April 6, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music]

[5:02] [Music] part of open comment and public comment that we will need your full name in order to be able to unmute you so if your name is appearing as something that is not your first and last name um please do go ahead and change that if you don't know how to change it you can send that to me in the Q&A and I can change it for you we are still working on getting on

[6:00] you could also Brenda probably use the time to explain the interpretation function since that's only available to people who are in the meeting that's a great Point thanks Sarah let's do that um so I will ask either um Marina or Elena to assist me with this let me P [Music] slide and says we are [Music] into Spanish Marina

[7:00] to activate zoom's S simultaneous interpretation function please click and it won't be there yet but once it appears please click the icon that says interpretation that looks like a globe that you see here on this picture at the bottom of your screen okay interpretation that icon will appear momentarily once you click on that icon you will be able to choose either English or Spanish as the language you would like for this meeting

[8:09] I'll will begin the interpretation function nowas and you should be able to choose your language and Sam Taylor tells me that we are ready to go awesome very good so welcome everyone to the Boulder City council meeting of Tuesday April 6 we will start tonight with a few announcements uh the first announcement is um about exposure notifications for covid-19 you can sign up for um an app on your cell phone that will tell you if you've been around somebody who is confirmed to have covid-19 and the um website for that is www . addou phone.com and for more local

[9:03] information on getting uh vaccination and to sign up for notifications when you're eligible you can go to b.org b.org covid vaccine notify sign up uh next subject boards and commissions there is still time to apply to serve on one of the city's boards or commissions we're continuing to accept applications for the following Boulder Junction access District parking and Boulder Junction access District travel demand management and for the beverage licensing Authority if you are interested in one of those you can go to the website shown on the slide which is bouldercolorado.gov boards commissions and finally um for tonight's agenda the followup on the the midre midterm Retreat check-in will be

[10:03] presented right after the consent agenda um we have Community connectors and residents available that will be co-presenting this item and in an effort to keep them from having to stay late in the evening we're moving the item up on the agenda item 6A the tribal consultation background and preparation will be presented as scheduled and with that Alicia could you call the role yes sir good evening everyone council member Brockett friend here Joseph pres Nel stick here wallik present Weaver here Gates here and young pres mayor we have a quarum thank you and before I go on to the

[11:02] motion to amend the agenda Aon I see your hand is up I I was just waiting for the motion to amend the agenda so go ahead okay great okay so for tonight we need to amend the agenda um the items we need to change are the title of item 1A to the boulder day of remembrance declaration which actually I think Will and then the next one is to switch the order of items 1A and 1B and then we want to move item 6B follow up on the midterm Retreat check-in to immediately after the consent agenda and then add item 8A boards and commissions appointment to the bla the board of zoning adjustment and the Water Resources Advisory Board now Aaron I just want to make sure the the board appointments were on there so thank you that yep okay Bob on the board appointments Sam are we going to make

[12:01] the appointments tonight or discuss the appointments and then make them at a subsequent meeting I will discuss the appointments tonight and put them on consent at a following meeting provided that's the will of council great thanks Sam and can I get a motion to amend the agenda so moved with your suggestions second second great a motion in a second anyone opposed to amending the agenda seeing none that passes unanimously um we will begin the meeting with a declaration of solidarity with the Asian-American and Pacific Islander Community which will be presented by council member friend Rachel yeah thanks Sam and I want to um thank Taylor Ryman and um Kurt Fern hobb's team for putting this together on pretty short notice I think so I'm reading a declaration of solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community on today's date April 6th 2021 the city of Boulder

[13:02] stands with the Asian-American and Pacific Islander or aapi community in the wake of the March 16th murders in Atlanta and other acts of violence including attacks on elders throughout the United States since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic the aapi community has reported a significant number of attacks with a stop aapi hate organization counting nearly 3,800 incidents in the past year these include verbal harassment shunning and physical assault and the above figure is likely a fraction of the true total due to unreported incidents sadly recent events are but a but a part of a larger buried history of hostility towards aapi in America on Halloween night 1880 white community members targeted Chinese community members in Denver's first race riot aapi labor was also exploited as part of America's Westward expansion a movement resulting in

[14:01] catastrophic imp implications for indigenous people other examples of institutionalized racism include 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act one of the first federal laws to restrict immigration and the interment of Japanese Americans during the second world war camchi located in southeast Colorado was one of these internment sites in 1982 although two white men beat Vincent Chen to death with a baseball bat and pled guilty to manslaughter they were sentenced to only three years of Probation and a $3,000 fine a piece these hate fuel murders in Atlanta offer a stark reminder of how the three threads of racism anti-immigrant sentiment and misogyny have long been intersected one provision of the 1875 page act restricted aapi women from entering the United States with supporters stoking fear of the supposed immorality of these immigrants such categorizations have long been

[15:01] detrimental to aapi women and it is consequently worth noting that in the past year aapi women have reported hate incidents at 2.3 times the rate more often than men it is critical to differentiate and acknowledge the varied experiences of people of color throughout the United States and this story is pretty shocking and also I want to give a lot of credit this is something we've been J J I think to Mo um so start the paragraph over it is critical to differentiate and acknowledge the varied experiences of people of color throughout the United States however narratives such as the model minority myth artificially divide aapi experiences from those of other people of color and minimize the challenges they face despite this myth which inaccurately portrays this community as a monolithic success story the challenges faced by aapi are not unique and there is at least some some shared experience with other groups such

[16:00] as African Americans and Latinos it is therefore crucial to acknowledge the common denominators of individual and systemic racism and violence all these groups have experienced informed by a foundation of white supremacy the city of Boulder has taken steps to address discrimination and violence against communities of color such as its commitment to racial equity and the 2019 passage of the sentence enh enhancements for bias related crimes we recognize that these steps alone are not enough we must first repudiate the violence against the aapi community and then continue bold and concrete steps to create a safe and Equitable environment for people of color thank you all for listening thank you Rachel and I will present the next item um this item is a declaration of the boulder day of remembrance March 22nd 2021 is a date that will be forever seared in the collective memory of our community on that Monday afternoon a grievous

[17:02] atrocity was committed that will Mark each of us for the rest of our lives but none more so than the families and friends of the 10 people taken from us suddenly and violently people going about their daily lives doing their jobs feeding their families and protecting one another our entire Community joins those families and friends in saying the names of our neighbors taken from us before their time Denny stong Nevan stanisic Ricky olds Trona Bak Suzanne Fountain Terry leyer Kevin Mahoney Lynn Murray Jody Waters and officer Eric tally it has been said said that there are three deaths the first is when the

[18:02] body ceases to function the second is when the body is returned to the earth and the third is that moment sometime in the future when the person's name is spoken for the very last time let us never allow this third death of our 10 Fallen neighbors let us take the time to speak their names celebrate their lives mourn their passing as long as we remember them they will never truly die and so as our modest and humble gesture the city council of the city of Boulder declares that every year in perpetuity March 22nd shall be designated the boulder day of remembrance on that day every year our community will pause and remember the 10 people who departed on that day every year we will will celebrate their lives on that day every year we will say

[19:04] their names out loud so that in our hearts they will live on I want to thank Bob Yates and juny Joseph for um pulling this um declaration together and with that I'll turn to Chris meschuk to get an update from staff regarding the tragedy of March 22nd thanks mayor Weaver and council members uh just two very quick updates that I'm going to provide tonight uh the first is related to the Assistance Center um our housing and human services staff are continuing to uh coordinate that effort with uh king supers to be able to provide the community what it needs in terms of support um and that is a service that is still available to uh everyone in the community uh and um we'll make sure that we continue to get information out as a um kind of a

[20:00] Clearing House of all the services that are available um at the Assistance Center the second area uh for an update is around um memorials and uh there is a city-wide staff team that we have put together including staff from Community Vitality um arts and culture planning and development services and more that are working in partnership with the Kroger company um and other external Partners including the mus Museum of Boulder um to develop both a short-term plan um as well as a long-term plan for a permanent Memorial in the community um and all of that is going to continue to respect the wishes and input of the victim's families um and um the the sympathies the uh just heartfelt Outreach that the community has has brought forward um at the kind of organically created Boulder Strong Memorial on the fence at king supers is uh is is just an incredible

[21:00] gesture in our community and the fence that was put up on that site uh um has been transferred to the Kroger company um and we're going to continue to work uh in partnership with them the the community should expect that the fence um will continue to evolve um we're currently working to restore uh access to the Eastern driveway of the shopping center and then additionally there'll be changes to the fence location to be ble to reopen that uh traffic lane on Table Mesa Drive um and all of this will be done in consideration with the flood plane that's in that area as well as access space for safe pedestrian and bicycle and vehicle movement um and then the operations of the other businesses in the Table Mesa shopping center uh and then uh we'll continue to work with um both the or or the victim's families king supers as well as uh other uh shops and property owners in the area um related to a site-based memorial or

[22:02] other community permanent Memorial um and uh if if folks are interested in learning more about that and where they can donate there is more information on the city's web page um we're also continuing to uh work with our other Community Partners like the chamber uh to ensure that both the neighborhood uh and the entire Community is able to access the businesses uh the other businesses is in that location uh and then as as Council has seen um we've received several inquiries from community members about the George Reynolds Library which is across the street from the Table Mesa shopping center uh and those uh we've had some responses go out from David faran and our library and art staff uh and we're we're currently examining ways to initiate carry out service that was planned in mid June for the library um and we're looking to see what we can do sooner than that so specific to uh the topic around

[23:02] memorials um Norine Walsh who is a project coordinator here at the city is the coordinator of that effort and that team um so if anyone needs to reach out to her uh her La her email is just her last name of Walsh and her first initial of n so Walsh n at bouldercolorado.gov is her email address and that's the update that I have for tonight but I'm happy to answer any questions thank you Chris any questions from coun members seeing none I think we're ready to move on to open comment um so we will begin we have 16 actually 15 speakers tonight because one withdrew we will begin open comment with Elizabeth ball Patrick Murphy and Andrew Harris Elizabeth I am not seeing Elizabeth Sam um and so we can go to Patrick Murphy um give me just one moment

[24:00] to unmute you Patrick great and we you're getting Patrick up if Elizabeth if you come in or or in under a different name if you could put that in the Q&A box that would be great and Patrick Patrick you should be unmuted uh I also have a slide that should be showing great is up Patrick go for it my name is Patrick Murphy I live in Boulder this is my 100th open comment since 2014 the previous 99 were regarding the urgency of fast carbon reduction with only two minutes every second counts so I have never started with a preamble thanking you for your service I have tried to thank those of you who had meet with me in person but not all of you would I thank you from the bottom of my heart right now you signed up for all the difficult mundane

[25:01] decisions of keeping a town moving forward you did not sign up with knowledge of a pandemic or mass murder the heavy burden of leadership is nothing I could ever bear so I thank you for leading us through and past these dark moments I cry easily regardless of whether it's a sad or happy moment I always have to take tissues with me to the movies every story of those lost and Boulder brings me to tears amongst all of this there are still moments of inspiration that also bring me to tears we're all hurting it's painful times we need some kind of healing medicine I see that you will be having tribal consultations I request that you ask even beg for a ritual blessing for recovery and cleansing of the evil in the distant past bill center of the

[26:01] Lakota tribe granted me the honor of a blessing on a segment of Boulder County open space so thank you bless you for carrying on and I will not be saying thank you for my 101st presentation but you will know that I do thank you thank you Patrick our next speaker would have been Andrew Harris but he has withdrawn so our next three speakers will be Joanne Simonson Dana Steiner and Sasha Styles Joanne can you hear me yep okay good evening mayor and City Council Members my name is Joanne Simonson I live in southeast Boulder thank you for this opportunity to speak I'm speaking tonight on two items first I thank you for all your dedication and service and Le leadership thank you for your extra time in regards to the tragedy on March

[27:03] 22nd your March 24th Community special meeting was heartwarming and beautiful to see Boulder's diverse Community leaders United together compassionate similarity thank you second to awkwardly switch topics I ask you to vote tonight to approve to hold a public hearing for 5801 arapo Avenue I support more housing in Boulder along with the related changes through infill by repurposing existing buildings as long as the first priority is the health well-being and safety of the citizens and the second priority is preserving Boulder signature character open space and Mountain views this project does not meet these criteria although this project proposes high density housing it offers only a minimum of affordable units while requesting a long list of exceptions this plan lacks full analysis

[28:02] of critical aspects with one being groundwater with related drainages this plan has a long list of adverse impacts to the proposed residents in surrounding area which have pers persisted for the past 20 years this plan is of great concern to the neighbors please do not let developers gain the system by asking for much while offering adverse impacts please do not let housing Trump all else please take a close look and hold a public hearing thank you thank you Joanne um before we go on to the next speakers I would just ask if folks um who are addressing us could take a breath between each sentence for a little pause um our interpreters can use that time to catch up with you as you give your testimony with that we will move on to the next three Dana Steiner Sasha Styles and Michael kerer

[29:05] Dana good evening this is my first time uh speaking in front of the city council since moving to Boulder um but I felt called recently to get involved with Community groups and to start local and state um advocacy efforts because through the pandemic and through the course of my attending uh Colorado law I feel like I've had my eyes opened um and I think that uh a lot of people uh could also open their eyes um I know that a lot of you probably all of you um on city council believe in evidence-based politics I'm sure none of you would run without them and I'm sure that you trust the advice of the CDC regarding the covid pandemic but the city continues to act in direct opposition to the cdc's guidance for keeping people safe during during the pandemic and seeing the conditions of my fellow neighbors as

[30:01] they try to stay safe um has has called me to testify here today it seems that uh once again unhoused people have been left behind CDC guidance has been very clear for almost the entirety of the pandemic um they say if individual housing options are not available allow people who are living unsheltered or in encampments to remain where they are and that is a dire quote from the CDC um and now that FEMA is reimbursing cities that paid for hotel rooms for residents during the pandemic um Boulder could have had an opportunity to reimburse themselves for all of the hotel rooms they should have bought for our neighbors during snowstorms and during the the covid crisis at large but instead Boulder has continued to sweep nearly every encampment where people have found shelter these sweeps do not respect the Dignity of our neighbors and they waste resources I ask you to stop these sweeps

[31:01] and put resources towards long-term housing thank you Dana next we have Sasha Styles Michael kerer and gasel herfeld Sasha thank you uh I'm Sasha Styles I'm the chair for Physicians for social responsibility in Colorado I implore you to hold a full balance study session about the greenway project science has changed and although you had a study session in 2016 I'm told you must do have another study session before Sasha I'm sorry we can no longer hear you what don't know I'm now we can hear you okay thank you sorry you've received emails from

[32:02] many members expressing their concern opposing the trail in 2018 there were soil analyses done and Dr Michael ker who will be speaking to you next I believe uh can tell you about what he found from those samples our PSR board member Ed granados uh PhD sent a lengthy scientific letter to your mayor who we had deemed stepped uh was steeped in scientific knowledge none of our letters have acknowledged Dr Granado's scholarly letter has gone un unresponded to PSR has signed many letters and we haven't heard from you um it's now many years since 2016 and I really believe we need another study session at the Broomfield study session cdph said was more likely you'd get a sunburn um from being on the ref the Rocky Flats Refuge than cancer from uh from being um on The Refuge she's right mathematical modeling of risk can be manipulated to show this kind of low-level risk but what if it's

[33:00] your child that happens to get the plutonium party particle many of which are present along Indiana laboratory we're now doing genetic um analysis with a research lab in and in the University uh renowned with the NIH we implore you to wait till we get our research till you know what you're up against um uh you must hold a full study session where all points can be expressed science has changed the genetic IC manipulation of what's happening in our genes from the radiation that is still present is really important your community deserves to understand why a health a healthc conscious scientific Boulder Community opposes the idea of a bike trail just happens to go through the most contaminated place on Earth the buffer zone of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant AKA The Wildlife Refuge thank you for your consideration please have a study session thank you Sasha next we have Michael kerer jelle her Feld and ly seagull

[34:02] Michael hello council members I'm Michael kerer uh I live in Longmont and I'm going to comment on the Rocky Mountain Greenway in my professional work I study plutonium in the environment and I've already sent in my written comments making the point about the presence of plutonium dioxide uh particles in soils from near Rocky Flats uh specifically as uh Sasha just mentioned I've uh focused on the Indiana Street Corridor uh just to the edge of the uh Refuge now uh the connection to the greenway is the greenway is just going to be a way to draw people into these areas that have these uh plutonium dioxide particles um is this really a good idea I just ask you that rhetorically is this a good idea you're drawing people into a place that's been dusted with plutonium

[35:00] dioxide particles consider if I go to Indiana Street by the former East Gate of the plant and I take a spoonful of soil maybe about 8 to 10 grams uh we would expect to find a few a few is maybe a half a dozen or so particles in the 04 to2 Micron size range respirable these are pure plutonium dioxide chemically indestructible think of them like cubic zirconia but these are plutonia not zirconia in my future plans I uh do plan to uh extend this work to other areas including uh inside the city of Boulder I think we'll find them there too uh so I just want you to think about the idea of forever chemicals Rocky Flats has its own little version of a forever chemical and it's the plutonium dioxide particle so please think about that when you're deliber opting on the Rocky Mountain Greenway thank you thank you Michael

[36:02] next we have jelle herfeld Lyn seagull and Randall Clark jel hi can you hear me yep hi my name is jelle herfeld and I'm speaking on behalf of the Rocky Mountain peace and Justice Center and I want to start by thanking you for your statement on the tragedy our community witnessed on March 22nd and I thank you for your leadership during this difficult time I'm here today to discuss the Rocky Mountain Greenway we urg the Boulder City Council to hold a balanced study session on the Rocky Mountain Greenway featuring experts from the community who have concerns regarding the safety of public Recreation at Rocky Flats we are also asking that you withdraw your participation in the intergovernmental agreement for funding the Rocky Mountain Greenway as a boulder taxpayer I do not want public funds put towards a mountain biking trail that risks exposing many thousands of people including children and pregnant women to plutonium and other radioac active materials known to cause cancer and birth defects the

[37:00] threat to public health safety and Welfare from promoting Recreation at Rocky Flats far exceeds any benefit that the new recreation site would offer while we understand that the trail section in question is only one portion of a larger Trail Network that lies outside of Boulder's jur jurisdiction the trail in question would connect Boulder trails with the trails on Rocky Flats thus facilitating access to Rocky Flats for Boulder cyclists also legitimizes the idea that public rec ation at Rocky Flats is safe what is clearly a risk for public health and safety the area at the center of Rocky Flats is still an EPA super fund site however due to the movement of wind and water contamination on Rocky Flats does not stay within the borders of the super fund site cyclists on Rocky Flats will be inhaling dust as they ride and this dust is likely to contain plutonium particles that can then become permanently embedded in their lungs the Broomfield city council and Superior Board of Trustees both withdrew from the Rocky Mountain Greenway inter government agreement due to concerns regarding public health safety and Welfare for a

[38:01] topic so important to public health and safety it is crucial that you hear from members of the public prior to finalizing your decision on this issue for these reasons we request that you hold a study session featuring experts from community group such as Physicians for social responsibility Rocky Flats technical group and Rocky Flats Downwinders thank thank you jelle thank you your time is up next we have Lynn seagull Randall Clark and Zack pesh sound check you're good okay um yeah I also recommend that there's a a two-sided um study session on this issue um you know I heard David Aben at the Stewardship Council declare that how great it was that we have this Greenway open now for all the people that that want to get out out of the centers of town because of the virus and now want the open space and I just find

[39:01] it so ironic that um people that already have a risk for the virus are now presented a risk for being exposed to a a dangerous contaminant um and I'd also like to see some kind of a gathering of people where there where both sides can discuss and and come to some kind of understanding between themselves about what this really means it's um it's really concerning my mom I believe died of um leukemia due to exposure to Radioactive contamination during the 1957 fire when we lived in um downtown Denver downwind of Rocky Flats and then and there's a dorcy phase you know and she died in

[40:00] 1969 the day of the second I mean not the day but the year of the second biggest fire at Rocky Flats the Mother's Day fire ironically so um you know if if you're really thinking about um your family's health and those that you know think about also of all the people that will be exposed to this and and the danger to all of our health from from um opening up this area and please have an open um process so that people can really understand the grave danger thanks thank you Lyn next we have Randall Clark Zack pesh and um Misha tour though I don't believe Misha is in the meeting yet Randall Randall you should be able to mute mute okay is that fine now yep oh

[41:02] sorry I didn't see the icon before um my name is Randall Erica Clark and I live in Boulder um thank you all for your service um on the council I'm sure it's uh difficult very difficult at times and takes up a lot of your time um I also want to speak about the Rocky Mountain Greenway um thank you for planning a study session on the Rocky Mountain Greenway next Tuesday April 13th and I just want to add my voice to those requesting that you include additional Community experts regarding the safety of public Recreation at Rocky Flats the Broomfield city council as somebody mentioned evaluated the scientific data about disturbing this area for construction and Recreation and voted to withdraw from participation um based on these scientific findings and I assume you're well aware of this and have reviewed the same scientific studies that they reviewed I would hope that you come to the same conclusion for the safety of

[42:00] all of us who live here in Boulder and for all the many other people who come to recreate in and around Boulder because they consider us to be environmentally Advanced and trust that we've made sound scientific decisions about how our environment is impacted I would hate to hear that amateur or Elite bikers who use this Greenway later become ill only to find that their illness dates to exposure to micr plutonium contaminated particles that they had inhaled because they were Unleashed during the construction of the Rocky Mountain Greenway that even our Boulder City Council had supported I understand that the Rocky Mountain peace and Justice Center has sent you much information about the dangers of disturbing the land at Rocky Flats and I hope that you will include some of their experts in the study session next week and thank you so much for taking my comments today thank you Randall next we have Zack pesh M

[43:03] Misha tour and Riley manuso Zach hello Council I'm here as someone who lost someone and almost lost another friend in the recent tragic shooting I'm here as someone who is impacted by the Sandy Hook shooting and I'm here as someone who has been shot at in a large group myself and then laughed at by Colorado State Troopers for asking if it was safe to leave the building we ran into I'm here to encourage you all to reject any requests from the Boulder Police Department to increase their funding in response to this recent tragedy I watched the live stream of the shooting and was taken aback by how long it took SWAT to stop the shooter they stood outside in bulletproof body armor holding AR-15s while shots could still be heard inside officer tally showed tremendous bravery by running in there without such tactical gear but given the history of police responses to mass shootings it is not surprising that his bravery was an

[44:00] exception like most mass shootings the shooter was apprehended after he completed his attack uh despite rapid increases in police militarization since Coline the fact is most mass shootings aren't stopped by police and since Columbine we have seen Decades of cowardly police responses to mass shootings including the Pulse Nightclub shooting where police arrested injured victims fleeing and shots sprang out the Parkland High School shooting where police delayed their response and refused to enter the school and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting where police parked a quarter mile away and walked to the shooting which was finished by the time they got there despite bulletproof vest AR-15s and worldclass training these police have they they usually act in a way that puts their safety above those actively In Harm's Way and despite this Dynamic police routinely politicized tragedies in order to get more equipment funding and public trust from the Pol from the politician to allocate their budgets more cops means more guns in our

[45:01] community which means more gun violence I imagine many of you reject the good guy with a gun Theory posited by many Second Amendment lobbyists so please be consistent with that when that good guy with a gun has a badge and a uniform on thank you thank you Zach next we have Misha tour Riley manuso Chris alred and Evan rabbitz so currently um only Riley manuso is in the meeting so if Misha Chris or Evan are in the meeting if you could either put in the chat or the Q&A that you're here that would be great now we will go to Riley manuso hello Boulder City Council um so we recently um passed over um transgender day of visibility so as a transgender man as um as a queer bisexual man um I

[46:04] want to uh remind you all that your words of support to the transgender Community your hanging of the transgender flag uh Your Love of rainbow in funed everything do not make up for the massively systemic transphobia perpetuated by your policies um in order to support trans rights you need to support all trans people including the many of us who are substance abusers who have mental illness who are survivors of physical emotional and sexual trauma who are poor homeless or housing insecure and 177% of queer adults in the United States have lived experience of homelessness or housing insecurity that's twice the rates of straight

[47:02] adults um and the rates for Trans people within the queer Community are even higher um and when you criminalize misdemeanors when you allow any degree when you allow police the arbitrary power to arrest people for things like JW walking smoking open containers sleeping sex Work Camp thing um whatever when you allow the arrest of people for things that don't harm others you are perpetu you are creating the conditions by which police can perpetuate their discrimination against the trans Community because we are vulnerable because our biological families don't care about us because our found families are poor and because the public is unsympathetic to us because they view us as mutilated monsters um thank you Ry thank you your time is

[48:02] up next we have Chris Alid and Evan rabbits Chris and Chris I believe is under the name of jelle herzfeld I have two Chris all reds because I had two jael's so we're gonna try one and I'm going to allow both to unmute and we'll trust that the right one will do so hello yeah we can hear you Chris okay thanks Chris OLED commenting for Rocky Mountain peace and Justice Center hope everyone's doing well tonight it's been a difficult time for the community and thank you for your work tonight I'm speaking on the Rocky Mountain Greenway first I must Express serious concerns about the Boulder County Commissioner's process to introduce this item today it was extraordinarily undemocratic to our best knowledge the public hearing was announced only three days in advance

[49:00] over an Easter holiday weekend the public deserves more advanced notice the presenters to the Commissioners were extremely one-sided many of whom have a record of promoting the project no voices representing Community groups were allowed to speak this is not just I urge this Council please do not make the same mistake there must be voices from the community to present both sides it is well worth the council's time to do this and it is our government's duty to be accountable to the people today we presented a sign on letter urging the Commissioners to withdraw from the intergovernmental agreement this letter has been endorsed by two elected officials 61 organizations and 322 individuals considering are significant concerns about the Rocky Mountain Greenway the council must take the time to do further study and hear from experts to represent Community groups to quote Dr King conflicts are never

[50:00] resolved without trustful give and take on both sides please honor the people in the community who have worked tirelessly to study this issue we need you to give the staff direction to hold a balanced study session invite the Rocky Flats technical group Physicians for social responsibility and Rocky Flats Downwinders please make your voice heard tonight as elected as elected representatives of the people and speak on behalf of the Public's voice thank you thank you Chris next we have Evan rabbitz hi Council and Commissioners have proved themselves to be anti-democratic for years now councilman Wallock March 26 editorial is wrong in one important respect he refers to mass shootings as a quote traveling circus of tragedy which has quote visited Boulder

[51:03] actually this area is Ground Zero for mass shootings according to the December Post in 2019 quote the Denver area has had more school shootings per million people than the other 24 largest metro areas since 1999 the metro area also has the Third most mass shootings by population and Colorado has the fifth highest suicide rate and is ranked variously from 33rd to 47th in mental health the problem isn't going away by thinking it's a visitor if only politicians would will would look at how their policies make life so miserable for so many Boulder in particular excels at putting young people into debt slavery and a treadmill to Nowhere this is partly a result of

[52:02] the city's occupancy ordinance single family zoning prohibit prohibition against tiny homes the incredible obstacles to forming co-ops Etc CU invests student money in fossil fuels thus sealing their fate and losing their money while firing scientist Deb l for documenting oil and gas pollution and hiring the insurrectionist John Eastman can you imagine how much the young safe folks hate the city for spending a million dollars last year more than the rest of the state put together to chase the homeless from Camp to Camp against the recommendations of the CDC thank you Evan thank you okay um one more time we check in to see if Mur is

