February 2, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music]

[1:48] all right thanks Brenda yeah we've got a full team tonight hello this is Carl Watkins we're live on air and ready to go great thank you Carl good

[2:00] evening hello hi good evening and I will go ahead and hit record too Sam great I think we have nine so I think we are good to go great and we're recording very good well welcome everyone to the Tuesday February second regular meeting of the Boulder City Council um we are going to start tonight with an announcement of the interpretation that's available on Zoom so Brenda I'll turn to you for that please great let me just share my screen and pull that up for everyone and we have concurrent interpretation at the moment so I will give these instructions and then Manuela our interpreter will share them in Spanish I'll pause for her to start

[3:09] now all right so we do have support for um interpretation in Spanish this evening so what we ask everyone to do is to choose the language you would like to experience the meeting in you can choose your language by finding the icon that is shaped like a globe at the bottom or top of your screen where your menu of options is

[4:03] and then click on that icon and you will have the option to choose English or Spanish great and thank you emanuela if we could put that in the chat as well in Spanish that would be helpful all right than thank you Sam very good thank thank you Brenda and then next at the top here I want to say welcome back to Bob Yates Bob we know from your newsletter that um you have been ill and we are super happy to have you back so um welcome thank you Sam be back yeah welcome back po okay and then moving on to the rest of the announcements I want to start the announcements with um exposure

[5:02] notification for covid-19 um there is an exposure notification tool um that can be signed up for at the web address www.you phone.com and if you download the application for your cell phone either Apple or Android you will be able to be informed if you have been near somebody who has tested positive for covid and the uh information is completely Anonymous so it's handled just as a handshake on cell phones so um more than 15% of coloradans have downloaded this application and uh it helps protect everyone yourself and others that you might be nearby also um there are vaccine um information and sign up for notifications which are

[6:01] available also online at the web address httpswww bouldercounty.org slf families disease9 vaccines there you'll find information about the staging of the vaccines as well as an ability to sign up and receive notifications when your group is available to be vaccinated next I will move to um recruitments I have two announcements about recruitments um annual recruitments for our 2021 boards and commissions has been extended through 5:00 pm this Thursday February 4th we would love to have you become involved in our local government and we'd love to have you consider applying before the deadline on Thursday day service on all

[7:01] these boards and commissions is of course voluntary and for more information or to participate please view bouldercolorado.gov again on the web bouldercolorado.gov SL boards dasc commissions and um it is a great way to serve your community to be on one of these boards many of us on Council started our community service on a board another board to talk about is um the city and Excel Energy have kicked off an energy partnership which is um novel in the state of Colorado and we are seeking a group of uh representative group of community members to serve on the advisory panel for the energy partnership the panel will meet regularly to review and discuss energy issues and provide feedback on projects and programs that arise from the

[8:01] partnership um The Advisory panel will serve to connect the community to the new partnership by representing electricity and gas customers in Boulder in both the residential and Commercial sectors the panel will review project proposals gather perspectives on community impacts and make recommendations to the partnership's project oversight team if you are interested in this or to learn more you can go to ww w. bouldercolorado.gov energy- future Excel DP partnership that last is spelled XC l- partnership and the applications will 00 pm on February 26 later this month so thanks for that and Alicia could you please call the role Sam oh sorry Sam if I may interrupt um in the

[9:03] um covid link that you um mentioned I'm wondering if we could also share a phone number there's a new Colorado hotline for covid vaccines and I'm wondering if we could share that I have it right here it is it's 1877 268 2926 877 268 2926 super thanks very much Mary sorry didn't see your hand I was reading the announcements um great let's try again Alicia could you call the role good evening everyone and of course sir council member Brockett present friend here Joseph Pres

[10:02] Nel stick present wock here Weaver here Yates here and young present mayor we have a quorum very good thank you Al Alicia um next I am going to propose a motion to amend the agenda it's a bit long so bear with me um first I'd like to propose we add item 1B consideration of a council statement on the Holocaust which will move the covid public health briefing to item 1 C then I propose that we move item 6B the new website and update demo to a future meeting and we replace that item with an online petitioning roll out and checkin and then I propose that we add item 8A which is any further discussion

[11:03] under matters on the council statement on the Holocaust which will move item 8A the city manager search update to 8B and it will move appointment of two council members to a City attorney recruitment committee to item 8C and then I'd also propos that we add item 8D which is regarding a not of five for advocacy on housing ability so if I could get a motion so moved very good looking at everyone is anyone opposed to the modifications to the agenda seeing none we will modify the agenda that way and move to our next item which is a declaration in memory of Dave height founder of McGuckin and that declaration will be presented by council member Young

[12:02] thank you Sam in memory of Dave height February 2nd 2021 Dave height was born in 1929 in Nebraska and moved to Boulder in 1960 to begin working for a community Cornerstone establishment mcgucken Hardware a few years later Dave and his beloved wife Don D mcgucken became the sole owners of the store which they operated and grew for more than six decades most of the couple's time in Boulder was spent at the house they built in sunshine Canyon Dave and B were committed to running the store in the seminal mcgucken way a robust balance of Staffing practices that Meet customer needs providing their employees a livable wage ensuring an abundant inventory and keeping community wellbeing at the Vanguard of their

[13:01] management strategy Barry height Dave son recounts how Dave loved the doers of Boulder and worked tirelessly to ensure they would have what they needed when coming to mcgucken after the 2013 floods throngs of people would wait as he coordinated across the region to locate and deliver the coveted sum pumps to drain the water from their basement Dave weathered numerous threats to businesses from Big Box competitors and many warned that the generous mcgucken way would put him out of business despite the pressures it was a it was his high ethical standards that afforded him his fiercely loyal patrons an illustrious Community standing and enduring success Dave had the chance to see Boulder start as a sleepy town and watch it grow to be the booming destination it is is today all the while playing a

[14:01] pivotal role in sourcing the tools and Ethos of the City's community and cultural development in 2006 Dave was inducted into the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame and in 2014 Dave and D were recipients of the boulder chamber Lifetime Achievement Award for those who knew him Dave is remembered for his witty jokes Charming stories affectionate smile and an endless twinkle in his eye Dave is survived by wife D Sons Barry Brent and Rob eight grandchildren and six great grandchildren we the city council of Boulder Colorado wish to honor The Life and Legacy of Dave height whose lifetime of service and strong character represent what we prize in our community members and I believe uh Barry is here and would like to say a few

[15:02] words sorry I'll need to um promote him is that bar height yes great Barry you should be able to unmute now yes I did can you hear me we can okay um I'd like to thank the city council for an honor my dad was so uh honored to be uh to serve the the Boulder Community when he came here 60 years ago um he knew that we were going to continue on with his mcguan way and with his heart he he just loved the people that surrounded him he loved his customers and he just prided people that came to Boulder and saw the opportunity to grow great businesses so he he created a lot of great friends in town um when he moved it to Boulder in the

[16:01] 60s it was only about 36,000 and he he just loved to see the town grow every every Milestone that we had from IBM he loved the campus he loved the city we we Supply him to the city um he will be remembered for um his love of customers and his W witty way of joking with them his love for his employees and his love for his family so as I close up here really quick um I know you got a lot on the agenda uh thank you it's an honor and it's uh he he'll he'll be uh sorely missed at the hardware store so thanks thank you for being here Barry yep and I just want to let you know that my humble dream has always been to work in Bolt Canyon we're looking forward to it

[17:00] very good um any other council members want to add anything here great seeing none thank you again Barry for being here and then I will move on to our next agenda item on January 26th prior to the last Council study session there was an exchange between a few council members regarding a postcard sent to council that made a comparison between animal euthanasia and the Holocaust the postcard itself and the public commentary on the subject caused pain and harm to many members of our community when they learned of it in response a couple of council members have taken it upon themselves to draft a statement addressing this issue and to solicit feedback from the community which has helped refine the statement Rachel and Mark have guided this effort and Rachel will now read the statement and ask that each council member

[18:00] indicate if they will join in support of this position so Rachel I'll turn to you thanks Sam all right here's our statement several Boulder City Council Members recently received a postcard that offensively compared the euthanizing of prairie dogs to the Holocaust that comparison was unacceptable and harmful as are any and all endorsements of the views stated in that postcard we explicitly reject false equivalencies that compare the Holocaust the largest recorded genocide in modern human history to other historical or current events importantly the reflexive use of such harmful comparisons degrades the significance and power of never forgetting we have a collective duty to remember Holocaust equivalencies diminish the memory of millions of people killed by the Nazis such comparisons cause pain and reinli Trauma to Holocaust Survivors and other community members they also play in into the larger issue of anti-Semitism at a

[19:00] time when hate hate groups and hate crimes are on the rise we value the many diverse communities in Boulder including our Jewish neighbors it is incumbent on each of us to ensure that our words and actions align with promoting peace inclusivity and understanding very good thank you Rachel and could I please ask that each council member raise your hand on camera if you're in support of this statement great that is unanimous thank you very much so Tom I turn to you and ask if you could please bring this statement back to us on consent for our February 9th council meeting for a final formal adoption so February 9th a study session do you want February 16th 16th please sorry thank you absolutely I'd be happy to do that Sam great all right many thanks to Rachel and Mark for pulling this together and to all the local community groups whose input was invaluable to us in crafting the

[20:00] language here and meby I know that you were involved in the conversation last week and I believe you have a few things to add thanks Sam last Tuesday prior to the start of our council meeting I joined in on a zoom to hear Mark wallik discusting a postcard that members of council had received I did not receive the correspondence the postcard touched on topics that I am passionate about the Holocaust and Nazism and prairie dogs the writer of the postcard compared Council to Nazis for their vote to kill tens of thousands of prairie dogs via gas a few sentences were exchanged between Mark and me in the short time before the meeting commenced this incomplete conversation which has now been quoted all over the media in no way represents my full views on this situation I want to begin by sincerely apologizing to those who were hurt by my

[21:01] words during their this abbreviated exchange I had no intention to minimize the immense human suffering that resulted from the murders perpetrated during the Holocaust I regret that my statements cause pain to those listening and to those who read incomplete accounts of them and I am sorry I believe that the Holocaust and events surrounding it are some of the most abhorent acts of all time for anyone who knows me they understand that this issue is deeply personal personal to me especially because of my Jewish Heritage anyone who attempts to make light of the Holocaust has been immediately removed from my life I look forward to elaborating further my further thoughts later in the meeting thank you mayor B and as we did when we amended the agenda tonight there will be time under matters this evening for more discussion of this item if council members desire and with that I'll move Mo us on to the next item on

[22:00] our agenda which is the covid um Public Health briefing and response and for that I believe that we have a few guests here Chris I'll turn to you to introduce them great thank you Sam good evening Council uh for our monthly Co briefing uh as always we'll start with Jeff Zak from public health so Jeff I will turn it over to you and your team Chris thank you so much and thank you council members uh a pleasure to be back with you uh will somebody my slides thank you so much uh what I'm going to do today is I'm going to take us quickly through the data then I want to actually walk through a few few other things I want to talk about what the variant um looks like in some of the projections from the Colorado School of Public Health uh I want to also talk about the proposed changes to the dial that the governor has uh has put out and is looking to make changes on um and then I want to make sure I'm closing with what that

[23:00] might mean for us moving forward in our communities and how that looks from some of those projections from the School of Public Health and then following that what I'll do is I'll turn it over to uh andir gal who will take you through where we are with all of our vaccines um and what we can expect in the weeks ahead uh next slide please so this is our dial which I've reported to you on we are looking good in terms of the dial um all three of our indicators are um are positive and heading in a downward projection so the only one that is still up in Orange is our incidence rate but our incidence rate has consistently come down for over the last two weeks now um so we are looking good next slide please this is our Metro data as you can see we had a slight Spike that occurred between uh the the Christmas and the New Year's holiday um that Spike was shortlived thankfully uh worse in some places like Denver than others um but we

[24:02] are now all on a downward Trend in the metro area as well next slide please this is our five-day average of the number of new cases uh and as you can see our cases in Boulder County are also representing a downward Trend um at 59.2 um in with downward cases across the state we are now into a place where we have the ability to do followup um on contact tracing and case investigations and the state has some ability to help support locals again so um again across the state looking good next slide please this is our positivity rate as you can see we've been below 5% since about the 16th of December um and our Trend continues to remain stable below 5% um this this means that we are doing an adequate number of tests in our community to identify and control the

[25:00] disease um one of the things I'll I'll press people to do too is it's free testing we have multiple sites in our community please do take advantage of the testing especially if you've been together in a large Gathering or you've been out someplace where there was lots of people uh the testing is free it's easy um and it's easily accessible if you just go to Boulder County Public Health um covid-19 data and then you click on testing on our website it'll take you right to the site that tells you where and when testing is available next slide please this is our hospitalizations again uh positive trend if you looked at the state hospitalizations too you'd see a similar Trend we are are on a downward Trend expect that to uh to continue especially as we have more vaccine getting out into the community next slide please this is our desk and thankfully our

[26:00] deaths are declining um unfortunately as you can see from the orange bars on this slide that the majority of our deaths are occurring in long-term care facilities this is one of the reasons why long-term care facilities was prioritize highest in terms of getting vaccines out um I'm happy to say that we have completed all long-term care facilities at this point with at least one dose um and uh we hope to see less impacts moving in to the future in this population and we are uh very excited to see that our deaths are on a downward Trend this has been one of the most difficult things that we can see in our community we know that these are are people's parents they're their brothers uh mothers and fathers uh and it's it's very difficult to see deaths like this happen in our community and across the state next slide please so this is where um I wanted to talk some more about the the modeling that the Colorado School of Public

[27:00] Health has done and what I want to show here and I'm just going to focus in on some very specific pieces on the leftand side uh it's we are at a currently estimated this was as of a couple weeks ago now the Colorado School of Public Health is going to do another update this week that's going to project these again but they're very similar um but we were at 78% transmission control which again just as a reminder was the terms we were using early on in the uh in the disease outbreak as social distancing um it's now being called transmission control but we are around 78% transmission control and what these what these show is on the far left hand side that dotted line is the ICU threshold that would if we went above would it would cause us to exceed ICU capacity in the state and what this shows is projections if you look at the bottom you'll see those little boxes

[28:00] pasted vaccine with no b117 vaccine with b117 no vaccine with b117 and no vaccine um with b117 and what I want to focus on is vaccine with b117 because that's the scenario that we have in Colorado that is the dark blue line that you see so on the far left hand side um and then I'll talk about the assumptions that go into this at 78% transmission control which is where we're at now and with the bar variant coming into place and with vaccines getting out in 70% of our population of age 70 plus vaccinated by mid-march um we see very little change in our overall uh hospitalizations and ICU uh in the middle uh box there scenario you'll see that that's at a 70% transmission control so um that drops to less social distancing or or less maske

[29:00] wearing more opening things up more uh and you can see in that scenario that dark blue line bumps up to just below 500 on the far right hand scenario you can see 60% transmission control um which is the which is a worst case scenario and with a dark blue line um you can see that even in that scenario we are not exceeding ICU capacity um through uh it looks like the projection is through May 24th here so in all scenarios uh what the state is looking at um is that we will not exceed ICU capacity this is of course assuming that we maintain um higher transmission control levels and the message here is is not to give up um we are getting more vaccines out but we need people to still maintain social distancing we still need people to wear mass mass are incred ibly effective as I'll show I think it's on the next slide here if you want to go to

[30:00] the next slide oh sorry it's not quite there yet let me talk about what this represents at a Statewide level you've heard me talk about how many people are infectious um and I wanted to show this slide today in Colorado we're at about one in 115 people that currently are um infected with the virus that's still really high comparative to where we were back in the middle of the Summer where it was about one in 800 or 900 people so we still have a lot of infection in our communities but we are on a downward Trend um we expect that that number will continue to get better each week as this model gets rerun and you can see some of the variability across the these are regions of the state so you can see some of the variability across these regions um with a high of 1 and 32 in the East Central Area um to a low of one 328 in the West Central partnership and

[31:00] right there about a third of the way down is uh the is the Metro and that is that represents the the data that I showed you on the second slide which is Boulder Broomfield Jefferson um and Tri Counties as well as Denver County and you can see that we're right about where the state average is at one in 116 next slide please this is the slide that um illustrates that social distancing and masks uh in addition to Max vaccines make a big difference so that the numbers on the left the 78% the 70% and the 60% represent those same transmission control levels that were in those graphs and what this essentially shows is with no vaccines distributed whatsoever um as we increase transmission control from less restrictive at the bottom to more restrict restrictive at the top that even with no vaccines we are controlling

[32:01] the number of deaths that we're seeing um and with vaccines distributed that's even uh more control but that there is significant control with social distancing and masking and that's an important thing to remember especially as we continue to get vaccine out it's going to take a while um to make sure that we have vaccine into the entire uh population um and during that time it's going to be critical that we continue to is take these prevention strategies regardless of where we're at um and again masks are are really are a really important strategy in that next slide please I'm going to go through a series of uh I believe there's three slides or four slides and what I want to show you is just where we are in terms of some of the behavioral health impacts that we're seeing that are associated with um what's happening with covid and what this essentially shows you is the each of the different years and where our

[33:01] numbers are um and I picked just the ones um that were most significant for us that we know we're having Associated impacts with this comes from syndromic surveillance which is data that comes from our hospitals um and is collected and analyzed on a weekly basis and what you can see here is that the green line represents 2020 and this is cumulative emergency department visits for suicide attempts in Boulder County per year you can see that 2020 was a much higher year than the previous years um and you're going to see this in each of these slides that I'm going to show you so we know we're having um significant impacts uh in our community associated with many of the things that people are challenged with uh in this disease progression and how we're having to respond to it next slide this is uh emergency department visits for opioid overdose and again you can see that in 2020 um we've had a

[34:03] representative pretty significant increase in opioid overdoses next slide this is uh emergency department visits for sexual violence in Boulder County and this one is the biggest jump of all of those that I've showed you that we have and and again represents a very troubling Trend um for us to see in Public Health as we look at how this disease uh has impacted folks and um and how it's manifesting in the type of emergency department visits that we're seeing I think that's the last of those slides can you go to the next so what I want to talk about here is uh the the what the governor's proposing so I think most people are probably aware that the governor is looking at proposing changes to the dial and what this table I'm not going to go through each of these lines but what this table represents is what the old

[35:02] dial had in terms of each of those three indicators that I've showed you um each time I've reported and what the new dial has and essentially there's a couple main changes that are occurring or three really main changes that are occurring here number one is to expand the range of what the new dial represents for each of the colors so I'm just going to use one example if you look at Blue um it used to be 0 to 75 per 100,000 14-day incidence rate and in the new dial it's 50 it's greater than 15 um to 100 per 100,000 in a 7-Day incidence rate so that means a couple things for our community it means that our incidence rates if you look at a 14 day to 7 Day roughly if you half um whatever our incidence rate is at at um 14 days so let's just say it's 100 um per 100,000 at a at a 14 day as a 7 day it's roughly

[36:02] half of that so it's roughly 50 instead of 100 so it brings the number down um which artificially then moves the number lower in terms of what category you would be categorized in on this dial um and the second change that occurs here is you can see that there is a change that lowers the percent positivity rate from a little bit High down to a little bit lower um and then the Third change is in how the the state is measuring hospitalizations and looking at residents uh or County residents that are in hospitals and whether they're increasing decreasing stable or declining and the biggest change here is in that severe uh category of risk on the far right hand side where you can see that in that category um the state is is proposing that we look at whether patients in the hospital need to be

[37:00] transported from One hospital to another as a indication that capacity is starting um to get stressed so this happened in Pueblo um as an example when we were in this last outbreak in the fall time period um and they also are including staff we provided feedback and you can go to the next slide and I'll I'll cover the feedback that we provided on this we provided feedback to the state um and I'll just point right to that hospitalization piece because we're not exactly clear of how they will include Staffing um to be assessed in whether Hospital capacity is being breached or not we had as as you know we reported um throughout the last several months uh throughout the fall that our hospitals were um reporting some staff shortages but it wasn't causing our hospitals to to go into a crisis situation so we wanted to we asked for the state to better clarify what that looks like in terms of how that will be assessed we also and I'll

[38:01] just move up from the bottom um we also uh believe that counties part of the reason why the governor has proposed these changes is because more vaccine is getting into our community which is going to lower the amount of impacts associated with those high-risk populations of 70 plus so that will result in less severe outcomes less ICU um admits um and less deaths and finally um in the sday shift in incidents much of this is being driven because there is serious and challenging as we all know um social economic and Behavioral Health impacts and challenges that are occurring across the state and when the Colorado School of Public Health ran the projections on what kind of impacts we would have in the State uh they were not seeing in any of the those scenarios that I just showed you that we would actually exceed any of our Hospital

[39:01] capacity uh and the governor is looking at this in terms of how do they balance and cdph how do we balance being able to help people not be in a position where we don't have people in jobs where we have catastrophic impacts um some reports from counties across the state where that more than 50% of their population was on um public support so some really catastrophic impacts that are occurring across the state and trying to balance that with the Advent of more vaccine into our communities um and looking at uh expanding those ranges so there's a little bit more openness that can occur we also know really clearly uh and I know most most of you listening here and certainly city council know this as well is that when we have people who are out of work or they don't have housing um that too can have a significant impact as we know on our overall health um so I think this is

[40:02] the reasons the state is proposing and looking at these changes um and then the last thing I'll say is that we we also ask to be able to clearly evaluate how this impact may impact our ability for schools to continue to operate one of the challenges for schools was when we saw more cases and and with this kind of change what again what I think we can see based on the modeling that's out there is could expect to see more cases in the community but less severe impacts associated with those cases in the community so overall less hospitalizations of high-risk populations um less deaths uh less ICU admits um but it will increase the number of cases in our community and to evaluate how that impacts our schools ability to continue to operate will be important as we move forward next slide please I think this is my last one it is um and so as as you know uh as I

