February 23, 2021 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music] me i'm here did you have a busy day always i was i can't remember but i have another friend who's taking the bar this week so i thought maybe it was today [Music] all right on that note it is 6 00 p.m um so ryan are you the one to check on channel 8 support are we ready to roll this is carl from channel 8 and we are live carl thank you okay and i see a quorum so we will get going hi everyone i am rachel friend a member of boulder city council my pronouns are she and her and i will be chairing tonight's meeting and we are officially calling this meeting to order um this is a study session so no roll call is required welcome to the tuesday february 23rd 2021 study session of the boulder city council

[1:00] tonight we will be discussing two items first is possibly forming a library district and second will be an update on the excel energy partnership together with kind of the muni wrap up and first we have some announcements and then told ryan that we have slides for each we are ahead of the game up i gotta exit you out all right so first is on covid19 exposure notifications you can sign up or learn more about receiving exposure notifications on your phone at your phone dot com second for vaccinations the state vaccine hotline is available 24 hours a day seven days a week um and answers are provided in multiple languages including spanish you can call that hotline at 1-877-co vax co so it's 1-877-268-2926

[2:02] and for more local information on getting your vaccine and to sign up for notifications you can go to boco.org boco.org covid vaccine notify sign up and i assume that is on the slide as well and as of february 22nd for county residents 25 167 are the number of people who have received one covid19 vaccine dose again for boulder county and the number for a full course two doses of a covid19 vaccine is twenty four thousand two hundred eighty five so that's first announcement second new slide please will be boards and commissions um our annual recruitment for the 2021 boards and commissions has closed for most of the boards or commissions the city clerk's office is in the process of reviewing all applications to ensure applicants meet the requirements for the border commission applied for and is on schedule to have

[3:00] the application notebook well it was posted i believe yesterday february 22nd we do however have three boards and commissions that did not receive applications to proceed on to the interview portion of recruitment so we will continue to accept applications through 5 pm on march 18 2021 for the following boards first the boulder junction access district parking a second boulder junction access district travel demand management and third the beverage licensing authority if you are interested in applying for one of these boards please view our boards and commissions website at boulder colorado.gov boards hyphen commissions all right third announcement is on the energy partnership advisory panel um as we will discuss uh later tonight the city and excel energy are partnering and are now seeking a representative group of community

[4:00] members to serve on the first energy partnership advisory panel the panel will meet regularly to review and discuss energy issues and provide feedback on projects and programs that arise from the partnership the advisory panel will serve to connect the community to the new partnership by representing electricity and gas customers in boulder in both residential and commercial sectors the panel will review project proposals gather perspectives on community impacts and make recommendations to the partnerships project oversight team interested members of the community are invited to learn more about the working group and apply at boulderdale boulder colorado.gov energy hyphen future uh slash excel hyphen partnership and i hope that's up on the slide uh the application will close at 5 pm on february 26th all right with that announcements are done and now i will turn to our interim city manager chris messcheck to kick off the staff presentations

[5:00] for the library district discussion great thank you rachel good evening council for this item we have a staff team that is here to support our two presenters tonight we'll begin with david gear from the city attorney's office and cara skinner from our finance department so with that i will turn it over to david good evening members of council i'm david with the city attorney's office good to see all of you also with me tonight is janet michaels from our office and she's been assisting with a lot of the work associated with the library district we're here to answer questions about library district formation and the colorado library law generally tonight we're also going to talk about funding library service services library governance and the process of library district formation the municipal we should be on slide two right now by the way um um the the municipal library is um governed by the by the city

[6:00] council with the advice of the library commission in the future however it could also be governed by a separate government entity a library district with its own separate board of trustees we're going to review the process for creating a library district listen to the council's conversation and answer any questions that you may have about tonight's topics library districts are governmental entities that use property taxes as the primary revenue source historically as you all know property taxes are amongst the most revenue most stable revenue services to fund governmental services the issue of library funding and government was raised as part of the library master plan that was adopted by the city council in 2018 in 2019 an advocacy group called the boulder library champion circulated a petition with the objective of forming a library

[7:01] district that included land both in the city and unincorporated boulder county it was presented to the boulder county clerk for signature verification the timelines in the state library law are fast moving and as the process was unfolding the city asked the library champions to hold the petition for the 29 2019 election and let the city have a more robust discussion about library funding in march 2020 the council was ready to start to have that discussion and and a public hearing regarding the district that discussion uh was interrupted by the covet 19 pandemic we're picking that conversation up now and intend to return to the council in april to ask the council whether it wants to look at approaches to fund the life the municipal library or in the alternative to start the

[8:02] process for creating a library district so whoever's running this slide if you could take me to slide three the city can continue its municipal library if it so chooses in the alternative there are two approaches to creating a library district under the colorado library law governments that have the authority to create libraries to can come together and through cooperation adopt resolutions to create library districts the other approach as we experience at least part of in 2019 is through a petition process a group of petitioners can create a petition that meets the requirements of the library law and get the petition signed by at least 100 registered voters the petition is then sent to the county commissioners the governing bodies can establish the district or if they choose not to the council

[9:02] will schedule the matter for an election also during this process if a a governmental entity such as a city that already has a library if they want to opt out they have the opportunity to opt out of the district once form the remaining steps of creating a lot a library district are the same for both processes and i'll get into those in a little bit more detail in a moment a question was asked about whether the city or county could just refer the entire question of a library district to the voters the statute does not anticipate this option however i could foresee something similar to be accomplished by forming a district by resolution entering into an iga and making the passage of a tabor measure to fund the district a condition of the continuation of the district

[10:00] there is no requirement that in the statute that the taxes that the tax has to be approved by the voters at the inception of the district that may occur in later years so slide four i'm going to go into a little bit more detail now about each of the processes so if you're going to establish a library district by resolution or ordinance the process includes a public hearing that will be held by the governments forming the district the hearing is should include a discussion of the purposes of the district to be formed and they should the hearing should also address the rights powers obligation and responsibilities of each governmental entity involved the rebel the resolution or ordinance will describe the proposed library service area specify a mill levy and property tax dollars to be

[11:00] imposed or the type and or the amount of funding and then also state that the electors of the library district will be required to approve any necessary tax levy that has not previously been approved upon adoption of the resolution or ordinance the legislative bodies establish the district and provide for its financial support uh beginning on or before january 1st of the f following the adoption of the resolution um and they also appoint the first board of trustees five to seven members of the library district the legislative bodies thereafter may ratify the committee selections for the trustees so if you could take me to slide five

[12:01] next the legislative body of each participating government will develop the iga within 90 days this time can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties the iga describes those rights and obligations discussed above that are parties to the agreement typical the typical things that you see in the igas include addressing the transition from a municipal library to a library district including things such as the ownership of real and personal property how personnel that work for the library will be addressed and provisions for the administrative services that a library may need during a transition also included is the method of trustee selection and then whatever other terms the parties find reasonable and prudent if the district wants to have an independent tax or independent revenue

[13:02] source you know independent from the municipality or the county it will need to conduct a tabor election to establish an ad valorem property tax so if you could move me to slide six please if the establishment is by a petition of the registered election the following procedures are used the petitioners draft a petition that includes a request for the establishment of a library district all of the governments that will be creating a library district in our case the city and the county the proposed name of the district a description of the service area boundaries for the district and a statement of the mill levy that may be imposed in the future and that the amount of funding that the electors must approve of any tax not previously adopted before the district can be established the petition is addressed in our case to

[14:02] the boulder county commissioners because it includes land that is both in the unincorporated county as well as a city upon receipt of the petition [Music] the county may pass a resolution or an ordinance that establishes the district as i mentioned before if this during this time the city has the opportunity to opt out of the district if it does not want to participate they the county will set the ballot title and they'll submit this the question of establishing the district to a vote at the november election the taber the taber election itself can

[15:02] be held concurrent with the formation issue or it can be passed at a later date but of course as you all know paper elections have to occur at the november election again much like the petition or the resolution process the required the legislative bodies are required to hold public hearings prior to the election where people have an opportunity to discuss the purpose of the library to be formed and the powers rights obligations and responsibilities of each of the governmental entities that will be participating if it's approved by the voters the legislative bodies of each government will establish and provide for the financial support of the library beginning on january 1st of the year following the election typically when it's a county municipal type arrangement the basic effect of

[16:01] this is that the city continues to run the library as it has in the past [Music] again very similar to the resolution process board of trustees gets appointed and then there is also an iga created that addresses the transition from the library district or from the municipal library system to a library district next slide so this slide here just simply demonstrates a sample timeline of how one might look to forming a library district either by resolution or ordinance or or if you were to go the petition route of course um this is conceptual so it would need to be tailored to actual timelines and notices that are required

[17:02] in the statute so with that said i would like to turn it over to kara skinner and devin billingsley who will talk a little bit about how we go about funding libraries thanks david and good evening council um if we could go to the next slide one second i see i see a hand up i want to ask bob is that for later do you have a question before we keep going here i just wonder before we launch into finances if it would be uh helpful if council members have questions of david information or do we want to save those until the financial presentation i was going to save all questions till the end because uh they weren't built in but if i'm fine with that i just was asking a procedural question that's fine all right thanks just told him thank you kara okay thanks i'm kara skinner assistant director of finance

[18:02] um so we are going to now step into funding and we're going to cover the total cost of service different estimates for different levels of service we're going to talk about four different library funding scenarios and then specifically with regard to a library district what the budget impact would be to the city's budget and then other potential financial matters that we just want to provide context for council as they make this as they have this discussion so next slide so first we're going to talk about the total cost of providing library services and the total current budget is comprised of the 2021 operating budget which is 6.4 million dollars funded by the general fund and 1.4 million dollars funded by the library fund which has a dedicated mill levy of 0.333 that helps fund provide funding for the

[19:02] library fund so the total 2021 operating budget for the library is 7.8 million dollars then the other cost of providing library services that is budgeted is administrative overhead or what we commonly call cost allocation and that is the cost of support services to the library such as human resources finance information technology facilities things like that and the total cost of that is 3.4 million and that is funded by the general fund it is just simply not reflected if you look into the city's budget book at the library department budget you won't see this captured there but it is a true cost of providing library services they do require that support so if you add those two together you have a total cost of 11.2 million dollars that is funded in 2021

[20:01] what is not funded as we all know that there was a reduction to the library budget for 2021 from what we had planned in 2020 and and that is a budget gap due to the covet 19 economic crisis and the resulting financial crunch for the city so if we were to refund that that would cost 1.3 million dollars in addition we would need to fund north boulder library operating costs and if we for if we funded deferred capital maintenance of 2.3 million that would be an additional 4.6 million dollars of costs to meet a higher level of service and that would be that meet community demand service level as identified in the master plan so if you add those two together to meet this higher level of service essentially to restore funding to what it was pre-covered to fund nobo and

[21:01] to address the deferred capital maintenance the total cost of providing that level of service is 15.8 million dollars and stepping it up a little bit further there was an expanded service level identified in the master plan and we've identified the amount to fund that on an annual basis to be approximately 4.2 million dollars and what that expanded service level includes is full build out of the north boulder library with maker space and an outside playground as you know the scope of that project had to be reduced to fit within the budget so to complete that project expanded collections and materials more activation and accessibility of the canyon theater a gun barrel corner library a corner library in nywat and an outreach program to the latinx and senior populations so if we had that additional um

[22:02] [Music] level of service that would cost 4.2 million for a total of 20 million dollars so total cost of library services at the expanded service level would be 20 million dollars and you'll see this 15.8 and the 20 million on some later slides so next slide so this is a map that has been shown at past presentations when we've discussed the library district and the area defined by the red line is the boundary of boulder city limits and the area defined in green is the boulder valley comprehensive plan planning area and the area defined by the black line is the proposed library district boundary that was discussed earlier and was used

[23:00] in the financial analysis in 2018 and in our funding scenarios presented on the next slide and that greater black boundary is intended to capture more of the library patrons which are denoted on this map by those gray dots so you'll see that there are many gray dots within the boundary of the city but then there are also many gray dots outside that boundary but within the black boundary so next slide so this slide has a lot on it i apologize but i think we'll walk through it line by line and hopefully it will make sense so this slide presents different funding options and and we have four different scenarios so the first scenario which is that top line is a scenario of a library district funded by a dedicated property tax

[24:02] that would fund an expanded service level generating 20 million dollars a year and with the boundary shown on the previous slide the mill levy needed to generate that 20 million dollars is 3.85 mills and for all of these scenarios we're we're going to demonstrate the impact of this dedicated this new dedicated property tax mill levy on a representative residential property owner and we assumed the market value of that property to be eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars um so it's you can do the math if you wanted to calculate for a property that was half that if it was a property with a market value of 425 000 then you would just split these numbers in half but we're using 850 000 i think is uh

[25:00] actually less than the median in boulder right now so looking at that first scenario for the library district we do have two numbers there one for the county and one for the city and i'll walk through why those are different so for the county this would be an increase of 3.85 mills so the impact would be a 234 dollar increase to their annual property tax bill for properties within the city we assume the property owners would only be assessed a total mill levy of 3.85 for the library so the city's current mail levy as i mentioned on the previous slide the city currently has a .33 dedicated mill levy to the library so we assume that that would go away so the net mill levy increase for residents in the city is less because they already have a 0.33

[26:02] that goes away so then the net increase in mill levy for a city resident would only be 3.517 so that's why the impact to a city property owner would be less and we have that being 214 dollars so the next scenario is if uh we have if the city's municipal library had a dedicated property tax that would fund expanded service levels similar to scenario one that would generate 20 million dollars a year and the dedicated property tax or the mill levy that we would need to generate that would be 4.56 mills and it's more because there are fewer property owners paying in to generate that same level of revenue so the mill levy would be higher than it would what would be required for a library district and the impact to the residential property owner of an 850 000

[27:02] market value home would be that 250 dollars so moving down to scenario three this is a funding scenario where the city's municipal library had a dedicated property tax that would fund the total cost to meet community demand service level as we sort discussed on that previous slide so this would fund the budget gap from covet 19 reductions fund north boulder operating and of course fund the administrative overhead because we're saying it would fund the total cost so the mill levy required uh to generate that 15.8 million dollars would be 3.53 mills which would result in 194 dollar impact and then last this scenario four is sort of a hybrid scenario of current

[28:00] undedicated funding and potential additional increments of dedicated property tax so i'll walk through this sort of line by line so the top line assumes the city's current funding which is that general fund support and the dedicated 0.333 mill levy would support that current level of funding which is the 11.2 million which you saw on that total cost slide so that's sort of the status quo we would have undedicated funding plus the current .33 mills to support the current level of funding and then if we were wanting to add dedicated property tax to fund increments to improve our service level this is the increments that you would need for each so that next line to fund the coven 19 gap which is 1.3 million would require a dedicated

[29:01] mill of 0.32 mils and the impact there my little zoom guy is covering it up is 19 dollars a year increase on the property tax bill the next line um to generate enough to cover noble operating at one million dollars would be 0.24 mills with a 15 annual impact and the last line to fund the deferred capital maintenance at 2.3 million would be 0.56 mils additional with an impact of 34. so the one last thing and i hope that wasn't too painful but the one last thing or comment i want to make about this is we have tended to focus on the residential property tax impact as residential property owners are typically voters and they would want to understand the impact as they consider a decision but commercial property would be

