found that the classrooms were a coveted safe environment faculty students and staff who will be attending educational programming or work on campus will participate in the campus monitoring programs we consider their participation those programs crucial to avoid having further Public Health restrictions and the type of environment that we ended up in last semester um in-person events and Gatherings really are dependent upon Public Health guidance we've already announced that we won't be able to do an in-person

[31:00] commencement in the same way that we traditionally have in the in the spring we can't bring together people um at Folsom Field hold those large type of gatherings and as we move forward we're going to be mindful about what the public health requirements are and we expect our students faculty and staff to continue to comply with public health orders and our own campus policies as you know we unfortunately had to suspend students last semester for behaviors that were inconsistent with public health orders in the community health we don't take those actions lightly and we want nothing more than for our students to be able to succeed and to advance them to their degrees but we do need them to abide by public health requirements we know that there will be instances where students don't meet our expectation and we're working with the Boulder Police Department the cupd as well as student conduct to respond whenever we're learning of those behaviors that pose a risk to the community that we think this offers us the best

[32:01] opportunity to keep infection rates low and offer the best opportunities for students to have increased social activities and student programming throughout the course of the semester and hopefully as coveted cases continue to abate one of the things we also know is that the campus is being asked to be one of the distribution point for vaccine when it becomes available to students faculty and staff right now we've received a very limited amount of vaccine uh that we've provided to our health care providers and those people who were in that group 1A we're beginning to look at our group 1B population which includes the population over 70 but the important thing for people to know is that it's not going to be at the point where a vaccine will be available for most students faculty and staff for probably several months down the road are general student population is in that vaccine group three which is really

[33:00] looking more towards the late spring or early summer when they'd be eligible based upon the supply of vaccine we've learned a lot of things and we use that knowledge as we improve the student experience this semester we're also going to be updating our covet dashboard on a regular basis we've reset that to be able to display the data for the spring semester we're going to continue to have access available for the fall 2020 semester if people are interested in viewing that but we really want to provide meaningful real-time information about where we stand and how things are going this semester you can easily find the dashboard by searching for dashboard at colorado.edu and then the last thing I'd really like to do is turn the presentation over to Jennifer McDuffie Dr McDuffie is leading our new pandemic response office last semester when covet first began to

[34:00] impact our community we really used our emergency response mechanism to be able to guide how we would uh look at things on the campus and in the community but we recognize now that covet's going to be part of our experience not just this semester but in semesters to come so Jennifer's leading a team that is looking at our whole response including vaccine testing contact tracing isolation and quarantine mental health and other support for the community she's the point person who's going to be working on a day-to-day basis with Boulder County Public Health epidemiological teams and we're going to continue to participate in the multi-agency structure to address covet challenges both on campus and in the community we're really fortunate to have Jennifer with her expertise leading that team and with that I'll turn it over to her so she can provide you with some further updates about what we're doing and what our program are going to be so Jennifer thanks for for joining me today

[35:02] thank you all for having me and thank you Pat for the introduction uh good evening mayor Weaver council members and members of the community I'm really excited to be here and humbled uh for this honor I really wanted to talk a little bit about the pandemic response office um as Pat mentioned we were hoping to move from that emergency Focus to um and operations that's integrated in all things that we do some of the responsibilities will include planning policies protocols that support prevention and Mitigation Of covid-19 leading the containment efforts that Pat mentioned as well as overseeing Logistics and operations when our students move in or transition out as well as any kind of containment strategies that are needed we're hoping that we can identify requirements related to technology

[36:00] facilities human resources and other campus functions with the objections of having a unified campus approach and then you know that approach needs to be actionable and data driven so we're very excited about the pandemic response office and the team I think that our partners on campus and in the community will help us align you know our procedures with local state and federal guidance we'll be coordinating as Pat mentioned with Boulder County Public Health the city of Boulder as well as the Colorado Department of Public Health and environment we think it's really critical that we're aligned as well as engaging in our academic Partnerships subject matter experts so one of the things I'd like to talk with you a little bit is what is happening currently as it relates to some of those containment strategies so in terms of testing Pat mentioned previously that

[37:01] we've spent some time expanding our capacity for surveillance and monitoring we have the capacity to test 20 to 25 000 people each week on campus through our surveillance and monitoring program and we are expecting that every person who comes to campus is able to get that surveillance and monitoring test again those results um and what we're trying to detect is if the covid virus is there and turnaround time for that testing is about 24 hours the other piece that we're looking at is this surveillance and monitoring coupled with our daily Health questionnaire our buff pass will allow students faculty and staff and like I said anyone on campus able to monitor their symptoms know where testing is and get those results in that 24-hour period we continue to expand diagnostic testing we've worked with that closed system

[38:01] agreement within Boulder County Public Health to have contact tracing and case investigation we'll continue to do that for anyone students faculty or staff and one of the things that we're really most proud of is our ability to expand our surveillance and monitoring to our families our immediate household members of CU Boulder faculty staff and students and so that's a really um it's been a really beneficial program for our Campus Community as it relates to vaccines I'd like to share just a few quick updates obviously we want to make sure that we align with anything that's happening with the state and local guidance working right now trying to Define that educator definition and working on how to support best the information that's being shared and how we distribute that to our campus

[39:00] Community we also recognize that you know congregate group housing was part of the earlier prioritization and now it's not and so Fielding a lot of questions and trying to come and make sure that our most vulnerable populations are able to get vaccine information timely and as appropriate I think it's also important to highlight what Pat said around vaccines we recognize that our campus semester has started and will be in person and so vaccines may not be readily available for students at that time and so making sure our prevention and intervention efforts as well as our enhancements are ready I want to share just a few things around the dial as of Saturday so I don't have the latest numbers from today but we did have over 400 screening tests completed and all of this is available in the dashboard 125 completed diagnostic tests through

[40:01] our medical services and 14 results from those diagnostic tests were positive we are not using any campus isolation space but do have space set Assad in as we did in the fall I think it's important as we look at what we're doing to really look at the semester as a whole we recognize that this will not be a problem-free semester that there are multiple things happening and evolving whether it's the variant or the changes with the vaccine distribution but I want you to know that our commitment is to be good partners and our hope is that we can meet these challenges with you and that we can solve these problems together we look forward to continued communication um and I look forward to working with you all more we are pleased to answer any questions that you all have at this time great well thank you Pat and thank you

[41:00] Jennifer for being here it's really helpful whenever you come and give us an update and um I know that we're hopeful to have a smoother semester this time than we did last semester so um appreciate all the work that you're doing to ensure that that's true I've got a couple hands up and then I have a few questions as well so we'll start with Mark Adam and Mary Mark okay Jennifer thanks for the briefing um your statement that CU has the capacity for 25 000 tests per week is obviously very impressive um are there any requirements for students to be tested uh yes so that's a very good point and and Pat do you want to speak to that or would you like for me to yep so uh Mark I'm sorry council member um thanks yeah we are communicating last year or this

[42:00] semester that our uh posture last fall was that we were encouraging people to to get tested we are switching that over now to saying that if you are going to be coming to campus for work teaching or instructional that it is no not just an encourage that you are expected to be part of the weekly testing protocols and that that's something that you need to do in order to be present on campus oh that's very encouraging thank you for that that's all I've got sample is muted but I'll just go ahead um Patrick my question I think is for you this is looking down the road a little bit once we're past the point where we have enough vaccines for everybody to get them do you anticipate that CU is going to require vaccination for all students um that and

[43:02] an interesting question and the first thing is that all of the vaccines are currently being done under an emergency use authorization band so technically they are classified as experimental most of the really smart people who are bioethicists say that it's not appropriate to ask people to to compel people to undergo something that is still considered an experimental therapeutic assuming that at some point in time that it will move Beyond being experimental therapeutic to be in uh something that is approved really what we're going to want to do is first and foremost talk to our partners um at the general assembly and to be able to understand what vaccine policy is going to be throughout the state how it's going to relate to K-12 how it's

[44:01] going to relate to higher education and try to to figure out what those requirements are going to be currently both the state law has broad exemptions that allow somebody to be able to exempt themselves from vaccine based upon either a personal preference or a religious objection and so we need to understand what the legal landscape is for us to then be able to make policy decisions once the general assembly has given us some guidance and see who doesn't supersede with their own personal rule set um any of those State guidelines or rules I just remember I think I had to be vaccinated for several things before I attended CU yep we do require MMR um but we need to really understand what the the landscape and the science is first before I could say this is the direction we're headed gotcha yeah I totally understand that

[45:00] there's still a lot of questions to be answered I'm just asking about General policy great thanks Adam Mary thank you for being here Patrick um just a question um there was mentioned that um testing has been extended extended to families of people that work at the University and I'm wondering what that looks like in practice so Jennifer can can backfill um but it's it's been cool um that we were able to do that really and because I can comment from my personal experience because I took my family up there and we had it done so anyone who has a buff one card which are the students The Faculty the staff that's your your CU identification you go up with your family members and you're the buff one card gets swiped

[46:01] when you when you arrive and then they link it back to the buff one card so that we can report the results back um as Jennifer said we're turning those around within 24 hours and if there's a positive that gets revealed it gets communicated to the buff one card holder and then can the person can get follow-up from there Jennifer did I get that right so the testing um happens anytime that the staff member wants to get tested themselves they can bring their family along correct we need to have the buff one card holder there to be able they're really the access point into the system because that's how we do our our tracking is that somebody comes in and swipes um and then they get their test tubes um submit them together and then we're we're off to the to the lab

[47:00] and the the um data that tracks that is applied to the family members that are tested as well or or is the data that's collected um limited to only the buff one card holder can you take that one I can uh Mary that's a very good or councilman that's a very good question um the data is actually individual laws based on who shows up with a buff one card holder so if you or in Pat's example were to come with two children and a partner we would be able to delineate the partner and the children so that if someone was to screen positive we could isolate or wrong word but we could reach out to that individual and let you know the test result thank you both for the answer that's all I have thank you Mary Rachel

[48:01] since it came up I just wanted to put a little um plug-in for when you're testing families like my son goes to CU so we went in a week or so ago for the test and like he could get information if his result was negative or inconclusive I think but we didn't my other son and I didn't so you don't really know if the test was performed yet or uh you know if it was a faulty test if you're a family member so type of thing for the community it's better if somebody knows that they took a faulty test so I just wanted to encourage you all to maybe give equal information to family members as you're given to students and and thank you for bringing that point up and even more importantly thank you for participating in the process and hopefully it was two to three minutes and it was very expedited um and we are working on the communication uh for that currently um the notifications are um only if there's a positive screening but we are hoping to expand and correct that per uh

[49:02] the ass that you have in the upcoming weeks awesome yeah it's great that it's available for family members so thanks for doing that and thanks for lifting that ask up great thank you Rachel so I have a few things here uh first I thought I would ask are you guys um pushing out to the students and faculty the uh voluntary exposure notification app yes um we have been pushing the voluntary exposure app through our communication sources and we're going to continue to do that as people make their returns got it yeah it seems like when they come back is a good time to potentially show them how to do that and it seems like a pretty painless it took me one minute to do so um and we recognize uh that it's one of those things that the the more people have at the greater the benefit to the

[50:00] community so um that's a that's a good thing awesome very good um let's see uh two more questions one um since three quarters of students live off campus and not on campus what kind of Outreach and encouragement is being given to those who may not come onto campus very often because they're doing remote learning so how how are you coordinating I've always admired the work that you've done on campus and it seems like our our difficulty was more about off-campus behavior and off campus coordination so I was just going to check in on what you have learned from last semester and how you're going to change your off-campus work this semester so we're we're doing some some things differently the first thing and I have to give a lot of credit to our dean of students JP Banks is that he's really working hard particularly with the Greek

[51:00] organizations to be able to address things going to them in order to be able people to to communicate behavioral expectations but really also to work on Partnerships so that we're not just banging heads with that Community but are trying to communicate with them and have them accept the responsibilities we're also going to do things like have mobile testing units that we can send out onto the hill so that it's not just those people who are coming to campus who have access to the test but that we're going to bring things directly to them and we're working hard to be able to increase our student engagement working with the hill Association and so we're trying to address this through a multitude of of mechanisms including also the student government organizations okay very good I appreciate that and one

[52:02] more question um as we move into the later phases of vaccination distribution to see you have any plans to host a site for the general public is there any conversation about as we move deeper into the vaccination distribution we'll see you be playing a role in the community as far as access Jennifer you may have additional information but so far the bcph is the agency with which were um working with has asked us to look at the CU population first there are conversations that um are happening but so far they haven't asked us to serve in that type of community role if they if they need our help though that's certainly something that we're we're open to to considering and trying to to support the community generally

[53:01] thank you Pat Jennifer do you have anything to add to that okay well super I don't see any other hands up so I will thank you again Pat and Jennifer for being here um it's always a pleasure to have you and we will probably reach out again in a month or so to see how things are going and see if we want to have another informational session for Council so much appreciated thanks and just wanted to put in a plug that on the agency coordinating meetings Chris meschuck is always there and and does a wonderful job of being able to represent the city's interest so that's been a really wonderful partnership too super great thank you look forward to a great semester thanks okay very good and with that we will head towards open comment um we are going to begin with a reminder of how open comment works and so with that I think I'll turn to Brenda

[54:00] hello my name is Brenda writtenauer I'm a member of our engagement team here at the city of Boulder and it's our pleasure always to help support the zoom facilitation of these meetings since we've entered this virtual space um so one of the ways we do that is by keeping our meetings safe by instituting some virtual rules you may have received some of these rules if you're on our open comment list tonight but we did want to go ahead and share them as well just to make sure everyone knows what's expected um and can everyone see that okay Sam yep I can great thank you um I'll just go over them quickly um we've been called to order um to conduct business of the city of Boulder activities that disrupt display delay or otherwise interfere with the meetings are prohibited the time for speaking will be limited to two minutes um and no one will speak and accept um recognized by our Mayor Sam Weber

[55:03] um and no one may speak longer than the two minutes allowed each person has registered to speak using their full name and we need your presence on screen to match that full name um I am seeing a few people who aren't um here yet who are on the list and I'm wondering if they might be here under a different name if so please reach out to me in the question and answer box and I can re-change your I can change your name for you to match the way you registered for the list and we will not be able to unmute anyone who has not given me their full name that matches the list no video is permitted other than City Council Members City staff and invited presenters um everyone else will participate by voice only again our mayor presiding will enforce these rules by requesting me to mute anyone who violates a rule um the chat function is disabled tonight

[56:01] but we do have the Q a box and that can be used for technical questions only I'm unable to answer questions about the content of the meeting but if you're having trouble with zoom or need me to rename you please reach out in the question and answer box and only the hosts and individuals designated by the host will be able to share your screen at tonight's meeting thanks so much for indulging a few moments to make sure that everyone who's joining us tonight is aware of these rules great thank you Brenda for that and with that we will turn to open comment each speaker will have two minutes and can speak on any subject that they would like our first three um signups tonight are Ron Depew Emma Goldman and Chris Hoffman we'll start with Ron John you should be able to unmute okay this is Rod DePew uh how much is enough in to use

[57:00] insatiable appetite for growth so you hazards already has its sprawling 313 acre main campus 197 acre East Campus the main Williams Village towers and Williams Village East apparently these four Boulder locations Aren't Enough enter see you South the University's coveted 308 Acres off campus question Boulder rights should ask is see you when is enough enough is Boulder's real purpose and Destiny to be absorbed and subordinated to cu's never-ending growth evidently yes people living in South Boulder west of U.S 36 regularly experience acute impacts from CU it's impossible to get onto South Broadway or Baseline during CU home football games and Norm move-in move out dates traffic backs up for miles south bull rides are essentially trapped in their neighborhoods during these events forget about trying to go anywhere in town now the Table Mesa Majestic Heights Tantra Chautauqua and Martin Acres neighborhoods we will face even more

[58:00] traffic impacts from the theoretically proposed 2300 new residents of Cu South theoretically because CU won't disclose its specific plans with any certainty it could be twice that many residents the only viable routes between CU South and Main Campus already have major major traffic backups Martin Acres Majestic Heights and Table Mesa residents already cannot turn on to Table Mesa Drive or South Broadway during morning and evening rush hours of encarnist see you and multiple K-12 schools Morehead Avenue will become a high-speed cut through shortcut for students like for class the further absurdity is that the city and its tax paying residents will be expected to pay tens of millions of dollars to prepare the CU South site for CU to build there just say no to annexation thank you thank you Ron next we have Emma Goldman Chris Hoffman and Chris Allred Emma I don't see Emma here in the meeting

[59:00] Emma if you are here under a different name please let me know in the question and answer box um so we move on to Chris Hoffman Mr Huffman I am unmuting you okay thanks can you hear me yes great thank you very much Council uh I want to talk tonight about a um a graph that I sent you earlier that on the day I know that you can't see it but I if you have not seen it I think I can talk you through it it basically shows the years between now and 2050 and the percentage of attainment of renewable energy and it shows Excel with Boulder attached to excel starting here at 30 renewable and reaching 100 renewable by 2050. it shows at Boulder wanting to be at and committing to be a 100 renewable

[60:00] by 2030. it also shows the achievement uh or the goal of by Holy Cross energy of getting to 100 renewable by 2030. so we have Boulder 100 renewable wanting to be at 2030 and Boulder getting there actually by 2050. so I basically have three questions to get from 2050 which is obviously too far away to 2030 what is the plan how much will it cost and how much is Excel going to pay for so to get to a 100 percent by 2030 what is the plan how much will it cost and how much is Excel going to pay for thank you thank you Chris next we have Chris Allred Roberto caccia and Roger Walker curse good evening can you hear me yep

[61:02] hi this is Chris Aldridge team for Rocky Mountain peace and Justice Center I'm speaking tonight regarding the Rocky Mountain Greenway our neighbors in Broomfield and Superior have both unanimously opposed this project due to the public health risk Boulder Valley School District was the first of seven school districts to ban field trips to Rocky Flats why has Boulder City Council yet to speak out against this project please join our neighbors stand up for the precautionary principle and withdrawal the information packet from the city staff failed to include several important points for example one not a single map of the contamination at Rocky Flats a transparent well-informed process should provide maps to show a point of reference for contamination in the area two the packet neglected to mention the extremely high reading of 264 Pico curies per gram found on the Eastern side of Rocky Flats in 2019.