[41:04] said in the beginning are we are on a a positive decline for hospitalizations deaths and cases across the state um and across our region and in Boulder County um again estimated one in 115 people that's based on two week old data uh so that will likely number will be better um when it's reprojected uh this at the end of this week um and the reason that we want people to continue to get tested and it'll be really important for us to do this um as we continue to get vaccine out is because 50% of the people uh that have the disease don't even realize they have it because they're not showing symptoms um and that's why the state is focusing so much on continuing to support testing um as we distribute vaccines so please do take advantage of it as you saw from the other grass it's preventable um as we as things get loosened up and as we look at opening a little bit more up I can't emphasize

[42:01] enough how important it is to continue to focus on the prevention strategies masking washing hands maintaining six feet social distancing is really important if we can do those things and do those things as we move forward through the vaccine um we're going to continue to have declining numbers and things will look good but it's going to be up to us to continue to focus on that and I know you all have worked so hard to do it under such horrible circumstances and how negatively it's impacting all of us um but if we can keep it up as the vaccine goes out uh we're only going to be better in the long run and I won't won't add to what um mayor already repeated about go to adour phone.com uh and at this point I will stop and turn it over to endir who is going to give us an update on where we are with vaccines and how things are looking and then I'm assuming we'll take questions after

[43:03] that okay okay good evening everyone um I'm Dr andir Gall I'm an epidemiologist and the division manager for communicable disease and Emergency Management for Boulder County Public Health we can go to the next slide um I'm going to talk a little bit about three main topic areas thank you um just to provide some situational awareness about what's happening with the vaccines and how they're being distributed also to discuss the new phase distribution that rolled out um on Friday from the State Health Department and the governor's office and then to talk a little bit about some of the vaccination strategies

[44:00] that we have planned next slide right now we have 32 enrolled providers in Boulder County and that includes all five hospitals um are outpatient clinics such as Kaiser Permanente we also have uh CU is also in enroll provider and then the bulk of the other enroll providers include our Pharmacy Partnerships so that includes king supers and Safeway all of them have been enrolled we know that we have the capacity as a community to be able to vaccinate up to 22,000 people per week but the uh vaccine availability that we're getting is very limited so in the past few weeks we've averaged around 3,000 doses that we've received as a whole community and last week we got about 800 this week we did see a significant increase um so we're really excited about that but basically what I wanted to share here is that we have the capacity with

[45:00] our traditional vaccine Partners to be able to move a lot of Doses and our long-term care partnership is just doing such a phenomenal job making sure that our skilled nursing facilities and our long-term care facilities and assisted living are all making sure that they get vaccinated and as Jeff mentioned in his presentation this group of folks has been disproportionately impacted not only with hospitalizations but with that and so it's really critical for us to make sure that those vaccines are going to them next slide this is just a graph that shows the allotments of vaccines that vary by week um you can see in the beginning we started back in early December uh small doses of vaccine and over time it's increased the orange represents the second doses so people who initially started getting vaccinated in mid December and then they start receiving their second dose depending on what type of vaccine they have either three or four weeks

[46:04] later so far in Boulder County we've had 21,000 people who have received their first dose I think this numbers are actually probably on the low side uh just because they're usually a few days old um we should be seeing a lot more of a significant increase by the end of this week given that we got such a number of doses this week so we're really EXC excited about that and then of course we have people 7,000 people receed their full course most of them are in that critical Workforce of the healthcare workers who uh were vaccinated first this also may include some some long-term care folks the good news in Boulder County is that our enrolled Partners um we meet with them weekly and we have a very strong partnership with them and you can see that uh almost over 50% of

[47:00] individuals 70 and older have been vaccinated which is pretty impressive considering that we just started a you know maybe a month ago um and the vaccine has been very extremely limited so pudos to all those and R partners and we hope to see this number increase significantly by the end of this week as we received close to 7,000 doses this week and so we hope to see um maybe this percentage closer to 70% which would be wonderful next slide this uh slide is looking at Co vaccination by race and ethnicity just specifically for those who are 70 and older um one thing we we don't see we see disparities particularly among our Hispanic and latinx um ethnic ethnic groups but for the other uh groups the Asian Pacific Islanders we do not see differences and then with the African American group we do see slight differences now one thing I think that's really important to note is that the

[48:02] Skilled Nursing Facility and that long-term care partnership they really started outreaching first and we know that most uh individuals who are in long-term care facilities are actually um white and so it is it will be interesting to watch how these numbers change as that partnership completes and as we start adding in our Equity strategies as well to make make sure that we don't have these disparities in terms of vaccination differences next so this is the new covid vaccination distribution um some of you are familiar with the old one I will say that this is our fourth iteration of AAS distribution in the past month um which makes it slightly challenging particularly for our enroll providers to be able to Pivot um with these new distribution ch changes Phase 1 a are those high-risk healthare workers and

[49:00] individuals who are residing in those long-term care facilities and I can successfully say that we are very confident that our highest risk healthcare workers were completed this week we had the last 200 that we had identified um they were sent over to one of our Safeway Pharmacy burners to get their final vaccinations so which is great in terms of 1b1 that are individuals who are 70 plus so we're looking at 52% of them have already received um one dose and then that also includes moderate healthare workers moderate risk healthcare workers and First Responders we do have a list of around 2300 moderate healthcare workers and First Responders that were still working to get vaccinated um but that that number is starting to come down slowly through our vaccination efforts in 1B 2 this is the newest one that will initiate on February 8th this includes

[50:00] coloradans ages 65 to 69 and those who work in Early Child Care Education Centers and K through 12 um along with some continuity of state government and so we're actually waiting for guidance from the governor's office um that guidance is really important because it also contains occupational lists of who actually qualifies for 1B point2 to but that is our current efforts right now next slide so when we add the those who are 65 to 69 on February 8th we know that we're going to be adding approximately 18,000 more individuals to the list um and I just wanted to show you that where you know where do people who are 65 and older where do they live um many of them actually live in in unincorporated Boulder County Netherland lions and other smaller communities in addition to

[51:01] uh half of them of that group also lives in Longmont so you can see 14,000 living in Longmont uh 11,000 in Boulder and then fewer numbers in Mafia at Louisville and Superior we had a really successful meeting today with all of our enrolled providers and our early childhood education and K 12 partners and so we uh we call this affectionately I think Dr Aina calls it matchmaking so we um do a little matchmaking and we were able to confirm that the Boulder Valley School District will be working with Boulder Community Health to make sure that their K through 12 uh identified front facing staff will be able to get vaccinated through them St greine Valley School District will be working with UC Health and our early childhood education Partners will be a combination of Good Samaritan hospitals and um some of our Pharmacy partners and we're still

[52:00] working through some of the logistics on that which are a little bit more challenging because they're so um there's a lot of unique Employers in addition our private schools are looking to be matched up with our king supers and Safeway pharmacies and so um they have been the Safeway Pharmacy has helped with the past uh School District staff that were healthcare workers that have already been vaccinated and that has been a successful relationship and so we're excited to see that move forward next slide so I wanted to spend a little bit of time on um some of our Equity vaccination strategies because um and go ahead to the next slide please because we know that a lot of what we are talking about in this first half of this presentation are traditional covid vaccination strategies so traditional strategies where you might register with your pharmacist or you or or a hospital and you know you sign up online and then you go and you

[53:01] get your shot there and we know that those traditional covid vaccine strategies are limiting um there are systemic challenges that may create barriers so we know up that there's historical injustices with between the medical community and particularly African-Americans there's examples around the tusi you know syphilis study the case of Henry metax and the use of her cical cells um there's also not just among African-Americans but among the um LGBT community where we might have medical providers who are transphobic um so we just want to recognize that and and honor that these traditional covid vaccination strategies may not work for some of our um population and so we want to make sure that we have opportunities um other groups that have been challenged with the medical System including those who are undocumented who may have a fear of having a medical home

[54:01] or not have a medical home establishment um and then those who are individuals who might have you know be impacted by social determins to health they might have limited English proficiency limited Transportation options uh limited access to technology and not just access to technology but being able to use the technology so as a daughter uh I I have a 90-year-old father who I can tell you cannot go online and register for a vaccine so I think that we um are trying to look at other different ways that we can make sure that we have strategies that are um addressing these impacts next slide please so our Focus um we've been planning on our what we call our priority populations so these include uh racial ethnic minorities and people who' have been impacted by systemic Injustice and we are working really closely with our community- based organizations to make sure that it's an inclusive approach next slide

[55:03] please um so I love this quote this actually comes from Simon Smith I borrowed it from him or I should say I stole it from him Simon is in charge of the Clinica uh federally qualified Health Center and Simon really we talked about how do we do this collectively and how do do we do this Equity work and he said you know we have a saying at Clinica that if you want to go far you go together and that's the truth and I just want to share that you know if Equity work was easy we would not have the disparities that we have in our uh covid what we've been experiencing with who's been disproportionately impacted uh the equity work is a little bit harder and so that means sometimes we have to go a little slower and we have to use the values of inclusion and making sure to listen and hear all the voices in the room that we have to make sure that our Equity strategies for

[56:01] vaccination are community-driven that they are helping to identify the community themselves are helping to identify where do we locate future vaccination sites that we have to do it through collaboration it is not just one government that is trying to own this or it's a collaboration between our enrolled providers our governmental systems all of our governmental systems and of course our enrolled providers who handle a lot of the vaccine management components and so we look at this as a value of shared ownership and shared leadership and so we are working on plans next slide please um we are working on plans that are really focusing on two Equity based strategies um that are focusing on fostering trust addressing vaccine hesitancy um people who might be hesitant to this new technology they may not want to get the vaccine um and then also working through the logistics and

[57:02] so this is our approach next slide please and one approach is to do community vaccination clinics so we're working on uh plans that will look at who are priority populations who can handle the vaccine management Administration it's not an easy vaccine to handle it's not like flu you're going to have to manage it quite differently um looking at vaccine Supply and being able to pull it regularly from the State Health Department who now has an equity allotment and then looking at recruitment which is a really really important component around building trust because we know that people trust their providers so how do we leverage our providers to help us get to um how do we how do we leverage our providers to help us get folks to uh to a clinic this was uh very successful in Aurora where the salude uh Clinic partnered

[58:02] with UC Health in which UC Health provided all the vaccine management and administration and the salute Clinic leveraged all their their trusting relationships with the community to be able to bring people to that clinic so we're looking at how do we do this locally in Boulder County next slide so the other strategy that we're looking at are mobile vaccination clinics and what we know is um a lot of our folks are maybe homebound uh particularly in this stage where we're doing 65 and we're about to do 65 and old older um individuals who are homebound they may reside in independent living situations where they have maybe mobility issues or Transportation issues um we also know that we have individuals who are in house and groups with you know those Mobility challenges that will not allow them to access vaccine through

[59:01] traditional vaccine strategies and so here what we're doing is partnering with far our pharmacies our home health agencies um and our community ambassadors and our cultural Brokers and Community Based organizations to make sure that we can go to them so a good example we do this all the time in public health example is around hepatitis A vaccination among our unhoused populations um but another example is that this week for example king supers got uh a few hundred Doses and they were able we were able to partner them with uh housing authorities in different municipalities and across the county so that way we could start to initiate vaccinations those so these are the strategies that we're using next slide please and I just wanted to share that um these are in the planning process they do take a little bit more time

[60:00] because Equity work does take more time and it takes a little bit more uh time on the planning side to make sure that we do this well and with the community that's it thank you very good and um Chris I'll just turn to you and ask briefly do we want to ask questions Boulder County Public Health or do we want to hear from Chris arbina and then turn and ask questions of all three I guess the real question is can Jeff and and Deus stay with us for another about hour I can and I I certainly can if need okay very good well then I I guess I would suggest Chris why don't we go ahead and hear from you um on your update and then we'll turn to council for questions for any of the three of you does that sound okay yep that works that sounds fine

[61:03] with me as well I just uh thank you council members and mayor for allowing me to come tonight uh both andira and Jeff wanted me to talk a little bit about the variance I didn't put any slides together but I think it's I want to just give a highlight overview about what's happening not only uh in the world but in the United States and I think people are very curious about this I want to first start out this by saying that all viruses mutate this is a very common process if you can look at over history you can look at the current influenza virus I think this is a very common uh process that happens with mutate with mutating viruses because as they come into new hosts as they spread rapidly uh there it's a very common uh fact of life that viruses change now we're very worried about several viruses that you've heard in the news a lot there's the UK variant that's the b117

[62:01] that Jeff is talked about and I'll talk briefly about each of these there's the um South African variant that people are very concerned about and the Brazilian variant but we also know there are lots of variants out there that we are still yet to be discovered so that's why it's important as Jeff talked about earlier to devel continue to emphasize masking because masking doesn't doesn't matter which variant you're you're using the masks protect against that if you use physical distancing you're washing your hands disinfecting Services avoiding large Gatherings and um uh uh and and trying not to come in contact with the virus we can successfully prevent the infection spread by doing those strategies simply it doesn't matter what we do we can protect ourselves now let's talk about the things are most worried about in terms of the impact of the variants first one is are they more contagious

[63:00] that is if you come in contact with one of these can does it spread more rapidly and that this is currently true uh yes I can slow down I know I speak very fast but I will try to speak a little slower so they can translate effectively so we are worried about the contagiousness or the transmission of the first virus or or these variants and that has been true in the UK virus we're monitoring that very closely and I think that's why it became a worldwide problem because we were worried about the increased transmiss transmissibility and if you have that then it may lead to increased hospitalizations and increased deaths and that's why it's probably uh can cause more severe disease not because it's uh it itself is more severe but because it can spread more rapidly the second one issue that we worry about

[64:00] is the severity of the disease and we're still that's a little unknown at this point um but they are studying this very closely and has been shown that a couple of the variants have shown more sever disease in the laboratory but our scientists and and the scientists that in the world as well as CDC also are looking at the severity of disease that's second important factor the third factor that people were worried about with the variance is whether or not our current treatments are going to be effective now let's talk about that the REM dise the antiviral uh treatment as well as steroids are still very effective they stop viruses from replicating and they control inflammation now the uh convalesces and convalescent antibody uh treatment logically is going to be less effective because the anti antibodies that were produced against that first parent variant or the first virus are probably going to be less effective

[65:01] against the changing variants because not all variants cause the same amount of disease but it's probably true that the convalescent Serum is going to be less effective in these variants the fourth one um will the testing pick up these variants and the current thinking is our PCR tests our antigen tests are very effective at picking up these VAR so we don't necessarily need to worry about that because they test various pieces of the virus the most important thing to do about surveillance is we need to ramp up our genomic sequencing of a sample of these viruses to tell if it's here and I don't know if I said this already but we have at least 11 cases of the UK virus or the b117 here in Colorado so we know it's here we' known it's here it's probably in in 25 plus states in the country and now we're beginning to see the South African variant so again uh we're watching it

[66:00] very closely we Sample about 200 cases of the PCR tests here in Colorado so we're watching this very closely because we want obviously want to monitor that because if the UK virus is more transmissible we want to make sure we identify that early um the final one and I think people are you're seeing this a 00 and I try to catch my latest CNN or MSNBC and I even watch Fox News to find out um uh what they're saying as well because now that we have the two V Mna and fiser that that endira talked about we find that those virus those vaccines are highly effective against the common variant the common virus that we're commonly seen we think it's probably a little bit less effective both of them effective against the UK ours and we're studying the other variants as well so but they're still very effective and I

[67:00] think that's what people are worried about is are they going to be not effective at all well we know that they are very effective still probably 70 to 80% against these variants and the new ones that you're seeing come out Johnson and Johnson that's the one dose one as well as these astrena virus as well and Novoa are likely to be less effective against the variants but still very effective if you look if you compare effectiveness of vaccines um having the effectiveness of 60% or higher is still very very good when you compare that to the average influenza vaccine which it can be anywhere from 25% to as much as 65% so it's still very effective and I think people shouldn't be discouraged if we layer all the things that Jeff talked about the fast masking the the uh the physical distancing washing your hands avoiding large crowds and then we add

[68:01] vaccine then we're going to have a greater success in controlling this virus and I guess as I listen to the the TV doctors as well as talk to other public health experts we're still in a in a very good phase in terms of controlling the virus if we put all of those packages together so I'm going to stop there mayor and see if people have questions for me questions about the variant or questions for endera and and and Jeff one more shout out I think that you should feel very proud of our team and Dara and and Chris Campbell have done an excellent job of working with our partners to be very effective and trying to get vaccines to all the populations and I'm constantly amazed how well they do this matchmaking it's it's a it's a hard challenge to do that but I think they they've done an excellent job and I just wanted to give them a shout out I'll stop very good thank you so much so I will start by saying thank you to Jeff

[69:00] and DEA and Chris for being here it is great for us on Council our staff to hear you also great for the public to hear this things are continuing to move very quickly and so these monthly updates really help bring everyone along to what the current situation is I have a lot of questions of my own and I'm going to identify three buckets we can ask questions however we want to but when we come to commentary we want to talk about vaccine distribution and access think we want to talk about the dial 2.0 issue and then there's any questions that may have to do with the um variance of the virus not much we can necessarily do about it but there could be questions there so why don't we just kick off with general counsel questions I expect there will be a lot I'm starting I have Mark yeah I do have a few uh there seems to be a little bit of confusion out there as to how one enrolls and what the

[70:01] proper procedure is you you've mentioned 32 um enrolled providers and I know people who are actively seeking out as many providers as they can find and enrolling separately with each one is that necessary and uh in terms of maximizing one's ability to get a a vaccine and if it is is there a place where people can access uh the data on all 32 providers so they can move forward on that that would be my first question I have a couple after after that so um we do have 32 enrolled providers which means that there are 32 different sites across the county I think it's important to recognize that that includes a lot of our Pharmacy Partnerships Safeway and king supers who are not necessarily have vaccine open for the 70 and over so for example King sup Le has not received any vaccine and so that they they got their first 200

[71:00] doses this week and we had them assigned to the independent living situation so that way we could make sure that we to address themac for the general public who are trying to maximize on those traditional vaccine strategies if you go to the Boulder County Public Health covid vaccination website there is a there are links for all of the enrolled providers as well as phone numbers so you should be able to call also and may be able to get on the list I would say it's not really the best to put your name on every list in fact I would encourage you all I would encourage the general public to put their name on a list of a provider that's associated with their medical home so if you are with Boulder Medical Center you might want to just focus on getting on to the Boulder Medical Center list if you're with if you had past affiliations

[72:00] with Boulder Community Hospital you would just want to get on that list I will tell you that as soon as those doses come in those in providers are getting them out and that is what has been very successful with a lot of our partners and our partnership is making sure that they're getting them out as soon as they get I guess I'd go back to the question is and people are obviously apprehensive is there um Cross organization between the various providers or do you in fact have a greater Prospect of being called for a vaccine if you are on several and and I think people would like to know that and if the answer is yes then people would like to to know how to access as many providers as possible yes so those providers are all listed on our website and they are all of their email all of the websites and all of the phone numbers are there I am

[73:00] just encouraging people to really stick with their medical home and to stick with their which means your local provider um may have it or someone that's affiliated with the medical home like in loal hospital if people feel the need to act to add their name to all the lists then they can add them but I I I'm just sharing that there's only so much Supply and there's a lot of demand and with this new phase distribution change on Friday we have now just increased the demand twice as much and we don't have as much Supply just to to get out so it's just doing the best what we can this may be a question for Jeff um what are the factors determining how many doses we actually receive I mean it seems to vary Weak by week and is there Rhyme or Reason to it uh maybe andir that's a question for you I don't know um but that's endir but let me just add uh I can add from the

[74:00] national level and then maybe andir can talk about the state to local level so even at the national level there's variation week to week and it's difficult for the state to plan on how many vaccines they're going to get um this has been a challenge uh through the entire previous administration and it is getting better but there's still a challenge right now even to get good predictions on week-by-week basis and that translates um from the state to the local level as well and I'll let andir talk about what the process is for how they allocate uh state to local sorry um the original allocation was based on population distribution so looking at the populations and then they switched the allocation last week the state did um to look at not only population distribution let me the slide I have uh also looking at the County's occupational estimates

[75:00] that they had and then the County's first dose completion estimates so it sounds like they have not shared the formula with us so we don't know exactly what that formula looks like but that's what they told us they're using for the allocations and I have many questions but I'll just ask one more so my colleagues can can jump in um in your slides Jeff uh you you showed how we've been doing well since December I remember there was a lot of conversation about an expected jump in uh rates of infection hospitalizations Etc as a result of the Christmas New Year's holiday um that seems not to have happened is that is that a correct impression and is there an explanation for it yes there is um well as much as we as much as we know um yes you're correct we did expect a larger Jump Around the

[76:01] Christmas and New Year's holiday and there was that second slide I showed you um of the metro area where I said Denver probably had a worse Peak that was the the jump that we saw it was pretty consistent across the metro in terms of everybody having some jump some jumps were bigger than others um what we can do is thank the public here I mean this this is the truth we saw other states Across the Nation that have really serious spikes I'm sure you've heard about it on the national news um and I think the messaging that we've been using the fact that people were taking it seriously um that some people restricted travel and that if they were traveling they were doing their best to to maintain those prevention strategies made a difference for us in Colorado we were one of the lowest States if you look at Colorado's total numbers now we're seventh best in the entire nation and that was partly because we didn't see that same huge jump as did other states in addition the only other thing

[77:00] I would add that I've heard Lately from um the State Health Department is that the our state is estimated at 75% masking um whereas other states Across the Nation are averaging around 50 so we're doing better at masking than others okay and I will now yield and let my other colleagues have a have an opportunity to speak thanks thank you Mark next up I have Rachel and Mary Rachel um I will follow uh Mark's lead and try and be uh brief as well so but I did want to kind of cqu on on Mark's point about um not having One-Stop shopping basically for signing up for the vaccine and you all talked about matchmaking earlier and and I just wanted to say it would really be easy if that kind of matchmaking could occur as we go forward with the general public so you just went to one place and then got a phone call that your vaccine is up at X Pharmacy or ex hospital that would because I I you know I've got parents in their 80s and they've been doing the same thing like signing up um everywhere

