April 13, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[1:05] we're on channel eight um rolling ready to go very good welcome everyone to the special meeting of the boulder city council for tuesday april 13th we're going to start tonight with an explanation of our language interpretation services and then we'll move on into announcements i'll turn it over to you ryan to get started on that thank you so much and welcome everyone this evening um i will pass it to manuela who will give an explanation in english and then in spanish for interpretation please thank you ryan thank you mayor um welcome everybody uh the way to select a um the language channel is at the bottom of your screen you will see a icon in the form of a globe and if you click on that you will be able to select the

[2:00] language that you need you'll see english and spanish interpretation [Music] super thank you for that a few announcements tonight before we get started um covid19 exposure notifications you can add an app to your phone at the website www.addyourphone.com [Music] and that will tell you if you've been near someone else with the app who has a diagnosis of covid and then there's more information available on getting a coveted vaccine and to sign up for notifications when you're eligible and you can see the website

[3:00] on the screen there voco.org vaccine notify sign up and then finally boards and commissions we are continuing to accept applications um for volunteer positions on on three of our boards and commissions older junction access district parking and boulder junction access district travel demand management as well as the beverage licensing authority if you are interested and we would love to have you join us on on one of these boards you can apply at the website which is up on the screen and that is the end of our announcements for tonight um so alicia could you please call the roll so be sure you meet it thank you i thought i was all ready too thank you and good evening everyone

[4:01] councilmember brockett friend here joseph present nagel sweat lick your wallet present weaver here yates cousin and young present mayor we have a quorum very good thank you and we only have one item that we need to add to the agenda tonight that's to add item 7a which will be a scheduling discussion for april 20th and may 4th um cec made some suggestions but we wanted to run them past council so if i could get a motion to amend the agenda so moved and sam um you might mention after we pass this motion um why we're not having open

[5:00] comment tonight why this is a special meeting um we are not having open comments tonight because it's a special meeting and we only do open comments at regular meetings first and third tuesday second all right we got the motion and second anyone object to adding item 7a seeing none we will add that and then chris i will turn it over to you fern next item great good evening council members thank you mayor weaver our first item is uh our monthly public health briefing um so i will welcome lexi nolan from boulder county public health as well as chris campbell and potentially some others from their team so with that i'll turn it over to lexi thank you very much um are you able to see my screen yes good evening i'm lexi nolan i'm the acting executive director of boulder county public health we'll be providing a data update as well

[6:00] as information on the public health order that will go into effect on friday followed by an update by chris campbell on vaccinations i'm so beginning with some familiar maps you'll see that boulder county is in yellow in terms of our incidents it's at 140.9 this week which is down from 172.7 last week so we are improving slightly in terms of our cases our current positivity rate is 4.8 percent which puts us in level blue again down from last week when it was 5.3 percent we are currently seeing eight days of decreasing and stable hospitalizations which is unfortunately down from 11 days last week so that is a worsening trend and if we look specifically uh

[7:00] at cases uh trend lines of cases we see that cases are decreasing we're seeing about 66 cases a day um it's down a little bit from last week it's uh still higher than it was a few weeks ago so that is is largely connected to the variants that we're seeing that are more transmissible than the original we see 33 cases uh in the past week in 33 of the cases in longmont 32 in boulder what that means is that our proportion of cases in the city of boulder is actually decreasing significantly and our other municipalities are decreasing as well though not at quite the rapid pace if we do breakdowns by age we can see that we did have some rising trends among all of the age groups in the last week and that what we've been seeing over the past week is a pretty consistent decrease among all

[8:01] ages which is good news still high numbers in the younger populations not terribly surprising as school is back in session and our younger populations only recently began to have access to vaccinations we are seeing decreased cases among the 18 to 22 year olds cu students are accounting for about 59 percent of those cases at this point and if we look at cases by race and ethnicity what we see is that disparities in cases among hispanic latinx residents are much lower than in february the number of cases is declining in all groups but the proportion of cases between hispanic latinx is increasing although it's lower than previously the hispanic latinx population has about 17 of the cases representing about 14 percent of the population

[9:01] um these are challenges that we are working to support that community to be able to get vaccination that chris will talk about more in a few minutes in terms of testing we're averaging about 1760 tests per day that's going down a little bit we do want to encourage people to continue to test as we work to get everyone vaccinated testing is really important right now as we see the variants working through the population our positivity has been stable for a few weeks at about five percent it's a little bit lower than this today this is a slightly delayed um graph but what we really want to see is that percentage positivity to drop back down under three percent um and because it's close to five percent we really that's another reason to really encourage folks to get tested so that we're sure that what we're seeing in the community is our case