[62:02] three attachment B of the information packet States the city insists on a complete and thorough analysis in accordance with the National Environmental Policy the council should be aware that there are currently two lawsuits against U.S fish and wildlife service regarding the new process at Rocky Flats one brought by Community groups including rmpjc and one brought by the town of superior plaintiffs claim that U.S fish and wildlife did not abide by NEPA and both lawsuits still in litigation for the information packets States on page nine cdphe is available for questions the council should be aware that cdphe operates under conflict risk they receive funding from Department of Department Department examination at Rocky Flats it is the father in the hen house see equal time must be given to

[63:00] Independent scientists as do as as cdphe in a study session thank you very much for your time thank you Chris next we have Roberto Katia Roger Walker and Wendy ropeman Roberto good evening council members can you hear me yes Roberto gach University of Colorado I am speaking tonight regarding the uh Event Center restaurant at the boulder Reservoir I'm very concerned for three reasons safety this is longer designated bike route I bike there often and I'm very concerned about uh the safety of bikers like me it would be alcohol served to people who will then drive along a bicycle route second concern is noise and light pollution this is not a big restaurant this is going to be a noise Event Center at night making music loud music with

[64:00] lights and then of course the third concern is traffic and parking I have a few questions to the council members first of all is the sheriff aware of this project and the potential drain resources to manage these potentially high traffic place is there a plan to manage traffic parking and potential DUI enforcement do we have enough manpower to handle this and who's gonna pay for this all of the the cost to uh the increase uh need for uh traffic and police enforcement the second set of questions is on the license was the concession granted and lease signed under the belief that this would be a day you use restaurant for families instead of a place with bar and booze and late music and loud and the safety of people potentially drinking and then trying to swim in the reservoir the ALCO license is also a problem

[65:03] the person I think applying to for this restaurant has had a like or license violation and has to appear in front of the liquid board actually tomorrow I would recommend and encourage all of you to log in and listening thank you for protecting the community thank you thank you Roberto um it looks like I've been informed that Emma Goldman has arrived who is scheduled to speak second so we'll go ahead and Slot Emma in Emma you're up foreign I saw her name and now I'm not seeing her name so perhaps she has a connectivity trouble apologies that's fine then we'll move on next to uh Roger Walker Wendy Brookman and Christy Russell Roger

[66:03] hi good evening um thank you Rodrigo for your comments I'm also speaking tonight about the event center at the boulder Reservoir um specifically for my about my concerns for the extended hours past Sundown to answer one question Rodrigo posed I did learn this week that the sheriff has just now learned about the event center and really had no idea this was happening so he is a bit unprepared at this moment for to take this on especially since they're short staffed um the reservoir is and always has been set up for day use uh there's staff there during the day lifeguards and other supervision but once the sun goes down everybody clears out and it's closed for the night the reservoir is not set up to run at night there's no night staff or supervision there are a few to no lights anywhere inside the

[67:00] reservoir I'm looking there right now from my house across the street and it's pitch black the entrance parking lots and there are no street lights along 51st Street which is the main artery to go to the reservoir this presents a major safety challenge in my opinion to try to keep things safe and under control after dark no one is there to prevent anyone from taking a night swim after several drinks and potentially drowning or wandering to other parts of the reservoir to hang out continue partnering partying or even spend the night on the property concern for people's safety in the dark parking lot as they head out to their cars or people wandering into unlit areas um the other thing that happens when the Sun goes down a whole ecosystem of nocturnal animals Comes Alive owls start hooting as they begin their hunt coyotes foxes and bobcats come out of hiding and

[68:02] if anybody comes into their domain some of these animals May attack our local naturalist experts and I are very concerned about the impact of extended hours noise and human movement we'll have on these animals which is all part of our beautiful world out here my biggest concern however Roger your time is up sorry okay thank you yeah uh next we have Wendy Rockman Christy Russell and Olivia Booth Wendy let's see I'm trying to get Wendy there we go sorry here I am I did not meet thank you for this opportunity to encourage you the council to just say no to the current ill-conceived proposal

[69:01] for the development of Cu South you could do that right say no to see you we need to say no to their vague Promises of affordable housing cu's other housing prices are above average for Boulder say no to unnecessarily increasing traffic on Table Mesa Drive which will turn Morehead an already overused vehicle Corridor into a parking lot for CU students and a danger zone for elementary kids and this senior citizen in our own neighborhood no one really knows what CU will build out there they won't get started planning until late 2021 at the earliest 2022 is more likely just say no say no to eliminating a key habitat for people's jumping mouse at Ute ladies Tresses Orchid to protected endangered species who reside at this location say no to forking up 66 to 99 million dollars of our own city tax money to haul in fill dirt to raise the level of

[70:02] the land for supposed flood mitigation flood zones flood say yes to more sensible proposals for Upstream mitigation that work better than what CU is currently offering yep these plans exist even though CU doesn't want us to know about them say no to cu's plan written and proposed by people who don't live in the area then who have no stake in the effects their plan will have on those of us who do live here we live through the flood we dug out our basements and we're stuck in the traffic every day just say no to committing to a highly controversial plan that would damage the Wetland ecosystem threaten two native endangered species plus taxpayers Millions increase neighborhood traffic and add overpriced housing in a flood plain this is a bad plan just say no thank you for your time thank you Wendy next we'll try one more

[71:00] time going back to Emma Goldman if we can have Emma speak hi hello okay um so I just wanted to talk for a minute about the city's Behavior regarding our unhoused community um there was just another sweep last week right after another snowstorm if folks don't know what a sweep is it's basically this process where police put up a notice maybe the night before or two nights before and then the next day we'll sweep entire encampments of unhoused folks throw away their tents their belongings sometimes they won't even be there to object um this is really inhumane I'm sure that's pretty obvious just last week an on-house friend of mine who is paralyzed and wheelchair-bound had frostbite for two weeks because she was afraid to leave her tent because all of her things might be thrown away less than 24 hours

[72:00] after going to the hospital to have her toes removed for frostbite because her body started to die in the snow all of her things were thrown away by the police this is a very very unethical practice the CDC actually Advocates against the sweeps as they do spread coronavirus especially as 60 percent of the shelters in the Denver area have been closed due to coven 19. so leaving people B is really the best way to stop these spreads in our most vulnerable communities given that unhouse books are about three times more likely to die of coronavirus than someone who is hospitalized with it who lives in a home um and really the Marin city council are the only people who can do anything about that I'm sure Sam Weaver is familiar with this I imagine he remembers the vigil so um don't be bad people were on the lands of the Cheyenne the Arapaho about 48

[73:00] other nations nobody is illegal on soul and land and it is disrespectful to do this to people so close to where the very Sand Creek Massacre occurred so you I yield my time thank you Emma next we have Christy Russell Olivia booth and Lynn Siegel Christie Sam knows me I don't see Christy on the list um so if Christy if you're here under a different name please let me know in the Q a instead we'll go to Olivia booth Olivia you are unmuted hi thank you I'm also here to discuss your guys's handling of unhoused people and in your outline of proposals for today's discussion you go into relative detail about how much you all have invested in shelters and aid for the unhoused this past year but yet you don't plan on continuing to invest in those programs

[74:01] to quote unquote ease the burden put on police whose entire job is to criminalize rather than Aid the unhoused if your previous actions were so successful then why not continue them why not put the money in these programs that you claim work so well and instead create an entire job position designed to sweep these unhoused people and as you just heard put them in the hospital and then take away their entire home maybe instead of complaining about the quote-unquote waste and quote-unquote crimes committed by the unhoused why don't you address the actual Roots these problems which is almost always poverty racial and Justice and or mental health issues so your plan to increase increase criminalization of porn on house people's survival techniques learn nothing more than just increase the need for police to intervene and their job isn't to help it's to put people in jail and ruin their lives with fees and restitution that they're forced

[75:00] to pay and prevent them from getting future jobs because they have a criminal record so I believe you're choosing to do this technique of mitigation for the unhoused because you want to maintain the Uber white and pristine community that Boulder supposedly is instead of actually protecting these community members who just so happen to be unhoused and they are unhoused on Stolen land I yield my time thank you Olivia next we have Lynn Siegel Daniel Katz and Aaron Gutierrez when yesterday first testing for audio can you hear you okay um I was watching the um council meeting from last time about the developer of Macy's and um Sam was asking a question to Tom

[76:02] the City attorney and he asked um it was related to um something called a covenant which is an agreement for Community benefit or for any extra things that the developer could give us in exchange for this large office complex and Sam said could you put something illegal in the Covenant and then he said could you for example say that the developer had to paint their property pink and if the developer agreed to that would it be binding Tom Carr did not answer him he directly diverted the conversation to how the the Covenant

[77:00] would be worked out between him and the lawyer for the developer individually outside of the council meeting and this is a direct assault against democracy and a democratic process and I think you need to watch carefully who your your mayor asked you a question Tom so answer the question and and Sam if he's not answering your question stop him and then then the next question was Rachel she wanted to know about the small amount of commercial space that's for an art set up and the woman started to describe the whole art setup and didn't answer the question it's pretty simple just get and ask a question and get an answer the public depends on it thank you Lynn

[78:00] um next we have Daniel Katz Aryan Gutierrez and Taylor care Daniel Daniel does not seem to be on the list Daniel if you were here please reach out in the Q a box with your name um so we go to Aryan gutres hi can everyone hear me yes awesome um yeah my name is Aryan um I live in North Boulder and I'm also uh calling in to discuss the policy of housing sweeps um I'm asking the council to listen to the recommendations of the CDC as well as our own chapter of the NAACP and cease displacing encampments via the current policy of sweeps the sweeps are expensive and ineffective as well as inhumane and may actually worsen Public Health outcomes as some other speakers attested um I'm urging the city to focus resources on providing basic services for encampments which would end up being

[79:00] cheaper instead of perpetuating a cycle of harassment and displacement that has no real end in sight um thank you for your time I yield my time thank you Aaron nextria Taylor gear George Boone and Chelsea Castellano Taylor thanks I'm Taylor with Boulder surge um is telling that the boilerplate's response to emails about sweeps and encampments assumes the complaint is about our unhoused neighbors my frustration is not with the city's most vulnerable residents but with the inhumanity and disregard this Council and city has shown them during the current health and economic crisis since attending Mutual Aid events and these camps over the past few months I've seen a sense of community absent from all of my experiences living in Boulder over the past five years I

[80:01] believe members of this Council and the inhospitable citizens of Boulder could learn a lot about what it means to share resources take care of each other and be a good neighbor from the unhoused communities constantly being demonized and dehumanized your auto response is telling because it's consistent with the cities serving only the city's most affluent residents full are your inboxes with people's concerns for the safety and cleanliness of the city being threatened by these camps if you actually addressed the safety and needs of those experiencing homelessness you would actually alleviate the assumed complaints filling your inbox I'm here to urge you to choose compassion over cruelty instead of putting resources behind your inhumane punitive proposals you should Fund Solutions proposed by have and the

[81:00] HRC that this Council has apparently ignored it was said in last week's meeting that implementing meaningful changes will be unpopular there's no shortage of solutions resources or money just a shortage of compassion and political courage I hope you'll find the courage to choose compassion stop the sweeps Sam you're muted sorry about that next we have George George boom Chelsea Castellano and Wendy Ferrara George hi good evening my name is George Boone I live in North Boulder with my wife and children my elderly parents and sister nieces nephews all live in the city of Boulder as well I'm thankful to live in a community with strong values around our homeless and a robust housing first strategy that produced results over the

[82:00] past years that said over the course of the past several years and past two years in particular we've seen a market increase in crime along with trash biohazards fire hazards meth use camps in our public spaces bike paths and Community hubs that has gotten to the point where all of us actively avoid these areas I've read status report and to be discussed tonight and fully support their findings and many of the proposed Solutions the citizens of Boulder are generous with our services and support but have reached a Tipping Point where our city has been taken advantage of our lacks enforcement of the camping ban along with an overwhelming increase in number of chronically homeless coming from Denver along with the rampant meth youth in these encampments has led to an untenable situation where our parks and Creek are trashed and put our residents visitors City staff In Harm's Way or avoiding these spaces altogether I asked that tonight city council focus on staff's report and recommendations are successful housing first strategy and

[83:01] not get distracted by ideation such as sanctioned campgrounds as mentioned in Aaron's hotline tense sanctioned or not present challenges both enforcement and Outreach not to mention the Colorado weather tents conceal drug use stolen items weapons hazardous materials that would otherwise be in plain view given how tents are treated legally incidents of domestic violence sexual assaults and other crimes are harder to detect and investigate finally please once and for all remove and prohibit all encampments underneath our Public Library our children city employees and uh and Community Asset are at significant risk fires drugs and aggressive behavior have all been reported underneath this structure thank you thank you George next we have Chelsea Castellano Wendy Ferrara and Stephen parlato Chelsea

[84:02] um hello my name is Chelsea Castellano and an organizer with bedrooms are for people um and I'm here tonight to speak on two matters uh first I'm excited to say that tonight we are submitting our 2021 ballot initiative language to the city we have been waiting to submit our language because we were told that the online Signature Collection system wasn't ready as far as we know the system still isn't ready but we feel we can't wait any longer and are cautiously optimistic that it will be ready by the time that our language is approved and we're able to start collecting signatures as we are um expected to be allowed 150 days to collect signatures and if the system isn't ready we obviously won't be able to take advantage of that time second I feel obligated to make you aware that since you as a majority

[85:01] decided to continue evicting people for simply sharing housing we have been contacted by many people experiencing the harmful effects of the city's occupancy enforcement and subsequent evictions which I do find somewhat ironic since the city council sent a letter to landlords asking them not to evict people but the um but the majority still isn't willing to do that yourselves so with heart-wrenching stories and scared people coming to us with fear of losing their their housing we communicated with the city about these evictions and how your policies are continuing to cause harm and Jane before she left she did act accordingly and directed staff to to cite the landlord for any occupancy violation but with the recommendation that any impacts of that site of that sighting would would only

[86:03] occur on um if the if if the violations continued after May 31st so this essentially means that the city would not be the cause of eviction as long as occupancy compliance was met by May 31st so my request tonight is that this direction and information be linked on the city's website so that landlords and tenants are aware of this option provided to them and that we are not the broker between you I'm sorry Chelsea yeah next we have Wendy Ferrara Stephen parlato who may not be here in the meeting tonight and Leslie Chan Chandler Wendy I'm having trouble getting Wendy unmuted Wendy you should be able to unmute now

[87:05] hmm okay how about that can you hear me now we can okay thank you good evening Boulder City Council I'm here to address a council about the unsettling homeless encampments scattered around Boulder undoubtedly law enforcement in Boulder is facing many challenges managing these encampments which are heavily inhabited by transient individuals who seemingly are choosing a lifestyle of homelessness as opposed to those who are victims of circumstance as a 25 plus year resident of Boulder and a mother of a 10 and 14 year old I wanted to focus on one issue fear Boulder has changed a lot in 25 years some changes for the good some not but I've yet to meet a person who feels that feeling unsafe is a good thing the change is palatable look at Community sources such as next door neighborhood

[88:01] list serves the boulder crime log and the Daily Camera recent statistics tell of an undeniable increase in homeless flocking to Boulder and it coincides with an increase in crime conversations with fellow Boulder residents have also Illustrated a more personal development people do not feel safe in South Boulder we do not feel safe allowing our 10 year old to go to the park or our 14 year old to run the creek path due to persons camping and hanging out in park shelters we have had to install motion sensor lights and locks on a backyard gate due to break-ins and car thefts in our neighborhood children notice these changes and they don't feel safe add The Biohazard issues associated with people camping along the creek and families simply do not feel safe to enjoy the open space amenities Boulder has to offer I had a recent conversation with a veteran Boulder police officer and it Illustrated that their hands are tied they have been reduced to ticket writers

[89:00] and have had their teeth taken away they the recent homeless arrivals know exactly where the line between a ticket and jail time is and they are taking advantage of us the word is out on the Front Range criminals are coming to Boulder because they know there are no real consequences city leaders put in place policies that sacrifice the rights of some of the at the expense of others they are knowingly and willingly allowing laws to be broken putting both health and property of citizens at risk please enact better policies thank you Wendy next we have Stephen parlato Leslie Chandler and Evan ravitz as Stephen showed up uh Brenda and if not you can go to Leslie I do not see Stephen on the list again Stephen if you are here please reach out in the Q a and let me know I am going to Leslie now Leslie you should be able to unmute hi can you hear me

[90:00] okay we can hear you Lizzy city council members I appreciate this opportunity to speak my family has lived in Boulder 27 years my husband and I have raised two children here and we both own local businesses over the past several years I've witnessed crime and other public safety issues rise considerably and I'm very concerned for the future of this wonderful town we call home I no longer feel safe using many of our parks bike paths and walkways and I'm even hesitant to visit downtown Boulder these days my husband's business has been broken into and vandalized crime in our neighborhood is an ongoing issue the creeks and waterways around town are littered and becoming toxic environmental issues and Public Safety cannot be ignored I appreciate that you are city leaders

[91:00] are willing to acknowledge and address these issues as they are key to the safety of Boulder residents businesses students visitors the entire community from recent data released by law enforcement and other agencies it has become very clear that illegal encampments are a considerable source of what I have mentioned furthermore letting these encampments continue poses a threat to our own at-risk homeless population this cannot go on I understand that covet has impacted normal criminal justice protocols this is unfortunate but will hopefully change soon meanwhile please do what you can in the near term to keep our town safe thank you for your time thank you Leslie next we have Evan ravitz and Deborah segaloff and if anyone who was previously scheduled to

[92:01] speak but who was not in the meeting shows up we will put you in at the end so Evan you're uh hi I'm speaking tonight about who really runs the city and implications for homeless policy in 2017 I made an open records request for emails between city council and various downtown business interests I found that downtown Boulder Partnerships then director Sean Mayer wrote Council about 211 emails in the first 240 days of the year and received replies to every single one I was part of the city's campaign finance and elections working group and spearheaded the online petitioning Charter Amendment I've written Council maybe 50 emails about that in three years and got an answer to three or four

[93:02] one of mayor's emails asked Council not to do anything more for the homeless for fear of attracting more homeless that is paid off in Spades with Boulder recently cutting shelter beds from 282 to 140 just before winter and the coming explosion of homelessness due to the pandemic and unemployment now instead of shelter sanctioned camping safe parking or tiny home Villages like Longmont in Denver are building and after spending about a million bucks for sweeps this year the city wants another million dollars for more enforcement to drive the homeless to these more Humane cities in 2017 I also talked to downtown Boulder partnership board members Sam Sussman and asked him if downtown Boulder was driving the city's homeless policy he said quote downtown Boulder

[94:02] runs the city if you want a more Humane policy people boycott downtown Boulder businesses and tell them why the majority of city council worked for them even though we pay them thank you Evan next we have Deborah segaloff and I believe Daniel Katz is now in the meeting so Daniel will go after Deborah Deborah good evening my name is Deborah segalov and I'm a resident of Boulder County I wish to express my grave concerns regarding the Rocky Mountain Greenway I'm speaking to you with someone knowledgeable both about cancer and the health risks of radioactivity I'm a PhD biomedical research scientist who recently retired as a professor of physiology at the University of Iowa school of medicine and its cancer center and for many years lab members and I

[95:02] routinely handled radioactive compounds in the course of my research studies as a member of their board I'm also speaking to you tonight on behalf of PSR Physicians for social responsibility Colorado the designation of the buffer zone surrounding the former industrial site of Rocky Flats as a wildlife refuge gives the false impression that it's a pristine area it's far from that as it's heavily contaminated with plutonium and other carcinogenic and toxic compounds recent soil sampling of the Eastern edge of the Refuge identified pervasive contamination with respirable hot particles of plutonium notably one plutonium particle was more than 600 times higher than background soil levels plutonium emits Alpha radiation the most dangerous form of radioactivity the