[78:02] they thought they might have a shot a couple weeks ago so um I just think it would be helpful for the community to to have that one stop if that can happen in the future yeah I think um onstop shopping would be ideal and I think we'd all like to see that and I think it would make a lot of our barriers and challenges that we identify IED um you know would reduce all of those and unfortunately each Health Care system has their own process for registering people and getting them into the system um similar to every Pharmacy has their own process too and so it we just unfortunately I I don't see that happening unless there's going to be some technological solution that you know is magically interfacing with all these different systems but when you have all these partners it makes it really hard I did want to share one thing too and that is that um all of the providers that were interested in

[79:00] becoming enrolled providers like your primary care pH they have actually been enrolled by the state health department and once the vaccine becomes more like this the supply becomes more widely available we do expect all of those Primary Care physici Providers to start uh being carrying the VAC by phase two and phase three so that will help with um trying to get to the system now okay well I'll kind of hope for the the magic bullet if if that's possible but I I understand what you're saying um so Chris I was wondering on the um variants I had read that um the our standard cloth masks maybe are not as good anymore with some of these more highly transmissible variants so is there any recommendation for whether people should be you know switching to surgical or kn95 or n95 masks at this point uh thank

[80:00] you Rachel for the question the the I think that that was misinterpreted by the media the this the viruses are spread exactly the same way uh respiratory droplets and Aeros civilization what I think people are saying is if this virus is more prevalent in our community uh then by adding another layer whether or not it's a surgical mask and adding a cloth mask about over over the over your face will of course reduce the risk of having an infection regardless of what the variant is the challenge is is wearing two masks is very difficult and I don't know if you've ever seen a n95 mask there those are almost impossible to wear unless you're in a healthcare setting so I think if people choose uh to wear wear a double mask a surgical mask first and then a a a cough mask on top of that that's completely fine that will protect you for from whatever

[81:02] variant is out there but it's not necessary um I would just hope that we could increase as Jeff alluded to everybody in Colorado get that mask wearing regardless of the Mask up to 95% then I think will stop all transm most transmission of all the viruses so yes you can do it I don't I think if you wear a double apply cloth mask or a surgical mask properly um and making sure it's clean and changed regularly I think you will have the same kind of protection okay um thanks and then I I will have um questions about the 2.0 dial but I kind of want to wait and uh have Sam ask his questions and then I may have some follow-ups because I know he will have a lot on that thanks thank you Rachel um Mary thank you Sam um thank you all for being here tonight once again um Jeff I want to start by thanking you for the graphs

[82:01] that you sent me this afternoon I really appreciate it um and my first question is with regards to um just I guess it'll go to Dr Aina um the meaning of efficacy of a vaccine is it preventing the disease or is said about prevent lowering the severity what what does efficacy mean Chris you are muted sorry thank you thanks for reminding me S I know somebody has to do that at some time in a zoom call I guess it was my turn um council member young the issue is around um clinical trials so when you do a clinical trial you look you you sample number of people that get the vaccine and a number of people that get the bbo and then you compare the population you

[83:00] send them out out out into the world and because the virus was so prevalent a number of people got the infection versus the number of people who didn't and when they looked at those those folks that are um got the infection uh there was a larger number of people that got the infection in the placebo group versus the number of people that got the infection in the vaccine group and when you hear the numbers 94 and 95% that means of all of the infections 95% of those were in the vaccine group excuse me in the placebo group and the other five or six% were in the placebo group so it is still possible to get the infection um uh uh uh uh in in regardless of whether or not you got which vaccine you got because no vaccine is 100% effective now the the studies

[84:01] that they did in terms of following those people over a period of time and they they looked at the infections and the majority of people who who didn't who got um in the in the vaccine group it essentially prevented severity of illness so that it was the was shown that they didn't get those they did that did get the illness had less of an infection so versus the placebo group now there's a difference between efficacy and Effectiveness Effectiveness is how it happens in the real world um um so Effectiveness is how it works in the real world I'm sorry I'm blanking on the other other word um it's late in the evening Chris sorry the other ew the other e word means how it works in the

[85:01] laboratory so e efficacy and Effectiveness efficacy is how it works in the lab correct me if I'm wrong and and the effectiveness is how it works in the real world so that's how you translate those two so I'm hope I'm answering the question the the effectiveness is how it works among real natural people out in the community and we're still studying that if the other ew is when you do it in the Laboratory Testing okay thank you very much and um appreciate that my next question I believe is for endira and endir you mentioned something about the equity allotment um what does that mean yeah so the state has um recognize that there are disparities in terms of vaccinations and so they have put together an A lopment so uh there's a distribution right so 60% of all the vaccine goes to pharmacies and hospitals and then

[86:01] there's around 15% that goes to uh outpatient clinics and 15% that goes to lphas and so they have this kind of formula that they use so for every week that they get that big allotment from the feds they then break it down and then that allotment has a component of around 10% that is uh the state is using for Equity initiatives so I if I want to set up a community- based testing center like um in the city of Boulder I would say hey I want to set up this community vac I'm sorry Community vaccination Center um and I want to work on you know making sure that we're vaccinating our latex community and I am going to request doses from that state Equity allotment so that way I can be guaranteed those allotments over time and that's really important because if we don't do that then we're still going

[87:00] with those traditional vaccination strategies and so I think it's really insightful of the state to be able to put a set aside a whole bunch of doses specifically for Equity initiatives would that help yeah thank you thank you very much um and then I have a question about um we were talking earlier about signing up in one place only instead of signing up in all over the place um I was over here in a conversation today where um there was talk about some places are making their leftover doses at the end of the day available to anyone who is signed up for the leftovers um is that a true thing and how prevalent is that yeah so every um vaccine enrolled provider you'll hear these stories right like of being in a safe way someone's in a safe way and the pharmacist comes out

[88:01] and says hey do you want to get vaccinated because I have 15 minutes to get you this vaccine and that is true so the madna vaccine comes in um 10 doses per vial and the fizer vaccine I believe comes in five doses per vile I think they're fishing for six now um and so at the end of a clinic you have vaccinated everyone for their first or second dose depending on what they're doing and you have you've run 400 people through your clinic um you may have a few extra doses that are at you know from that vile from that last vile it might just be a couple and so everybody um the the rule that we work on um as enrolled providers is we never waste a dose ever waste a dose so right now for us at Boulder County public Health we have that 2300 people that are on that um outpatient moderate risk healthcare workers and so what we're trying to do

[89:01] is being able to to call them ahead of time and say hey we're going to have a clinic and you're you may be called to come and get a dose and so every uh different enrolled provider has their own system but the goal is never waste a dose ever because um that's just not acceptable that help yes it does thank you andira and um I I my last question is about um you mentioned that there one of the one of the reasons that there is a disparity is because of vaccine hesitancy and I'm wondering where the data comes on hesit hesitancy among um communities based on historical um incidents so that's yeah that's my question H how

[90:00] do we know that there is actual hesitancy because of these historical incidences yeah there's been a lot of research that the CDC has conducted which has looked at vaccine hesitancy not just with the covid vaccine but with all vaccines and so um there is some mistrust among certain Community you know populations that have been harmed by the medical community in the past and so um the CDC has plenty of evidence on that so I'm happy to look that up and share that with you so that way you can have a better sense we know that the hesitancy is much the hency is much higher in our African-American population than in our latinx population but it still exists for both um anything to add there Chris or Jeff anything on presidency you might want to share I would just add because salude and Clinica are two of our providers we have heard the same thing reported from both

[91:00] of them that as a matter of fact Clinica one of their main focuses with us when we were talking about trying to make sure we're getting to our priority populations is to address hesitancy or we're not going to be successful yeah but I think you're right and I'd be curious how you felt about it uh Mary is that our challenge is been particularly in among our communities of color that they suffer unfortunately more social and economic challenges where language um transportation access to health care which are lumped all into that hesitancy issue uh but also I know that that many of our since I I worked for a long time as a clinician in a in a community health center is that that our communities prefer one-on-one conversations you know uh for us to understand th those uh issues that their their expectations and and and be able to answer their questions oneon-one or

[92:00] one on group not by a talking head like myself you know even though I do speak Spanish it it's still doesn't matter looking at slides and looking at data that's not where the questions are so we would welcome any ideas that you would have in terms of improving our uh Outreach to communities because we certainly are not reaching everybody that we really want to reach yeah and I just add really quickly one last statement is that um the the concept of you hear a lot in the paper about having a popup and the state wants to do these popups um that's fine from a logistic standpoint but to Chris's point it's the trust component that is missing and so um sometimes that trust is on is is comes from a one-on-one conversation so how do we Leverage The trusting Partners in the community to help us ensure that people feel comfortable and safe when right no thank you I appreciate that and especially um Drina the the um

[93:03] the access piece of it because much of the historical um injustices are basically unknown to a lot of people in terms of they're not taught to anybody and you know they're swept under the rug so I was curious about um how they came to the conclusion that it was actual hesitancy based on historical injustices but what I'm hearing is is that all of the other access um barriers are lumped into the hesitancy so thank you I appreciate that now one another story you know my dad is 93 and he Mexican Mexican-American man and you know we spent a lot of time talking about the vaccine and he had covid-19 and I kind of so I had to kind of think you know what would he think and how how could we talk about it and he really was worried not necessarily about the safety and the effectiveness

[94:00] you know he didn't want to hear anything about the studies he wanted to know if it would protect him and the people he was living with from getting the infection and oh I got it you know so then that's that one-on-one and understanding those expectations of our communities which takes time and I think that's our that's our dilemma we have to understand that and have that two-way conversation thank you I I really appreciate that and um I'm gonna just I have more questions but I will um contain myself because um I think there are other folks that would like to ask some questions great thank you Mary and I do hope we get to all of our Council questions here I don't see any other hands up Ain I saw that you had yours up earlier so raise it again if you'd like me to come back to you I I was going to start by asking if we could get Jeff's slides back up I don't know Jeff if you

[95:00] were sharing them or others were um but one of my first questions Jeff you showed some projections about uh different future scenarios that we're looking at vaccination rates as well as I believe um the presence of other potential um variants of the virus and so you were it was forward looking and there were three different graphs on the chart and I'd love to look at that but I'll I'll tell you as we're trying to get to that slide the real question I had was um it looks to me like the forward looking Peaks all come in the April time frame uh so this is the slide here that's on the screen and if I look at the dark blue line vaccine Plus b117 it looks to me like mid to late April for the peak it's not quite as high as where we are now but it's a pretty substantial Plateau that we're on

[96:01] um do you have anything to say about that do you believe that that's when we're looking at our Peak even with a really aggressive vaccination program uh yes I do only because the car we ju I just came from a meeting with the Colorado School of Public Health just before I jumped on here and they talked about this week's data which they're also going to release and the other thing you'll see in this week's data is you're going to see not only the hospitalization projections but you're going to see the the numbers of cases projected based on these same scenarios and that what they talked about is that we're on a significant decline right now and in order for that to build back up with what's happening in the community it's going to take time it's not going to happen even if we changed from zero to for from 78 to 60% to tomorrow it'll take time for that to build back up so so I think with the variant and with the projections they they'll explain this um or they

[97:00] explained it to us um but I I trust the numbers that they're putting forth there's a really smart group of people working on this we could certainly ask um if you want to have conversations with them specifically about some of the projections we could bring them back uh to the next council meeting I'm sure they'd be happy to do that I know they've done it in other places um to talk about what they're building into those scenarios and why specifically they're they're projecting what they're projecting got it no I I don't think that will be necessary I'm not sure we'd understand the detail but I guess I want to make sure that we all understand what's the difference between 78% and 70% here like how do we translate that into is it mask wearing and social distancing practices so that if we get relaxed we move from the leftmost chart to the middle chart is that what this is really talking about so there's a whole host of things that goes into that but I

[98:00] can't tell you all of them I can give you examples you already mentioned a couple if we see a higher percentage so the other assumption that's in here is that the variant increases approximately 1% of cases per week up to a 50% by early March so as the variant increases it's effective because it's more transmissible it effectively lowers your transmission control and when you have less social distancing so it's a combination of uh opening things up so part of that is thinking about if you're going to more open places on the dial you have you have restaurants with five star in place uh you have more Gatherings that are occurring we went from um limited Gatherings to 10 as an example so all those projections are put into this model and then modeled out based on that um so those are all things that are included and more I I don't know every single one of those uh the

[99:00] the uh uh the characteristics that go into the modeling but again we could we could get more information from them on that and I think I want to add to and Chris you correct me if I'm wrong but with the variant the reproductive number is much higher so the transmission is going to I think these are very complicated models but y are similar saying the same thing which is hopefully if everybody can keep up the transmission control mitigation measures of wearing their masks and socially distancing and and people getting vaccinated that we hopefully will not see a surge in our icus and our hospitals got it well we all certainly hope that but we also want to work to make it so I guess what I'm looking at here and what I think there's a couple takeaways is that if we let our guard down moving forward that this will

[100:00] continue and not much down if we let our guard down a little bit not a great deal that we could be looking at April numbers that are in the ballpark of where we are today we be looking at a sustained plateau of ICU cases because what I'm looking at here I believe are ICU num projections right so this is this is the punch line right this is people who are severely ill who have to go into the ICU and so I guess I just want to frame this up as not only do we need to keep doing what we're doing but as we look at changing our dial policies and and and looking at the five star there that we really want to be careful we're not moving from the left graph the middle graph because the middle graph Peaks us up in April and it's February so we'd be looking at three full months of continued challenges so I just want to flag this make sure I understand it and I think it's saying what I I I believe

[101:01] it is which is if we are not careful with what we do over the next month or so we could be looking at the middle graph and God forbid the right graph as far as what our ICU experience is so I just want to flag that to all council members um that I think this is a real important piece of information that we're looking at here um and Jeff you had another chart I won't ask you to go to it but it seemed to me the punchline of the other bar graph that you were showing was about how many deaths we would expect total cumulative going forward between also different transmission control cases so it's not just ICU patients of course you also have given us data that indicates that if we change our transmission control by a relatively small amount through any combination of factors we could end up with a difference of thousands of deaths

[102:00] um and I'm not sure if that was overall Boulder County it was cumulative I know so it was this it was the state it's two graphs below this I believe State okay okay great yes it's this graph thank you very much so this is the state level um so again it's those three levels of transmission control but um I guess the punchline is even in the vaccine distribution scenarios these transmission control levels are not only ICU um capacity concerns but they're they they translate to to human deaths and so um which brings me to the questions about dial 2.0 um and you know from what the governor said on the press conference today it seems to me likely that they were moving in that direction um and there were a thousand so just a recap what I sent on the

[103:00] hotline over the weekend there was an announcement of this potential move to the dial 2.0 um that announcement was made Saturday and cities and counties had until end of day yesterday to submit um comments or were a thousand comments or so and those comments are being reviewed but now I'd like to talk about the dial 2.0 so if we can go to that piece um from my review of the slides and Jeff from what you showed us it appears to me that the change that we're talking about in dial 2.0 is roughly a factor of three as far as case rates go so if we get the 14-day and 7day washed out and we do all the equivalent math it it looks like we are talking about changing our triggers to move up or down in the dials and in the yellow orange and red by about a factor of three from where we are today

[104:01] and I guess my first question would be since that's so substantial what's your level of concern around doing that in light of the graphs we just looked at so based on the conversation that I just had with the Colorado School of Public Health I have less concerns uh and that's because even in the scenarios where they're looking at changing so one of the scenarios we put on the table with them was if we have multiple because what it means for Boulder County is if we have our our seven if we go from 14 day to 7 Day it effectively Cuts our rates in half which means that we would move from Orange on the dial to Yellow on the dial that's the change that we would see and when that happens we ask the question of if multiple counties are going to do this across the state what are the chances that that's going to factor into our ICU capacity exceedence or it's going to factor into our hospital exceedances and the col School of Public Health said that's what they're modeling this week they're going

[105:01] to release that data but it's not going to make a big enough change in our state for us to exceed that capacity in any of those scenarios so that made me feel a lot better when they looked at and showed us cases associated with that prediction of worst case scenarios and again um you know I don't want to say this as final because haven't released it yet um and we can validate it when they release it but we're talking about worst case scenario of case counts in the 4,000 in a 60% scenario um so that's significantly less than the 7,000 we were in at the peak of this in November when we're talking specifically cases alone at the same time um we're going to have vaccine out and you're going to see less impacts associated with high-risk impacts in ICU in in the hospital in terms of death so those two things should come down comparably based on how much vaccine if those predictions in the model hold of

[106:00] 70% of all of our 70 plus vaccinated by mid-march um if the 1.5 uh transmission increase holds all those things hold then those numbers are looking pretty stable does like I said it's going to mean we're going to have more cases in our community um but it but it is not going to result in exceeding ICU capacity or Hospital capacity Sam do you mind if I followup real quick please do Aon thank you that thanks for that explanation Jeff and that all makes sense and I appreciate that it would still have us low ICU capacity but do we have a sense of an incremental number of differences in in number of deaths because it seems like that's also a really critically important measurement um is is how many more people are likely to to die even if we don't hit those ICU thresholds yeah they they have predicted that and i' I'll have to follow up with that uh graph to send it to you they have multiple graphs I can send you the

[107:01] link to the report so you could share it on the website um you could share it among City Council Members it provides a lot more detail than what I'm just showing you right here that would be helpful thank you and Rachel so I think I'm struggling to like put the last two pieces of the conversation together like on the one hand saying you know Batten the hatches and don't let our guard down or else these numbers are going to get really you know the bar graph will get or the the Curve will get a lot worse and on the other hand we're saying it's okay to loosen so I think I it would just help for me to understand if I understood how those two mesh together I think that again part of the rationale and reasoning is that we're seeing really serious and significant impacts on people's Health from both sides of this and that if we continue with strong prevention strategies so again in any scenario uh that we move forward with if we can continue our prevention strategies just as Chris said

[108:00] if we could get masking from 75% to 95% then we can see those numbers even drop more I I've provided you with graphs in the previous um Council reports where I showed how much Mas can saves lives literally numbers of lives um so I think we need to go forward in No Matter What scenario that in continuing those prevention strategies until we have a larger percentage of our population um with uh the vaccine so that is going to be critical No Matter What scenario we're in going forward but it's a it's a really difficult and challenging problem as we all know we have serious social economic health impacts um and we have people dying from the disease it's it's really a no- win situation I I appreciate that I guess you know like if we're saying wear masks but then we're also going to open up indoor dining by a you know a percentage or a leap it it just hard it is hard to

[109:00] connect both of those you know directives I I just want to say you're right and the fact that um you can think of this as probably a transition period as people start to get vaccinated um and we still have to keep strong mitigation strategies in place but as we vaccinate people it's going to reduce it should reduce the number of people who are hospitalized at admitted to icus and who die and so as a result you may still see cases that that c the counts in the community may go up but you're not going to see those two week delays where you see those surges of hospitalizations and deaths because the Epic curve is going to start shifting whereas remember before you'd have those big surges then you two weeks later you You' see those big hospitalizations and You' see those ICU Admissions and those deaths we should probably start seeing some transitions with our epic curbs they'll start looking a little bit

[110:00] different um and I think that's what they're trying to do is figure out how do we open up safely and keep all the mitigation strategies in place knowing that there's all these huge economic impacts and all of these impacts on people um and making sure that we're not overwhelming the Health Care System would you say that's right Jeff but yeah I think you did a great job explaining that and I think that's why you've heard the governor also say that they're going to be looking at a phase three and a phase four because as more vaccines get out they're going to relook at that dial and think about can we adjust this again based on that we have more people vaccinated in our community and less chance of what endira just talked about Aaron do you have a followup I I did yeah thanks um I appreciate all those explanations but so um and then we also have the the five star certification program right which Boulder County just got approved for in

[111:01] the last few days I believe and and so as I understand it then that whatever level of the dial that we're on that if a a business is approved through the five-star program they get to go down level and and so does that mean that we're going to have um a substantial number of businesses essentially um operating under no restrictions at the green level here here pretty soon and what kind of time frame would that happen in so the the the five-star program as I understand it you can only move to the blue level you cannot move to the green level so the five-star program is basically null and void in the green level the state is talking about timing associated with moving uh the five-star program restaurants or not just restaurants but businesses to the next level down so they are considering that that is part of the feedback that they received uh in the comments that they got on on the dial itself so I don't know how they'll

[112:00] ultimately make that decision okay well that that's good I missed that you couldn't go further than blue that's helpful to know um we certainly want to support our local businesses so that they can get to you know their previous levels of sales and business activity um but given um seems like we've got a little ways on our vaccination curve before we go to business totally as usual so seems like those interplays will be really important thank you Aon Mary thanks Sam I have one more question and then a couple of suggestions um my question is about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine because it is so vastly different from what's out there right now and to what extent will it be um will it make access um easier for those who lack it uh thank you council member uh Mary

[113:01] the the data is still not it's completely out there yet we've seen some preliminary data that talk about its Effectiveness um and it is certainly in the 60 to 70% effective U which is still darn good I I think people are misrepresenting when they hear that they're saying well it's not 95 I'm not want I don't want to get that Johnson and Johnson vaccine but in their studies the preliminary data says that at one dose can get you that 60 to 70% Effectiveness and it doesn't have the same kind of requirements in refrigeration that and or super Refrigeration that that um that uh um the fiser and madna vaccines have so in terms of prod eduction it's going to be a little cheaper single dose and not the same kind of uh stuff that you have to manage it with so in terms of accessibility I would say that it's