[30:01] impacted differently because of the different assessment rates for commercial property versus residential property for an 850 000 market value commercial property these numbers in this final column would be essentially four times greater so um in that first row it would be close to a thousand dollars right nine hundred and some dollars so and then the other thing to just keep in mind with commercial property is on average their property the value is much higher so just think about that that would be another um in all practicality the impact would be more than a thousand dollars for pro for commercial property owners and next slide

[31:00] so this slide was really just trying to capture high level if a library district was formed what would be the potential impact to the city budget and we did decide to use the word potential city budget relief here and then and the one reason why i think and it might have been me uh i i looked to that word instead of savings is that um savings sort of seems to imply cost avoidance or reduced costs and really there's two different things happening there would be both reduced costs or avoided costs but there's also the potential for new revenue and new revenue offers relief but we don't think of that as savings so it's like it's like if we had a new revenue source to fund current costs that would provide us budget relief um so hopefully that's not confusing but so we do say that potential

[32:00] city budget relief over time could be up to 14.4 million dollars and the most direct and near-term relief is captured in that first bullet point that it would free up current general fund budget of 6.4 million dollars that could be used for other high priority needs and then the other near-term relief depending upon how the iga is constructed and if the library district contracted with the city to continue to provide administrative support services that would provide us a new revenue source to fund those costs that we do not currently have so that would provide us relief so if you add those two together that's 9.8 million dollars close to 10 million dollars so there could be an immediate benefit

[33:02] to the um city budget of approximately 10 million dollars we want to acknowledge that we say there there would be no net budget relief related to the 1.4 million dollars that the library fund currently funds because we're assuming we would eliminate that mill levy so the while the costs would be avoided we would also lose that revenue so no net change and then we did want to acknowledge at least um that we do believe this would relieve future general fund budget pressure to fund the covet 19 gap north boulder operating and deferred capital maintenance um we did not so if you add all that up that gets you to the 14.4 million dollars we did not um include those additional costs to fund

[34:00] that expanded service level we think that that's probably very visionary and and whether the city would realistically be building that into the budget with its current revenue sources is not as likely so we we constrained this at the up to 14.4 million and again that would be over time and it would depend upon the construct of the iga and whether the city would provide administrative services to the district so next slide so last um as as we did when we discussed um the capital tax renewal with you last week as you're having um as you're considering library governance and funding we wanted to provide you the context of other financial matters and tax policies that are being considered to have a holistic look and so

[35:02] um capital infrastructure sales and use tax renewals the first item listed here the next two are potential new sales and use taxes that are being possibly contemplated by the county or the city and then the following two are city taxes that are set to expire in the near term that council may consider a renewal action with those so those are the big picture funding um summary related to the library and with that i think next slide i'm going to kick it back over to david gere all right well um i think that uh we were thinking that tonight it would be great to get um council's questions on the table and if you have any thoughts about how we want to go forward and how we will how how you would wish to see a public

[36:01] hearing structured in april we would love to get some feedback from you and um so that we can kind of design a good a good meeting and a good discussion on kind of the next steps associated with governing the library as well as funding it and in closing juana gomez one of the library commissioners is on the call as well and at cac they requested that a library commissioner be in attendance today and be provide be provided an opportunity to say some words to the council as well and i don't know if juana wants to see my yeah okay um well thank you council and thank you

[37:00] david for the introduction i'm juana gomez i am a commissioner for the library um and i wanted to reiterate um our request for this evening we would like uh council to seriously consider creating a library district by resolution that would allow for all these questions about how many dollars do we save do we spend how much would it cost to be resolved and outlined it would allow an opportunity to figure out what happens to the assets of the library it would provide a guidepost for people to make decisions about whether this is a good idea or not we would ask that council

[38:02] it was brought up by one of the council members of uh creating a committee to further look into this um a subcommittee of council members and perhaps um somebody from commission from library commission so that these questions and scenarios don't get lost in between meetings so that there's a focus group looking into it and making sure all the questions are answered [Music] we'd also like that uh to ask council to [Music] restart the public discussion about the library district um with an outreach of communication

[39:00] about what all this means and how does this benefit the city thank you thanks juana david or chris or cara is that the end of staff presentation that is we're available for questions and of course look forward to listening to your conversation awesome um thank you i wanna david and cara and carl i'm sorry i butchered your name on the front end here so thanks for bearing with me on that um i see a couple hands up so um are there uh staff is there a staff slide with questions for council all right thanks so let's start with just general questions about the presentation um and general questions that you have and then we'll get into the specific questions and discussion so i see sam up first and then aaron bob and mark and real quick wanted to make an announcement that um council member

[40:01] nagel is on this zoom call but her um her volume isn't working on her computer so she had to call in so you may not be able to see her but she is here and um i can see her hand when it goes up so hi mirabai thanks for bearing with us okay sam over to you thanks very much and thanks staff for the presentation i guess first i'll ask it as a question we have march 17th on the last slide for our next action um i assume that's supposed to be a different date is that correct that's correct it should be [Music] april 20th i think we were a victim of our own recycling in terms of the slides okay great so just for the public who's watching the next step will be a march or sorry april 20th public hearing um if it would be possible to go back to slide four i guess i'll start really quickly with governance questions and then i'll

[41:00] move on to some finance questions i have but i'll start asking before we get there david this is probably for you um it talks about 90 days and then the ability so i don't know if staff caught that i do want to see slide four and nine later but 90 days david is that a requirement in some kind of statutes or yeah okay that's a that's a statutory requirement and basically how the process goes is that once the the petition has been you know that they have certified the signatures then um the county commissioners will send a notice to the city setting a date for a hearing on the ballot title um that it is at least 90 days beyond the date of that notice and within that time frame up to 30 days before the the commissioners take action on that ballot title that's

[42:02] the period when the city if it chooses to opt out may opt out of the district so so i get that if it's a petition route so i followed all that if it's a petition route if we form it by ordinance and there would be no election this year so reform it by ordinance and in the future years there's a tabor election would we have a 90-day requirement if we form it by um i'd have to check the statute but i believe so yeah actually that that looks like uh the 90 days is um i i i need to check the statute i noticed that janet michaels just popped on do you have a response janet i do there's there's not a thank you this is janet michaels with the city attorney's office there is not an opt out option when we pass a resolution or an ordinance to join the district

[43:00] so that's all it does it gives us an opt-out so that if a petition gets filed that we don't have control over if you will then we can opt out of being a part of the district but if we're forming if we want to participate in the formation of it we're doing that by ordinance with a resolution from the county so that's our choice and so we're not gonna we can't back out of it essentially right so i understand all of that i'm sorry let me try rephrasing my question one more time on slide five it says within 90 days enter into an intergovernmental agreement and so there's a 90 days and so is that 90 days to enter into an iga from the time that council would adopt a um formation resolution that's correct and so that 90 days to enter into an iga is by the library statute yes and typically what i've learned from kim setter who

[44:00] was at our last study session that that time can be extended and it usually is right and so that's what i was going to ask because if we had 90 days from a formation resolution uh to create an iga if we look at the ig it's pretty complicated arrangement that would need to be made so uh it seems like um we definitely want to have that be something we could talk about but that is required by statute unless we do something different got it okay super and then i've got my slides up so i'll go to slide nine for those who want to follow along and i just wanted to check a couple of things here so the deferred capital maintenance has shown up in a few places is that deferred capital maintenance and annual expense this is car and yes that's correct

[45:01] it's an annual and it would be to i believe address the backlog as well as it sort of smooths some major capital investments if you smoothed that over time you would need about 2.3 million a year to address the backlog and address cap future capital needs so how far out did we amortize the deferred capital maintenance in the sense that the question is because it seems like once we got past the deferred maintenance or on a regular maintenance schedule then it would only be new capital that would be required so um how did we blend the deferred capital with the new um capital deferred maintenance with the new company yeah i i don't know that exact number i can see if devin billingsley uh our senior budget manager knows that answer and if not we can clarify that in our um follow up to this study session if that helps yes so um that is uh something that we

[46:03] um certainly can uh uh verify but i believe i'll stop my head it was either 10 or 15 uh years but we can certainly uh conf can learn that okay it just seems like when we're past the deferred part when we caught up i was curious if that would go down going forward or not um another question about something cara that you talked about which is commercial properties and so i was curious are apartment buildings considered commercial properties um so answer that um uh the answer is yes and no so um uh technically um when you uh uh ass

[47:02] s them they are uh only assessed at the um currently the residential rate is a 7.15 whereas um all other commercial uh properties are uh 20 [Music] 29 so for uh purposes of property tax calculations they are actually more uh residential than they are uh commercial properties got it and so that means that the impact on renters is proportional to the property value just

[48:01] like it is with homeowners so i was just checking to see if renters would pay the higher commercial rate or not so that's great to know um and then i guess the final question i've got is about the 14.4 million dollar potential budget relief so the deferred capital maintenance line of that is some blend of deferred capital on future expansion capital and i understand that part um i wanted to dig into the nobo operating just a bit um i think bob had asked a question about this in the past recently which was he didn't remember it being 1 million and so is it 1 million loaded with the additional overhead or is that one million direct and there's additional overhead on top of that thanks sam i appreciate that um i meant to address that in my presentation so yes the one million

[49:01] dollars for operating has been the estimate for operating alone for the north boulder library the number that bob might maybe you're remembering is the north boulder corner library operating was around 300 000 so the new north boulder library operating has always been estimated based upon staffing needs and additional materials and things like that to be about a million dollars okay and we have this 3.4 million dollars which appears not to have changed as we reduced the general fund budget from 7.5 million to 6.4 million or whatever was it was a reduction because of covid so and then we're adding back in the coven 19 gap and so i'm just curious with both the coven 19 gap and nobo operating and deferred capital maintenance with all of those added in is it still 3.4 million will be the

[50:01] administrative overhead or does that change because it seems like the general fund amount if you look at it that way would be larger if we had nobel operating deferred capital maintenance and the coven 19 gap so how does a 3.4 million relate to either the current library budget or the increased library budget so i appreciate that question and i actually think what you just mentioned sort of offsets um they might offset each other so the 3.4 million does get um we have a cost allocation step study that we do it typically every two years and so it does get revised based upon new budgets for those support departments we are in the process of revamping our cost allocation methodology and we will be doing a new updated cost allocation plan in 2022

[51:00] so there is potential that given the fact that some of those support departments budgets went down that that 3.4 million might go down because of that but there is the potential that the library is going to need proportionately more services from those departments than they did before so even though the budget went down their cost share might go up so things are going to move around i think that that 3.4 million is a conservative number you know in a year or two it might be slightly different but i think somewhere between 3 million and 3.4 million dollars and um or 3.5 million dollars in support needed for a for us but a budget of 16 million is probably in the ballpark and i think that that's what we found too when we did comparables for library districts back in 2018 that that ratio is um pretty consistent

[52:00] okay very good and then i guess this kind of ping pongs back a bit to your court david on formation but it ties in with the finance when we do a resolution should we want to do a resolution and i believe the library champions and the library commission would like us to do a resolution at the april 20th hearing do we need to know the mill levy at that time um yes that's one of the requirements of the of the statute is that you you're supposed to state what you believe the revenue needs of the district will be great and then whether or not you have basically whether or not you have a tax for it yet okay and assuming that we wouldn't have a tax for it yet we would put out what we expect the mill levy to be and once we do that say that we did that and then through the process of the iga and the recalculation of the overhead rates and things that the the amount

[53:02] that um the council future council decided it wanted to set up an iga for what if that was different than the mill levy which was set in the resolution you know the statute doesn't address i don't believe the statute addresses that and i can look into it a little bit further with kinsetter but i would imagine that there's probably some flexibility in there so when you say you imagine there would be some flexibility that we could reform the library district with a different mill levy in the resolution or that um how would that be flexible well or change it and i would just need to check you know to make sure that this is um that this is an accurate statement but um you know the way it's worded in the statute it's it's it's worded as more along the lines of you're you're supposed to declare what the estimate is um so to me that seems to indicate that

[54:01] you know there might be a little bit of room for up and down but i but i would i would i would check with kim on that before i um you know drew a line in the sand and then of course yeah go ahead oh well there you know there's also two places you know if you do the um you know if you the the county commissioners could put on a tabor measure for the district that's one approach and that would usually be done right at the beginning or if it's in subsequent years um you know the district board itself can do a tabor measure um you know once you have a board of trustees appointed and the authority you know they're another tax once they're formed they're another taxing entity and they can bring things to the ballot just as the city can bring things to the ballot got it um it just it was a question because it

[55:02] seems like we're going to get a lot more detailed within the iga if we looked at the outline for the iga that the library commission mailed to all of council that outline doesn't have terms written into it or anything but it talks about what you would need to know and part of that is budget and use of funds and and all of that everything about the transfer and so i just want to make sure that if we were thinking about doing something by resolution we don't lock ourselves into a middle levy rate then when we haven't necessarily gone through the entire iga process and my last question just to make sure i'm tracking the iga that would be put together after a district formation with that iga be between the city the county and the trustees of the district yeah the district so so you would it would be the iga would be

[56:02] entered into by all the governmental entities that um are throwing in for the district and it's typically the people that have um you know responsibilities under the district so whether or not i'm not sure if the county would necessarily have to be a party to the district but i think it certainly that it would be anticipated my guess is is that um you know the county would not be throwing unless you know the county would not be throwing money into this um and yeah my guess is is that they are more of a an entity that has responsibilities that are described by state statute as opposed to things that they would otherwise do in terms of just providing governmental services you know our boulder county does not provide library services now so got it and so

[57:02] the the anticipation is that if we don't involve the county through a petition process to form the district if we form a district by resolution um establish the trustees of the district seat them then most of the iga will be between the library district and the city with some kind of tangential involvement of the county per statute that that's correct um and you know the county the county of course they speak on behalf of the unincorporated county so they would you know be the persons representing those folks and under the statute the first board of trustees they lay out a statute they lay out a process where the city puts a couple of people into a committee the county puts a couple of people into a committee and together that committee appoints the first board of trustees

[58:02] which then gets ratified by the boulder city council and the boulder county commissioners got it thank you thanks sam okay next we have um aaron and then bob and mark well look your hand was up and went down so if you have questions um if you could put your hand up again that would help over to aaron hey thanks rachel could we go to the slide that has the different funding scenarios please thank you very much so um with this so the first one is um a library district and the second two have substantial dedicated property taxes and then the last one has small additional increments of dedicated property taxes had a couple questions about the scenarios so for one i believe that um car the budget relief that you talked about um we would get that with the library

[59:01] districts um but we wouldn't like with that that fourth option correct the can you just have some additional increments of dedicated property tax no budget relief that scenario right thanks and if we pursued if we were interested in pursuing one of the property taxes wouldn't we need a charter change because we're close to our charter limit on property taxes that is true and let me let me correct what i just said i was too quick to respond to your first question that last scenario those costs that are captured with additional mill levy in a sense they would give us budget relief because if we did not have those dedicated mill levees those small increments we would have general fund pressure to fund those costs in future budget years and so like those amounts we did

[60:00] include in that 14.4 million so um i think that this uh 4.6 million dollars that is the total of the bottom three lines of scenario for we could realize whichever increments you chose relief up to that amount by the way that we have been describing budget relief and that we would feel pressure there would be budget pressure to fund those um items in future budgets and to the extent we didn't have to find that within our current budget that would provide us relief if we had these dedicated military so it would take the pressure off to refund those those programs but it wouldn't provide the base budget relief of taking the library off the books as well as allocation correct okay so i corrected that first answer now i the second question so the that uh these dedicated taxes they would require a charter change wouldn't they