[10:00] numbers is an accurate reflection of what's in the community in terms of hospitalizations and deaths our hospitalizations are staying fairly stable in boulder county they are going up in some other counties and we have not had any deaths so far in april we had one in march so that's wonderful news that is a testament to our older population getting vaccinated and again chris will provide some additional information on that what we're seeing is social distancing decreased is decreasing to pre-pandemic levels people are getting very comfortable um they're standing close to each other and this is true not just um in boulder but across colorado and nationally and i wanted to share this projection with you from the university of colorado school of public health which is really a look at

[11:00] the projected additional deaths that would occur if we have significant [Music] masking restrictions lifted and policy changes related to the dial to open up speedily or both or both with a 10 percent addition that would account for growing transmission by the variant and what this projection shows is um how we can control those additional deaths by delaying and slowing our policy changes just by one month so if we can hold on to our mask restrictions and we can step down from the dial more slowly we'll see significantly fewer additional deaths across the state according to these uh modeling projections

[12:00] um just a quick comment on um violations of of the nuisance parties and adherence to emergency orders we did see um higher numbers in february and march we are seeing lower numbers now that's good news for us um in terms of enforcement needs um and so just to to kind of summarize what we're seeing in terms of state trends and responses we're seeing at the state level we're seeing higher numbers of cases higher percent positivity and hospitalizations this is being interpreted as a fourth wave for colorado we are not seeing significantly increasing deaths at this point we are seeing um uh prevalence of the b117 variant significantly and there are five other variants that are in the population right now that have been identified our transmission control is at around 68 which is good news we need to keep that

[13:00] up um we're seeing about one in 207 people as infectious if the vaccinations continue a pace and we delay removal of the mass mandate as we ordered through our public health order last week which continued the mass mandate for indoors in particular and we can um delay significant dial changes for a month a month were projected to prevent a large number of deaths and hospitalizations so the key messages are that the epidemic curve is uncertain at this point we need about an eight week focus on vaccines and transmission control this is a little bit of a race against the variants and even one vaccine is good for people to get it confers about 80 protection which is terrific we do have plenty of infrastructure to deliver the vaccines if we can continue to receive them we will likely continue to see some disparities as we continue to try to catch up and get everyone vaccinated we are looking at

[14:01] an emergency use use authorization that is likely to come through in about three to four weeks for 12 to 15 year olds to receive the vaccine which would be wonderful and we're hoping to see ages 6 to 11 approved maybe over the summer so our strategy is to hold cases down until mid-may when vaccination rates are significantly higher to keep indoor masking and some restrictions in place for a month to significantly reduce death hospitalizations and potential case surges and to reach our priority populations including hispanic latinx lgbtq other populations that may have challenges getting to the vaccine through programs with our ambassadors our community influencers and our community equity clinics which chris will describe a bit more in a bit more detail in a moment um so uh trina would you like to discuss the public health order that we are proposing for um that has been approved to go into effect on friday

[15:02] yes so there are two public health orders that boulder county public health board of health have issued lexi made reference to the mask order already masks are still required in all indoor public places within boulder county and some municipalities may have more protective orders in place masks are not required outdoors though they are recommended still and like i said some municipalities might have more protective measures last night the board of health authorized uh order 2021-4 which is an adoption of the statewide dial as some folks may have heard the state is intending on devolving the dial on april 15th and making it guidance rather than mandatory in order to allow local jurisdictions to more adequately address the transmission in their

[16:00] communities in partnership with our metro area jurisdictions namely jeffco tri-county denver and broomfield we are all adopting very similar versions of this order locally in boulder county on april 16th we will move most likely to level blue and i say most likely because if our cases were to suddenly spike or our positivity were to suddenly set spike i see that there's a question i'll pause real quick we'll get to questions when you're done if it's okay yeah no problem so if our cases were to suddenly spike we would we would end up staying in yellow but uh the data folks tell me that right now it looks very good for moving to blue the level blue that we would move to is very very similar to the level blue that you see in the state dial the most significant thing is that there would be no restrictions on outdoor events

[17:00] this dial move is also meant to encourage folks to move any gatherings when they do have them to the outdoors if there are any events planned for greater than 500 people then the order requires that you submit for um you submit the plans to boulder county public health during this april 16th to may 16th period between april 16th and may 16th uh the the big goal is to get folks vaccinated and we will remain in level blue during that time to allow the vaccinations to catch up on may 16 we will move to what is called level clear which is our new normal of no restrictions and things will become guidance instead level clear will go until august 16th the goal of level clear is a monitoring period and we will remain in clear unless we see a large uptick in hospital