[96:00] deadly effects of alpha radiation are Insidious because they can take years even decades to manifest if inhaled ingested or absorbed through a simple cut in the skin even a single plutonium particle would remain in the person for their lifetime continuously generating Alpha radiation this particle of plutonium will require about 240 000 years to stop emitting Alpha radiation in light of this seven school districts thus far have banned field trips to the rocky flats wildlife refuge I therefore urge you to withdraw from the Rocky Mountain Greenway project thank you thank you Deborah and finally we have Daniel Katz

[97:01] please do not adopt the regressive and cruel so-called plan to maintain self safe and welcoming public spaces it's pretty clear who you want those spaces to be safe and welcoming for the city council is supposed to represent all of Boulder not just wealthy white homeowners the fear and anxiety expressed by those in favor of this plan is nothing more than bigotry and Prejudice directed towards the most vulnerable members of our community it does not outweigh the basic human right to survive how many of you have considered the safety of people struggling to survive on the street have any of you even talked to an unsheltered person no matter what these nimbys might say they are people too I do not care if you feel uncomfortable I care if people die on the street needlessly and I honestly don't understand how y'all sleep at night as other people calling in have mentioned further criminalizing homelessness cannot hope to solve the problem and I think by this point you know that increasing the number of cops will not reduce the number of unhoused people the only purpose of this plan is

[98:01] to push people experiencing homelessness out of sight so that you don't have to feel uncomfortable not only that the agenda item submitted to Council Claims quote activist groups have encouraged camping by providing free tents and other camping equipment are you kidding me encouraged camping it takes a lot of nerve to do absolutely nothing to address a problem and then shift the blame onto the very people trying to fix your fuck-ups if your shelter is so dangerous and unsanitary that people would rather risk frostbite than stay there the problem is with the services you're offering not the people trying to fill the gaps I truly don't understand how you can even consider something so regressive as mandatory minimum sentences for camping Bans your incompetence borders on cruelty and I feel like I'm giving you the benefit of the the benefit of the doubt by assuming that it is in fact incompetence please do not adopt this plan

[99:04] Sam you're muted yeah thank you Daniel um apologies for my fumbling right now Brenda do we have anyone else from the list who's shown back up the others have not arrived or um let me know that they're here okay very good with that we will um close public comment and I will turn to staff to see if staff has any response to any of our comments tonight Sam there was one item that came up but I believe Tom's going to address that tonight uh Chelsea Castellano raised questions about the online petitioning system we are working through a couple of bugs that we discovered when we tried to go live last week we're meeting tomorrow hoping to have it up and running in the next few days uh we just but as you can imagine we want to make sure that it's safe and secure before we send it up we're doing some additional testing we haven't seen anything else we have to make a decision we do plan uh we're discussing tomorrow whether or not to

[100:01] put up a preview of a test petition so the community contested so we can get more feedback on on the way it's working um if the bedrooms for people does submit a petition it will be available uh for that petition that we have 10 days to review the petition and our plan has always been to be to make it available when we get a petition very good thank you Tom and I have a follow-up question to that um just to be clear to us and the public the electronic signature Gathering system does not work for Charter amendments correct but only legislative amendments that is correct the council's interpretation the charter the charter amendments were governed by state law precludes the use of an electronic system uh the state law requires a wet signature for Charter amendments very good thank you any other staff feedback great seeing none I'll turn to council members do any council members have anything Aaron I see your hand up

[101:01] yeah um Tom thanks for that follow-up question are there um any deadlines that would be impacted by a delay in the availability of electronic signature Gathering I mean is the only only constraint the number of days after you get it approved or is there some other limitation that we might bump up against if it's not ready in time two under the charter all petitions for initiatives have to be submitted 150 days before the election we've got some time for that the charter also requires staff to review and respond uh within 10 days of receiving a petition uh we we intend to meet that deadline okay great so in other words we could make it available within 10 days you know you're comfortable with that time frame yes right and I uh my feedback would be that it would be good to get the community and uh out there testing um it's always helpful to have more more eyes

[102:00] on a on a new product yep thank you Journey thank you Sam um I just wanted to make a comment and because I was reflecting on some of the things that were mentioned by some of the community members and I just wanted to I guess make a comment that people don't use a lifestyle of homelessness there are many circumstances that leads to homelessness right there's mental health issues Financial in what we call socioeconomic challenges and we have you know people who serve them in the military people who are veterans who are homeless so I think it's very important the language that we use to categorize or just to acknowledge people because that's very important that we don't take away their dignity in their Humanity so we don't want people we I don't

[103:01] actually like the idea of people living on the streets and I would imagine even the activists who come before us you know who are really upset about you know the enforcement of the encampments or the campaign bin they don't want people to live on the street either but I think it's very important that we give people the humanity that they deserve and not just think that they just choose to be homeless so I look forward we will eventually talk about that I just wanted to make that comment thank you Genie see you know their hands up I think Alicia that we're ready to move on all right so our next item is the consent agenda which includes items a through d and this will require a roll call very good thank you Alicia and I believe that in particular we have um item C

[104:00] that we'll discuss and council members can uh let us know if we'd like to speak about any others item C is the um site review for Macy's and Tom if you want to let us know how the discussions with the uh Macy's Representatives have gone sure so just to summarize this agenda is to approve the council's final decision on the Macy's site review Council director staff to draft conditions that would incorporate two voluntary offers made by the applicant one voluntary offer to pay an additional approximately three million dollars in linkage fees which is based on the exemption they were willing to waive the second was a voluntary offer to provide at least 7 500 square feet of affordable retail based on a similar program that's that's part of the 30 pro project which at the former polar motor site the council's decision includes two covenants that will that will be recorded against the property and which will run with the land the linkage fee Covenant requires the property in order to paint the additional three million dollars prior to the scheduling of final building

[105:01] permit inspection the affordable rental provision was challenging because it's a New Concept and a slightly different program than what we offer at 30 Pearl that program contemplated office space this proposal is for retail accordingly made some changes to the 30 Pro agreement which are indicated in a red line attached to the memo I think it's a attachment C the principal difference between the retail and office rentals is the cost of the build out retail particularly restaurants often requires customized and expensive build out if a tenant leaves reconstruction can be expensive and difficult consequently retail leases tend to be longer to allow the landlord to recover the cost of the buildup the majority of the changes that we made to the 30 Pearl agreement were to accommodate these issues I want to thank the Macy's team for their general generous officer for working so hard and quickly to get this done in a little over a week joining us tonight and available to answer questions are Charlie Smith from Brownstein high in favor Farber Shrek Eric apart from current real estate Chris herb from Macy's just Fraser from Macy's and Danica Powell from the adjustable strategy

[106:02] great thank you Tom for that and I will turn to council and see if there are any questions or further discussion mark all right um Tom I have one question about one Clause um in the below Market retail Covenant in paragraph 20 the term of the um Covenant expires if quote the properties that are immediately adjacent to the property to the west south and east are no longer used primarily for retail or restaurant uses uh or for parking um what is the purpose of that and why would a change in use for adjacent properties um mitigate the requirement that that we maintain affordable commercial space in this project Mark that's a great question the the uh that was a

[107:00] compromise that we reached with Macy's and Charlie Smith can explain as well as I can but the the reason for it was they wanted they were concerned about the future of retail about brick and mortar retail in America and that if you look 20 years back um 29th Street was a different place nobody knows what it's going to be like 20 years into the future much less perpetually which is this Covenant runs forever so they wanted the ability to adapt if the mall is torn down and there's no retail at all so we we worked out some language that tried to incorporate that concept to allow them to end the the affordable retail if there was essentially no retail at all why wouldn't the remedy for that condition be affordable office as opposed to terminating the uh the Covenant entirely well we don't know that there's going to be offices there either mark that was the issue that's it there are always unknowns in commercial transactions I'm I'm not understanding why these concerns should be relevant to

[108:02] providing some commercially affordable space whether it is for a restaurant retail or office space for nonprofits in that space that we've carved out I'm uncomfortable with with that expiration clause I understand there was as you know these things were a work through compromise they wanted to limit the term uh we did not want to limit the term to get a Perpetual term we had to agree to it to Provisions that allowed them to end it if there was a material change in circumstances and we were we we codified those in that language in paragraph 20. okay as I said I'm uncomfortable there are no real standards for what constitutes uh the material change that they are looking for uh how much changes is required to trigger that provision um this is to me entirely to vague and

[109:01] uh unclear so mark would you like to hear from the applicant certainly would okay uh with that I think we can turn to whoever would like to represent the Macy's group to respond to Mark's question I see Charlie yeah we can hear you can you hear me okay yeah it looks like our our cameras warming up but as long as you can hear me I think we're good oh there we go all right uh so I'm Charlie Smith an attorney at Brown seed and representing the applicant thank you uh for the question um I think it's it's largely what Tom said that it's impossible for to predict what 29th Street will look like in the future and so we are trying to address uh uh Congressman or uh rather councilman Wallach um you know you you mentioned that there's a lot of unknowns we're trying to address as many of them as we can in the document to anticipate what is honestly a fairly likely

[110:01] scenario that 29th Street may be very different in 30 40 50 years than it is right now what we did also agree to is that it's not just uh by Fiat that that would happen uh rather in the event that that were to occur and we believe that okay now we think um there is not primarily retail use that on these adjacent Parcels we have to send a notice to the city and then the city has that opportunity then to raise its hand and say well now wait a minute we think that there still is primarily retail or um that one of these other events hasn't occurred so it would prompt at the very least a discussion there and it would give the opportunity the city an opportunity to interject and if necessary um you know send a demand letter or anything like that to try and enforce the Covenant so uh that was part of the compromise as well with uh the City attorney Tom there

[111:01] um extracted that out of us and uh we think that that provides the city some comfort um on this Perpetual term as well I hear what you're saying um but it's unclear to me if Staples became housing uh is that triggering the termination of this Covenant all the way at the other end of the mall no it's just on these immediately adjacent parcels and um we thought that that tried to confine it to this this uh area such that you know if if there's just no retail left in this area if it all becomes apartments or something else it wouldn't make a lot of sense to continue to mandate a certain amount of retail in that location when it just may not be leasable it may not make sense at that point I understand that but why wouldn't you simply convert it to Affordable office space and presumably they'll still be office space requirements otherwise your project will be empty

[112:02] yeah and and if at that time we came back for some Redevelopment proposal for some new use uh the city would at and the city council at that point would have an opportunity to impose a similar requirement just like this one or if it's not appropriate at that time some other requirement to try and address that issue can can you clarify one last question from you exactly what the parcels are uh that are subject to um this provision would you change well I would give you this termination right yeah uh yes sir so I don't have a map or anything available right now um you know it would be the parcels that are I believe we said immediately adjacent to this property so to the Macy's property to the west south and east and the reason we didn't say the north is because the the properties directly

[113:00] to the north is just a parking field right now so if you envision 29th Street uh and and the area surrounding the Macy's you obviously have retail kind of to the west south and east and the parking garage uh directly to the East and we said it's either retail or parking that primarily supports retail uses so that's the that's the area we're discussing we could put a a different parameter we could say within 500 feet or something um if you want it to be more specific I would be more comfortable knowing exactly what we're agreeing to and if you're agreeable to that I would be agreeable to that as well Mark I'm not sure I understand what you mean well I'm keying off uh the applicant's suggestion that if we uh put a radius around the Macy's lot we would have a better definition of which

[114:01] properties actually could trigger uh the termination of this affordable commercial space that was the suggestion they made and while not perfect I would be happy to agree to it as just an improvement so you you change the the sub D to the properties that are within 500 feet of the property to the southwest and East yes southwest east are no longer primarily used for retail that would make it clear for instance that if there's a change in use for instance of this of the the Staples site that doesn't trigger a termination of the commercial affordable space it gives us some basis for actually understanding when these rights are going to be triggered and they said if it were up to me it would be a smaller radius but I will accept 500 feet in the spirit of

[115:01] compromise if the applicant is prepared to do that and they have indicated they are draw you are you okay with that Amendment yes yeah I think we're fine with that if it referred to that 500 foot radius the approval to be contingent on that Amendment certainly so an amendment to the final document because it the the memo does say in substantially the form so there is some way the ability to amend we're not you're not approving the actual document but it's essentially the form of the document very good and I think we have the legislative intent pretty well established do you agree yes very good um Mark are you finished I am gratefully I I'm done yes I'm doing good Aaron yeah so that I think that's perfectly fine you just imagine want to specify within 500 feet on the applicant's property right just in case that 500 foot boundary extends to other Parcels

[116:01] uh so no Aaron I don't think we're talking about the applicant's property we're talking about the properties adjacent the the thought is if the the uses yeah sorry I I thanks for the correction but I think we mean but within the 29th Street area right like if this crosses 30th Street for example and starts sitting properties to the East are we talking about those are we just talking about the 29th Street area I think we're just talking about the 29th Street mall is that right Mark yes okay so we'll just add on the 29th Street Mall property okay yeah so just thank you thank you okay very good with that I'll check one more time any other council members have an issue on the consent agenda seeing none I would invite a motion on the consent agenda I will move the consent agenda as amended Mark as amended

[117:00] very good yeah so we have a motion and a second and I believe this is a roll call vote uh Alicia if you'd like to do the Roll Call council member Nagel hi can you hear me yes thank you yes wallet right Weaver hi Yates yes yes rocket all right friend yes and Joseph is that a yes Junie yes thank you very good so I assume that passes yes sir unanimously

[118:00] very good okay so I'll turn to council now our our next item will be long and so I would see if Council would like to take a five minute break before we dive in okay very good so it is 8 10 let's be back here 8 15 or a little after thank you all

[122:50] foreign

[123:12] [Music] are you around once Aaron gets back we'll kick this off

[124:12] foreign

[125:20] foreign would you like to take us to the next item of course so thank you next we have item 6A matter from the city manager the item is maintaining safe and welcoming

[126:01] public spaces update very good thank you Alicia and I'm going to kick us off just briefly here um this item uh is likely to be a difficult discussion for many of us it involves a lot of complex intersecting issues of Public Safety as well as human well-being so what I would ask for us is that we listen to each other and try and hear what other members of council are saying about this and members of Staff as well we've heard from the public both from emails and some testimony tonight and I think our job here is to hear the full complexity of this problem and to discuss it and to give staff Direction on it so I just ask Council please keep your ears open and treat everyone as if they're bringing their best ideas to the table here so thank you all for that and with that I'll turn to Chris thanks Sam good evening council tonight

[127:02] we're going to be discussing the topic of the safety and use of our public spaces and the approaches that staff and various departments have taken to enforce the camping ban the challenges they faced as a result of the impacts of covid and suggestions for changes to how this work could be improved there's multiple departments over the years that have worked to address encampments uh in our public spaces and in July of 2020 an inner departmental team was formed to address encampments in light of really the unique challenges of covid this team has included Parks and Recreation utilities transportation and Mobility the police department housing and Human Services and then other departments as needed as this issue touches many departments in the city tonight we're going to have four presenters for this item the first will be Kurt fernhober director of Housing and Human Services Ali Rhodes

[128:02] director of Parks and Recreation Chief Maris Harold from the police department and Chris Reynolds who is in the city attorney's office in our prosecutor division we also have other staff members that are here to address other questions that may come up including Joe tadayucci director of utilities Vicki Ebner with housing and Human Services Municipal Court Judge Linda cook as well as our court Navigator Megan Newton will also be joined for one slide by the chair of the human relations Commission um there will be three times during the presentation that we're gonna stop to um answer clarifying questions of council um uh or ask questions before we move forward in the presentation um and then as we get to each of those Allison Rhodes uh will be the one kind of directing and coordinating the various departmental staff responses to uh council's questions so with that I will turn it over to Kurt fernhover to

[129:00] begin the presentation uh good evening Council I'm hoping that someone can bring up the the presentation thank you so um with uh with housing first we have assisted many individuals and exiting homelessness with some in the permanent housing some with Supportive Services others with rent a rent deposit or a car repair to get in get to their job some to a treatment facility Mental Health Services a placement ready to work and others through assistance from our Municipal Court Navigators we've also expanded the Outreach to individuals who don't visit coordinated entry don't visit the shelter and don't visit Harvest of Hope we also know that over these last three years the percentage of individuals who are new to our community has increased despite these efforts we still have the

[130:01] same or more individuals camping in uh in public spaces so tonight we need to be careful um to not demonize individuals experiencing homelessness as most individuals have engaged some well and some with multiple efforts over time as we discuss camping in public spaces we will be looking at a subset of the homelessness in our community we will discuss the challenges of their disengagement some as a result of substance use mental health challenges or simply because they are calling Boulder home for a short period what we know is that despite many cleanups of many camps this year some areas remain overrun with campers and the impacts of these public spaces is significant so this presentation will cover the background and services efforts and challenges in enforcement or of encampments and we will bring you some recommendations so next slide

[131:03] so Council asked us for a brief overview of current homeless Services it all begins with coordinated entry or CE screening which is the front door for all Sheltering and Case Management Services based on a person's needs and length of time in Boulder a person is screened to either housing Focus shelter navigation services or diversion services intensive resources in most housing programs are focused on individuals who have been in the community for six months or more and we've had many questions from the community about the six-month policy and I wanted to give a a brief background so three years ago when we developed the homeless strategy it was based on National best practice with a focus on housing we also had a principle that individuals should not be stuck in shelters for years before

[132:01] housing we did we then looked at how much housing and vouchers could be available over the next several years and we came up with a number of 250. we have now exceeded that number but we also realize that we cannot nearly house all the individuals who come to Boulder and don't want to place people in a program where there is no realistic chance to house them this is where a six-month policy came into place and other programs for for short-term individuals have been developed in this last year it is also important to understand that people can't just age into the six months otherwise we would simply have people come to Boulders simply to stay unhoused to get into a program that has limited capacity so the first program in housing focused shelter for individuals is with those Mo that have the most barriers to housing stability they receive case managers that work with them to identify housing

[133:01] options with our apparent Services then navigation Services assist individuals with programs like ready to work treatment programs or financially helping people with security deposits diversion services are open to everyone and it focuses on individuals that are new to the community the most common exit under this program is reunification with the family member or Network and then severe weather shelter is open to anyone who has been through coordinated entry screening next slide since late 2017 this community has provided more than a thousand people with exits from homelessness over the past year over 100 new permanent supportive housing vouchers and many new units have been added while covet impacted the number of people being reunited and delayed some housing initiatives the chart on the right shows that we have been able to continue a steady pattern of placement

[134:01] of individuals into housing under Homeless Solutions for Boulder County our 2021 focus is on the hardest to house including those addicted to meth and places for people with significant criminal records next slide Outreach Services in Boulder are accomplished through multiple agencies the first the police department homeless Outreach team were hot focuses on building relationships with people who live unsheltered in our community they have been fundamental in connecting high justice system utilizers with housing resources and programs they also help individuals in getting social security cards identification and even driving them to lease signings the Municipal Court Navigators also work closely with high utilizers of the justice system getting people on the prioritization list for housing and services as well Boulder County provides two public