[61:00] like how far away are we from our charter limit on property taxes right now oh and i should have that's about it's close to two mills oh okay what was that it's close to two mills it's in that neighborhood there's a there's a decimal point in there someplace yeah i think it's like 1.69 or something maybe we we can see if we can scurry that up but i i think it's something less than 2 ml something like 1.69 that's okay yeah if you you wouldn't mind throwing that number together when you get a chance but um anyway if we wanted to fund with a dedicated property tax we would need to not only have a tabor election but also a charter change i believe so is that right that's correct erin can i clarify is that for options one two and three are just two and three two and three thanks so if we pursue a library district there's no problems with the charter

[62:00] because it wouldn't be a municipal property tax our charter limit on property taxes wouldn't apply correctly if i'm wrong there but that's my understanding that's my understanding too but it says the the language we're using is dedicated property tax and the funding source for one two and three also is dedicated so i just wanted to make sure you were talking about only for municipal dedicated property tax not for districts yes yeah i think it's required so all right so now if we did get that budget relief then um the funds that were freed up those would be essentially discretionary right like we could use those for whatever purposes we felt like were the highest priority that's correct so again that we did want to include this budget relief concept of the relieving us of the pressure of having to fund this so say in the future budget year if we had a dedicated mill levy to fund noble operating and our current revenue sources grew we

[63:01] could then we would be free to use that revenue source on other high priorities in the city thanks and would there be any limitations to prevent us setting up say a property tax relief program with some of those funds say something that small businesses or individuals who are you know for whom the incremental increase in property taxes would be difficult to you know have a kind of a rebate program that people could apply to there's there would be nothing that would stop you from doing some type of rebate program okay great i mean we're not the taxing entity and necessarily like if in their library district we wouldn't be the taxing entity but we could set i guess you wouldn't necessarily exactly be rebating property taxes but we could give grants probably how it would end up working out i i think either would work either way okay great um and sam asked a couple of my questions i

[64:01] think the one other one that i have is could you go to the slide that lays out the schedules the potential schedules please there are a couple timelines there we go yeah i was i was staring at this and it went away pretty quickly this is really helpful so if we um if we wanted to go the resolution ordinance route could we form the could we have a public hearing on the resolution of the library district sooner in the process like would there be anything stopping us from giving direction tonight to say like uh rather than have two public hearings uh let's have our next public hearing be on whether we should have a resolution resolution from the library district you could do that okay uh thanks well i guess i'll i'll talk about that during our discussion portion of the evening that's it for my questions thanks thanks for keeping discussion cleanly away from

[65:01] questions erin um chris mess chuck i see your hand up do you have something to add to aaron's questions yeah i just wanted to jump in on the last uh on one of erin's questions related to the the mill levy rate so the charter cap is 13 mils um currently is what's listed in the charter and we're at 11.981 if my memory serves me correctly and devin or cara can correct me if i'm wrong so uh so that's that's our you know it's just over one mill that i think is our uh our um rule where we would have to amend the charter uh yes uh chris you are uh one 100 correct great thanks thanks chris okay i've got bob and then mark and then mary after that i've got a couple questions for david i had more but sam sam stole most of my thunder so uh thank you sam for that david just a couple questions then i do have several for cara i'm still struggling a little bit understanding the um the mill love you

[66:00] versus the taber vote uh first of all i guess first question is under both scenarios that is a resolution by the county in the city or a petition by residents in both instances does there have to be a declaration of the estimate of the mill levy yes okay and you know if that um to sam's point about well what if we get it wrong what if we put down a mill levy and then a year or two later is there's a taber vote and it's wildly off um do you know if if people put down ranges of mill levees which we said we think it's going to be more than two and less than five or do you have to pick a number um that i would have to i would have to look that up and okay about that idea when you look that up maybe helpful to find out if other jurisdictions have gotten themselves in a situation where they've picked a mill levy and then their table vote ends up being different i guess the question is how much how much grace do you have there um so you're doing that research that'd be helpful and then um the only other question i have for david right now is

[67:01] it sounds like the car the county is a party to this three-way iga which has to be negotiated in a relatively short period of time have we reached out to the county have we had discussions with them or did they kind of know that we're thinking about this uh they do frankly i don't know the extent to which um they know about the resolution um or ordinance formation part but i think that just in terms of conversation that have had been had between the staffs it's my understanding at least with the prior commissioners was that they were they were not particularly interested in forming um a um a library district by petition or not by petition i'm sorry by resolution or ordinance if the city was not on board with it so i think that they would look to the city for leadership in terms of their support for going that route

[68:01] which makes sense sure i mean some of you might just um since we have two out of three new county commissioners as of a month and a half ago somebody might just check in with with the county staff the county commissioners um give them a heads up that we're having these discussions so they're not blindsided this spring or summer um could we go to slide nine okay sam almost asked my question it's my understanding cara that um we're spending or at least pre-covered we were spending about three hundred thousand dollars in operating the nobel hub is that right yes okay and that 300 000 is presumably embedded either in the 7.8 million that we're spending this year or in the 1.3 million gap i'm not sure how much of that 300 000 got cut maybe it's all in the 1.3 and all got cut but somewhere in the 9.1 million steady state that we spend to operate the library system there's 300

[69:02] 000 embedded for novo right okay and how much will it cost to operate the nobel library going forward my understanding is the amount that we have been saying we need to add to the library's budget is one million dollars okay so you said the word there that i wanted to make sure so it's going to cost us 1.3 to operate noble library or 1 million i will want to double check that okay so the increment might be 700 000 or the increment might be a million over the 300 000 we're spending now is that right well i believe the increments one million but i want to make sure that when that was decided that that was the additional budget needed for the new north boulder library that that took into account the we would 300 000 we're already spending plus right right okay so i just want to verify that but it has always to my knowledge it has always been um

[70:02] said that we needed one million dollar additional operating to run the new north boulder library on top of the 300 000 we're already spending that's my understanding but we will confirm that yeah that'd be that'd be great because i want to make sure we don't double connect that 300 thousand um stand on slide nine uh this is kind of a similar question to what sam asked about the 2.3 million defer capital maintenance how much of that is how much of that is um backlog that's been advertised over a certain period of time versus how much of it is oh we should spend you know a million dollars a year or whatever to keep up the capital so it'd be good to get that detail sam has asked for but i'd also appreciate the detail on the 4.2 million because again we have apples and oranges here we have operating capital so for example um one of the things that was mentioned that the 4.2 million would be spent on was there's like a one or two million dollar capital shortfall on the construction north boulder library that of course is a one-time expense but this 4.2 million is every year forever so it'd be nice to break that down to how much of that is is operating for the

[71:02] expanded services and how much of it is um capital either to finish nobo or to build gun barrel or whatever it is if we could break that down between opex and capex that'd be super helpful yeah we can do that and then if you could go to slide 12 um the the second bullet point is what i want to ask a question about so this is this is money that we spend for salaries and benefits for centralized services like lawyers it hr is that's allocated to the library and it kind of goes up and down every year is that right that's correct and and there are a lot of fixed costs in there too besides um salaries so like our in our core infrastructure for information technology and financial systems and things like that that our foundation all are included in that as well thanks and so this is this

[72:00] is our it's our best guess at kind of um true pass through costs i know it's an inexact science but the idea is is if if one were to um to run a library standalone without city support they would have to spend 3.4 million ish uh to to get those services or at least that's how much we allocate our the central fund towards that is that right correct so i'm trying to understand a little bit how that would be relief i understand the 6.4 million general fund relief the 3.4 million and i think you did qualify this you said that kind of depends on if the library biases services the library might buy these services for one or two years and then take it all in house or they might buy it forever or they might not even want to buy it at all but but if this is truly pastor in other words it's costing us 3.4 million dollars to pay people to do this work and then we're passing it through and then the library district someday said you know we don't need that anymore we're going to take care of it inside wouldn't we save some of that 3.4 million so that's correct so if the library

[73:03] bought these services from us we would have new new revenue to fund those costs that currently general fund revenue is having to fund so that's why it would it would be relieved to us if they did pay us because we'd have a new revenue source to fund those costs and right now those costs are being covered by general fund resources if they did not contract with us we could avoid some of those costs but not all and so that is the unknown how much of those costs could we truly avoid um and if we could those would that would provide budget relief but to the extent they did not buy those services from us and we could not avoid those costs because a lot of them are lumpy and um people can't be divided into parts and pieces easily um so we don't think we could if they did not buy services from us we

[74:00] do not believe we would have budget relief to the tune of 3.4 million it may be 2 million it might be 1.5 million it would be some amount less than that but if we um i get that so that's helpful so but if we if we're saying that um we're going to incur these expenses or some at least some of these expenses anyway is that 3.4 is it really fair to say that it costs us 6.4 million plus some of those other numbers plus 34.4 to operate the library if we have to spend that 3.4 if we need those lawyers and it people and hr people and systems anyway it's really not costing us that extra 3.4 million to operate the library because if we just shut the library's doors tomorrow which we would never do um that 3.4 million a lot of it wouldn't go away we just keep spending is that right that's correct okay so then going back to the earlier slide when we added up how much it cost us to run the library we should really back that 3.4 million out right well i wouldn't i mean i have to think about this but i don't think i would

[75:00] back out the whole thing and i think it's true that if it was a standalone entity i think it would cost them 3.4 million to to buy those services so if we look at that slide the total cost of providing these services i think that what that was really trying to get at is if if you are trying to buy services to run a library it probably would cost you between three and three point five million dollars to have those administrative services for you right but it's not it's not costing us 3.4 million because that sounds like a lot of that money we'll spend with or without a library is that right that's still costing us though right but but the library's not costing us we've made a decision to have a legal certain size and an i.t staff certain sizing hr staff and you said many of those costs would not be avoided if the library chose district shows not to buy from us sure okay so so some of that 3.4 million can

[76:01] be attributed to operating library it sounds like a lot of it's not well actually i do think at least two million is very directly related to whatever okay that's helpful to break that out so about two million is it could be avoided if we didn't um support the library or the library district didn't want to buy from us and 1.4 is unavoidable is that your rough estimate i think that's our good estimate that's that's helpful that's all i have right now okay yes you may sorry to interrupt but just that i mean about that there's a good set of questions but um i don't think you could back any of it out of the current way that we talk about how much the library costs because because it is the library's you know um proportionate share of those centralized expenses of the entire city organization so i mean in different hypotheticals where the library gets turned off or or um tries to provide all the services on their own the numbers would work out a little bit differently but i think it is the case that

[77:00] that 3.4 million is the proportional share of the library's centralized costs i'm going to assume if we have a further questions or or points on that we can get to a discussion so thanks aaron and mark wallach is up next hey thank you um my first question is for david um can conveyance of library assets to the district be done by lease or does it have to be a conveyance of fee title it could be done by lease it could be done either way and from what we've looked at um of the other library districts that have been formed with municipal in part municipal libraries it's been done both ways so we can effectively ensure that those assets are not subject to any future financing by the library district yes okay um my next question i guess would be i'm not sure who would answer i am just curious does anybody know what

[78:01] percentage of the voters in the proposed district live outside of the city of boulder anybody i'm thinking 30 says the commitment library commissioner juana what's the number again 30 percent okay um are there any estimates for future growth in salaries expenses inflation that are that are built into uh your estimates uh if we're doing a library district and raising 15.8 million dollars how is that going to accommodate for future needs um so when the excuse me hi um so when the um uh financial uh an analysis was uh are

[79:02] originally constructed in uh 2018 they did account for growth um on an i believe an annual basis of uh i think three percent to three and a quarter percent um in that range so that is uh a accounted for to a certain extent but the tax itself will be relatively fixed uh except the extent that property values go up okay that that is correct and i guess my last question would be i think for kara um we we're using a calculation of the tax impact based on home values of 850 000 how did we arrive at that number i think that was the number that was used by the consultants back in 2018

[80:03] and i think it was a median value for single-family homes something like that at the time um but again you can do math around that you know clearly like multi-family home has condos and townhouses have probably a lot of value so i'm just concerned that that may not appropriately state what the impact of the tax will be i i did some very sophisticated financial research today and looked on the mls and i found uh 12 listings of single family homes at 850 000 or under against 134 in excess of 850. so i mean it says to me that uh we may be looking at a number that's a little low um in terms of that and i'm also and i you know i made this a question is should we not

[81:02] break out in a little more detail what the impact would be on commercial properties i i would imagine most commercial properties are in excess of 850 000 and many by a great multiple of that um so i'm i'm right we do think that the average i think of the commercial property is closer to 3 million or the median is closer to 3 million we can provide a table um and attach that to uh the study session summary that sort of provides a table of different assumed market values for both residential and uh commercial and very very helpful okay okay i think you've uh covered my questions okay thanks and i apologize my camera all of a sudden on my computer decided it wanted to turn off so i my camera back on nowhere make a request for information that can dovetails on the marks you may thank you so carl that was real

[82:02] helpful if you could actually provide three pieces of information one is the impact to a median price of a house which whatever that is i think it's above 850 as mark says these days second is the impact um of course gallagher will phase in over a long the gallagher um elimination will phase in a long time so just let's just focus on now what what the impact tax impact on um an average commercial property would be and the third element that i'd asked for is is it and this will be a little harder to calculate but i'm going to guess that the folks the good folks of bahrain could probably help us with this is how much would be the impact for tenants i know that unlike commercial properties where taxes are generally passed straight through residential tenants which are about 53 of our residents indirectly pay taxes but eventually the landlords recoup that in the in the course of rent if you could work with bara and see if you could um

[83:00] uh get a rough estimate from them about how much how much an average rent is um and how much what proportion of that is property taxes and therefore what the increase would be at these middle levies that would be real helpful for our residential tenants okay we can do that thank you thank you all right thanks uh bob and mark and cara i wanted to note that um wanna put in the chat that it's assessed value not sales price if that was not yet understood um and also wanted to ask i saw david farnan's hand up and then down so david did you have a response to a question that mark wallach asked no i i mean thank you rachel i some answers to questions along the way but um the last questions i think it could it would be good to give us a chart when we did the gk bound study the average assessed value of residential property in boulder was 647 thousand dollars um we upped that to 850 at the time in 2019 or 2020 when we were preparing

[84:01] the packet for city council because again council said the property values were significantly higher than that average assessed value and as far as commercial properties i mean it is a good question and the average i believe is three million over forty percent of the uh commercial properties are valued at under eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars so some for some perspective on there the average may not give us what we're looking for in the sense in which there are some rather large property holders large property holders which skew that average uh up to 3 million when more than 40 when 40 of the house uh commercial properties are valued at under 850. thank you david and i did not give you a chance to introduce yourself would you like to for the record i'm david farnan i'm the library and arts director for the city of boulder thank you all right thanks for that answer um and we may have more questions for you later uh mary you are up next

[85:01] thank you rachel um my first question has to do with um slide number three we've been focusing on establishing it by ordinance of resolution and i wanted to better understand the petition route um as i'm as i'm interpreting it here is it you do the petition you do the hundred signatures and that 100 signatures plus the boundaries and proposed mill levy that would come through the petition i presume um would establish the district is that correct that's correct um so the hundred signatures that gets you on that that will get you on the ballot so a hundred verified signatures will get you a place on the ballot when you

[86:00] go down to that second or the third box in the list you know you kind of go into that the loop in the statute that always kind of wants you to do it by um by resolution or ordinance so that you can it could be established at that point or if the county doesn't establish the district the the matter gets referred to the voters and then if the voters approve it it's formed um at that formation election time you could have your taber election at that same election or you could or you could wait until a year from then um and do a taper election in a subsequent year and some districts do that uh or have done that um i think it's really kind of a question of strategy and you know what what you think will be successful okay and then um thank you and then so the district is established and then i'm