[18:00] admissions of boulder county residents well we hope this doesn't happen that safety net is there one thing i did not mention is that uh while we're in level blue uh personal social gatherings are limited to 10 people indoors there is not a current limit outdoors though we recommend you keep gathering small and i think that covers the highlights of it and i'm happy to answer questions about the order thanks trina um bob yeah thanks i think my questions are for trina trina as i read the order that was issued last night i think it indicated that the in order to stay in this level clear um during the late spring and into the summer we had to maintain as a seven-day average of a 14-day period um hospitalizations at the rate of or below 2 per 100 000 in population did i get

[19:01] that correct that is correct okay and um i have three questions then one is um is it based upon the residency of the um of the of the patient or is it based on the location of the hospital it is based on the residency of the patient it's boulder county residents that's that's good because i think good sam and maybe some other hospitals here in the county take on overflow from other counties and so i just wanted to see if that would be kind of towards those counties rather than ours okay great that's super second i just was trying to um square the math on the chart that was linked to um the order that was issued last night it showed us um at about i don't know 0.5 um cases or hospitalizations for a hundred thousand i think our numbers have been below one for for several months which is great so sounds like that limit of two is is achievable if we keep doing what we're doing but then on slide 18 i saw 24 hospitalizations in boulder and when i bought a county when i do the math there and divide that by

[20:00] 330 000 it seemed to indicate a hospitalization rate of more like six or seven per hundred thousand can you help out that difference sure and lexi can jump in on this one too if i get it wrong um the metric that we're measuring for the public health order is hospital admissions so you only get admitted to the hospital hopefully once on on that one day and the hospitalizations can measure the actual number of people in the hospitals many people stay for multiple days got it thanks for thanks but i knew there was a really great explanation and then finally can uh you started to talk about some of the differences between yellow uh the yellow level we're at now in the blue level my question is a pretty narrow one relates to restaurants are there differences in what restaurants can do either inside or outside between yellow yellow which is where we're at now in blue where we're going starting friday so outdoors should remain the same for restaurants because right now they can uh have essentially unlimited capacity as long as they have enough space and can keep six feet between people

[21:01] once we move into level blue we will go to just six feet between people up to 100 capacity and i phrase it that way because the six feet might limit the actual percent capacity you can have in your restaurants currently it's a 50 capacity up to 100 people 150 people with six feet distancing so it becomes a little simpler and a little less restrictive and blue for restaurants great so it's the for a restaurant inside it's effectively the low the lower of the lesser of of of how many you can put in that six foot distance or a hundred percent right i mean i i don't think you should go beyond 100 because there's there's other factors that play there i should keep six feet distance and you can have whatever the capacity is correct that's all my questions thanks rina super uh mark yeah just one question um what are the contingencies i i assume there are some firm standards with respect to the initiation of

[22:01] the level clear i just i you had mentioned that it was subject to there not being a spike what constitutes a spike and and what standards are we looking at before we go to level clear so the move from blue to clear on may 16th is automatic unless we are seeing those hospital admissions exceed two cases per 100 000 in which case we would move to blue if they exceed i believe three we would move to yellow four we would move to orange etc the normal dial as we know it just simplified and based on hospitalization or hospital admissions i should be very careful with that based on hospital admissions because that reflects the severity of the cases rather than just the number of cases thank you super i don't see any other hand so i think we can move on

[23:01] thanks very much okay thank you uh good evening um mayor weaver city council members and the border county committee i really appreciate the opportunity uh to bring another update to you on our vaccination campaign let me share my screen here again my name is chris campbell uh i'm the emergency manager with porter county public health and have just worked with remarkable teams and community members on our vaccination campaign i'll bring that update to you all this evening okay and just a reminder uh for council members and committee members of where we started and uh we have made incredible progress i'll talk about tonight uh the photo on this slide actually i'd like to remind us of this is uh one of the first vaccination clinics we did back in december um and we're really excited this is uh some staff at hope lake clinic and longmont that have been uh really

[24:00] crucial in helping us work with priority populations in the community and we really have made strides and i want to share that information tonight you've seen the phasing we know that we are now in a place where we're able to vaccinate all eligible community members you know that certainly has been helpful and it's also brought us some points that we needed to continue to address as a community so today we we vaccinated over 145 000 committee members with with one dose of vaccine and and you know that is uh you know it's if you take a step back and look at that is it's pretty wonderful to see it's about 53 percent of the eligible population in boulder county um you know relative to the colorado and national average we're really making good progress and and uh that's a testament to really community members making you know that really good decision informed decision um you know to get vaccinated uh you know we're seeing those numbers as well go up for community members with that full dose and and and having uh