[114:00] going to be a a boom for many countries that can't afford the the vaccination and for populations that want to just say yeah I'm ready to get the vaccine and to get it out into into more and I would hope that this would be one that we get out to Primary Care providers that we get out to to these Community CL or Community sites so that they don't have to have the same kind of equipment and and and and stuff that they have to carry with them so I think that that has a real potential to be a very valuable vaccine until we hear more about the data and before it's approved I don't I don't want to let the cat out of the bag and promise that it's going to be perfect but we need to hear more about it but preliminarily it sounds really good for those reasons I don't know andere if you want to add anything to that wanted to add that I think we should wait until the um asip and the FDA do their review on this vaccine so it does look like it's 60 or 70% effective you know for the whole population but some of our smart

[115:04] uh really smart epidemiologists over at CU that we've partnered with have maybe seen some maybe heard of some preliminary data that suggests that for some of the younger age groups it might be highly effective so I would just say let's not discount this as Dr Aina said this could become a game Cher particularly because it's one dose but let's wait until they do their FDA review and they go through the asip review and make their recommendations because it could be um it could be much more effective for younger age groups and things than than what we know which is great thank sorry thank you thank you no thank you very much um and then my suggestions were um one of them is uh in terms of addressing the the hesitancies um which now I understand there's a lot more lumped into that than I understood um is

[116:02] to basically pay people for getting the vaccine so as an example what that might look like is to say to the five-star uh businesses the that qualify for the five-star program is to say as part of being um included in this five-star program you must allow pay time off for your employees to go get the vaccine um so that's an example of what that could look like another example of um how to address some of these disparities would be to um make sure that the hours of operation of these um clinics and um you know popup sites are meeting the needs of people that that can only come late in the evening or early in the morning or you know whatever their needs might be um so that's that's a couple of examples of how you know we might further address

[117:03] um disparities absolutely and we did put together a um recommendation guidance for administrators for different cities and maybe uh Chris mesik could share kind of the AA guidance that we put together where we did really encourage um everyone to pay employees to go get their vaccine like do it on work time and have a commitment as an employer that you're going to commit to um paying for someone to go get their vaccine and um we we did put some of those approaches in there but you're absolutely right about the hours and the days of the week those become incredibly important for um trying to make sure that we get the folks that we want to get to those you know those community clinics there yeah thank you very much thank you Mary um I I have more questions but I I'm gonna stop with the

[118:00] questions I'm gon to make an observation and then Jeff I'm gonna ask you a programmatic question not a detailed question we we were recently in red back in December um Boulder County was one of the many many counties in red and we were doing well enough in our two-e trajectory that we were looking to maybe move to Orange and right as we were on the cusp of moving to Orange um a whole bunch of counties got moved to Orange uh and then there's this new dial 2.0 and what the dial 2.0 will do if adopted by the slides that were presented this weekend is move the 35 or so counties who were in red to have only five counties in red after the dial 2. o um structure goes into place and Boulder County our backyard we would pretty much move to Yellow as a result of that and so we will have gone from red to yellow

[119:03] in the course of essentially five weeks and uh as Aaron points out if the five-star program is then used um and we've got applications opening up next week for that program then business businesses that qualify will move to Blue and so effectively in Boulder for certain businesses in five weeks we will have gone from Red which is essentially lockdown and only outdoor dining for restaurants as an example to Blue for the qualifying restaurants which is 50% occupancy um this causes me great concern now I have no crystal balls so I have no idea if this is going to be a problem or not but it sure seems seems like it's an area that we're going to have to watch closely um because even if it's just to Yellow we will have moved down two dial levels in the course of

[120:01] pretty short time and all the attendant openings that come along with moving down to and then the five star moves us even further and what we know from the studies that many folks have done recently is the ideal occupancy levels in the range of 20 25 %c with all the social distancing and masking and so on seems to be about where there's a good balance between the economic negative Health impacts and the virus negative Health impacts so I guess I'm flagging this for all of us staff Council everyone's going to need to watch it because this could move quickly and we're going to need to have some way to respond and so Jeff to you I guess my my programmatic question is if we pay close attention to this and we see um some concerning changes or we even have concerns enough that we might want to mess around with the five-star program

[121:01] I'm assuming Boulder County Public Health would be willing to work with us as a city to tailor uh based on whatever we see the county response so that we're not just dependent on the state and we can go speak to you so how would you view cities appealing to Boulder County Public Health to um change the way the five-star program works with the new dial 2.0 what what do you think the role of the city with Boulder County Public Health will be in making sure that we don't go backwards in our disease rates so um a couple things and I I'd like to respond to several of the things you brought up the the first one is the one thing that we need to remember is that and and dar you can correct me if I'm off here but by the end of this week we will be at effectively 70% of our 70 plus year olds so that's a game Cher in terms of vaccination that means can I

[122:02] interrupt just to make sure I get it that's the first dose 70% will have received the first dose that's correct yep great thank you um so that's a game Cher for us in terms of predictions and that's also where the predictions from the Colorado School of Public Health come in um the second thing is the feedback that we've provided to the state is uh and the reason that we went so two things for 7 day 7day is more responsive even though the ranges are wider uh the state has made it very clear that the governor will move people until red um that's what we heard and the feedback that we provided is that if we get to Red we also need support to be moved in red but that it won't be waiting so the the past I think all of you know this but the past last process was we had to submit a mitigation plan we'd wait two weeks then we would see if that mitigation plan was working they would were given us an additional two weeks so essentially they were giving us up to a month to move there is there is

[123:02] in in the anybody who looked at the feedback um that they're proposing says that if you have any indicators out when you're going back up that you would be immediately contacted and moved and that and that so there's a lot quicker response to go from one to the next so that's the second piece that we felt better about when we were looking at uh some of the detail the biggest concern we have again is in the red um which we provided feedback on and then relative to your last question um we of course would sit down with cities um we we meet with our cities as I know you all know um on a weekly basis was twice a week now it's once a week um uh we have summer laws and Karen Waldo from the chamber who report weekly on what the five-star program looks like in Boulder County I can tell you um that our fstar program uh was submitted with the intention that it's going Beyond what's

[124:01] required um only if you're in that category already so they have to go beyond that and demonstrate that they're working harder than what's just available in that category um so I would be fully open and supportive obviously of looking at the data and then having convers ations um with cities across the county we have already a mechanism to do that and I would commit to continuing to do that very good thank you and Mary I see your hand I'll come to you in just a moment I I do just want to flag this first dose and us being careful that we don't get too excited about first dose um I'm gon to say something personal it's not to generate sympathy but just to raise awareness is that I had someone in my close family die in the past week and they had received their first dose of the Mna vaccine um before they contracted covid and so the first dose

[125:01] takes a while and a while depends on the vaccine to begin to confer even the protection that's received from the first dose so I think we need to take with a grain of salt um the first dose numbers because it's a while after the first dose that the protection becomes effective and then it's a while after that that the second dose can be administered so I am all happy that we're getting our 70 plus year olds vaccinated but I want to say to our entire community that that means we still have to be careful even to protect those people going forward for the next month or two because even when it's 100% at the first dose and 30% who have received both doses they're are still elderly members of our community who are going to be in danger and with that I'll turn to juny oh Chris actually Chris why don't you respond to that I see your hand and then

[126:00] juny thank you Sam and and I think I just wanted to add to your your very strong statement and I'm sorry to hear you about your family member the to get fully effective um coverage you have to get both doses of the of the mad and the fiser vaccine to get that 90 and 9 95 and 94% protected and ites it takes till after two weeks after the second dose to get full immunity so I'm sorry that your family member passed away but I think people that's what I we're we're all very concerned about that people just say well I I got my single dose I'm have a little bit of Effectiveness but we really want people to get both doses hopefully from the same provider so that we can increase the likelihood of we're going to be have vaccine uh protection in our community in addition to all the other prevention strategies that that we're putting into place thank you Chris

[127:02] juny thank you Sam and thank you for sharing that personal story um I think it's very helpful for a lot of people in the community to really understand the reality of what is really going on and I just wanted to thank you all for the presentation it was really informative it really thought about a lot of the challenges that we faced and I think just by hearing from you knowing that you're considering the challenges when it comes to people of color and we may not have all the solutions but thinking about them is very important as well and I think my question to any one of you is are you working with local community groups when it comes to information dissemination we do we do work with local community groups and um I'm I'm not as well versed as cha who is our

[128:02] public information officer but there has been a lot of work to gather feedback from the community and then to make sure that the uh communication is available in multiple languages and then also making sure that it's um that it's centered on the community voice yeah and that's really important I think you raised a really good point is that the community has to be part of the solution and that the equity work is not owned by one of us it is owned by all of us and so it's working collaboratively and right next to folks to make sure that we can prevent people from dying from covid um making sure that people know where to get tested for covid and then also really trying to get people vaccinated with the thank you so much for this because again you mentioned you know the popup um vaccination uh places and also community

[129:02] outreach and and and also you know the issue with for me when it comes to um you talk about hesitancy I think part of it as well is misinformation is that people in and I think even you mentioned earlier people from minority groups or minority communities being a black person I've heard you know people say even in my own family and friends say they're not gonna take the vaccine because they've heard of the tusky um experiment or what happened back then so I think it's so important to have people who connects you to these communities in both in in nor C we do have the community connectors and I don't know if you've already working with them and how they can be helpful I'm not signing um City staff to working with you but if that's something that is possible um maybe that's something to look into to because again I think having people who look like you and people who can bring

[130:01] that information to you as opposed to just looking at the internet which is very different and far removed so having that that human component involved in someone within the community to tell you yeah the vaccine is safe you can take it I know people who have taken it as much more more different than just looking at what's going on on on national TV and I think even our discussion today shows that as Rachel mentioned there's there's several things going on there's hey we're going to lower restrictions but please wear your mask so sometimes people just don't know what is the right thing to do so having someone who look like them who can communicate or who's closer to the community not just look like them but who's closer to the community to express who's more of an authority figure to them than real authority figures you know a doctor May tell you what to do you may not listen but having someone who's in the community telling you what to do you feel like somehow that's much closer and you understand that better so and thank

[131:01] you for this presentation it was really great and and I really I I learned a lot and I I'm really happy to see that you're considering the different groups in the community and the challenges thank you thank you juny Mark yeah I'll be quick um are we creating a priority for people um over 70 who have been vaccinated once so uh to make sure that they complete the course of treatment or they just sort of out there looking for another dose along with everybody else one of the requirements with all the enrolled providers is that once you come in and receive that first dose you have to you're pretty much not allowed to leave until you schedule for that second dose um yeah that scheduling is takes place really uh really as part of that whole covid vaccination planning and and my second question I don't see um Chief uh heral here so I guess I'll ask Chris met

[132:01] if we can find out um there was a very disturbing uh slide uh indicating the increase uh in emergency visits for sexual violence and I'm wondering uh given the fact that the jail is of very limited utility I would hope we're not giving people who are committing sexual violence a summons um and and so we can find out how in fact we are dealing with that increase and and how we're dealing with people who commit sexual violence I think it would be very useful to know and Chris magic if I'm in the wrong spot point me to the right spot but as I said I don't see uh uh Chief Harold in the audience tonight yeah Mark I'll have uh Chief Harold follow up with with you on that appreciate thank you so much great well thanks I think I will bring us to a close here I do want to point out one thing before we let

[133:00] everyone go so you can correct me if I'm wrong but from my read of the slides distributed this weekend sometime early summer we will be into the general public administration of the vaccine so if you look at the tearing and we're doing the most vulnerable first and the most uh exposed workers first but it's just worth everyone keeping in mind that we won't be administering the vaccine to the general public until around summertime so with that we really do need to keep on all the things that we've been doing because we're in the final Hall and the the hall the end of the hall starts in the summer we're we're in it now but we're not into the general public until summertime so we're going to be doing this for a little while we can't let our guard down um this is this is the time when it's the hardest to to keep our patience up and our our Focus so with that unless

[134:02] there's any other comments I will again thank Jeff and endur and Chris for your time it's always helpful and for your work that you're doing with our staff so thank you all very much thank you with that I will turn back and I will announce that um with the closing of this item that the active um language interpretation is going to end so I want to do that and um please flag me if I've missed anything on that um but then we'll turn to open comment and before we begin open comment I was going to turn to Brenda and have her reiterate our thank you um and then I will turn to Brenda if you want to talk about the rules for open comment again thank you great thank you see I'm sorry about the um misfire on my button push there um I

[135:01] do want to share our meeting rules we do see that um we likely have some folks joining us tonight for open comment who may have not joined us in our virtual space so we wanted to make sure everyone's familiar with how we operate our business practices in this space can you see those slides Sam let me take a look here got a few things up yes the meeting rules are up great um so I'll just go over them very quickly make them a little bigger so we can see them easier um we are here to conduct the business of the city of Boulder and any activities that disrupt dislay delay or otherwise interfere with the meeting are prohibited the time for speaking or asking questions may be limited and no one shall speak except when recognized by our Mayor Sam Weaver and no one can speak longer than the time allotted each person has registered to speak and are

[136:02] using your real name um we need to have that real name um connected to your presence on the screen while you're speaking um I do see some folks on the list who only have a first name at the moment if you see that that's true please um send me your last name in The Q&A box so I can change that for you so we have your full name there no video is permitted except for City officials employees and our invited speakers and presenters all others will participate by voice only um the mayor presiding this evening shall enforce these rules by asking me to mute anyone who violates a rule the chat function is not enabled tonight we do have the Q&A box in enabled and that intention is only for technical questions to the host just like in a live council meeting we don't have a question and answer opportunity we also don't um in this meeting and sorry about that um and

[137:02] finally only the host and individuals designated by the host will be permitted to share their screen during tonight's meeting thank you so much for the time to share those important rules with you and now I believe we're ready to begin Sam thank you Brenda for our open comment tonight um our first three people are Joy roody Kim and Haron and Deborah basa so Joy you're are up thank you Sam in 2013 Boulder's flood cost was over three billion in Damages and many properties across South Boulder were impacted we only need to look at the rainfall currently happening in California to wonder if 2013 might become more common than we think the city's justifying its decision to build out cu South based on the need for flood mitigation which is a valid concern but choosing CU South rather than an upstream location is a costly and short-sighted decision that ignores the potential cost of flood damages in the parts of South Boulder west of Cu south

[138:02] from future storms which could be millions or even billions of dollars to Boulder its citizens the city has always followed best practices of development in leaving riparian zones as open space better suited to wildlife habitat and flood control CU South left his open space would naturally provide a secondary safety if flood control were moved Upstream a closer look at the proposed 66 to 96 million being allocated to CU South reveals that only 10 million is for fil dirt to raise portions of the property above the 500-year flood elevation while 15 million is for miscellaneous C related costs including rebuilding tennis courts and the road that accesses the property from table nesa drive so 25 million of the 66 million or 38% of the estimated costs aren't directly related to flood mitigation many question why the 25 million should be paid via our water bills and not from some other source such as the general fund furthermore why is the city paying to raise CU land to the 500e flood level when the city is providing only a 100-year level of protection to its residents and businesses if a land swaper made with CU

[139:01] for North Boulder parcel instead it would save taxpayers the $25 million in cost to build the flood plane and avoid the additional cost required to pull water sewer and utilities to the South Boulder site and to relocate table makes's fire station to the detriment of Resident safety and home insurance rates but one of the best things about a land exchange for the north campus is that it is zero cost to taxpayers because the city owns 230 acres and CU only seeks to develop 129 so I thank you for your time I hope you'll consider this um I know that that floods will only get worse in the future here but I believe that North Campus would really save the taxpayers a lot of money and would we would continue to enjoy the open space that we do today thank you Joy next we have Kim and Haron Deborah basa and Holly Carlson Kim in okay hi uh this is kimman Haron I live in the Northern most part of Martin

[140:00] Acres as a taxpaying resident of Boulder for 29 years I want to voice my objection to the city of B Boulder using our tax dollars to fund cuu excesses we need flood control but not at this cost I want to strongly urge the city to decouple flood mitigation from cu's desire for a fourth campus we need flood mitigation not only on South Boulder Creek but CU does not need a fourth campus CU can always add buildings on their existing campuses if the need arises in the future as it stands now there is a downturn in enrollment and who knows that may be the new normal but if CU must have a fourth campus the other alternative is a land swap the city has a planning Reserve which is much better land not in a flood plane and it will save the city and US taxpaying residents 10 to20 million Trucking in fil dirt and Grading is totally totally unical if we don't uncouple this the residents of Frasier Meadows will get

[141:00] 100% of the benefit from this deal and those of us in South Boulder get all the impact I know I know Rachel friend has said that by the time a topic comes up for vote the council has already made up their mind so she wants to cut back on public comment I hoping you all haven't closed the door on the thought of decoupling flood control from annexation as well as using the planning reserve for what it is meant for growth for the city because this is what this is and Rachel as a resident of Frasier Meadows you will be a direct beneficiary of this bad deal in order to get flood control so maybe you ought to think of recusing yourself from this vote if you haven't already thanks for your time thank you kimman next we have Deborah basa Holly Carlson and Sher Norland Deborah ah City departments are now

[142:01] holding Community meetings on the CU South annexation proposal kudos for this citizen engagement effort not so for the city's disappointing beard Boulder website which reaches thousands more people but with push polling that glorifies cu's position at our expense that site currently acknowledges significant negative feedback alleging that it focuses too much on promoting terms of the annexation rather than the annexation itself but offers the excuse that their purpose is to focus on the current negotiation status and to inform development of an agreement nothing more loudly says done deal to those of us for whom Emer Mercy response time utility costs and quality of life are seriously jeopardized under the proposed terms and clearly objections to the annexation cannot be separated from its terms

[143:01] notably costs of annexation appear nowhere in the questionnaire which presents CU terms in the rosiest light as if CU were offering us a free lunch we simply choose from their menu examples the questionnaire is silent about increased utility costs silent about the city's 66 to $99 million cost for infill to enable massive construction projects in the flood plane aimed at doubling the main campus silent about better options like condemning the land needed for flood control and letting CU develop its property already within the city or swap for developable land outside the flood plane many of us are losing faith that the city is even listening be heard Boulder falls on our ears as manipulative sloganeering but it is not too late to rework the site and actually start listening thank you for listening to me thank you Deborah next

[144:00] we have Holly Carlson Sher Norland and Carrie pazari hly good evening city council I'm speaking tonight because yesterday late afternoon I had to call 911 due to a homeless individual being so erratic because he was having an extremely bad methi he was not only hurting himself he was hurting the open space around him he had no control over his own body or the Illusions he was having I write this because as much as I push for the environment to be cleaner and safer I still believe we should be helping individuals who really need and desire the help the police came and he did go with them which made me feel better as he would get the medical treatment he needs but it still breaks my heart that we have to continue to watch individuals like this person suffer continuously who clearly need intervention and part of the reason our open spaces look like such is because fact is we're neglecting the actual issue of addiction and just focusing on housing which any recovered

[145:02] person will tell you you cannot skip part A and go straight to C it doesn't work like this in recovery giving housing to an addict will not do anything but keep the addiction going while wasting actual tax money that could have been used for actual rehab program which after rehab is a halfway house and so forth all I am saying is that some of the CC members need to understand it's a 12-step program for a reason and they can't make up their own because they feel a certain way this is the nature of the beast called meth and yes it is a real issue we have to face and deal with in a Humane but proper way leaving them to be like this is cruel and as a mother it breaks my heart because we all know that this man most likely has a family that loves loves him and would like to see him clean and clearheaded lastly I should not have to reach out to the superintendent of Boulder Valley School District Mr Anderson or his secretary Miss schaer because you guys have allowed an

[146:00] encampment to stay behind Boulder high school for over two and a half weeks you are putting the children of this city at the back burner for what encampments thank you Holly next we have Sher Norland har pazari and Wendy Ferrara Sherry Sherry you should be able to unmute now Sherry it looks like she may not not um her mute button may not be working she's here but I I don't seem to be able to get her button unmuted it's okay Brenda let's go on to Carrie and we

[147:02] can come back to Sherry right Carrie you should be able to unmute okay there we go hi everyone I am the executive director for Studio Arts Boulder and we manage the historic Pottery lab up on uni Hill I am also on the grant review panel for the boulder Arts commission this year and my main reason for speaking to you tonight is to say thank you for restoring nearly all of the Arts funding in this year's City budget Studio Arts Builder is a recipient of a three-year General operating Grant and we received funding from create older through their match and we found ways to stay open and provide safe programs through the pandemic but 2020 has really shown us that our programs are not just for fun and Recreation they are really critical

[148:02] to the mental physical and social health of our community um we all saw the statistics about suicide and mental health impacts just a few minutes ago um we know that the Arts are not considered the front line but they really are essential and before the pandemic the Arts and Boulder employed 1,900 people and generated $70 million for the local economy but the first four months of the pandemic wiped out about a decade of growth for the industry when we say Arts funding we usually think of things like paintings but really what we're talking about is people our grant allows us to pay our studio assistant so when we talk about Arts funding what we really mean is helping artists and art workers eat and pay rent so uh when the current crisis is over I just want to ask that you remember to include the Arts as a critical lever in rebuilding both our community and our local economy and

[149:01] thanks for the money great thank you Carrie and um I think we will come back to shering Orland and see if we can get her on now so Sherry I think she's dropped off the call now Sam sorry okay that's okay no problem we'll keep trying uh with that next we have Wendy Ferrara Dorothy Cohen and Brian buma uh Wendy good evening and thank you for this opportunity to address the city council those of you who are still remaining regarding the proposed annexation of the CU South Campus to those that are even aware of this proposal it is obviously rif with a lack of transpar transparent from the city following are a few glaring examples at the conceptual preliminary stage of the postcard flyer that was mailed out to 7,000 Boulder residents the Martin Acres neighborhood