[87:01] trying to understand that red line that goes out from district established and yeah so so yeah so my ques yeah just my question is um is the district established after the votes the the ballot measure is decided or is the district established i'm not understanding that red line over to a point of a board of trustees and then underneath it where it says or referred to voters yeah could you help me with that please sure so i think that probably what's confusing about it is that uh you know it's referring to two different things there are two different paths that the county commissioners can take at this point in the process first they can just they could the statute says consider establishing a district

[88:00] they can establish the district if they do that then we have that time period where we can opt out before the commissioners set the ballot title just they just say thanks for the petition petitioners and then they um just do what we normally do during ballot season when you get a petition you set a ballot title and set it send it uh to the county clerk for um you know for getting put on ballots for the november election so it's two different processes and if they do the district which is why it's in red um and then the red arrow if the district's established the next step in the process is you point the board so this is where i'm getting hung up so the the the board is established before the election if if that's true if the the county commissioners create the

[89:00] district okay as opposed to referring it to the voters right okay so the commissioners have two choices then they can either establish a district and then appoint the board or they can refer the establishment to the voters correct and then after the voters um if they decide they affirmative to the district then the board is formed that's correct and there's okay there's a um you know there's a recipe basically in the statute for how the the two governmental entities cooperate in forming that first um board of trustees okay got it thank you um that's very helpful and then um that my next question has to do i believe it is and i need to go look at

[90:01] my version of the slides here that i have it's the one that's got all the costs in it um i'm not finding it in my total it's the one that's got the the um general fund 7.6 up at the top i think that might be slide nine is that right okay yeah yeah that's it that's it slide nine um so that's the one um so on slide nine i wanted to um better understand the the budget gap due to covid 1.3 um i'm i'm trying to understand so

[91:01] so because of coved um the library and the library had to close so it had to close because um you couldn't have people congregating in the numbers that they usually do at the library so because of the closure then there was um a resultant staff reduction so much how much of the budget is related to the closure the budget gap is related to the closure versus how much of the the budget gap is related to um just the budget gap so in other words there there were staff that were um there was really no where to go for work because it was closed and then once it opens up how many of

[92:01] the people would return to work if it is just a budget gap am i is there yeah that making sense so thank you mary and we did talk about that during the budget process and the reductions that were proposed by the library were and david may jump in here too but they were um characterized as both budget reductions because of public health requirements as well as budget reductions because of the need to offer up budget reductions because of the decline in revenue for the general fund and i don't know that it's really parsed apart between those two causes really yeah because i'm wondering because at some point the library will reopen and in order to have it function there'll be a certain number of

[93:00] employees that have to return so there would be a delta there but the the library is not funded to return to pre-covered um levels of service is my understanding and and i see david david farnan might want to jump in and talk to this a little bit yeah i mean thank you for the question mary if i understand correctly um car is absolutely right we we don't we do not have we do not have the funding to reopen the branches uh in the budget for 2021. we're going to do you know we're going to do everything we can we're trying to restructure some things to offer as much services as we possibly can but the funding the funding is the critical issue at this point if if if we were to go to blue tomorrow i don't we do not have the capacity to open up the libraries is that so yeah that's well that kind of um so

[94:00] my understanding is that the branches won't be reopening but that the main library would reopen and and it would have less capacity than prior pre-covet nevertheless it would be a difference between um closed um you know because of covid and then full on operation and in between full-on operation and closure because of covid there is the post-covet reopening level um so what is that difference and is that the full 1.3 yeah the majority i i mean car would have to clarify this but the majority of the 1.3 million dollars that the library reduced in funding for 2021 um was personnel cost so i believe that's in excess of 60 of all the cuts we made cuts across the

[95:00] board in everything collections um but the primary reductions were to staffing right right so the staffing once once the library reopens will the staffing level be the same as pre-covet or is it some intermediary um no not not until funding were restored so if funding were restored in 2022 yes we would reopen the buildings with the current with the pre-covered levels of staffing but until that time those those employees have been let go so they're not if um covered restrictions are lifted in 2021 we don't have a current plan for how to reopen um the branches am i i feel like yeah but yeah my my question about i i i understand that branches will not be reopening

[96:00] um but in my understanding go ahead do you mind if i ask when i'm hearing your question as slightly differently yeah please aaron um david the i think what i'm hearing the question of which is a really interesting question is to what extent does the 2021 budget include the 1.3 million dollar budget gap just baked into the budget for both the main library and the branches right so that like to mary's point that if the if suddenly the health issues went away tomorrow to what extent do you have the budget in the 2021 budget to go back to normal versus how much of it is is this full 1.3 budget gap that is not budgeted for in 2021 you know so we we are offering carryout services at meadows and have been since august of last year with the short interim when the covet went to red we're hoping to be able to offer some level of carryout services uh at our other locations sometime in

[97:02] 2021 you know we we re um we repurpose staff to do home delivery to i think you know we're calling every single patron who's over the age of 60 just to check in on them so we have some staff who are available who are working remotely who are bound by some restrictions to covet as well so they're not going to be coming back to the building soon we have gained assurances from i'd say 99 percent of our staff that have coveted restrictions are lifted further they would be willing and able to come back to work one hundred percent um on site so the majority of our funding is staffing that are in public service buildings they are they are the staff you see every single day and that they constitute a portion of that 1.3 million dollars so there are some things that likely would not come back about maine mary i mean the canyon theater

[98:01] we don't anticipate being able to reopen in 2021 we're not really sure about the maker space in 2021 both of those parts of the library have experienced not only code restrictions but staffing reductions um so and that's across the board i mean in every department there have been staffing reductions including in public services and the branch staffing who work in public services at the branches so in 2021 there i'm trying to figure out a way to rephrase my question but what i'm hearing is is that if the library were to reopen and it would just be the main branch i understand that the the the smaller branches the meadows and um the one in south boulder the reynolds would not be reopening only to do the the carryout

[99:03] service but the live the main library would open up with some level of staffing minus the canyon theater and minus the maker space that's correct we're open now i mean it's limited browsing and no you can't stay forever but we have open computing on the second floor we have limited browsing in the main library um you can come in and select your own books so that that exists now i mean okay that would probably not expand dramatically but we could we have had a lot of requests to open up the stacks so that patrons can come in and browse the entire collection again i'm you know i'd love to be able to do that i it won't happen until coveted restrictions are lifted and we have the funding we can ensure that we can move around funding to ensure cleanliness so that i guess that's my question is reopening all that what you just described is that reopening based on

[100:02] covet um or funding or both it's both mary okay and um and right now that 1.3 budget gap is for both but only for for both plus the branches is that correct that's correct okay great thank you thanks mary um i'm gonna ask one question maybe while david's nearby oh i have more you're not done sorry yeah yeah i have more questions yeah i think i have um one more um mark asked my um one of my questions so i would with respect to um

[101:00] negotiating i think this is kind of everybody's question if we were to do it by resolution there will ordinance a resolution there would be a some staff resources that would be necessary in order to do that and probably went from both library and the city attorney's office and perhaps other departments do we have any idea about what kinds of resources would be required to create that iga and would we have to impact other things going on in the city and to what extent is the capacity to negotiate the iga impede it by um covet reductions in staff well our our staff is down like many

[102:00] city departments um but i think that we you know if this were a priority of the council we would certainly put resources towards it to try to get it done but would there be would we have to make decisions about things that don't get done in order to get this done mary that's a really good question that uh in you know in addition to the city attorney's office uh library staff finance staff um there's you know a whole group of staff that would probably be involved in uh in working on an iga if the council chose to go that route so that might be a good question for us to follow up on and bring to the april public hearing as a follow-up item just just to make sure that we can answer that question on what the trade-offs would be i think as david described if if the direction of council is to move um down the iga path we would we would be able to we would rearrange the work plan to make

[103:00] it happen um i'm not sure what those trade-offs might be right now um i'd like to huddle up with the team to be able to understand what that would look like thank you chris and that would be i think that that would be um i would like to see that is what what would we have to because invariably some things there would be trade-offs and we would have to make some decisions of what about what would fall off so um thank you thanks and i think that is my last question thank you thanks mary um sam i see your hand i'm gonna ask a couple quick questions and then um you'll get your double dip um so i think this is maybe to chris or david gear or david farnan um what would be what is the public hearing in april exactly like what's going to be on the table for that and then at some point we would usually

[104:00] receive a staff recommendation like on slide 11 here's your four options here's what we think is is the best one for the library so i'm just wondering like when will we have is that something that that can be advised tonight is that coming in april because um it seems to me the questions are sort of do we want to look at forming a library district do we want to move forward with that and do we want to do it by resolution and i'm not sure if staff has opinions on that and if they would come out tonight or in april so i'll start and i i'll invite chris and david to to follow up on that as well but so i guess i i'm looking at april as being whatever the council wants it to be um when we started when we were working on this in 2020 we were starting to kind of move down the road to actually get some direction from council on kind of the path that they want that they would like to see

[105:00] the city take in terms of both governance and finance um and you know covet kind of knocked us off our our path um and we're we're starting to re res start that and and frankly we even took a step backwards like we were kind of retaking the same step that we took in february in terms of the background the questions and and those types of things as well so um i guess i would love to hear what the council thinks and in terms of you know i know that um both members of the library commission and the boulder library champions has done some level of community engagement about the the the district um one of the things that we were talking about is that the council hasn't had the opportunity yet to let the community kind of weigh in and talk to them about it so i guess we would be nice to have some

[106:00] kind of a little bit more formalized way to let the community kind of weigh in on some of the the ideas around this topic so david um what i'm hearing if i may just jump in here rachel i'm hearing that essentially this is a political question this is not a a situation in which staff makes a recommendation it's strictly a political question is that well i i don't know that i would go that far because i i'm guessing that david farnan would have some probably pretty strong views about how libraries get funded um but there certainly is quite a large political component to this you know what a municipal library is a service that the city has been providing for you know over a hundred years um and i think that you know the conversation around giving that up that's that that's i i would consider that a big deal that's a big conversation um and yeah it kind of a lot of that

[107:01] falls into the council's lap and and maybe i'll just add on i think david described it really well um that this is this is a really big decision and so um what we were anticipating is that the april meeting would really be the opportunity one to hold a public hearing on this and for council to then um give the initial direction of which which of these paths um are you interested in in potentially going down if any of them and really get get that direction that's what i think um the uh we as a staff um the the library district as well as the library champions are are looking for is um uh which route are we going to go are we going to look at keeping the library as a municipal service and exploring uh continuing to explore funding um are we going to begin down the

[108:00] the library district route of making it a district service uh through either a petition process or a resolution process so that's what we were envisioning but i think as david described it's really for for i think council to help shape that uh in what you're looking for as well okay um so you will be looking uh for us to vote in april on whether we want to proceed with a district and by resolution if i'm hearing that correctly um i will say from my perspective it would be helpful if there was a you know a staff recommendation in there because we usually do get those um understanding mary's point that it's a political question it's still helpful in my opinion to hear from staff what what is the recommended recommendation for the best outcome um for this department um so and maybe just invite you before we get into discussion because we're now uh 20 minutes over this whole agenda item and we haven't even gotten to

[109:00] discussion so if i could um just get clarified what is it that you're looking for us to give feedback on tonight as we launch into this discussion after sam and mary's questions well i i think um you've given us a lot so far just by your questions one of the things that i was really kind of hoping to hear tonight was the kind of things and or the information or resources that council members need to be educated on the topic and you know ready to kind of start to provide some level of direction thanks okay sam you're next and then mary thanks a bunch and i know that we are over rachel i acknowledge that and uh it's a big topic so there we go um on slide nine uh some of the questions that were asked tickled me a bit to want to know um

[110:02] we've got this deferred capital maintenance line 2.3 million we're going to catch up on deferred and then eventually that's going to go towards presumably additional capital and then at the bottom we have unfunded needs for expanded service level operating and capital 4.2 million and coincidentally 4.2 million and 15 8.8 million adds up to 20.0 million i was curious how the 4.2 million was derived like what and it seems to be ongoing ad infinitum uh so how did that come about that was that part of the master plan evaluation i assume there's a bottom-up build up for that it's a great question it's a great question sam i believe you and mark both alluded to how do you how do you predict it out the funding in the future and so the gk baum study that was done in uh 2018 2019

[111:02] around funding for the library calculated all of the costs the average cost of operating the library over the course of that 15-year time frame that gk pound did was roughly 20 million dollars a year and there are a number of costs that factor into that and a lot of assumptions a lot of assumptions and variables and so that is the really the best case scenario that they came up with in terms of what those operating costs would be i can tell you because i've been looking at it recently over the course of those 15 years roughly roughly 20 percent of those costs go to capital maintenance uh roughly seven percent of those costs um total accrued revenue goes to new capital and so the new capital funding is really around things that we don't know yet right so reynolds is old at some point do we replace reynolds or do we build a library in the eastern portion of of boulder county above the city of boulder um so all those things are just they're all speculative guesses um having played around with the

[112:02] model at infinitum i feel pretty confident that those mill rates and the overall revenue is what's necessary because again going back to the assumptions one bad year in property assessments and everything in that model goes out the window right so when we talk about expanded service level the the master plan paints some picture of that but really it's not they're not huge cost um holes right opening a gun barrel lamp branch opening a nylon branch activating the canyon theater funding the collections at a level which we think is um more appropriate to the city of boulder in this area those are not major major costs they don't add up what does add up is building uh reserve building a 20 reserve and addressing those capital needs um especially the capital maintenance needs which by my calculations are a little over 20 of the overall

[113:00] expenditures of the library district in 15 years okay that's helpful now if we go to page 25 of the packet so i'm jumping off the presentation here jumping into the packet that's where we show the library budget change over time and i just want to make sure i'm interpreting that right before covet hit i believe we had a 9.1 million dollar total budget for 2020 which was 1.6 million from the property tax 7.5 million in the general fund so leaving covet out just for a moment does the chart at the top of page 25 of the packet ongoing library budget 2002 to 2020. does that show a 2.37 percent annual growth rate above inflation my understanding of that this is cara and devon can correct me if i'm wrong is

[114:01] that it's um that's the compound growth rate of the cumulative growth rate not counting inflation and then the 0.39 is if that was adjusted for inflation uh yes car that is uh correct okay so just making sure then it sounds like the 5.6 million to 6.1 million is the inflation increase and the 5.6 million to 9 million uh as this was budgeted before covet is a 2.37 annual budget increase for the library okay super thank you that's helpful and then my last question is um again about formation david this is for you and i just wanted to understand on slide four it says the establishing entities determine the appropriate boundaries period then there's another bullet that says public hearing or

[115:01] and the next bullet says 90 days written notice of the proposed establishment to other governmental entities so i assume the or means you either have a public hearing or you have 90 days to i think actually that's an error on the slide but that's okay the 90 days written notice is part of the um it's part of the petition process oh 90 days is part of the petition process not resolution and ordinance yeah i don't think so no okay got it thank you carried over and i see that perfect that clears it up those are all my questions rachel thank you sam um mary perfect segue this is the slide i wanted to go to um the establishing entities appoint the first board of trustees five or seven members to the library district after that is it the council

[116:01] that continues to appoint um ongoing members and is it done through the regular um boards and commissions process how does that work well i think it can work a variety of ways i i it just in terms of looking at how other library districts have done it they've all been appointment processes and so they vary from um having one or another government so we'll all just start the first one you know the first board of trustees what the statute says is that the council identifies two people who will be on a committee and then the board of county commissioners does the same and that committee basically creates the first board of trustees