[25:01] having uh you know that good immunity so it's it's uh just a great thing to celebrate uh this uh you know just again talking through some of the areas where we've had success you know older adults in our community you know we've really worked through and been able to vaccinate a good percentage of those community members and we continue to work through that um you know certainly you've seen numbers even start to go up and and younger community members which is great to see so generally um you know at the point we're at today i think it's again something to celebrate as a community [Music] i just wanted to share our goal has been to make sure that we have the general structure to provide about 25 000 vaccines a week and we know we are meeting that so that's that's good to see um you know we certainly the the vaccine supply has gone up and we're seeing a more consistent vaccine supply i'll talk a little bit about the the jansen johnson johnson

[26:00] vaccine and what we some of the information we got today on that vaccine how it's impacting us but the good thing is we know that the structure we work together to build is is meeting that demand and need um so you know certainly we'd like to see even more and we feel confident that the capacity could go up more but we want to make sure we met this marker we're meeting that on a weekly basis uh lexi mentioned this a bit but our we also want to you know be very transparent and clear about when we hope to meet some timelines and you know based on you know certainly again the factors of continuing to see a consistent vaccine supply uh certainly no interruptions of interruptions to supply chain we hope to have about 70 percent of the eligible population vaccinated with at least one dose by mid-may or so and uh you know certainly we'll have some work to do we know we likely won't reach 100 vaccination uh but you know into the summer uh truly is our goal uh to really

[27:02] make sure that we provide access to all community members particularly adults that would like to get vaccinated and as as lexi mentioned we'll also look at then looking at younger adults when that when they become ineligible uh so we also i mentioned this this just highlights how boulder county community members have made that good decision to get vaccinated we're in the highest counties in the state in terms of uptake we consistently are up there with broomfield broomfield county in terms of you know folks uh the percentage of folks uh that are choosing to be vaccinated which is which is a thing to celebrate again uh this is uh this slide's a little dated so it doesn't quite match the percentage we have uh but we just wanted to share this with you all and we also know we have work and i'll talk about some of the strategies we continue to implement and and and hone and and really hear from the community on how we can improve uh so we have some work with our

[28:01] with our bipal community members um to provide access to vaccine and that's going to be our focus for the next eight weeks um we know we have some areas of of low vaccination and uh for example in in in longmont here um we have clinics and i'll talk about that a little bit it's tough to see uh we do know that we have we have clinics there we know that there's some some areas in lamont um you know that we need to continue to work to make sure community members are vaccinated uh the the the lighter portion you see here in boulder is actually uh cu and um the zip code there um just just to let the council know and community members we have worked very closely with cu particularly recently when we saw a bit of an uptick with 18 to 22 year olds to ensure they're getting a consistent vaccine supply they're very committed or having looking at and continue having clinics on campus

[29:00] and vaccinating both both staff and and students so that's that's where that would be again we're using this data in inform our strategies ensuring we're providing equitable access to vaccine you might recall that there's a we have what we're calling our traditional clinics and these are incredible providers the hospitals fairly qualified health centers all the providers you have out there this also includes the state vaccination sites that are available in the region that is that is our traditional clinics and we also have equity clinics and these clinics are really designed for priority populations they're various sizes throughout the county the longer standing community clinics i'll share some information on and additionally some information on the mobile clinics we're doing you know we uh we have made strides in this we're pretty proud of the work we've done um this has really been informed at a grassroots level from from community members um city staff have

[30:02] also worked with us uh very closely on this i'd like to uh really commend them for the work and the the collaboration we've had with them uh pam davis uh has been really instrumental uh elizabeth crowe as well and other uh other staff in the city have really been helpful uh to to inform us and and can you continue to push us to make sure we're meeting the needs of all community members i busy slide here but i'll talk about a couple i just want to remind the council of our strategy so one is education ensuring folks have the information they need to make make that good decision to get vaccinated if they have questions i'll talk about that strategy a little bit we have meeting been meeting regularly with the vaccine equity coordinating committee that really has informed our equity strategies they've they've informed some of the locations like in schools where we've had mobile clinics and they continue to really push us to provide culturally

[31:00] really culturally welcoming clinics and i'll talk a little more about that connection the vaccine that is really where we're focused in the net next eight weeks this is a broad group including uh cultural brokers and our committee ambassadors that are really going to help us get information out to the community information on how to access vaccine where you can go to how to navigate the systems we have it can be challenging as you all know to access vaccine sometimes online and we have worked very closely with community ambassadors and we're bringing in our cultural brokers to continue to help us and really ensure we're coordinated in that work and then making sure the vaccine is available in clinic so both traditional clinics we really push their own cultural relevancy and then our equity clinics which i'll talk about a bit this is uh just recently released from