[53:01] available so hearing nothing from Brenda I'm gonna assume great thank you B um with that I'll turn to staff and see if staff has any response to um the testimony we heard at open comment Chris none for me tonight thank you Tom nor for me Sam than thank you great and then I'll turn to council I see a few hands here give me just one second we'll start with Aaron then Rachel and juny Aaron this want on a couple of um speakers there was one who um asserted that that the um shooter in the tragedy a couple weeks ago was not stopped by the police but I just want to get on the record that after after officer tally engaged the shooter no further people were hurt after he was killed so just for the record and the police did stop

[54:00] the shooting um that's just that's all I want to say thank you thank you Erin Rachel um I just wanted to say congratulations to Patrick Murphy for his hundredth open comment that's a pretty amazing feat and uh to thank him for the kind words thank you Rachel juny thank you um I just wanted to say based on what I heard tonight and all the emails that came in I do support the speaker's requests on an inep in-depth study session um because just to respond to some of their claims or some type of a response and also what does that mean that surrounding CDs have withdrawn from the project so again as someone who got on Council about a year and a half ago there is a lot of context that is missing so I think it might be useful to

[55:01] have that opportunity thank you junnie um I see no other hands I'll just follow up on Aron's comment and say that it was only a few minutes after police were dispatched that a response team from Boulder Police Department entered the king supers it did result in the death of Officer tally but it was a very short time after the initial call came in that police entered the building and as Aaron said um no further um people were injured after police first made entry so with that I think we are done there and Alicia will come back to you all right sir thank you next on our agenda we have the consent agenda which is items a through G very good um so anyone have questions or comment

[56:01] or a motion Bob I move the consent agenda in the entirety very good is there a second second great we have a motion and a second any discussion great seeing none I believe from my notes this is roll call is that correct Alicia yes sir because hang on I'm sorry to interrupt Mark I see your hand just came up yeah I assume uh for some of these items we will have the opportunity uh at um second reading to discuss them in Greater depth yes okay I'm particularly um I'm making that comment with particular reference to item D very good okay yep okay any other discussion questions

[57:02] comments great seeing none um we have a motion in a second back to you Alicia yes sir council member swatl hi thank you wallik hi Weaver yes Gates yes young yes rocket Hi friend yes Joseph yes the consent agenda has passed unanimously sir very good next we have item for a which will be the followup on the midterm Retreat check-in that we are

[58:00] moving from 6 great thank you Alicia I'm going to kick this item off uh and then uh some of our community connectors are going to join us for this presentation as well um so Taylor if we can go to the next slide what we're going to cover tonight is just a quick recap of the um 20121 to 2022 uh or that should be 2020 to 2021 major priorities and key Council actions um and then as I mentioned we'll get the Community Connector feedback as Council discussed at The Retreat um and then uh we'll specifically Identify some of the uh specific engagement subcommittee actions that came out of the retreat as well as the the new tasks uh and then uh what the next steps are so with that next

[59:00] [Music] slide as Council will remember there were uh 12 major priorities identified um for uh the the two-year period of uh 2020 uh to 2021 uh and for each of those major priorities key Council actions were identified uh and uh next slide Council added one uh new major priority which was related to the covid pandemic recovery and response uh and uh we continue to um present monthly briefings to Council on developments related to uh our response and Recovery uh our next briefing is scheduled for next Tuesday the 13th uh next Slide the uh last I think it's four priorities here uh continued to be around broader topics of homelessness and housing with some of the key Council

[60:00] actions related to the homelessness strategy um and then specific also around the manufactured housing strategy uh and ordinances which were just recently uh adopted next slide and then uh lastly the last two categories around police oversight as well as CU South and South Boulder Creek flood mitigation with two key actions related to those so with that I think I am uh oh I'm sorry I forgot there's two more on here as well um so with that I think I'm handing it over to Ryan Hansen um who's going to tee up the feedback that we received from our community connectors thank you Chris and good evening Council thank you for the opportunity to share the important work of community connectors and residents who have been Gathering Community feedback on which Council priorities most impact communities of color and

[61:02] recommendations for leveraging the city's racial Equity instrument my name is Ryan Hansen my pronouns are he him and I serve our community as the city's engagement specialist I'll turn it over now to my colleague Anna syvia to continue introductions I'm checking here I don't see Anna syia joining us here now um let's turn to our commute connectors to introduce themselves uh while I follow up with Anna syvia uh Marisha would you mind beginning sure thanks Ryan good evening Council and thank you so much for the opportunity to elevate community members voices here today my name is Marisha Kei haen my pronouns are she her her and I serve the physical communities of Whittier and North Boulder as well as

[62:00] many others through social media I also Ser serve those who identify as black African-American or who are parents of color and I will pass it on to Anna Karina uh my name is Anna Karina kasaar and I am a Community Connector and residents representing the community of Boulder medals and the Immigrant mattings Community now we have Adriana

[63:04] thank you next slide please uh here we have pictured Uh current Community connectors and residents uh and support staff and you know as you can see um here with the rest of our colleagues represent many different communities across uh our city and you know we um have have evolved this Community Connector program uh to to really focus on long-term outcomes and um really looking at positive changes in systemic and institutional level around Community engagement and racial equity and we've co-designed this model alongside community members and a special thank you to Anna Silvia co vanan uh frienda Sarah Huntley and Amy King for their support of this

[64:00] program the next slide please and I know council is a bit familiar with this timeline uh Council priorities were identified in January uh through February uh beginning February 25th Community connectors and residenc engaged commun members and collected input um we're here presenting feedback uh here tonight and then staff will continue to work with project uh leads to implement the racial Equity instrument through the end of 2021 uh influencing decisions in programs and policies and then in 2022 we'll be able to share the case studies uh from this work with the community to and then staff to make sure that we're focused on sharing what we've learned and how to best use the racial Equity instrument moving

[65:02] forward next slide please a quick note here on how um this work aligns with the city's engagement Spectrum uh and the the consult level here and promising to to keep commun MERS informed listen to and acknowledge concerns and aspirations share feedback on how public input influen the decision and a note here on which of the strategies of the racial Equity plan we're aligning with here oper operationalizing the racial Equity instrument partnering with the community and focusing on high quality Community engagement next slide please and so here we have you know all of the the priorities that Council uh did identify uh in last January and continuing to work in in this January

[66:02] and three questions were asked of community members uh when shared with with these topics uh one you know of the the work plan items identified which may have the most impact on community members of color uh what feedback or lived experience or narrative uh or stories could be shared to illustrate uh these topics and impact on on your family or your community and then which of these may be uh best leveraged with the city's racial Equity instrument next slide please thank you as uh Community connectors and residents gathered feedback uh this team of seven connected interviews focus groups and bilingual questionnaires 105 community members participated with an intentional focus

[67:00] on communities of color and harder to reach or untapped communities as you can see in the displayed pie chart 24% uh of community members participated in Spanish 11% are youth 133% identified as LGBT and 43% shared contact info to be kept updated on on this work and you can see in the pie chart here um a real intentional focus on reaching commun members of color uh another harder to reach or untapped communities next slide please and of the top five priorities we heard shareds having the most impact on communties of color were advancing racial Equity uh housing police oversight Co recovery and and homelessness I'll now turn it over to community connectors and residents who will share some of the lived experience

[68:01] and qualitative data we heard from commun Members Arisha please so thanks Ryan as Ryan pointed out uh next slide please thank you so as Ryan pointed out advancing racial Equity was a top priority that would have the most impact on communities of color and this should be of no surprise last year jurisdictions across the country including Boulder County through joint resolution 2020-4 declared racism specifically calling out structural racism to be a Public Health crisis the resolution describes structural racism as quote a system in which public policies institutional practices cultural representations and other Norms work in reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial

[69:01] group inequities our community members are living breathing Testaments to the impacts of structural racism and don't see Boulder as welcoming citing in their feedback having been the victim of discrimination when accessing services and while at work one community member talked about experiencing unspoken bias that created an uncomfortable work environment and the importance of racial bias training and I should note as well that some community members have not reported incidents fearing that it wouldn't lead to any change Boulder was described as having a homogeneous population not having people of color well represented during meetings and I would extend that to boards and commissions as well and uh I'd like to share one quote from a Community member that helps to underscore sentiments and if I could

[70:01] have the next slide please so as a Cho I have observed over multiple decades the racial and linguistic biases and inequities that still permeate our communities these are inequities that require trainingdevelopment of the public and institutions that issues stereotypes of non-white populations and that was from a Latino or Latina uh Community member who makes less than $25,000 a year so on a hopeful note a Community member pointed out that when we help all in our community succeed we all benefit and so in short community members viewed advancing racial Equity as key to increasing diversity and inclusion and reducing the ne negative effects of racism and discrimination it is a Cornerstone to any City programming and policies and I

[71:02] think I have resolution 2020-4 to back me up here and saying that quite literally the health and overall well-being of our community members of color depends on advancing racial equity and I will pass it on to Anna Karina thank you maresa um as he was mentioned before one of the most important priorities in our community is Affordable Housing Home Ownership and Home Ownership programs were emphasized throughout the testimonies and the questioners currently only 88.4% of homes and Boulder are affordable most of these being for rent um the city has a plan to increase this to 15% by 2035 but this is not enough our communities are be are being and have been priced out of Boulder for decades also we have community members

[72:01] who work in Boulder and have been working in Boulder for decades and whose kids go to school here and have never been able to afford to leave in Boulder as one Community member mentions I love getting to know and be part of our Boulder economy and at the same time I feel like I am leaving my salary resources to a city where I want to belong but where I don't really belong from our focused groups and testimonies and the questionnaires we see that even those living an affordable housing like BHP are having to leave because they can no longer afford BHP subsidized rent these families move out of the city or to the manufacturing home parks in Boulder manufacturing home parks are the only affordable homes in Boulder and without any rent control soon we will be priced out of these as well my fellow Community Connector denes who is an immigrant from Nepal and a resident of Boulder medals reports that

[73:01] roughly two years ago there were around 50 nepi families leaving in Boulder midds only in Boulder midds and in the past two years over 20 families have moved out of Boulder because they wanted to purchase a house but were unable to do it here buying a house and Boulder is nearly impossible for lower and middle income families um while we to hear from the community is that um the city needs to focus on programs of home ownership for minorities and marginalized communities something other than Habitat for Humanity programs that are more accessible for everyone including or undocumented Community who are able to buy homes in other places in Colorado and the us but not in Boulder and for community members who are priced out of the market rate homes and make too much for other affordable home programs as this member of our community points out um and if you can pass to the next slide

[74:00] [Music] please thank you how can we help those with little generational funds but good careers also be part of the community there's virtually no housing to buy at a reasonable price and there's not even the ability to buy land as Grand land and then construct a prehab house on it at a lower cost this is from a uh a person who identifies as black or African-American and whose income is 100,000 to 149,000 or 150,000 a year roughly um overall what we saw in the testimonies was that if we want to advance racial Equity we need to focus on affordable housing and Home Ownership this gives people the opportunity to build equity wealth and stability we also need legislation for rent control and Boulder and in col colado um and if you can move on to the next slide

[75:00] please um and um to the next slide thank you affordable housing and homelessness comes hand in hand uh many members of our community are faced with difficult situations as a testimony we see here many families of color in North Boulder where I work in public education are facing homelessness or home homelessness as defined by mackini vento unsa residents double up unsa living quarters Etc or they are leaving and very condensed housing where all their neighbors are as highly impacted as they are these housing situations affect their attendance in school and graduation ability to be ready by third grade and behavior in and out of class inadequate housing and Crow situations affect the life of many people in our community also we saw concerns for the lack of immediate emergency resources for families facing homelessness and concerns for the lack of shelter space

[76:00] for people sleeping in the streets again in the words of one of our community members Boulder will remain a daily homogeneous City in terms of race and ethnicity and an econ economic status unless it directly addresses the affordable housing issues and homelessness thank you and we can move on to Adriana gracias anak Karina when

[77:22] is for

[78:21] for for testimon can we see the next slide

[79:21] please next slide please

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[81:21] Sol next slide

[82:16] thank you and I take U bring it back to Ryan thank you thank you thank you Adriana thank you anak Karina thank you Marisha thank you to our community connectors and residents forther commitment in elevating the voices of under representative community members on the next slide please in meeting with staff leading work in each of these areas we recommend moving forward with implementing the raal Equity instrument within the following projects or programs within racial Equity better understanding and conducting interviews

[83:02] inventory of barriers for community members in accessing or participating in boards and commissions around covid recovery really focusing on equity and and vaccine distribution as part of a strategy with wer County around homelessness further development of an approach in identifying barriers in continuing to house hard to house individuals housing is is focusing around the eviction prevention and rental assistance Services Contin Continuum of services uh looking at a number of different points in in which we're able to support community members with legal and financial services and then around police oversight the further refinement of evaluation materials and review criteria uh needed to transition to civilian uh oversight panel members uh to review Community complaints the next slide

[84:03] please and so moving forward uh we are focusing on um continuing to train remaining project leads uh we had a number participate uh in the training last week uh include other uh work group staff who are trained in the racial Equity instrument to support this work as well as racial Equity core team staff supporting this work moving forward and then as I mentioned ensuring that we're documenting the process to share what is working well what could be improved how we want to strengthen the instrument and how case studies can better support uh staff in implementing the racial Equity instrument next year um so uh with that we'll turn to to the next slide and if if there are any questions uh for staff or for Community connectors and residents

[85:01] great thank you Ryan Mary I see you have a question I don't have a question I wanted to thank all of the community connectors for all of their work and I know that it takes a lot of time and effort to um do listening and and document all of this information that you presented here tonight and it's really appreciate it because it will be really helpful in moving forward um and helping us understand where we need to focus with the racial Equity plan so thank you thank you Mary I see no other hands up from Council Ryan and Chris I'm just one quick thing to mention that you know our community connectors here shared a vital piece of the feedback we heard we couldn't cover everything in this time and so we'll share the additional lived experience uh with each of the project teams that are moving forward implementing the racial

[86:00] Equity instrument so thank you again for for your time um thank you Marisha and anak Karina and Adriana for being here tonight as well thank you great thank you Ryan thank you all thanks Ryan and uh Taylor I'll just touch on two of these uh you can pull the slides down uh if if you'd like there's two other follow-up conversations that we're going to have the first is on May 11th which is when the council engagement subcommittee we'll bring forward uh some recommendations related to all of the engagement related topics that we talked about at the retreat uh and then the the second is um we typically in the middle of the year do a bit of a midterm check-in on the the work plan so we've tentatively scheduled that for uh the July 27th council meeting so uh uh with that I'm happy to answer any other questions uh if there are any great thank you Chris and I'll wait to see if we get hands I do have one

[87:01] comment um one item which got taken off of this Cycle's work plan was implementation of the down payment assistance program uh which was passed by the voters a few years ago and uh just to respond to some of the concerns we heard about housing ownership affordable home ownership program the goal of the uh down payment assistance program is to be able to assist with exactly that so hopefully the next Council will be able to at least think about what it would take to to advance implementation of that um with that Chris I don't see any other hands up council members last chance okay good enough uh thank you Chris and Alicia I think we're ready to move on all right sir thank you next we have our call up check-in items and item a is the call up and consideration of the

[88:01] following items relating to the 14.88 Acre Site at 5801 and 5847 of rabo Avenue first is the site review application to develop the site with 3177 residential units and approximately 15,000 feet of ground floor commercial space for office retail and restaurant uses the proposed includes construction of 10 buildings surrounding a loop drive with one access from arabo Avenue 421 parking spaces are proposed where 439 spaces are required that is a 4.1% parking reduction the development includes 25% permanently affordable housing the proposed requires a review by planning board for the request for an increase in maximum allowable Building height for three buildings case number

[89:03] l2019 D21 second on that item we have the use review application to allow for the following uses as part of the Redevelopment of the site residential uses within the IG Zone District efficiency living units over 40% in the RH -4 and IG districts professional technical or other offices within the rh4 Zone District convenience retail sales within the rh4 Zone District convenience retail sales within the rh4 Zone district and a restaurant Brew Pub or Tavern within the rh4 Zone district with 144 indoor and 50 outdoor seats that is case number L

[90:00] 2019-22 great um so we'll stop there turn to council are there any questions comments about um I guess we'll just call it the water view development I see Mark hang on give me just one moment Mark Aaron and Mary Mark yeah this is this is a project I would like to see called up um it's a project I'd like to get to yes on but I want to understand better um uh how we are doing a height modification uh uh a elu modification um and only getting the bare minimum of permanently affordable housing um and so that's something I'd like to discuss thank you Mark um Aaron um I don't I don't have any interest in calling this one up I just wanted to and call it out as I think an exemplary mixed use uh project that that hits all

[91:01] the check boxes on the site review criteria and we so rarely get the affordable housing on site that's not one of the criteria but it's a welcome um thing when it does happen I know there's been some concerns raised around how it interacts with the flood plane but uh in looking at the site review application um you can see that those were carefully evalu ated by City staff members and found to to to be safe and in compliance with all our regulations so no need for me to call this man thank you Aon Mary thanks Sam um I have some questions my first question is regarding um um I I'd like to understand what the emergency exit plan would be given that it's a one access point um so what thought has been given to the emergency

[92:00] exit Sloan we can't hear you um you look to be unmuted but for some reason I couldn't hear you anyway can you hear me now a little but you're still very quiet maybe you need to turn your microphone volume up speak again let's see I can hear your keyboard oh is this better yeah that's better yep maybe you have to lean in we'll just lean in um so what I would say is that it has been reviewed by the fire marshall and found to be compliant um I believe that there is a second um a access ement that could be used to um exit the site but we have Edward Stafford here and it looks like he's ready to answer as well sorry about that finding the unmute button so that is correct uh it has been

[93:00] reviews by reviewed by place and fire as part of our process as a part of the fire approval there is a secondary emergency access at the far East Side onto arapo Avenue it does not look like a standard access in fact it's a has landscape in the area but is designed to accommodate that emergency access if necessary um and therefore meets all code required for Access um for this type of development go ahead Mary no just a just a quick follow-up question um you so so that by access you mean then exit and entrance so if there were like a fire and everybody was trying to get out at the same time that exit would be that access would become an exit it it could become an exit although it is primarily intended to get emergency vehicles in and out if the main entrance is blocked okay great thank you and then um

[94:00] my next question has to do with um Transit access the memo discussed that there is an um a westbound stop right adjacent to the development which is great my question has to do with the eastbound um stop where is it and um and what is the expectation of The Pedestrian to get across a rapo so I believe there is an eastbound stop near Old tale there is a pedestrian underpass for the South Boulder Creek Trail that would allow them to cross great separated from on rapo from the north side to the South side and um does that underpass um Crossing is it considerably longer and by that I mean I don't know 25 50 yards longer is it longer um than just taking the direct cross uh Crossing across the the highway

[95:02] and the reason I ask is because people do that when they're running to catch a bus and they see it coming they're going to take the shortest route so I'm just interested in that emergency um type of um situation yeah don't believe that one significantly longer it may be at a slight skew that adds a little bit of distance but nothing significant uh through there but I don't have an exact number okay great thank you and then um the final one I guess is more of a comment than a um than a question although I asked staff to correct me if I'm wrong uh I don't believe that we are um able to as a condition of approval to require voucher Acceptance in um for rentals is that correct we do have a representative from housing that's probably best suited to answer that Michelle are you on in

[96:06] available Kur yeah I'm not Michelle may have uh having tech technical problems I'm not sure um so they Mary thanks for that question uh so Kurt fower director of house in human services um they aren't required to um uh to accept vouchers um is certainly as part of the um um the condition however um we are in conversations with them about um accepting some um vouchers you're aware we have a city voucher program and we have other voucher programs um we we do try to um uh any projects that are funded by the city um going forward we've been ensuring that they do uh accept vouchers

[97:00] as part of the agreement um so this would be part of a voluntary agreement um with the developer and um as I mentioned we're in conversations with them about that okay great thank you and um and then my last final comment is just um regarding kind of response to Mark's comment that this was the bare minimum of affordable housing it is actually the maximum of affordable housing and its onsite um so I um have been through uh at least half of the um iterations of um site plans for this property and um this is by far the best one and um I think it it's it meets all of the site review criteria um I would like to just be assured that the emergency exit will be

[98:02] functional should an emergency occur um and that's good to hear about the vouchers and I have no interest in calling it up um this is by far uh the best site plan that I've seen of this um property so thank you thank you Mary um Aon I see your hand up um I'll assume that that's left over and left over try sorry I'm trying to scar down some dinner here that's okay no problem and then Rachel just a quick question we had um a number of call UPS and and I can't pull up the right document in this one to verify but was this a 70 or unanimous planning board decision yes it was a unanimous planning board decision okay I just wanted to make sure I was remembering that correctly um and if memory serves it was a pretty thorough discussion and public hearing at the planning board level is that accurate almost four hours long if mem serves okay um I I also don't have

[99:00] interest in calling it up because um our planning board which is I think politically diverse um or Viewpoint diverse getting to 70 on a a complicated um site review like this is is pretty telling to me and I appreciate Mary's perspective on the different iterations as well thanks great and I'll just jump in here um mirbi called today or texted me today to express that she would like to call this up um so we have that in information um I have no interest in calling this up I am with Mary and thinking that this is the best best plan for the site that we've seen so far and um as far as the level of affordable housing you know we recently raised the requirement from 20 to 25% and so this hits that 25% and it's on site so while that's not a sight or use review criteria it is uh definitely a a good part of this project

[100:01] so I have no interest in calling it up Mark has asked to call it up nearby has um given her input are there any council members who would like to call it up besides Mark Mark I have you um seeing no others besides Mark and mir's comment this will not be called up and we can go on to the next one all right thank you sir Item B is the call of consideration for 1600 Commerce and 501 arahal Arapaho which is the ball Aerospace concept plan very good council members uh so I'll I'll speak for mirbi mirbi also um put out there that she would like to see this one called up and I think that's based on height and Mark just a procedural question um will we have another opportunity to review this uh

[101:00] when there's a site plan yes we'll have site plan review um we can turn to planning and make sure that we get the detail on that but this is concept plan and there will be a site plan review as well Carl I see you're ready have an opportunity to review it at site review okay okay uh Mark I see your hand Aaron and Rachel Aaron I I don't need to call this one up you know ball Aerospace is one of our Cornerstone longtime um City employers um so the program looks uh interesting looks like they're on their way to an approvable project potentially um so I don't need to go through all the details um I'll just mention uh one thing you know that that usually we ask ask that buildings be built to the street for a strong Street Front presence and in this case they have more of a campus kind of on the back side and for security and

[102:00] various other reasons you're not um going to their final plan doesn't include buildings on the street so I understand that just one uh request out to the people who are working on that just to make sure that there's some kind of strong landscape sign Etc element you know maybe sculpture or something like that so that that there is still some you know sign on the street that this is B Aros space and that there's some pedestrian and and bike and interest to people are passing by just one little comment but good good luck to the ball folks and um you know they do Implement worldclass um Aerospace instruments so cool company to have to right so thank you Erin Rachel yeah I don't know if I um read the packet too early but it didn't I couldn't tell what planning board did on this one was that maybe that got added later but I was just wondering what what um happened at at planning board and also um I was a little bit confused about does this intersect with what we

[103:02] decide on appendix J like do we have to look at that now versus later or um give any indication on that sure Carl did you want to summarize the board's discussion briefly and then we can talk about the relationship to appendix J sure uh planning board reviewed the concept plan on April 1st um we identified the three key issues that were in the packet so the historic preservation issue with the Hobert Wagner buildings uh the community benefit uh issues related to additional height and floor area and then just some sight and and Architectural design uh issues that Aaron raised um they talked about those items I would say for the most part the board was fairly supportive of the plan uh there were some concerns expressed about the additional employment numbers that might exist at the site um so I think there was a request of the applicant at time

[104:00] of site review to provide some more information about the amount of employees on the site uh there were comments about having a robust uh TDM plan to mitigate for traffic and and those things from that site but overall I would say that the the board appeared to be fairly uh open to the plan so as far as appendix J um there was support across the board for adding ball Aerospace on the appendix J map their discussion about appendix J did not um align on the issue of diagonal Plaza uh but we we've recommended that ball Aerospace be added now to the appendix J map since their uh plan is moving forward thanks yeah I just since we're not doing that until second reading I wasn't sure if there was how it again interplays or intersects so I also don't want to um call this up I just wanted to make sure there wasn't anything from planning that that we needed to address

[105:01] so thank you very much Carl great and I'll just jump in here and say I also don't have any interest in calling it up and I'll Echo what Aaron said um ball Aerospace does worldclass work here and at this site and uh the job jobs that are um that come from that kind of work are reasonably well-paying jobs typically a lot of um Tech work and I will say middle- income kinds of positions will be created um as a result of the work that's going on here so from a um kind of economic diversity standpoint of the types of jobs that we have in Boulder I think that um that what will come from this expansion will be good on that front as well that has nothing to do with the concept plan directly but I just want to Echo what Aaron was saying about um how how important it is to have ball as an economic anchor here in the

[106:00] city so and Mark I see your hands still up I'm assuming that's leftovers this new no no it's new Carl um there are several uh buildings on existing buildings on site that might have some Landmark qualities to them uh has there been any conversation about those buildings is there any agreement with respect to those buildings um have our landmarks people wait in what's what's the state of play with respect to that landmarks board has not had the opportunity to review those buildings there's been a lot of conversation about those buildings I think what staff has conveyed to the applicant is obviously our pre our preference would be to preserve as many of the buildings as possible um the applicant has indicated that there are some issues related to the usability of the building based on their age and and just the functionality of the buildings um in our review uh our Focus went to what is most important on the site and that revolved

[107:02] around the original building that was built on the site which is called the control cells division building which is that one that's shown at an angle um on the site the original building so the applicant has indicated to us that they would be open to um updating and preserving that building in its location but then demoing the other buildings on the site should the application advance to site review U the applicant would then need to engage the landmarks board as part of the process all right thank you great um so to council does anyone want to call this up okay very good um with that I think we're ready to move on Alicia all right sir um didn't we have a third one we that's what we're moving on to oh okay sorry we have item C which is the call of consideration for a combined site and

[108:02] use review application to redevelop 1.45 Acre Site with a 189 room hotel along with retail and small scale office case number L 2020-4 this is located at 1155 Pleasant Street 1301 Broadway 13113 Broadway and 1335 Broadway very good Council any comments questions call up Mark and then Mary well for a change of pace I do not want to call this up um I think it's an extremely well-designed project uh I think it is an important step in hopefully the revitalization of uh of the Hill um I have previously said that I I question whether it will perform that function but in the absence of a better strategy I think this is the way to go and I think the applicant has done

[109:00] a terrific job in its design so no for me great thank you Mark Mary and then aarin Mary yeah um I have no interest in calling it up but I do have a question with respect to the assistance for um the business relocation um what is the status of that so I'm gonna suggest U that Sarah wenson who's with Community Vitality um join our um group and it might take a minute to pull her into the conversation I am not seeing Sarah on our attendee list you could be trying to come in I'm available to answer that question question awesome go ahead Evette that's great good evening council members Evette Bowen from Community Vitality playing Sarah weedon this evening um to answer your question Mary

[110:02] that fund still stays in place should there be a closing on this property will continue the work that we have been doing with those tenants um some of the existing tenants have decided to already start relocation elsewhere uh on University Hill and Sarah's doing a great job of keeping all impacted businesses on the hill engaged and updated on the status of the project we have to be careful not to encourage breach of their current leases and so while we're available to let them know what's available on the hill we don't want to encourage that at this time so we're um still uh planning on having that funding available for p uh for people who at time of closure um would still need to be relocated and we hope they do so on the hill thank you Evette thank you all right Aaron I'm going to keep my street going