[150:01] association of which I am a member was asked by the city to provide feedback we pointed out that it did not mention the costs of somewhere between 66 and99 million to the city and taxpaying residents we asked that this being included on the postcard our suggestion was ignored to date the public has not been made aware of the closure of the Table Mesa darly fire station as part of this proposed development at the CU campus CU South Campus which will include a new fire station thus creating a greater distance and response time for Table Mesa and Martin acr's residents I think residents would be concerned about this as it will directly impact the cost to ensure their homes in the presentation the city staff gave to Martin acr's neighborhood on December 2nd they provided us with a very helpful reference point and rough equivalency for cu's South CU South's 38 acre campus

[151:00] specifically that it's roughly the same size as the existing 313 acre main campus but none of the city's subsequent disseminated information has this reference been mentioned additionally it has not been mentioned in community briefing sessions not in the postcard flyer not in the beard Boulder survey essentially the only mention of size comparison was at the neighborhood briefing on December 2nd this all-important reference point came from City staff not us we simply asked them to share with other residents what they shared with us very few people can Envision one AC thank you for your time thank you Wendy next we'll go back and try Sher Norland again okay Sherry you should be able to try to unmute we suggest your space bar okay can you hear me now can okay great thank you sorry my Wi-Fi got disconnected

[152:01] really quickly thank you my name is Sher Norland I live in the Valhalla neighborhood next to the reservoir this is my first time ever speaking to the city council thank you for the opportunity I would like to share my concern regarding the limitation or lack thereof represented in the lease the city has entered into with the tenant Josh Diner I attended the open house with Ali rhods and Josh Diner excited to learn more about what I thought was a family-friendly concession and dining option at the reservoir after learning more I am concerned regarding safety at large events where alcohol will be served at night near a large body of water per the lease agreement the tenant has a lot of latitude and will be allowed to operate with no limitations on frequency of events and attendance the lease States the tenant can operate after hours all year long seven days a week until midnight with

[153:00] Amplified outdoor music with no mention of limitations on attendance the liquor license application also States unlimited unlimited seating the lease States the tenant has the exclusive authority to book manage and schedule AR for entertainment the lease also States the city hereby grants tenant a license to possess and control the yard and swim Beach for purposes of sale and service of alcohol this is over 61,000 square feet of space the tenant will exclusively control per contract with the city with no limitations that I can find on attendance this is a huge safety concern on the property during an event and on the roads after an event it is come to my attention that the tenants liquor license was suspended by the boulder Liquor Board just last month at another establishment I respectfully urge the city to call for a review of the lease to fully understand the free reign which will be given to the tenant at our beloved Boulder

[154:01] Reservoir thank you thank you Sherry next we have Dorothy Cohen Brian buma and Lynn seagull Dorothy my name is Dorothy Cohen and I live in Martin acres and I was just horrified to hear what CU is considering doing and what the city is doing as far as closing a fire station that is that serves South Boulder so CU can have a fire station that will that will lower their insurance rates and have everybody in in in Majestic Heights some part of Martin Acres um and T Mesa area have their rates increased why should the citizens of Boulder be paying more money for their insurance why CU gets all the benefits of it I talked to my insurance agent today and they did say that the

[155:00] distance between a fire station and your home definitely affects your your insurance rates none of this has really been clear to to anybody in at in the city and especially Martin acr's residents who be affected by it I live close to the one on Baseline so I will not be affected by this but many people will have their their insurance rates go up why should CU get a free a free ride and they think that they're doing a favor to the city they're giving the city some some land so they can have a fire station but CU is benefiting not this residents of Boulder of of the city of Boulder especially us residents of South Boulder thank you for your time thank you Dorothy next we have Brian buma Lyn seagull and Bruce Breslau is Brian here

[156:02] Brenda yes Brian is here I do not see Bruce s good Brian you are up cool thanks I appreciate that opportunity this is actually my first time presenting or talking to council as well thanks I'm a resident of South Boulder and I wanted to speak to the CU South um annexation as well and clearly there are benefits regarding floods for a couple neighborhoods and uh the problem is those the costs associated with it aren't being communicated to the public but since I only have a couple minutes all um of uh focus on traffic and the safety of the elementary kids here in South Boulder so Table Mesa 36 in South Broadway are already jammed at rush hour I mean it's literal stop and go you know non- pandemic times uh it's already already impossible to leave Martin acres for example on the table Mesa during many hours of the day and Morehead which parallels 36 is already a very attractive high speed cut through for commuters and students rapid cut throughs happened every single day Rush Hour pre pandemic I mean there's no

[157:01] there's no stop lights it's a straight road it's legitimately the fastest way between the proposed development in main campus and it will be used as will Martin drive to rush through at all hours and I know See's proposed mass transit but let's be honest students will at only only best partially use those options the reality is most don't use buses and especially post pandemic most won't and South Boulder will become a bigger thoroughfare than it already is and there's no way to mitigate this despite the city's best efforts short of blocking those shortcuts I mean more people's more people more cars is more cars I live on Martin the other Road that'll become the way uh main way from south campus there's an elementary school in daycare on the street and it's already used as overflow during rush hours um you the kids were it was really wonderful when people stopped coming through because of the pandemic or when the roads were blocked in November um kidss were playing in the streets it was a family neighborhood it's not safe to propose a mass development which is guaranteed to bring increased traffic rushing through these neighborhoods which are our family neighborhoods I mean I can almost promise that eventually they'll be in an accident um

[158:01] there's already close calls so I appreciate that uh you are taking the time to listen um to this perspective but please consider that sort of safety and kid and family issues as well thank you Brian next we have Lynn seagull Bruce brow and Karen goelman Lynn first inform me if there's a audio transmission issue you're fine thanks we'll tell you yeah Sam you definitely need to get answers from your City attorney when you ask him a question that is just unacceptable I was sitting on the edge of my seat about an agreement between the developer of Macy's and the community benefit for the citizens of Boulder and you had a good reason for answering for asking your question and that was that we lost a movie theater at the Boulder Daily Camera because of the way a contract was written so the devil's in the details

[159:02] and you ask the right question but if you don't get the answer it doesn't help does it um CU South dick Tharp the athletic director at CU was the council for flat irons Gravel Company as a result the $16 million price tag that the city of Boulder would have had to pay to buy it was actually 11 million to the city of Boulder because the appraisal got changed around through the lawyers dick thp athletic director not okay now the city needs some payback I guess you know or I mean CU feels they have they are entitled somehow they already got a sweet deal the land was only worth 9 million that's what we should have bought it for so this is a problem um 20 stories worth of dirt 20

[160:04] stories that's a lot $25 million that we're supposed to pay for that so that see you can build something there you people have got to really start thinking about the long-term benefits the city needs this is just poor policy thank you Len next we have Bruce Breslau Karen goelman and Timothy wolf I do not see Bruce Breslau on our um on the participant list Bruce if you're here and you might be logged in under a different name please let me know in the Q&A and I'll get you renamed and we'll get you back on the list um but for now we should go on to Karen goelman perfect

[161:00] Karen hi can you hear me yep okay thank you thanks for letting me speak today uh my name is Karen Goan and I have lived in the South Boulder for over 15 years my husband and two kids my kids and I take my dog for a walk nearly every morning and evening in the undeveloped area known as suu South where we see dozens of other people getting exercise in fresh air the land includes only a remnant of extremely rare Tall Grass Prairie which is the only Tall Grass Prairie we know of west of the Mississippi the site is immediately adjacent to the city-owned and county-owned open space which is important because development will adversely affect these areas especially if there are changes in groundwater flows it also includes two ferally protected species orchids and the meadow jumping mouse among many species of concern is the spotted leopard frog there is much more Wildlife there than you might think Elk Mountain Lions and black bear have been seen there as well as Fox coyotes and many species of birds snakes and monarch butterflies there is

[162:01] also State Natural Area a designated open space area owned by the city and county and paid for by the citizens of Boulder there is a reparan habitat in and around South Boulder Creek raran habitat is probably the most endangered habitat in the entire Southwest this Wildlife Corridor if left undeveloped could also be a much-needed connection for Animals moving North and South I ask you to save and protect this unique undeveloped area and encourage Su to develop in a more sensible and appropriate location which will also save Boulder citizens and the city upwards of40 to 90 million thank you thank you Karen next we have Timothy wolf Roger poac and Ernie strong Timothy un mute there we go can you hear me yes oh thank you very much Council Mayor Bob it's great to see that you are up and around and healthy um I'm

[163:00] speaking um like Sherry against the lease of the reservoir I live in Waterstone I also own a home in on Lincoln place um I want to make three points one it's this is a terrible idea two I hope you asked detailed detailed questions and three I hope you consider alternatives let me start with a bad idea Sherry did a great job I think of reviewing some of the pieces but this is very likely to turn in my view a public good into a public nuisance as I think many of you know 51st Street which runs right across you know the open space for for my my home sorry CNN jumped on um 51st street is a drag Street out here culminating with a blind hill before before you reach the reservoir the combination of kids moving from the hill to the reservoir to drink and party um I think is dangerous U Bob with all due respect the 61,000 square feet of space that will be allowed in this lease I think is

[164:01] not something that that Bart contenders and weight staff can can cover um I think this is dangerous you combine young kids booze a road and a body of water we're asking for trouble a point two ask questions the specificity of of what's been laid out is very unclear um what are the terms of of the deal is it market-based is it 9 o' that they're going to be shut down 12 o'clock 11 I've heard three different numbers um please please ask detailed questions reconsider the lease point three um I have the privilege to serve as chair of bridg house we came to you three years ago to install a cafe much the way we have done at the mental health Pavilion at bch were turned down because we our folks wouldn't and couldn't serve alcohol so I I consider that alternative once again thank you thank you for the work you are doing appreciate it thank you Tim next

[165:01] we have Roger piak uh Bernie stom and Kenneth Nova Roger I apologize I accidentally Roo m muted Roger instead of Tim Roger you should be able to unmute again how's that does that work we can hear you okay great hello everyone chance here to regroup my name is Roger posac I lived at I live at 4925 vye Drive in Boulder County within a mile of the boulder Reservoir a few weeks ago I spoke here to council about the Dockside liquor bar at the boulder Reservoir and how bad an idea it is to allow a liquor license at this location City attorney Tom Carr stepped up and said the city cannot and will not interfere or influence the liquor licensing process well that is precisely

[166:02] what is about to happen uh this the director of city parks and recreation and Josh Diner of docside have scheduled a meeting on February 10th with the neighbors surrounding the reservo although I appreciate parts and Recreation reaching out to us the timing is not good and violates City policy stated by Tom Carr I ask that you postpone neighborhood meetings here until after the bla hearing on the Dockside liquor license on February 17th please allow proper liquor licensing petitions and bla hearing processes to take place without interference or influence by any City entity or partner also I find it interesting that the reservoir facility lease requires a liquor license at all this actually procr precludes great non-alcohol organizations like Bridge house from operating a cafe at the reservoir

[167:01] facility it saddens me that the city is pushing liquor consumption and a partnership with a known bad actor Josh Diner that has had his current liquor license suspended due to Serious violations with all due respect back I Call On You city council and City attorney to do your duty call up the lease to make changes that do not discriminate against better Partners like Bridge house thank you thank you Roger next we have Bernie strm Kenneth Nova and Misha tour Bernie Bernie can you hear me y there you go yep hi I live at 5303 Westridge Drive uh in Waterstone and I have a direct line of sight to the reservoir we're very concerned about the lease Boulder signed with landlock LLC this

[168:01] venue will totally change the character of a beloved cherish Park and Sanctuary we beseech the council to invoke a n ND of five to call up the lease review it and revise it or cancel it and and find a new tenant there are others quite willing to step in as you just heard it would be good for the reservoir and supported by the neighborhoods to review some of the facts the lease violates the vision and goals stated in the boulder Reservoir master plan the lease will not protect enhance and restore wildlife and plant species in their natural habitat but will do the opposite the lease will not promote and support visitor safety there's too much alcohol going on on a very dark street with blind curves blind Hills and a lot of alcohol just doesn't mix it will not Endeavor to be a good neighbor to adjacent properties that's us and the Valhalla neighborhood long hours loud

[169:00] music and unlimited attendance will disrupt the neighborhoods where a majority of residents oppose such a venue they're proposing to stay open until midnight year round it's just unacceptable with um Amplified music the lease violates the vision zero initiative of the city increasing the possibility of pedestrian and bicycle deaths on 51st Street the neighborhoods were not included in the open forums and information sessions there weren't any the processes for such a notification and inclusion were ignored and perhaps designed to be misleading by leaving out information to the communities within a mile of the reservoir and perhaps even to the city council we believe the city council was not given a sense of the scope and impact of the changes to the lease thank you for your time thank you Bernie next we have Kenneth Nova Misha tour and Leslie glom

[170:06] Kenneth sorry Kenneth try again okay yep we hear you thank you eight reasons why CU South is a terrible idea eight my apologies I am tripping over myself um Kenneth let me get you back on here apologies for the delay Mr Mayor no worries Kenneth you should be able to immute again I will stay out of your way are we okay now yep start over please thank you eight reasons why see South is a terrible idea eight the promised fire station at CU South would mean that the current station at darly Avenue would be closed with the new location being on the Eastern edge of Soo this would mean increased distances

[171:00] an elapsed time of service for many residents seven two endangered species would be in serious Jeopardy from CU south construction six the residential units in CU South could be built on the East Campus Which is far closer to Main Campus five instead of building CU South in a flood plane there could be a swap of 129 Acres of the city's planning Reserve which is high and dry for 129 Acres of the SE South land four the flood mitigation work that needs to occur should not be coupled with CU South separate the two projects three current budgetary estimates include the city of Boulder paying between 66 and $91 million including depositing many tons of fi dirt to raise the area for CU South Housing up in a flood plane which

[172:01] is really absurd that huge range of costs with no CU South site plan should not be acceptable two where will the traffic from CU South go to get to campus skip the traffic jam at Table Mesa and Broadway and take Morehead instead turn Morehead into a major traffic Corridor or take Martin which recently was closed to through traffic because it's used by so many pedestrians and bikers not to mention the elementary school one have you ever tried to drive through the intersection of Table Mesa and Broadway at rush hour or tried turning left onto Table Mesa from Martin Acres it's impossible please don't add this giant bottleneck for Soo residents thank you thank you Kenneth next we have Misha tour Leslie glustrom and Gary erling Misha hello can you hear me we

[173:03] can first of all I wanted to respond to some comments by earlier speakers about the encampment behind Boulder high school as a student myself and one of the kids Holly Carson claims to want to protect I wanted to say that I have never once felt unsafe interacting with the people living near my school which is something that I cannot say about my interactions with your children this think of the children attitude is quite frankly classist fear-mongering now for what I originally wanted to talk about I've noticed that you're paying a cop to sit in Central Park and do literally nothing and I was wondering what the point of that is it certainly doesn't make public spaces seem safe and welcoming to me when they're guarded by pigs with enough weapons to kill me 40 times over and a known history of brutalizing marginalized people what purpose does it serve to install these armed thugs in public parks other than to expand your surveillance State and terrorize poor and bip members of the community furthermore how much money are you

[174:01] spending on this is that cop making overtime how much will you pay in settlements when they maim or murder another person Samuel forgy Zade Atkinson Sammy Lawrence Seth Franco Lauren Gothel Christopher Mayan how many victims will there be how long will you keep paying to cover for this murderous and militarized police force why are you having these criminal cops occupy public spaces I can think of about a million better uses of those resources thank you Misha next we have Leslie glustrom Gary erling and Eric Bud Leslie evening Council lesle glustrom here and thank you as our always for all of your service and taking on all these issues that we have I wanted to come before you tonight to share some good news I know there's not so much good news on many other fronts so uh this is on that other crisis known as the climate crisis we had a meeting with Holy Cross energy last Thursday night

[175:01] holy cross is a rural electric uh utility that serves the areas around Aspen Veil and Glenwood Springs they're on their way to 84% renewable electricity by 2024 they their original goal was 70% they've blown through that now they've said we're pretty sure we can get to 100% by 2030 this was like a major drink in the desert we met with uh Brian Hanigan the CEO who was recruited out of enil to make this happen Steve buig who left Excel because he wanted to be in more Innovative utility and uh you know they say it's like it's like trying to get your destination your headlights won't you show you the whole way but if you just keep taking it one step at a time you'll get there so uh we were still going at it at N9 o'clock last 30 finally Brian hanigan's wife started to text him and say are you okay and he's like oh yeah we're just talking about interfaces and how to shape demand and all that so the good news here is that

[176:02] we now have really important kind of benchmarks as we move forward towards 2024 and our next big Community decision one I'll take out of the United Kingdom they were less than 2% coal last year so Excel can clearly be Beyond coal by 2025 the second is Holy Cross with 84% renewable electricity by 2024 if XL isn't awfully close then I think we ought to start looking for another alternative and finally what was so wonderful about this was to speak with utility that really wanted to serve its customers customers were customers not just people who paid the bills and then helped shareholders so thanks so much Council appreciate you as always thank you Leslie next we have Gary erling and we'll close with Eric Bud Gary I don't see Gary in the call so we can go straight to Eric Bud

[177:02] Eric hello Council uh my name is Eric bud and I'm a co-lead on the bedrooms are for people Campaign which is a ballot measure to reform Boulder's exclusionary home occupancy laws we have a right in the city Charter to a functioning petitioning process to put our fair housing law on the ballot Our Hope has been that we'd have an online petition system to allow for safer petitioning during the pandemic no one wants to get covid-19 and I wish I want to wish um Council manes a quick recovery the problem is the City's online petitioning system currently doesn't work for a large segment of the community 45 of our volunteers tried to sign up but only 21 were successful and our volunteers would walk through fire to get bedrooms off people on the ballot people and Boulder deserve a process that is Equitable and accessible there is currently a huge unsolved issue with unlisted phone numbers that can only be fixed by individuals going to the

[178:00] Boulder County Clerk's Office in person the new system adds major hurdles to signing a petition there is a simple solution to the recently discovered problems with the online petitioning system allow ballot measure committees to submit both digital and paper signatures the purpose of an online petitioning system is to expand access to the Democratic process not to make it more difficult we've seen how the current system excludes people due to the technical implementation and also how paper petitions exclude people because of the pandemic as well as mobility and access challenges allowing petition groups to submit both online and paper signatures would cost less City staff time than having us submit a physical petition only in fact it would cost less than some of the solutions you will discuss tonight like mailing a postcard to people for registration you all have the power to provide the community with Equitable access to the Democratic process and it

[179:01] is our hope that you will consider your commitment to equity when making this decision tonight thank you thank you Eric and Brenda do we have anyone who we skipped over as Bruce there or Gary I do not see anyone else who is on the list tonight thank you with that we'll close public comment and bring this back to council Chris I'll turn to you and Tom to see if staff has any response to testimony tonight no response from me tonight just happy to answer any questions thank you Chris Tom I did want to point out I one of the commentators suggested that I said the city could not be involved in the liquor licensing I said the city council had no role in lior licensing to be clear um the city obviously is involved um they're they're the petitioner of the application have nothing else you Tom thank you uh Council anything

[180:00] else Rachel yeah um since CU South is heating up a bit I wanted to ask Tom if he could speak to um council members requirements to recuse it's my understanding that I do not need to recuse myself because I'm part of a large class within the city of Boulder that uh is going to be protected from flash flooding and other catastrophic flooding as well as a bigger class in Boulder that um benefits from keeping Foothill and 36 open so I was hoping that you could respond to that sure the city's uh conflict of interest roles are in chapter two title 27 2-7 of the boulder Revised Code uh they prohibit anybody from receiving receiv receiving a benefit from their City service benefit excludes uh things that affect the entire membership of a significant class or significant segment of the community in a similar matter as the affected public official or employee uh since you live in an area that uh would be protected and consider I would

[181:01] consider to be a significant class or significant segment of the community you do not receive a benefit as it's defined under our code and therefore would not have a conflict of interest thanks uh it is not my plan to recuse myself from consideration of C yourself thanks thank you Rachel Mary yeah thanks Sam um I just wanted to um respond to the speakers that spoke about the boulder Reservoir um restaurant and I'm I just want to put it out there that there is a um FAQ section at um bouldercolorado.gov parks hyphen re SL concessions and in there um there is a lot of information that answers a lot of the questions that were asked tonight like for example hours of operation and um and so I would um I

[182:02] would hope that residents were already made aware of this but it's it's pretty comprehensive and like I said responds to a lot of the questions that were brought up tonight so so um that's really all I have great thank you Mary seeing nothing else from Council I will turn back to Alicia all right sir our next item on our agenda is the consent consent agenda items a through G Mary that was a leftover oh sorry okay um then Chris I'll turn to you uh we have our items item 3G we were going to touch on briefly do you want to te that up sure yeah so item 3G is related to the appointment of members to um our

[183:02] police oversight panel and uh I'm just scrolling through names here to make sure that uh Joey laari is here uh in the meeting um and I don't see him let let me promote him Chris I was not aware he would need to speak here we go awesome there we go thank you Brenda we'll let Joey uh get promoted here um the council agenda Committee just had a question about just the the process so Joey's happy to to answer any questions or address that so uh Joey I'll turn it over to you hi Council yep so uh earlier uh actually last week uh the selection committee for the police oversight panel um the interviews had been completed uh they met uh discussed the interviews uh selected uh nine members uh that they are they they

[184:02] provided to you uh for final approval so you have there in the packet um a little brief bio of each um nominated panel member along with with the um time stamp of the interview that is on our website so hopefully you all had an opportunity to check out those bios and some of those interviews and uh happy to answer any questions about the process very good um thank you for that jery Bob I just wantan to um I don't have any questions I just want to thank the Islamic Center of Boulder and then NAACP for for um screening the applicants and taking the time to interview them and making recommendations to us I know that was a lot of work and it was a great service for our community so I want to thank both organizations thank you Bob and I'll just speak for CAC and the council as a whole I thought this was important that