[32:00] the state health department um this was a survey they've done to ask community members in colorado about um you know if they're willing to get vaccinated uh what's very positive about this this they they did this survey prior to the vaccines being uh approved for emergency use authorization and now in february you'll see um you know across all coloradoans uh with hispanic and latino community members african-american and black community members it's very positive i think those groups have made decisions to that good decision to get vaccinated we also know there's work to be done you know there's you know certainly still some education some information be provided for community members so we continue to do town halls we have held about 20 town halls of boulder county public health dr sheila davis our health equity coordinator works on this contin continues to work on this uh we would ask new members and

[33:00] the council if you know this is uh something you you see as a need please reach out to us and we can work on a town hall uh and work with you again this is to address education and hesitancy and and provide clear information we've also other partners that have done these town halls as well we know the haas boulder community health for example has done town halls we know that cu has as well and they've been really successful and helpful our clinics um we have had some great partnerships and these are now up and running which are excited about and these are clinics that you know again are uh really focused on equity and um we are working with again with committee ambassadors and culture brokers to ensure access uh so in longmont last year street station uh salud salute family health is a federally qualified health center is is working um with a partnership with st lawman along boulder county public health uh this

[34:01] clinic's running two times a week and they're looking expand hours already partnership uh in in lafayettes at boulder county building southeast community hub this is a great partnership with clinica family health which is located nearby this clinic runs two to three times a week and again meeting the needs of priority populations and community members that really have uh barriers so we're also now using the border county fairgrounds these are also clinics run by boulder county public health working very closely with community ambassadors and cultural brokers uh to provide access to vaccines there um and i i will say for for council uh we're also exploring with what city staff additional additional location in the city of boulder for a clinic similar to these and we should be able to provide information soon about that with mobile clinics we we started out with

[35:00] really uh partnering with uh independent living this was early uh a couple months back um so this partnership we really worked closely with boulder housing partners uh city boulder staff um you know we had several of those clinics across the county and accidentally about provide about 950 vaccines for community members so that was very successful we continue to work with hope lake clinic the area agency on aging meals on wheels to to work with homebound individuals so that is uh ongoing and community members at the boulder shelter we started working with with our partners with the shelters we did have a clinic last friday um and more clinics were scheduled unfortunately this was impacted by the pause with the johnson johnson vaccine so we are learning more about that and what that means um and right now we're exploring how we're going to circle back and get these clinics rescheduled

[36:02] um you know but that is a exciting uh approach we're looking to work with all the uh providers for on-house community members and really using that one dose vaccine so we're going to continue to push on that and and we're hoping that we work through some of the issues with that vaccine here soon and be able to start providing it again well additionally we are exploring additional mobile clinics these are smaller clinics and we hope to have uh maybe at some school sites in boulder working with bvsd also working with city staff and others cultural brokers to identify sites that where there's known gap areas identify communities and community members that really really have barriers to access what we are learning is there's gaps in access after hours after work and on the

[37:00] weekends so that is something we're really looking at and hope to really start launch some clinics we had the ability to launch those in the next couple weeks we we know how these work we know how to staff them uh we have we're working on the partnerships and ensure we have vaccine so working with boulder community health and others on this uh boulder border county public health is a provider so we're excited to really dig into this and ensure we're meeting those needs and we we did have a clinic i just want to show kind of what an equity clinic looks like these are smaller these are not in a hospital setting uh this is actually a timberline school in longmont that we did a clinic there it was very successful we vaccinated 200 people over success successive saturdays and these are what these clinics will look like across the community and we're going to continue to do these i talked quite a bit about our masters

[38:00] and cultural brokers our community i'll go ahead influencers move past that i just want to remind the community please uh please go to our websites we have a a really updated website both on the provider side that we have gotten some feedback that it's a little easier to navigate and at very least see a very clear list of providers uh we also uh you know we also have the community vaccination sites the larger backs of state vaccination sites on that i would just urge committee members to continue to make that good decision to get vaccinated if you have questions you can certainly call the state at the state call center i will also say if you are unable or have internet or issues accessing anything online please call our call center that that number's here as well we community members can call our call center and we can help actually schedule appointments there we can answer questions as well at our

[39:01] call center uh and i think i'll end it there so a lot of information is there so i appreciate uh appreciate let me go through that you have to answer any questions great thank you chris and council any questions rachel and then mary rachel thanks uh for all that information i have just one question um with the with the j j vaccine going offline for some period of time i guess i've been a little bit confused by pfizer and moderna being like 80 percent effective after their first shot and johnson and johnson being somewhere a little bit below that so just wondering at least temporarily could we do one shot for people and hope that they come back but if they don't um you know for like harder to reach populations they're still getting one is that an option and also would the expectation be that most of us are going to need a booster shot at some