[111:01] and not ask for us to call this one up um I just wanted to offer a couple comments that I think we've been looking at this sign and and this potential project for just about the entire five years that that I've been on Council and um it's evolved gradually and I feel like it's its final form is is its best form so as to the points that Mark said earlier I agree with those um I think it the project is welld designed it it's the criteria and it's hopefully will be the catalytic project that we've been looking for for a long time particularly with the um the Synergy with the new CU Conference Center across the street so looking forward to uh the future of the Hill here in a few years when these get get finished great thank you Aon um with that I'll do a final call does anyone want to call up the Hill Hotel great seeing none we will call up none of the three call up items tonight I neglected to make an announcement

[112:00] earlier which is that um translation services uh ended before the callup so we will have no other translation going on for the rest of the meeting I'll turn to council I will make a suggestion that we take a break now um once we start the next hearing I think we'll be in that hearing for two two and a half hours so speak your peace if you wouldn't like a fem minute break now otherwise we'll take a five minute break and let Carl set up for the next hearing okay very good see you all at 7:55

[115:18] e

[118:18] right okay council members it is 75 5 if you could turn on your cameras so I know that you're here that would be great there's

[119:01] Aaron three four six we are waiting on Mary Mary are you here Alicia I think we're good to go ahead and kick off Mary I'm sure we'll join us in just a moment all right sir thank you um we have coming up next our public hearing um on the update on state legislation and motion to revise the city of Boulders 2021 policy statement on regional state and federal policy

[120:02] matters and for this item I'd like to welcome our chief policy adviser Carl Castillo thank you Chris and good evening council members can you hear me okay yep great um thank you TOR for putting up the PowerPoint slide if you could Advance it one thank you so tonight my uh presentation I wanted to update you on State Legislative and Regulatory policy action um I also wanted to make a recommendation on changes to the policy statement they two very small changes and then finally um just wanted to mention that this is an opportunity for Council to act on that recommendation and to make any other necessary course Corrections in terms of of how we're proceeding on our policy advocacy next slide please the first one I wanted to talk about is one of our three Council

[121:00] priorities and it has to do with climate action um in terms of things that have happened that Council would be interested to know and and probably already knows is that the a greenhouse gas pollution reduction road map was finalized by the governor's office and that is to uh describe how the state will get to its HB 1261 climate targets uh getting to 50% ruction by 2030 when compared to 2005 um Baseline measures three significant things are occurring that I want to report on that would take us um towards that Target um first one is transportation um transportation as you may know is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in Colorado um significantly in May the air quality control commission will be considering adopting a rule actually in May they'll be um proposing it in August

[122:01] they'll be considering it they're going to consider a rule that U establishes greenhouse gas emission budgets for Regional Transportation plans so this is going to be really significant we all know that uh the allocation of Transportation transportation funding is a really important issue that all local governments battle for so having greenhouse gas emissions be one of the significant factors is is going to be a major change secondly I want to talk about energy so the electric energy Generation Um sector which is the number one I'm sorry the number two producer of greenhouse gas emitters um the clean energy plan as you may recall was created through statute back in two uh 20 9 to allow Excel to have a safe harbor basically if Excel was to achieve an 80% reduction by 2030 they would not be

[123:00] subject to additional regulations under hp1 1261 well not only is Excel about to um submit an Erp that would have them comply with the the clean energy plan but so have the other largest Electric utilities in Colorado um not all of them are actually submitting clean energy plans but they are committing to the same goal and with that that's essentially 99% of the states electricity uh generators are now committing to reaching that 80% reduction by 2030 which is of course one of the reasons why electric vehicles which we'll talk about later is such an important uh approach to uh to get to this goal lastly the third sector that is the most uh significant in greenhouse gas generation is the oil and gas sector and in June a rule will be proposed and in December a uh a rule will be adopted

[124:00] that aims to reduce the reduction reduce the emissions of the sector by 50% by 2030 you probably have heard that there have been significant rules that have been adopted recently that have helped reduce the amount of methane emissions so for example uh just a couple months ago the air quality control commission did adopt a rule that um requires non-emitting pneumatic controllers which is very significant nonetheless what this rule that I'm talking about that will be considered later this year will get towards is all those gaps that need to be addressed that you know sort of the hard problems that have not yet been addressed in terms of regulating the oil and gas sector so collectively I mentioned those because I think they are both challenges and uh significant uh approaches that will be uh considered over the next year and I wanted you to know that um Boulder is very much at the

[125:00] table on these issues we specifically are working with Colorado climate cc4 CA Colorado communities for climate action to advocate for uh strong roles in in each one of these R makings um otherwise I wanted to mention though that in terms of legis ation you all know that uh we are looking to partner with Excel to have legislation introduced that would remove uh the 120% cap that exists on customer cited solar generation we're working with Senator fenberg on that uh that has not been released yet but we still expect that to come forward and another priority uh under the topic of climate action is the bill that representative hooton is working on which would have a study of how Community Choice energy might work in Colorado um so we still expect that to come forward next slide please so second large priority is

[126:01] sustainable mobility and the big topic that I'd like to talk about there is the likely expected introduction of a bill that would raise nine new distinct fees on a variety of things such as Road usage trucks electric vehicles what you see in the PowerPoint slide is actually the order in which the amounts are so basically Road usage fee which is basically the uh two cents per gallon increase is the largest increase and then there's truck and then there's EVs and and so on um these fees would be index forever um they collectively uh would come together to make a $4 billion increase in Revenue in 11 years um so it's it's very significant uh next slide please um in terms of how the revenue

[127:01] would be spent and I'm speaking based on a variety of traveling Road shows that have occurred describing what this bill is anticipated to to include we have not yet seen the bill so it's just based on what the sponsors are telling us is going to be in there but we do believe that it'll be what I'm talking about here so 18% of that $4 billion would go towards um electric vehicles and and trying to uh increase the proliferation of EVS throughout the state so 323 million for charging infrastructure and electric vehicle Equity 32020 million for Fleet electrification uh incentives and then lastly uh 81 million for seedot public transit Electric electrification and I will mention that the U Fleet electrification incentives are available to cities like Boulder as well or at least they would be next slide

[128:01] please also wanted to mention because one of the big things that we've always asked whenever there's been a new transportation funding measure is how much of it is going to go to multimodal projects well in this case the way it's structured 20% of the new Revenue would go towards that um it would go towards multimodal um in addition 219 million would be available in Grants actually not in addition but let me uh pause here as part of that there is a multimodal options fund that would make grants available to local governments and local governments could use their funds on a onetoone match basis to secure the grants and what's significant is as you see in the next line here is local governments would be getting some money out of this they'd be getting over 1 billion and they can use that local share of the highway users trust fund that they would be garnering through this bill to match the uh to

[129:02] submit a grant uh match for the multimodal options fund um and finally a large amount the largest amount of money is going towards the uh the state share um it's the highway users trust fund State share so one point 637 billion dollars would go towards the state working on the 10year plan and what's in the 10-year plan there's a lot of really important projects but for our our neck of the woods it's important to know that projects like like State Highway 119 and State Highway 7 and having multimodal improvements added to those corridors are in the plan so that is something that we could expect to see go forward if this um if um if this bill was the pass um wanted to just conclude um by saying that we expect that the city will be able to support this bill but we'll need to review the actual language and before going any further I wanted to pause

[130:01] because I know they I know the mayor and uh council member Brocket both have been part of these conversations and I wanted to see if they'd like to add any comments before going in going further well great thank you Carl I appreciate that um I will just first set a little context here all the numbers you've seen are the 10-year numbers so um these are not all one-year um changes and this is a very very important bill um this is the follow on to the multiple other attempts to get State transportation funding kind of addressed and brought into the current ERA so um there are parts of this that are fantastic like the EV amounts and the multimodal amounts there are parts that are a little more questionable like um continuing the highway user trust fund allocation formula um much of that particularly for the local share looks

[131:00] specifically at Lane miles of Road and Lane miles of bridge and then vehicle registration so not directly population but vehicle registration so one of the points of conversation with Metro Mayors and other Regional groups has been around how can we change the formula for the hutf um that's not proposed in this bill and there's a lot of reasons why it's not proposed here but it has sparked the conversation we hope to carry forward um once that ruling comes out that Carl mentioned from the air quality uh Control Commission about um greenhouse gas emissions and transportation funding that will be a spark to have the conversation around the way that um monies are allocated through the Highway user trust fund um and as Carl said we don't have Bill language so we're this is the the sponsors I heard today on a call have done a hundred different meetings uh with people presenting the the

[132:01] particulars of this bill so um I think we want to support this bill um it's not perfect but it's pretty good Ain what are your thoughts that's a good uh summary uh the 101st meeting is Faith Winters coming to Dr Cog tomorrow to to talk this over as well the the road show continues but you know there have been a variety of efforts to increase transportation funding in the state of Colorado over the last you know many years and and all of them have foundered um either in the design of them or at the The Ballot Box and this is the one that looks like it may actually have legs and may actually make a dent in um getting us funding uh for our transportation needs locally but also for the state as a whole so as Sam says you know we could ask for certain things to be changed potentially but overall with the multimodal and um EV shares I think it's it's something that we'll be fortunate to get yeah and with that thank you Aon I agree with all of that the one one thing to add is that one of the asks that we had was that um

[133:02] we have a little more focus on the Front Range because if you look at Equity regionally um the Front Range funds uh rode maintenance all over the state um and disproportionately to population so what one thing that did come out of that um discussion was about $100 million that will go towards um mitigating air quality impact so we're nonattainment in the Front Range on ozone and so um part of the negotiations that have been successful is some of this money will be set aside specifically for um mitigating air pollution so with that Carl I think back to you great thank you I should also say that many May wonder how this is being done through legislation the reason is because these are fees and fees are not Carl Carl you're very quiet oh

[134:00] um let me check my sence here that's better that's better it's where your mic was Carl yep okay all right as I was saying because we're using fees here um and the way uh our our constitution works is the general can increase fees and a fee is defined as essentially an assessment of of a of a um Revenue generating tool on activity where the money then is used for that to support that same activity so in this case the use of the roads generates revenue and it's used in turn for infrastructure so it's just important to note that because people may wonder how this is being done by the general assembly uh next slide please um also along the lines of sustainable Mobility I wanted to speak quickly about our nams projects again nams stands for Northwest area Mobility study and it

[135:02] includes a variety of multimodal corridors that we're supporting through the uh Metro May through the Northwest Mayors and Commissioners Coalition um two of the ones that uh are likely to be first served are State Highway 119 um basically basically to diagonal and State Highway 7 and I just wanted to report that in working on these we are working on it through a phased approach and I'll describe later on here why that's important um I also want to just digress by talking about the Northwest rail uh you know this has of course been a project that has long been neglected um by RTD um there has been very significant um reasons to believe that it could be incorporated into Amtrak's Front Range passenger rail um two things that are significant first Amtrak released a map last week that actually showed the Front Range

[136:00] passenger rail on its map and just today the U the vice chair of the state's uh house Transportation committee talked about uh it was cleared that the Northwest rail alignment was the preferred choice of the governor um as well as the legislative leadership so um if you combine that with the fact that there's an infrastructure package that may very very well allow for the money that would be necessary there may be Reason for Hope um so wanted wanted to just pass that on um there's also reason to Hope as far as State Highway 119 there and State Highway 7 for that matter there's a lot of new state and federal funding possibilities that are opening up first of all there is the transportation fee bill which we just spoke about and these projects are part of the uh 10-year plan as I mentioned there's also the federal infrastructure package and there is the ability of

[137:00] including um there's certainly the ability that that money would contribute towards these projects there's the transportation reauthorization bill so the the transportation um transportation funding has to be reauthorized through a bill every few years and um we are requesting $5 million through uh Congressman neus for a phase of the State Highway 119 project which is basically the intersection with State Highway 119 and Highway uh 52 uh finally as you've heard Appropriations are coming back in a more limited more transparent way they're now being called Community projects and the MCC is making a request of $1 million for State Highway 119 bike ped connections and a Bikeway design and last but not least uh we continue to pursue build grants for State Highway 119 in hober so all bits and pieces of a

[138:03] very expensive project but again there is reason to believe that we will have these projects move forward I would say you know perhaps within four years for State Highway 119 um next slide please last but not least of council's priorities is restoring local control for the city to engage with undocumented immigrants in the way it chooses um as you will recall in 2006 there were some bills that passed that put barriers preventing the city from providing Community benefits to undocumented immigrants this includes um uh benefits in the form of of financial aid but it also in includes benefits in the form of Occupational professional licenses um so we have been working with Senator Carl we lost you again when you turned your there you

[139:02] go uh so we've been working with Senator Joz Lewis to uh uh have a bill introduced and we're working with the Coalition of a variety of nonprofits Senate Bill 199 would remove those barriers that were passed in 2006 it would restore local government's ability to decide if they want to provide Community uh benefits and licenses and certifications to undocumented immigrants um it would also repeal a 2003 law that required the use of secure and verifiable identity uh act um identification so essentially it's your passports your driver's license your military um um ID card things like that up till up until now unless this this law passes Boulder is unable to provide create its own identification which is something that I know that has been spoken about and and and there's many in the community that would like to have the ability to provide for that um so

[140:03] this bill is certainly not a short thing um it's it's very challenging but I can report though that there are some other bills that are out there that are taking bite-sized pieces at this there's one that has just said that uh housing benefits uh shall be allowed to be given to undocumented immigrants um that one is on the way to the governor there's also one that's listed here on the PowerPoint slide that would exempt state it would exempt from the prohibition State commercial or professional licenses and certificates or registration um we were able to work work with the Colorado Municipal league and I think I'll take this opportunity to make a brief commercial for being a member of CML um I am very impressed with the the lobbyist that they have in this case I called up CML and I saidou know it's a shame that Senate Bill 77 only applies to this state um is there any way we could have it amended to actually allow local governments that have that ability as well because we

[141:00] don't know if Senate Bill 199 will pass well within three days uh the bill was amended to include that so uh so we will have that if this bill passes which I am I do expect Senate Bill 77 to pass will at the very least have the ability to uh decide whether to issue professional licenses and certificates to undocumented immigrants next slide please so I want to now shift to some other bills that are not uh Council priorities but are nonetheless very important to the city and I want to start off with Senate Bill 21062 uh this is one that you have received many many emails on and I believe a lot of people will be speaking about this at the public hearing um it's called the jail population management tools bill um our council's intergovernmental Affairs committee met and talked about this they adopted a position of amend basically meaning they

[142:02] want to ask for some significant amendments they generally agreed with the tenants of the bail reform part of the bill they think that's important and they certainly understand where the sponsors are coming from on that topic however they had some significant concerns on the part of the bill that has to do with arrest standards um I before I walk through the Amendments that we have proposed to uh Senator fenberg and that we've also shared with representative hooton I wanted to say that the basis of C the intergovernmental Affairs committee's position is rooted on council's direction to protect local control it's also based on the city's interest in protecting Public Safety uh our police chief is quite concerned about this as is the police Chiefs Association and now the county sheriff's Association as well as Colorado Municipal league and the

[143:00] Metro mayor's caucus all four of these organizations are actually opposing this bill at this point they've actually switched their positions so Public Safety is a significant concern and lastly it's actually council's direction to protect racial Equity we believe there are some un intended impacts that would occur with this bill both in terms of the victims that whose rights would not be protected and some of the authority that would be uh bestowed upon the police officers or actually imposed I would say that we think would actually introduce um uh racial bias or certainly create the possibility for that and I'll speak about that um the first part of this of the amendment that we wanted to speak about is this bill actually includes entire categories of crimes that that there should not be an arrest for so it says any class 4 felony or lower any misdemeanor any Municipal crime any one

[144:01] of these um shall not be subject to an arrest there was more there's there there's an exception but let me just focus on that part first I want to just um emphasize that these are serious crimes um certainly in felony you know you have you have uh second and third degree burglary motor vehicle theft and and these are crimes where people of uh marginalized communities are more likely to be the victims of these crimes even crimes of of M Municipal codes can be quite serious for example um brawling is a municipal code violation so the concern is that the way this is structured rather than cite certain crimes that are perhaps not serious and we would agree for example that a ticketing for camping um is not a crime that should lead to an arrest um nonetheless this bill goes too far in

[145:00] having these broad uh categories of crimes so the amendment that we have proposed is to specify those level of CRI crimes that we want to have this bill apply to or at the very least exclude all felonies from this section the next amendment that we we are asking for has to do with the fact that I talked about how these crimes are all prohibited from from leading to an arrest well there is an exemption it's very very important to know about that exemption the bill says that felonies are exempt from this prohibition and arrest if the officer records a reasonable suspicion of threat to safety or unwillingness to cease and desist these are certainly important questions to be asked but the committee felt that these are not questions that should be asked by a police officer in the field these are the questions that should be asked and answered by a municipal court judge or by a bond officer who has the

[146:00] ability to consider these questions in a very uh careful way through an impartial risk assessment Matrix the concern is that officers if they if they are forced to make this decision they will um they could make the wrong decision at the very least they could even let um bias be introduced into their decision-making they uh could also be concerned about liability they could be concerned that if they arrest somebody when they feel like there's a threat to safety uh and it turns out to be that that someone else says it wasn't a threat to safety they this bill seems to allow for a u a lawsuit to be brought against them I don't I don't know if that's for damagers or what um it also could be a concern that if they don't arrest somebody that that person who goes on to hurt someone else could also perhaps um have a have a case against the officer so it puts the officer in a really difficult position which we don't think should be uh a decision that the

[147:01] officer should be making so the amendment request is to strike these requirements from the bill next slide please the bill also in describing exemptions says that crimes that um othered in felonies that are made that include the illegal possession or use of firearms is part of a reason to exempt them there's other conditions that need to be met as well um this makes sense of course um our concern is that it leaves out other weapons that could be just as deadly and certainly concerning we list knives machetes as examples so we've made a request to amend this bill to replace the term firearm with deadly weapons so that kind of concludes the section on arrest standers now this last bullet has to do with the the bail reform so like I said council's committee was generally supportive of

[148:01] the reforms that are being proposed there um one of the changes though is that it requires non-monetary bond for a failure to appear unless certain conditions are met and one of those conditions is that there be three failure to appears in the case at hand so the defendant could in fact have other ftas it could have several other failures to appear in other cases but they would need to have at least three ftas in the case at hand before um they the judge could provide a monetary Bond uh we believe that three ftas is too much and so the amendment request is to lower lower the ftas to two and now I'd like to pause again because this was part of a substantial conversation as part of the intergovernmental Affairs committee and I think it's important that you hear from your own members on um how they reach their conclusion and then I'd like to proceed with the rest of the

[149:01] presentation super thanks Carl I'll just step in here and turn to the other members there's four of us on the um intergovernmental Affairs committee uh Aaron Brockett Mark wallik juny Joseph and myself and I think um Carl I think you did an excellent job at summarizing our discussions but I'll turn to um other members of the committee I see Aaron you have your hand up yeah I mean I could offer a few words uh Carl thanks for that that thorough explanation of the the bill and our discussion and potential amendments um so I I think we all felt that the cash Bill reform was an extremely important um thing to do it's an important step forward for um Criminal Justice Reform in our state that you know we shouldn't be um keeping people in jail uh for different lengths of time based on whether they have a certain amount of money or not so generally that was felt like a very very

[150:00] positive step forward so um we had the the one kind of very I think very small request to change about the FTA conditions um but felt like that was Cash Bill reform really important and that um the the intentions of the arrest standards changes uh were were very good that the goals of jail D population are uh moving in the right direction for sure and then as Carl mentioned just a few more um more concerns in that area um you know things like the the you know yielding a machete threatening somebody with a machete is uh you know nearly as serious as threatening them with a with a handgun so the that we had some additional specific requested changes um in those areas to to to I think get the bill to a point where I think uh we could support it you know more wholeheartedly so that's my sense of our our discussion so the hope would be that that these we could get a few amendments done and then

[151:01] this could move forward um as as a as a positive step for for the state and I'm speak that's my personal words there thank you Aon Mark yeah I I think Aaron said it very well um we were very supportive of the bond reform aspects of the legislation and for the rest we are trying to balance the needs uh of the community for Public Safety with the desire to not imprison people uh for whom prison is is not really warranted and I think the proposed amendments do that uh it permits us uh still to um address serious crimes as they're committed uh and for minor crimes um we will hand out a summons and uh I I think the what we have been proposing is a is an is a good balance between um the concerns of Chief

[152:01] heral and others in the community uh and the desires to reform the criminal justice system in a way that is rational and Mak some sense um so uh also Carl I wanted to thank you for that presentation uh that was as always lucid and uh very informative so thank you thank you Mark um I guess I'll add here one more thing which is that there is a template law called the it's a group of folks that write um templates that can be adopted by States and passing laws for Criminal Justice Reform one of those focuses on this specific area and it has some significant differences between the bill that's proposed and moving through right now and what was in that template law and the Amendments that we have um asked for here around arrest standards um would

[153:01] bring it the the current bill more in line with the kind of nationally accepted template for Criminal Justice Reform of this type so um I would also say that it it has been interesting to watch the political dynamic go on um because um the Colorado Municipal league has changed their position uh on this a couple of times and they're now in a straight opposed position on this bill um Statewide sheriffs are in straight oppose and the police Chiefs Statewide Association is in straight oppose and I I think those are too strong a position if amendments could be adopted and accepted I think it would make it a lot more palatable to law enforcement communities so our committee did not adopt any kind of opposed position on this it's simply that we think these amendments would make the bill um much better in balance and along the lines of

[154:01] national models for this kind of legislation so with that um Carl turn it back to you great thank you tler uh next slide please okay we're we're winding down here I know that was fairly meaty but uh talking about some other bills that are significant interest to the city uh it's important about important for you to know about HB 211117 which is the bill introduced by representative Kennedy from lakwood he did not introduce this bill for Boulder but you would you would you you would have a hard time realizing that because the bill does exactly what our voters have required us um to do in the most recent election which is to have the mayor elected through Irv starting 2023 that is what this bill would do it would allow the city cities already have this Authority what they don't have is the ability to coordinate with counties counties don't have the authority so

[155:00] give the ability for counties to do this in coordination with cities it would give the Secretary of State's office the ability to create standards and certification processes uh that um that would have to be met that's another part that would be missing counties if this bill was not passed even if cities could technically do this they would not be certified by the Secretary State because they wouldn't have a process to do that um and it also allows the Secretary of State to buy a license for the software that would be necessary uh for this um for instant verto voting to occur um challenge is that it is going to cost uh a million dollars is what the Secretary of State's office estimated for them to do do the standards and certifications and and about $70,000 of that is for an a new license so a relatively insignificant part of it um we have worked with representative Kennedy he's been great to work with uh the mayor and

[156:00] I have joined him in in a meeting I've had other meetings with him um and the mayor has also testified on this bill um in order to address the high fiscal note and the challenge that the state might not have the ability to pay for that representative Kenny did change the measure to delay the implementation of a good part of the bill I should say for those cities that exist in one more than one County they would not have this available to them until 2025 but it still would permit cities like Boulder to take advantage of it and Boulder and Boulder County but that decreases the initial cost and thus the fiscal note it also was amended so that any County that actually took advantage of this would have to pay a prator share of the license and in this case in 2023 could very well be case very well be the case that Boulder will be the only city participating in this with Boulder County um and the only only city in the

[157:01] state in which case Boulder would simply be build $70,000 for um for it share of the software we would also have to reimburse the county for other costs related to running this this election this bill is again a challenge it's not a guarantee um but as I said representative Kennedy has been great to work with and in being creative and ways that will essentially make it likely that we could use this so we're hoping to continue to work on this and I wanted you to know about that also wanted to speak about HB 1162 which is a bill introduced by representative Valdez has to do with the management of Plastic Products it prohibits the single use of plastic carry out bags into to go food containers made of polystyrene it used to repeal local preemption so that we would also have the ability to address other issues such as straws for example however that local preemption repeal was

[158:00] amended out in its most recent hearing there's a possibility that it'll be read that that would be put back into it there's a lot of um stakeholders including Boulder that will be lobbying for just that but at this point it is Lim to the Statewide prohibition on bags and takeout containers made of styr Styrofoam um lastly I wanted to just briefly mention a bill that we have worked with representative Weissman on which is a bill is a small small part of a larger Special Districts Reform Bill that he's going to be running uh he agreed to address a concern that Boulder and Boulder County had which had to do with Special Districts having the what's know as dominant eminent domain and with that Authority they could actually go beyond the the the the boundaries of where they were um created where the voters created them into another city into another County like Boulder and actually use them in a

[159:00] domain to acquire Water Resources in our case that are owned by the city of Boulder um or certainly the land underneath it and the land next to it which creates a lot of concern so we still expect that to go forward and it is part of a larger bill so we don't know uh it's too early to say how How likely it'll be to pass but it is a priority that we continue to work on next slide I think that might be the last one but looks like it may be all right well that that concludes my um oh no okay um it's important to mention that we do have some changes to recommend to the policy statement uh they're small um but they're significant nonetheless um you will recall that Council was was asked by the school district um I think two months ago to support a position of regulating uh High potency T THC marijuana products essentially um I think shatter and wax are the two

[160:00] examples that have been cited um the concern is that people overdose on this uh and particularly Youth and how dangerous that can be there has been a bill that's been in the works but I just found out that it's totally been re Rewritten so it's probably not even worth discussing it at this point nonetheless what we'd like to have in the council's policy statement is the position that we would support the regulation of such project products so that there would be some standardization of the sizes so right now in Edibles you have a standardization you have to have a clear demarcation I think it's five milligrams per serving um that doesn't apply to uh these products like shatter and wax so that's an example of what we'd like to see we also want to make sure that there is some marketing and education especially targeted towards youth so that they understand how dangerous this product can be uh so that's recommendation number one is to include language in the policy statement that would allow us to support that kind

[161:00] of Regulation the second change is it has to do with a very uh particular bill Senate Bill 211 15 156 which would create a pilot program that would help Finance the use of nurse nurses to be used in take calls of 911 911 calls the reason this is important is by having nurses answer to phone they can often prevent the need for an ambulance to come there or for somebody to be taken to the emergency room it's part of the fire department's master plan to decrease unnecessary 911 calls we think that Boulder could be a candidate for this pilot program the way the bill is structured I didn't want to write into I didn't want to propose something in the policy statement that was so narrowly tailored to a bill like this because I didn't know where else it would apply but it occurred to me that there is no language that would indicate what should be fairly obvious that we would support um grants and um yeah I I suppose the word is Grants Grant programs that the

[162:01] state would create that would help Finance City efforts uh so it's a very general statement that we're proposing to add to the policy statement that would allow us to support a bill like I just mentioned and I think with that that may be the last slide and tayor you can let me know otherwise okay that is the last one so uh with that I wanted to mention I know we have a long public hearing um and I I wanted to make sure that our lobbyists who are on the call Will coin and Adam iberg and if they haven't been elevated the panelist yet if that could be done that'd be great um I wanted Council to have an opportunity to ask them any questions they are very much the expert experts on all things actually happening at the capital they actually make a physical appearance there and are quite sophisticated on a variety of issues beyond what I've spoken about um so I know that in the past Council has wanted to Pepper them with some some questions

[163:00] and it could also be a question related to something I spoke about that you feel like they might have some expertise on so super thanks Carl and I'll turn first to Adam and will and see would you guys like to uh tell us anything add what Carl has said about the current legislative session and then we'll turn to council members for questions hi everyone good evening I can jump in this is Will coin I would only just take time to mention that it is an unusual year procedurally since we started a month late started really in mid-February and because of the emergency declaration the legislature has permission to go a bit longer so instead of being sure that they will end um 120 days from beginning in early January and ending in early May the session's going to continue on into late May and even early June um so it's one little additional process thing I would add but I think Carl did a great job of