[117:01] and and then once once they have selected their five or seven members then those slates get sent to each governmental entity for ratification so that's how that's the first board in terms of just kind of looking at various ways governments have done it like douglas county the county board of commissioners does it they're done different ways in different districts whether it's whether they continue that ratification process have one governmental entity or the other do it and then some actually have the remaining board members appoint the new board members so that's kind of the gamut and after the first board um it has been seated one of the things that you can address in your iga is how future boards will be appointed

[118:03] okay so that yeah that was my my my follow-up question so the that first board of trustees that is appointed by a committee of two council members and a committee of two people appointed by the county commissioners decides how the future trustees are appointed that's correct now one thing i'll say is it the council can appoint not city council member people to be on that committee okay and then and so then afterward who is the board of trustees for the library district accountable to well i guess that they would be accountable well they had the statute makes reference to the fact that uh trustees have a fiduciary obligation to the health of the district um when i kind of look at how the

[119:01] formation and how they're governed it seems to me that it's more akin to um being like a board of directors uh of a corporation or a non-pro you know or on a board for a non-profit you have a fiduciary obligation to make sure that uh the organization is running a in a responsible manner but it's not you know it's it's not the same as being on city council where all of you get the opportunity to run for election as well as once once once you take your seeds you you've been given you know 14 different priorities and you have a city manager that will ask you would you help me balance these priorities you you would i don't think you would have that same kind of governance with the library district it would be

[120:00] much more single purpose and so once a board of trustee is appointed they serve out their term regardless of i mean they don't have to run for reelection they're just appointed and they are beholden to the well-being of the district itself yeah yep and the uh there are provisions in the statute that talk about the end procedures for removal of commission members um i don't have that right off the top of my head but i do recall that there is also you know that in addition to the process for removal i believe that there's also a requirement that um whoever taught would toss such a member off the board or the board of trustees has to have good cause so if there is not a standardless decision that that would be used

[121:03] to take such an action okay thank you that's all i have okay thanks mary thanks david i think we are um technically it's time to move into discussion and i want to um just quickly go through staff had asked us to answer a couple questions did or make sure that we answered these so did we have questions about options for governance i think people asked those as we went did we have questions about process and procedures for forming a library district i think that one's checked off and questions about funding options presented for either form of governance i think we also um did that so question four is is there additional information that council directs staff to prepare for the april 2021 public hearing and my sense from david gear's answer is that's what they were hoping for us um to answer tonight and to walk away with so that they can prepare for the april

[122:01] hearing so i also just want to summarize i think there were some kind of buckets of information and questions that we wanted staff to really um prepare for april um and then invite people to expand our way in if i'm getting this wrong but um one is it sounds like we really want um the nuts and bolts like times 100 for the financial questions of possibly forming a district and and where our finances are now as well as what goes into the iga and the considerations there um and then you know the the questions will be teed up do we want to form a district um do we want to do it by resolution do we want to get working on an iga um and i think i heard some periphery sort of when when might the ballot measure um be be teed up to go to voters so i wanted to just present that to everyone for consideration as we go into discussion i think that those are the um questions that staff once answered i think that we

[123:01] have um given staff a lot of information and and prepared them to answer so invite people um to weigh in beyond that now and the hands i see up mary is yours up again or is that still up okay so i see uh mark mark bob mirabai and aaron so let's start with mark well just a a quick uh comment i think we need to add to the information um that we need from staff is what is going to be displaced by this effort if we're doing it by resolution um how much staff time what will we have to forego uh in order to get this done um i think that's a pretty critical component of of how we move forward so that would be my request thank you mark uh next i see bob i guess i have a kind of a question and

[124:01] it's really for council as opposed to staff um because it will kind of inform my opinion on what to do about the resolution question i kind of be curious it sounds like we have the the prerogative we or petitioners have the prerogative of forming a district and asking the tabor tax question right away or deferring the tabor tax question for some period of time a year or two and i guess i would ask my council colleagues if people don't mind answering um do how do folks feel about a tabor tax question on a library district this year because if the answer is yes i think it takes us down a certain procedural path if the answer is no it may take us down a different procedural path and so rachel if you don't mind i'd like to ask that question of counsel i don't know if you want to do that by straw poll or let everyone weigh in but i'd love to know if people think we should ask the mill levy question on the november

[125:01] 2021 ballot um okay i'm happy to do a straw poll on that um and i'm assuming that you think that's relevant tonight i i personally would rather answer it uh in conjunction with the april discussion because i don't feel like i have all the information yet from staff in terms of what we would displace and whether we even want to form the district that seems like a threshold question but happy to do a straw poll so i think actually go ahead and start it could i just request yeah sure could i just request that we do the struggle after we've had a chance to chat a little bit because i have a couple thoughts on that question before i throw my hand up or down that's fine with me so bob i'm going to put a pin in the straw poll but we will get into it uh before we finish this discussion okay did you have another question bob or but but might i'm going to approach

[126:01] this exactly opposite from aaron i can't answer the question unless i know if there's going to be a tax question this year so i i i can weigh in under under both scenarios but i'd really like to know where people are thinking all right i will uh circle back to you i think miraby's up next oh i'm kind of with bob i i do think that this is an important question to ask and so um i'll wait i guess till we have the discussion on it but during the public hearing i guess and i understand that this is a difficult thing to ask of staff but i guess maybe base it on the emails and the feedback that we've heard on in the past in terms of what to have ready because again this is a very hot topic as i'm sure we all know and so the questions that i would have prepared is anything that the community might be asking um and obviously again you can't know what they're going to be asking but maybe base that off of what they've asked in the past and the emails that we've received so that would just be the one thing is to be extremely prepped for the community and what they're going to be

[127:01] asking or stating during the public hearing thanks miraby um aaron i've got your hand up next but so sorry about that and i guess nearby didn't mean to derail your comments i i guess i just wanted to get one comment out before we took a straw poll and i'm fine having one after i get to say a couple words here but the way i would think about the tax is that i i would want to hold open the possibility of a terrible election in 2021 but i would not say that we should definitively do it in 2021 i think and that would to me would depend on um like how much stimulus comes through um for example to to help us with our financial situation the city what our economy is looking like you know what sort of what the economic uh conditions are like in the city later on this year so i would i would hold the possibility open and make a decision later this year

[128:00] thanks and i have other thoughts but did i do do we want to am i fine doing the struggles since i got to say my couple sentences okay um i see mark mary and david gear does anybody else have a a um in terms of hands up does anybody else have a comment on the timing of the straw poll and adam's hand is now up mary does all right mary so i guess i'm gonna answer the question that bob posed um i you know soon as i sit on the finite financial strategy committee and we are having conversations about the um the ccs tax which i actually want to have renamed to community resilience and safety tax um after what happened in texas but anyway it's another matter um i i'm really concerned that asking a tabor question on top of

[129:01] that question could um could put at risk the um the i'll call it the the infrastructure tax um and we really need to get that one resolved and i don't want to risk that tax with another question thank you for that adam did you have a point on this before we do a struggle then i'll come to you next march mine is a comment i don't know where it fits i don't know if it should be pre-straw poll or not to be honest but i'll make it um in my mind it's probably important that we changed the maximum mill levy before we asked the question just a thought since there's no point in asking it if we can't do it um and i don't know how that fits in the process at all so

[130:00] could i conclude adam if we formed a district we wouldn't have to change the mill levy limit okay i missed that part so thanks for that aaron thanks adam thanks aaron mark wallach thanks for your patience no problem i have a very strong view on on the timing issue uh it is consistent with mary's uh view i'm also a member of the financial strategies committee i think um the extension of the capital improvement tax is extremely important for this city but any extension of a taxes is a heavy lift and i do not want to confuse that issue with a tabor um ballot measure relating to the library i think it's it would be horrible timing um especially as we're still dealing with the the pandemic and asking for approval of in effect to tax measures um i think is

[131:02] very unwise so i have a i'm happy to try to move the ball along a little bit with respect to the library district itself but i would not want to see the tabor tax measure this year and i also suggest that its chance of passage might be a little better during a general election year um than a special election year so for all those reasons i would very much like to see that ballot measure or the table measure not be on the ballot this year thank you noted junior i see your hand looks new newly raised thank you rachel um i did have a comment and i think there were people ahead of me but i know why you let me speak first because i did mention that i was going to leave and did you so can i ask the question or should i wait no go for it thank you rachel

[132:02] um i think i understand bob's comment and i just wanted to add i have a question first and i think it might be for david is it for david or probably para how many ballot measures do we intend to have this year because i know um mark mentioned well one or two but is that the max because i know that we will have a discussion in a couple of weeks and we will be talking more about um financing when it comes to um services for the homeless i don't know if that's gonna be we are even looking into it a tax for that particular issue but is it just these two for now because i'm wondering do we don't even know how many ballot measures what we have already so how do we make the decision of whether to defer or not do we have a number on that well there was a slide that showed

[133:01] potential ballot measures in the presentation um and i don't have the slideshow in front of me so there there is um an indication but when typically when we come to council in may for the kind of the pre-ballot season study session staff will attempt to identify what the potential ballot measures will be based on the conversations that you all have had as well as whatever we're hearing from our colleagues at the county the stage and the school district thank you yeah i think for me that's the chat that's the only challenge even though i support uh i fully support the districting i do think if it's competing with another issue that is very important to me i think it's going to be really hard um

[134:02] so and then the thing is even if we were to maybe my i guess the conflict that i have or the problem for me is is it necessary that we have the ballot measure this year coupled with the creation by resolution or can we just have the creation and then as we've met discussed before just put the tax kick it down the can to the next council in a couple of years and what difference would that make basically you know i i couldn't have asked you to ask a better question because i wanted to make a comment along those lines anyway but one of the things that you know and i'll just maybe channel a little bit of kim's kim setter when he was with the council last year so one of the things that he you know and i know that people may

[135:00] perceive him as a very pro-district kind of person but one of the things that kim talks about a lot is that the benefits of exploring a district without your tabor measure allows you to have that community conversation about what this district is going to look like so that when you do the um taber election people know what they truly know what they're voting on and i guess as a way to kind of seal that deal you know he has talked about other uh other library districts where they put a provision in the iga that says um continuity you know that the library districts formed you lease all the property to it for a nickel the city would usually finance it in the interim just as we're financing it now um but but that if they don't

[136:01] get a taber mill levy within you know i don't know one two three elections that the district will end okay thank you for that you really do kind of put the decision into the voters hands in that process of kind of a fully baked idea thank you so much i think that those were my only questions um i don't have a strong preference just to answer bob's question deferring i i think i just feel like i don't have the full picture that's really the problem i just don't know how many taxes we intend to have on the ballot so i think that makes it a little bit fuzzy for me because we're still having that discussion um so i don't have the answer whether we should defer or or have it this year and i just wanted to add as well i will be leaving the meeting shortly i just didn't want to miss this import meeting thank you rachel

[137:01] thanks for being here junie um and and good luck to whatever's coming up for you um so does anybody mind if i do the straw poll now uh give me a all right we're doing the straw poll then so um i think the question that bob is asking is um please raise your hand if you favor putting um let's see if you favor putting the library district's tabor measure on the 2021 ballot for sure does anybody just for sure want to put it on 2021 ballot um does anybody okay so that one's done um raise your hand if you do not want to decide that tonight so that's the category i'm in so i see one two three four of us in that category and then raise your hand if you know that you do not want to put the library district tabor measure on the 2021 ballot and would like to reserve that possibly for

[138:00] 2022 or beyond so i see bob sam mary mark and nearby so that's five so that is five four do not put it on in 2021 okay so that's straw poll for whatever that means not a not a firm vote but whatever we can do in study sessions straw poll accomplished um and now i see sam and then adam mary and aaron thank you rachel david you couldn't have answered um junie's question any better to do this up so thank you for that um i think that the the meat of this question is in what the iga says so if i look at the iga outline all the details about what's being transferred when how many tapered elections could fail before you dissolve it and so on and so forth it seems to me like the iga is the heart of the matter and what's in the iga is in the heart of the matter and all that forming the district does is get some

[139:00] straw men people appointed to the uh the board the trustee board but we don't need that because the iga itself needs to really be driven by i think staff and council at the moment to come up with what the community wants so for me what i'm interested in hearing from the community and staff is what they propose for iga terms on april 20th so that's like what i would like to know um and i don't see a particular driver to do the formation if we spent the rest of the year kind of working through the iga and and as council and as our community having the conversation that david referenced which i think is great i think we should have that conversation before we even form the um the district then i think we can make progress this year and i'm not necessarily potentially even in favor of forming the district because i don't need i think we need to now by the time it's the year that we're going to do a taber election

[140:00] so say it was 2022 i would totally support forming a district if in conjunction we intend to go to the ballot and have a pretty good iga kind of worked out because the iga is where all the action is so that's really all i've got for tonight thanks to staff and thanks for putting up with a slightly longer meeting thanks sam um next up is adam i had one more question that has probably been asked and answered but uh is it good for faq prep for our april meeting um who actually gets to vote on the uh iga and the formation of the district do people who would be in the district but outside the city of boulder get to vote on it like how does that part work because i can't remember it yeah so if you were to do if you were to form the district by resolution or ordinance uh the boulders city council would make that decision and the board

[141:02] of county commissioner would make it on behalf of anybody you know if we're going to put unincorporated areas into the district the funding of the district under tabor requires to go to a vote at a november election so the voters would ultimately you know have the veto power to say hey you know either i'm all in i'm ready to fund this or i'm not okay so just trying to get this 100 certain um the formation of the district itself we can just do that right with without voter approval yes you and the county it's whoever you know if you were to fund a district that was only the city limits or i mean establish a district that was only the city when it's it would only be you but if you wanted to do one that included unincorporated areas it's full gotcha and if we want to fund that then

[142:00] the unincorporated people have to vote on it as well that's correct okay just want to make sure that we have that prepared for april thanks adam mary and then erin and bob thanks rachel um i'm gonna bring up a question that'll probably boo me out of the room but i'm going to do it anyway because i found the math really interesting so mark asked the question of how many people within the property tax revenue area of the proposed this of the proposed district boundaries come from outside of the city and the answer was 30 percent um and so i took that 30 percent and i um multiplied 15.8 million by 30 percent that comes out to about four and three-quarters million

[143:01] um which when you subtract four and three-quarters million from 15.8 you end up with about 11 million just a little over 11 million which curiously enough is about the same amount that um on slide nine um which is the current budget for the library so and then curiously enough that four point four point seven four million is pretty close to 4.6 so you know as the conversation went on then i heard um a question somebody made the comment about um or it was the the proposal for the the city the cost allocation that the the district would contract with the city to provide those services so what if we flip that around

[144:00] and said the city provided library services to the people outside the city boundary but within the proposed library district which would then bring in that four and three quarters million and then the city or the let's call it a out of city district um would then contract with the city for library services um so if they if that would produce that would bring the whole budget up to 15.8 million um and then so the question then becomes is how could you set it up in a way that the people outside the city boundary but within the proposed library district would raise the money in order to pay the city for library services it's a little bit different