[185:00] we flag it it's the result of a ton of work um by staff and especially by the community to get to this point that we have seated a police oversight panel independently um Opera in from the police department and um working with Joey laari um to uh make sure that we have a good auditor monitor set up for our police oversight and a panel who will um be part of that process so if there's no other comments um I will ask for a motion for the consent agenda but I do want to thank everyone involved um with the police oversight work so with that Council I moved second great we have a mo motion and a second to pass the consent agenda um I believe Alicia this is a show of hands is that correct yes sir yes sir very

[186:02] good I'll do it in reverse is there anyone who does not support passing the consent agenda seeing no one I think that passes unanimously Alicia all right thank you sir our next I'm sorry to interrupt Marque has his hand up yeah it's it's just an informational question I know we're only U on the first reading on the mobile home uh Amendment um but I was wondering uh just an informational question um in the event of a landlord uh evicting a mobile home resident or or basically uh terminating his Pad lease uh is that individual eligible for uh Services by Under the newer legislation not for a mobile home owner at this present time uh people there are some folks who rent in mobile home

[187:00] communities uh they would be eligible uh but people who are owners are not defined under the ordinance we are going to bring back some tweaks to the ordinance in the second quarter and this is something that we'll ask Council to take a look at because it it it wasn't considered by the in the original draft then I I I would ask for some consideration of in the event of a termination of a pad lease that that individual um be eligible for receiving Services Under the newer yeah of course Mark we uh actually provide assistance to anybody who's in eviction Court I'm pretty sure though you don't go to eviction court for uh terminating a pad leas Okay so we will'll need to look into that to develop some sort of recommendation for Council okay thank you great thank you good question mark and we pass the consent agenda unanimously and I'll turn back to Alicia all right sir thank you again um we have next uh item four on the call up

[188:01] checkin a vacation of a portion of an existing utility easement at 2230 20th Street I do not see interest here and calling me that up all right next we have item number six Matters from the city manager we have the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation project Upstream alternative analysis update and that is scheduled for 60 Minutes Chris I think this is yours right it is uh I will just kick the item off here and hand it over to uh Joe tauchi and his team who will present this item tonight good evening mayor and city council members uh I'm Joe tauchi director of utilities and we are here tonight for the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation project uh you likely recall back in June of 2020 city council gave us

[189:02] Direction uh to proceed on the variant one 100-year option as the basis of our design for the project and at the same time you gave us directions to to Circle back and work through some recommendations from the open space board to review and compare an upstream option to the variant 1100 and uh compare it in terms of flood Effectiveness cost and environmental impacts so uh despite the process guidance and the technical work that had brought us to the variant one uh 100-year design there was uh back in June still still considerable interest in community support for for an upstream alternative and many people had felt that it hadn't been fully vetted so in your packet tonight U is a memo and attachments detailing the work we did on the Upstream option and it includes a a

[190:03] complete summary of all the past work on Alternatives including previous review of Upstream Concepts and Council had requested that of us back in June so uh I'm here with Brandon Coleman and Joan Bloom and Brandon if you can uh pull up the slide presentation the suspense is striking well maybe I'll I'll just start uh start without it and for our agenda tonight um we're going to go through a process update um and we'll talk about some of

[191:02] the flood plane modeling that got us here there we go yeah if if you'll go to the agenda slide Brandon the next slide and uh also look at the Upstream analysis that we did and and bring back bring it to a tradeoff table that you also requested that we come back and kind of show what the alternative look like in comparison so uh in a second I'm going to turn it over to Joanna and Brandon but uh first just to uh introduce them they both uh had leading roles in the work that brings us here tonight Joanna is the utilities business relations manager and she had a key role in shepher our project team through the process as we worked over the past half a year with representatives from city council and several boards to go through this Upstream analysis and then Brandon Coleman is our utilities engineering

[192:02] project manager and Brandon led the technical analysis um the the open space board had asked us to conceptualize staff best concept of an upstream alternative and Brandon's going to talk about the technical work to describe what that is and and how we got there before I I turn it over to Joanna and and Brandon I I want to explain what uh Upstream means at least for tonight's conversation the CU South uh project or the South Boulder Creek flood project is just south of us36 and the variant one 100 involves a flood wall and an earn embankment that run parallel to us36 um the CU self property which Brandon will show on some figures uh is on the western portion of the area that's in the flood

[193:00] plane and so for tonight's conversation Upstream refers to a project concept that would Place most or all of the project features on the south end the CU South property and and the thought behind it is that there is a a flow split that occurs based on the the flood waters as it hits Highway 93 the bridge causes a flow split and the thought behind the concept is capturing that water in the CU South uh area and and could we do that in a way that would eliminate impacts or minimize impacts on on open space it the concept would still involve um developing the project features on cu's property so would still create that connection for an annexation agreement so I'm going to stop there and and turn it over to Joanna and she will uh talk

[194:00] about the process we went through from June until now thanks Joe um so as Joe mentioned I'm Joanna Bloom I'm the utilities business relations manager and I'll just give a brief overview of the process that we went through um the goal of which was really to build consensus and identify a path forward related to South Boulder Creek flood mitigation um so I don't expect you to absorb all of the details in this slide um but I did want to give a brief indication of the level of effort undertaken by board and council members the community and staff um in looking at the Upstream option since June of this past year and I'll also highlight the far left of the timeline which is September 2019 which was the point in time when major project components shifted from being located in the highway right of way onto osmp lands which kind of

[195:01] reopened questions about whether an upstream option could avoid or minimize impacts to osmp lands um so on June 3 of last year of the osbt reiterated their request for a more in-depth analysis of the Upstream option Beyond um the conceptual level analysis that had previously been considered um and then next slide on shortly thereafter on June 16th it's coming there it goes um Council supported moving forward with the variant one 100-year flood project design but also recognize the osbt um request and ask that staff work with the trustees to build consensus about whether an upstream option could achieve the same level of flood protection while also potentially reducing costs reducing environmental impacts and yet still have the ability

[196:00] to be permitted next slide please um so to do this we formed an Advisory Group that was comprised of two members each from three boards the open space Board of Trustees the planning board and the Water Resources Advisory Board along with the two Council process subcommittee members um and we really tried to walk through clarifying the osbt questions and then going through the existing data and a new model run to analyze the performance of an upstream option um this slide here kind of gives the flavor of some of the discussions it's the it's a slide from the third of three facilitated meetings um and I just wanted to mention here that all of those public meetings were available in real time um and they are still available online and notes from those meetings are available as well um and I will note there continues to be Community interest in the project as you heard tonight um and a group that

[197:00] closely follows the process and public comments that we receive still include concerns about environmental impacts and a potential disposal of osmp lands next slide pleas please um so finally staff presented the results of this Upstream analysis to the osbt in two meetings in November and December of last year um it's worth noting that at both of those meetings the obbt spent a significant amount of time going through and providing comments on the memo which provided a summary of the analysis we've since encorporated those osbt comments in a report format that's attached to the memo that you received in your packet as attachment a um and with that I will go ahead and pass it over to Brandon uh thank you very much and uh good evening to everybody thanks for having us back to discuss the CU South project um next we're going to go over

[198:01] kind of the Upstream analysis and the technical work we did related to an upstream concept and see here there we go um and we really tried to distill this down um into something that was a little manageable there's going to be a lot of technical information uh you he tonight but this was um kind of our paraphrased Approach at the obt's motion and some of the major questions that came out of The Advisory Group process that Joanna just mentioned uh really related to flood mitigation uh of South Boulder Creek at the CU South property and as Joe mentioned um really this concept is really focused on capturing a flow from South Boulder Creek uh that splits at State Highway 93 and uh is directed towards the CU South property and uh osbt really needed to understand this option because uh they

[199:00] wanted to look at ways to potentially reduce or eliminate impacts uh to the osmp property adjacent to CU South and also that's the South Boulder Creek uh State Natural Area so we developed this list of four questions and we'll just kind of walk through them briefly we went in a lot of detail with osbt here um but the first question um that we answered was what happens to flood flows uh if the existing CU South Levy is removed and we've addressed this one um we were able to use existing modeling we've done in the past but really what we found was um not a significant portion of the flow uh enters the South property if just the Lev is removed and we went into details about how that Levy was assumed to be removed and the modeling that we did um so to give context here the entire flow in South Boulder Creek in this area is about 7,000 CFS and only 850 CFS of that would enter the CU South

[200:01] property so next uh we were asked to develop a concept to direct the maximum amount of flood flows to a storage facility with infrastructure only on on the CU South property and this was really important for looking at ways uh to eliminate uh impacts to the existing open space property and the resources associated with that so to do this we really um focused on a concept that was presented in 2018 and looking at further developing that concept so this was um and I'll point out on this figure North is to the right this is a historic figure um from 2018 typically we have North pointing up but really we wanted to build on existing work um and so this was a Upstream concept that we evaluated in 2018 and for this analysis that we've did recently we really focused on these two components so um there's an inflow rundown which is actually directing the

[201:01] maximum amount of flow we can into a Detention Facility which is shown in brown here um and that's our proposed Dam and that really leads us into question three was what happens to flood flows if only those two features are in place so an inflow rundown which would direct the maximum amount of flow uh we could without additional infrastructure off of the CU South property and the Detention Facility on the CU South property as well and I'm going to uh so I'm going to switch over here quickly and this is uh this is going to be a video that we've developed as part of um the discussions with The Advisory Group and also as part of the discussions with osbt this is really a representation of our flood modeling and what's happening during a flooding event on South Boulder Creek and this is really going to be focused on that concept I just talked about which is just the inflow rundown so directing

[202:01] flow onto the CU South property and also Detention of that flow and really looking at what happens Downstream based on that so I'm going to try and switch here here and they should so Brandon while you're switching I'm just going to point out that I believe in this North is to the top as opposed to the right is that correct yes yes you are correct and I'm apologies for that it is a uh it is a historic figure that I pull from and we do try and keep north to the top on all of our uh figures no worries just helping people Orient themselves thank you very much and um so I'm going to make this full screen and you can let me know when everybody can see this okay I can see it okay great and I'm just going to stop it here just to get us oriented um North is to the to

[203:00] pointed to the top of the screen on this figure um in that large Highway you see cutting diagonally across the screen that's us36 and then you can see the CU South property uh on the left hand side of the screen with the CU south tennis courts and then uh towards the right of the CU South property that's South Boulder Creek Channel proper and so this is a model of a flooding event and I'm going to stop it at a few key points to kind of point out some of the um really key features that we're looking at for flood design so you'll see on the bottom and I'll play it just a little bit further than there um we're looking at time steps so we're looking at five 5 minute intervals and this interval so around time step 24 um is really an important point when we're talking about flood mitigation design because you'll see where South Boulder Creek in us36 um cross South Boulder Creek begins to leave its banks and that's what this blue uh is representing that flow

[204:01] leaving South Boulder Creek and that's really so important because that's ultimately the flow that's going to contribute to the West Valley overflow and that's the flow uh we're trying to mitigate as part of the project so and I will stop it right here as well so you'll notice at the bottom of the screen you'll see flow in the main channel of South Boulder Creek but you'll also see this additional flow um coming towards the CU South property on the left hand side of there that's the split flow that's occurring at State Highway 93 so really this Upstream concept the the basis of it is really capturing as much of that flow as possible and detaining it on the CU South property so as we play through here I'm going to I'll stop it one more time here so what you're seeing is that split flow from State Highway 93 you can see our inflow rundowns affecting the flow

[205:00] essentially so it's directing as much flow as possible to the CU South property and you see a dark blue shaded area on the CU South property that's our Detention Facility beginning to fill up but it's important still to look at that intersection with us36 and South Boulder Creek because the flows continued to spill out of South Boulder Creek along there and it's ultimately um headed towards the West Valley overflow and then right about here um so we're getting really close to the peak of our flood and you'll see that the SE South properties become very dark blue um you see very little flow escaping from the state highway uh 93 split flow um and that's all due to the infrastructure that we put into this model run but you'll see at the very upper leftand corner of the screen is where us36 is over topping um and that's

[206:01] showing essentially that with infrastructure only on the CU South property um we don't meet the same flood mitigation goals um that we would with any of the other project so we're not eliminating that us36 over topping and this was really important to demonstrate to uh the open space board and also to The Advisory Group that um they got a good understanding of this and that's ultimately what we found and this was the new model run uh that we did as part of this process as well and I'll let it play out um so what you see is ultimately this flood is coming down and then it will start to recede so you'll see some of the the flows uh going back down again but you'll see that large Blue Area in the middle of the screen remains and that's ultimately what our Detention Facility was modeled uh for and I'm just going to stop it and now that I've pointed out all the very interesting stuff to a flood plane

[207:00] engineer I'll just play it one more time and you can watch um kind of those areas I pointed out so and I'll just flag them again for you so as the floodings occurring in the main Channel now and we're approaching time step 24 and that's where you see that flow start to leave South Boulder Creek um and then as we get progress in the flood you'll see the split flow from State Highway 93 enter the screen and start to enter the proposed attention facility um through our inflow rundown and then right at the peak of the flow you'll see uh in the upper part of the screen us36 over topping and thank you for bearing with me on that one Let's uh I'm going to pause it and I'll go back to the presentation and we developed uh a number of those videos actually to uh look at different impacts of the flood and really kind of understand uh what

[208:02] was happening during flooding events and that's all derived from our uh modeling efforts related to South Boulder Creek I am while Brandon's pulling up that presentation I'll just note that what you just saw was um even if you capture all of that split flow there's still enough water in the main South Boulder Creek to overtop us36 so that was a real key Point uh with The Advisory Group and it should be back up again okay great um so moving on kind of what Joe just said um really that was a key a key uh information for us to have these discussions was that with infrastructure solely on the CU South property we didn't meet the flood mitigation goals um of the project which is really protecting this area of the city which is known uh commonly as the West Valley overflow

[209:05] area and we've mentioned this a few times but it doesn't mitigate the West Valley flooding but we did see um reduced Peak flows under the us36 and also along the main stem of South Boulder Creek but that's ultimately the flooding not the flooding we're trying to mitigate as part of this project so um lastly we were asked to develop um a project to meet the flood mitigation goals and then estimate the impacts to the osmp resources um particularly in that South Boulder Creek State Natural Area um so as I mentioned before or really even if we capture as much flow as possible that's um headed towards the CU South property we still have this area along us36 which poses a problem um from a flood mitigation design so you'll see when we further develop this Upstream option um we incorporated two features that would

[210:00] have to be included on existing osmp property uh in the South Boulder Creek State Natural Area one was a levy um it's called out here on the figure and that's really to cut off that overflow um that we've been talking about and that we've been pointing out and the other feature is a great control structure and that's really to give us a control section um to ensure that we're capturing the flow um that we would model and um also prot Pro protect against scour and channel migration um during a flooding event so then we got back to uh so in uh at our June 16th meeting uh we were asked to compare this to variant one 100y year and now with this concept developed um we were able to take this Upstream concept with um the minimizing our impacts to osmp and actually compare that to the variant one 100-year

[211:01] configuration and so uh for the open space board uh they're very interested in the resources found on open space particularly in this uh South Boulder Creek State natural area so as you heard tonight um it's a very very important ecosystem so reducing and minimizing our impacts is very important there are uh two threatened and endangered species uh that are found within the area the pre prebles Meadow jumping mouse and the UT lady Tres orchids along with other environmentally sensitive species including northern leopard frog uh Babble link and plains top Meadow and there is a very unique uh ecosystem out there with the Mosaic of wetlands and Tall Grass Prairie and uh open space also uses uh the property for agriculture and this map is really just to show how complex the environmental resources are out there and what makes this uh area so valuable and why minimizing our impacts are so important

[212:01] is um you can see just how many uh prebles Meadow jumping mouse habitat you lady truss Orchid and also wetlands and riparian uh area so we did develop a project trade-off summary so through that process we were able to develop a conceptual design related to an upstream concept and really compare that to the variant one configuration and we also heard um from the open space board that they wanted their recommendations and their decisions to be made Based on data um so we've included a very detailed datadriven table um in your memo and we've summarized that here and ultimately what we found from that was um an upstream option could provide similar flood protection to the variant one 100-year uh configuration which we've talked about it would be significantly more expensive mainly related to that Detention Facility um and then it would result in Greater

[213:02] overall environmental impacts um and it wouldn't reduce the need for engineered structures on uh open space land in that South Boulder Creek State Natural Area and then I am GNA turn it back over to Joe for this one thank you for that Brandon and and what you just heard from uh Brandon in describing the tradeoffs and bringing it back to the council direction from June uh was that an upstream option would in comparison to the variant 1100 would provide similar uh flood protection Effectiveness it would be more expensive and have greater overall environmental impacts compared to the variant 1 100 so on this slide you see the the motion from the open space board in December of

[214:01] last year and based on discussing the work that Brandon just presented with the board through that two meeting process that Joanna described they they provided their feedback to council and uh paraphrasing it here that the board didn't support the Upstream option as we had conceptualized it and developed it through this process uh they noted some of the primary considerations they made in reaching that conclusion um and they also maintained previously stated concerns that um they have over the variant one option and details of this motion are on the on the slide as well as in the in the packet so if you go to the next slide Brandon so we have uh Kurt Brown who is the open space Board of Trustees chair

[215:02] he's going to say a few words here we're we're about wrapped up with our uh presentation he'll provide the board's perspective but before I turn it over to Kurt I did want to thank um mayor Weaver and council member friend and the and the board members from the uh three boards on our Advisory Group they put in a lot of hours and Beed with us waiting through a lot of technical detail they asked a lot of good questions that I I hope help bring some clarity to the community so really just want to recognize the the efforts and the council and board members are listed here on this slide so with that I'll say thanks and and turn it over to Kurt thank you Joe and Brandon uh and thanks to council for uh the opportunity to just comment on all the work that's

[216:00] been done here I've got a short statement and then happy to have any other questions or discussion but uh I want to express on behalf of the open space Board of Trustees our appreciation to council for supporting a more detailed examination of the Upstream option and to the leadership and staff of both the utilities in the open space and Mountain Parks departments for carrying out the investigation in close collaboration with the three advisory boards we recognize that this investigation did require significant additional time and resources however given the likely impacts of moving the variant 1 us36 flood wall from the seed out right of way onto the state natural area and given the new information that the board received in June about the flood path and the flood volumes the board felt it was incumbent upon us to seek the additional investigation of the Upstream storage option we thank the utility staff for their diligent analysis which did confirm that a considerable fraction

[217:00] of the flood flow could be stored in the SE of South gravel mine area sufficient to prevent overtopping of us36 and flooding of the West Valley however to make such a storage Dam fully functional and to meet the flood control objectives a pertinent structures would be required to ensure the stability and reliability of that Dam and also to train any remaining South Boulder Creek flows through the us36 bridge the analysis of the entire concept by the osmp staff made it clear that the total environmental impact would likely be greater than that produced by variant one and also that it would significantly reduce the potential for restoring the area inside the existing Levy while the investigation did not in the end produce a less damaging alternative I believe that when the city seeks regulatory approval for the flood control project this additional Upstream investigation will provide important

[218:02] evidence of a good faith effort to avoid significant environmental impacts so thank you again to council and to the staff uh for their diligence in uh trying to translate what was a a perception on the part of the board back in June into a viable engineering structure and to complete the analysis thanks very much so that that's that's what we have for a presentation tonight I'd be happy to provide any clarifications or answer any questions I I do uh agree with what what Kurt just said that there's value in the analysis that we did and as we go forward and and present alternatives to the environmental agencies the last thing um I want to mention is just an acknowledgment of the open space staff this is a this is a really good example of one Department's work plan putting a

[219:01] huge burden on another department and I have really appreciated the collaboration uh and partnership with Dan Burke and his staff so I just wanted to mention that great well thank you very much Joe and Brandon for that great presentation and Joanna and I see we have a question from Rachel I just really wanted to say thank you um actually so I'm glad to see you here Kurt I was hoping that maybe you would be I didn't know so thank you for um summarizing that and I I really wanted to thank you and Karen from osbt and Kirk and Gordon from RAB and uh David and John from planning for all the um we did a lot of intense you know kind of runthrough in that work group and I thought everyone um came in good faith and took really you know long sober looks at the options so I wanted to thank you all um and to anyone else from that work group who's listening uh for doing the the heavy lifting there um and

[220:01] for osbt for giving that uh thorough review in November into December if I recall correctly and also to Joe and Brandon and all the other staff members from uh open space and utilities who put a ton of work into this that was um really um well done and appreciated that's all I got for now thank you Rachel Mark I also want to thank staff for the work they've put in on this I I think these were important questions to look at and to answer the results are very dispositive and I think this this is a a matter of the case being closed and um I think that was an important analysis to undertake for the community as a whole so I I thank you for the work I'm sorry that you had the extra burden of doing it but I think uh it has served a very valuable purpose um and has answered a lot of questions that people had so I think well done and uh

[221:03] next case thank you Mark eron yeah I'll just Echo the things my colleagues uh to everyone who's worked so hard on this and as well Mark's comment about that it does seem like um this is a concept that we can put behind us uh going forward so appreciate everybody's effort there and just I did want um to follow up from something from open comment people were talking about in the open comment a few people made references to that that the this project would protect a couple of neighborhoods but can we just get on the record that like the variant 1 100 year like the rough number of hous holds that would be protected by that level of flood protection do we know that off hand and if you don't that's fine I think we do Brandon may have a backup slide on that but um I remember the number 1100 Brandon uh structures I think and and you're

[222:01] muted yes if you give me just a minute I can pull it up here I don't have it in the backup but I will pull it up here you probably don't have to pull up the presentation but if you just look at it and the number yes I I will pull I will pull it up and be able to answer before we wrap up here while you're at it I'll ask other tough questions just to well Aaron well we're waiting for that I'll also jump in here and uh say thank you to everyone involved which is more than just the staff who are presenting tonight and all the board members and also to the community we had Fairly good attendance at the work we're doing by the public and I think everyone got an education through this project I will say that one of the things I enjoyed about it was diving into um some of the simulation tools that were being used uh it's not exactly Optics which is where I've done a lot of my simulations but uh it was adjacent enough that I was able to follow along with the work that