[164:00] walking through a in detail a lot of the big issues facing you all and the state going on at the general assembly and will I have a question on that um when we first kicked off the session there was it sounded like there was still a goal to get us done by early May and sounds like what you're saying is it'll go longer um is that a firmed up decision is there a firm in date at this point or is it just kind of becoming understood that it will last beyond early April I'm sorry early May so yeah go ahead Adam yeah I I spoke with the um leadership today about that very question mostly because I'm trying to plan a vacation um and uh the answer I got was you know they're constitutionally allowed to go 120 days that would put them at the latest at June 12th and um you know as will mentioned they had originally intended to finish by Memorial Day I think that our gut is

[165:01] that they'll probably go into that next week that first week of June and then try to be done um I think that there is this looming question about the incoming Federal stimulus money and whether or not they will have time uh to deal with it in the regular session and if they don't um there are rumors that they will call them either they will call themselves back or the governor will call them back to do uh the distribution of the federal money um sometime this summer great thank you both um Mark I see you have a question yeah this is for uh will and Adam um one of the problems we're experiencing here is that part of the upsurge in crime that we're trying to deal with um is that crimes are being committed um by a number of individuals for whom jail is not really the answer they're either suffering from meth addiction or mental illness and um we've

[166:01] been told on any number of occasions that Colorado is very poor in terms of the the funds it allocates for responses to those problems is there any legislation that will provide relief um and provide better out comes uh with respect to those who are suffering from drug addiction and mental illness uh or is there not anything on the table with respect to that sorry getting off the mute uh uh councilman I think that there are several bills and certainly a very broad discussion about mental health um in lots of spaces in the criminal justice space um youth uh the impacts of covid on people and there is stimulus money uh available and I think that my last conversation again with leadership was that they plan to do some allocations

[167:01] within those areas there are at least three bills moving around crisis hotlines uh you know the 998 hotline another hotline provided by the Department of Human Services um and there was talk even today about expanding some of the funding from the hotline for the services provided or the referral services so those conversations are absolutely happening and I think you know you raise an interesting point not not just around crime but around the impacts of covid um that folks really mental health is suffering and I think that the state leaders recognize that thank you okay C IL members any questions for our lobbyists will we have them here I think they will probably head out before the public hearing so this is your chance all right seeing No Hands um Carl anything else before we move on to

[168:01] public comment uh no other than to say that of course if you have any questions for me prior to the hearing I'd be happy to answer them super Rachel yeah well and I see the lobbyists are still there so I will just ask you guys will be back on the 20th to talk about um gun violence prevention bills maybe um just if I could speak for them because I I have not yet asked them but uh I think I saw a I think I saw a noob there so I will not to put them onto a spot but I will certainly ask them and see if that works for them and um I guess we we'll need to decide how we're going to structure that conversation on the 20th as well okay um so we're not talking about that aspect of our legis lative agenda tonight so we may have questions for you on the 20th if that's a possibility and then Carl I had a couple for you um at our last meeting I don't know November whenever it was we talked about changing um one aspect of of homelessness policy where I think

[169:01] it's our um practice to oppose any state law that would sort of um impose a you know a requirement at the state level that people that cities provide services for people unhoused and I I think there was Council maybe majority will to look at that and change it so I just wondered if that change was made so that if the state is trying to take action that would impact all this you know all municipalities or counties um and require some some you know a floor of services we didn't oppose it right yeah and and I apologize council member friend because you're entirely right that was brought up and there was clear direction that that should have come back to the intergovernmental affairs committee um I'm trying to think if there's any way that I can Briefly summarize how to address the issue so that we can just have Council approve it the concern if I recall was on the issue of um whether

[170:01] the city would oppose impositions of restrictions on the state in terms of how they make decisions on on addressing homelessness and your concern was that we went with the language perhaps too far and didn't make room for support for maybe I'm trying to walk through it but I'm not getting there uh Rachel maybe you that's okay so I don't have the language and I'm sorry I didn't bring it up in advance I just thought of it while you were talking and wanted to make sure it was in there but as I recall there was some language that said like if the state wants to um take any action on homelessness we will oppose it you know them forcing us to do something basically do you know we prefer local control and our discussion was we actually would would like everyone who is unhoused in the state to be able to be um you know to receive quality services in their home cities and if the state were to require something like that it would be sort of silly for us to

[171:00] oppose it so like tweaking the language to say that we would support whatever it said that we would oppose along those lines and perhaps somebody else remembers this better than I do right right no I I actually have say that um with your permission I'd like to indulge with your Indulgence I would like to uh take this up at the next Amendment and the reason it might be okay is because I don't see that this is currently uh an an issue I have not seen any bills that would be related to this I know that the intergovernmental Affairs committee was talking about meeting again to talk about Transportation so if that's the case we could certainly have that conversation I think I couldn't do this point Justice to try to come up with language now is that okay and that was what we thought at the last meeting was like we didn't want to do it on the Fly because we wanted to kind of get it right so right well I I do apologize and and I'm gonna make a big note it's going to be a post that right on my my computer thanks and then um I I have some questions on um

[172:01] Senate Bill 2162 and and I kind of want to hear from um the a I see that there's some speakers from the ACLU who are signed up to speak and so I'll probably ask them some questions can I come back to you after I hear from them on the tail end after public comment and ask questions of course awesome and then just one other before is you mentioned um the the subcommittee being concerned about police officers exercising discretion pursuant to this change and that confuses me a little bit because right now obviously police officers exercise discretion you know whether to stop someone whether to arrest someone you know all down the line there's discretion in the criminal justice system so I don't understand how this increases discretion like the discretion that that police officers would be um employing so I don't know if that's you or or committee members who would answer that yeah it's a really good question and I'm certainly not the expert on it

[173:00] what I understand is the officer is typically asked to make the determination of whether there's uh a reasonable um well what's the term maybe someone else can help me out here probable cause probable cause probable cause and that is the judgment that they're expected to make in these situations of arrest um this bill would have to make a subsequent decision so not only have they found that there's probable cause that a crime was committed and that maybe it's a a class four felony but then they would be asked to make the decision that there is a reasonable suspicion that the that the crime that the risk would continue to occur if they did not bring the person in my understanding from speaking with our police chief it's that additional discretionary or actually requirement to make that judgment which is a very uncomfortable position that she thinks her officers would have a really difficult time so you are entirely correct officers are M are required to make judgments all the time this particular Judgment of this type on the

[174:00] field all I can say is I understand that that's not what's typically done and she thinks that that would be very difficult and that it's a decision that really should be made and um before a judge or before a bond officer all right I I'll Reserve for for comments I think that's M question thank you great I see no more hands so a couple of housekeeping items here I want to emphasize what Rachel said and just be super clear um because of the king sup shootings we wanted to have a separate resolution come forward on April 20th that addresses gun violence prevention and what we want to support with that so we have intentional um sequestered off that discussion until April 20th so there will be a fome discussion of what we want to support going forward regarding gun violence um prevention and the folks who are working on that right now are Rachel and Aaron

[175:00] so we expect to hear back from them about the draft um resolution to speak about um another bit of housekeeping here is the only thing that we are moving voting on tonight is the changes to the policy statement so we are obviously discussing the positions that the um committee has taken on specific bills on the policy committee has taken on specific bills so we can Council as a whole can always um opt to change that um recommendation from the policy committee it was active or we made it and now is a chance where we can adjust or reverse it so as far as what what we will act on for sure tonight it's going to be up or down on the proposed changes to the um policy agenda policy statement but um we will only be changing position

[176:01] on any of the bill positions if Council decides that we want to to direct Carl and the lobbyist to take a different position that what we've taken so far so with that um unless I see other Hands Up Oh Aaron yeah thanks for that clarification Sam Al also ju just to clarify because I've it's some of the emails we've gotten it seems like people think that we are opposing uh Senate Bill 6 62 which is not the case uh we are not opposing it we're just um asking for amendments so just wanted to clarify that great that that was the position that the legislative committee took that would be the default position unless Council wants go different direction right y thank you and then finally as we move into the public hearing um because we have a lot of folks here I thought I would turn to Brenda rittenau who's facilitating our meeting to have her put up the uh guidelines for public comment

[177:02] so Brenda thank you Sam um I will share my screen can you see that now oh I've got all sorts of things up on my screen don't we can see the second slide is highlighted at the moment okay great let me move to the first slide okay and so just to go over our meeting rules this evening before this public hearing um since we have such great participation tonight um we're glad that you're here we do have these rules in place adopted by city council to keep these meetings secure from folks who might be here to disrupt um so this meeting has been called to order to conduct business any activities that disrupt dislay just delay or otherwise interfere with that with this meeting are prohibited um the time for speaking will be limited no one may speak except when recognized by the

[178:01] person presiding and no one shall speak longer than the time allotted each person who's registered needs to be displaying their first and last name in order for us to be able to unmute you if you are not currently displaying that please let me know and we will um get that changed for you if you don't know how to change your name yourself please send it to me in the Q&A and I can help you out with that um on the second slide no video is permitted except for officials staff and invited speakers others will be participating by voice only except for this uh little Zoom bomber here uh the person presiding at the meeting are Mayor Sam Weaver will enforce these rules um by asking me to mute anyone who is violating um our chat function is disabled and the Q&A box needs to be used for technical questions to me only and not to um comment on the content at the meeting and only host and

[179:01] individuals given permission may share their screen and I think with that we are all set Sam great thank you Brenda and with that we will turn to the public hearing um the first four uh on the list for Testimony tonight are Luna peek Dana Steiner and Riley manuso Luna oh and I'll just mention there because of we're more than 15 um people signed up it'll be two minutes per speaker Luna you should be able to unmute am I am I Audible you we can hear you all right fantastic uh hi I'd like to say that I strongly support s SP 21062 the bill is an important measure to reduce jail populations and steer our communities away from treating incarceration as a Panacea for all social ills I'd also like to offer a comment on the council's proposed

[180:00] amendments to the bill to start I agree with the council that the provision that allows police officers exemption from arrest restrictions at their discretion should be removed as you've already observed this opens the door for further racial profiling and given the track record of law enforcement in this country I'd say it's basically inevitable that that exemption would be used for that purpose for a similar reason I disagree with your current recommendation to remove all felonies from the scope of the bill and find the suggestion that you're proposing this amendment to protect people of color dubious a characteristic attempt by the city and the council to cloak conservative policy and Progressive rhetoric you are disregarding the threat police posed to people of color in other marginalized communities to scaremonger about crime if you're truly concerned for the safety of marginalized communities within Boulder and more broadly col you must Advocate to drastically curtail police power even if it means resisting the urge to cater to the petty fears of predominantly white and universally privileged small business owners that said I'd like to reiterate my emphatic support for S SP 21062 and express my hope that it represents but one of many

[181:01] steps to combat mass incarceration thank you thank you Lena um Dana Steiner Riley manuso and Misha tour it does not look like Misha's in the me so um Misha if you're in the meeting if you could put that in the Q&A and with that we'll go to Dana my name is Dana Steiner I'm here representing myself to speak in support of SB 2162 and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you for a second time tonight I passionately urge you to publicly support SB 2162 make this bill a priority and use your platforms to request that our state lawmakers pass this bill as soon as possible with without Amendment I'm a 2020 graduate of Cu law I'm a queer and trans person and I'm also a survivor of rape and intimate partner violence I am begging you to listen to people of color and actual survivors instead of lobbyists and police about the content of this bill the depopulation policies

[182:01] in this bill do not put survivors or victims at risk when I was in an abusive relationship there were many things that could have been done to protect me but locking up more of my neighbors for low-level offenses isn't one of those things a quick story while I was still in an abusive relationship my partner's roommate who often stood up for me was arrested on a low-level drug offense one that would not be arrestable under this law while jailed he wasn't able to go to work and he lost his job one of the people he met in jail knew that he would be subject to particular drug tests after being convicted and knew which drugs he could sell my friend that wouldn't appear on that test six months later my friend had to move back with his parents so he could undergo treatment for substance abuse without a roommate and an ally in the room the abuse escalated quickly we know that arresting and jailing someone is a deeply traumatizing experience it doesn't make sense to me to inflict this pain on members of our community especially when they have not inflicted any violence on another person I don't want to see my neighbors arrested for traffic tickets or shoplifting bail is

[183:02] supposed to tie people to the jurisdiction but most people are tied to Colorado through family friends their work and time I'm happy to talk via Zoom phone or safely in person to further discuss any concerns about this bill but I anticipate that other community members will dispel some of the misconceptions I've heard presented today thank you for your time thank you Dana um we have Riley manuso Misha tour and Dan Williams hey um I want to comment on what Aaron said um Ain we understand that you're not opposing the bill in its entirety no you're just proposing amendments that would totally gut it and undermine all of the hard work that activists of color and survivors have been doing to implement what should be a no-brainer in terms of undoing severe over incarceration in this County in this state you know the state of

[184:00] Massachusetts incarcerates less than half the number of people per capita as Colorado does and it's not a hellish place I used to live in a college town in Massachusetts very similar to Boulder very like a place that used to be the home of a state mental hospital with high rates of drug use and mental illness in the community and it was not a worse place um because of lower rates of incarceration like it's just incarceration doesn't help people and especially pre-trial detention fundamentally the idea of bail is that if somebody is suspected of burglary and they have a bond set at $150 and they can't afford to pay that then they're stuck in jail but if they can't and they go free if they were really a danger to the community they wouldn't have Bond set like the suspect in the Table Mesa shooting doesn't have bondet like just like stop just stop with these amendments they're thank you Ry next we have Misha

[185:01] tour Dan Williams and Lyn seagull Misha hello I'm urging you all to publicly support Senate bill 21062 as written to bring our neighbors home from their cages at the Boulder County jail and across the state according to the 2016 study by the boards of County Commissioners crime has steadily decreased in Boulder County since 1985 but the incarceration rate has nearly tripled growing faster than both Colorado and the nation as a whole these are people with lives family and friends removing someone from their community and putting them in cages causes irreparable harm to the communities they belong to that alone should be caused to support liberating people from jails but when we add on that the people locked up in these cages are disproportionately black brown indigenous trans and disabled it becomes all the more clearer the city of Boulder continues its Legacy of white supremacy since the first colonizers cleared this land by pulling over and arresting black

[186:01] people twice as much as white people according to Sheriff Joe Pelle 70% of the inmates in the Boulder County Jail have a diagnosed mental illness making the actual rate likely much higher in my opinion this is a mass system of ablest abuse and the most direct way of reducing this violence our justice system inflicts on people with disabilities and other marginalized identities is to free them from their shackles these are common sense reforms to curtail the incarceration epidemic in the United States and in Colorado which steals the freedom from more people than any other country in the world support Senate bill 21062 as written thank you thank you Misha next we have Dan Williams Lynn seagull and Neil santu and we do not currently see Lynn in the meeting Lynn if you're in the meeting please U put that in the Q&A Dan you're up thank you I'm Dan Williams I live in

[187:00] North Boulder and I'm here to request that the city support SB 2162 without Amendment researchers like Michelle Alexander have carefully documented that people of color get more harsh treatment at every stage of the criminal justice system from police stops to arrests to time in jail pre-trial to plea officer to plea offers to trial outcomes to sentencing that's what has led to our mass incarceration crisis and SB 2162 modestly seeks to address this importantly it's championed by Colorado's civil rights leaders the NAACP ACLU black lives matter 5280 and the Colorado Democratic black and Latino caucuses among others and this Coalition worked with victim's rights Advocates and folks in law enforcement to be sure that the bill as written does not sacrifice Public Safety so even attorney general Phil Weiser our

[188:02] state's chief law enforcement official is supporting the bill as written it's also supported by the Colorado dep Department of Public Safety The Proposal council is considering tonight to amend the bill would in fact substantially water it down that puts Boulder in opposition to the impressive civil rights Coalition leaders for racial Justice and equity in Colorado who are pushing this bill watering down this bill is the opposite of Boulder being a progressive Force for Colorado or uh championing racial Justice it's abandoning our allies so the question for Council is this when the rubber hits the road and we've committed to racial Equity but some in our community have expressed concerns do you do the brave thing and stand with Colorado's civil rights leadership please stand with our social justice allies in the legislature be a leader among Colorado's municipalities instead of following more conservative P cities

[189:01] and support this bill without Amendment thank you Dan um I've not seen that Lyn seagull has shown up so our next three are Neil sand who d searia and Darren o Conor Lynn if you are in the meeting let us know um and we'll put you back in Neil you're up good evening Council my name is Neil Sandu I'm a third-year law student at the University of Colorado where I regularly represent Indigent clients and I've lived in Boulder since my family moved to the United States when I was one year old given my tenure in this city I feel particularly qualified to address Mr Castillo's concerns about Community safety I think the question posed to the council is what is our idea of community the last time I checked and I'm sure the last time you checked that Community included poor folks those living with mental health issues and the formerly incarcerated and what's important here is that jailing these folks before they go to trial or jailing these folks at

[190:01] all poses a sincere risk to their health to the point where many individuals have died in Colorado jails before they've ever had an opportunity to he ever have an opportunity to be heard at Tri now where Mr Castile thinks that these that the people posed to be most vulnerable by this bill are people of color what's truth is that people of color are regularly subjugated by the criminal justice system and the best solution to their subjugation is removing them from jails and putting them back with their communities as a final note I'd like to I'd like to respond to comments uh by the council regarding Public Safety First I'd like to respond to the exceptions proposed regarding um the questions officers can ask or when they can incarcerate folks uh when they pose a risk to the community every police interaction who to stop who to question who to investigate is already colored by bias surely this is true and we can all accept it but the solution is not to

[191:00] Simply arrest everybody and then toss the determination as to whether or not they pose a risk to a magistrate later down the road I urge this Council to support 62 as it is written and restore the idea of community that I grew up with and dispense with the idea that poor people people of color in the form incarcerated are not one of us anymore thank you Neil next we have Daniel sikaria Darren o Conor and Jude lansman Daniel hello can you hear me yep um I'm Daniel Scara and I'm a Colorado law student and I'm here in support of the unamended version of s SP 2162 uh these amendments would completely destroy desecrate the basic purpose of SB 2162 um and frankly defies the very purpose of it um you mentioned uh Carl mentioned um several elements of Public Safety concern um which really is unsupported by any data in any jurisdiction in the United States I mean New York has has made several of these

[192:01] changes and they've only produced positive results for the community um one of the key concerns is is uh the community the role of policing in the community and if the police aren't fulfilling their basic purpose then they should change I mean if we're so concerned about um about making this palatable to the law enforcement Community we should really rethink uh what we're doing here because giving difference to the law enforcement Community is ridiculous in this context uh they already have the broad discretion and they're the people who are abusing um the the broad uh broad swats of authority they're given by the state um keep in mind that an arrest is an enforcement of State violence it's allowing somebody to throw somebody in a cage and ripping a family apart now I'm not sure if any of you have ever been poor or had to deal with those circumstances but I can tell you personally firsthand that it ruins a family and the things that it does to to us and our community are is frankly horrifying um you really need to reconsider uh who you're supporting and who you're fighting for in this uh circumstance you're supposed to be protecting us and defending us and I'm begging you to do that here stand up for us I know firsthand what it's like to to experience this and please I'm begging

[193:02] you to have some spine and support this um furthermore there's a mention about the change from firearm to deadly weapon and if we're so concerned with vagueness here I don't understand why that change is something that you uh to support when uh deadly weapon is already something that is very misunderstood in Colorado um it's something that uh particularly in the AA municipal code 38117 is something that's been fought and challenged a number of times because that statute is particularly vague and unnecessarily vague um thank you for your time thank you Daniel next we have Darren OK Conor Jude lansman and shoban Blades Darren Darren you should be able to unmute all right how about now we can hear you all right Darren o Conor speaking on behalf of the NAACP Boulder County Branch we support SB 2162

[194:02] which as written is a thoughtful measure aimed at safely reducing jail populations the bill is endorsed by our Boulder County Branch the ACLU of Colorado the Colorado attorney general and the Colorado Department of Public Safety among others not a single victims group opposes the bill it is worth noting the Bill's co-sponsors worked with attorney general Phil Weiser and prominent Das during an eight-month stakeholder process AG Weiser was the dean of Cu Boulders law school and certainly not one to back a bill that would cause harm to our community at the legislature many Boulder rites decried the bill based on con concerns about increased homelessness and property crime crime during covid-19 rather than recognizing a global pandemic and economic crisis are the likely source of these ills even Chief Herold effectively yelled lock them up locking up people experiencing homelessness pre-trial does nothing to decrease homelessness and generally exacerbates the problems of

[195:02] poverty where is Boulder's outrage over mass incarceration which grew by 800% in Colorado between the 70s and today whereas Boulders outrage over the a atic racial disparities in the criminal justice system where is Boulder's outrage that wealth rather than dangerousness or even guilt determines whether someone remains free pre-trial or gets out on bail this bill gives discretion to police and judges to jail those who are dangerous but would also stop filling our jails with people who are simply too poor to buy their freedom Boulder's failure to address criminal Behavior as proven by other Colorado municipalities decrease in crime under similar conditions of decreasing jail population during covid is no excuse to oppose or demand changes to this well-crafted bill we urge Council to support SP sp262 thank you thank you Darren next we

[196:00] have Jude lansman shoban blades and Kristen Eller shoban blades we uh don't see you in the meeting if you are in the meeting if you could put that in the Q&A that'd be great Jude you're up Jude you should be able to unmute now okay am I unmuted yep we can hear you council members I uh will uh reiterate what um my colleague Darren OK coner has mentioned the NAACP Boulder County strongly supports sb216 to as written without amendments I will also say that it's obvious that the Amendments wanted are mostly backlash uh will gut the bill and prevent what it is supposed to do which is the real Criminal Justice Reform to

[197:04] the the idea that the police would be accountable in a way they're not comfortable with is a sort of classic double speak it does not make sense I I thank Council uh woman Rachel friend for bringing that up um the police already have discretion and put people in jail and do not have to be held accountable for that already uh police accountability is a major issue with Criminal Justice Reform so um I want to bring out also that um we heard from Community connect factors and we heard uh earlier in this long meeting about structural racism well this bill as written is a major effort to address racial inequity the structural racism to put to put uh people through

[198:01] the process and say okay well magistrates and courts have to decide whether there danger is ridiculous because then you are putting people unnecessarily through the the Mill of the criminal justice system if city council wants to uh be authentic about the racial Equity plan to the community they need to support this bill as written thank you thank you Jude um next we would have sioban blad um sioban if you're in the meeting let us know um next three Kristen Eller myen vard and Lizzy Ford CHR hello city council members my name is Kristen Eller and I'm an organizer with bedrooms are for people a member of United campus workers Colorado and a Boulder Community member desperate to hear your public support without Amendment for S sp62 so Boulder's

[199:03] currently holding up progress in Colorado when we could be setting an example s sp62 is a fantastic bail Reform Bill that curbs wealth-based detention this past year we saw that jail depopulation did not lead to an increase in crimes across the state some cities saw an increasing property crime motivating some Boulder residents vocal opposition in s sp62 but there concerns have already been addressed in this bill Sheriff Pelle even said that the arrest standards in this bill reflect the ones in Boulder before covid so clearly they're workable the bill also leaves broad discretion for resting to protect protect Public Safety and to protect against revictimization so we need to stop masquerading jail depopulation as the reason for increased property crimes we can't continue to use it as an excuse to oppose progress so I ask that you please listen to the sheriffs and Das and the

[200:00] racial Justice Advocates there's so much concern around how this bill's unintended consequences will it increase racial bias but there's so many racial Justice Advocates out there directly saying that this bill is needed they're screaming at the top of their lungs for you to listen so please take this into consideration listen and listen to the boulder residents that you're hearing tonight who support this bill we support this you have our support thank you thank you Kristen next we have milen vard Lizzy Ford and and Jacob Tennyson myen hello uh my name is Milan vard and I'm a member of Boulder showing up for racial Justice today's ago was the 53rd anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's murder in 1963 he wrote his letter from beragam jail one passage is particularly Salient

[201:01] to tonight's discussion of SB 2162 and I quote the great stumbling block in the stri forward toward freedom is not the White Citizens counselor or the klook's claner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to Justice who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of Justice who believes he can set the timetable for another man's Freedom end quote the campaign against sb62 from a small group vocal group in Boulder go against everything that Balo claims to be and want to essentially punish lowincome and people of color all over the state to protect their already insured wealth in this very White City this is anything but Justice we heard earlier tonight about the importance of Boulders racial Equity plan s sp262 sb62

[202:04] is about Equity right now people held on cash Bill are disproportionately lwi income and people of color this is anything but Equity at a time where Co has been hitting the heart as people struggling with poverty as well as people of color we cannot further the damages to their future by putting them in jail for low-level offences as I see hashtag Boulder strong signs around my neighborhood as my neighbors and I grieve what happened a few blocks away from my house on March 22nd let us remember that being bold or strong is not meant solely for white people with wealth in Bolder we are bolder strong together regardless of class race gender abilities and other divisive qualifiers I urge everyone of us to do better and to do it now support SP 2162 as written in the strongest of terms thank you thank you malen we have

[203:01] Lizzie Ford Jacob Tennison and Marcos Opa liy hi can you hear me yep hi um so my name's Izzy I um am a representative from Boulder Valley Mutual Aid and the Boulder Community member um I want to start with a reminder that your individual experiences with police do not outweigh the fact that the entire criminal justice system was built on institutionalized racism media disproportionately ignores the kinds of crimes that the presis industrial complex is actually profiting off of mostly things such as traffic violations drug possession drunk driving and other nonviolent crimes the reality is that most of the crimes committed are reflective of a cultural lack of care I.E driven by poverty and cycles of violence things that incarceration and policing exacerbate by bringing armed thugs into poor neighborhoods and instigating a cycle of criminalization and incarceration so that's just something that we have to remember when we're

[204:00] talking about who we're actually incarcerating right now and how this bill could alleviate that um so I'm just going to choose drunk driving as an example because it's a very common offense um if you want to talk about harm reduction practices you can consider a current practice where an individual pulled over for drun driving drunk who actually has a lower chance of hitting someone than a police officer of hitting his wife is then arrested by an officer who has a 40% chance of being a domestic abuser the individual then spends a night or more in jail a place that is not conducive to recovery and passes through the hands of more officers none of whom are trained in the medical field applicable to drug addiction and abuse to likely experience trauma and isolation that exacerbate existing conditions of abuse or addiction instead imagine that person who has allegedly committed the traffic offense Petty offense or Municipal offense um misdemeanor offense a class four or five or six felony or a level three or four drug felony has the chance to go home with their humanity and prepare for their upcoming court date I have far more to say and I wanted to

[205:01] pull my time with Jacob Tennyson but it seems like nobody's responded to them um if I can keep going on their time that would be great no lizan sorry your time is up appreciate your testimony though um next we have Jacob Tenison maros aspa and Heather Balor Jacob I'm going to be continuing what Lizzie Ford was saying the council considering this bill is largely white so you don't really have to imagine any of this just think about when your neighbors and kids at the discretion of the the detaining officer are allowed to go home with just a ticket and then prepare their case many folks are incarcerated pre-trial for so long that they lose their jobs their homes and even their ability to see their children this bill would make it possible for Trans folks who are disproportionately jailed compared to the overall population to avoid the unique and dangerous mental physical and sexual