[135:01] health related Outreach Services Boulder County works program in the Boulder County AIDS project which help educate about um IV drug safety and assistance in the treatment programs Mental Health Partners also works um with housing focused Outreach and has been involved with the be there program the be there program began as a pilot in September and provides initial Outreach Services and covid screening in public spaces with an average of 83 interactions per week and lastly I'll just mention a coordinator for this program was recently hired Jennifer lybovich a well-known person to many of you and in our community with valuable experience next slide so through CE and through many Outreach approaches and case managers these services are made available it's an

[136:00] array of different organizations who often coordinate in assistance with individual needs so we've broken that down you know by meals Housing Shelter health and in other programs as well just to see the sort of the landscape of what that looks like next slide um so since the uh um since October the boulder shelter for the homeless has had an average of 30 unused beds on any given night as a reminder there are 25 hotel rooms that are used for high coveted risk shelter residents in an additional 20 um during critical weather conditions which you'll see sort of in that um that blip in the sort of the end of September when we had um some very cold early weather um and um so we also have 30 beds at the CRC which I'll I'll talk about now next slide

[137:03] so one of the cons other concerns we've heard in the community is the impact of our programs and approaches on individuals during covid The covid Recovery Center or CRC was open on March 20th um in every person in the community who uses homeless Services particularly related to shelter are screened every day since the 20th of March and the use of we also use Hotel spaces for at-risk people which was put into place and has had a dramatic impact on the control of covid within the unhoused population and there are highly vulnerable population due to congregate living situations of the 1912 people that have been screened at the area shelters between March 20th and January 13th only 10 percent have been referred to the CRC and that would include Longmont as well of those

[138:00] referrals which include referrals from Hospitals and Clinics 36 people have tested positive that's less than 1.9 percent of the total population screened at the shelter it also compares to 4.9 percent of the overall Boulder County Community who has tested positive for covid so you can see through these interventions the homeless population is less than half the house population in covet impact the graph along the bottom indicates that the number of residents who have stayed at the CRC uh since the first of March or the 20th of March next slide so what we've seen in our community since Cobin and what we've heard from Outreach workers is that they encountered a significant number of people coming from Denver who Express fear of the Denver Shelter system particularly at the beginning of the pandemic in addition some people have a fear of the boulder shelter system in

[139:00] congregate living generally even with all the safety protocols that have been put in place safety precautions have also limited in-person mental health and counseling services leading to deterioration of several people who cannot effectively utilize Telehealth or or video assistance however to Aid with access Boulder County provided cell phones for people experiencing homelessness to Foster connection and address this shortfall we also know that empty public spaces creates opportunities for people to camp in prohibitions on public Gatherings is deactivated many of our public spaces next slide so these are three specific challenges that we've had particularly around you know policing police have been unable to arrest for none non-violence offenders misdemeanors the jail has released a lot

[140:03] of the individuals at the beginning of the of the pandemic and um um you know limits individuals that could be put in jail for for various misdemeanors and offenses um and we also know that activists have been very involved this year passing out tents and that sort of thing which is created um more visual encampments than what we've probably seen in previous years so I'm going to stop there to see if anyone has um any clarifications on anything that I said um before I I pass it off to ollie Rhodes thank you Kurt I'm looking I see Mary has a question just a real quick question Kurt with respect to the cell phones that were handed out by

[141:01] Boulder County I was curious to know um if you knew what the number of cell phones was that was handed out and with with the distribution process was for those cell phones um I don't know that specifically but I can probably I will see what I can find out I might be able to answer that later in the presentation thank you Kurt that's all I have very good thank you Mary um Kurt I do not see any other hands up so I think we can keep going um okay so I'm gonna pass that I was just seeing if I had a response but I'll pass that off to to Ali Rhodes next thank you and sorry Ali before you get started Kurt you can just text um write to me in chat if you've got something and I'll come back to it thank you thank you Mr Mayor we can go to the next slide and I'm Ali Rhodes the director

[142:00] for parks and recreation uh I want to note that I too am very aware of how complicated and challenging this issue is as are our teammates across the organization we appreciate the partnership of various departments to provide information support and solutions the intent with these next slides is to factually describe the conditions and encampments on public lands and I'm representing information from across the city including our transportation corridors drainage ways open spaces and of course city parks this slide is a mapping of encampments across the city in 2020 as you can see the prevalence is along the creeks drainageways and in parks and Open Spaces I do have to note that this data is not a hundred percent perfect or all-encompassing cleaning our parks and other lands across the city as something maintenance staff do every single day and not a hundred percent of the debris or other materials they pick up are reported next slide

[143:02] these two charts are an attempt to convey the conditions that those purple dots represent the pie on the left is a representation that over 80 percent of our documented cleanup events include the presence of Hazard materials when we say hazards we mean drug paraphernalia buyer hazards such as human waste weapons propane tanks or other conditions that create a risk to staff visiting community members and certainly the inhabitants these conditions are also why the city has contracted with a hazardous materials cleaning company to support the rehabilitation of public lands when campsites are vacated in addition to the contractor however City staff have been trained into some of these techniques as they address many of these materials on a very regular basis for example Park staff and other maintenance employees have and regularly use prick-proof gloves when they perform trash removal well I noted a mom ago the rest of people with the presence of hazardous materials we do have to just acknowledge the threats to lands and water quality from some of these conditions

[144:01] the pie on the right is a representation of the various sizes of debris and encampments that our teams address that green section is about 35 indicates a smaller Camp which we classified as less than two cubic yards of debris so just to picture that a cubic yard is a volume of a box about three feet by three feet or the size of a typical household oven the aqua color is about 40 percent of the pie and is those medium-sized sites they're two to four cubic yards of debris or about the size of the typical pickup truck bed the purple represents larger sites and is about 25 percent of encampments and is debris greater than four cubic yards um I do want to point out here that while the city does store personal property items that are contaminated by human waste or the presence of methamphetamines are disposed of and that is what these numbers represent next slide many encampments addressed as noted have

[145:01] flammable materials and there is an extreme danger to people in the camps public property in the community we are aware of instances of harm to people living in camps as well as damage to property from fires related to encampments and there is certainly also the risk of more wild spread Wildfire from encampments on the urban Wildland interface or on open space properties on the left is a photo of pro paintings collected by our team in parks in November and December of last year to the right is a fire at Valmont city park that happened in late December last year the result of a propane tank explosion and in the bottom middle is a fire ring on open space property next slide syringes are often found in public lands the bottom left is an example of a low-cost method often employed by staff as they collect syringes and wanted to share that both staff and Outreach providers who regularly visit encampments do provide personal Sharps

[146:00] Containers to those camping to reduce the risk of an accidental predict prick but a Community member an employee or um or that those with the needles next slide I mentioned debris earlier and these are just some examples of the conditioned staff and our community members encounter in public spaces with so many campsites along the stream corridors and drainage ways there are real threats to water quality and downstream users slide finally this chart represents the city's direct spend on hazardous materials contracts over the last five years um I wanted to show this to you one to show the order of magnitude but also for later in the conversation when we talk about some of the options in addition to the spend staff have tracked over 5 000 hours on cleanup activities this number is growing each year and does not include the planning

[147:00] and coordination by those in management the growing need has not been met with growing resources and so staff must adjust adjust workloads by deferring work such as path maintenance turf management weed control Horticulture playground maintenance and delaying repairs of non-urgent deficiencies in addition to the monetary impact and those on workload I have to mention the emotional tool this work takes our teammates are regularly harassed and twice in the last two years one of our employees has been criminally assaulted while performing maintenance in our parks our maintenance staff are Frontline workers and put into conditions where they do not feel safe so that our public spaces are I can take any clarifying questions from here and then I will pass it to police chief Herald very good thank you Allie um I see Rachel has a question yep um just looking at that last for Servpro from 2015 to 2020 it goes you know up up down up do you have a

[148:00] theory or explanation for like why 2015 was almost nothing in 2018 high and yeah I mean 2015 I can say was almost nothing because I you know and I'll be honest I I became involved in this topic in 2016. I'm not quite sure and and could find out how we handled this topic before 2016 was the first year we started using this contracted provider I know that it's been growing every year and as to why there was a decrease in 2019 I I don't have that information available but can try and find out oh okay but it was it was higher in 2018 than 2020 though it looks like right accurate okay thanks great and the next thanks ali um Ellie um I like this the slide where you show um the various encampments um that you guys identified in 2020 do you have historical information anecdotally I think people in the community feel that there's more encampments this year than there have been in the past

[149:00] um prior to 2020 was there an effort by the city to account in encampments so that we have a uh something to compare it to yes and no so we've been working on having better data on this topic for years and I would say 2020 is the first year where it's been more comprehensive and consistent across the organization and so any information about prior years that I have is is much more anecdotal um I can tell you that it reflects somewhat of the chart that's still on your screen where Staff feel like um and again this is anecdotal but Staff feel like across 2020 there were many larger and more you know visible encampments were as years prior they might have been more dispersed and in less visible spots great and is it your plan to um both for large encampments and small ones to um kind of count and keep track on a going forward basis so we can see what our Trends are absolutely so I think our team has done an incredible job in 2020 to create consistent you've heard some of the nomenclature and standards you know quantifying this is really hard we're not going to ask staff to count

[150:00] needles as they pick them up and and many of it you know again they're cleaning up in our public spaces every single day but because of this topic is of such importance to Monitor and track we've created standards uh we're getting the support of some of the data engineers and the information and technology department to help so we believe the data will just improve as we go great thanks so much Ellie thank you Bob next year Mary um my question was just addressed previous question we have an answer from Kurt I put it in the chat to everyone but I will just make sure the public can hear it as well um Kurt says that the county provided 400 phones to homeless individuals and each of these phones had 500 minutes of air time a piece and the distribution was through both the county organization as well as Affiliated nonprofits so mark

[151:00] uh ali uh how um how deep into the open space are we finding the encampments at this point I'm sorry say that again how deep into the open space are we finding the camp the encampment's located sure um I'd have to go back to the mapping but I also believe that deputy director of open space and Mountain Park Steve Armstead is available and could offer I I believe based on their information they they find them dispersed in throughout the system but the most prevalent locations are at the um the western edge of Boulder Creek and sunshine Canyon is what I heard from them in prepping last week thank you Ellie and I see Steve is here Steve yeah I think Ellie got that correct um and although it is not atypical too for us to see you know camps or encampments even in the most farthest reaches of open space and Mountain Park so we can see them up on the side of Green Mountain backside of cinitas and

[152:00] enemy area so it's it's impo it's possible to have some remote they usually aren't that large but they're smaller camps that can be more hidden okay thank you and while we're queuing up the next question Mr Mayor I'm hearing I'm getting great input there are again many many staff across the city involved in this and I'm getting information just to answer Bob's question 2019 you'll notice Parks and Recreation specifically there were many fewer Camp encampments addressed and then um there was a significant growth in the latter half of 2019 and into the year and then the other um thing we wanted to mention with 2020 being lower than 2018 is that in the initial months of the pandemic while we were sorting out our approach and CDC recommendations and you heard Kurtz um mention of putting together the covert Recovery Center there were less cleanings of encampments good good thank you Ali Mark do you have more no I'm good very good Mary

[153:00] yeah um thanks Ellie and thanks Sam um as I'm sitting here looking at this graph and the the graph is based on the amount of money expended for um encampment cleanups so I'm wondering um in 2018 we've got the the vast majority of expense um expenses attributed to open space and Mountain parks and then in 2020 um that kind of flips over to Parks and Rec so my question is is um is the spike is it possible that the spike in 2018 on open space is because perhaps the cost to clean up encampments that are more dispersed in on open space is more is higher than it

[154:02] is to address encampments that are in more the more urban environment and and closer together yeah let me just clarify Mary because I know that the coloring can be hard sometimes the the largest section in all of the years except for this year is in public work which up until this year had been a that that that darker green and top segment of the bar is the um a combination of Public Works transportation and utilities and then our facilities and asset management department I'm sorry yeah yeah so we believe that continues to be the largest segment that is it you know along the bike paths in the drainage ways some of the cleanups along the creek Corridor and this year is higher just most likely again we are we are seeing more of those medium and larger size encampments in our parks thank you thank you Mary um next I've got Juni

[155:03] thank you Sam I just have a quick question about looking at the cost and I was wondering are they internalized by each department are they reimbursable from Human um HHS um I do not believe any of this operational cleanup is funded by housing and Human Services it's a mix of funding I know um in Parks and Recreation most of those expenses are coming from the general fund and for transportation maintenance most of their funding I believe comes from their transportation maintenance dedicated minimal sales tax but I I probably should stop talking and let one of the finance experts but it is operational money across the city I'm most familiar with where it's coming from in Parks and Recreation and then other departments less so thank you thank you Juni and I still see Mark and Mary's hands up do either one of you need to go again okay great those are

[156:00] leftovers so with that I think we have asked all of our questions ready to move on with the presentation thank you so with that we can go to the next slide and chief Harold's going to take it from here thanks Ali good evening council members mayor good evening my portion of the presentation will focus on four key areas first a review of the impact of the encampments and people experience in homelessness on police resources to present data on the unhouse crime victimization and unhoused offender involvement in serious criminal activity three provide a glimpse into the community's fear and the associated impact of the encampments on the community and for and importantly strongly emphasize that these data points do not reflect on the general population of people experiencing homelessness but on

[157:00] a small proportion living in the encampments who suffer from serious addiction issues and or mental health issues many not capable of engaging in offered services next slide so in 2020 Boulder Police Department responded on over 6500 calls for service involving the on the house population this equates to over 9 500 hours 500 000 dollars worth of police time that equates to about four and a half police officers working full-time to break that down a little bit further Boulder Police Department responded to over 540 calls for service to the on-house population per month with an average time spent on those calls for service at just over 55 minutes next slide this is a really interesting slide and

[158:01] it really speaks to the clustering locations across the city but more importantly how these encampments become entrenched in certain areas so if you look at the darker color purples on the map that indicates that a high concentration of encampments have been cleaned over 20 times in 2020. the medium concentration color indicates that camps have been cleaned over 10 times and then the lighter colors indicate that the camps have been cleaned over five or more times um in the city of Boulder since December 16th of 2020 Boulder Police Department has tried to keep a visibility presence on a 24 7 time frame um both at the Central Park area tried to maintain the library area as well but this is needed to even

[159:01] contain a small area like Central Park it needs 24-hour police visibility at that location next slide please I know there's a lot going on in this slide but I just wanted to take a moment show clearly the impact of the jail closure on the impact of crime with the exception interestingly of the two stay-at-home orders on each side of the graph but clearly if you look at the five-year average in yellow and you look at the jail closer closures in early March crime has significantly and statistically been up since the Early times in March the purple segmented lines clearly indicate when the jail closed and those restrictions kept getting harder and harder for the police as we move into 2021

[160:00] um again I think it's worth noting that police officers are giving serious offenders felonies some um summonses for the first time I think in Boulder's history next slide please this is a really powerful slide and um it's more than I thought it would be so this slide is speaking to the unhouse population is very small we know that so you would expect that the victimization to be proportional to that population but the unhoused population is much more vulnerable and they are disproportionately impacted by crime so these again are part one crimes and you can see in blue that the high percentages of victimization occurring in the unhouse population Chief could I ask you to just say again what type 1 crimes are yes sir so their homicides aggravated assaults robberies

[161:01] burglaries and assaults they're usually categorized as part one crimes in part two part two being the less serious more of the misdemeanor type crimes thank you and I think I think you've got a typo owner burglaries I assume that's a 90 on the Green I'm sorry that is a typo that is 90 . oh it's just making sure we get it understand it thanks yep sure thank you Aaron um Chief Harold I I'm not come entirely understanding um the percentages in blue are you saying that 11 of the total for instance aggravated assaults the total percentage of aggravated assaults committed against people who are unhoused um 11 of the total um as compared to the small percentage of folks that are unhoused is that but we don't know what

[162:00] that percentage is the what the slide is showing is that for example in aggravated assaults 11 of the total victimization and aggravated assaults is disproportionately from 11 of the unhoused people in Boulder thank you sorry can I follow up on that sure um do you mean that uh that 11 of all aggravated assaults have a victim who is unhoused and 89 of all aggravated assaults have a victim who is housed that's correct sir right and do we do we know what the percentage of unhoused people is of the total population of the city I can approximate it by housing numbers that um Kurt and his team has have given but it's I will say with confidence it's it's less than .03 percent of Boulder's population

[163:01] okay so that like an 11 number is many many many many times than the percentage of the unhoused people as percentage of the population that's correct sir thank you for clarifying and then Mark yeah Chief um with these statistics do we have um data showing who is committing the crimes against the unhoused population to some degree um councilman it it when you're talking about crime to understand the Dynamics of known and unknown offenders and I'll talk a little bit about that on the next slide um and I've committed to to capturing better data moving forward we've started to do that but I can just show you the next slide of the what we know about the known offenders in Boulder right that would be helpful please next slide

[164:04] so I just want to be clear on this on this slide we are talking about nothing but known offenders where the police either identify and offender the victim identifies an offender or a witness identifies an offender and so again I'm talking about part one crimes and this data was garnered from our records management system hot team records and we went over these cases one by one so at the time of the offense these numbers clearly demonstrate a disproportionate number of offenders who are unhoused again when you look at these crimes so to be specific of these part one crimes we've had 490 known offenders in part one crimes of that the blue signifies the percentage of offenders identified as unhoused at the time of offense this chart does not include felony

[165:01] menacing which we had 39 incidents of felony menacing by the unhoused offender which is really important because these are significant because this is somebody threatening somebody else's life significantly serious physical injury by a weapon and so I wanted to bring that to everyone's attention this also represents approximately a 37 percent known offender committing part one crimes in Boulder next slide this is underneath the library this was our most recent cleanup that occurred last week I just want to mention a few things one um City staff and private contractors found over a thousand needles at this one location

[166:00] they cleared 900 pounds of trash they cleared 15 to 20 tents that were removed this work required the dedication of 10 hours of police officer time and that was actually 11 officers one sergeant and one Commander to manage this cleanup process at this one site last week next slide in almost all of the cleanups that the city's been engaged in the police department has found evidence of criminal activity specifically bikes bike parts new bikes tools bike tools propane tanks fire pits all kinds of Fire Apparatus weapons needles drugs in various metals um so very complicated issues when we clean these encampments

[167:01] up this definitely has a strong correlation to our recent uptick in bike thefts in Boulder where we talked about before where we've had over a thousand stolen in 2020 with a 2.1 million dollar value to those bikes next slide I just wanted to show a glimpse of what the Boulder Police Department has consistently enforced the encampment ordinance and the accompanying Criminal Trespass ordinance I also was asked by cu's Chief Joker story and jokerst to also include cu's encampment enforcement efforts throughout 2020 and she wanted the community and the council to know how the encampments have impacted her police budget her resources and the amount of time taken to enforce the illegal encampments on her property on cu's property as well