[145:01] concept but i think the the result the outcome is the same so i guess my question is is that something that could be done the i have a question it looks like david farnand is going to be ready to answer that mary's has something you want answered tonight or something that we can put in the the exciting packet for april and then i was up for all of council mary did invite us to boo her so i don't know if we want to like do that all at once or just kidding but no um that can wait till the april memo because i think we should let david have a quick crack at it yeah i feel compelled to answer right juana gomez i believe was answered the question about 30 and that's not inaccurate but that 30 is not all encompassed by the district boundaries so the district boundaries that the um library champions drew actually encompasses 20 percent an

[146:00] increase in 20 percent of assessed property values so 80 of the assessed property value that would make up the revenue for the district is within the city of boulder 20 of the assessed property tax value that make up the revenue for a library district is in that outer lying area there are extensive numbers of patrons in colorado and beyond the district boundaries that use the public library so i think your the math is your math very well interesting it doesn't hold up with regard to the assessed values the property in um in the district boundaries thank you for that um i just went by the 30 number so thank you thanks david okay aaron and bob oh sorry mary did you have more okay aaron and bob good um well i mean i um i would like uh for us to come back in april to see how we can move forward uh the library district in

[147:00] 2021 you know we do have the you know our library commission and and many interested uh and devoted users of the library who feel like that's the best path forward to providing um a stable revenue stream for our beloved local library system so i i want to see to what extent we can move that forward this year now it sounds like at least at this time it's not a binding vote but at this moment majority council wouldn't want to put something on the tabor ballot for this year but i think it would still behoove us to strongly consider forming a district this year as sam noted the the really the the details of how it would work would be in the iga but you can't um you can't write and approve the iga until you've formed the district so i i would like to see in april uh city staff bring forth kind of a clear path to um passing a resolution that would form a district and then move us forward on negotiating an iga

[148:01] uh with the county and the future library district so to me that's kind of the clear path forward in terms of setting up a sustainable future for our library system so i would just like staff to have you know we have we're asking lots of questions about all the different routes um but i i would just like to see that path laid out clearly um as as a potential path that we could um hear from the public on as an alternative and see if that's uh of interest to the to the public and um how we could move forward from that april meeting and as part of that i would really like rachel said i would really request for the library department to to weigh in i mean i get that this is fundamentally a choice by you know the elected officials here on city council but but i'd like to hear from the library department about their perspective on whether or not a district could accomplish the goals and whether they feel like it'd be a good path forward

[149:00] for the library system thanks aaron um and i was going to colloquy and say it would be helpful again if there's a staff recommendation attendant to that so thanks for adding that in um we have bob and then nearby yeah in other words opinions i'm going to agree with sam that there's a lot of work to be done on the iga and and um and we're gonna we the city the council and community have opinions about that whether we own the assets or lease yes that's how we're gonna share um services how we're gonna share employees uh governance a whole bunch of things and it seems to me that creating the district without knowing the answers those questions and then answering those questions is a little like the famous statement of one of our federal representatives who said we have to vote on the bill before we find out what's in it and i think we should find out what's in it first um i get the fact that there won't be a library district straw man

[150:00] trustee on the other side of the negotiating table but i think that we we because we're gonna have ultimate veto power over the iga um should put to take the time and put together an iga and other terms and conditions that we feel comfortable with and if um the majority on council feels strongly and i agree with mark i don't want to muck up the infrastructure tax that we won't have a tax on the november ballot it seems to me we've given ourselves a fairly long runway to answer those questions that's in other words we're not under a shot clock to try to get all those questions answered by august we have um august plus a year and so why i do want to advance this and i'm happy to have a discussion or a public hearing or whatever people want to have in april i think i think my preference is going to be to develop fully we have a lot of we we have more questions now than we did three hours ago and so staff's got a lot of work to do and we haven't even got into the iga

[151:01] terms yet or at least not most of them and so my preference would be to this year answer those questions move this forward as people have suggested and and really have it fully baked so that when it comes back for the creation of a district whether that's done by a council in the county or my preference by the people that can be done in parallel with the tax question and will have a fully formed idea of what a library district is rather than forming it and then trying to find out what we just created thanks bob nearby bring us home i said one other thought and again i know this is difficult um and i don't know if this is possible with staff but maybe you you know how at the end of presentations you put up questions for us i'm still curious to hear from the community and so when we have this public comment they're going to be talking about everything they're wanting or not wanting or their views but if there's a staff presentation prior to open comment

[152:01] which i'm hoping there will be um to bring them up to date maybe you can put up some questions you know a few pertinent questions that we really would like answered so that maybe while they're giving their few minutes speech if they can just say yes no yes no to those questions it just might be helpful again i'm just i'm very curious in terms of what the community has to say because i think we've been quite divided on this topic um and it would just be helpful when they're giving those comments to actually have some guidance with what they're saying rather than just uh open-ended these are my comments and again they can still of course add that in but just even just two seconds of saying yes no yes no to what staff puts up if that's a possibility thanks nearby um okay i would ask um staff i'm not oh nearby we're not we're not bringing it home yet i'm sorry mary one more question comment yeah this is i i

[153:00] want to ask the clarifying question i guess of bob and to see if i understood correctly what um he was proposing so bob what you were proposing is to create the iga without the formation of that four-person committee that appoints the straw trustees the straw man trustees and that the city we the council um create this iga then we're not bound to any kind of timelines we can take our time to create that iga and then and then have the iga basically done and then go through that process of forming the the committee and the the um um the trustees the temporary trustees and

[154:00] so that they can finish off the iga that we already proposed and then um take that and the taber question to the voters next year is that what you proposed that's exactly what i'm proposing mary thank you you summarized it better than i did and i just to be clear i think the the people who work on the iga can can be a cross-section it doesn't have to be just council or city staff we could have community members members i would hope the members from the library commission the library champions perhaps even a one or two county residents who would be affected by this who don't live in the city maybe people the county wants to put some people up so it can be a cross section a diverse group of people who work through this ihea but but if we create the district this year um then we're under a shot clock of 90 days and i understand it could be extended but i'm not too sure exactly what the advantage of trying to rush the iga this year if we're not going to ask the real question which is the tax question until next year why not put together that group of people see if we can put pull together an iga i don't know if that'll take us

[155:00] two months or ten months but take take the time since we it looks like we're not going to ask the tax question next year either way anyway and then bottom this out and have some answers that way we can form the district or ask the community form the district and present the tax question all at the same time so could i if i could just respond to um bob's response i like the idea and um i especially like the idea because it sort of spreads out the needed resources for um creating the iga which is something that i have a real concern for um the staff resources um so my question for staff would then be to bring us the staff resources necessary to do you know the shot clock version of the iga and then this um spread out version that bob just proposed thank you that's all i have

[156:00] um i'm gonna call on um aaron and um i also just want to point out i think we're getting a little bit away from tonight's study session because i know that we will have another multi-hour discussion on whether to do a district this year um so we'll we'll try and call it to a close after aaron shares but i think junie left the meeting so i also think you know she wanted to be here for the library discussion if i heard her correctly so i don't want to creep beyond the study session given that she already left erin yeah thanks for that rachel and and i think we should settle these questions you know the next thing when we have a public hearing but just one quick point i wanted to make to what mary and bob were just talking about is that you know by statute the iga is approved by if we went this path the city council the county commissioners and the library trustees that we appoint if we pre-create an iga it could very well get rejected by the legal bodies who were in charge of approving it afterwards so there would be there would be the risk of spending a lot of time and doing

[157:01] something and have it not get approved as opposed to the process by statute where you form the district and then figure out the iga so i could just respond i think the county would be at the table from the iga so i don't think they're going to veto something that they felt draft and with respect to the trustees i would i would select people that we think are going to be the trustees and have them participate in the preparation of the iga then we're going to be pretty sure that once we appoint those people they're going to bless what they just helped draft so i think we can have the same human beings around the table we're just not to take the legal step of forming the district we can talk it over more in april sounds like we're in for a fun discussion april 20th sam that'll be over to you for that one this is herding cats i can tell you right now um so uh david i wanted to check in with you did we answer all your questions i gave you sort of a list of what i thought i heard during our questions and then i think um mirabai adam and mark um and maybe marriott and mary at the end added another so i wanted to make sure that was all captured um check out that yeah no

[158:01] lots of great feedback um and you know we'll be preparing a study session summary so that you guys can all have one last look of at least how we're interpreting it um and you can provide us with any feedback on this on the study session summary thank you so much thanks to all the staff and commission members who are here tonight um so i would like for us to take a two minute break or whatever uh four minute break if we need to before we move into the next um discussion of what comes after the muni so is every can i see it like a somebody put up a little fire or something if that's not okay okay so we're just gonna do a super short break and try and be back here i don't know does staff have can we just do two minutes i'm gonna come back in two minutes thank you everyone thanks

[160:45] all right bob way to follow the two-minute guideline there adam's had a nearby good all right we got erin

[161:03] mark everyone else's bathroom must be more than a minute away i mean you know you try and be humane and build in that little break but not have it you know tumble into a 10 minute thing okay so i think we may be just waiting for sam and mary oh just sam hi mary think i wait right

[162:03] although sam if you are here and just have your camera off please let us know foreign so now we know two minutes is ambitious just build in the five okay

[163:17] does anybody have the protocols like let's say that uh sam just decided he's going to bed but what is the time that we wait here um we go ahead and get started because we do not need a quorum and it's just oh here he is anyhow okay perfect um all right so we are going to now turn to the second issue for the night which is kind of follow up on the wrap up of the muni and the new excel partnership so i'm gonna pass this over to chris messchak to get it going please thanks rachel and i will be quick and turn it right over to jonathan cohen and the rest of the team that is here tonight to present this item great thanks for the quick handoff there chris uh good evening mayor members council

[164:00] i am jonathan cohen i'm the acting director of the climate initiatives department so um as far as the team joining tonight uh carolyn elam the city's energy manager in the climate initiatives department who is also managing the excel partnership efforts is going to be joining giving part of this presentation so it um why don't we go ahead and go to the next slide and we'll jump right in so uh just doing a quick look at our agenda we have about an hour scheduled together i know you've had a long night so we'll try to move through the slides relatively quickly tonight is really broadly centered on our energy and climate work but really focused on two very specific items first is a quick update on the wrap-up efforts related to municipalization followed by a deeper dive on the work that's really taking place since last november's vote including a bit of mapping on the work that's currently taking shape on the partnership i did want to point out on the agenda that we do have iffy jennings who is excel's new boulder area regional

[165:00] manager she is with us tonight and she has some brief words to say to council when we get to that point go ahead go to the next slide please great so we do have a few questions um for council they're fairly general i won't read them out loud and of course we'll bring them back up at the end of the presentation but really just um any questions that council has with respect to the to the wrap-up of muni and then how we're moving forward on the partnership activities next slide please so to start with and you can go ahead and click again we have two parts of this slide so i wanted to start with a bit of grounding for tonight's discussion you know we've spoken often that electricity generation and energy more broadly has consistently represented the majority of boulder's emissions and that really makes it a key target for our climate action and it has really been decades that our community has prioritized an energy system that is renewable local accessible reliable and secure you can see those

[166:01] words on your screen and it's really that framing that's consistently driven so many of our policies and programs locally on the right-hand side of your screen it it's a reminder that council has also endorsed a package of relatively ambitious energy targets including an aggressive 100 renewable electricity target by 2030. now the reason i mentioned that is that our ability to rapidly and equitably decarbonize our energy supply was really the driving factor for municipalization and it's going to continue to be the driving factor in our activities moving forward through the excel partnership so the goals on your screen are really critical because they provide the backstop to our broader work just as the creation of a local electric utility was was intended to be a tool for achieving our communities goals the new partnership is really intended to be a tool as well i also want to mention that staff is preparing a new set of science-based targets that

[167:00] really go beyond emissions mitigation and allow us to track progress in our efforts related to adaptation and resilience as well as progress towards our equity values we do plan to start socializing these with the community in the next month or so and that will lead up to a may study session with council next slide please so just a very quick reminder around uh some of the municipalization discussion between 2010 and 2020 the city's primary strategy to change how the community's energy was generated was to bring local control of electricity to the community through municipalization or the creation of a local city-run electric utility municipalization was really from the beginning a community driven effort and as we know last november after many months of negotiations between the city and excel voters approved a new settlement agreement really signaling the community's desire to pause municipalization for now and instead focus on partnering with excel

[168:01] energy next slide please so to essentially close out municipalization at this point our armeni team has been focused on a handful of activities really over the past couple of months since the november vote the first relates to funding council will likely recall that prior to 2018 in addition to the utility occupation tax funding roughly one and a half million dollars was allocated from the general fund to supplement staffing and really unplanned litigation and transition expenses that were were not part of the project's original budget i am happy to report that by suspending a portion of the technical and legal work leading up to the november vote provided enough excess to repay the reserves with the closing of the 2020 books i will point out that attachment c in your memo is really that final accounting of the municipalization expenditures the second part of our closeout is

[169:00] is really thinking about how we suspend the city's efforts to municipalize uh remember that the settlement does suspend those activities but the franchise agreement has provisions for the city to opt out under certain conditions in the future remember we we spent nearly 10 years or over 10 years in an adversarial relationship with excel so the partnership was built recognizing that ray that reality excuse me which is why we have those opt-outs so if we determine that continuing with the partnership is no longer in the best interest of the community council of course would need to decide whether to recommence the municipalization effort and in particular the funding mechanism necessary to continue that process so to be prepared in that event uh if that situation arises the staff team has been documenting all of our municipalization work activities archiving pertinent records including our engineering designs and system information um that said i really want to stress that in

[170:00] in these first few months our teams of the city and excel teams have really come together in a way i've not personally experienced historically and i'm confident that we're building a solid collaborative working relationship so finally the third point on your screen we we really have covered a lot of territory over that the past 10 plus years and and made what i see is an unbelievable amount of progress on a really complex issue that the tremendous body of work that was completed by the staff and community won't be wasted and i really want to stress that point in fact so much of what we learned through the municipalization process is serving us in the partnership we're carrying forward all of that critical information and all of the lessons learned there is additional detail of course on the specific wrap-up efforts on page 13 of your memo if you'd like to see some additional detail so before i turn it over to carolyn to talk about the partnership activities i did want to reflect that

[171:00] really throughout the history of municipalization our community was divided to many the vote last november was overdue and to many it was a disappointment and while i believe there is general agreement around our community's energy goals i i do think there's still some division on the best way to get there now i i raise that because i want to take this important moment to really thank the incredible staff team um the many long hours we spent with council and the leadership that you and former councils showed on this issue but most importantly i do want to deeply thank our community the countless hours that our community volunteered the numerous debates and the overall engagement on this issue was really extraordinary regardless of what side of the issue community members found themselves on so i i think we have not had an opportunity to say that publicly since the vote and i wanted to take that opportunity so i do want to welcome carolyn elam who will take you through the rest and probably more exciting part of the

[172:01] presentation so carolyn i think we're ready for you to jump in great thank you so much jonathan and um thank you council uh for having us this evening so again as jonathan mentioned i'm carol nielam i'm the energy manager in climate initiatives um and just to some background for uh since i joined the city about three years ago i've been really leading our efficiency and local generation goals so the work the energy work outside of municipalization in our department and i'm just really excited to to be launching in this partnership with excel and really kind of accelerating the goals that we we've laid the foundation for both through the municipalization work and our work outside of that effort so next slide um and then again next slide thank you um so i won't rehash the timeline i just wanted to really note that all of the work that council and the community and the city put forth in excel up leading up to the vote really laid the foundation for what we're going to talk about