[206:02] traumas present in US jails similarly folks of color unhoused folks and other criminalized instit institutionally could avoid the same dangers also those with mental health diagnoses one in five people incarcerated statistically 65% of which meet medical criteria for substance abuse and addiction who arguably are having their rights abused by by being denied the necessary stabilization and support when incarcerated for their drug use 80% of arrests are accounted for by these low-level offenses that this bill would prevent pre-trial incarceration for meaning that the enforcement of these low-level crimes in increases Community contact with police and the opportunity for police violence I'm asking you to help reduce our community's encounters with these armed thugs so that we can have the space to enact our own means of harm reduction and restorative justice it costs about 70 to 80 a day to incarcerate a single individual meaning if all of that money

[207:01] were not being needlessly spent on incarceration and by passing this legation legislation could be freed up to potentially redistribute to community oriented program that actually help us instead of harm us support bill as written I see my time thank you Jacob next we have Marcos asena Heather Balor and Lindsay lber Marcus wer hello can you hear me yep yes hello Council mayor Weaver your comment on how the proposed amendments to SP 2162 would make the bill more palatable to quote law enforcement Community highlights Boulder being its true racist and violent self so much that it is actually sickening the city of Boulder's amendments to S sp262 go against the majority of Boulder Community members survivors of violence and anti-racist group support of the unamended bill and Boulder claims that the Amendments will

[208:00] better protect black and brown people stop taking all of your cues cues from the police who are not and never have Community interest at hand arresting people as we know from Andel Davis does not disappear social problems and yet the city of Boulder is fighting to maintain the ability for cops who arest people for these lowlevel crimes that you wish to specify and expand in the in the Amendments the people who make downtown Boulder the most unsafe are the overwhelmingly reactionary racist and anti-homeless business owners and above all others the police I've been a part of a community accountability and transformative Justice process of my love months for the past nine months the first thing one of the first things I heard in this process is from Mariam cabba you can't hold cops accountable please support this bill in its original form work to prohibit officers from the ability to arrest people Beyond this we all must actually get to know our neighbors all of our neighbors unhoused people that cop loving Boulder rites love calling the cops on are our neighbors we keep us

[209:00] safe people don't belong in cages hard stop thank you thank you Marcos next we have Heather Balor Lindsay lerg and Katie Dyer Heather hi uh my name is Heather bowler and I live in South Boulder and also work in South Boulder um at Community United Church of Christ pretty dear king supers and I think all of us are feeling in a really vulnerable place right now and um this tragedy in South Boulder has really brought out a lot of my mama bear in SS as the mother of a 10-year-old and I believe that sb62 will make our community stronger I urge you to support it with no amendments because when I think of the offenses that would be um a part of the

[210:03] Amendments um I actually think of the person who was speaking an open comment at the beginning of this meeting who brought up as a transgender person how vulnerable they were to these arrests and I think of how any of these arrests can affect people and have those unintended consequences that arrest is not protecting anyone it isn't jails that protect us we protect each other and it was interesting that you brought up the idea of a deadly weapon because unfortunately it brought to my mind when Mr Atkinson last year was told that the Implement he was using to pick up trash could be considered a weapon and so I think that the amendment that says only guns should be considered for arrest an arrestable offense is actually a really good line to draw

[211:01] because in that case the officer was not using discretion appropriately um the more often we ask people to pause the more likely they are to check their bias so by asking them to use more discretion and more thought before arrest we are actually asking them to consider their bias more thank you heather next we have Lindsay lerg Katie Dyer and Tess stty Lindsay thank you um so I came to talk to you about human relations commission um and our support of this bill in our March meeting we unanimous unanimous unanimously voted to use our advisory function to encourage your support uh we thought all of the Bill's measures as written were reasonable economical and advanced Equity um and now I'm speaking for myself simply because I haven't had the opportunity to talk with other

[212:01] Commissioners about the Amendments that we heard proposed here tonight um I um would like to emphatically support the as it's written without amendments I would like I I would request that you all are cons consider the work that has been done and if the goal is to pass a bill that is going to ad advance racial Equity support the people doing the work of racial Equity the people who create help create the Bill trust that people know what's best for them don't tell them what's best for them don't undermine the work and act like they don't know what they're doing I know the disrespect is unintentional but it's real now when you suggest the modification to prevent police bias and suggest people convicted of of a crime have to go in front of a bondsman to determine if there are risk to be protected from police bias you're suggesting reinforcing systemic racism

[213:02] to prevent the possibility of bias bias is not the prevailing issue we're talking about here it's systemic racism if there's an issue with racial bias on the police worth entering this conversation why are we concerned about what the police think about this piece of legislation we as a city really have to show up and supported this bill because a great deal of the opposition to it is coming from Boulder and it's based in Mis information incarceration doesn't prevent crime policing doesn't prevent crime depopulation doesn't correlate to increased crime rates um out of time thank you thank you Lindsay next we have Katie Dyer Tess dhy and sidon Haynes Katie hi thank you city council uh my name is Katie Dyer I'm a queer person a mental health worker in Boulder and a member of Boulder's surge showing up for racial Justice um like others I am

[214:01] grieving the boulder shooting and would first like to thank the First Responders who showed up on March 22nd to prevent further violence as someone who lives in South Boulder and who has been a victim of violent crime I support sb62 as written without amendments and ask the city council to support this bill as written there already are two very intentional Provisions in the bill for burglary and auto theft first felonies when the officer determines there is a safety threat or risk of continued repeated Behavior the officer can arrest as others have said let's stand with the social Justice leaders in the state and support the bill as written supporting these abolitionists and leaders is in alignment with our racial Equity plan mass incarceration harms our most vulnerable communities the Bolder poverty rate for non-whites is double that of whites black indigenous and Latin X people are disproportionately

[215:01] policed and arrested compared to white people people in jail are four times more likely to have disabilities and more than half of the people in jail have psychiatric disabilities these valuable people in our community need support and not jail this bill is about equity and it is also an economic issue holding low-level offenders who do not pose a threat costs our city in jail millions of dollars let's instead invest that money in transforming the CT or Edge program into something like Cahoots or the star program let's invest in programs that dismantle racist and classes systems of of Oppression I believe that sheriffs should be empowered to safely depopulate jails and decide who is a threat to Public Safety and who is not thank you Katie next we have Tess storyy sidon Haynes and Liz morasco

[216:00] Tess hi um good evening my name is Tess Dy and um I have a story I'd like to share with you um it's a story regarding the reality of barriers that disproportionately impact black brown indigenous trans and people with disabilities in this country on March 29th only a week ago I got off the phone with a friend my partner and I are trying to help this friend hasn't been able to afford the bond amount required while he awaits trial he's been incarcerated since October 2020 his daughter was only eight months old when he was arrested and in the same year doctors told doctors told his wife that her cancer was terminal my friend was taken to jail where for 6 weeks he was placed in covid quarantine effectively solitary confinement only later to contract the virus thankfully he survived around 10 p.m. on Saturday night March 28th his wife began calling the jail begging officers to give her husband an important message but they didn't she finally got a hold of him at 2 p.m the next day only an hour before I spoke with him his mom a black woman

[217:02] single mother and his best friend died the night before from covid-19 the jail blames a shift change for their failure to communicate I think it's important to address the choice by some who choose to only seek out and listen to the input of police Chiefs and law enforcement agencies when these are the same people that did this to my friend why are we still asked to respect the rules of a system that continues to terrorize the lives of black men and punish people who can't buy their way out of it two days after this happened to my friend he shared this piece of his grieving process and ask me to share it with you tonight than Tess next am I done oh sorry go ahead okay one second here I justanna do you right Mama I thank you for your prayers each and

[218:01] every night did your best me right put purpose in my life M I thank you for your love that always provide never make C tears that's time test thank you next we have saridon Haynes Liz morasco and Curtis hessle Saron thank you um Sarah Don Hayne South Boulder and uh we're halfway through tonight's testimony I think we all need a big breath feeling a lot of feelings thinking a lot of things um I know we're all anxious to help our communities um

[219:01] with some of these really challenging um fears and concerns and opportunities to meet our um our goals that we've talked about everybody tonight has had really wonderful things to say and I want to touch on why I started looking at abolition as a climate Justice leader it was because the point was made that we are displacing people through climate change and that means we have to be responsible um for folks who are being criminalized and we are going to have um more folks displaced from climate change and we we can't we can't cram them in jails it's not the solution we know what this has been doing to the fabric of our community um

[220:01] we have a lot of really wonderful people who worked on this for the last year plus in fact Decades of abolitionists have been and working to know what is good for our community and when we um are talking to our stakeholders politicians victim rights organizers uh people formally caged Faith groups sheriffs and anti-racists that have been working on this um we need to support them we need your moral courage and your commitment to do what is best for all of us and support s sp62 in it's uh without the Amendments proposed tonight thank you thank you Sarah Don next we have Liz morasco Curtis hessle and Jackson Galloway Liz you can hear me

[221:00] yes yes okay uh I live in Boulder I'm a lost student at du I'm an organizer with Boulder Surge and I love my community which is precisely why I'm speaking in support of sp62 in its unamended version tonight district attorney dhy and Sheriff P both support the unamended bill they help draft the bill and their voices and expertise are reflected in the unamended draft as has been mentioned the unamended bill is supported by broad Statewide Coalition including BLM 5280 and the Attorney General as we also heard tonight our local Boulder County n NAACP also supports the unamended version of the bill being held in jail for a low-level offense can be disastrous for low-income folks who don't have the resources to make cash bail it can start or exacerbate a cycle of crime and poverty this harms all of us and weakens our entire Community as Boulder businesses and chief heral have pointed out without context we have seen a rise in crime this year but Sheriff P has said that this year has been an anomaly he has referenced a weak economy homelessness

[222:01] joblessness underemployment all caused by covid-19 in addition to a lack of funding in mental health and Addiction Services according to Da Michael dhy the data doesn't support that jailing restrictions have been a cause for the increased crime that we've seen our Reliance on mass incarceration has blinded us to the possibilities of Criminal Justice Reform of a strong healthy Community where we invested in and support the safe safety of all members of our community an unamended sp62 gives us an opportunity to reimagine alternatives to incarceration and start investing in preventative care for our community let's strengthen and care for our community by keeping low offenders out of a cycle of crime and poverty let's seize the opportunity to make good on the Promises we've made to the community in the racial Equity plan on our commitment to be a more welcoming and inclusive City and with that I urge the city council to support sp62 in its unamended version thank you thank you Liz next we have Curtis hessle Jackson

[223:00] Galloway and Matthew DUIs Curtis you hear me okay yep all right thank you very much I'm Curtis Hessel I live in Boulder um when I spoke with Boulder district attorney Michael Doty on March 18th uh he told me that there was no evidence linking Co era jail depopulation to increases in property crime that means that the opposition to SB 2162 is arguing exclusively on the basis of surmise stereotyping and fearmongering when deciding whether to support this bill you need to acknowledge that increases in property crime follow from Myriad factors in March 2020 the stay-at-home order put many coloradans for forcibly out of work and we've heard multiple times throughout this meeting about the economic hardships that occasioned uh and we must understand how it complicat simplistic stories about an uptick in property crime rates as linked to jail depopulation opposition to 2162 draws a false connection between jail depopulation measures and increased property crime some members of this

[224:01] opposition fear scary statistics and reach for the simple callousness of lock them up logic others spend outright lies to protect the profits they reap from the pain of the jailed the system they want to shore up is unjust cash bail criminalizes poverty locking people in cages without a trial simply because they cannot afford to post bail any legal system that values Liberty should find such an arrangement odious fortunately the tide of history may be turning against cash bail less than two weeks ago the California Supreme Court ruled that incarcerating someone solely because they could not afford to pay bail is unconstitutional SB 2162 is restrictions on bail align with this hopeful shift if it's ahead of the National Standard as mayor Weaver said that's a good thing I've been told Boulder is a good place where people are progressive and Humane when I walk through the streets I see a forest of yard signs claiming a belief that love is love and kindness is everything is Boulder a good place in a good place people would not oppose good

[225:00] policies like s sp262 purely because they were afraid recall there is no evidence linking Co a jity population to increas crime in good place the people would jump at the chance to support this kind of legislation without any amendments thank you thank you Curtis next we have Jackson Galloway Matthew DUIs and Renee Morgan Jackson yes I'd like to take a minute to thank Council for having me here tonight my name is Jackson Galloway I'm a boulder resident I currently attend CU Boulder and ni strongly encourage city council to support the passage of SB 2162 um I think firstly we need to discuss the fact that jail is not a solution to the very real mental health and substance abuse issues that exist in our community Boulder currently leans incredibly heavily on carceral Solutions it's not sustainable and it's only going to create cycles of violence that make both crime and pain towards members of our community worse um now one of the

[226:00] things I really wanted to bring up is the fact that the city of Boulder or the Boulder County Jail has a program with wellpath an organization that has dozens of lawsuits against them regarding negligent care leading to death um this is something I think that's really important because this is one of the main Avenues the city has to deal with with folks who have mental illness that leaves them unable to stand for trial along with a number of the other mental health programs we have it shows that the city really doesn't put the work in that the words that you all are saying seem to suggest you care about so what I think we need to discuss is not where things stand right now but where things can be when we do not rely on carceral solutions to problems that quite honestly aren't solved by putting people in cages um and regarding that I actually wanted to discuss one of the Amendments that was brought up um the city's insistence to strike subsections B4 and B is seemingly Progressive but

[227:00] the fact is these impartial risk assessment matrixes that are brought up don't actually exist there are numerous documents including a study by Harvard Law review showing that risk assessment matrixes in and of themselves are biased because the data that goes into them is biased all you are doing with a number of these amendments is actually just creating the same system with a different name so therefore I strongly encourage you to support the bill as written thank you Jackson next we have Matthew DUIs Renee Morgan and Elizabeth EPS Matthew hi um I am I'm a c a boulder resident C graduate business owner and I'm here to express my support of s SP 2162 without Amendment uh the merits of this bill are obvious and I think that's why there's such a outpouring of support for it as is um I myself am a fairly non-active

[228:02] politically active resident I felt this was worth speaking out for uh the boulder shouldn't be pegging ourselves to the middle of what is the right we all know is the right direction we should be leading and if we all if we can acknowledge that there's structural racism and not fundamentally change things it's just acknowledging it's just a hypoc hypocrisy uh so I would ask that we listen to the activists every historically every time there's an activist movement they end up being on the right side of history and so it to me seems silly to not be on the right side of this issue we should be pushing to remove pre-trial detention throughout Boulder and Colorado the damage that can be done to somebody in pre-child detention economically and uh physically and emotionally can ruin lives and the

[229:00] decisions that are made here tonight decision rather decisions uh will determine how much suffering goes on in this community or not and I strongly support uh SP 2162 as written thank you for your time thank you Matthew um next we have Renee Morgan Elizabeth EPs and Rebecca Wallace hi there um so I'm Renee Morgan I've lived in Boulder County for 25 years Boulder proper for 10 or 15 of those um there's been 25 people ahead of me that have talked about why this is a good bill why sb21 d62 should be supported by the council in full no amendments and I'm going to let them speak for themselves because they thought that was all really eloquent I just want to point out what's happened in this meeting today just in the past couple of hours um so your very

[230:02] one of your very first presentations was from your own sort of racial Equity Group and the three things that they said were that they that people of color predominantly are um the three issues are advancing racial Equity housing and police oversite so if you even wanted to take direction from your own Council that has been appointed by I assume you all I actually don't know where that group came from they're saying that advancing racial equity and police oversight are vitally important to their communities what you could do to support that is support verbally publicly sb2 2 1-62 and Aaron said that it would go as is based on what Carl's policy recommendations are unless you do something different so I'm urging you all to do something different do not support these amendments support this bill in full and some of these amendments really quickly um Carl said

[231:00] that um the largest victims are people of color and it has this reverse racial bias something or other but I'm but what we're saying is every racial Justice group is supporting this bill in full not the amendment if it was really going to like backlash on people of color they would certainly be saying let's not support this bill but they aren't they're saying support the bill I worked at the ark for a long time everybody carries a knife every homeless person carries a knife so if you exclude knives it's going to backlash and I'm done thank you Renee Sam can I inter for a second and and just U preview that I would like to ask um Elizabeth a couple question questions at the end of of her comments so maybe we we could keep her microphone on sounds good okay with her thanks Elizabeth good evening I don't see the clock

[232:03] yet sorry good evening I'm an abolitionist in the arapo land that we call Denver I have been working for years to safely bring our neighbors home from Colorado cages and for months on the legislation that is now s sp62 s sp62 balances the critical goals of pre-trial Liberty with Community safety counselors when we say community safety that must include safety from police Terror safety from over prosecution safety that is the freedom to safely survive mental health and substance abuse challenges not in unsafe cages and S sp62 will help us do these things why as a woman from Denver testifying at Boulder City Council because frankly in the months of meaningful deep work that has made this bill stronger stronger work that has earned the support of true progressives across the state there has been one city from which opposition has disproportionately emanated Boulder Colorado your neighbor Claudia handsome theme said of s sp62 she said it's been

[233:00] striking to see prominent voices in a liberal City pushing back against efforts that many residents would claim to support elsewhere to see an overwhelmingly White Community talking over black and Latino organizers whose communities carry the burdens of mass incarceration I am a black woman I am one of the black organizers who opponents of this bill would try to speak over and have the nerve to speak for I'm a Survivor of intimate partner violence as well as repeated violations of my home garage and car by strangers not in the distant past but in recent years and months arresting caging and setting cash ransoms has never kept me safe to hear so many white and white presenting folks talking about what is best for racial Justice is at best disgusting much of the opposition to S sp62 has been misinformation but much more y'all has been outright racist dog whistles with the most hostile opposition to This truly Progressive legislation coming from a place that naively I thought and hoped would would be Progressive in closing I ask you to listen to our friends at the ACLU your

[234:01] own Sheriff Your da and be what much of Colorado has looked to Boulder to be a progressive City committed to real racial Equity not just in name not just in commemorative resolutions but in the practices and policies you support thank you Elizabeth Rachel yeah um and thank you Elizabeth for being willing I hope to to stay on and answer um a question or two and just to explain to colleagues um Sam and I had an appointment with Elizabeth on uh the afternoon of March 22nd and we obviously had to cancel that um due to the mass shooting and we're not able to reschedule it so Elizabeth was just going to be willing to answer a couple of our questions and um I had emailed you essentially my question Elizabeth so if you remember it that's great but I just kind of wanted to understand how one aspect of this works and I'm already on the record as supporting the bill um but there's a provision that it's got like an and in it so I think it's talking about um you know you can the police May arrest if um

[235:02] something like the individual is a considered a danger or will not cease and assist um or has a handgun or things like that and I'm just wondering is it actually an or or is it really an and so you have to have a handgun and not ceas Sy deist um and be a danger are you able to clarify that per chance um yes I'm certainly glad glad to try and one of the things that is uh I think a real benefit of true um collaborative legislation is that I have colleagues who are upu right behind me who um can correct me if I'm wrong but the the answer is um or and that you can always arrest if there's a safety risk or won't cease and desist there will obviously be times machete wielding person right where both conditions are met both the safety risk and SE and desist but the answer is or um and of course for felonies right this is what we're talking

[236:01] about okay um thank you for that um although so I guess your last com there does make me wonder like if it is a a code violation and not a felony so let's say we've got the riot situation like we had at CU um and it's maybe noise violations and and city codes is there is there anything that the police can do to stop that or or does it just continue without arrest if that's the option you know that they have if somebody get and doesn't stop so thank you for that question question because as important as what the bill does right what is what it doesn't do and this bill is not going to allow arrests for those code violations or for misdemeanor offenses that don't rise to the level of felonies it's okay to name this because when we're talking about mass incarceration right um there are many many thousands of innocent people in cages and there are also there

[237:00] are people who are in cages who have committed behavior that we're uncomfortable with but it's a behavior that we're uncomfortable with that isn't a safety Danger and if we're going to bring our neighbors home right if we're going to provide them mizing factors then we're going to have to to be comfortable in that discomfort that folks who have allegedly committed low-level offenses code violations um visible homelessness and those misdemeanors um are not going to rise to the level of being arrestable offenses um if we're going to bring our neighbors home right these are the folks we're starting with so um I just don't want to ever shy away from naming that um you're I think it was the mayor who mentioned mentioned earlier that there were some ways in which this bill goes further than what our comrades and other places in the nation are doing that's accurate and we should be proud of that we should want to be a leader we should want to be being U more Progressive um and so by determining that we're not going to put people in cages for misdemeanors that's one of the ways we do that but we

[238:01] balance that with that important concern that when there is a safety concern the offense is going to rise to a level of a felony and that person can be arrestable all right I appreciate you naming it thanks great is that it Rachel maybe Aon has a question okay Elizabeth thank you for th those answers I appreciate that um in what you were just saying that is that if it's more serious it would uh rise up to the level of a felony but but the bill is written excludes the classes four five and six felon writer am I misunderstanding no you're not misunderstanding but even those felonies are eligible for well actually maybe I'm misunderstanding your question are you asking me if four five and six are excluded from arrest well I guess maybe I'm just asking you to explain because you were saying more serious things rise to a level of of a felony and then therefore would be eligible for arrest

[239:01] but thank you so thank you for the opportunity to clarify all felies certainly sir and thank you for the opportunity to to clarify um all felonies are arrestable in this bill including four five and six so an F6 felony of um allegedly showing a false ID to a pawn broker the state agent would have to be able to make would have to be able to say that was a safety danger right um or as Rachel has pointed out or that it would be repeated Behavior but it is something that would fall into the category of an arrestable offense if it is a felony and meets one of those conditions so all felonies and all victim V I don't want to start lapsing into jargon here but all victim's rights um act misdemeanors as well so gotcha so if it have has one or more of those aggravating features right then then then it would be arrestable if it's a felony yes and if

[240:02] it's a misdemeanor where there's V involvement yes thanks for that explanation thank you for the opportunity to clarify um I would like to say by the way that um while you're I can't speak for him but while your district attorney has not come out publicly in support of this bill as far as I know he has been a very um active part of working on this bill for months other Progressive Das have come out in support and the provisions you call them aggravating factors but the provisions relating to safety sir um and the the or Clause as your colleague pointed out those came from meaningful work with with stakeholders including law enforcement District Attorneys um and your Sheriff who has been incredibly reasonable about this bill okay very good I think then we're ready to move on to Rebecca Wallace Aaron Clark and Katie Faron

[241:02] Rebecca um hello can you hear me yep okay thank you so I'm Rebecca Wallace I'm a senior policy council at the ACLU of Colorado um City council's presentation suggests that it agrees with the sentiment behind this bill but simultaneously Council seeks to dramatically cut the Bill's Effectiveness through substantive amendments um just want to clarify because I have been working really closely on stakeholding with this bill for eight months and it's been almost it's been primarily with law enforcement and crime survivors and as Elizabeth mentioned key stakeholders from months ago are Boulder Sheriff Joe Pelle and Boulder County DA Michael Doty and they are neither of them are opposed to this bill Sheriff Pelle has stated publicly and repeatedly that the bill largely mirrors the arrest standards in place in Boulder before the pandemic now Chief Harold has informed this Council otherwise and the council seems to be taken by her views but you know we

[242:02] remain confused as to why this would be persuasive given that Chief Herold wasn't even Boulder before the pandemic Chief heral has suggested that in her opposition she's standing up for victims but not a single victims group opposes this bill one supports it and all the crime survivors that we have heard testify not just here but during J uh Senate Judiciary are in strong support crime survivors can speak for themselves and many have said that lessening arrest and pre-trial detention as this bill will do actually will enhance Public Safety this bill strikes a really careful balance between Public Safety and maximization of pre-trial Freedom it does have the support of the Colorado Ag and the department of sub Public Safety and it really tries to make a dent in over policing Mash incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal justice system um I'm just going to if if I would just like to say that I would if if I could be asked a question or have a moment to just do have a few

[243:02] clarifying um responses on some of the pieces that Elizabeth was talking about regarding which um offenses are arrestable I would appreciate that but I know my time is up I would like to make that invitation if it's okay of course thank you um so these the the bill has been crafted yes with there are sheriffs who support it and sheriffs who don't there's but we primarily crafted it with the sheriffs and especially basing it on Boulders arrest standards that existed before the pandemic and what the bill does is it makes clear for every victim misdemeanor and all low-level felonies arrest is always allowed whenever an officer finds a safety risk or sees a risk of reoffence it is also correct that the high level felonies are completely excluded from the bill and that there is no impact at all on

[244:00] domestic violence arrests so um and this concept that there's um that officers are now going to have this terrible moment where they have to exercise their discretion in the field that's what they do every day right now officers on a daily basis must make a decision about whether they're going to ticket somebody or bring them into jail except for U mandatory arrestable offenses which aren't even in this bill like domestic violence so they have to make that decision every day and what we asked law enforcement when crafting crafting this bill was what are your officers to consider when making that decision and what they what we came up with is are they a safety risk are they going to continue committing these crimes if not why does that person need to be locked up pre-trial instead of at home with their families managing their case so I have a question for you um it seems like the the Statewide Sheriff's Association has come out in

[245:01] opposition to this bill do you know why that would be if um because my understanding was the sheriff's Statewide supported the bill but in the last week it looks like they've come out against it do you have any thoughts on why I do and I worked um as closely with the sheriff's Association as one could have possibly worked on this bill since June of last year and I also worked primarily with the president of the sheriff's Association Matt Lewis and please feel free to check my work with him so the sheriff's Association worked on this bill because there has always been tension between Who police might want to put in jail and whose sheriffs are who sheriffs believe their jail beds should be reserved for and the idea behind this bill was to reserve jail beds for people who pose a public safety risk rather than for people who happen to be homeless who happen to be poor and some of these and and we have actually

[246:01] good common ground with many sheriffs on this goal and so that is where the work came from with the sheriff and this bill was drafted in close collaboration with the sheriff's Association in the end upon introduction the sheriffs were neutral on the bill there was a real split among sheriffs with different viewpoints about whether they were in favor or or or against and they had the the bill was dramatically cut down to get the sheriff's into that position but not only for that also to recognize that this is a bill that really needs to balance the public safety concerns of law enforcement and pre-trial Freedom what happened after that and and I have to say Boulder played a significant role and chief heral in particular who took who played a loud and leading role in saying that this is a horrible bill for Public Safety um started putting enormous pressure the police on the sheriffs for having gone neutral and they um started also telling City Council Members all over the state inaccuracies like that murderers and

[247:00] rapists were going to be on the street even though the bill has nothing to do with that that officers were never going to be able to arrest people who ever engaged in auto theft these are the kinds of things that were being said and sheriffs got increasingly uncomfortable individual sheriffs who are being lobbied by their individual um police local police got increasingly uncomfortable with their position nothing changed about the bill um the other thing that happened is there some cities like Boulder havec experienced an increase in some violent crimes the high level violent crimes that have nothing to do with this bill and in some property crimes and that has a entally led to a Le kneejerk reaction of no criminal justice reform during this time and that that that has been a sort of like Perfect Storm to press the police into City councils like yours and um to push sheriffs to go negative on the bill there is nothing else that has changed in fact the bill has undergone significant revisions so that the

[248:01] Colorado depart um sedak the district attorneys have gone neutral several District Attorneys were in support and came out in favor of the bill that all happened after the sheriffs have gone neutral so it's even narrowed more since then so the answer to your question is politics well that's interesting I I do want to return to one of Rachel's questions to Elizabeth and ask you on page four of the pre- amended bill um line 13 the active word there is and so let me say it basically says you can't make an arrest an officer police officer cannot make an arrest unless the offense is a felony and the arresting officer records in the arrest document a reasonable suspicion so even for felonies um it is an and that says it has to be a felony not four five or six but it has to be a felony and there has to be a reasonable suspicion so I'm