[168:01] next slide please I wanted just to take a second to talk about what I see as Community harm and the stress that the community is under right now this is without a doubt the encampments are my most common complaint to the police chief's office and I get complaints by phone by email by cyclists by Runners by the elderly by the disabled um by Library users really under stress about the encampments and the locations of the encampments we've also received over 700 email complaints to city council regarding the encampments and over the last three months we've received 550 Community reports of encampment locations to inquire Boulder in the last three months so I thought it would be remiss if I didn't mention these facts as it was related to me at the police chief's

[169:01] office and how much this is causing harm to the community next slide and I think I turn it back over to Ali now yeah so I'll take it from here but first Mr Mayor I want to check in we might have had a Miss order after the feedback from CAC this morning before we go into the work in progress and then recommendations did you want to pause for that first question for Council you know I I think it would be okay why don't you just go ahead and finish the next two slides and then we will do that um so Sam go ahead Mary mine's a fresh one um I wanted to go back um to for a question to um she curled and it has to do with um there was no slide on the felony

[170:01] menacing um other than you mentioned that I believe it was 39 felony menacing um incidents and I'm wondering um if you have a percentage what percentage of those was committed against unhoused members of the community uh so um so in other words the the slide that had the assault and the homicide as percentages committed against um unhoused individuals what percentage of those felony menacing incidents were against unhoused so that's a great question Mary and I can get that back to you um like I said we're going through these reports one by one so I I will get a number of those 39 that were committed by on house Defenders and see how many of them were against um on house victims but I'm sure that number is is probably

[171:01] pretty high thank you very good any other questions from Council if not Ali if you want to take us through the last slides about the creek sure so these next few uh slides are just letting you know of some work in progress as City staff have uh continually received requests from both the community and Council to be more effective um in the Parks and Recreation 2021 CIP we are funding the development of a Boulder Creek Management plan there is an interest across the organization and with many partners including certainly utilities and others to manage and improve the creek Corridor which is one of our most visited and attractive sites here in our community every year for a while there have been concerns about overcrowding environmental degradation trash and other ordinance violations and as council is aware these issues were exacerbated in the summer of 2020 when

[172:00] the pandemic created a greater interest in outdoor activities and Gatherings so in Partnerships with other developments this project will develop a comprehensive management plan for the creek to balance Recreation and public use while maintaining the streets ecosystem there are lots of opportunities to enhance this Corridor and we look forward to developing it and really embracing this area as the heart of Boulder so Ally I I am going to stop you here because I think the next slide does go into the the follow one from here so if you want to put up slide 29 I think this is where we are the the slide after and Chris would you like to frame this up or would you like me to uh either one Sam if we can go one more slide forward uh Emily that'd be great um and this this first question really is is to try and really understand from Council before we move into any

[173:00] potential recommendations uh um understanding does council support staff the and the continuance of enforcing the camping ban so Sam happy to uh have you add in the additional context um okay very good I I think that to me this is a gating question that we need to answer because how we address the the additional staff recommendations to some extent depends on whether we as a council uh support continuing to enforce the camping ban ordinance as it's written so with that I'm going to turn to council I don't want to lead off with this um but I can if nobody's willing to speak up so I would just put out there the question to counsel that we need to answer um and we can move on from here uh down whichever path Branch we choose whether the answer is yes or no do we enforce do we support staff enforcing the camping

[174:02] ban ordinance that's on the books and I've got Rachel's hand up thanks Sam um so a couple things um first I think we have framed this as a conversation about where people cannot be and we did recently answer this question I think last year at The Retreat and then again after do we want to enforce the camping ban so we are revisiting a question that we have recently answered and in that we are doing that I think it's also appropriate to talk about the other side of the conversation which is where is it appropriate for people to be um so I haven't seen any discussion in here of like the HRC and Hab report and I I'm uncomfortable um having this conversation about enforcing a camping van without having the other half of it of do we want to have a sanctioned encampment so I will start there

[175:00] um also want to add that in a separate part of today's memo it says that homelessness affects persons of color and people who identify as lgbtq Plus disproportionately um so I want us to be very um careful under our racial equity plan or plan for plan to not take steps that are going to further harm any groups of people that we are proactively trying to help um and then I also want to encourage us to be really careful not to stereotype in a lot of emails that we get we have a lot of people um blaming unhoused people for every crime and we judge one unhoused person you know based on the acts of another unhoused person um we saw that people who are homeless are often victimized and traumatized at higher rates so I want us to be careful not to add our own hatred or intolerance

[176:00] to that burden um and last thing I will say at this point is I think that we have um lacked Community engagement um on this so we see a lot of people come and talk at open comment on both sides of this issue and I don't think in my time on Council we've done a very good job of there's been no public hearing there's been no um space for people to come in and dialogue and strategize and I don't know that we have the right people at the table like we don't I think Among Us have anyone with lived experience who will be voting tonight um so I have concerns about saying I would enforce the camping ban without saying and we will be providing these additional supports where people can go okay and I will just comment that depending on which branch we take here we're certain to be touching on that we have HRC um representation here tonight and later on in the conversation we will

[177:01] definitely be hearing from HRC and staff about other things you've seen in the memo Aaron well I just wonder if we couldn't hear from HRC before we begin our discussion it seems like you know checking in with our board representative you know after the staff presentation but before we're going through our discussion would be helpful so I I guess I think differently about this I feel like you know whether we enforce the camping ban if we say yes we want to enforce it we can ask how we're going to enforce it and what gaps do we have if we say no we don't want to enforce the camping ban then I think the question becomes what do we do with it and how do we want to also address the gaps so um I I guess I'd like to hear from other Council people this is about how we frame up the discussion to me this is a

[178:00] uh decision that we need to make in a way to inform what we do next so I see Bob's hand yeah of course I agree with UCM in a process I think there's a kind of a fork in the road here and I think people need to declare whether they want the camping ban enforced or not if they don't we're going to have a very different discussion if they're if they want it to be enforced but they have qualifications on how it's enforced or what all the alternative homelessness Services might be provided those are different conversations but if we don't answer this question right now I I think we're going to get end up spinning ourselves around uh so I'll answer the question uh the answer is yes okay very good and Mark I see your hand yeah um I think that uh well I'm with Bob I also would answer uh this question as yes it is an unfortunate fact that we have seen that where the encampments are

[179:02] um the public no longer feels safe going and so we remove those public spaces from public use um and if you're going to say um that you do not support the camping ban I I think it's imperative for there to be some discussion of which areas of our city do we in effect want to abandon for that purpose do we want to give up Central Park give up the library Enchanted Mesa I think Rachel is correct that we need to have a longer discussion about other possibilities but for me the answer is is clearly yes because I am unprepared to surrender those aspects of our public spaces and open space to public use we also represent 106 plus thousand

[180:00] citizens of Boulder and I think it's important that we be mindful of their concerns I don't think those are illegitimate concerns to say that I want to be safe in my Parks I want my children to be safe in my Parks I want to be able to walk on Boulder Creek path and on and on so for me it becomes uh it's not the end of the conversation and I think Rachel's quite correct about that but it is the starting point for me in this conversation that um yes I I am really unprepared to surrender portions of our best spaces for that purpose thank you thank you Mark we've got nearby and Adam nearby Samuel support with what you were going and so yeah I strongly support the camping van um and I'll just go off of what Mark was saying that if we are going to go into the discussion of what areas to surrender that we only do that in terms of being efficient if

[181:00] the knot of five goes towards not supporting the camping ban if we're not gonna if we're not going to move to not support the camping ban I would say just for efficiency sake not to go down that rabbit thank you nearby next we have Adam and Mary Adam so for me I also agree that uh we should enforce the camping ban but only because we shouldn't have the necessity of public camping period so if we can provide the options that public camping isn't a necessity then yes absolutely we shouldn't have a camping or should we should enforce a camping man okay very good Mary so um Chief Harold presented some very compelling slides with respect to the

[182:00] harm that is happening to the folks that are with the within the encamp encampments themselves so the the statistics um about how many of the people that are suffering from the the assaults and the homicides and the burglaries are people living in the encampments themselves and then the question about the felony menacing um that's a very serious crime and could result in the death of an individual and it although Chief hell didn't have the number she did say that it was probably a high percentage that is being committed by and um toward members of the encampments I also don't see how it's Humane to allow people living in tents that are

[183:03] storing and using propane tanks the the memo had called out incidents of fires and we had that one photograph of the tent fire that occurred over at Belmont city park but there are people are cooking with fire in their tents I just don't see how that's Humane and so I have to support the camping ban enforcement of the camping ban and I look forward to the discussion to see what um what other things we might be able to do to address this thank you Mary Aaron um well unlike some of my colleagues I I can't start hearing and give a yes or no answer so please um bear with me while I talk for a little while um so I I agree that um it is not okay

[184:02] um for us to allow impromptu camps in our public spaces and um the reasons for that are there are many of them um and but they revolve fundamentally around Public Safety uh both for the residents of those encampments and for other members of the community and so I'll start with the the residents of the encampments um that uh the encampments that we've seen um are often closely packed together and they often have impromptu fires they're often in floodways and there are generally no sanitation or other facilities immediately adjacent to them so you have no place for human waste and um you don't have kind of the safe facilities for daily living and so you have many of these encampments could be wiped out by flash flood or by a propane

[185:00] tank explosion that could you know rip through a closely packed tent encampment and result in the deaths of numerous people and I I don't think that we can kind of Stand By and and allow people to to live in situations like that that are so dangerous for themselves um but also for members of our community who kind of come in proximity into encounters with those camps certainly uh it is it is not okay to make people go away just because they make some other folks uncomfortable but the issues of um of the the dangerous fires and the needles and the weapons are serious ones for other members of our community and it is reasonable for us to protect our Parks from things like needles lying around and so we need to make sure that the folks are able to access the Sparks

[186:00] many people who spend time in our Parks don't have their own kind of private Open Spaces backyards and such like that and there are Equity issues about making sure that anyone who needs it has access to those parks and also I'm going to I'll point out like the under the 9th Street um I'm sorry under the the library uh the encampment that was there recently and there have been others in the past um that's immediately adjacent to the children's playground in front of the library and having an encampment um that as the chief Harold mentioned uh was found with a thousand um discarded needles immediately adjacent to a children's playground is is simply unsafe and and not acceptable so I I think it's it's critical for us I think is as stewards of our community and of the safety of our community um the the that kind of encampment is is not acceptable in our public spaces but the the problem though is that we don't have a suite of

[187:00] um services and um and shelters and and places to live that are available to every person who experiences homelessness so we have some some phenomenal Services we've had amazing successes at getting people into towns and we do have have some spare shelter beds but there are a number of reasons why the current Services may not work for people who are experiencing homelessness for example if Sheltering situations are psychologically unacceptable to them say because they're a veteran with PTSD or have PTSD for other reasons or if they have a partner that they're unwilling to be separated from or a pet that they can't leave behind my dog's just making a little noise there um so so there are there are a variety of situations in which our current Services don't meet the needs of people and so I think that as we talk about ways to make sure that we

[188:00] do not have unsafe and dangerous encampments in our community that we also work on figuring out how we can have safe sheltered places for people who are experiencing homelessness and to make sure that people don't fall through the gaps in our available services so I think it's critically important that we're going to talk about this topic tonight that we have to talk about Alternatives and not just about enforcement so that's what I got Instagram with you thank you Aaron no that's much appreciated that's I I think it's important that we all say the complete thought around this so thank you for that next we have Juni and Rachel Junie thank you Sam and I think again for all of us this is a really really hard discussion and I think we've heard some of the pros and cons of the encampments um or at least the campaign ban you know

[189:02] and I had done some research for myself as well to learn you know the environmental safety when we think of you know um the pros of the campaign band for instance you know when we think about Soil and Water contamination um habitat degradation and also when we think of um human rights as well so I think for me um my understanding of the campaign band has evolved since I've been on Council because I see some of the challenges that staff um have gone through as was mentioned in the presentation tonight um but my understanding of the people who are in the camps as well I think as Mary mentioned suffer from for lack of better terms from certain human rights violations right and and and also the enforcement is about uh

[190:00] having more officers to ensure more people are um are not installing camps and red directing people toward Mental Health Services um I do think again as was mentioned by um Aaron that campaign campaign is inhuman I find it very unsafe I don't think that's the right place for anybody to live we need more services we need more efficient services for certain groups and I think that's what I really heard from Chief maris's uh presentation because as she mentioned it's a very small group of the population and I I hope I didn't hear that wrongly but from what I heard from her or people with drug addiction and who have been convicted of certain crimes so but at the same time my question is or at least My worry is that we're kicking the problem down the road with the further enforcement because if we just enforce then the people come

[191:01] right back the next day the next week the next month so I think that's that's really hard for me um and I think as well I do understand Rachel's perspective when it comes to again if this is a discussion and I suppose some type of a negotiation for Council to agree you want to know you know what are we leveraging are we getting more services to people because if people are getting better and more efficient services whether we have a campaign been or not that would not matter because we have better Services we have more efficient services so at the end of the day is that do we have the services to help people as opposed to discussing a campaign Ben or not does that make sense sure so I'll try and summarized at the end when we get there are you done Juni okay Rachel

[192:00] yeah thanks for that Jeannie I just wanted to um Circle back to something that Aaron said about Equity we get a lot of um feedback from the community that you know it's sort of inappropriate for us to look at like spaces rather than people um and I think uh as somebody who um lived in apartments and didn't have a lot of disposable income and and had a very busy job with young kids for a lot of years the the thing that I could do was get in a stroller and walk to the nearest park and so I think it is very important that our parks are safe for especially people who don't have fenced-in backyards and don't have hours to take their kids on um you know long walks on open space so I I don't think it's offensive for us to be looking at keeping our parks and open space in Creeks safe for people so I I just wanted to sort of put that out there that um I don't think that we are

[193:01] are being inhumane by trying to make places where children go safe from hypodermic needles and human feces I just want us to have um better options for people who find themselves in that circumstance because I think junie's correct and people don't opt into homelessness um people may opt into drug use whether they are housed or unhoused and so um you know when we sort of stereotype people and and say that they're making a choice you'd rather be doing drugs in a nice house rather than facing the elements and doing whatever else you're doing so um I just wanted to make that clear thanks thank you Rachel and I think everyone's had a chance to speak at this point I'm going to speak my mind and then try and sum up and move on um so I I think two things are true here um I think we want to protect the people

[194:01] who are unsheltered and who are in need of services that is true we also want to protect our community and our open space meaning Parks public spaces Parks as well as open space and to do those things means doing more than one thing and one of the things to me it means doing is enforcing a camping ban and another thing it means doing is continuously improving the safety net that we have for people who are experiencing homelessness I think we heard the sentiment from most everybody on Council stated in slightly different ways but I feel like there's a majority on Council and it includes me who feels like the camping ban was put in place for a reason and it was a compromise at the time that came out of a whole lot of public Outreach and public hearings and I believe it strikes the right balance

[195:01] and I believe that we need to continue enforcing the camping ban as it is on our books I also think we need to make certain that we are doing everything we can to ensure support for people who need it and we I believe will touch on details of that as we go forward but to me if we did not enforce the camping ban we have to go down a branch that that talks about how do we manage our space in the presence of people camping there and so I'm going to answer yes to this question and I think we have a majority that said yes and I think almost everyone believes that we need to take a look next at how we enforce it so what are the mechanics that we use to enforce the camping ban and what are gaps potentially in the current set of services so I guess I would turn to

[196:01] Chris or and or chief Harold to see um from what you've heard so far do you have enough clarity as far as council's sentiment on the camping ban itself and then we can move on into some of the details of enforcement and the gaps is is that clear enough uh merits clear to me and we can proceed from my perspective okay very good so I I think um if if anyone would like to weigh in um on that summary um I I think the the meat of the discussion is yet to come because it seems from what most members have said that we all agree that it's inhumane that people um live out in the elements without options for service and so given that I think we're ready to move on with the rest of the presentation in which I think we're going to focus on

[197:00] staff ideas for how to enforce the camping ban how to support cleanup and as well to talk about additional services and the possibilities there so I'm ready to move on unless somebody on Council would like to weigh in on this okay seeing no one then I think staff were ready to keep going through the presentation thank you Mr Mayor and Emily could I have you go back to slide 28 for a moment this there was another option that this is an effort in progress that we're going to go so on that it's slide 28 and this is a position that is posted in the utilities department it's a supervisor to help us coordinate the work of sorry I'm distracted by the slides so I'll talk we'll get there so slide 28 talks about that Public Works is uh recruiting to fill this position now it

[198:00] has been budgeted in their budget since 2019 but not hired while they were awaiting the structural recommendations from the public work assessment with which council is familiar and then also while they were awaiting the various hiring and budget impacts associated with the pandemic I want to point out that um right now supervisors across the organization are working to coordinate the cleanup of encampments focusing it one of the city's operational departments in the department with the highest frequency of encampments which is utilities allows others to focus on maintenance and improves our ability to coordinate and prioritize the public across public property so on that slide this is a this is it just to clarify this is a different recommendation we'll discuss in a minute if we go back to slide 28 for that position um this one is in progress or maybe we'll just move on and counsel and ask questions so then the next one we're going to jump around again slide 30. I'm sorry Ali I don't know what you mean by the slide 28 recommendation yeah sorry I was talking with um there we are

[199:02] so now we're oh yeah so I just gave an overview of slide I think it's 28 in your online presentation and Emily will get us there just a moment Ali if it's helpful for you if you want to go up to the top where it says view options request control of the presentation and that way you can control it with your keyboard the evening so I think we'll just okay we've we tried this in a trial once and it did not go well so we'll just slide 28 I'm not sure what they're numbered and if council is looking in the online Link slide 28 talks about this the position is titled a public space Reclamation supervisor and the intent is that this one person um and so Aaron maybe just listen and don't look because I don't know what's going on but um and I'm certain it's probably more my fault not Emily's uh the idea is that this position would rather than the work

[200:01] being dispersed across the many many supervisors that are trying to coordinate it would be focused and it would allow those folks to focus on maintenance so that that's what I was speaking about maybe I do oh we're getting it fixed uh Chris do you want me to try and I don't have any chat going on with Emily so let's Okay so I'll just jump in here and I've got the the presentation up um I don't think Aaron that we need to make a decision right now but it's one of the um things that's ongoing it's about cleanup and it's about the the Reclamation supervisor I do think we want to weigh in on this alley I think we'd like to at least get council's feedback on it we don't have to weigh in now but why don't we bookmark it and go through the rest of the staff suggestions and hear from HRC and then come back to the suite of things there