[173:00] tonight and what i'm really going to talk to you is what we've been doing since the decision that occurred in november to launch the franchise and really get us up and running next slide before i really dive into where we're at with the partnership we did wanted to provide a brief update to council on the status of the franchise agreement itself so the legal document that governs our both franchise and partnership with excel so just as background um that does get filed with the public utilities commission um so following the vote in november and the adoption by council of the ordinance um that adopts that franchise um excel energy did file that with the public utilities commission in the latter part of december um we did want to let you know that as you know as allowed within that process there is opportunity for interested parties um to intervene and so while it's not typical in a franchise for there to be much of a engagement with the external parties or

[174:01] even the public utilities commission i think it's no surprise that you know just with some of the nuances of our our franchise agreement um there was some interest and so we did have three parties interviewing um at the puc um the pc has since referred that to their authority having jurisdiction to review the case and set a hearing schedule um so we have not formally adopted the franchise we can answer any questions about that but just wanted to let you know that we are expecting that process to go throughout the coming months we are a party to that process as well so we'll certainly keep council informed and we're there to support excel in the commission as they review any of the concerns that the outside parties may raise through that process um i think the most important message though is as far as the city and excel are concerned we remain committed to the partnership and we're not slowing down progress as we continue to support that proceeding so just wanted to to make that clear to the community and we'll be happy to answer any questions about that as well next slide so again

[175:01] just the founding principles of the partnership it's really to advance our goals around our greenhouse gas emissions reduction um to help us as we seek to eliminate our natural gas used through electrification of our buildings and our other fossil fuel use through electrifying our transportation system it's really to help us boost our resilience of our electricity system and our gas system um as we face the realities of climate change and and some of the stressors that come with that and then founding that is is really um addressing our equity goals and delivering a more equitable solution that meets all of our communities energy needs recognizing that we have a ways to go to close that gap next slide um so the partnership agreement um outlined kind of a governance structure um so with the passing of the the franchise we've been working to stand up that structure and start to put the parts and pieces in place um so that includes the executive team which is a joint team with our city leadership um so chris

[176:01] jonathan um and some key members of our executive team as well as the excel teams alice jackson and her leadership team serving on the executive team we have our project oversight team which is really managing the the day-to-day work helping inform priorities and then i wanted to talk about you know working groups um so we didn't really outline this in the partnership agreement but they're really core um to the operational excellence of the agreement so we've been standing up those groups as well that really brings in the subject matter expertise from both the city and and from excel um and thank you to uh councilperson friend for talking about our advisory panel recruitment at the beginning of on tonight's study session we are really excited to be seeing our advisory panel as mentioned our application process does close this friday i'm excited to report we've just had tremendous interest from the community as of this evening we've had 74 application applicants there russ yeah sorry i know it's a big number i'm so

[177:02] excited um and it represents the breadth of our community and so a lot of residents businesses some associations i'm so really what we were hoping for i still encourage people to imply um to participate because i'm going to talk a little bit about what that means i'm you know with that kind of interest in our group we've really thought about what the balance of engagement really looks like you know everybody who applies um to be a member of that panel is going to have an opportunity to provide input to the agreement if we don't even if we don't formally seek them on the panel so really looking forward to that i'm just outlining the process because we do have a large number of applicants we do expect to work through march um to really screen those um conduct some phone interviews with folks and and work towards seeing our panel towards the latter part of the month so with that we'll be looking to really kick off that advisory panel function in the april time frame and so we'll be really kicking off publicly the the process of participating in the partnership at that point in time

[178:01] next slide i'm going to talk about some of our project successes so far but i do want to throw this slide up i'm i am not going through all these names um but i do want to really just mention that while jonathan and i heard talking to you this evening this is a citywide effort and we really have leadership throughout the organization for key aspects of this partnership and these are just the folks who i've had key discussions with meetings they've been in meetings with excel so far in just these first couple of months and that list is going to grow and if i look to excel you know it's a similar level of effort on their side we really are collectively committed to to making this a success and it touches on every point you know and i'll talk about some examples but you're thinking about our leadership from transportation on how we underground our system how we transition our street light system how we plan to electrify our our fleets um so everybody on this list is is really playing a critical role and it's going to continue to grow and i

[179:00] just really value the partners throughout the city that have really you know rolled up their sleeves and dumped into this partnership with us next slide so key project areas that we highlighted in our memo i'm in some more detail but i just wanted to to touch on here so distribution planning you know this is really how we continue to invest in our infrastructure both our electricity and our gas infrastructure to advance our goals which include our resiliency and our equity goals um you know highlights of work here is really working with excel to get details on our historical reliability understanding where some of our challenges are looking at some of our future investments working with them in our city departments to plan what some of our load growth might be around deploying electric vehicle charging infrastructure as we really think about how we want to transition our buildings to cleaner healthier building stock so it's a lot of work really standing up the foundation of what projects are going to flow from that going

[180:00] forward we have had kickoffs um for our alpine balsam project so looking at our energy infrastructure opportunities there as well as chautauqua and the sustainability plan there and really thinking about what the feasibility looks like for different projects um and at both places so we've already launched that and are continuing to work with those teams and to get those projects off the ground in the undergrounding area i think you'll see in one of the attachments to your memo attachment b we've laid out a lot of the criteria for how we're going to inform a five-year undergrounding plan which is really going to identify what some of our key priorities are and how we'll make decisions on investment going forward we are looking to start our undergrad fairly aggressively looking at potentially underground as part of our reconstruction project at north broadway we're really thinking about how we can use that project to pilot a joint trench standard which

[181:00] will collectively save money for both the city and excel moving forward so we're moving forward on that as well 100 renewable electricity um in the coming months excel will be filing their energy resource plan so by the end of march um we'll really have an idea of where they're going to be and then we'll kickstart projects to and working groups to really plan on how we as a city and the community and partnership with excel are going to close the gap between where excel is projecting to be and what our community's goals are climate policy we've been supporting senator fenberg as he pursues potential legislation to really remove some of the barriers to solar adoption for customer side systems so the 120 cap is what you've probably most commonly heard from and so continue to move forward with that street lights has long been a concern of our community we know that many communities have been converting to high efficiency leds we are exploring how to get there with

[182:00] our system just to give you an idea we have about 4 700 lights street lights that are owned and operated by excel and another 400 that are owned and operated by the city at this point in time and how do we merge that system and make it a high-performing system we've conducted the baseline assessment of where we can get with excel's existing programs and then we're collectively working with them to explore options which could include our acquisition of the street light system um so we'll have more information on that in the about three to four months as we complete that study i'll talk about communications and engagement in a minute so we can go to the next slide we have been working to collectively develop a more detailed plan for the balance of this year really focusing on our near term so next month goals as well as um into the mid-summer goal and the end of the year so as i noted we've already stood up our governance structure we've launched our advisory panel recruitment we'll see

[183:00] that panel we developed a preliminary communication plan really highlighting what our needs are going to be and charter initial working groups by the end of march we're hoping to see our panel have a very clear idea of what our engagement plan is going to be for the balance of the year we're going to have the first draft of our underground priorities out there we're going to launch some additional projects and really by the end of the year we want to have a solid plan on how we're going to close the gap what our interim targets are going to be we're getting to our 100 goal um i talked about finalizing street lighting conversion and many other projects so we can talk about this in more detail but just wanted to highlight that's where we plan to go um with the balance you know with some very good engagement throughout this process which takes me to the next slide so as we heard the gas we do have um already 74 community members have expressed interest in this which i think is very telling about how important energy is um to the breadth of our community and so with that

[184:00] you know we want to be very clear that the advisory panel is not the only means by which our community is going to engage with us we do plan to stand up working groups with technical experts we plan to use individuals who have expressed interest in the advisory panel to serve in focus groups there's going to be quarterly public engagement events where we'll give updates to the community they can ask questions we're going to have technical presentations with the first one targeted for april on some of our specific projects so we are really committed to keeping the community engaged and really providing many opportunities to them to participate as well as um opportunities for council to participate so just wanted to highlight that and we'll be doing a lot of recruitment and participation over the balance of this year once we received our advisory panel and finally next slide we do have a question for council later i'm just making sure that we're hitting the appropriate touch points to keep you informed as well

[185:02] so our thoughts at this point are an annual study session such as this one to to provide updates and engage and make sure we're heading in the correct direction and we do anticipate using information packets for specific issues or topics of interest um obviously we still have email heads up um hotline posts we have the climate energy newsletter which would be you know our routine conversations and then the community meetings that i mentioned briefly so we'll come back and ask some questions about that with that next slide so i did want to take an opportunity i've had the the pleasure of working with iffy since she joined excel and i moved into this role over the last couple of months and we're really excited to have here here to to talk about her vision um for a partnership and i'd like to just welcome iffy to the community and give her an opportunity um i think she's already been elevated so iffy i'll turn it over to you

[186:01] thank you carolyn um thank you um mr mayor and city council for allowing me to come and speak to you tonight i'm really excited to be here um fairly new to the excel community and the boda community i started with excel in november uh what excited me about this partnership and what moving forward is an opportunity for us to have a new start to our partnership and an opportunity to partner and collaborate and that's the lens that we will be looking i will be looking at this partnership is through a lens of collaboration and partnership um with the idea of knowing that we're working together to meet an overarching goal of clean energy and energy efficiency in your community i know the boulder community is very exciting has a lot of innovative ideas to bring to the table with this idea so i look forward to hearing all the diverse opinions and opportunities to listen to the diverse opportunities that i'll have in the community with different community members as well as the city um the city has been great partners with us with the city staff a number of the

[187:00] members that were on the slides that carolyn mentioned before in her presentation were people that i've had the opportunity to work very closely with and with our excel partnership and my colleagues we're all coming with the view of collective impact and how we approach this partnership moving forward so thank you for the opportunity to come to you before before counseling mr mayor tonight i look forward to getting to know each of you and we are very excited about this partnership and opportunity to continue to partner with the city of boulder thanks carolyn yeah no thank you so much iffy um so i think we go to the next slide and i'll kick it back to jonathan um to lead us through the the questions to you council and answer any questions that you might have of us thanks carolyn and it will be another quick handoff back to to rachel and i think the questions just to wrap this up again we wanted to just clarify if there were any questions thoughts or concerns about the wrap-up or repayment of the general fund with respect to municipalization and then the the second and third question really are on the

[188:01] partnership whether or not council has questions or thoughts about the goals or structure of the partnership or any of the identified projects or programs that carolyn walked through in her part of the presentation and and then as carolyn also mentioned we'd love to hear from council if you have thoughts or preferences around the communications and future updates on the energy partnership both uh as as we think about communicating back with council and then the community so those are the questions that we have tonight and and rachel i'd love to turn it back to you for a discussion with council thanks jonathan and carolyn and welcome to boulder iffy and thanks for being here with us tonight a nice job moving through that quickly and and trying to get us a little closer to back on track so first i'll open it up to counselor just general questions on the presentation and then we'll move to discussion and answer the three questions that jonathan has teed up so any questions um i see mark wallach out of the gate and then we'll go to see him and whoever else

[189:00] gets a hand up mark my questions are actually um relating to the uh the memo uh that accompanied this presentation um and in that i i read that the cost of undergrounding as a citywide project is going to be half a billion dollars is that correct um so i think we're estimating it as some um it's half somewhere between 500 000 and a million dollars i'm sorry and to which project i'm sorry about the undergrounding the undergrounding of a specific project or the total investment the total investment on the ground if i if i read the staff memo correctly that the number was half a billion um that's accurate my question is that um the memo also states that there's 33 million available over the next 20 years from um excel and if we are reliant only upon that revenue stream this

[190:02] project would take us 300 years to complete so i'm wondering do we have a more advanced timetable for that and how would we how do we intend to to accelerate that process because i think 300 years would not be very satisfactory to most people in boulder yes no now i understand your question and thank you for that uh councilman wallach i um yeah so we've done an estimate and that that includes undergrounding um every single residential feeder as well as the entire backbone um of the of the system and and so what we know is that we can greatly improve reliability um by underground even just a small section of that in the very near term and that's how we're prioritizing the 33 million dollar investment i think it's a very important conversation for the community that we'll be having moving forward as to how we collectively share in the cost of the balance of that system because once we start to get to those um

[191:01] lower level theaters we're really talking about aesthetics as opposed to to really enhancing our resilience and so i think that is a conversation we definitely want to start to have with the community and see what kind of cost sharing mechanisms we can put in place another investment um but yes the the proportion that excel covers um through the one percent is estimated and we're projecting about 33 million dollars over the the term of the franchise okay um mark mark can i colloquy i just have a follow-up i appreciate that um so in the memo it also says undergrounding distribution main lines will yield the largest benefit in terms of reliability so i was curious if you've got a breakdown because mark's right 500 million is very daunting and it would be many many years many centuries in fact before we got there but the biggest bang for the buck is with the bigger lines so is there any kind of breakdown that lets us know about how much it would take to get the

[192:01] the main distribution lines underground and not everyone to the home or business yeah so we don't have that number yet mayor but um what we do have is we've gotten from excel um through non-disclosure at this point the reliability data to really identify what those key segments and and lines are where we do see the greatest reliability issues as well as um the greatest customer benefits so meaning the number of people served by that main line so we do hope to have that estimate later this year as part of that five year plan okay and my other question would be um after what we've seen in texas uh besides undergrounding are there any things we need to do with our energy system to make it more resilient going forward so we don't have um the same experience that they do even though we have different climactic conditions yeah so first you know i would um say we have a very good partner

[193:00] in excel who has operated in extreme weather events in cold climate and has a pretty robust management plan for their gas service i think a lot of what you saw in texas really has to do with the fact that they have very inefficient heating systems because they don't rely on it um routinely um combined with a poor plan for how they manage that gas usage and electrical consumption that went with that so we definitely i think have a much more robust system to start with but as we look to that i think it's really a matter of really planning what our low growth could look like and continuing to deploy some of the most efficient and resilient management approaches that our community has really been a leader in um you know we do have pockets of concern um we certainly are wrapping up our programs focused on our manufactured housing communities as an example which we know continue to be very vulnerable um to the impact so the city's been increasing investment directly for weatherization in our manufactured communities so i think

[194:00] those are things that we very much flagged and then considering to look at things like how we may deploy microgrids to our projects at alpine balsam and chautauqua and thinking about how those could be more scaled to enhance our resilience so those are things we've certainly flagged through the partnership to try and mitigate because we do know that we're going to see continuing climatic events we saw the fires um this summer we know that people are happy to shelter more and more in buildings which increases their lows we've seen that with covid um so making sure that we have a resilient electricity system to that kind of load change is really important and my last question would be on on street lights do we have a timetable for conversion to led yeah i think um once we make a decision on whether we want to acquire the system and a few nuances to that is under you know excel's current program they would cover the retrofit of about 60 of our lights the balance we would have to pay for so we're trying to estimate that cost you know once we have the green light

[195:00] it's a fairly rapid process to convert the lights um so i'd say something on the order of you know six months um could get us fully converted i do think we want to work with the community really to understand what that plan is because we know um changing out the street lights changing out the lighting quality is is not always a smooth event and so we want to make sure we work closely with the community to manage that process and meet their expectations and make sure we have the customer service to back up that conversion if we do identify issues so um i would say we'd probably plan for a full year deployment but the complete conversion is is a relatively rapid process okay thank you and that's all i got thanks mark sam and then mary great thanks for the presentation much appreciated i a few comments i'll save till the end but my first question is has the executive team had a meeting yet um i believe the executive team is our city manager and um the ceo of