[249:00] curious in answer to Rachel's question I think the version the pre- amended version that I'm looking at has an end between felony and must have a reasonable suspicion that they're a threat so do you have a response to that I absolutely do um sorry I'm just pulling it up right now um to look at this but the first thing is that the four five and six sorry so the first thing is that for when that that there the and part is that if there's a felony or a victim Rights Act defense like uh that includes misdemeanors and there's other Provisions like Firearms offenses and sexual offenses um if an if there is probable cause to believe an individual committed that and the officer has a reasonable basis to believe one of two different

[250:01] things either that there's a safety threat or that there's a risk of re offense that is how the bill is written so the first and is like the predicate is what is the um offense at issue my first question that does that make sense no it does not because the way I read this it says the offense is a felony it doesn't say four five or six in fact four five or six earlier is barred so it says it's a felony and there must be this suspicion or um the a susp supon of a threat or unwillingness to seize and assist so that's right and I've asked other people about this besides you and they read it as an and so it has to be a felony and these other things it's not enough that a felony has been committed oh I agree we are in agreement the idea is that for low-level felonies where somebody low this says

[251:01] any felony sorry R but I'm just trying to make sure I'm clear and and I are speaking to the same point that it's any felony and a suspicion is that correct it is they it requires a felony and a suspicion but four five and six felon I'm sorry uh high level felonies one two and three are excluded from the summons provision but yes it is accurate that for the lower level felonies four five and six and for victim offenses arrest is always allowable when so when there is either a safety risk or a risk of reoffence and what that means is for low-level felonies and this is precisely what was happening in Boulder prior to the covid um prior to the prior to covid this was already happening Boulder already had discretion for issuing low-level felonies um summons and

[252:01] officers would make decisions in the field about whether or not to issue those summons I encourage uh council members to return back to sheriff Pelle and ask if this is accurate does this you know does this reflect essentially what was happening in Boulder before the covid standards so yes the idea is low-level nonvictim misdemeanors are now going to be mandatory summons if there's a warrant arrest them but if it's going to be a victim offense or if there's going to be a low-level felony the officer can arrest but the officer needs to be thinking is this person of safety risk is this person um going to have a risk of reoffence and and to be clear because I think Carl Castillo made a point that somehow this was going to subject officers to liability um the sheriffs were very very it was very important to them that we put a provision in that made clear that there was no liability for officers for failing to follow um the Prov the

[253:01] summons Provisions this is really an unenforceable bill it's not something I'm proud of but it's a reality there is no civil liability there is no criminal penalty for it this is really about a culture change though okay thank you juny and then Rachel juny thank you I have to say thank you to miss Wallace because um she has changed my mind about a few things but I do have a question about for instance one of the changes that we want to make the Amendments is about firearm arms uh with deadly weapons and I'm wondering why is that why is that problematic I just don't see the problem so maybe if she can eliminate that for me sure well the first thing I just want to let you know is we did not rece the ACLU you know approached I think you um

[254:01] council person Joseph and mayor Weaver you know a few months ago to discuss this bill and we never had seen any potential proposed amendments until we reached back out a few days ago so those have not been presented to us or discussed with us um but we have been looking at them and um you know I don't think that the the deadly weapon provision is a complete non-starter I actually would question what what what offenses are you concerned that are not victim Rights Act offenses that are not covered in the exceptions that already exist and I would challenge that they don't really exist but in some ways that might suggest that a deadly weapons offense I mean de a change in the deadly weapon standard um you know may be something that that the uh proponents can consider we haven't gotten a chance to fully discuss it and we really look forward to an opportunity to get into more detail

[255:01] about the proposed amendments with um Boulder I think the place where we have the greatest amount of disagree is the pressure to make all felonies automatically arrestable say not to encourage officers to pause for a moment and say is this person a safety risk is this person a um a risk of re offense um so I think that there is room to have a discussion on um deadly weapons and that's something that the sponsors will have to consider as well juny do you have anything else okay um I'll just point out for the record um juny Joseph and I did meet with the ACLU I think back in December or January but certainly we had never seen any Bill language and in our discussion I at least did say that we supported the concept of bail and bond reform um the arrest standards just hadn't come up and so I think the the

[256:01] real concern here is more around arrest standards Aaron and then Rachel it was the other way around I think oh I'm sorry I'm not well um just to ask a kind of follow question I appreciate your you're clarifying that that you feel like the removal of all felonies is really problematic for the intention of the bill that's helpful to understand one of our kind of backup requests on that was you know that that um I is that um the way it's currently worded in terms of there the low level felonies that that are excluded but then there are a number of them that would be included because they met one criteria or another and so that as as one reads the bill if one is not familiar with the list of every lowlevel felony and how they might interact with the various other conditions in there then you really don't have a sense of what's left um of what low-level

[257:00] felonies um would still be subjected to arrest and which ones would not um so I I think one of our back up request was to enumerate those specifically so do you think that's at all doable or in instead do you think that's more of an education thing like of a supplying a frequently asked questions about exactly which ones are included which ones are not so um I first I you know I I have been working very closely with Michael dhy and thinking about is there a way to read Ward the bill to clear up um confusion about this basic premise that Noni nonvictim Rights Act misdemeanors and below are the mandatory summons lowlevel felonies victim crimes and these other specific Provisions like Firearms um are arrestable when there's a safety threat or a risk of re offense that is something that we would be open

[258:01] to clarifying um and I think it clarifies the current intent of the bill but might bring some comfort to folks who are less um familiar with the uh with the different with the different crimes that being said I do not think that I I even want I mean I haven't gotten to talk to Da DH about this or other Das but my guess is that want that Das and others who are in who are working on in the criminal legal space are not going to say it's a good idea to enumerate every single crime these are hundreds of crimes they are already they already fit in certain buckets and right now there is a reworking of the criminal code that the ccjj is undergoing that is going to reclassify a whole set of crimes in the misdemeanor category and probably next year in the felony category and so it's you know that one of the things that you don't do in drafting is list out every

[259:03] single crime if you want to know what an F what your S5 and sixes are go to your da go to your your county attorney they should be very familiar with these things um but the thing you should the thing is that all of these categories these are broad categories and we're not picking out a specific crime we are saying essentially any victim crime any felony at all you can always arrest when there's a safety risk know that makes a great deal of sense so I think the enumerating idea is probably not not a good idea so appreciate your explanation there I just think that um so that I think it does then become more of an education matter but I do think this is where some of the confusion about the bill has arisen is that one can read it very closely um but still come away with it with a not having a clear understanding what's covered and what's not not because you haven't written it clearly but because if one does not have a a familiarity with all those categories then then one

[260:00] is not so sure but thanks for explaining that I appreciate it well Erin let me just say I'm not sure the bill is a written quite as clearly as it could be and as we've gone because there's been so much confusion as we've gone back over the language we have been working on language that could make it clearer so that the things that I am telling you here today that the bill does which I believe they do Under the language as it's currently drafted could potentially be further clarified and maybe that would bring some comfort to um fols on this Council well that's good to hear because then that might be something that we advocate for instead dead conceivably would would be for clarification in in the bill language for uh what offenses were covered and what were're not Rachel and then Mary well I want to thank Rebecca again for um answering questions and and then I'll turn it over to Mary but I just wanted to make a motion to extend the meeting are we there already it's only 10 o'clock oh okay well we're getting

[261:01] there so just figured i' do it'll come when the time is right Mary yeah thank you Miss Wallace for um staying on and answering all these questions I have an additional one for you um in the the assessment that is to be made by a police officer in assessing a person um whether or not there's a safety risk or um a risk of reoffence how does that assessment being made on the Fly not introduce additional bias thanks so much for the question um so I was trying to address this earlier right now officers have broad discretion for basically all misdemeanors and in some jurisdictions including Boulder low-level felonies to either issue a summon or arrest people so that's like

[262:01] the current situation right now and when they are making and there there's exceptions to that you have to arrest people for DV and for high level violent crimes like I said those are not what this bill is about um so officers in the field are making these decisions every day and when we talked to law enforcement about what are the primary factors that you are considering when making that decision that you make every day in the field the two things that we kept returning to were is this person going to hurt somebody else is this person going to keep doing bad stuff and so I guess this doesn't really all this does is clarify what are the appropriate considerations um in the field um because that decision is being made all the time and the goal is to actually Reduce by I'm sorry I just lost my

[263:00] speaker can you still hear me we can hear you yeah okay their goal is actually to reduce bias by narrowing and clarifying by narrowing and clarifying the categories that can be considered I think and you know I can't speak for Sheriff Pelle but you can ask that those are the very considerations that he would expect his officers to be making in the field right now okay okay um thank you for that and um did I hear you say um just a little bit earlier that the bill could benefit from some further clarifying language I'm sorry if you just asked me a question I just lost my headset and now I can hear again but question Sor yeah no I I thought I heard you say just a few minutes ago that the bill could

[264:00] benefit from further clarifying language well we've heard enough um misconceptions about what the bill does um some of which frankly I think are potent are in are potentially intentional intentional misleading but others that I think maybe because the bill language isn't as clear as it could be and so I've been trying to be as clear as I can with council tonight um and also to say that any of the things that we have said this bill in intends to do um you know we of course would be open to clarifying language that makes clear that this is what the bill intends to do we have been you know I think we've sent out we have fact sheets we are very clear about you know the categories of crimes that are covered and what's you know what's expected from officers and to the extent that the bill that that the bill language isn't totally clear on that we

[265:00] would be open to clarifying Amendments of course and you also thank you for that and you also mentioned that you had not looked at the um proposed amendments um from our legislative subcommittee we did look at them earlier this week okay and but so you had not but you mentioned that you had not had a chance to see them or consider them I thought I heard that I was saying that we had heard that Boulder was oppositional to the bill and had not until this week when we reached out received Boulders amendments okay so you're open to looking at the Amendments and considering them yeah we have looked at them and ultimately this is the sponsor's decision um but I can say that i' I've tried to share at least our view and we are following many of our organizers in the field who are saying we don't just throw out an entire

[266:01] category of like we don't throw out human beings and say they belong incarcerated pre-trial because they're accused of a low-level felony we still say we want officers making reasoned decisions in the field about who they arrest based on safety and re offense um and so it's not just about what we're open to I think that the community that we are obligated to um is it cares about pre-trial reform and freedom for people accused both of misdemeanor and of felonies particularly after Decades of high felonation where we have consistently ratcheted up the nature you know how how you know what used to be a misdemeanor is now a felony as we've continued to ratchet those things up um and of course there are many people who are accused of crimes they didn't commit and there are also people who are accused of lowlevel felonies who are of no danger to anyone and should not be

[267:01] incarcerated pre-trial and so um it you know it's not just about the ACLU it's about the entire community and ultimately it's going to be up to the sponsors I can tell you the ACLU would be opposed to the strongly opposed to the felony felony amendment that um Boulder is considering for all the reasons I've already shared okay thank you Miss Wallace thank you thank you uh we'll move on in our public hearing we have Aaron Clark Katie faran and Lane taplan thank you mayor Weaver and city council my name is Aaron Clark I'm a black resident of the city of Boulder I'm the founder of Justice res skill in pursuit of equity we Empower Justice involved individuals to transcend personal and societal limitations to secure long-term professional success I'm also a member of the NAACP Boulder County's criminal justice committee under the leadership

[268:00] of Darren OK Conor and Annette James I'm also the founder of equity Solutions The Firm that recently won startup of the Year by the boulder Chamber of Commerce for our work advancing racial Equity during and after the racial Reckoning and the murder of George Floyd tonight I would like to call our city to elevate our emphasis on finding Community solutions to ensure Public Safety and to find alternatives to incarceration all too often we immediately move towards legislation force and control when facing a challenge like we're in today this fails to address looking for root causes and in the the middle of a global pandemic the root causes of this pandemic in our community are disproportionately affecting bipod communities my concern here is that we are pushing decisions that about that and the folks that are impacted are not actually in this conversation many folks tonight have said to listen to the people around the state that have stood and support this bill and it's clear that that's not really being listened to rather we listening to the local opposition only I

[269:02] would submit that this Council should take the time to seek out the IAC members of this community to understand the direct or indirect impact that opposition or an amendment to this bill would have on us in 2020 we made statements of support for racial Equity with yard signs and hashtags any legislation tonight that is connected to our Criminal Justice System must be seen as impacting bipo and marginalized communities if we support racial Equity we have to consider this impact before making decisions affecting our Liv lives let's pass sb62 as written and stay on the correct side of Justice Reform and move towards racial Equity thank you thank you Aon next we have Katie Faron Lane taplan and Denise Mays Katie thank you so you're back to the non-experts my name is Katie Faron uh I am with Boulder Surge and I'm speaking rep of the unamended State Senate Bill

[270:01] 2162 I'm also here to stand in grief with my fellow Boulder writes over the events of March 22nd I am so thankful to the First Responders who ran toward the danger that day now more than ever I am convinced that we need to make sure that law enforcement resources are directed at preventing real Public Safety threats and violence like we saw here on the 22nd rather than on arresting and jailing folks charged with low-level offenses and non-violent crimes SB 2162 is a Statewide issue it goes beyond Boulder I have been a victim of property crime and no one deserves to go through that but mass incarceration and wealth-based detention angers me more and those conditions are disproportionately experienced by lowincome and people of color 2162 is an equity issue as district attorney Alexis King testified in the Senate Judiciary it's

[271:02] not too much to ask officers and prosecutors to AR articulate a public safety threat in order to justify jailing someone pre-trial which is so disruptive to people's lives and sometimes deadly the prospect of losing your job your home or even your life before you're even found guilty because you cannot pay your way out that is what makes our communities across the state less safe Boulder must not stand in the way of sp262 because we marched last summer with a commitment to address racial equity and policing this is that work and as you can see from the testimony before me and what you've all been really engaging in um that is the work it is work and so I encourage you to stick with it thank you thank you Katie give me just a moment here okay next we have Lane taplan Denise Ma and Ralph Burns

[272:04] Lane hi my name is Lane taplan I'm with Boulder surge I'm a boulder resident have been a victim of a violent crime and I've worked as a psychotherapist for folks in the criminal justice system I strongly urge city council to show up in support of sb62 in its unamended version I am honestly horrified by the amount of push back we've seen in Boulder against this bill especially in the wake of the recent racial Equity plan sb62 is an equity issue J failing low-level offenders who are not a public threat impacts people of color and poor people the most other counties in Colorado have already proven that jail depopulation doesn't correlate to increased crime rates 60% of people in jail are unconvicted and are just jailed because they can't afford to pay money Bond not because they're dangerous sb62 helps decrease the

[273:00] harmful incarceration of this unconvicted 60% of our community and it still allows officers to arrest and hold people who do pose a threat to Public Safety we need to acknowledge that police are already using their discretion in every interaction we can't twist this bill and claim that it's going to be the cause of oppressive bias please follow the lead of racial Justice groups who are in support of this bill as is Sheriff Pelle himself has been quoted as saying that the arrest standards in this bill reflect the ones in place in Boulder prior to covid so clearly they're work a b and this part of the bill doesn't need to be amended what keeps Boulder safe is investing in our whole Community particularly members who are struggling and marginalized not jail being held in jail for a lowlevel offense even for a day can be devastating to someone's entire Financial picture and works against people already struggling because of institutionalized racism classism and ableism please listen to

[274:02] our social justice Advocates walk the talk of the racial equity plan and support sb62 as it's written thank you you Lane next we have Denise May Ralph Burns and Eric Bud Denise thank you um mayor weer and thank you members of council uh my name is Denise mases and I am the public policy director with the ACLU of Colorado and I'm here to ask for your support for Senate Bill 62 I want to acknowledge first and foremost I know that crime is is real and I also know that the fear of crime is also very real but as already mentioned no one no one has offered any support for the claim that this bill will increase crime and that is very important for everyone to understand and if that were the result of this bill why would prosecutors in the state of

[275:00] Colorado be in vocal support of this bill why would attorney general Phil Weiser be in support of this bill as well as Colorado's Department of Public Safety now I've heard it said here that the recommendation to seek amendments on this bill is in part out of concern for unintended racial bias and harm to victims I think victims survivors of crime can speak for themselves there are four Statewide victim Advocate groups that were involved in the development of this bill three looked at it and they don't oppose and we have one that supports with respect to racial VI uh bias also don't speak for communities of color let them speak for themselves and they are in strong support of this bill at the end of the day we have relied over relied on jails and prisons and yet

[276:03] we are no safer today Senate Bill 62 plots a new way for you to look at Criminal Justice Reform it's the right way and I'm confident it's the Bolder way and that's why I ask for your support thank you thank you Denise uh Ralph Burns Eric bud and Chelsea castiano Ralph hello my name is Ralph Burns a member of Boulder Surge and I thank the city council for both your work and for hearing from citizens regarding s SP 2162 consider per Boulders new racial Equity plan the boulder poverty rate for non-whites is nearly double at 23% compared to 12% for whites second per the Federal Bureau of Justice statistics persons in households below the poverty level are more than twice as likely to

[277:01] be involved in crime as higher income households third sp sp 2162 eliminates monetary bonds for lower level offenses and reserves jails for those who are a safety threat it prevents non-threatening persons not convicted of any crime from remaining in jail because they cannot afford Bond also note that USA's incarceration rate is more than five times greater than the rest of the world support for 2162 is an anti-racism action driving towards structural Equity an objection to S SP 2162 is an action reinforcing structural racism every public speaker at the March 16th city council meeting discussing the increase in Pearl Street crime connected the increase to covid restrictions not a single speaker spoke about the best postco interests for Colorado criminal

[278:03] justice does Boulder racial Equity plan carry any weight if so then take a stand for the 23% non-whites Imp poverty within Boulder and support sp262 as written thank you both for listening and for acting with courage thank you Ralph next we have Eric Bud Chelsea castiano and Abby Bradshaw Eric hello my name is Eric bud I'm an organizer with for people we are working to reform discriminatory occupancy limits in Boulder with sb62 Colorado has an opportunity to reverse the trend of mass incarceration that we have seen all over the country for decades I support the bill in the current form and Boulder should not push to amend the bill I want to connect the over jailing of people in Boulder to Boulders

[279:02] Boulder's housing occupancy limits in most of Boulder it's illegal for more than three unrelated people to live together these occupancy limits create criminals whose crime is sharing housing which creates instability poverty where people can be evicted for living four people in a four-bedroom house this exclusionary policy leads to more poverty and more struggle we want people to be able to live in Boulder and succeed in this community even if they have fewer resources so we shouldn't be jailing people for low-level offenses we shouldn't be putting people who aren't violent in jail just like we shouldn't be evicting people who are living one person per bedroom in a house what I'm hearing from the city leadership tonight is that there is this concern about racial equity in this bill how the officers will exercise discretion and that apparently has more

[280:00] weight than the actual abuse and violence towards black and brown people that we have seen over and over from police in our own Community this bill has brought support across Colorado including Boulder state legislators and the bill is not opposed by our district attorney or Sheriff who had been engaged stakeholders in this bill uh the legislative committee's position particularly around jailing people for low-level Fel felonies would gut much of the progress of reducing incarcerations I'm asking the council to remove their opposition from the bill Boulder must not uphold progress for the entire State thank you thank you Eric next we have Chelsea castiano Abby Bradshaw and Aiden cook Chelsea I'm Chelsea Castellano and organizer with bedrooms are for people and we are working to end some of Boulder's exclusionary housing policies this Friday at the conference of world affairs council member Bob Yates will be moderating a session called quote

[281:00] policing in America now what differing views on how to change law enforcement to end police violence against people of color unquote I hope this isn't too presumptuous but I have taken the liberty of preparing Bob's opening remarks and here they are as a member of city council my colleagues and I have the great honor and responsibility of ensuring that our laws and the laws we support are anti-racist and protect people of color against police violence and unjust imprisonment I am proud to stand before you today having just recently fully supported SB 2162 as written during the last sensus we found that 1% of the boulder population was black and yet over 5% of the total arrest in Boulder were our black residents that is systemic racism and the only way to combat that is with systemic change now for a moment we considered making amendments to the bill that would have weakened it but as council members we recognized that it would have been a disservice to try to amend the results of the year-long engagement process with experts and stakeholders from across the state we

[282:00] recognize that arresting people for nonviolent crimes was itself an act of violence we recognized that it was more important to listen to black and brown voices civil rights activists and victims groups than the police on the matter of mass incarceration we recognize that our unfounded fears would not allow us to dim our commitment to equality and justice for all and that is why we supported S sp262 without amendment that could be our future now you must have the courage to make it our reality thank you thank you Chelsea next we have Abby Bradshaw Aiden cook and Claudia team Abby hi Council um my name is Abby Bradshaw I'm a boulder resident um so incarceration um disproportionately affects black people unhoused people trans people and other marginalized groups in Boulder and across America um as we've discussed a lot tonight when people are caged they're often unable to pay their they're not granted bail or

[283:00] they're unable to pay bail um staying in jail even for one night can have negative consequences like losing your job and longer jail STS of course can lead to things like eviction or losing your children or health problems um people in jail are more than four times more likely to have disabilities and if you need daily medicine um or rely on other medical support oftentimes you cannot access those in jail and those can lead to um further lifelong health problems um opposing SV 2162 because of feir mongering by wealthy business and homeowners in Boulder puts you in opposition to this supposed goal of equity and reduction and violence against marginalized people the police chief Maris heral is lobbied by nimes and other wealthy stakeholders like safer Boulder and she is only interested in a homogeneous and Wealthy Boulder and SB 2162 does not support a homogeneous Boulder it supports the goals of reducing violence and reducing inequities against marginalized people

[284:00] Maris Harald claims to follow the datadriven policing approach but this is meaningless when the data is informed by existing racist and classist Injustice system and S SP 2162 is is taking us with with one step towards ending some of these systems towards towards reducing some of the violent um violent and inequitable impact of these systems and I urge all of you to publicly support this bill as written and to urge our representatives and Senators to support this bill as written and to reduce the impact of um unnecessary incarceration on people in Colorado thank you thank you Abby it appears that Aiden cook is not in the meeting with us so next we have Claudia team Lauren Tompkin Tomkinson and Alisa sores Claudia good evening members of council this is Claudia hon theme I live

[285:01] in Boulder and I'm speaking tonight on behalf of Boulder progressives this is a difficult time to be talking about public safety and policing in our community and I appreciate all of you and the city staff represented here tonight for leading through these dark times with your whole Hearts Boulder progressives is not in the habit of endorsing Statewide campaigns and issues even when they align with our values but we're here tonight to support s sp62 because some of our neighbors including our chief of police have made this our fight we support efforts to reduce arrests for low-level offenses and to end cash bail because these practices disproportionately hurt low-income people and people of color they perpetuate unequal Justice in a time we know we should do better the overuse of pre-trial detention also destabilizes lives that we've already made precarious in our society when people lose employment housing or social supports because of unnecessary jail time that is

[286:00] a threat to Public Safety we're concerned that you are only listening to law enforcement and to a vocal segment of the downtown business Community when formulating a position on this bill there are the voices that our political system has been built to hear but they are not the only ones that matter it was just two months ago that this body approved a racial Equity plan that commits to correcting that kind of imbalance s sp62 contains relief for overp policed and over incarcerated communities throughout Colorado and already reflects input from a broad range of stakeholders including our sheriff and MDA we would expect given Boulder stated values that Council would support it and encourage others in its orbit to do so as well we know you well enough to know that that's a big ask but at the very least we ask that you respect the strong and principled support in our community and the work of civil rights and racial Justice leaders Statewide and that you and the city's agents at least remain neutral on this bill as written thank you thank you

[287:00] Claudia next we have Lauren Tomkinson and Alysa Sor Lauren hi Council can you hear me yep great thank you uh my name is Lauren Tomkinson I have lived and worked in Boulder for seven years I am a member of United campus workers Colorado and I'm speaking for the first time at city council this evening to urge that uh council members publicly support SB 2162 as it is written um as it is a bill that will keep our loved ones and neighbors safer at home rather than Shackled In cages as so many of our community members have highlighted depopulating jails is a matter of racial gender health and economic Justice for instance did you know that Colorado incarcerates women at a faster rate than the United States as a whole and faster than 11 other first world Nations that's

[288:01] outrageous and this bill as written will help to reverse these horrible facts um depopulating jails make sense in regards to covid-19 safety and it also makes fiscal sense with a daily incarceration cost of over $98 per person sustained jail population reduction could save our community uh millions of dollars each year let alone the whole Colorado Community furthermore I want to share my own experience interacting with the justice system several years ago a former intimate partner stalked me and made me feel fear for the first time in my life and without realizing what would happen Boulder PD got involved and arrested my ex for about 24 hours after he was arrested I was shocked that I didn't feel safer I actually felt more distressed all this to say uh I have

[289:01] learned that jails and police are not a solution to personal and Community safety um I have one minuted time but all this to say I urge you to support S sp262 as it is written and to help keep our neighbors and loved ones out of cages thank you thank you Lauren and finally we have Alisa Sor hi can you hear me yes great well uh you made it to the end you made it to me so I appreciate all of the council's time and energy this evening I am I think you are final Boulder Community member I live in Boulder I work in Boulder uh voicing support for sb62 as written we've heard from Community connectors already we know there are Connections in our own Community between policing and the effects on marginalized folks we know that this bill is the culmination of the work of many stakeholders of both people who work

[290:01] every day to advance racial equity and people who work within the criminal justice system I urge you to listen to them trust their expertise we've heard from a lot of community members tonight with a lot of compelling arguments every single speaker from the community here tonight spoke in favor of sb62 as written and on the idea of felonies let's remember that not all felonies are created equal the word felony is a scare tactic for example cultivation of marijuana even multiple instances of possession are still considered a federal felony offense something that we do in Colorado all the time so I hope you'll take the comments that you heard tonight from community members seriously even if they felt uncomfortable to receive and have the courage to change your mind if you truly want to advance Equity I urge you

[291:00] to stop the criminalization of poverty in our community and support SB 2162 as written thank you again for your time tonight thank you Lisa and with that we will bring um the public hearing to close and bring this back to council um I would suggest and this is just my suggestion that we break any discussion down into two parts one is a motion um on the uh policy agenda policy statement and the the second is in the discussion of Bill support that we have so I'm happy to entertain process feedback on that okay well hearing none I would invite a motion on the um policy statement Mark and hang on let me get this right because I can't do it off of just that Mark and then juny Mark yes yeah I I neither agree nor disagree

[292:01] because I'm a little confused by your statements am if you could be a little clear as to exactly what we're doing in the two parts the first part is the suggested motion language in the um item in the packet so the motion language is to support adoption the revisions um that Carl brought to us in the policy statement so part the first is the motion about the policy agenda or the second would be any feedback um to Carl and to our um policy subcommittee on positions that we have talked about on Bills moving through the legislature so policy agenda and current bills at the legislature is that more clear yeah but I I guess my question is don't we need to do the second one first because that's where the seems to me the rubber meets the road well we need to do both so we can do whichever one first that you would

[293:01] prefer I was trying to do the easy one then the hard one but if you'd rather do the hard one first I'm open to that no you're the mayor you're call is is someone willing to make a motion to adopt the changes Carl proposed to the policy statement I will make that motion do I have a second second okay is anyone opposed to adopting the policy statement as amended uh in in front of us tonight Aon just to make the comment to folks who are listening along that that the policy agenda it is independent of specific bills and doesn't have anything specific on S sp62 so just to be clear we're all about to vote on this then we're going to talk about s sp62 and any other specific bills people want to bring up so just clarify yeah so we have a motion in a second around the policy statement as amended

[294:03] um before us tonight so does anyone object to adopting that policy statement seeing no objections that's unanimous adoption of the policy statement I will turn back to council and see if there's any um discussion of the recommended position on any of the bills before the legislature Rachel yeah yeah I mean I'll I'll go right for uh Senate Bill 2162 if it's time unless we need to pause and ask questions first I just have discussion okay um so I do want to say that we are on the heels of a police officer laying down his life for our community just two weeks ago so um we're all I think on this Council very grateful to our Police Department um and I don't think any of us are likely interested in maligning