[201:00] it is yeah um so Mr Mayor what I just heard you say is we'll go through the other efforts in progress and the other items and then take Council questions on these so again this is a budgeted position utilities is recruiting for it now and so now let's we can do this we're going to go to slide 30. this is another um set of options that are in progress we are scoping them out these were outlined in the memo um one is just figuring out Civic area well they're both really about activation of public spaces I'm going to quote Adrian benapee formerly of the Trust for Public Lands and now with the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and just saying here that it's it's known in our world that a multiplicity of positive uses will drive out negative uses and so our team is working on providing more positive activity in the Civic area so that all will feel welcome and safe um

[202:02] it's coming slide 30. several Arts producers and partners are interested in more programming in the Civic area certainly with folks wanting to be outdoors they are looking for spaces while they're indoor sites are less available and we are looking into infrastructure that would make them more covid friendly and easy for example while we have free and public Wi-Fi in the Civic area wired and secure internet would facilitate live streaming and promote Equitable access fencing in restrooms um the other option and we have a picture of this when we get this figured out is that we would love to program the area under the library as a skate area this was highly requested by youth during the Outreach for the Civic area master planning process and would provide a legal place for skating which is lacking in the downtown core and results in complaints um about skating in various areas downtown

[203:01] I do want to note that the skate area is not fully designed nor are costs finalized we do have an existing contract with a skate park designer because of work happening and hopefully at Belmont city park and at Scott Carpenter Park so they are eager to partner on this project and we may return to council to request funding and of course we're always interested in Partnerships or philanthropic funding I also want to note that utilities is looking into environmental modifications under bridges that would modify ground services in a way that would meet floodplain regulations and decrease the likelihood of locations being attractive for overnight sleeping or camping several accounts members I heard mentioned just the the danger to folks camping in those sites and especially in the flood season this is what I was talking about so the picture on the left is from the Civic area master plan that Council accepted and drove really the improvements in that area and then the right is just an example of a refurbishment under a highway this is a

[204:02] treatment that's often used note obviously we don't have the clearance of that site nor the size but it's a nice example um so those are all efforts in progress now I will shift to some recommendations from staff um so the next slide is an option to establish an internal City cleanup team I do want to note as we shift into these recommendations that these um these are options should Council desire to adjust the response to encampment cleanup and I have to note that these uh recommendations are not fully fleshed out we're preparing these at what we call a Class C cost estimate which is where someone kind of looks at it and you know makes a back of the napkin guess with council's Direction we'd more fully flesh out these proposals including any benefits challenges and fully costs but the the costs in your packet are estimates based on information known now and they're very conceptual in nature so Ali I'm sorry to interrupt but can I

[205:01] ask a question on this slide um you you have established the internal cleanup team and then previously you talked about Public Works the public spaces Reclamation supervisor are those separate so that one is public works and they're going to do that and then this is the internal cleanup team is a possible addition to that or are they yeah related yeah so let me say a little bit more about that so um this is uh would be establishing an in-house team in utilities and likely reporting to that utility supervisor that we mentioned and so what this one would do is in addition to ensuring planned maintenance can happen for our labor standards an in-house team would really provide more flexibility right now we're dependent upon scheduling with the contractor and um some of the challenges we saw last year is as the contractors were diverted for some of the disasters happening across the country and so an in-house team would just provide more flexibility

[206:00] um for this one it is key to note that these costs don't include all new resources in your memo the the cost for the team would be around two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year but we believe this would replace and augment those labor hours being spent um across the system and certainly on the contractor and then allow the city to perform both plan maintenance and address encampments and so really the idea is that we're doing this work anyway let's be realistic and plan for it in our work plans and budgets so that full cost would be two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year but the the new operating expense would be 70 000 a year and then 80 000 in initial Capital to equip and train a team and so then the next option um is around increased visibility or enforcement and in your memo we prepared two options for proactive prevention of negative behaviors in Code Enforcement but I want to just point out that there could be a whole Myriad of approaches of

[207:00] Law Enforcement Officers limited commission Park Rangers or even ambassadors and volunteers to support other needs across the system and have a more proactive approach to encourage desired behaviors in our Parks Wildland education and more and so if council is interested in that Avenue we would explore various models and develop the one that makes the most sense for Boulder and based on council's input and again it could could be a broad mix and so with that I will turn it back to Kurt to share a few of the other recommendations and then we'll take Council questions uh good evening again so I'm I'll I'll just assume the uh the slides um aren't working for me um so the the one recommendation I'm going to to talk about um in particular is is probably from an HHS standpoint our biggest concern

[208:01] um and so one of the challenges that we have in housing or high utilizers of the justice system and people residing in encampments is is meth to that end uh HSBC has recently set up a working group to look into recovery housing and sober living options recovery housing facility provides in-home counseling um and sobriety assistance in a group home structure with 24-hour support people who use math can access traditional permanent Supportive Housing due to public health concerns about using meth and Rental facilities a sober living facility will remove this landlord dependency and it's a major goal of our department nhhs for 2021 it is worth noting that funding um and that was a question that we've seen on some of the the council emails

[209:02] um that the funding to support this would be primarily towards obtaining the housing for this service um Medicaid now supports this type of treatment as well as as other sources for the actual operations of that work we've been in conversations with a um a group in Denver who has um 13 successful homes where they they do this type of residential treatments and um from the initial work that we've done it really looks like um the best of of limited options um around treating methamphetamines could ask a question yep so [Music] is the recommendation here

[210:00] that we fund something like this is it that we to look for a location in Boulder what what are you suggesting here if anything sure good good question Sam um so this has been um sort of on our work plan um and something that we've been working toward that we were working towards in in 2020 with um hoping to really tackle in 2021 um so this type of facility um can happen without the approval of the council this use Can Can Happen um in in a residential location um and it's just like uh you know an alcohol treatment facility or something like that as well um what's helpful is having understanding

[211:00] what kind of support um you know city council would have for this so would we would we start with you know one um One Pilots of this or you know would we you know what what's the enthusiasm for that it doesn't also have to be simply in the city of Boulder um we're we're um as a county initiative we work regionally um in all of these issues um and it could be so it could be housed in several locations in the county it's really to get your inputs on um your support for this there may be additional funding that would be required or we would have to look within our our current funding sources to support this um kind of initiative okay very good sorry to interrupt thank you and then I see Mary has her hand up and Mark as well Mary yeah thanks Simon thanks Kurt

[212:01] um on this um the recovery homes for um meth how many if we were to go with the pilot say how many folks would we be able to um house within that pilot home sure so if it was a pilot it would be relatively small most of the facilities like this have anywhere um typically four to ten residents um um they're they're typically on the sort of the smaller side of that of that range because it is very intensive and requires um um you know real personalized support so they they typically don't they're typically typically not larger than um you know 12 or 13 individuals um and so I think in our code if I'm correct they would it would want to be

[213:00] under um age residents right that's the the maximum for a group home yeah um okay um thank you thank you Mary mark yeah um can you speak to the success rate of this model when it has been employed elsewhere um I I can't um and that's something that we're that this working group is trying to get more information on okay what what we do know with our initial look at it though is it's it's it's probably the best approach of of anything that's out there right now but we don't know what the what the numbers look like okay I think that I think it would be important to understand sir we're getting a 14 um cure rate yeah wisely 80 or you know in terms of of looking at the program and

[214:03] the resources it will require I think the um degree to which it is effective will come into play sir yeah I think the starting point is that um it's a it's a challenge that a society or a city or our city you know can't ignore um and um you know we can continue to ignore it as you know if we want to but it will it will have impacts um not just on the community but you know but the individuals who are who are you know suffering from this addiction okay thank you and yeah bye so Kurt this may be too fine grain but I'm just you know thinking ahead already to the North Boulder neighborhood and you know what had to happen there in order for the homeless shelter to go in um you said this could happen in a neighborhood so

[215:01] I think it's going a little bit about how we're picking if we did this how a location would be picked and how we'd handle the neighbors because I can just imagine how that's going to turn out so I think the other um you know obviously we would come back to council with more information on this the other thing we're looking at is what the um what the impact has been on other similar facilities in neighborhoods um where they're providing this service okay it looks like all the questions for now Kirk thank you and I think from there Chris Reynolds is next for the next um recommendation thanks Kurt good evening Council my name is Chris Reynolds and I'm a prosecutor in the city attorney's office I've previously spoken to you about methamphetamine in October of 2018 and

[216:00] about our office's approach to Prosecuting individuals experiencing homelessness in May of 2020. tonight I will speak with you regarding recommendation number four which is to explore adjusting the camping law to require minimum jail sentences for individuals who have multiple prior camping convictions first off I want to say that the housing first approach to homelessness is well supported by the crime statistics tonight on a per capita basis people who have housing are much less likely to be accused of committing a crime than it than unsheltered homeless individuals are on the other side of that fact unsheltered homeless individuals are also much more likely to be victims of crimes than housed individuals housing reduces Criminal Justice System involvement both for offenders and for

[217:02] victims the crime statistics presented by Chief Harold also tell the story of an unhoused population dealing with extremely high rates of mental illness addiction and Trauma it is much easier to remain law abiding without the stressors of not knowing where you'll sleep how you'll get your next meal whether your belongings will be stolen or how you'll be able to get your next fits the human beings living in illegal encampments are subject on average to stress simply above and beyond those dealt with in the housed community moreover those in the house community on average have more resources and healthy support systems they can rely on so their problems do not get out of their control now I recognize that mandatory minimum

[218:00] jail sentences for the crime of camping May strike some council members and some community members as heading in the wrong direction it may strike others as a long overdue solution to our encampment problem when we provide some context to this recommendation when our country closed mental health institutions between the 1960s and the 1980s the idea was to replace them with robust community-based mental health support in 1955 there were over 500 000 individuals residing in state institutions today that number is 35 000. replacing these State institutions with community-based mental health support never happened to the extent necessary to address the scope of the problem those institutions that were closed have been replaced by jails and prisons

[219:00] the rate of mental illness in our jails and prisons was then made worse with mass incarceration in the War on Drugs the largest institutions of mental health care in our country are now jails and prisons such as the Cook County Jail in Chicago and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles Boulder is no exception to this according to the 2019 Boulder County sheriff's annual report approximately 50 percent of individuals in the Boulder County Jail have a mental illness when talking about encampments and unsheltered homelessness the jail is a tool and a resource and not a solution when someone goes to jail addicted mentally ill and homeless in the vast majority of cases that is exactly how they come out when they are released they may be more stabilized than they were before they were arrested but those difficult problems are not solved when someone goes to jail

[220:02] because of kovid the jail as a tool and a resource has mostly been taken away from the city of Boulder until vaccinations have been widely administered the jail will continue to be unavailable for individuals who commit low-level offenses this presents a significant challenge the jail is an integral part of the city's strategy to address disengaged individuals with serious mental illness and addiction many of whom stay at illegal encampments the goal with the use of jail is to incentivize people to engage in the resources that we have available it takes time to connect individuals to the resources at the jail and to make a plan for people when they get released these re-entry supports are critical making sure that people have necessary medications helping them make appointments with social security or mental health partners applying for legal documents such as birth certificates and disability

[221:00] verifications and connecting them with housing Specialists to work on long-term solutions that keep individuals out of the criminal justice system are just some of the things that we can and do work on with our high utilizers many of whom stay at illegal encampments Boulder County has made great strides in recent years of increasing re-entry supports based at the jail such as the behavioral health assistance program the mental health diversion program the hiring of a re-entry coordinator for people who are sentenced to less than 45 days in jail and the creation of a transitional housing coordinator position if someone is in custody only for a day or two connecting them to these existing supports in the jail can be challenging in addition to re-entry supports there's also addiction and mental health programming in the jail but that programming has minimum length of stay requirements

[222:01] typically in order to be eligible for mental health programming at the jail someone has to be sentenced to at least 45 days of jail this is much longer than the average camping sentence recommended by prosecutors and imposed by the court and outside the jail the current model of treatment that's available for unhoused people staying in illegal incumbents does not involve providing them with inpatient or residential treatment that sort of medical intervention is simply unavailable to individuals who are reliant on Medicaid to cover their medical expenses this means that treatment is outpatient where the individual being treated is responsible for where they sleep at night it is unrealistic to expect someone who's staying at one of these encampments to be able to successfully complete Outpatient Treatment when they are surrounded by drugs alcohol and addicts in an unsafe stressful environment getting them out of that environment is

[223:01] key to successful treatment that is where the jail can be a useful tool and resource but it is but it does not come without limitations even if we did pursue minimum jail sentencing many disengaged individuals would be able to avoid lengthy jail stays due to bail reform legislation that mandates release for certain types of low-level offenses like trespassing or camping furthermore the city does not control any of the programming at the jail and individuals must meet eligibility requirements in order to access that programming and finally the provision of mental health care in a correctional institution where safety will always be the priority is very difficult despite its limitations minimum jail sentencing for repeat camping offenders may be a tool that could be used to connect individuals to jail-based resources while also deterring

[224:00] individuals from accumulating convictions in the first place we must remember above all else that over-representation in the unhoused community of societal harms such as mental illness drug addiction trauma and racism are formidable barriers to using Boulder's camping law to reduce Street homelessness the criminal justice system alone cannot solve these systemic problems only by pursuing evidence-based long-term Solutions such as housing can we hope to make the future a better place for all people and I believe with that I'll send it back to Ali unless there's some personal questions yeah I'm going to stop you there because we have a few questions so Mary your hands up was that leftover or is this new leftover very good then I've got Rachel and Aaron Rachel thanks um and thanks for that presentation Chris a couple questions

[225:00] that I guess what I think I heard you say is addiction treatment and stable housing and to me it's obviously going to be better to cut jail out of that and just go for uh addiction treatment and stable housing so why are we looking at um jail in this mix if those are the goals that's a really good question uh Rachel for the folks who were talking about who are staying in the encampment a lot of their point of contact with the system is the criminal justice system and so the only time some of these folks are ever able to access you know talk to a mental health professional is at the jail um and so you know we have to recognize uh the resources that we have available and try to use them to their best effect and so um if it wasn't for um

[226:00] the CR the criminal justice system and the boulder Municipal Court there are lots of folks who would still be living on the street in an unsheltered homelessness but now they're actually housed and so it's not to punish people but it's to engage them and to try to help them in any way that we can I'm hearing that I I it's and and I can understand where the ticket brings you into contact with um court services that can then divert you to the necessary resources but it seems to me much better if you can get more beds at Fort lion say than than jail so clarify that um yeah and also wanted to clarify um what's the mandatory minimum you would be looking at because my understanding is under our code you can already get sentenced to 90 days so I'm unclear on why we need more than that um and let's all start stop there for now well the details would still have to be

[227:01] worked out but I don't think we're contemplating a minimum beyond the 90 days which is already set by the general penalty ordinance in the boulder Revised Code um you know my ballpark estimate would be between somewhere between 30 and 60 days and would this apply to people whose Soul infraction say is sleeping like under a tent so it would not apply uh for somebody who gets one camping ticket it wouldn't likely apply for somebody who got two or three but only after uh they'd have to accumulate convictions before it would be triggered is the idea but the convictions could just be for existing sort of in a tent yeah sure I mean it's not it's not attendant to other crimes that we see um it's not yeah this recommendation is to explore just uh amending the camping

[228:00] ordinance and and just thank you for that kind of back to my second question I'm still unclear and maybe I just didn't understand it from your presentation but since we already have 90 days why do you feel that a mandatory minimum is is helpful if you can already know uh prosecute somebody and ask for 90 days well I presented the recommendation to explore the idea of instituting mandatory minimums I'm not saying that it necessarily would be helpful or that it would um you know be the solution but when we're talking about um enforcing the camping law a lot of the time the focus is on the police department and they're only a kind of the first step in the process of the criminal justice system and so it has not been the practice of the municipal court or our office to recommend lengthy jail sentences for somebody who is convicted of camping in

[229:01] the past and so there's definitely has been uh a lot of um Community uh members who want the the camping lot to be enforced and and email you you all about that and uh from my perspective as somebody who's practiced in the municipal court system for the last almost six years it's always been enforced sorry one more and then I'll I'll move on thanks Sam um is this are there other instances in Boulder code or ordinances where we have mandatory minimums or would this be a first uh we don't have any other mandatory uh minimums for that require tail senses this would be the first okay thanks thank you Rachel next we've got Aaron Mary and Mark and I will just call to attention that it is 10 o'clock Aaron hey Chris I appreciate your time on you coming and talking to us about this about to us about this difficult subject

[230:02] um is that first issue I just want to raise is so we we know that that um African-American um Native American Hispanic and other people of color are over represented in uh the homeless population versus the rest of the community so it seems like a policy like this would end up with us imprisoning people of color at kind of higher rates um than white people and have we run this proposal through our sort of racial Equity lens I'm not aware that we have um I mean the Criminal Justice System writ large uh disproportionately affects people of color um and so that is already occurring and happening but it seems like this might aggravate that it would be a factor that would have to be considered okay um thanks and have we talked to to sheriff Pelley in the in the jail about

[231:01] their opinion on on this idea I don't believe that we have okay because I'd be interesting because I know in the past I've heard the sheriff have opinions on how we enforce the camping ban and so they might have objections to this how about um have we checked in with the District Attorney's office at all not about this specifically no okay all right thanks for that thank you Aaron I've got three more Mary Mark and Juni and then what I would suggest on this specific item is that we see if there's anyone interested on Council on pursuing it further so Mary Mark and Juni Mary um Aaron's final two questions may have just addressed what I was going to ask but I was I'll bring it up anyway because it does have to do with um a plan that I think Sheriff Pelley

[232:00] had already in terms of the 2018 ballot initiative that passed um to create an alternate alternative sentencing facility um and so I was curious how an alternative sentencing facility would play into something like this and if that facility could be used as the the kind of facility Rachel was was talking about in terms of bypassing the jail and actually going to a place that is intended for the purposes of um helping people access resources I don't have the details exactly on how the alternative sentencing facility is going to operate um I'm aware that it's completed or almost completed um my understanding that it's still essentially a jail it's just really

[233:01] focused on treatment as much as possible and I do hope that the city um would be able to access that if appropriate um but I'm but I don't have all of the details on the alternative sentencing facility but that that's a good thought thank you thank you Mary um Mark and then Juni Mark yeah um thanks Chris I'm a little unclear about something is is the basic point of the minimums to leverage um homeless into treatment options in the sense of you can go to jail or you can get the help that we can provide for you or is it simply to put people in jail because of of their violations of a camping ban in that respect more interested in putting people in jail and commit criminal acts of a different nature whether it's aggravated assault or robbery or whatever

[234:01] and so it would be the first one um you know I I believe that in in certain cases punishment is appropriate and telling somebody to punish them is appropriate but in the vast majority of cases that we that I prosecute in the boulder Municipal Court people really just need help and uh getting them the help that they need is extraordinarily uh difficult sometimes people are so um mentally ill that they they don't even they won't even say that they're mentally ill um and so getting them to see a mental health professional is incredibly difficult and and my last comment is I I do think Aaron's it was Aaron's comment is correct that would be very useful to coordinate with the district attorney and the sheriff and get some feedback from them and and see if whatever we might or might not adopt is if someone has been run by all of the uh relevant departments