[40:00] point so that's kind of my two-part question yeah i wish i i wish i had dr bean on the on the call here i think um you know again that's something you know we could explore the the guidance there still is for for the two dose vaccines you do get two doses that's best practice um so we're gonna stick to that guidance um you know but it could be something that we do um if it turns out that johnson johnson the jansen johnson johnson vaccine is unavailable then we will have to shift a little bit um you know i think we do foresee that that coming back online the the that one dose vaccine um i think it had you know i think it's taught that there are some benefits of that vaccine this one dose and um you know against it's been tested against some of the variants um so it's you know what we what we see is they're all incredibly effective vaccines where i guess you know we're going to basically encourage members who've been doing this you know please access any vaccines available to you we know they're safe and effective

[41:01] you know we will continue to look at the information being provided on the the johnson johnson vaccine uh and um you know we'll share that with community members as soon as we have that hopefully that'll be a pretty quick resolution of the issues there okay and and just to clarify i'm not um impugning that vaccine just sure since it like my understanding is um oral contraception oral contraceptives have a higher rate of of the um issue that this vaccine is causing so it's it's perhaps not a a huge risk but still like if we are having this kind of pause on community members who were worrying about coming back for dose two could we schedule them for a two dose hope that they come back for dose two but know that you know if they don't one is better than none so that that's what i'm lifting up for consideration sure that's awesome so just to comment on that very quickly um we receive allocations from the state as

[42:01] first or second doses and the pattern of distribution follows those allocations so it's difficult for us to have influence over shifting second doses to first doses it's possible that that will change in the future um the other thing that i'll mention about the johnson and johnson vaccine is that it's difficult to compare the effectiveness between the vaccines because they were tested under different circumstances so they're not direct comparisons um just a caution about um about that consideration and a reminder that the flu vaccine usually on a yearly basis is has efficacy at a significantly lower level than any of the vaccines that are out there right now great thank you lexi and chris mary thanks sam and thank you lexi and chris um for your marathon work on this i know

[43:01] you've been going for a long time um shorthanded and working really hard so i appreciate that and i appreciate all the work that you've done in the mobile clinics and i had a bunch of questions about the mobile clinics and you answered most of them in your presentation um i do have one lingering question with respect to the person the staffing personnel i'd heard through some community members recently that they feel like the the staffing at these sites is kind of low so i'm just wondering what you might be doing to address that uh can somebody ever say that again kind of kind of low i'm sorry i didn't hear that staffing yeah they're staffing challenges uh yeah the challenges in terms of having enough staff or yes yeah well that's what i that's what they said just staffing challenges not enough staff

[44:00] i guess that's what they're referring to yeah no i think uh you know what's been remarkable we've uh the medical reserve poor in boulder county has been simply remarkable in helping out in a lot of these clinics uh also with community members um you know the equity clinics we um we've had uh volunteers help out and and really help out with uh the welcoming aspect so um you know i think we're doing okay uh in terms of staffing um you know but as we get again as we get spread thinner with more and more clinics that is challenging so um you know i think we we feel okay about that and we're training more and more volunteers from the medical reserve corps uh and working with community ambassadors and some of the cultural brokers um you know to help supplement staffing as well so i think we feel okay about it uh the most important thing is to continue to we've gotten lots of feedback in fact we had a clinic at the fairgrounds where you know we had some challenges in terms of cultural uh being culturally appropriate we had great feedback we made

[45:00] some good uh you know just good improvements and that's what we want we want the community to inform that and that's when we meet with providers even the hospitals and other providers we continue to provide that feedback so i we've built that great system to have that that community level feedback and it's worked really well just a little bit more on this staffing issue we also are getting back up from cdphe um as we also transition to hiring some additional nursing staff so we here we hear you and we're on it thank you very much um i have a question with respect to the town halls first of all are the town halls available in languages other than english they are yes we have we have done tunnels in in spanish and elizabeth mendoza has done those um and you know i know certainly we um we we have translation services we've

[46:02] we've looked at a um you know i think um some we can explore for additional languages as needed as well councilmember young okay thank you um and if if somebody if a community member wanted to organize a town hall who would they contact i think if they could work with sheila davis or um or elizabeth mendoza um that would be a good way um to to contact us it might be best to just go ahead and call through our call center uh and and put that request in um we haven't kind of formalized that process for requests uh we we are what we are trying to work through that but um we you know we have uh maybe the call center or uh you know just trying to get a hold of those two staff members would be really helpful there is actually a space on our new website that's just been launched uh on vaccinations where you can request a town hall through the website