[295:02] our police officers or Department um so where I am coming from is an interest in improving the criminal justice system and that is distinct from any criticism of the police department so I just wanted to make that clear because we did hear some people um maligning Maris and police officers um so moving on into the substance the beginning of the meeting I read a declaration in solidarity with the aapi community members I did not write it but it closes with quote we must continue bold and concrete steps to create a safe and Equitable environment for people of color um additionally um senate senate Bill 2162 seeks to U protect bipac community members and so it is hard for me to square anything shy of support with taking bold and concrete steps um

[296:03] Also earlier today um we heard discussions from our uh Community connectors that two of their three top concerns were police oversight and advancing racial Equity um and we have a a chance here to advance those goals and then lastly just in in my day I will add that I was at our um racial Equity guiding Coalition meeting today and we sort of had a lecture from staff about the history of Boulder and um we were immersed in the history of um the massacre of IND indigenous members um people who lived here before we lived here as well as sort of our racist Clan passed so I I I think that the the racist roots of our community are also relevant in this discussion um I would also add that in terms of of Public Safety we need to be very careful

[297:00] to recognize that that Public Safety does include people um who and protecting people who have been accused of crimes and so it's not like either we protect Community or we protect um you know criminals we have to be mindful that it's our our job as a city to protect everyone who lives here um and for my part I'm not very worried about the discretion of police officer determining you know those those um issues of of who's in danger or is it a continuing threat that seems pretty in line with what we already ask our police officers to do so I'm hopeful that that will be um not a high burden um and lastly I guess I would just note that our criminal justice system does need um reform uh from sort of the front end to the back end it has racial bias um and unconscious bias often just Rippling throughout it so any

[298:02] chance that we have to um write that wrong I think it's it's important that we lean into it so I would prefer for us to trust Phil Weiser and the ACLU and the NAACP um and especially in light of the aclu's responses tonight I think that they offered a lot of assurances that this is going to be uh a bill that does allow us to be safe um while still improving um the lives of our community members so in light of that I would um I would support and and hope that Council would support SB 2162 without amendments or with many fewer amendments if if people feel the need thanks thank you Rachel Ain and then Mark yeah thanks for that Rachel that was that was very well said um yeah I found the testimony tonight to to be very compelling and and much some of it

[299:00] very educational um I will like Rachel said um exempt from that um the specific criticisms of our Police Department um like uh like Rachel said we owe them a great debt um the sacrifice of Officer tally and and other extremely Brave and heroic um behaviors of our officers in the incredible tragedy from a couple weeks ago so I in no way condone uh those pieces of the testimony but the speaking of the uh you of the existence of of how mass incarceration affects our society and and the bipod communities in particular um and and how this could make a a significant dent in that problem is is very compelling and also like Rachel today we had our um racial Equity guiding Coalition meeting today and then shifted in with the discussion of our um work plan and then the um Community connectors and talking about how um you know what's important to the

[300:00] people of color in our community and other F we don't hear from as much and what what we hear from over and over uh from people in in these circumstances about racial equity and and from you know marginalized communities is that the our what we talk about is fine but we need to take concrete steps as well and so I feel like um this is a time to to take a concrete step so I I did find the aclu's U explanation of the some of the details of the bill very helpful there were things that when our legislative subcommittee that we talked about about requested amendments that um I think upon hearing um their explanations I don't think were necessarily necessary so um I I would encourage us to to switch to a position of uh support for the bill uh with some uh smaller requested amendments as Rachel mentioned um and I have a a couple thoughts on that like the specifically like asking for Clear

[301:01] language on um what offenses are included in the arrest standards so changing our um request that felonies be excluded to instead request for Clear language on that um and then um I think the testimony about um officer discretion I think I was moved by that so I would I would strike our objection to the uh the officer discretion because I think of the points people made to say that uh if the officer doesn't exercise discretion then a person ends up in jail and then they're then they're brought to a hearing and instead it is it is better to let the officer exercise some discretion given that there are no um civil and criminal penalties involved so um I I would remove that request and then leave us with just a couple of other um ones about lethal weapons or deadly weapons and a very minor failure to a pure one so that that's my

[302:00] recommendation thanks thanks every everyone for coming out speaking so powerfully tonight thanks Aaron Mark Mark you're on mute I often am um first I want to thank both Rachel and Aaron for their comments um uh about our police force and and the role that they play uh in in Boulder um and I I share those um I want to make a couple of comments um about what we did did at the intergovernmental Affairs uh meeting um first uh I do not believe we are gutting the bill we we were proposing amendments that we believed uh would actually improve it um we heard a great deal of commentary tonight that we should not incarcerate for low-level offenses misdemeanor and code violations that was never an issue we agree with that um we also heard

[303:03] testimony that we need to reform the city the cash bail system we agree with that and and the we proposed only the most minor of changes uh to that provision we did propose some amendments um that we believed were reasonable attempts to better balance the needs of the community against the need to differentiate between those individuals who should be incarcerated and those who should be not um and finally we heard a lot of many speakers um all of the speakers oppose our our proposed amendments and and frankly I would have been a little bit more persuaded if I had heard these expressions of support from a number of downtown business owners who actually have experienced theft break-ins and damage to their businesses I did not I did not hear any of that um I also heard a lot of hostility to local business owners um

[304:02] you know running a business is is a difficult proposition at the best of times and those who Express this kind of animous towards our business owners are certainly entitled to that view um but frankly I don't share it and and do not uh support comments of that kind um I thought we uh I thought we proposed very reasonable um amendments to the bill and despite the many references to sheriff Pelle and attorney general Weiser um their positions on this bill um do not absolve us from the obligation to render our own best judgment and that's what we did and I continue to support the results of that uh committee meeting uh and uh we'll continue to do so thanks

[305:01] Bob well I I'll jump in um I I um agree with Mark um I I think the committee did a fine job of of uh proposing amendments to the bill that were as modest as possible um keeping the essence of the bill in place but um curbing some of the um the excesses in the bill that really tied the hands of law enforcement across the state I I I do I'm a little troubled by um a state bill that tells home rule cities and police departments and city managers and city councils in the various cities throughout the state about how they enforce their laws uh it seems to me we are a home rle City and we should um be allowed to um engage in law enforcement um consistent with our community standards that may mean less arrest that may be more arrests but um it it seems to me that this is awful heavy-handed

[306:02] for the state to tell the dozens and dozens of police departments throughout the state who they may or may not arrest um and I'm I'm troubled by that I'm troubled by this preemption by the state of local control local Authority local law enforcement local discretion and so that is probably as as disturbing to me as anything um I think most of the bill is just fine as Marquez said um I thought committee did a good job of um proposing some amendments um there are certainly lots and lots of cities um in the state that are just dead set against this bill in its entirety including the Colorado Municipal league and the Metro Mayors and uh several police departments and Sheriff's departments throughout the state so I think our position is is pretty Progressive perhaps not as Progressive as um some of the speakers tonight would wish but it's certainly a lot better than an

[307:01] opposition and um I really appreciate the um the Overture that um some of our speakers made tonight to continue to work with our committee to further refine amendments um I think the amendments were a good start um but if the committee and those speakers are willing to continue to work uh together to come up with some amendments that would improve the bill because I think that's what we're trying to do I think Boulder is actually the minority here I think we're trying to improve the bill it seems that uh everybody else is either uh fully in favor of it or fully opposed to it and uh perhaps we can um be the mediators between those two opposing camps um so um I agree with Mark I think it's a good start I would encourage the committee and um those speakers who are in leadership roles with the ACLU to continue to work with Boulder to come up with some amendments because um if if if you uh if you shoot for the whole inch of aot you may get nothing and uh there's a possibility of working

[308:01] with Boulder as a compromising Force here and perhaps coming up with a bill that's um pretty good maybe not exactly what you're looking for but pretty good and maybe um better than nothing thank you Bob and juny uh if you would start your comments by making a motion that we extend the meeting that would be great motion to extend the meeting there second second anyone opposed Mark Mark you're always opposed so thank you juny appreciate that go ahead yeah thank you and you know I I want to thank Bob for his comment and generosity for everything that he said but I think I have uh some slight criticism even as a member of this committee based on what I heard tonight um you know I think something that

[309:02] struck me was when one of the speakers I believe it was the ACLU that we should not speak for people of color and to let them speak for themselves and I have to say there are times that I've been on Council I get a sense for lack of a better word there is some kind of commodification of black experience and oppression or and the oppression of people of color within our own political discourse and I think again it's so important moving forward if the sense that we will take is having Community discourse we need to speak with the community members the community members of color to really get their perspective as opposed to just blanket things and and and and attempt to sell it to whether it's Council or community members I think that's very important and I think when I was at our

[310:01] own legis ative meeting as well I was on the side of support with Amendment so I support my fellow council member Aon Brackett um based on what I hear tonight I definitely believe there are this bill as is seems to be even confusing to even the ACLU as they were speaking today they were saying well it could be better it could be better so I think the idea is to make it better let let's let's do the hard work to make it better where we can have the support of more communities around Colorado but I was actually I just Googled you know what's the percentage of nonwhites in Colorado it's about 30 33% that's a that's a large population and we have to do whatever we can to protect them if that means going back and work on this bill we should do

[311:00] it great thank you juny and I'll jump in here and say I appreciate the testimony we heard tonight and I agree with um much of it I certainly do not agree with characterizing police in the way that they were broad brush stroke characterized I think that is unhelpful I think generalizing about groups of people is most often unhelpful um and so that includes people who are police officers um but that that being said um I I believe that our position is a pretty good one which is amend I did not sign on myself or for Boulder to the um Metro mayor's caucus sign on letter which is straight up opposing this bill so for what it's worth I found the um recommendation of the committee to be quite balanced which is amend it is neither support nor oppose but amend and I think it is quite fair to say that everyone on this Council agrees with the

[312:01] bail reform form piece of it the cash bail and almost all the bond Provisions the three failures to appear in a specific case is pretty difficult to understand the justification why isn't it one or at most two so I think that Amendment deserves discussion I think the amendment about deadly weapons deserves continued discussion and I think as Aaron said the detailing of which um fell felonies are and are not arrestable on their own is well worth the time to discuss because things like motor vehicle theft if officer finds somebody who has stolen a vehicle I would believe that's grounds for arrest even without a public safety component similarly with arson arson you know may have started minor but as a former firefighter I can say that plenty of things that start small can become big

[313:00] and be lifethreatening so I think arson is another example of an arrest bar that I'd want to question whether you would want to say you can't arrest unless there's a clear and present danger um because I think arson deserves to you know go before a judge at the very least um to to understand you know and and to protect the public from the possibility of of you know that person being out so I'll just say that I think and I do hear and Aon I agree with you on this as well um we should not strike the requirements about um determination of threat to safety or unwillingness to seas and deist so I would be fine with taking that one proposed amendment off but the other three I believe are worthy of discussion I have spoken directly in the last week to da dhy um and I won't speak for him except to say that we had a very

[314:00] fome discussion of all the proposed amendments and he did not express support or opposition to the Amendments but he said that it certainly was worth more discussion going forward um and I I think to Bob's point that we can play a role of trying to make sure that this passes in in the main of How It Was Written but to clarify some of the points that are not clear enough um as they're written so I think an amend position is perfect for us to have as a council if we want a state support for the parts of the bill that we support I think that is good as well but I think there are parts of it as juny said that need to be cleared up so it's a good law when it's finally passed and becomes the law of the land so I would continue to support an amend position I would support removing one of our Amendment requests but I think the others deserve to be at least discussed going forward

[315:01] Mark yeah I can also live with uh that change of of removing the uh the one proposed amendment um I think Aaron made made a good point about it and uh I'm good with that as well uh Rachel I assume I'm in the minority here um but I I disagree with um a position of amend I would just support with sort of a suggestion that we that whoever on the subcommittee is uh authorized to do that meets with the ACLU and and tries to hammer out some improvements but they would not be required to get to a support position so whatever the terminology is there I think it's support and and chat rather than amend Mar did you call on me I did yeah sorry Mar that's okay um thanks um first of

[316:02] all I want to agree with all my colleagues who have um said that disparaging comments towards our police chief and our Police Department are [Music] um inappropriate um so there are probably um certainly those that are not imp pathetic and um and geared towards safety but I would assume that they are likely in a minority but um so anyway I would support what our um my colleagues have said with respect to that um the other thing I would like to say is that um business owners also come in all Races so to to to just disparage all business owners because they're business owners is also dispar

[317:02] aring it's disparaging everybody um I Heard a story about someone who is a person of color who um was arrested for a misdemeanor and um in Boulder um by the Boulder Police Department arrested for misdemeanor um and and um determined that they were a safety risk for themselves and um suicidal and thrown in jail um naked um to keep themselves from being harmed so um if this um bill would prevent that I would support it um but I do think that

[318:03] something that is right out of the gate that it is perfect and doesn't need amendments is like writing a novel in the first draft and it's good to go so I I would support some amendments and I think that um what um what Sam suggested would be a good path to go um I think that the clarification um on you know what qualifies as a um arrestable offense um is necessary given that there's a lot of confusion according to miss Wallace I think it was and um and I think it also needs clarification about the liability for officers because that was one of the things that I heard that was

[319:00] a real concern so um I think that move further maybe the committee gets together again and has a further discussion I agree with Rachel to meeting with the ACLU and um getting some more those clarifications and um and you know support with amendments is where I would go Adam yeah I just want to make sure I had some sort of weigh in here um the thing that I struggle with here is I don't know enough to say what is a substantive change and what is not and that's where I have to defer to the people who have been working on this for a year um and in that case I would default to support and having them make the clarifications as needed that are

[320:01] clearly bouncing off of some of some of council and some of our community as well um because I think council members and community members have reasonable doubts about um some of the language and they don't understand what it means so uh I'm not looking to make any substantive changes to what the people who brought this forth want but it's pretty clear that we're having some miscommunications that should be cleared up so um if we had to vote I would probably vote in favor of um support but it's pretty clear that there's some mess to clear up here Aon well um Sam I think everybody had some words to say um so I mean could I offer a path forward from what I've

[321:00] heard from the majority Council sure go for it um what it does sound like there's there's energy for the uh taking the approach of support while working towards amendments and um and it and sounds like generally there was there was agreement about no longer asking that that subsection about was it B Iva and B just rolls right off the tongue um uh to to remove that request and um and then for us to have further conversations with Bill sponsors and ACLU about addressing our other the other concerns of the city um and how the the bill might be um potentially change to address those so um the the positions that are usually available are oppos andless amended amend and support with amendments which

[322:02] I think is what you're saying Aaron um and and just straight support and straight oppose so am I to understand that you're proposing that we support with amendments and that we keep the three of the four except the one that you mentioned well and yeah and with the with the other the um the one about the list of offenses um that we had the our request was to say it should be um that that we should replace it with a list of crimes and and I think I I would say to replace that with a request for clarifying language on what crimes are included which ones are not and you specifically are talking about the requests we had put out before on class four five and six felonies we're going to strike that you'd like to amend that to a request that we are more clear about the what's prohibited from being arrested for that's right yeah CU I I

[323:01] found it compelling the saying that that listing the specific crimes is problematic particularly as the code changes over the years so instead to ask for uh clarifications to the language okay so what I'm hearing is a proposal that we support with amendments and I think Carl are you clear enough about the Amendments that we're talking about um so what I heard from council member Brockett is support with amendments focusing on the ftas and the deadly weapons not focusing on the other two amendments except um with regards to felonies and for that matter for the categorizations of different crimes that um there be some clarification but I'm not hearing from um Aaron the same thing that I've heard from some other members suggesting that we we still try to move felonies

[324:03] so so so there's certainly a difference between what I've heard from different members but I do understand what uh what Aaron is is uh proposing yeah I'm putting that out there um I Heard a majority of council being interested in supporting with am with amendments um it was a little less clear on this particular one so I'm I'm proposing that on this one we solely ask for clarifications to the the list of of crimes that are included and not and I don't know I don't know if that's a majority would support that approach so let's take them one at a time just to get clear um it sounds like we're in agreement on two of them I continue to look for expansion of firearms to be deadly weapons or some expansion of firearms to include other um weapons and then ft reduced from 3 to two

[325:01] those are two that sound like we're all in agreement on and then do you want to try stating one more time the clarification you'd like to support because let me stop there full stop on the first two is there any disagreement that we want to keep going on the ftas and the deadly weapons okay seeing no ones there I think Aaron the last one we need to clear up is the crime definition yeah that that we ask that the C categories of crimes that are included in section one of the bill for arrest standards uh be clarified make it that simple okay um I I think the only problem for Carl is like what clarifications are we pushing for exactly um but but I'm comfortable leaving it there and continuing to work within the committee to get the detail around that so if we want to bring back some ACLU proposal to the committee I

[326:01] think that's worth doing even if it's a um we require another meeting so is that close enough a we we say we want to clarify and we're good and the committee can figure out what clarify means exactly that's fine with me if it's fine with other people great Mark I can support that um as long as we have a process for getting that clarification um and being able to express our views as to um which class 456 felonies we feel strongly about which we you know uh which we can agree ought not to be uh um subject to incarceration um but as a process matter I could go with that and just to be clear you mean subject to arrest not specifically incarceration subject I'm sorry do mind if I just interject real quick s just

[327:01] my my part of my reasoning for this these revised set of amendments is that from speaking with some of the bill organizers that um these all seem to be things that that left the fundamental um intentions of the bill um intact so thank you Erin we got Rachel and Mary Rachel yeah just reiterating I I don't think we need to be so formal about it I think that the ACLU basically said tonight that they already are going to work with Bill sponsors to make some improvements because they've heard this feedback already so I think we could could just do a support and I I don't support the width Amendment because I think that um a lot of what we are sort of dancing around they already said addressed like we don't have to get so specific with the felonies because they said you know it's going to have a a a victim and and be arrestable basically they couldn't come up with an example of what we'd be talking about so I would just once again favor us supporting in keeping with our racial Equity plan and

[328:01] all of the testimony that we heard tonight and um and simplify and support and let the committee work with it I understand I'm in the minority but just wanted to clarify because you asked are we all in agreement I'm not Mary Yeah question um so we've talked about the committee going and and hashing this out um so do based on tonight's outcome from our discussion do you then hash it out and then because things move so quickly at the state legislature there won't be a chance to come back no so you'll you'll just go with whatever you come up with and that that'll be that is that is that the case I I I think that's right um and I only think the unclarity is around the the re the more clear definition of the rest

[329:01] prohibitions that are currently um class four five and six felonies are prohibited and I think what we want is if we don't have that in what what are the um offenses which rest is prohibited for and so I think what what the way I heard it Mary is if we hear something back from the ACLU about what they might be willing to do on that clarification that would be something that committee could weigh in on um I don't think we're going to go and try in write language um to to Define that I think we might um weigh in on what we might hear back as potential amendments if if the bill sponsor is willing to make an amendment we have no idea if they will okay um thank you for that so um Aaron do you want to go forward with support um with amend

[330:02] okay so I think we'll take a vote on that um all in favor of adopting a support with amendments and we have the three of them listed um indicate by raising your hand one two three four five six opposed Rachel I clarify it's a full support not opposed to support with amendments full support okay so so I think we're good to go six to two um that we support with amendments and we have the three asked Carl is that good enough to work with yep that works okay very good so I think we are done with this I think we've adopted the changes to legislative agenda and we've weighed in on the bills at the legislature right now so thank you Carl thank you to all the community members who testified and thank you to all the folks who had to wait through

[331:00] all of this to talk about the next item Alicia I think we're good to move on all right sir next on our agenda we have from the Mage from city manager the tribal consultation background and preparation and to begin this item tonight I'll introduce uh our director of open space and Mountain Parks Dan Burke well great uh thank you Chris and uh good evening Council um I just want want to uh uh let you know that we will have a few minutes we'll try to keep it as brief as we can but it's a it's a pretty interesting and uh uh comprehensive subject but we're going to provide you an update in information related to tomorrow's uh City tribal consultation meeting that's scheduled and by we I just want to recognize that there are a number of Staff members from across several City departments who are involved with City tribal consultation work as well as with other issues and matters relating to the

[332:00] city's commitment to strengthening relations with tribal Nations and our indigenous community members um so I'll just start off by saying it's a bit disappointing that tomorrow's consultation will need to take place in a virtual format uh the opport but the opportunity to spend the day discussing matters with representatives from about a dozen tribal Nations is nonetheless an extreme honor for those of us who will be able to participate and an opportunity for the city to continue its commitment to de de deepen and strengthen relations with these Sovereign Nations so tonight we want to accomplish a couple of uh hit on two matters first Ernest house the senior policy adviser for the Keystone uh policy Center and the former executive director of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs will provide council with some background on what formal government toover consultations are and their history and what one may expect when attending a consultation and after Ernest presentation we will uh open it up for

[333:01] uh any questions that council members have as it pertains to consultation and then next uh affilates with uh City Communications will briefly describe the process and timeline that staff is moving forward with in developing a land acknowledgement that Council will eventually review and consider uh later in the uh summer and possibly early earlier in the fall uh but before ER I bring Ernest on I just want to quickly summarize the city's involvement with formal consultations and the agenda items that were scheduled to address tomorrow 1990s and the early 2000s the city of Boulder and tribal Nations consistently held consultations and emerging out of these were formal of these formal meetings were a series of memorandums of understandings and then around the time of the Great Recession uh consultation ceased until 2019 when the city hosted a two-day consult that

[334:00] was attended by over a dozen tribal Nations we were hoping to continue those discussions in 2020 but those of course had to be postponed and tomorrow's meeting is actually the rescheduled consultation date uh and what we hope to do tomorrow is to continue the discussions from 2019 which consists of discussing a a name change of Settlers Park and that is called for in the 2016 indigenous people's day resolution we're also hoping to continue to discuss an update to the existing M us that I just referenced earlier that exist between the city and and tribal governments and also the city will receive some initial feedback from tribal Representatives on the city's desire to develop a land acknowledgement statement or statements and Phil Yates will uh briefly describe that after Earnest presentation and I just want to point out that the memo in your Council packet provides a lot more details on each of these issues but with

[335:02] that I'm going to turn things over to Ernest and hopefully he's all set and ready to go uh who will uh provide you some background and information on government to government consultation thanks Dan um and thank you mayor and city council member staff for the opportunity to join you uh yet again for another opportunity to conduct tribal consultation um this guide is something that I've been honored to provide in this overview been over been able to provide previous city council members and even some of you have participated in the 2019 tribal consultation conversations back in February and then of course moving forward so I appreciate your commitment to this uh over the years um and I thank you for who's helping me navigate through this through this PowerPoint as well next slide please um as Dan mentioned um

[336:00] again my name is Ernest house Jr I'm a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe from Southwestern Colorado um and what I first start out with and I'm going to go through this side deck first part um kind of fairly quickly because I think it's information that perhaps many of you know but at least to get us on the same page and use my tribe as an example of of why it's so important to talk about tribal consultation and conduct tribal consultations but really we're we're first starting out as um Colorado's American e Alaskan native popul population we think about that that really represent 2% of the total Colorado population now uh the Nations American Indian Alaskan native population is also uh approximately 2% so Colorado is very similar to a lot of our national numbers uh in fact out of the 2010 census over 70% of the total us American Indian population lived off of the reservation and I would suspect that the numbers especially those increasing numbers in the urban Indian population

[337:00] like Denver Metro Salt Lake Phoenix um these places that are seeing a higher increase in urban Indian Urban American Indian populations by 2020 census we'll see that 70% number increase to probably over 80% um and it's really a lot of folks that are moving into the Front Range and I think a lot of lot of what you're seeing in Trends probably for Boulder counting on the Front Range as well so here's some additional information about Colorado uh that we have over 15 tribes are represented uh amongst the just the Denver metro area alone that's seven County District including Boulder County uh Su nations are the most represented in the Denver metro area and the Navajo Nation members da are fastest growing in the in the urban Corridor next slide please so we often refer to 48 historic tribes of Colorado um and this is the list of those 48 tribes 46 of these recognized tribes were forcibly removed

[338:01] over the last 150 years from what we now call the state of Colorado um a lot of these uh tribes have are now relocated in Oklahoma the dtas Montana 19 pblos in New Mexico uh and then you'll see the UT Mountain you tribe My Tribe and my sister tribe the southern new Indian tribe are the only two tribes have remained in the state of Colorado even the northern you the U Indian tribe of Utah was force removed as well I was a part of the team in 2007 at the state of Colorado when I was with I was the director for the Colorado Commission of Union Affairs that met with 48 all these tribes it took four years to do that to establish a a working relationship an ongoing agreement we were the first state in the country to do so and so when we refer to 48 historic tribes of Colorado these are all federally recognized tribes uh and and we'll get more into that in a little bit later but I just want to make sure and put that up there because a lot of times when we talk about land acknowledgements really

[339:03] these are the tribes that have always and continue to call Colorado home uh and so that's something to think about when we when we look at the invitation to to tribal consultation next slide please so I'm going to like I said a little bit earlier I'm going to use my tribe as an example of why this is so important so a little bit of History here um who are the UTS I think a lot of times we we talk about the UTS we see the UTS names Ute is actually a Spanish word it's not a word that we came up with it's not a word that we call ourselves I mean it's it's part of our our federally recognized name it's in our designation that we signed as a tribal constitution in 1940 and then the southern tribe in 1930 respectively but if you look at these names on the top of the first uh bullet point these are our names in our language that we call ourselves the maachi the capot the whuch tagat the Grand River the yamas uent uh these are

[340:03] seven several several bands that have Consolidated they were throughout what we call Colorado they resided historically in the es Park region in the Gunnison Valley uh in Crested but down in Colorado Springs Garden of the Gods along the Front Range and through the Rocky Mountains uh of what we call Colorado now over the last 150 years though primarily Consolidated to make up our three you tribes today primar when reservations were established in the late 1800s in the state of Colorado is when we saw these bands of youths start to consolidate and when treaties were developed start to be forced onto reservation so you see the three tribes now that I talked about earlier which make up those seven bands now when I first said that Utes is a Spanish word there was a Spanish Expedition that were going through Southwestern Colorado on the Western Slope when the Spanish Expedition came across a band of UTS they called us utas uh and that turned

[341:02] in translated and turned into Utes what we call ourselves in our language is nutu nuu means the people and it's very um it's it's uh regularly it's a regular term with other tribes in their own language that they have a a term for their for their tribe for their Community for their band that refers to them as the people and I think this comes back back around and some of the conversations that we heard from tribes uh moving forward through consultation next slide please so here's just a a a visual for you the green dotted line is the area that the UTS would have traveled the vast area to search for um for game to sustain our livelihood um we have been in what we call Colorado now for the last 10 to 12,000 years now if you ask us as a tribe we've been here since time

[342:02] immemorial I've just added these state lines just to give you an idea of the vast terrain that the youths would uh would move to to to move with that game to sustain our community the red dotted line though is primarily the area that we refrain we stayed into uh very nomadic we're often called the people of the of the shining mountains uh primarily because a lot of our trails are either now consistent trails or their highways uh that se dot has turned into major uh roadways throughout the state of Colorado crisscrossing our state next slide please and here is uh where as I mentioned our bands would travel back and forth um up in the High Country in summer weather uh and back down to lower elevation in the winter but primarily these band stayed in these locations so often times when we talk about land acknowledgements or places that are inviting groups back to rename places if