[235:00] um it would not really do for us to pass this and then have Sheriff pelly tell us uh no way I'm not taking those prisoners obviously we don't intend for them to be prisoners we intend for them to get help but um we ought to not be at Cross purposes with the sheriff and the district attorney if we can help it thank you Mark that's a good point sorry Chris that's all for me thanks thank you Mark Juni and then Mary Judy thank you Sam and thank you Chris for our presentation but I have a few questions you mentioned 90 days minimum and I have a question similar to Rachel's because it's still not clear in my mind didn't used to be 90 days maximum so it's it's 90 day it's 90 days maximum is is what the boulder Revised Code has as a maximum

[236:00] punishment for any one violation of the boulder Revised Code um yeah so that is what it is right now and you are I guess advocating for this 90 day to be a minimum so I see you shaking your head as a no no um so uh I wouldn't uh I'm not advocating uh for any uh minimum sentencing I'm exploring the idea of what it would take and what it would actually look like in practice and the different limitations um if it was something that Council was interested in uh in my professional opinion something between 30 and 60 days would make the most sense okay so basically you're just exploring it since you're already exploring it then what would be the maximum or would it just be open to the discretion of the judge unless the boulder Revised Code was changed for the general penalties that

[237:00] is 90 days it would stay 90 days what you're saying is n't a minimum right then the maximum let's say for instance if I were to show if someone were to show up before a judge for I guess for this encampment issue and the minimum is 90 days whether the judge would have the discretion and say you know what you've been here before me too many times instead of giving you the minimum 90 I want to give you let's say 200 days or 300 days the judge is constrained by uh what case is presented before her so if somebody has one count of camping it would only be it could only ever be 90 days um well I think my comment is along with that question is that in my view mandatory minimum is is oppressive and and I think there are other parts in

[238:01] the country where mandatory minimums have been used for other crimes and it has not work it's it's it has been disproportionately used against certain people and I think Aaron mentioned that but I think part of the question as well when it comes to Boulder is what percentage of our population of a homeless population are people of color I think that's very important as well because if we're gonna talk about equity and talk about the impact of you know certain policies on let's say minority I think it's very important to know what percentage they represent within that group because that might not really be an issue but nonetheless we're talking about human beings and I don't think something as a mandatory minimum that further oppress them and put them into a system that somehow just snowballs so to me I just don't see I understand you said you're not advocating but I find I find even the whole discussion actually I find it

[239:02] very hard to um you know to process because again this idea of this 90 90 days minimum I think is uh and I understand your perspective as well because you mentioned you know um providing people access to services and I understand I think Rachel talked about that how you know it's hard to get people to uh use Services if they're not before the court so maybe that's a bigger National discussion that we need to have as well when it comes to people who are who have issues with uh drug addiction how do we really uh help them to get Services as opposed to having to deal with the criminal justice system so thank you thank you thank you Genie Mary do we how could we um instead of having a

[240:00] um a mandatory minimum could we invent a new um um I guess I'm not sure what to call it but instead of sentencing somebody to jail you would say we see that you need help and we're gonna you know provide you with an opportunity to address your um your challenges and so we're going to you're instead of sentencing you we're going to give you the opportunity to go um say for example into one of these group homes and stay there for a minimum of the 45 days that it takes to actually start to um see Improvement I mean can what what

[241:00] is to prevent some sort of a um diversion I guess to help rather than a diversion to a incarceration and and Mary as a prosecutor I would love to be able to present people with an option like that we just don't have it what would it take to invent it well what um Kurt was talking about it um you know residential exploring the idea of residential Med treatment that that that is something that would be awesome and um it doesn't even necessarily have to be a part of a like a criminal sentence to sentence somebody to do that you know if we have that option available and somebody wants to exercise it I'm happy to dismiss all of their cases that they have at the municipal court and get them out of the criminal justice system and that's been my focus as the primary prosecutor of people experiencing homelessness uh for the last few years is is to do exactly that it's just

[242:02] um the resources uh that we have are not always ideal well so say we did have um a group home available and um and somebody came in that could benefit from the services at that group home um and there was the space and um so somebody came forward and you would say look we have we'll dismiss everything but you have to it's a conditional dismissal sure that they have to go to this group home and um and get sober or um or address the addiction does I mean is that something that we can do now if we have those resources sure absolutely I mean I do stuff like that all the time um if well not all the time not as much as I would like but um you know if somebody gets a spot at

[243:00] Fort lion or Harvest Farms um those spots are hard to come by they're hard to get into um I you know I will say hey I'm gonna put this case over here to the side you stay down there Fort Lyon or you stay at Harvest Farms for a couple of months we'll check in if you're still there I'll dismiss your case so so stuff like that does and is happening so if we had a a regional Coalition say that came together and said okay we're going to address this problem and in by the end of by December of 2022 we're going to have a hundred of these group homes and they're going to be spread out throughout the whole region and they will be available to all of the participants of you know whatever the the Coalition is and um and so then you'd have what 100 800 spots that would be available to anyone that is willing to go into one of those homes and

[244:02] address um their condition I mean is is that something that you know I'm just thinking ahead to the the idea of creating a regional Coalition that works together to address some of these problems and um and if we came together and created those opportunities for people it just seems to me that in lieu of a mandatory minimum sentence that something like that would probably be um a better alternative so that's I'll just leave it at that thanks Chris you're welcome so thank you for that Aaron I see your hand but first I want to see uh Chief I saw you turned your camera on did you want to speak uh yeah I I do and I want you to know that um fundamentally and philosophically aligned with Chris's presentation I think a couple points need to be made

[245:00] one um this is not a great system for people that are addicted to drugs and that are involved in criminal activity and the only um the only thing that I think that we have right now that may divert marry like your I think that people that understand the addiction cycle um it is extremely hard the Neuroscience is not in the brain to even accept services so how to break that cycle um becomes the pivotal point in my opinion and where I policed in Cincinnati we do have diversion programs that are very strong in nature um and so this to me needs to be explored um the other issue that I'll bring up is that writing tickets

[246:00] the same concerns that Juni has expressed should be expressed similarly when you are writing tickets to people constantly with no back end strategy and no back end support and so this becomes to me the most important piece of the puzzle that we figure out is how to get people into meth treatment um that they have a space and time to even make the decision that this is a good idea and so it's really challenging for me as a police chief to be enforcing an encampment ban without the back end of the Criminal Justice Center trying to have a holistic strategy because I think it is just as dangerous and believe me I've been in places where this has really been blown up so I just want Council to think of that

[247:01] too as we're walking through these because in my opinion police writing camping tickets we could do it in the thousands and is not going to stop the cycle of meth addiction is the way I see it in the criminal activity that is connected to that issue so Mary I I love the idea of a diversion and that's I think what Chris and I um and the other members are trying to get to is how do we best do that thank you Chief um go now to Aaron and then Rachel Aaron and she failed it I mean I appreciate you raising the issues and the perspective is the and Mary I'll just say I love your vision of the like a regional network of recovery centers you know that people from all over the county region could take advantage of I think it's I hope we can move in that direction I hope that that's one of the pieces of um uh direction that we give tonight is do

[248:01] something like that I just to say that that the the only way to help people are suffering from addiction is to imprison them is not something that that I can um agree to like I I understand that we are sorely sorely lacking in addition recovery um options in our society and it's a real shame and I hope that we get some federal intervention to improve our options and one of these days before too long um but but in the meantime um saying that that if people are sleeping in public multiple times that we're going to imprison them for a minimum length of time in the hopes that some of the treatments some of the the resources that are only available in a jail might assist them with their condition is just not something that I can agree to so I I hope that we we don't move forward with this one um and I don't know honestly the thing

[249:01] are you in Rachel yep um I appreciate your um points Chief Harold it's my understanding though that we already do have diversion as an option and that's what um Chris was saying we do that as much as we can we will send people to Fort Lyon and move the paperwork over to the other side of the desk and wait and see if rehab works out so I don't know that we need this expanded tool to be able to do diversion and so therefore I don't know why we would consider exploring it um and then we'll just say you know societally we can pay for jail beds or we can pay for Rehab beds if we're putting people in jail and getting them rehab there there's we're paying and we're probably paying more than we would for a rehab bed so we need to move this into uh you know the same dollars can be used in a different way and we just need to figure out how to do that um because in one circumstance you're going to be more likely to come out on the other side of jail or prison more likely to recidivate and commit another crime versus if you go into rehab you

[250:02] you have a decent chance at lifelong sobriety which benefits all of society so I think that we need to be um to the extent that we can pushing the new Biden Administration reaching out to Joe nagoose reaching out to our state legislators and right now in our legislative action guide we're we're not going to do that as a city we we say like we don't want to advocate for different um homeless you know service floors and things like that so I think that we need to shift our thinking and advocate for um more funding and better resources from the state and federal government and I think this is the time to do it thank you Rachel mark I agree with everything Rachel has said about reaching out and trying to get more and better resources but I'm also um very sensitive to Chief Harold's comments and basically if they're if you don't have any kind of option you're just writing paper you might as well take the

[251:01] right ticket and throw it into the wind because you will be ignored if there is no possibility of consequence for repeated acts of of camping I mean I just don't um maybe our situation will get better when the um the jail reopens and we can at least address those who are committing crimes as opposed to those who are simply sleeping out in the open um but to the extent that that such a program might be the basis for trying to get people who are otherwise unwilling to consider other options to get them to do to utilize those Services I think it could be useful and I am sensitive to sending out our police force to do nothing but but write tickets that are crumpled up and thrown in the garbage um that to me is not an effective uh

[252:00] system um and so I I would be at least in favor of a further exploration of this possibility I I would like to see some input from uh the sheriff and and from the district attorney but we don't live in the perfect world where we can accommodate um every individual with state of the art programs we don't I'd love to have them I'd love to be able to afford them but we don't and and so the issue is are you going to enforce the camping ban in any way that that has any kind of teeth in it or not and it's perfectly acceptable to say not but my choice would be to um give our law enforcement Personnel at least some ability to enforce the camping ban that we have all said we want to enforce so okay

[253:02] um so I'm going to jump in here and say that I think what we have um is a a message from Council to continue exploring better ways for addiction treatment so if if I'm summarizing where everybody's coming from whether it's the chief or whether it's the prosecutor whether it's Council I think what we're after is better addiction treatment and I want to come back to the idea of of lobbying at higher levels of government I think that's important and is coming here shortly but what I'm sensing from Council on people raise your hand if I've got this wrong is that there's not a lot of appetite to put in a mandatory minimum for camping so I I don't think that is a starter but I think what is a starter is for law enforcement the sheriff prosecutor and Kurt to continue exploring better ways for treatment so

[254:00] what I heard from Kurt's suggestion was let's keep working with the non-profit in Denver that does residential meth treatment and I do completely get what the chief is saying with prosecutors saying but I I don't think the sense of counsel is that a law to increase sentences for camping even repeat offenders has a lot of purchase right now so I'm just going to leave it there at the moment and we have some other suggestions we need to touch base on it's almost 10 30. so we may as well just get the ideas on the table and then go from easier to harder or smaller to bigger so I'm going to see Kurt if we can bring HRC forward and have the conversation I want to tee it up a little bit with Aaron and Mary have had a series of conversations with HRC and along with HRC I think has distilled down to a few ideas to consider so that Curt I'm going to turn it over to you

[255:00] and see if we've got the HRC representative if we could get a quick presentation and coordination between HRC Mary and Aaron to kind of summarize where that's landed I think that'd be helpful and can I just ask a quick question before we move on which is you know we also heard about um that activation under the library and in you know internal cleanup were we supposed to weigh in on that stuff already are we leaving that behind are we going to come back to that I was I was thinking we'd come back to it but um it is almost 10 30 wanted to get the HRC folks um in front of us so they could say their piece um the way I'm looking at this Rachel just to your point is we have about three other items on the table that have been proposed to us and then we're going to hear from HRC we'll end up with a list of about six before we touch on things like um uh say parking and a sanctioned Campground so I just didn't want to leave HRC behind and Kurt has been

[256:00] pinging me on that so if we can go ahead to HRC and Aaron and Mary and Kurt I think that would be best next does that answer your question Rachel okay thank you um so so thank you Sam I'll be very brief and um I think without you know in US losing this um this PowerPoint um it's it's become um not quite as smooth as we wanted it to at the end of this presentation um but um I'll just give a very brief overview and then um hand it over to Lindsay and then Aaron and Mary may also have some input they they met with two members of the HRC um so I'll just read the slide that was um it's very brief um it was presented um as a joint meeting of two members of the HRC and and Mary and and um Aaron brockett's so the the three things that

[257:03] they wanted to look at was number one reviewing city of Boulder dehumanizing language in reference to underserved populations number two collect data on why individuals do not access homeless services and number three create or form a regional coalition to lobby for Statewide legislation to address homelessness and with that I'm hoping that Lindsay um is on and um I will turn it over to her I see Lindsay on and deep okay perfect there you go thank you um hello thanks for having me Lindsay loberg um they them I um thank you Kurt for reading those suggestions um those are suggestions that um uh were brought up by the membership

[258:02] your membership staff and HRC as things that we imagine might be actionable um and find purchase with uh with the group of you individuals and um I want to express willingness to work on those things and collaborate um and I I do want to be clear um that those items don't address the substance of our concerns um and I'd be remiss since we're talking so much about the camping ban if I didn't mention that we're very much opposed to it on on the HRC and are very concerned about about human rights in in Boulder because if we as we've heard a couple times it's

[259:01] certainly the case that there are not services for everybody who is homeless in Boulder either because they're not allowed to access those services or because those Services simply don't work for them um and I have to admit I am I am reeling from a conversation about whether or not we were going to employ mandatory minimum jail sentences for people sleeping outside I appreciate that there is no purchase for that um I um want to move back to willingness to want to collaborate and then just clarity around um the the the guarantee that we will continue to dissent to this policy because we consider it inhumane and I

[260:02] think at least some of you do too we all heard the public comment and one thing I want just to say to everyone who's listening is that none of us have a right to comfort when people don't have the right to shelter in survival and and that is the situation that we're stuck with right now we don't have the right to comfort until everybody has the right to shelter in survival um again willing to collaborate um and work together and wanted to make that very clear that we want to work together towards intimate incremental change and we'll continue to dissent against this policy and happy to answer your questions very good thank you for that Lindsay I think it's clear what your position is and I think we got that also from the memo that you sent so that's much

[261:00] appreciated does anyone have any questions for Lindsay or I would invite um Aaron or Mary if you had any color you wanted to give on the three points of uh collaboration I am seeing nothing uh Aaron here almost nothing um right um Lindsay thank you for that I um respect you standing up for your principles and the principles of HRC with us here at council tonight so much much respect for that um so the and also thank you for the time the that you um and other HRC members uh spent uh with Mary and I with um art as well um in working on you know some incremental steps that we could take to address some of hrc's concerns um so I I do think you know maybe I could just speak to them uh briefly the you know the a little bit more than than

[262:01] Kirk did but the you know the first one is an addressing kind of language used um in City Communications and and information when speaking about um uh folks experiencing homelessness and how we can avoid dehumanizing language and and use language that recognizes the humanity of everyone in our community including people who are unhoused um so thank you for that point and I look forward to us working on that and then the second one was I think it talks about how Lindsay you spoke and I I did earlier about how our services system um does not um is not available uh for some people who are unhoused but this does not meet their needs or work for that and so the second one would be about collecting data to try to determine uh how many people that applies to and what the needs are that are not getting met and um I think that has promise you know for helping us to make sure that we have as few holes in our safety net as possible

[263:03] and um then that last bit is about I think we all recognize um that we as a city don't have the resources to address these problems in the way that they deserve to be addressed and so this is about working with um the state legislature and other um governments around the region to try to come up with some shared solutions that can tap into more resources than we have available locally to try to get as many people housed and and needs met as possible so that's that's my slightly longer summary Lindsay does that does that sound like your meets with your understanding of these ideas as well yes I I think one thing I'd like um I'd like to highlight is when we're talking about language we're really talking about idea construction so

[264:01] um I think the thing that I want to highlight there is is the complexity of the issue um that and it might require more explanation but we simply can't I want to talk about what kind of fix I think this is and what what it might not be and and um uh speak to um uh like put this issue in context and relevance um of what we're thinking on the HRC um that language is up used to uphold entire ideas that can be um dehumanizing so one example that we've used is service resistant which as a term in itself isn't dehumanizing but the concept of service resistance as

[265:00] it's sometimes applied can be um so um for for example to talk about everybody who does not use Services as service resistant can be an example of dehumanizing language because it um removes um it removes the context of the situation that often the services just don't work for people or they're not able to use them um and kind of can assign um this uh reluctance or um obstinence to people that that may or may not be there right and distracts from the issue so I I want to um when we talk about like collaborating and working together I want to um make clear um the the project I think that we're all like undertaking together

[266:02] um and happy to answer more questions about that too thank you I I have a couple of comments on that um but I turned to Mary first because she had her hand up no thanks I think um Aaron pretty much covered it um one thing I just wanted to add is that um the on number two it is um looking into um collecting that I think the the language and the the minutes that we used in the meeting was um to consider data collection so that means how I I think what we need to determine is how would we do it and is it possible to do it um so and I think that that's perhaps um something that we can get some input from um the the court on because I know that

[267:02] they're doing some work uh and maybe we can get um the court navigator to comment a little bit on that but um I get I I don't want to go into a lot of depth of discussion into this because I think this is the retreat conversation um but but I think um Aaron um summarized it pretty well the only other thing that I would add was that um the HRC um wanted to consider looking at a um some other suggestions on on consideration of gaps in data collection and um and again I think that the court can shed some um light on what they're doing and whether or not that could help with this data collection so one of the outcomes of that meeting was to have the court present to the HRC on what they are

[268:01] doing um so that's that's the only other thing and then um with respect to number three and um forming um a coalition that was kind of along the lines of the cc4ca which is the um communities for climate action um Colorado communities for climate action yeah Colorado communities for climate action which was has been very successful and has grown in of the fears that it's been in existence and lobbied at the state level and people are working together so that was the vision behind that and um and really it came out of a conversation with um with art feagle who basically um recognized that this is not this is not this is more than a local problem it's a regional problem it's a Statewide

[269:01] problem it's a nationwide problem and he went on to expand it to its maybe even a galactic problem but um but I think that what what happens when you start to work at those more expansive levels is that the the problem at the local level is intractable but when you start zooming out it becomes something that you can address so um I think that's a real important concept um to pursue thank you Marion Mark I'm gonna weigh in here briefly um I I think all of these should go to our work plan discussion at The Retreat the way I look at number one and two is those are great projects that could potentially be led by the HRC in fact I think the HRC has been our go-to body for looking at things like dehumanizing language in the the larger concept that Lindsay talked about