[47:01] thanks lexi it's hard to keep up chris i think it is hard to keep up right now wonderful thank you and then um finally um some some suggestions that came from some community members which was um that soccer practices are ramping up and to address the the issues that you mentioned with after hours and weekends there are some soccer practices that are happening um on wednesdays at columbine park and then at um pleasantview on fridays and um so that it might be a good place to reach folks and um so i'm just passing that along thank you very much and i appreciate the uh presentation on on the mobile clinics with relatively short notice yeah of course thank you great well thanks mary and i want to say thanks again to lexi chris and trina for being here these are always helpful hopefully the

[48:00] need for them will continue to go down um but until then thanks so much for all the work you're doing for these updates community really appreciates it um this will be the end of language interpretation so once we close out this very briefly um there will be no more um interpretation into any language but english so thank you for the folks who are providing that service and with that chris i'm sorry alicia i'll turn it back over to you all right sir thank you um next on our agenda we have the public hearing for the second reading and a motion to adopt ordinance 8447 regarding the regulation of human and electric powered micro mobility devices on streets paths and sidewalks great thanks alicia and for this item i'm going to first turn it over to erica vandenbrand who is the director of transportation and mobility to kick off this item

[49:00] council mayor weaver thank you so very much for having us here this evening um we're here to bring forward for your consideration the micro mobility item and specifically which devices go where and how um they would best be used safely to help with this i'd like to introduce dave kemp who goes by dk who will go through the presentation and answer any questions you may have thank you very much thank you erica and good evening council let's get one set thing set up here real quick okay you should be seeing my screen now [Music]

[50:01] great thank you and good evening mayor and members of city council it's great to be back with you all for the next and final step to develop the policy for the regulation of micro mobility devices on our streets paths and sidewalks we've made considerable progress since the october city council study session when we initially saw your direction regarding this topic and we were happy to share this progress with you this evening joining me tonight are my colleagues in the transportation mobility division city attorney's office and the boulder police department to get us started i'd like to first provide a brief overview of our presentation this evening we'll share the purpose behind the micro mobility traffic ordinance and the proposed changes to the boulder revise code we'll explore in greater detail the four main topic areas including the proposed new and revised vehicle definitions where micro mobility devices would be allowed to operate in the public right of way a few of the safety precautions we are recommending and then lastly we'll discuss the process we conducted

[51:01] to refine the sidewalk dismount synonyms and then to wrap up the presentation we'll share next steps before we transition to clarifying questions from council and the public hearing so i'm sure we could all attest that we are seeing quite the diversity of micro mobility devices operating on our streets and pathways in boulder today from scooters to one wheels to electric cycles to electric skateboards they're all out there and so recognition of these new devices and the choices people are making to transport themselves around boulder staff is proposing changes to the boulder revised code to essentially provide clarity among the different types of vehicles to regulate where these vehicles can operate and ensure that the regulations meet their safe operation and it's important to note that these regulations will affect both the private and the private use and also the shared micro mobility devices in our program

[52:04] and so when we first began developing the definitions for the human and electric power devices it became quite clear that new or updated definitions were also needed for other types of vehicles related to micro mobility to discern the differences in the vehicle dimensions and power and the micro mobility traffic ordinance proposes new and revised definitions to accurately describe this diverse array of vehicles operating on our roadways and paths the proposed definitions also reconcile recent changes to the state statutes while also ensuring the boulder police department can effectively enforce traffic ordinances pertaining to all types of traffic excuse me of all types of micro mobility related vehicles it's important to note also that the brc the boulder revised code already has existing definitions for bikes and e-bikes and therefore these vehicles are not included or described in the definitions for human powered vehicle or lightweight

[53:01] electric power vehicles intuitively it may seem logical to also include e-bikes and bikes in these categories but they are substantively different and should be defined separately and so now let's take a close look at each of these devices and share where these devices would be allowed to operate did include bicycles electric bicycles so you can see where they fit in the scheme of things they are allowed on sidewalks currently multi-use paths and in on streets and in bike lanes human-powered vehicles such as skateboards and roller blades are allowed on skateboards and excuse me they're allowed on sidewalks and they're allowed on multi-use paths the the change in the ordinance would allow them to be used on residential streets and only in the bike lane on all other streets and then lightweight electric vehicles like e-scooters or e-skateboards or one wheels and e-unicycles

[54:01] the orders would not allow them to be used on the sidewalk unless there was no bike lane present in the adjacent street it would allow their use on multi-use paths and also on residential streets and in the bike lane on all of all other streets similar to human-powered vehicles then we look at low powered scooter we see a lot of these in boulder excuse me and the ordinance currently does not allow them on sidewalks nor multi-use paths and they are allowed in the street but they're not allowed in the bike lane and then neighborhood electric vehicles as we commonly refer to them which are now low-speed electric vehicles they're not allowed on sidewalks multi-use paths and may only be ridden in the street and not allowed in the bike lane and the same regulations go for mopeds and then finally the last category is our tour vehicles