[343:02] you ask a lot of our tribal Representatives they'll defer to these specific representatives of these regions uh historically to do that next slide please so here is the state as we know I just added the dot the green dots as to give us reference of some of of of our contemporary communities next slide so I say before there was a first reservation we we called allive Colorado home um so we would like I said go where there's hunting blinds still standing in Rocky Mountain National Park that are that are set by the youths uh the last uh bear dance in Garden of the Gods was in the early 1900s and 1908 until we were removed from that location in 1868 the first year reservation was established on the western slope of Colorado and this is where this blue line com comes into play next slide

[344:01] please you can start to see and if you followed American Indian history throughout the West westbr expansion homesteading act uh Manifest Destiny you can see and have heard this this history before that uh treaties were broken um expansion was encroached upon in the blue area and and land was starting to chip away and and renegotiated treaties were starting to take place uh if you've see that big chunk in the southwest that is because of the San Juans over 400 miles of mining which is actually this picture that is um my uh background um that I'm talking to you right now next slide please pretty much within 40 years the youths lost what we know as the state of Colorado by the late 1800s it was down to this you UT strip um and that was after uh the Meer incident battle Milk

[345:00] Creek and I'm just talking about the UTS there was several other altercations treaties that were broken on the Front Range that impacted and involved shyen rapo kamanchi uh you name it a lot of tribes that were forcibly removed the next slide and here is where our tribes located today the blue line is the Ute Mountain Ute reservation located in three states we have two communities the uh toyot Colorado and white Mesa Utah which is on the Utah side and then the red line is the southern new Indian tribe and it's a checkerboard reservation solely within the state of Colorado next slide so why do I give you all this history and background for tribal consultation because tribal consultation is seen as a I guess I don't use the term very often but a best practice and the reason why I think and I'm not going to read this verbatim I'm just going to call attention to some of these things as you read these slides on your own but it really truly is a convention

[346:00] originating from the trust responsibility of the United States to tribal Nations tribal consultation is a process that enables both the tribal communities and other entities and systems to advance the wellbe beinging of tribal communities now tribal consultation is most oftenly seen at the federal level and even state requirements for some state agencies it's not required at the local level so that's why call it a best practice not every local community is doing this primarily because there's um there's a huge effort to do it there's a commitment to do it and there's a long-standing process to engage in type of consultation and meaningful consultation and you'll we'll talk a little bit more of kind of what those steps of what Boulder's been doing since 2019 I believe in a good in a good way next next slide please so the three areas that I've highlighted for the need for local tribal consultation at the local government level is one to enable the create of stratey strategies that

[347:00] effectively address unique challenges and opportunities we know that the population growth in the Front Range I get a lot of contacts um at least our team at the Keystone policy Center does around Land Management practices from other counties local governments that they're re-engaging they're re reviewing their Land Management process and policies well how does that intersect with different indigenous communities bipot communities Representatives organ organizations how do they engage with some of these communities so there's a creation of these strategies not only to do Outreach but that address the need for a lot of what we've heard in the past is especially tribal community members that have been in the Boulder area for some time along the Front Range is the influx the the growth of the urban population in general has reduced the availability for some of the sites that our indigenous populations have been able to utilize and has reduced the opportunity of some

[348:02] of these sites to do sweat lodge Ceremonies for example or to conduct some of these things that they were able to do 15 20 years ago um because of the growth uh in on the Front Range so I think that's part of one of the main reasons of how to engage these tribes the second is to leverage opportunities of mutually beneficial collaborations what I mean by that is again this example if you're doing a Land Management plan have you identified the sacred sites um is there a historic accurate record um from a tribal perspective of some of these sites that are located can they be preserved should they be protected uh moving forward I think that's leveraging both a win-win situation for not just the tribal Community who can speak to why that area is sacred why it needs to be protected but then also give you that background in history uh as you develop that relationship and then third and final is to meet the consultation requirements established under any type of memor

[349:02] memorandum of understanding memorandum of agreement or intergovernmental agreement mou Mo MOA or IGA now a lot of these times and especially with Boulders unique I was a part of the conversations with city of Boulder back in 2003 I was a part of a lot of conversations with Valmont but around the time moving into 2004 and 2005 and so I've seen a lot of these originally originally created conversations with different tribes over the years so it's been great to come back to see how can they be developed strengthened and also uring that other tribes voices are brought to the table next slide please and really tribal consultation is consensus based decision- making if there is any type of decision- making being done a lot of times you have to ensure that the tribes you're including at the table you're giving them the opportunity them the time to uh to learn about the issue to provide

[350:02] their thoughts to provide their feedback and that you're not creating a rubber stamp process and you're definitely not creating a check the boox process it's very easy to fall into a check the boox process especially when you're invite you're adding tribal Nations as a stakeholder tribes are not stakeholders especially with the Sovereign status that federally recognized tribes have they have that respect and and they we have have to show them that honor to be engaged with the process so every time I talk about consensus-based decision making you know we're really not putting this to a vote we're creating this relationship and you're often starting from from step one next slide please here's just some consultation guide examples now under the uh Obama administration there was an effort to strengthen tribal consultation to try to move forward not fall Vic into a check the boox process um here's national

[351:02] Indian of Education Association has put out guides uh when every student succeeds Act was created for um for throughout the nation they put out how to engage in meaningful consultation and the far right uh picture is the consultation I created um under my tener at the state of Colorado for state agencies uh which these next slides will have a couple excerpts from that and I can give you a copy and send that link uh for folks as well next slide please again all this is based off tribal sovereignty which is an understanding that native peoples have existed since time immemorial like I mentioned predating the United States Constitution but recognize not only United States Constitution that tribes have Sovereign status and also uh come to conversations and agreements at the level of states and that we have to ensure that adhere to that sovereignty a

[352:00] lot of times this tribal sovereignty is misunderstood um it's um challenged for sure over the years and I think it's one thing that that's why this is so important when we invite tribes to the table about something and we frame it within a formal consultation process they are of the understanding that there's going to be conversations agreements something put forward so that they can take back and so that's why there's a lot of time commitment into this and it's it's a long-term approach this is not this is not a Sprint excuse me this is a marathon and I think it's very important for consultation to to start out with the understanding that that um with the development of the relationship building first and foremost in that process next slide please I often refer to the government to government relationship that often times and even still today on a regular

[353:00] basis uh mayor City Council Members your staff may get phone calls requests that the city meet with tribes on a government to government relationship so even though you've created a consultation process with numerous tribes um tribes can still reach out oneon-one to talk about Mutual issues of mutual uh interest or understanding um it's happened numerous ways I think a lot of times people the general public might think of American Indian history as something of the past if you go go to museums you might see our pictures of American Indians in of the 1800s I think my generation the younger generation others have really tried to Advocate that the Contemporary that we're still here that we're still alive that we want to to engage in a conversation around Economic Development um perhaps these tribes that were once removed from the location can come back partner with the city and something that's that's mutually beneficial not just for the tribe but for the community moving forward that's the type of contemporary issue now the government toover

[354:01] relationship piece that's that's always been ongoing and I often use the quote that that collaboration happens at the speed of trust and for American Indian history as I would I hope that you all would know um has not been has not been one that's been positioned in a position of trust has not been one that's been Stak in a position of trust so these steps these um conducting consultation early and often and continuously having a relationship with that that's going to be helpful to the ultimate success of any type of consultation process you move forward respecting that these Sovereign Nations and you're having this conversation a government to government just as if another nation was going to be coming and sitting in front of you is the way that that I would frame that as well next slide please and of course then we have the emphasis on meaning tribal meaningful

[355:01] tribal consultation ensuring that the the development of a relationship is based on that trust that's not one-sided that you're not checking the Box you're not just doing it to say oh great this is the time oh April this is our time frame that we have to do this and we're just going to get into a rhythm I've seen so many communities fall victim to that and take the relationship for granted and it not go well and and I think that's what the basis of meaningful Tri consultation is why are we coming to the table what are we going to be talking about how are we going to be moving this conversation forward next slide please and one of my last few slides here is just tips for cons successful consultation um I think that some of you maybe all of you hopefully are going to be able to join us for a portion tomorrow one of the biggest things is that I mentioned early communication early and often with tribs is critical for successful con consultation but the the plan to spend sub

[356:01] substantial amounts of time and personal involvement to develop the relationship will help lead that um I think a lot of time we're so driven on time and I and I know that I work with so many different local governments you have so much you have to get done within your day there's there's not enough hours in the day but for indigenous communities time is not is not the pressure time we will get get to the issue when we get there if it's more important to share a story or to let you know where I'm coming from because it's harder on Zoom then that might be uh something that I want to explain or or come across so if you're in these conversations I'd ask you to to please be that that take the approach of of of quick to listen slow to speak in terms of there's so much of that history so much of that 10,000 12,000 years has been transferred orally like I'm speaking to you this evening and a lot of our elders uh deserve that respect

[357:03] and they need and they bring that that education and that knowledge with them in that way next slide please I think sorry for this no one can see that or read that I apologize but this is just some pages some additional things in that consult consultation guide for successful consultation next next slide please I think my last two here is um some pictures of the 2019 which some of you uh were at maybe you can find yourself in some of these pictures of the um not just the meeting itself but then the the tour of of Sellers Park at that time by the tribal Representatives next slide and then at the end of course some some gift exchanges which is also very important you know remember you're inviting these tribal Representatives even though we're in this Zoom world

[358:01] right now in Virtual format we're still inviting them to the table you are calling them to the table to have a conversation about something so gifting their time to you to talk about this is very important and I think that the staff has done a great job about um not only um honoring that time with either covering the expenses but also sending with the virtual format even just a a little gift um of the appreci apption next slide please I think that is my yep that's it I'm happy to answer any questions and one thing that I will make sure and just let folks know is that during this time um tribal consultation during CO's very interesting and I facilitated conversations with indigenous groups from South America to um up here to to the to the US and the states and the lower 48 and I got to say that um you know high-speed internet is not available many parts of the rural tribal communities I'm sure that you would

[359:00] automatically understand that but that's one of the biggest challenges connectivity and Tech connectivity for tribal communities and so um we're going to try to be as as uh reading as much as we can for folks that just are able to call in because they're saving bandwidth um for for kiddos going to school um or trying to help out and navigate some of the connectivity and Tech challenges that folks might have but that's one of the biggest issue areas I think that the tribes are now I'm starting to see more and more involvement by tribes on wanting to do um virtual formats but it's also you know they fall into the zoom fatigue as well and there's almost so much time in in in the day to do this so I just appreciate your attention I appreciate your your interest in this and happy to answer any questions or turn it back over to you Dan great so Dan I see we have a question here shall we go ahead with that yes let's do that um

[360:01] Mary yeah thank you Ernest um just a quick question um how do non-federally recognized tribes um fit in to tribal consultations or if at all how how does that aspect um work it's a great question so Colorado we do not have any state recognized tribes each state handles it different um the to have a state recognized process that can be developed at the state level if they wanted to do that um so Colorado does not have a process to do that all of our consultations at history Colorado and the state of Colorado with state agencies has done with federally recognized tribes and following the department of interior process around federally recognized tribes and and recognizing that government toover process when I created the when we created our our office created the tribal counil ation guide we also followed up with Native American

[361:00] rights fund around ensuring how to respect those federally recognized tries process now having said that there are groups and organizations that either want to seek or don't want to seek State recognition or federally recognition recognition but still want to be involved in the process I think that's also a great opportunity to follow up or create some type of committee commission Outreach process whatever the Comm Community uh is looking to develop to ensure that you also open that up to the much broader Community native and non-native community members I remember back in 2019 there was um a public portion and there it was fully packed I think it was great to see the community's interest and not just how this conversation went but also wanted to follow the issue and see um you know as much as they could be a part of it now for tribal consultation these are closed door conv Sation meaning they're they're intended to be that one-on-one

[362:02] government to government back and forth communication the reason why it's we've asked and tribes have asked for closed door sessions is because a lot of times when tribes are providing historical background information and knowledge they they don't want to send it to a broader group they want to ensure that it's just a one-on-one conversation I think that that's another way that we're trying to Fig also develop a process and figure out how to share that information with the approval of the tribe with the broader Community how and when can that be uh provided and how can additional community members provide and be engaged in the process I think that's also a way to we're going to segue into the land acknowledgement conversation and a way to engage and how to engage the much larger broader community in that process moving forward thank you thank

[363:01] you so Ernest I have a question this is Sam thank you so much for that presentation it's very very helpful to get us um thinking forward to tomorrow one of the things that um we did at the 2019 consultation was have a discussion about Settlers Park and the renaming and then it was clear that each of the tribal Representatives wanted to go back and discuss that issue with their their tribal councils and and their tribes so just to set expectations for tomorrow we have an hour and a half set aside for the Settlers Park renaming discussion would you expect us to land on something as kind of a close to final decision there or is that something where we'll hear back from each of the tribal Representatives about how those discussions went and

[364:00] then maybe we wouldn't come to a decision this year about a final naming decision do you have any kind of how would we approach the conversation and think about the outcomes from tomorrow no it's a good question and I think part of it is to we do have that first and foremost we have heard some feedback from the tribes that we've been talking to and also from the follow-up conversation in February and there has been some communication with tribes in between these meetings as well so we're hopeful that we can land on a um a final agreement that's what we're GNA we're going to propose but we also want to be flexible with tribes that maybe that weren't a part of the conversation maybe they may be just attending and don't have the background maybe they want to seek clarification but for the most part we have heard back heard feedback from folks that that they want to move forward in in some of these areas and so I think that at least that's what we're

[365:01] going to be moving forward to to try to seek some resolution around that okay great so I mean the the the one part that was eye openening for me in that whole conversation two years ago was how deliberative everyone was about you know taking it quite seriously and getting a lot of input so um it seems like our goal will be to get to a decision but if we don't would that go all the way to the next year or would it be something that we could land on a final decision between consultations I'm just trying to figure out how to think about that as we go into tomorrow absolutely no it's a good it's a good question too and as the facilitator for that section I'll let you know that that I'll have some options to ask the tribes to consider around um following up time frame frame that we don't that we don't either have to wait if if there's bandwidth there

[366:02] that we believe we can get this done within a few months if that's uh supportive by the tribes in a shorter amount of time versus waiting till the 2022 consultation at least that's the type of time frame we want to try to put on that knowing that this has also been discussed by the tribes and they probably also want to start talking about some additional next steps and and how to get this moving forward so we'll have some options to to also have groups the group think about so that we can if tribes if groups do need more time to think about what that time frame looks like and knowing too that a lot of tribes go into ceremonies during the beginning of Summer middle of summer and end of summer some tribes even obviously are also in elections right now and then elections will also happen like with my tribe in the in the middle of fall and so we have to keep that time frame in mind as well as we as we look at how

[367:00] much runway that that we have and bandwidth we have moving forward super thank you very much Mary is that hand new or leftover leftover okay great thank you uh any other questions from Council great seeing Dan I'll turn back to you yeah so just and a note to council members that will be participating tomorrow that has agreed to uh help facilitate the uh uh once we get into the discussions and help navigate uh uh conversations and decision making and putting out some options staff will be there to provide some contextual background information on the agenda items but then we'll move into the discussions and Ernest has agreed to be there the whole day to kind of help guide conversations so we're really honored and fortunate to have Ernest uh available for tomorrow um so for the last remaining minutes uh um we would like to just briefly update

[368:01] Council on the proess and timeline that is associated with developing a land acknowledgement and this will also be a topic for tomorrow's conversation uh one of the agenda items at consultation so Phil Yates a communication specialist with the city is going to take a few minutes just to provide you with uh with that process and timeline that staff has come up with to develop a land acknowledgement so absolutely well thank you Dan and Ernest good evening Council m members um and uh yeah just uh next slide good morning Phillip oh good morning so yeah yeah um just to kind of briefly is uh Northwestern University and other organizations generally describe land acknowledgements as a way to recognize and respect indigenous peoples as traditional stewards of the land and the to Earnest point the enduring relationship that still exists between indigenous people and their traditional territories so for the goals

[369:02] that we have for the city of Boulders we want to build on the city's racial Equity plan and its indigenous people's day resolution that was developed by community members in 2016 a big focus is honoring all indigenous peoples who have lived in and stewarded lands in the area for thousands of years to Earnest Point since time Memorial we want to emphasize traditions and oral histories that still connect indigenous people and tribal Nations to the the area critical part of all acknowledgements should acknowledging the past and continuing harm caused by the colonization of indigenous lands we want to celebrate the generational knowledge and wisdom of indigenous peoples we want to address the interest of indigenous community members and fly recognized American Indian tribes that consult with the city and have agreements with the city but more importantly I think is the CR critical part of what we've really heard is building a foundation to take action for indigenous people's now and into the future and then another key goal is also

[370:00] to develop a consistent approach across the city for land acknowledgements next slide so right now I think it's really important to say that plans for land acknowledgements are still being developed we're going to be speaking with tribal Nations and tribal Representatives tomorrow about how we can use those with honor and respect but as we think about this and as we move forward about we really want to think about how we can evaluate how we can use acknowledgements to inspire reflection and action in our work that could include when we're planning Council and board meeting agendas and at meetings for topics that may affect Community uh indigenous community members when we're planning actions and strategies and long-term plans such as Master plans and I think it's also important for staff when we plan our annual and long-term Community projects how can we really think and reflect on acknowledgements while we're taking while we're actually doing our work but also it's how can we use acknowledgements in our Communications and that could include

[371:00] education and interpretive signs web pages and other features such as email signatures next slide so what we're we really do appreciate the hard work that community members did to develop the indigenous indigenous people's day resolution oh in 2016 and I think it's just what I've done is pull some important acknowledgements that were in that docu and I'd let people just reflect on those for just a minute so Our intention is to include several of these statements and honor the hard work that community members did to to to develop this and we're using it as a foundation to move forward next

[372:03] slide so we've taken several steps in recent weeks to develop uh this work and to develop a land acknowledgement we had a preliminary discussion with tribal Representatives on February 18th we presented information to the human relations Commission on February 22nd we provided an update to the open open space Board of Trustees on March 10th we sought um Community engagement through be herd Boulder from March 3rd through March 24th and what we were seeking as a part of that process on themes and ideas that were not in the Indigenous people day resolution so how can we build on the good work that community members had provided in the past um Community input on language suggestions and local government policy actions are included in the memo that we provided next slide and so what are the next steps so the important uh the an important step is tomorrow so what we're looking to do

[373:02] is present very preliminary draft based on the indigenous people's day resolution and Community input in order to uh to give tribal Representatives something to respond to so to Ernest point this is not meant to be a check the box or a rubber stamp it's it's meant to start the conversation to to understand where we can take this and how we can do it with honor and respect um same is true of how can we use this in a meaningful and collaborative way and to Earnest Point again we want to make sure that we take time to do this right so it's this is an effort that can take time and it could span two different consultations again what we're trying to do is start the conversation and have a collaborative conversation moving forward we also do anticipate a review by tribal governments and so I think to what Dan said earlier our next plan Council update is in late summer or early fall uh late summer or early fall

[374:01] this year that's that's I think the last slide given the time but that's thanks Phil and if if there's any questions on the process and timeline that uh uh staff has worked to put together on building the land anagement well feels happy to entertain a couple absolutely Arin no question I just want to say um that I appreciate your work on this and and approach to take it slow and take the time to get it right and work with the tribes over multiple consultations um to do this um carefully and and slowly so uh it's been a long time that we've intended to rename that Park uh and I look forward to the day when we finish that work but it's it's more important to take the time to get it right and do it quickly so thank

[375:03] you thanks Aaron I don't see any more hands Dan all right well thank you for your time so I do have a question then did you want to say a few brief words about your expectation for Council Members as far as um getting in early to get briefed or anything like that just for folks who might not have done this before yeah so um as you all know you're uh those of you who are participating are scheduled in blocks and if you're joining uh other than the first session which uh I believe would be Mary and Sam uh there is a uh a a briefing uh uh link that you can go to and there'll be a staff person there that will kind of brief you on where we're at with conversations so you can come into the meeting having some uh uh knowledge about where we're at with conversations uh and then uh and then there will be a link for you to actually join the actual conversation a after you get some briefing by staff um so for

[376:03] those of you who are not there at the first session that's sort of the plan that we have for you is to first touch base with staff get briefed and then you have a link that will go right into the consultation meeting great thanks for that Dan and um in person that briefing is important you arrive early and staff tells you kind of what's been going on earlier in the day so that you can come in kind of up to speed the only other thing I wanted to say on this before we leave it is um I was going to be at the second session um but that won't work um there's a funeral I'll be going to tomorrow so there's an opening if a council member would like 30 um to 1:30 time frame so I'll just put that out there if anyone is interested there's an opening for a council member that wouldn't violate our open meetings law and I will

[377:02] also say as I'm going to say tomorrow on my remarks it is one of the most eye openening experiences I've had since I've been on Council to be at this um event in 2019 so if you have time it it is fairly interesting it'll be different over Zoom but I would encourage um someone to take that opportunity if you have the time m and I'll just put out that Taylor Ryman has been working to uh work with uh and schedule council members so if there's interest even waking up tomorrow morning uh contact Taylor and uh she could work on uh getting you scheduled in for that 1045 slot great join I believe yes that's right yep okay thank you Dan thank you Ernest thank you philli have a good rest of your

[378:02] morning okay Alicia I think we're ready to move on Alicia I'm sorry you're on mute I was just a talking it's um next our last item is the ma Matters from the mayor and members of council it's the board and commission appointments to the beverage licensing Authority Board of zoning adjustment and the Water Resources Advisory board thank you very much um Chris is somebody gonna walk us through this or do you want me to just give it a shot Sam I think this is mine mirbi and I are the boards and commission sub committee and mirabai is not here so I think that that leaves it to me awesome so uh we have um three vacancies that the that the subcommittee is recommending that the council consider

[379:02] filling um we had a an opening that on the beverage licensing Authority that no one applied for and uh Alyssa lungren whose uh term just ended has offered to serve another five years and has submitted her application and we're recommending that Council uh appoint her to that term I'll I'll note this is a different open seat uh from the one that was created by the tragic loss of Kevin Mahoney who was killed in the shooting on March 22nd and serves uh served on the bla we are leaving that seat open for the time being um in in in his memory and we'll we'll come back in a few months to work on on filling that seat but for now we'll leave that open in in his memory um so but separately from that Alysa lren has has offered to fill the other uh vacancy on that board also the board of zoning adjustments um there was a resignation from Elizabeth

[380:01] apprentis uh who stepped down early um we had had three applicants for two vacancies um this year for Boza and appointed two people uh the third person who applied was Jill Lester who had served a full fiveyear term very ay I think Council mostly did not reappoint her because she had served a full term no reflection on her quality of her service which I think everyone felt was very high so so she has indicated an interest in continuing to serve so we're recommending that she fill out the rest of Elizabeth apprentice's positions uh which is for additional years and thank you to to M Lester for being willing to do that finally um we had two applicants for the Water Resources Advisory Board in this last cycle um and an quiner was the person that we've pointed to that term um however um after some consideration she realized she was not going to be able to Serb on the board because of personal issues so she has resigned um we're recommending the other

[381:01] applicant uh for that position Jill Park uh be appointed to it um while she was unable to be present for the interviews um she's uh from her um application she's qualified to serve and has affirmed that she is still interested in serving on that board so that's that's the recommendations from the subcommittee great thank you Aaron so much and um I am going to make a suggestion here process-wise um this came at Bob's reminder so thank you Bob that uh in order to avoid the public hearing under matters um issues that we've had in the past that tonight we um decide as Council on whether we want to move forward with what was in the motion language and if we do we have it um put on consent either at the April 13th or April 20th meeting I'd lean towards April 13th if we can get it in um and then take the official action and the

[382:02] motion language here under consent at a future meeting so if there's any conversation on that now is a good time to have it if seeing no hands or anything um Aaron are you okay if we PLL your your idea here if it looks good that we just bring it back on consent at the next meeting that sounds great if we can just get get direction I don't know if there are any meetings in the meantime but if we could just have some Council direction that we people could serve in an interim capacity um subject to final approval yep and I I believe Bob reminded me that that is in our um code that that is the case if but you're right we should clear it up tonight as well Rachel yeah I was basically going to ask if there were any trainings coming up if they could be included and so they they didn't miss out on anything and then maybe a a process question that applies to only two of the three candidates but

[383:00] we did already have a a public hearing for two of those you know two of the candidates were involved in in the public hearing that we had in the first place probably not uh the third for bla I'm guessing but I just didn't know if we even needed a public hearing if they already had one those two seats um you know I think if we put it on consent then we can invite anyone who might have a comment or feedback to sign up for open comment and if they can't get on open comment for whatever reason we can um give them the opportunity to comment in addition to open comment so I think that's a great Point um is Council okay if if we invite folks you know in the meeting packet to um sign up for open comment if they have any um feedback on this Sam I don't think there'll be open comment at the special meeting next you're right a special meeting there will not so if we if we agree that um we would like these folks to serve in the

[384:01] interim we can just do it on the 20th and then that will give people the opportunity to speak it open comment that makes sense okay I believe the way the city attorney's office wrote the um the appointments are retroactive to March so it it it shouldn't matter whether we appoint them next week or the week after my only concern is is that I believe the bla meets on the third Wednesday of the month and they have a quad they have some quasa judicial applications on their agenda and so I would be concerned about someone participating on a quasi judicial basis without having a formal appointment from Council so so maybe maybe we could do it on the 13th and make it a public hearing to doter risen cross artiz I mean I'm guessing we won't have 100 people signing up to speak you know but but if anyone did want to to weigh in they could that's a good idea I like that so well what just one other thought is isn't the third Wednesday going to be the day after we do the appointment will

[385:01] that still work yes if you do it on the 13th on the 20th I mean are we not meeting on is it 20th not an option so clever Rachel the third Wednesday is right after the the meeting on the 20th that's right all right so that means that we can just do it on the 20th and stick with an open comment for okay awesome so then to the of the subject does anyone have any objections to proceeding with Alysa Lunden for BL Jill Lester for Boza and Jill park for RAB any objections okay seeing none then I think the guidance to staff is bring this back under consent um on April 20th meeting and we will um make a point that anyone who would like to come on this these um three appointments can speak at open

[386:00] comment Sam my hand is up again it's not for this but it's just a general question I have like when we're doing boards and commissions so maybe this is Aaron for your committee to consider for future reference we usually require a minimum number of applicants and this year like after we you know realize that some people you know didn't have tenure in the city and now we're looking at RAB there's really only one applicant left and things like that like feels a little bit um Loosey Goosey with the rues so I just wonder if we should um for future years think about doing that differently so Rachel I don't believe it's it's about rules it's about custom I don't think we have anything in the code or even in council's rules and procedures that requires multiple applicants it's more of a traditionally we we look for multiple applicants so that we have choices and um so so we would often hope for multiple you know I'll be frank um between um the continuing covid crisis and the shooting I think uh you know we

[387:02] have qualified applicants in front of us and rather than stretch that on for months we're we're taking people who are great who are sitting right in front of us during a difficult time in the city and moving forward with with them yeah I I don't disagree and and it stems partly from the usual appointments not from these and it's why I think we should move forward with these but in future years like if our either rules or custom are we should have multiple applicants we sort of don't in a couple cases we do generally follow that yes yeah and and these are special circumstances we had somebody resign right after the appointment and we have BL um two issues there so I I concur um Rachel generally we're pretty when we do the solicitation for the appointments in March we're usually pretty strict about that I think in this case it's a little different so okay seeing no objections we'll go

[388:02] forward with that plan and see this again April 20th um Alicia I think that brings us to the end of the agenda correct that is correct so so soon debrief anyone have any comments about the meeting great if not enjoy your day see you all morning everyone morning okay Miss [Music] Brenda [Music]

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