[223:01] was being done so I'll say that there was some pretty good competing horsepower and tools that were brought to look at the the different ways of doing the upstream and I agree with Mark that I think this pretty much settles the the issue that the split flows help with part of it being able to be contained on the CU South property but the part on the main branch of South Boulder Creek that spills over the banks is really what causes the over topping of 36 that variant one 100 Year can address so again thank you and Brandon I'll turn to see if you have a number for Aaron yes so we have um about 2,300 people uh that would benefit from this project and then about 260 structures within the flood plane that would be mitigated from this project so 2,300 people was the the figure so just to make that point that this is a project that has very substantial Life Safety benefits to

[224:00] thousands of members of our community just want to get that out there thanks again everybody great thank you Aon and um I think we've said bunch of thank yous St uh Council any other questions comments feedback great seeing none oh Adam sorry yeah um I assume we're moving on from the topic of Cu South in general after this correct we're wrapping up completely right now on the CU South Upstream update yes okay cool um do we have any future updates on CU south or time to talk about you know we're getting a lot of community comments again and I feel like it's worth addressing in some way with an FAQ or something about what's been done what hasn't been done what's to be decided you know there just seems to be a lot of questions out in the air especially at this moment so just wondering what our timeline looking forward is uh now that

[225:01] we have this particular piece settled so I I can I can speak to that and Sam and Rachel who are on the process subcommittee can can chime in as well so for us this this really allows us to focus on a single alternative now and working on on permitting and developing the preliminary design associated with that alternative and in terms of public process it really represents a transition where in in 2020 we were working a lot on the flood mitigation project and in 2021 um because we're now focused on a single alternative for flood the annexation agreement and that process will be coming forward and you certainly heard from a lot of community members who are concerned about the development on CU South and and the the ingredients of of the deal that'll be coming forward in the annexation package so our

[226:01] planning staff are are leading that effort and are working with the university to kind of bring a a complete picture to counsel of what what the complete package looks like and um certainly the community will be able to weigh in throughout an engagement process and provide their overall feedback the concept has the the flood project and the annexation tied to each other so there's certainly some members who don't want to see that development and annexation happen but we're working on a on a questionnaire that um assumes that it does happen and asking the community what they would like to see on the property so there'll be a lot of activity and a lot of opportunity for public engagement in 2021 Adam did that cover your question yeah that covers my question for the most part I guess uh more specifically

[227:01] do we have uh a specific time for our next update uh scheduled yet or is that still in cic's hands right we we have a process subcommittee coming up on February 19th where I'm sure we'll be taking a look at the the schedule from my memory I think there's a a fairly significant Council update planned for for April and I'm I don't remember if there was something before that no I think that's right my recollection was it was about two two and a half months um after this meeting here so I I think April Adam is when we'll begin getting our next big touch on this got it thank you I think that they did recent um maybe one of the staff members can confirm but I think that uh staff has recently updated the frequently asked questions portion of the website that does answer some of the um points of confusion I think um and and information that's floating out there um and also that I think

[228:01] Transportation Advisory Board will be looking at this either maybe next month which is a big uh I would hope point of community engagement around you know there's a lot of concern around um traffic and impacts so that's it's not coming to us next month but I think it is going to T and and we'll be there's a website for the annexation there's a separate site for the flood mitigation and we'll be continuing to provide up updates on those sites as we go through the steps but there there'll be a lot happening in 2021 for sure that's all I had thank you Joe and thank you Sam sure all right well everyone thank you so much for your time and I think that brings this item to a close um with that I'll turn to council um and check in we are getting close to 10 o'clock it's 9:47 we have another major item and then matters to get to so I'd suggest a f

[229:01] minute break and then we come back and tackle the next item give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down um getting some thumbs up okay great so let's make it easy 55 5 minutes and we will reconvene and move on to online petitioning

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[236:27] [Music] 55 and the only council member I haven't seen yet is Mark and there he is so I think we're ready to go Alicia if you want to take us to the next item our next item sir on our agenda is

[237:00] item 6B online petitioning roll out and checkin and that's scheduled for 60 minutes as well and I will be presenting tonight uh thank you Council for the opportunity to talk a little bit more about our online petitioning system and where we are I'm going to put up a presentation if you'll bear with me for a second and I hope you all can see that so where we are is uh we put the system up for preview with a test um petition on January 22nd and I want to thank all the folks in the community who have tried our system uh it's been incredibly helpful as anybody who's done any software work knows you can test and test and we did and you um don't discover everything and we've we've learned some things about the system in this last week or so and we' fixed most

[238:01] of them I wanted as a before I I go into some details I want to just describe uh some fundamental differences between the online verification process and the paper verification process in the paper verification process when a uh voter signs a petition they have no way of knowing whether or not their signature will be accepted and generally uh about between 30 and 50% of signatures are rejected for one reason or another uh the person could not be registered to vote in Boulder the person could uh have put down a WR an incorrect address or an address that's not a residential address address a person who was listed as a confidential voter uh on the on the County's voting roles uh can sign a petition but that signature will be invalidated because the city doesn't get uh records of those voters for for verifying written petitions um so what happens with a written petition is people sign assume that their signature

[239:00] is going to be accepted but don't know whether it is or not uh the petitioners generally have to submit at least 20 to 50% more signatures than are required to try to meet the level and often times they they have to go back out and get more signatures uh there's a tend grace period to do that after the verification petition uh Provisions after verification in an online system the verification is goes up front so the voter uh if the voter puts in incorrect information the system will not accept their their endorsement uh they learn this right away so a a a voter who is not registered in Boulder or who uses the wrong address perhaps is an older address in the system um is is kicked out of the system so we're getting you you're naturally going to have some level of frustration for example um in the online system uh in the test system I'm listed as Tom Carr so when I put my

[240:00] first name in as Tom in the regular system my voter record has my first name is Thomas so the first time I tried to use the regular system the online system um I was kicked out because I put my first name in as Tom um I I corrected it because I checked my voter registration to see how I was registered and was able to get through so we're getting a lot of those kind of rejections U but we did actually have some have significant problems uh that I wanted to discuss so the first one is unlisted telephone numbers um sorry unlisted telephone numbers were an issue that we didn't realize existed until we went into the preview there's nothing on the voter registration form that allows you to have your phone number as unlisted and I'm still not sure about how people get their phone number unlisted the county we've asked the county and the county have been terrific partners for us and U they I I want to mention that they managed to get us this data set that we're using last July in in the middle

[241:00] of the the CER Records Office running perhaps one of the most difficult elections in American history uh they've been cooperative and Incredibly helpful to us and I really do appreciate the partnership with them uh we learned about this issue and they don't count unlisted voters they have no indicator they have no way to run a report uh we're try they've actually offered to try to count them by hand because we've trying to get some idea about how significant a problem this is um the their General process as Eric Bud mentioned in his testimony earlier is to require a voter who wants to take a phone number that's unlisted and make it a listed phone number uh to go into the office personally um since we've discovered this problem they've developed um a a a more direct system for doing that you'll see on the screen uh they've created a form which will be posted on our website so someone whose phone number is unlisted can uh download this form fill it out they have to scan it and then email it back to that email address I have on the screen vote

[242:01] bouldercolorado.gov so there is a a first workr that um that voters will be able to use use ultimately we hope to have any some s of system where it could be done electronically so people don't have to scan and and send in a form because we we wanted our goal in all this is to reduce the barriers not create additional ones so that's one that's still outstanding that we're we're working on and um I will tell you that at least three members of council who've contacted me turned out to when we check the county records to have their phone number listed as unlisted um so this is this is problematic and I'm I'm I'm I'm very sorry for it but it's something we didn't we didn't anticipate didn't have any idea existed before we went to the preview system which is why one of the reasons it's been incredibly helpful to do this we other issues that we've discovered or we knew about the not there there was there were a there several people experienced an issue of not receiving confirmation code after they put in their information correctly

[243:01] this had happened once in our testing system and we hadn't been able to replicate it uh the preview allowed us to replicate it run back identified the problem uh with the the the greater incidents and was able to fix it it's been fixed for a week or so um there was a problem where the link that uh gave the to the Secretary of State's office if you wanted to correct your voter information disappeared on some screens that's been fixed there was an issue that came up with uh an error code being cached and that that is even though the person put in correct information the code kept reappearing and that's been fixed uh there was a delay in the counter that showed that the the number of endorsements for the particular petition uh updating was taking a minute three to four minutes to update uh that has been fixed as of last Saturday um the other thing that we've done we rolled out the preview knowing that knowing that we would not have the whole full support services that we planned available there are training

[244:00] videos available on the city website all less than five minutes all really well done by uh the the IT staff who did them uh that t basically walk people step through step through the process uh if that had been available some of the comments that we reserved early on about not knowing where to push which button to push could have been avoided we also as we've learned about the challenges people faced we've constantly updated the frequently asked questions that are available on the city website so uh at the bottom of the screen there are several buttons that you can click one says help one says BDO one says city of Boulder they'll all take you in way one way or another to this information on the city's website so people can get through this so that's the end of my presentation I'm happy to answer questions or have comments super thank you Tom and I guess I turned to council I know a few of you have reached out to me if you'd like to ask questions now' be a great time

[245:02] Aon hey Tom I appreciate that presentation I also appreciate sounds like you all have worked through number of the issues and have been working hard on resolving those quickly which is which is great to hear um and uh I'll say you know I I tried to to sign up and and I didn't have a phone number on and I entered it and it has yet to work and apparently maybe I have I don't know but I guess my number was set to be unlisted um that that is what the county has told us that your number is is marked as unlisted so you know I uh I probably checked a box on a form when I first registered to vote in Colorado in 2003 something like do you want to keep your information private so there probably a lot of people in a similar situation do we have is there going to be any way of getting from the county clerk uh the information to let people know that that's the problem um because it feels like you're doing everything right and and that the two to four days have elapsed uh to to let the system

[246:01] sync but then it still just tells you there's no phone number on file when there is one and you can it right and so so if if we were able to notify people hey your number is set to be unlisted if you'd like to change that you know here's a form that would be much more informative sorry Aon as I've said the county has been incredibly helpful uh they don't have a field they can't even count this this incidence so and they don't have a data scientists to help them with it so we're working together with them as closely as we can to see if what we can do to better identify and help folks with it this I I'm not optimistic I I I think that the bottom line is if there's if your phone number is listed uh on the voter registration and uh you're still getting a no phone number indication your number is probably unlisted uh Vonnie Kata is here who's done an amazing job project managing this this this program ion did you want to add something I see you turned on your screen yeah we updated the error message

[247:02] to to um uh that comes up that says you know it might be because your phone unlisted that you're getting this information unfortunately as you'll notice when you go to the Colorado Secretary of State to look at your voter registration you'll see your phone number there but there's no indication that it's unlisted so to you the voter too there's visually no confirmation that You' requested it to be unlisted and and as you said Aaron You' done it a while back so you just didn't remember so um this is kind of the the situation that we're in um city of Boulder doesn't have that visibility because we just don't get the phone number because the county is not uh authorized to share that with us and you the voter can't get that visual confirmation if you don't remember that you requested it to be unlisted so the best thing that we put in the error message was to reach out to the county to to confirm that and then they can help you with um removing that unlisted designation uh that's good to hear that

[248:00] the the message has been updated um so yeah it sounds like the the we're having an issue maybe with what exactly is in the the day ass set that the county is sending over and then do we is there any chance of like striking like an intergovernmental agreement or something like that to the fact that they could send us the phone numbers even if they're unlisted but we would keep them confidential and only use them for the purposes of verifying the uh the record that would be great um I think that's at a higher pay grade than me so it would be great if we could U that that may take uh some relationship between electeds uh and that would be wonderful we're I'm happy to draft something as quickly as possible but we have a great relationship with the county attorney's office but we we kind of need direction and that would be the best we could do okay yeah well I just um and I'm happy myself or other council members could uh contact the the the county clerk or other County officials just to check in and see so if that would be useful um

[249:00] I'm certainly happy to volunteer to check in uh if we might be able to do something like that I think that would be wonderful Aaron I I do want to reiterate how what how good of Partners they've been I I don't want to make suggest that they have been less than Cooperative in any way they they through under extraordinary circumstances they've produced for us no I appreciate that it sounds like uh they're coming up with new stuff on the Fly uh which is really appreciated right that new form and such um and hopefully we can you know move forward on some better ways to handle this so I'm I'm happy to reach out to the county clerk and and talk over different options to see how we can get that piece of it um a little more streamline thank you thanks thanks Rachel yeah um thanks Tom Tom and I spoke earlier this week I was another one of the council members who um struck out trying to sign the test petition um and so I have some big concerns I think Tom told me also that I'm one of the unlisted members and I'm assuming

[250:01] although I have no way to verify it that I also checked a box at the driver's Bureau or something that that kicked that in because I didn't have a phone number in there put a phone number in you don't get any notice of what's going wrong so I'm glad that maybe there's something in the work in the works that might fix the unlisted problem but I think that's the whole experience also made me realize how not userfriendly this is going to be um because even if you fix that glitch like you're still waiting a couple days after you go to sign the petition to get your phone number entered or you know maybe get it unlisted or whatever needs to happen there and it requires you to go back and and in some cases multiple times and I just don't know how many people are going to want to do that and I think I'm understanding from your presentation that the the reason that's happening is because we're verifying on the front end now instead of on the back end um but I think that has made it just something that's not going to be very successful

[251:00] because it's it's going to require people to engage more than I think the average petition signer wants to do when I've signed petitions I'm you know outside of a grocery store or walking on the mall or something and somebody you know hands me a piece of paper I sign it and that's it if if it's going to be this cumbersome I just don't know that we have meaningfully enacted what the voters asked us to do so I just wonder are we looking at other ways like to maybe have it work more uh userfriendly on the front end like you can just sign it and then if there's a validation error the campaign can go back and um nudge you maybe or are there other things that we could do to just make it easier on the front end that it's likely that somebody will follow through to the complete signature if they're not like super invested in in the issue which is I think how most people assign those so one thing if if we could get

[252:00] access to the email address email address is a mandatory field so everyone has one uh but it's confidential data so we're not allowed to get it if we had access to that and could build had some time to build it into the system that certainly would make it a lot easier for folks there wouldn't be this this step of having to add your phone number and what what steps would need to happen for that is that another political level that that somebody needs to take that on that we have not been able to get that through the staff approaches the the um all we've been able to get is what the public gets and is that a conversation with the secretary of state or with the county clerk I believe it's both I mean I I I my guess is that what the county clerk will say is that they they are not authorized to give that out by the Secretary of State the Secretary of State may say that they can't give it out under state law um I'm hoping that we we could work our way around that but that would be a simpler approach okay so is is z do we need to

[253:01] make a decision or direction or does somebody just need to raise their hand and start making phone calls no we will continue to work uh as we have to try to resolve the issues uh if council members want to reach out on a on a policy level that's great and we're happy to support that in any way so Rachel do you mind if I hop in not at all so um I could certainly add that to my my list of things to discuss because one one could imagine uh a situation where again uh the email address was not made public in any way but that the ability to trigger an email to the address on file was possible through the system so I I I wonder if there's any um any willingness or possibility that the the county and maybe the state would be willing to participate in a system like that where no personal data is being revealed you're just sending an email through it I can ask and and ideally in real time so if it is something that you're doing you know if you're outside the grocery

[254:01] store with an iPad you could complete this transaction in a f minute period it seems like where we would want to get to so the way our system runs is we have an updated file every day so if if an email address is in there we get we get the same data every day um as it's as it's updated does that mean it's going to be the next day there's no way to do this in real time no it we it's it's if if the it well yeah it's it's doable in real time as long as the person puts in the same email address they have in their voter registration okay if we have the email address thanks thanks phone numers in there it also will work in real time okay um and then are we looking at all again at like the combination of paper and online to just sort of transition this tricky the the the city manager rule says that people can do either but but they can't aggregate

[255:01] them I know that's what I'm asking are we looking at all allowing for some aggregation so people can continue to try and use this but also have some be collecting paper in the no that's a major change that if you wanted us to do that we should have designed the program to do that a year ago all my questions for now thanks thanks Rachel um I'll jump in here I I think probably it is time Aaron and Rachel for some subset of us on Council to reach out because I you know when we were first starting down this path I had a conversation with Jenna um the Secretary of State and she had a lot of reservations about this and we spent a good long time talking about it and I think that the handling of confidential information some of that can be done by the county clerk but some of it is

[256:01] dictated at the state level so it seems like there's um requests that we could talk about systems at the county to the city level systems at the state to the county to the city level and then it could be that for some of what we really ultimately want Rachel to make sure it's five minutes and phone and or email would require legislation so I think one of the things that we need to dig into is in these conversations what what can be done through policy changes at the offices that we care about or the staff level in those offices and what might need legislation I don't know the answer to that I'm just putting out that um it seems to me like a little bit of work has to get done there um the thing that I'm intrigued about the emails for is because all email addresses tagged to your voter registration number are confidential so you can see them you can change them online um but they cannot be

[257:01] accessed by anyone I think who's buying a database to use for a campaign and I think that is one of the key rubs that we've heard about this system is if you got your phone number in there that phone number is available to everyone and then the email can be in there and not available to everyone and I think there should be a little check box next to both of those it says public yes or no and the voter controls whether it's public yes or no but if it's in there that we could always get it because we have requirements for confidentiality in many things that we do so we're a good student Steward of information that is not public but um which could be shared with us so it seems to me like we could already see a way to improve the system from where we are um so we should do everything we can right now to work around the challenges we have and make it as usable as possible but I have some some hopes that we could extend it and

[258:00] make both protect people's privacy with the phone number and the email and to be able to do it in five minutes like you say Rachel I think that's a great goal um to be able to do that um this is a new system first in the nation of its kind to be able to do this kind of work so not unexpected to me that there's going to be these kind of challenges that we need to work through and it may be maybe a cloue for um the first month of this year um to get through it but I guess I thought it was important we flag in and talk about it and we see where we can get to with it I think one thing that we might want to allow the flexibility for and maybe I can phrase this as a question if a group has intended to use electronic petitioning and they see these problems and they don't like it say bedrooms who's submitted something can they change to a written um approach without a full resubmission like what would the process be if they say oh it's too clunky we

[259:02] don't trust it we want to go back to physical signature Gathering what would the process be for that uh I we've already approved um the language for bedrooms for people I don't know that we'd have to reprove but is Diane Marshall on the call she would be the one to best answer that or Alicia I think we have Diane here let me um pull her over from oh nope it looks like Diane has dropped off the call so Alisa Aaron did you have something well I I I had thought thought that we had said that people could pursue parallel paths they could just only submit one at the end of the process that that was my impression of what we were allowing and if I heard it Sam's question it was not not whether they could do it but what are their barriers F where they have to go through a full resubmission and I don't know the answer and I guess Aon my concern just so you hear it was that they what if

[260:01] they start the clock ticking with their submission right so there's certain amount of time to gather I guess 100 80 days or whatever and they get two months in and they they decide they don't like it um what would have to be done to change it because the clock is still running so I was kind of interested in their ability to reset the clock maybe it would require resubmission to do that so yeah resubmission re sorry Alicia please no I was gonna say if I may Diane and I were just discussing this possibility earlier um yesterday and what we were thinking is because some people the first petition we received was a full petition in paper so we were thinking about um and we going to talk to Louise and Tom about this as well possibly approving the paper petition in in case they wanted to go ahead and start circulating it along with the actual electronic submission so that would in case give them the

[261:01] opportunity to be again circulating them both at the same time but I am pretty sure the deadline is just how many days they have to gather the the signatures so if they've been in it been collecting signatures for two months both electronically and paper and they decide okay we want to possibly maybe just go paper they would have to continue the process that they started I think what we may want to consider or maybe talk to uh Louis about is possibly taking which I don't know if we can uh take the electronic signatures that have been verifying and combine them with the actual petition if there if it's too cluncky and we can't get around some of these issues so that that's one of the things we've avoided we don't have a we don't have an output from the electronic system to allow us to dup although we could probably do it by hand if that was necessary the thing is

[262:00] that council did lower the number of signatures required so U we're not really putting an additional burden on folks if they're going to do what they always did which is gather them by paper so we haven't really accommodated both together but they can do both I see so so they can do them in parallel should they choose to I think our Focus tonight is on the electronic side and it's about um how we can make this work as best as possible at the moment so you showed us things that are fixed and things that are remaining to be done are easier ways for folks to be able to change their phone number uh go from unlisted to listed if that's their barrier um what are the remaining to-do items outside of council talking with s the county clerk and the Secretary of State Tom just remind me what what the next steps are for you so we have a petition that's

[263:00] been submitted and approved uh we made some comments on the petition they got it back to us it will go live on Monday so on Monday we will take probably over the weekend we will take down the test petition and put up the real one and that will be live for people to endorse we've we we have we have fixed every known bug that we have identified um can we leave the test one up for a while just so that uh people can continue to test without having to sign the um the real one so are are it folks advised against that they didn't want to have two petitions or maybe it was the clerk's off there two petitions running at the same time that they thought it might be confusing to have a test petition and a real petition people might not realize that the real petition was actually live if we had something that said test okay fair enough I'm not sure that it would be that functional anyway but

[264:00] just want to check and for what it's worth I have a question when I went in to do all of this myself um the phone number that I had listed associated with my voter record was an old phone number I have no idea if it's dead or not uh it was a landline at one time so uh there's a number there and if that number were listed and you got it and I had said I'm clicking on it what happens to the two-factor authentication does something get sent to that older phone number and if it does do I get a notice that it bounced if it bounce like what happens to bad data in the phone number field I can answer that um Sam you didn't get a chance to see this but um when you get to the next step it shows you um uh Aster out the first three three digits and the last four digits of