[196:00] piesco excel colorado and some others around them so is that met yet and what are the plans for communicating out the results of those meetings so our plan is to really kick off the executive team meetings as well as the associated public meetings starting in april um so they have not met yet but we're get working to get that on on folks calendars um we did want to make sure that we have our community engagement plan around that to to make sure that there's good transparency before we really kick that process off i i want to add one piece to that if you don't mind um sam thanks for the question i i do want to report though that we do meet weekly with with senior leadership at excel to talk about how we are standing up this partnership specifically around some of the near-term projects and actions and around the governance structure so while the executive team has not yet met i think we have had a really clear line of communication your second question about how we'll

[197:01] report that i don't think we have really tackled that one yet and so we'll take that under advisement in terms of how we can really report out on on the activities and the discussions super thanks much and then i want to follow up on mark's questions about resilience and i love the answers that you gave there that was wonderful um another component of this um some of which is inside our boundaries but much of which is outside of our boundaries is wildfire impacts and i know that there's a little bit of work that's starting i know there's some money the puc allowed excel to be spending on planning for this but i was curious how we're going to incorporate the wildfire question into our resilience planning working with excel let me start carolyn then you'll probably have a better answer and i would start by saying we need to walk before we can run part of what we've been able to start teaming up in our conversations with excel is really starting to transfer some of that important data to us in terms of how our system currently

[198:00] functions where the hot spots and perhaps reliability concerns might be and then as carol and i think really accurately pointed out what are the right tactics that we can deploy at the local level what are the right tactics that we can think about more in a more regional basis so i really appreciate that you're bringing up the wildfire issue because there are all types of threats to our energy system and how do we think about uh local generation how do we think about microgriding how do we think about islanding uh how do we think about undergrounding all of those tactics to really protect and harden the system but also create benefits um in real time as well so that's that's something that we have started discussions with but i don't think we have a full answer to your question carolyn may have a better response though no i think that was beautiful jonathan i i don't really have anything to to add um although you know we do know that there's a lot of work going on right now um to harden the resilience of our main transmission system around the community um so that's the the project that's been ongoing and will continue

[199:01] um with the work it's it's up near boulder hydro at this point really looking to um improve those large towers um their resistance to start their durability um their ability to prevent starting fires um as well as you know keeping them above the tree canopy um so that they aren't as susceptible so i mean that work has been ongoing but i think as jonathan said it's a conversation that's just really starting and has a lot of opportunity to to really grow from here super that's all great and i don't have any more questions but it does seem like our utilities folks also particularly water supply have to look at the wildfire question as well so maybe there's synergies there too thanks very much thanks sam um mary and then i have a one question thank you rachel and thank you jonathan and iffy and carolyn for your presentations um

[200:00] i have um kind of want to follow up on some um some with the streetlights question that mark was asking um i'm curious about one well the this piece in the memo with respect to street lights mentioned that there would be multiple pathways um to achieve our street lighting goals and i'm wondering how that plays in with um the memo talks about just replacing the lights but it doesn't talk about the poles that the lights are on it doesn't talk about fixtures such as i would assume that those lights would have to comply with dark skies and how does maintenance play into that and um so and and how does how does equity play into that i mean which neighborhoods would come first and how would all of that be handled

[201:00] um so i'm just curious about kind of a more holistic approach to the street lighting question and um cost wise and also kind of um management wise yeah that that's a really great question and thank you very much for framing it that way i um what i would say is i think that's the reason we haven't moved forward um with just working under excel's existing offering to convert our lights is because we know that as a community we really want to go deeper and explore right sizing our lighting system to really address the current community needs addressing things like making sure we're more aligned with our dark skies so our plan is to really go out and we're planning to issue a request for proposals coming up to start to get ideas from the lighting community as to what the cost of that might look like so it would look at all sorts of options

[202:00] to include redesign of key components of our system which would replace existing light poles and lights to right size and so removing some fixtures adding adding different ones so that we can ultimately present the council in the community with the range of options from just a simple retrofit all the way to you know what would be a more holistically designed uh system that is more aligned with kind of what our standards have been for how the city has deployed our 400 lights so far so that is our our goal and our deliverable that we're planning uh to present you with later this year hopefully i'm assuming um we have success with that request for proposals and getting those numbers um because it will be ranges um the acquisition is is the the smallest issue of the whole um process right it's not buying the lights it's it's making sure that we're thoughtful and how we deploy and continue to invest in those thank you carolyn and i also was curious

[203:00] about um the structure of the rates um the memo talked about that and um what does the puc play a role in this yes and so i think that's um so right now the 4 700 lights i refer to that ourselves are non-metered and so we pay a monthly charge for those called a street lighting rate in which there's all sorts of components into that rate that includes depreciation of those lights as well as some operation and maintenance as well as the energy charge um that goes within that when you have a meter lighter or more of a metered rate you're taking out some of those other costs like depreciation of the light and such which greatly lowers the cost all the cities likes the 400 that we own are metered so we're actually paying an even lower rate for those but that comes at a investment cost for that infrastructure to be able to to meter those so those are the trade-offs we're going to have to

[204:01] explore but that is set at the public utilities commission they review those um and you know we're really working with a design that's decades old um and really hasn't been modernized and i think that's why you see excel working with so many communities right now to explore what's the best way to meet their lighting needs um just because they they don't have as much opportunity to really um make that a flexible design to meet specific communities needs and so i think that's why they've been working with us to explore the potential acquisition option which would give us a greater control over that thank you carolyn it's mary okay i have one question then we'll turn to discussion um and it's a little bit similar to what um mark was asking um and i'm guessing we were all kind of reading this memo you know at the same time as we were watching what was happening in the dire

[205:00] situation in texas so i was struck when i was reading it um looking at the undergrounding considerations we did put an emphasis on reliability and mitigation of risk and equity um but then we also mentioned things like the view shed and so i was just thinking given the gravity of what we've seen play out in texas is it appropriate to be you know looking at preserving view sheds at this point um when we're talking about undergrounding or until we have equity in place and reliability locked in and fire hazards mitigated why is that coming up in the memo or how much are we looking at it yeah i think it's a component i think that's why we tried to articulate you know kind of the waiting factors and criteria that we're we're going to put out there and get feedback from the community on that prioritization um you know i would say first and foremost our investment is going to be prioritized towards any kind of hazard mitigation um so that could prevent that could include um as we talked about potential ignition sources for fire which

[206:01] you know i don't think we have very many of those that that's what we're exploring um as well as you know we are subject to flooding and so considering things that could you know systems that could create debris powers those would be the first and foremost um reliability um is second i think you know if there's a trade-off um consideration that might be where view shed comes into play but certainly you know recognizing the magnitude of investment that's needed um you know i don't i don't foresee that we would see any early investment prioritized towards something that strictly be shed but we might it might be a factor into how you design or how far you take it or other considerations okay um thanks for that i guess maybe i'll just circle back to it in discussion um okay so i'm gonna turn now to discussion and um go through the three specific questions that staff asked and then open it up for general um comments or discussion after that so the first question is does council

[207:00] have any questions about the municipalization wrap-up or repayment of the general fund any questions on that or comments i've perhaps a merry thumbs up all right moving on to question two um does council have any questions about the goals and structure of the energy partnership or any identified projects or programs any specific questions there okay third council have any questions or preferences around communications and future updates on the energy partnership all right let's just open it up to random discussion then sam i know you are holding some some stuff back and i'm going to probably want to circle back to the half a billion dollars in the view shed so i'm going to assume your hands up sam and turn to you if that's okay and anyway thanks um i guess i want to say that i really appreciate the framework

[208:00] around the undergrounding decision making process i think that's a good way to kick it off because i think we're gonna want frameworks around you know lots of projects how we prioritize them and how we um have equity as well as protection uh our as driver considerations i mean at the center and cmap of our triangle of solutions and actions is equity and resilience so i think those are perfect and i think those are the right filters to kind of look at everything with so i guess i'll given that context i look forward to learning more about the projects that get identified we know alpine balsam for instance and we know undergrounding but i guess the the question about communication is really interesting because there's a subset of us who would be really interested in things like how's the distribution planning working because that's not something that excel has done before is work with the community on distribution system planning so i

[209:00] think you know among the group of us who care about that it will be really interesting to both hear it in our community but also it would be interesting to know how that might be used in other communities so in other words are other communities interested in that component for us it was a big deal because resilience is a huge driver and i would be curious to know if there are other communities interested in that or other aspects of what we're doing so i think the communication portion of this needs to continue to develop in a way that there's geeks and communicating with the geeks is important but also showing the relevance to the wider community i think you know between the wildfires in california this year in a couple years previous and what just happened in texas i think there will be interest in it but it will not be in a very technical geeky way but it's going to be what are we doing in our partnership with excel

[210:01] that is going to make a difference in our community's ability to get through those things so i think this is a great kickoff and i guess that does that word brings me to one other point i do think we want to have a kick off event you know once kind of our feet are under us and and covid's ramping down and the partnership is ramping up and the puc has had it say i think it would be good to have a kickoff event where our community gets to meet some of the excel principals who will be working with us and we talk about how we want to hear their inputs on these things and introduce our advisory group to the community so i think it's a great start kudos to everyone for that and i look forward to seeing how it evolves well said sam um no other takers we can go for hours on the municipality

[211:01] i mean so i'll summarize here uh if truly nobody else wants to chime in and and just reiterate that you know what i was getting at is while we're looking at a half a billion dollars in undergrounding um i would think a lot of it in the near future would be on those um top three considerate considerations um of mitigation and reliability and equity and until those are really locked in i just don't understand why we would be looking at things like vue shed um so hope that that's that that is the plan and that i'm reading it correctly um and then i will just distill i think some of the priorities that i heard tonight which is resiliency and especially concern over things like wildfires and undergrounding in that context some emphasis on street lights and dark skies and then i think i heard sam say he wants us to distill communications kind of for laymen

[212:00] and have a party so did i did i get that right and i think that's it so thank you so much for that presentation and the update and this is exciting and i think we're all looking forward to getting um another update soon thank you all really appreciate all the feedback tonight super helpful thanks jonathan yeah thanks so much um and then i i guess i lied earlier in the meeting when i said we have two discussion points because we have three um and um yeah jonathan left so i'm assuming we answered all of his questions although i should have clarified that if you're still there jonathan anything else you need no i don't think so um i i think just to be clear we will be bringing back kind of answers to your questions and thinking about a regular update for council it may be in the form of ips because i think there were some things that were brought up that that we can easily respond to so just know that we want to strengthen the communication line between um both the work that's going on in council and of course the community

[213:00] perfect thank you um so it's a very brief third item it's a quick city attorney recruitment update um around the firm selection and a draft recruitment timeline so i don't know if i'm over to chris messchuck and jen sprinkle or if i am supposed to stay with this so over to chris maybe as a question to jen yeah jen i i've got it um good evening council i'm jen sprinkle hr director for the city of boulder the city attorney recruitment process begins this week with the recruitment firm the novak group so the city has an existing recruitment contract with the novak group which is part of raf telus this week the recruiter will kick off the city attorney recruitment with the council subcommittee and then next week the recruiter will meet with council members 2x2 for position backgrounding and discovery discussion so council members you will hear from us by the end of business thursday to schedule these meetings so keep that on your radar

[214:01] for next week the recruiter will also meet with attorneys in the city attorney's office the interim city manager as well well as gather feedback through a survey to additional city attorney staff and department directors and then as we move through the timeline the week of march 8th the position profile will be drafted and then presented to council for approval at the march 16th regular meeting after that the recruiter will begin active recruitment through advertising and candidate outreach active recruitment will last five weeks and note that candidate applications will be due by april 25th the recruiter then after that process will present confidential candidate materials to council members the week of may 5th um council members will be asked then to read applications and provide feedback to the recruiter and the council subcommittee and then the week of may 17th council

[215:00] members will have the opportunity to interview the finalists again two by two uh there will also be an opportunity for community feedback once the finalists are determined and we anticipate the next city attorney joining the city of boulder in the month of june and any questions thanks jen um and i just wanted to clarify as a member of this recruitment subcommittee um obviously we're not voting on anything tonight but we wanted to bring this to you because we're really trying to hammer out a pretty fast timeline because we have a narrow window to have someone um begin this job and overlap with tom carr in time for his anticipated retirement so where it says that we have selected the novak group i would say we are recommending that we do that and if anybody had concerns with working with heather on this this would be an appropriate time to flag that concern

[216:01] um my personal feeling as a member of the subcommittee is again we are trying to hit the ground running and heather has been wonderful on the city manager search and i think that it would be um a very natural thing for us to move into the same format and kind of know what we're getting from heather and and i think it will be pretty seamless so that's uh my take on why it would be good to hire her for this as well and i see a couple of hands up so i'm gonna go over to um i'm gonna go mary and then erin i think aaron had his hand up for a solid aaron go thank you i i shut my participants box so i had to guess uh thanks mary uh yeah so i think this is fantastic you know as mary and i of course have been the city manager search subcommittee and uh working with heather has been a a pleasure she does an extraordinary job and i would be thrilled to have her continue on to help us select the next city attorney

[217:00] thanks erin mary yeah and i agree with aaron and i just want to add that the the process for the city manager um selection has gone so smoothly um jen and heather have coordinated everything pretty seamlessly and things have gone off without a hitch and um so um staying with the same team a proven success so i i would recommend staying with heather awesome thank you anyone else have questions or concerns about the direction this subcommittee is going i just would jump in here and say do we want to talk about membership at all on the city attorney happy to i see mark's hand up that might be inappropriate well my my question i've had wonderful experiences with heather but my question is how many

[218:02] city attorney searches has her firm conducted um acknowledging that that recruitment of attorneys is is a little bit different than recruitment recruitment of city managers and so i guess i'm just asking what's the direct applicable experience i don't have the exact number but i can tell you that there this firm has a current active recruitment for a city attorney and also a county attorney so these are active um attorney recruitments that they are working on okay all right thank you thanks heather um i i think maybe bob has the the new hand up i don't know mary if mark if if your hands are old there old old all right bob following the old hands um i just i want to answer sam's question uh mark and i have had a discussion so mark mark was was was going to uh

[219:01] serve on this committee with in partnership with rachel and as we discussed last week aaron and i had raised our hands have not yet been appointed to the cu south process subcommittee mark and i have had a discussion and not to confuse folks but i think we're going to propose to council next week in the council's decision that we actually swap places and that i serve on the process committee for the city attorney with rachel and mark serve on the cu south process committee with aaron that'll obviously be a vote of council next week but just to tee that up in response to sam's question thanks for that bob um i don't know if we want to flag any concerns with that uh bob and mark horse trading amongst themselves discussion obviously you can't vote on anything tonight um adam i'm sure we'll hear about it thanks thanks for that um yes

[220:00] i think that's true and um again that will be uh as i understand it taken to council next week for a vote any other concerns tonight and then back to the uh subcommittee for city attorney recruitment sounds like no concerns there so i think we're going to wrap that up and move forward as planned and thank you jen for all the work you're doing on both of these recruitments i know you're working here right now um okay thank you so i think that that wraps up agenda item three um jen did you need anything else on this or questions concerns before we move and tom i see you're i see you for the first time on camera tonight did you have a did you want to weigh in on that good to see you jenna do you need anything else from us here tonight before we move on no we're all set thank you great thanks okay um if there are no more

[221:00] hands i believe that concludes our council business for tonight and we are formally adjourned thank you thanks for good meeting rachel way to make up for you know the lengthy number one on two and three go team good job all right good night everybody [Music] or you know which you just mentioned and also witnesses have sort of spotted two notorious uh military troops um in both yangon and mandalay so in mandalay