[270:01] and then as far as exploring how and what data to be collected that that will take some focused work that aren't the council will have time for and that also might make something that's really um in the Wheelhouse for the HRC to flesh out for us as has been done successfully in the past on the regional Coalition this is extremely timely um you know mayor Hancock has begun talking with other Mayors in the last six weeks or so about kind of trying to have an action-oriented Coalition there are some coalitions which exist that are region wide and they tend to address specific very small problems without looking at the holistic challenge so I guess my suggestion here uh is to take all of these good ideas into the retreat and I think that we can parse them out and figure out how best to address them

[271:00] but I think all of them have significant legs is the way I look at it so with that I'll go to Mark and then Juni Mark and well thank you Lindsay and uh Mary and Aaron I think you did some some wonderful work here along with Lindsay I am um I think the points of cooperation that you detailed are are excellent and worth supporting um and Lindsay I certainly appreciate that you have a different view on some of our policies and I I would respect that but I will make one comment you know you can't you mentioned how language is important and I I believe that is the case um and I would disagree with your use of the term comfort in discussing how people view this problem I don't think that that's the the matter at all uh I think this is about safety for most people it's about the safety of

[272:02] their children and it's sort of um belittling the seriousness of the problems that we Face to talk about it as elevating the comfort of some people over the needs of others um it's much more fundamental than that you may continue to use that language of course but on that we will have to have a respectful disagreement because I don't think it's about Comfort at all I think it's about people being afraid um people suffering from high crime rates and people seeing the the change in a community that is not for the better and that's simply my view so thank you and I thank you for the work on this thank you Mark CUNY thank you Sam and just to add to what Mark said is that I understand where lens is coming from and I think

[273:02] what she was saying essentially is that until our entire Community is safe and secured you know other parts of the community will feel the insecurity as well so and I think that's just this idea of justice and social justice is that if you have people who are highly marginalized in a community it's going to be very hard to have a very secured community so I understand that perspective and thank you for sharing it and I just wanted to say um thank you Mary and and Aaron for bringing these ideas forward when it comes to the demonizing language I fully support that um I think the idea is having language that Empower people I worked before in for instance in disability work and I the first time I encounter this idea of that you need to use language instead of saying disabled people you say people with disability because that's something

[274:01] that they're living with as opposed to something that they are so I understand that perspective and I think that will be great and I hope that at the end it's gonna be their will be concrete output of that discussion whether it's maybe providing vocabulary to um City Council Members you know on different words basically that they can use as opposed to to the words that you mentioned and also I think the idea of the regional Coalition I fully support that as well I think that's a great idea we all have to do a parts it's not just Boulder it's the entire Colorado region or Colorado state that really needs to get this uh this work together in order to make a real difference thank you thank you Genie okay with that um to Corral this conversation my

[275:00] suggestion is that we take these three items from the HRC as discussed with a couple council members and move them into the uh Retreat just to give our thumbs up as a whole on what we like and don't like to move forward with so council members do you agree with taking that forward these three items right seeing no disagreement then I think we'll go ahead and do that thank you Lindsay again for representing that to us and then we had four other staff suggestions as Rachel had mentioned and of those four suggestions I think we have taken one off the table at the moment um which is increased penalties for repeat offenders I think we distilled that one down to a focus on um treatment and so the other items that I have here and there's some to add to them but internal cleanup team additional enforcement which was Rangers or police and then meth addiction and I

[276:02] think that one's going to be generalized and then there were a couple other items in the memo which were um laws potential Ordnance changes around propane cylinders and around tents so I have five items in addition to speak about in addition to what we just did with HRC I would ask first before we start going down that list to staff or Council have other items that they'd like to be on the list Aaron I see your hand yeah well I was actually just going to say that um it sounds like we all liked um additional uh addiction treatment programs that sound likely more or less addressed that one already um but but I would like a chance to uh speak to the items I brought up in my hotline email from last night as well very good so um it's 10 to 11 and so I guess the question we have a handful of things

[277:02] that we could check off and maybe some are already checked off and then we have Aaron's additional item which at least is Cahoots and then um do we have others that we'd like to add to tonight's discussion uh Rachel I'm sorry well that's okay I mean I think Aaron's you know sort of plus basically which is um we've decided we're going to enforce the camping ban and my objection to discussing that alone up front is there are gaps and there are perhaps some other things we need to look at the where can people be not just where can't they be so I'm going to be irritated if we you know said that we'll get to that later and then we say it's too late to get to it because that's if we start enforcing and um we we know those people need to go somewhere they're they're humans that are existing right now where we don't want them to be on playgrounds and along

[278:00] the creek and we never discussed the HRC and Hab report and I know Lindsay's still here so and Adam was a liaison to that so I think it's inappropriate if we um move forward with half the discussion so Aaron's proposal gets to some of it but I think it's broader and um it it can't be dissected bisected I think is the word there okay Mark I I would I would disagree with you a little bit Rachel I I think to do justice to the alternative proposals whether it's a sanctioned Campground or a safe parking or tiny homes or any other alternative solution I think requires a a full conversation I mean I'd hate to just throw it up there and go yay nay um because I don't think it's doing Justice to the topic uh whichever way we would come out on it and I I think there's a

[279:03] lot to unpack there and my view of not necessarily including this conversation tonight is not to cut it off but to give it its full measure of um attention um otherwise at you know 11 15 11 30. somebody's just going to say you know campgrounds yes no and I don't think that does Justice to us um I think there are a lot of issues relating to it either way you that we go um so my view is is we we have not necessarily scheduled this correctly to take us to 11 o'clock and and you know only be this far through the conversation and I I just hate to give a short shrift to any of the uh proposals simply because the hour is late um I'm not trying to cut off my conversation I'm just like you don't need to stop talking I I was not by the

[280:02] way putting a time limit on anything I'm just keeping us track of our time and trying to track track the items that that's really all so far so if I make on that real quick just yeah I I think that I'm short shrift is better than no shrift but also I think that we are just giving staff guidance tonight like do we want them to look more at something and I know in the like safe parking update we got in July there was a a you know a pretty important piece of outcomes of safe parking that was was like sliced out of our report as was reported To Us by um Lindsay's work group I think so we don't actually have the data on outcomes and and I think it is within our purview tonight to say you know while we're looking at these other things and having staff explore them we can also say let's also you know look back and because we said we couldn't put staff time into looking in those options and I think we could say let's get a little more research so I think there's a way for us to do some of that tonight okay

[281:02] Aaron well I guess I just I I feel like we either should stop soon or go really long because I'm person I'm personally not willing to pick three or four perceived easy ones and and say yes or no to those without talking about the whole range of services so I you know I sort of feel that maybe we have a threshold do we do we go at this for another couple hours or do we um or what or do we say you know what don't change how we're behaving from the way we have been behaving and then schedule another session sometime soon I I just because I I feel like we have to have that full Services discussion before we talk about any additional enforcement that we might pursue okay mayor bye I mean I'm I'm fine if we schedule another session I can tell you I'm not going to be on here much longer it's for those of us who have work you know when you schedule these meetings we go by a five hour and 10 minute meeting it's

[282:00] already longer than the 10 30 Mark that we agreed upon and again a lot of us have jobs the next day so this is not an easy thing to do after an eight-hour day so I'm not going to be making smart decisions as as much as I would at six o'clock as I am at 11 so you guys want to keep going that's fine I'm probably going to jump off but I'd be much preferred to have I would much prefer to have a meeting where we continue to schedule this so we can all think with a brighter mind seeing as it's about to be 11 o'clock at night so okay Aaron your hand's still up I assume that that was left over okay so I I'm gonna return to a suggestion I think there are a few things that we could touch on tonight if we want to put some of this to the work plan discussion we can do that as well maybe that's where that belongs particularly the um safe parking and encampments I don't know but the things I see that we could probably touch on tonight would be

[283:01] cleanup which is separate from enforcement doesn't have to do with the police so much as how we manage the cleanup as a Servpro is it internal so and then as far as the increased penalties for repeat offenders I think we'll clear on that as far as um looking into treatment for methamphetamine addiction I think you're right Aaron we've been clear about that as well so I'll ask Council would you like to touch on any of the cleanup issues because I really don't think that we can get into so Aaron you don't even want to talk about cleanup issues let's take a sense of counsel is there anyone on Council who would like to tackle the cleanup issues tonight three people yes so and Bob's here Bob would vote Yes but that wouldn't get us over the top so I think what that means is that we will

[284:01] punt some of this but not all of it over to the work plan discussion to see if there's interest in devoting additional time does that sound like the right solution here um because what I've got is do we want to talk about internal cleanup team do we want to talk about additional enforcement and then we have Aaron's pointing about Cahoots and then on top of that we have safe parking and uh encampments so we can put all those onto the work plan discussion and we can make decisions about them there Mary and then Mark Mary I just wanted to perhaps ask a question regarding the two options the public place spaces Reclamation in the um the establish the internal cleanup um it seems to me that those are ongoing

[285:01] regardless of what we decide here tonight it's they're basically do we um do it in such a way that um works better in terms of Staff effort and Community dollars and if we perhaps if we put more effort into those two options there can be savings that can be put into um other things so um to me it seems like those two and and please whoever on staff can answer this it seems like those two things are ongoing regardless of how we do do it those two proposals are basically kind of a reorganization of what we're doing right now

[286:02] yeah I mean yes it is reorganizing and restructuring work that is currently happening and has been happening to a way that we think would be more cost effective and efficient Mary did that answer your question yeah it does and and I you know it seems to me that those two I don't see why we wouldn't um go ahead with those right so I'll turn to Adam and then Mark and then I'll weigh in on that Adam so for me this is a resource allocation question and it's a chicken in the egg issue if you allocate resources for cleanup before you allocate resources for diversion Services you don't necessarily know how much you're going to have to clean up so I can't answer the question

[287:01] of whether or not I would want um an alternative cleanup service without knowing what the potential other options are that we're going to put on the table for diversion um that's kind of where I'm coming from I think I've got Mark next and then Aaron let me check here yeah Mark Mayer my view is what the ought to schedule a very prompt special meeting rather than doing it at the retreat um one just dedicated to these issues um whether it's any of the Alternatives that have been presented and whether I'm happy to approve the you know the cleanup items tonight but I'm not sure that that makes um all of the members very very comfortable I'm not sure that that Rachel and Aaron would appreciate that as much and if that's the case I would say let's let's do it all

[288:00] uh in one meeting um as early as next week if we can do that uh Aaron thanks for that Mark um yeah I mean I I think we need to look at it holistically and and I'll just point out just from a process perspective that the meeting was put together differently from the memo um so you know it was you know it was sectioned off as the threshold question and everything else I I would have liked to have dressed it more holistically from the beginning so I'm basically unless we're dealing with all of it I'm I'm not willing to kind of pick and choose a few of them and so maybe special meetings the way to go Junie I just need some clarification because from what I'm hearing is that some council members are saying at the next meeting which is after the retreat and I

[289:00] think is it do I understand you correctly Sam that you hoping that we can wrap up certain issues so that we can have a proper discussion during the re to retreat so that they can be on the work plan well my suggestion was simply that we carry things to the work plan that have support the work plan discussion that have supported majority of council so as an example uh I think the three items that HRC has come up with fall into that and I think they'll be fairly easy and short discussions because I think there's broad support um I think what could also go to a work plan discussion but I think would just it would take up the entire um Retreat would be do we want to do or not do um sanctioned encampment do we want to do or not do state parking so I think that those are work plan items in the sense I don't think we're gonna I I

[290:00] don't think there's gonna be five council members that say absolutely we can have a four-hour meeting and I don't think there's going to be five that are going to say we're going to do it I think what we would end up doing is saying staff can you answer these questions or can you answer those questions so I was just trying to sort out what from here can we get quick either disposition on so I think we've got quick disposition on the three HRC items we're going to touch on them at the retreat we have quick disposition on the crease penalties for repeat offenders and methamphetamine addiction I think we have those I tried to list the things we don't have agreement on or haven't touched on they include Aaron's points they include the HRC suggestions of of uh parking and sanctioned camping and I I don't think we have time at the retreat to go over them but we can say do we want to have another meeting on them um so I mean I think council's all over the place on this I think we have taken

[291:01] care of some of the items that were before us I think we have to find Space to talk about the additional items and the challenge with approaching it holistically is I'm not sure with nine council members and four or five hours that we can solve this big problem so I would like to break it down into chunks that's my opinion about how you work through big problems you can't eat the elephant all at once you got to do it in bites and so I think we've taken some bites tonight and I think you know for me we can punt it all over what's left to the work plan discussion and I think what we're going to end up doing there is seeing how much appetite there is for future meetings on those subjects because I don't think we can get through everything in one meeting that's just my realistic assessment of where we are so I I think the retreat committee should probably take the results of tonight's discussion figure out what needs to be

[292:02] at the work plan discussion and then we can put time to it whether it's council meeting time which I think it will have to be or whether it's staff time I don't think we've defined that well enough but I think what we can do at the retreat is Tee this up for the additional meetings or the additional questions to staff or like HRC I think those three we can find a home for at The Retreat does that help answer your question Judy thank you thank you very much Sam so what I would suggest here it's 11 o'clock can I get a motion to extend the meeting so moved second okay moving to second any opposed great so what I would suggest the retreat committee to do is see if you can find a home for these meaning I don't think we're going to resolve them there and I don't think we're going to give staff marching orders to to do things but we might want to say how many meetings will

[293:01] Council need in order to resolve this into action items for staff so I if anyone has better ideas I'm all ears Sam um why wouldn't we just um instead of punting to The Retreat to talk about when we would schedule it why wouldn't we punt it to CAC to just go ahead and schedule a special meeting to just focus on these items I'm fine with that too we need to Define what we mean by these items because does anyone disagree that the HRC the three items on HRC I think they're ready for prime time and we can address them at the retreat does anyone disagree with that okay so we have a place for those I'm happy to take the rest of it to CAC if that's the will of council okay very good so I'm going to summarize

[294:02] what I think I'm taking to CAC cleanup additional enforcement and then response meaning response like Cahoots Aaron just I can frame that up any way that you'd prefer all right did you want me to do something now well I'm just telling you how I would take it to CAC and and you can if if I were to put a bucket in there in our discussions for alternative response a lot Cahoots with that yeah well and and that one I that actually might be a good work plan discussion because it has some relationships the encampment issue but it's maybe a larger issue than that so um I would I would be fine going either way as a work plan discussion or is it separate important to talk about it in the larger set of camera related issues Okay so

[295:01] then thinking about going to some that I think are easy managed encampment and safe parking those need to go to CAC is that correct Council yes no okay so to CAC goes clean up additional enforcement and parking and encampment sanction encampments those four items and then to um work plan discussion at The Retreat goes the HRC three items as well as potentially we'll talk about Aaron alternative response to calls for service is that captured that well enough for us to move forward with so what that that says to the recruit committee slash Heather and staff is the HRC items plus potential alternative response for seeing if and how much

[296:00] they've hit into the work plan the rest will take to CAC yeah I would only request the CAC schedule something fairly promptly to the extent that there are members who have supported the camping ban in anticipation of having this broader conversation um I I do not want them to feel that they've been uh cut off halfway and and that it gets back burnered so I would hope that this meeting could be scheduled in the very near future very good well um I will say this the March meetings are pretty full so I think to do it would be a special meeting and not only because of scheduling but because this topic always dominates an entire meeting if you look at tonight we had a couple updates and then this has been the entire meeting so I I would I will take to CAC anything that Council tells me to but I would I would be looking to schedule a special meeting on the

[297:01] remainder okay very good I'll just mention that um Bob had to drop off about an hour ago um he just sent me a text so he hasn't been privy to the last about hour of discussion his General input was generally he supported staff recommendations on on most of the issues I don't know that he had the benefit of the entire conversation around penalties or not so okay I think we have enough to move forward on as far as the disposition of these buckets of items anything else that we want to touch on tonight before I return to staff I'm not seeing any Hands Chris Oh Aaron sorry well I'll just say that and this is a very difficult topic um and and we one we all struggle with so I do appreciate our ability to work on it together from our diversion

[298:01] viewpoints thank you Aaron anyone else I don't see anyone else Chris what's your feedback from stats perspective yeah a couple of things one to Echo uh what what was just said in terms of this is a very challenging topic and so I just really appreciate the conversation tonight um and Sam I think you did a really clear summary of kind of what the next steps are so uh uh I think I think it's clear um the items that'll come to the retreat this this weekend and which items then we'll come to CAC for scheduling so uh I'll look to the rest of our presentation team just to make sure there isn't any other wrap-up items uh that I've missed foreign I think you nailed it Chris the only thing I would add is just for Council Members certainly members of the community listening that that what we've

[299:01] heard tonight is the approach will continue until the next conversation with Council where modifications to both supporting community members who are unhoused as well as the the keeping public spaces clean we'll discuss further that's right Kurt yeah I would agree with that uh Ellie took my words um and the other thing I'll add is it's um these topics are all huge um even one of them by itself is is Big so um I agree we need to figure out how to um prioritize What will what we'll focus on so I hope that next meeting can do that okay good okay well thank you all um I want to Echo what Aaron said um it's complex topics and I appreciate everyone hanging in there and uh again I think everyone listened I think we we hear the perspectives and we should

[300:01] continue to work uh towards solutions that we can mostly get behind nothing will be perfect um every other City struggles with this as well and you know we're all learning from each other as we go I'm going to put one more bit of context around it the the change in federal housing policy in the 80s has landed us where we are now Federal housing support's fallen in real dollar terms by over half since Reagan took office and we're seeing the impacts of that so um these problems are being pushed down to us and to the extent that Rachel said that we can push them back up I think we should all be looking to do that so with that thank you all for um a good discussion any other comments if not I'll gavel this meeting closed at 11 13. thank you oh Aaron I'm sorry a

[301:00] quick city manager search update oh sorry my fault uh Mary do you want to take the lead on that or or I could either way you go ahead Erin hey um I will be brief because it is late so um so we have closed um the application period uh for the city manager position and uh we received 56 total applicants from 21 different states and outside of the United States we have all kinds of demographic information we'll go into right now um but um here's the quick outline of the next steps next week we will be getting application materials uh sent to All council members and we will have uh roughly a week week or a little over to review those applications and then the recruiter will start holding meetings with us two at a time of the week of February 1st to um to do the first pass at rating the applicants that we've received so just to be clear that that

[302:01] every council member will have a chance of weighing in and and winning the next steps and then I won't go through all the details of where it's going from there but the goal will be to have uh finalists um by the week of February 22nd second with a lot of public Outreach with those with those finalists generally virtual because of where we are with the pandemic but a variety of interviews with Council City directors employee Forum Community member Forum meeting with labor union presidents and others and I can offer additional details if that would be helpful and Aaron I apologize to you and Mary for cutting that off I got ahead of myself thank you for that update it's very encouraging Barry anything else you'd like to add um just to say that it's quite a diverse pool of applicants based on the the demographics that were sent to us so

[303:00] um that's great super okay Alicia I'll turn to you as I should have before is there anything else tonight no sir that is the end of our agenda and you can gavel us closed okay we'll try this again thank you everyone I'll gather list closed at 11 15. thank you all good night everyone thank you foreign