[265:00] the phone number and request would you like a text to this phone number or a phone call so so you actually confirm you get a chance to visually look at the last four digits and if it that doesn't match what your current phone number is you have an indication oh this isn't where I want this text to go it is a cryptic message in case if somebody misses that and it goes to wrong phone number it just says your confirmation code is um this this this you have uh 24 hours once you log in you have 24 hours something like that so we tried SEC security method to cover that too okay I see that's good enough I mean the fact that you get told what number it's going to text the code to is uh that deals with that situation thank you Adam yeah I just wanted to game this out one more uh scenario for understanding it completely uh so if they sign up for an electronic

[266:01] petition they see that it's probably not going to work out within the first couple weeks because of any issue known or unknown um remind me again do they have to resubmit that petition or can they switch to paper um and if they resubmit that petition does their time reset essentially which time Adam uh so they it's my understanding they have a certain amount of days to collect signatures based on a petition so so right now the key is the dates before the election that they have to submit so the the charter says they have to submit the petitions 150 days before the election they have 180 days to gather signatures for an initiative petition so that's um that would put them back sometime in early January or late December I forget the date so that that date's irrelevant now the only date counts is that early June date by which

[267:02] all petitions must be submitted okay that's super helpful to understand but they would have to uh if they want to switch from electronic to paper resubmit or can they be just doing both simultaneously what Alicia was saying we actually haven't SP was the clerk's office is considering just approving both at the same time since the language would be the same there's no additional work for us to approve the U the to approve the the text of the initiative since we've already done that okay that clears it up thank you there is also I should point out phase two of the roll out in March will include Spanish language interpretation and we're going to provide that for the paper system as well so that we will at the city will will pay to uh interpret the to to to translate the petition into Spanish uh it will be put on the online system and if people want to do a paper system in

[268:02] Spanish as well we will provide them with the the the approved translation for that and if I may uh say that the reason we were discussing it is because of some of the glitches and and the possibility of people wanting to maybe convert after a couple of weeks that they would have the paper petition already approved and like the first petition we received they they actually submitted the whole petition to include the page with the signatures so what we're going to do is approve both formats if that'll help because we want them to be able to to maneuver as quick as possible and not have a a delay in their signature Gathering thank you Alicia Mary thanks Sam um Alicia in the in the scenario that you just described where you um approve it and they and it's approved for both paper and um and

[269:03] online is the clock ticking for both well and like Tom said it's basically the same time it's you have to have them submitted to us before June 4th so the sooner they submit it to us of course the more time that they'll have to gather signatures so what we were hoping to avoid is them having to say okay we just want to go electronic and then switch and say we want to go paper and then have to resubmit the paper petition so what we're going to try to do going forward and again just I'm going check with Tom and Louise Toro who is our elections attorney to see if we can ask them to submit both just so we can save them time okay I think I understand now because we're past the that um 180 days and 150 days before the election it doesn't really matter you can just approve it both and the the clock

[270:01] ticking is we are we are same we have fewer than 180 to the June 4th deadline yeah yeah okay so so it doesn't really matter you can if they both get approved it the time won't the clock ticking won't make a difference if they don't start the if they don't have the paper petition in hand and approved as far as the language is concerned that's why we were considering approving both formats at the same time in case they wanted to switch gears okay so it basically what it does does is it provides um an option without having to come back right and then we would still and once they submitted the paper we'd have to go through the whole review process and the 10 the 10 days and then if they were changes needed we'd have to start the process again if they resubmitted it for approval so we're trying to avoid that Pro that particular step okay got it thank

[271:02] you and I guess it seems like the up side here and Tom correct me if I get this wrong orani they'll get to see as they're going along the rate of people being able to successfully sign the electronic petitions and they'll have a good confidence that those signatures are valid because they've already gone through the validation process so if they're finding out that the rate of signature Gathering electronically is much lower than they expected they'll have indications ahead of time that they might want to switch yes um another way of looking that Sam is generally as I said paper petitions require 30 to 50% additional signatures over the number required um an electronic petition will only require a few over um there's still a provision for challenge someone could Challenge and someone could deny that they sign so I would recommend having some over but you're not going to need the sort of numbers that you normally need so the

[272:00] petition committees can have confidence that if if the counter says they have the requisite number of signatures they're done and we won't go through an extensive certifying process because they're they're already pre-certified so it makes it a little easier for the committee great thank you Aaron well you mostly answered the question Tom I was just going to ask I mean is there would the city um disqualify any electronic signatures or would the only Avenue to lose a signature after it got entered in um was a challenge yeah it would be a challenge one of our security features Aaron is that we if you you actually go without signing in you can look to see the name of everybody who's endorsed the petition and so if by chance someone fraudulently endorsed in your name and you hadn't endorsed it and you checked and you came to us and said I didn't endorse that that's not me and we investigated and found it was true we would remove that signature but and we we will we we often

[273:01] get challenges to petitions and I expect we'll get challenges to is something as controversial as this it's not unusual just don't see I think the grounds for challenging will be far fewer it so that you might expect a like a 98% success rate of of the petitions that were actually registered then yes as opposed to like a 60 or 70% like you do with paper yes and and I would say 99% because as as everybody's commented it's not that easy to get through the endorsement process but once you're through you're done and the signatures are valid which is thanks very good Mary oh you have a leftover hand there it's a leftover hand okay um so I think that's probably the end of this uh item unless other council members have comments or staff any further

[274:01] followup great well thank you very much Tom for bringing bringing the information to us I think it's incumbent on us as Council as well as staff to keep watching this and to make sure that um as we same or get worse um we should probably bring it back again so council members ping CAC if you think we need to touch on this again okay with that Alicia I I think we're ready to move on all right sir our next item on our agenda is item number 8A which is the discussion on Council statement on the Holocaust that's SCH thank you this was a placeholder just in case anyone felt a desire or need to uh talk about this any further I'll look for hands and see if we want

[275:01] to go any further Rachel and mirabi um sure well I wanted to start by um saying thank you to mirabi for um her apology I think that does help to heal the community and the hurt um that stemmed from the false equivalency so I think apologies are not easy and I just wanted to say thank you for doing that um I also want to thank Aaron for helping so much on the early draft of um the statement that we did and also to thank the JCC and the um ADL and Rose community foundation and some other um Jewish leadership regionally who uh took time to reach out and to um advise us on ways to kind of best heal the community so thanks to all those people thank you Rachel nearby um I had a lot more to my letter that I was wanting to read in the beginning but um

[276:01] was advised that it would be better to be put down here so um if you can bear with me I'm going to read the rest so that you guys can understand um the thoughts that I would have liked to have gotten out um on on last Tuesday in my discussion with Mark um as this was you know a chat before Council when we had discussed during the retreat that you know we should jump on and have some discussions with each other and obviously um we did not have near enough time um and so that it just at least helps set where I was coming from and yeah so I'm just going to read so this was in relation to my discussion with Mark regarding the postcard that some council members received comparing uh prairie dogs and the Holocaust and Nazis together so tweeting this incomplete conversation was a reckless use of the media that has spread misinformation and hatred this

[277:00] type of rep reporting only serves to decrease our humanity and compar which is already lacking in our world today I am disheartened that people have spread this incomplete and inflammatory conversation on social media with no understanding of who I am and what I stand for animals and the environment are something that I have stood for since I was a child this passion has only grown as I've become increasingly aware of the mass Devastation that humans caused to this planet helping to preserve our natural world is one of the main reasons I ran for Council it is said that serial killer and abusers start on small animals and eventually move to humans as the culture of killing is so prevalent in our world the question is where does it stop almost every hardware store sells inhumane poisons and traps that kill mice and un other unwanted quote pests end quote almost every state in the United States allows the killing of cats and dogs that are in perfect adoptable

[278:01] conditions the overpopulation of pets URS frequently due to people who don't spay and neuter their animals is my cat um this cont contributes greatly to the overpopulation and thus killing of these pets 98% of the prairie dog habitat has been claimed by humans for development and agriculture how are all of these animals killed by poison and gas the Jewish Nobel Prize laurate Isaac Bevis singer has drawn comparison between the treatment of animals and the Holocaust Edgar Kuper cobitz a holocaust victim sent to daau concentration camps wrote in his DACA Diaries I have suffered so much that I can feel other creatures suffering by virtue of my own I believe that as long as man tortures

[279:00] and kills animals he will torture and kill humans as well and War War s will be waged for killing must be practiced and learned on a small scale end of quote if there had been more time before the meeting this important point from Mr kobitz is what I had wished to convey to Mark when we kill animals on a mass scale we and our children become numb to the atrocities I believe this creates a global Consciousness that life is disposable and thus leads to the killing and genocide of humans gassing humans or animals is an act of such atrocity that I am often kept awake at night with the gut-wrenching truths of what is currently occurring on our planet the bottom line is do you value human lives over animal lives or do you value all lives equally I believe that all life is precious how we treat the small and innocent translates to how we treat each

[280:01] other these are my values my morals and my opinions no one need agree with them however I am allowed to have them as each of you is allowed to have your own I hope that my statements today will correct any and all misinformation and conjecture that has been made about me now I hope you understand that all lives are dear to me and every single day I strive to act in a way that brings support caring and compassion to the world thank you thank you mirbi if there are no other hands I think we're done with this Aaron Rachel well meby I really appreciate um that statement um and the the the passion and care that you bring um to the mistreatment of animals um and so really very much appreciate that that moral position of yours to um to treat

[281:01] animals well so thank you thank you for that um I I just wanted to uh just speak up about one thing at the beginning of of your most recent statement about the the media um I did see the the relevant tweets I I believe they were more or less just quotes I I get that when when your statement there by itself didn't explain your full position because it was a brief thing at the beginning of the meeting um but in this time of um the the media kind of you know being called fake news and enemy of the people and stuff like that I just want to make sure that you those we just recognize that those were just quick quotes tweeted out and not some misinformation campaign thank you thank you Aon Rachel I was gonna um say something pretty similar just that I'm I'm very uncomfortable um pointing fingers at the media I think that they are doing their job when they report on things that we say so um I think that's a a slippery slope to go on and uh to go

[282:01] down and then just want to uh reconfirm that I I think what I heard tonight was that the um entire Boulder City Council rejects all Holocaust equivalencies and I think that uh we need to to just make sure that that's a a focal point of of the these discussions because that's the Genesis of what upset the community so thanks thank you Rachel Mark as um one of the Jewish neighbors who are Valu in accordance with this statement I want to thank everyone on Council for having agreed to it um I uh appreciate the comments made by mirabi and I understand her passion and I I believe this was a strong statement and a direct statement of our values and I am pleased that we were able to do

[283:01] this uh I hope that the Comm commity will understand the strength of our position on this um and uh with any luck we will not be receiving more odious postcards of the kind that we received but I I am grateful that we could come together on this matter and express our sense of outrage and our sense of what we consider to be uh proper um uh historical referencing of the of the Holocaust which um in my view is absolutely the most hateful and vicious and destructive regime um in recorded history and obviously loose uh comparisons are of that that regime and those

[284:03] behaviors to almost anything else in the world are simply not acceptable um and so again I thank all of my colleagues for uh taking the effort uh to craft this statement and to stand behind it thank you very good thank you all for your input on this uh it's an issue that deserved our undivided attention and uh a coherent response I'm glad we got there so thank you you all for uh working through this with each other and with me with that I think we're ready to move on to our city manager search update um Aon and Mary would you like to kick us off on that sure Aaron um well I'll I'll I'll jump in and Aon if you want to just um correct anything

[285:03] I say or add please do um so as you all know we're um each meeting with the recruiter um this week on 2 by tws to um narrow down the field and then um currently there's a community Forum that's being planned for February 25th 00 to 7:30 um for each of the finalist candidates to do a 10-minute presentation with a 10minute at Q&A and um that Forum will be recorded and it'll be available through the normal um platforms um there will also be an employee Forum on Fe February 25th as well um from noon to 1 and in that case each candidate will do a f minute presentation with a 10-minute Q&A um

[286:02] so um and then the recorded um the recording will be available through normal platforms um Aaron anything to add yeah I'll just a couple additional notes I'll just note for for members of the public if anybody's still up and awake and watching us that uh that the the full council is participating in the kind of the winnowing down of the qualified candidates so we're we're having um interviews with search consultant the next couple of weeks to winow that list down and then uh there will be um as Mary mentioned the week of the 22nd February 22nd um uh the finalists three finalists will be announced and that's who that Community forum and um Forum with the internal employees will be with and we'll be collecting plenty of public input um in that process before we make a final decision on who to hire that was all that I wanted to

[287:03] add super well thank both of you for the work on shepher this along um and I think as we look ahead to our next item which is uh two council members to um take on the City attorney recruitment committee um we have three folks who have shown interest in that and I was going to had a conversation with Tom this afternoon went and looked at the city Charter and it seems like the city manager um search team is uh to people but it is not doing any of the the things which it's allowed to do in the charter um which include the the subcommittee itself Aon and Mary being able to winow it down when know the applicants down to a smaller number we're doing that with all of council and so it seems like one of the main functions of having a two-person

[288:02] subcommittee search subcommittee which follows Charter is because that subcommittee will be doing work which has confidentiality around it well the way we set up the city manager search um the the subcommittee of Aaron and Mary are pretty much a process subcommittee they worked on drafts for the job description which came to all of council to approve um after the search consultant gives us a long list of um qualified candidates all of count council is going to work on winnowing that down to a shorter list so it seems to me like I'm going to propose that Council consider appointing all three members uh Mark and Bob and Rachel to be our City attorney recruitment committee and to do the same thing that we've done with our city manager search committee which is get the job description put

[289:00] together get a timeline put together kind of work through the administrative organizational details and use the same process we're doing with the city manager to winow it down for the City attorney candidates so I would turn to Tom and and get Tom's feedback on that and then turn to councel to hear your thoughts you're on mute thank thanks Sam uh I think that works as as long as the committee is willing to work publicly the the twers limitation in the charter applies to a committee that can um it's basically the only executive sessions allowed in the charter is the two person search committee uh if the committee is willing to work do its work in public um and and have open meetings then a three-person committee is fine and Tom just to clarify we would still be able to do the two by tws like we're doing for the city manager for the City attorney position yes very good

[290:02] delegated in the authority to the to the to the to particular two people it's to it's it's council meeting individually with the slch consultant to give their their feedback two by two thank you we've got Bob Aaron and Mary Bob well I I endorse your uh recommendation Sam I think um we've got three qualified people three practicing attorneys or at least retired attorneys um who have recruited attorneys in the past and I think um I would be honored to work with both Rachel and Mark on that I do think that um having our meetings open and to the public is a good idea um as you as you say um both with city manager search and I I suspect with the city attorney search um ultimately the decisions will be made by all Council so this is really a process committee so I'm perfectly fine having the three of us serve thank you and then I I I'm getting a reordering here so I'm gonna go to Aaron Mary and Adam next so Aon yeah I agree thanks Bob and Mark and

[291:02] Rachel for volunteering I think you will do a fantastic job and I just wanted to say that I don't think there's anything that Mary and I have talked about in our uh subcommittee that I wouldn't have been perfectly happy to do in public on a public meeting so I think there there no inhibitions there to having public meetings for this process thank you very Mar yeah thanks Sam um I I I would recommend however that um the subcommittee appoint a sub subcommittee of two um in case there are confidential issues that need to be discussed um just to have that um option handy I know that we did that in the um racial equity subcommittee which is five people and um we appointed two people in case issues came up that needed that sort of attention so um and it has been

[292:02] um exercised so um it's just a recommendation that doesn't need to be followed so um and I agree it's completely um a process subcommittee and ultimately all of council looks at all of the recommendations and makes the decision together may can I call agree please um so how about if if we do choose to have all three work on this if they decide that there's a confidentiality the issue that they want to address and uh they can come back to us and we as Council can appoint a two-person subcommittee yeah um however however you know it's it's up it's completely up to the the the subcommittee um I was just it's just a suggestion um that could come in handy and just to know that that's there I um I don't know that it's

[293:00] completely necessary to have that come back to council um they could decide amongst themselves and so um it's I'm I'm agnostic on that cool okay great Mark and then Adam uh yeah I also endorse that I you know it is a process subcommittee and I would point out that juny uh Mary and I currently uh operate as a subcommittee of three on the financial strategies committee um which takes on some very substantive issues and and that has not been a problem uh for us either in terms of confidentiality or or in any other matter so I am fine with this thank you Adam I'm also fine with it uh sort of conditionally that the process subcommittee's actions be unanimous um simply because I think with three

[294:00] varying degrees of uh lawyering uh it's pretty important that they all agree that there should be one process that is you know mutually beneficial to all of council and if there is a disagreement that's when I think it should come back um to see what that is and full Council can decide on that great that seems in line with uh the spirit of what's going on with the um city manager search so I I think that's that's good okay Mary and Mark your hands are still up I assume those are leftovers yep okay great so um Tom the way that we had talked about this is Council can indicate its intent and then we can confirm the appointment at the next meeting on the consent agenda are you still good with us going that way absolutely if that's the council's will great so I suggest that we um do a straw

[295:01] poll indicate who we'd like to have on this and they can start work right away and then we'll do a final confirmation that will retroactively approve any work that's done between now and the what is it the 16th the February 16th meeting I believe that's right so um I will suggest that and let's all raise our hands if we agree with doing that and we can do a final approval on the 16th I see hand all around I think so Tom if you would tee that up for us and I believe that we are um we have a new City attorney search subcommittee of Rachel Bob and Mark so thank you all for volunteering to do that and then the last item I think is uh Rachel I'll turn to you it's a request for a notd of five came up this afternoon yep um back in the fall Governor polus enacted some executive

[296:01] orders aimed at preventing evictions um and those orders lapsed around the holidays and some of them were renewed and some were not so there's a Boulder County Consortium of City's meeting tomorrow night where they will consider a strategy of cross jurisdictional advocacy to the state to Governor pois to extend or reinstate interventions and uh prevention efforts that have proven effective during covid-19 so we have some staff members who will attend um that meeting tomorrow night and they would like to advocate for these efforts and and Carl Castillo requested that we give an out of five to do so because this is not specifically enumerated in our policy agenda um examples of the interventions they would be taking include extend or make permanent the executive order requiring landlords to give a 30-day notice instead of formerly what was a 10-day notice um before filing an eviction case in court requiring notices to go out in both English and Spanish and include some specific information about resources

[297:01] extend the moratorium on late fees or penalties um for late rental payments for people who have been impacted by covid-19 or else to cap late fees at a reasonable percentage something like two to 5% of your monthly rent uh reinstate the eviction moratorium in Colorado that just sort of reaffirms alignment with current federal um CDC extension and then extend through December of 2021 augmenting the emergency rental assistance program which was established by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 so we were asking for not of five um to sort of give the go-ahead to staff to advocate for um these evictions preventions efforts can I get hands y raise your hand if you want to have staff put in more than a little bit of work to do this see hands all around so I think you've got your notd of nine um sorry May yeah I just wanted to um

[298:00] make an amendment um okay if if um Council so desires um the items that you enumerated Rachel um said that the um notices be supplied in English and Spanish and I would amend that to say that the notices be supplied in English Spanish um or the first language of the renter um or just um English or the first language of the renter something that covers uh languages other than English and Spanish I would ask if if is there a staff member on the line who can say that they heard that and I think that it was English and Spanish because that was what was um in the initial evictions prevention you Suite of um executive orders that Governor pus passed so they were probably just emulating that it sounds I I I like what you're

[299:01] saying Eric yeah thanks Mary for raising that just that there might need to be some bounds on it like that as long as it's one of the top 30 most common languages because there are 6,000 languages worldwide it might be hard to do all of them but just no right no no absolutely and I was just thinking of a place like Aurora which has you know like something like 25 languages spoken there um and if we're talking about this about State um we should consider that that was that and that's the only thing and if I could jump in here oh Adam go ahead I was just going to say as the member for city council to the Consortium I'm happy to bring that up just since there's no staff member here who's going to be representing tomorrow night so great thank you all um I think the KN of five is the formality for staff to put in as much time as it takes to get

[300:02] this done I appreciate Mary your suggestion and Adam your willingness to carry it but I think the nod is to give staff the ability to the advocacy and I think any council member who has particular uh interest in this should feel free to reach out the staff as well and make suggestions because I think what we're uh endorsing is that staff can put in time to work on this issue Rachel would you agree with that yeah um and and I would say I think it's something that staff is is seems pretty passionate about about and it's something that I've reached out to staff on my own about so I would agree if if anybody else has a particular passion or interest it would be a a good thing I think to advocate for and I don't know if this is you know crossing the line but if if this is not enacted at the state level I I think it's something that we may want to look at doing at the city level some of these protections okay very good and I I think just for the purposes of any council

[301:01] member who would like to um work with staff I think Kristen Heiser is the city lead on this so she's the one that's been flagging this I've been on and off parts of the conversations and it it does look like um the county has asked for the city to help with the advocacy that's going on at the state level so I I think this is all good work and any council members with ideas on this please feel free to reach out to Kristen um and and chat about them or to give her your input so great well thanks everyone for approving that um Alicia I think we're done with the agenda yeah yes sir okay so I'll turn to council any debrief any last things it's 11 o'clock so we can get off right within our I say one sentence please tell I had the opportunity last night to staff the conus licensing Advisory Board and I wanted to report to council that they're amazing the detail and the cooperation I

[302:00] saw on that board last night was incredible uh they're working through whether or not to recomend recreational delivery and when they bring a recommendation to council I expect it to be incredibly detailed they're going through every one of the state's requirements and one by one making uh discussing and making recommendations it may take a while but I want to tell you I was incredibly impressed with the way that board's working and it was not what I expected considering the diversity of views that there are on that board but they're coming together very nicely so to the extent that I gave a different impression at the at the retreat I wanted to retract that and say that I was incredibly impressed super well that's great to hear I will say two things thank them for doing that and better them than us so um with that uh unless I see a hand quickly I'm going to say we are 01 thanks everyone and have a good night good night night everybody [Music]

[303:01] hi [Music]