[55:01] toy vehicles are like they're otherwise known as pocket bikes very small low prio low profile vehicles that can go pretty high speeds and and these are not allowed on sidewalks multi-use paths or streets and bike lanes it's not to be confused with a toy vehicle such as um barbie jeep or um something that to me that effect that a younger child would use and so again let's talk about what's changed what does this micro mobility traffic coordinates really address and so what it would do it would make it legal to ride skateboards or rollerblades on residential streets and only in the bike lane on all other streets before lightweight electric vehicles such as scooters and skateboards they weren't allowed anywhere in the public right-of-way and so we would like to refrain them from being used in the sidewalk unless there was no bike lane present in the adjacent street

[56:01] we do want to allow them on multi-use paths and we also want to allow them on residential streets and again only in the bike lane on all other streets and with these proposed changes we must also recognize the existing safety concerns regarding the operation of human and electric power devices on residential streets and in the bike lane on all other streets and to address these concerns transportation and mobility division staff have been working closely with the boulder police department to develop additional safety requirements in the boulder revised code regarding the safe use of these devices the next couple of slides will describe these proposed requirements and while these requirements will certainly help we must also recognize we have to strive to construct facilities for vulnerable users facilities that are separated and protected from vehicular traffic safety education outreach also plays a vital role in mitigating crashes

[57:00] involving vulnerable users and we need to continue and increase these efforts these educational efforts under the umbrella of vision zero quick shot off to bob for his idea to create this yield diagram here [Music] pedestrians are number one and all vehicles human electric powered and motor vehicles must yield to them further people using electric vehicles must yield to users of human powered vehicles and finally motor vehicles must yield to all others when entering or exiting any place other than a stop control or signalized intersection in those instances traffic control devices regulate the movement of all road users it's also important to note that people riding human and electric powered vehicles must be equipped with lights at night if not on the vehicle itself then on the

[58:02] operator the second part of the slide involves bike lane positioning and requires human electric power vehicles to stay within the bike lane and to perform a two-stage left turn at intersections for example for example a person riding an e-scooter would cross the street position themselves in the adjacent bike lane and then continue in their intended direction once they have the green light and so dk you may ask how will we communicate these regulations to community members well this is an immediate first step if council passes this ordinance uh this evening in order to build a foundation for our community communication strategy we began sorry we begin with addressing the feedback we heard through the be heard boulder outreach that we conducted late last year creating awareness about where devices can be used and safe behaviors making all regulations as clear as possible and streamlined so they're easy

[59:00] to understand by the resident and three safety behaviors that we really want to stress is to yield to pets to go slow and announce yourself passing on the left in our communications plan we've developed specific goals number one to translate their regulations into clear and easily understandable terms in both spanish and english number two to educate community members on the safe use of micromobility devices in shared spaces and it's important to note that city staff has been working very closely with several departments at cu boulder regarding the proposed regulations and our communication strategy the departments at cu include transportation and parking the environmental center at cu and the and the cu police department we are striving for a seamless transition for users of micro mobility devices between cu campus and the city in terms of regulations and our communication tactics

[60:02] okay now let's shift to our fourth topic dismount zones you've seen these images before the left image illustrates the current dismount zone which are scattered throughout boulder and have been designated based on land use zoning it's currently hard for community members to discern where they can ride bikes on sidewalks and where they can't at october study session staff presented the map on the right which proposed decoupling the dismount zone from the land use zoning and to focus dismount zones only on the general improvement districts or areas that are currently experiencing a high level of pedestrian activity council then asked based upon the input from transportation advisory board and community stakeholders they asked us you asked us to take one step further and to more closely examine these zones and so we did and we performed a sidewalk analysis for the three general improvement districts downtown the cajun university hill

[61:00] eugene and boulder junction bjet we investigated the sidewalk widths pedestrian volumes land use and encroach existing encroachments such as patio dining and other amenities and we developed a draft dismount zone map only for downtown boulder and university hill and why not be chad boulder junction because most of the facilities when this area was designed was designed for micro mobility users such as the pearl street and also both junction place with its shared shared street and so we took these maps these draft maps to several community groups and in including commission boards and commissions and we received some feedback from them which we'll share in a second but downtown boulder partnership had a lot of great information to share in

[62:00] conjunction with the downtown management commission of course the university hill commission area management commission and then we talked to the access district at boulder junction and in community cycles and here is the the first map we want to share with you this is the university hill bike dismount zone now let me explain what some of these lines here are um the yellow is the proposed dismount zone this is what the ordinance would change and where the dismount zones would be the the light blue aqua colored line is the existing dismount zone based upon the land use which we currently have in place and then red simply shows the border for the university hill commercial area and what did we hear from the university hill commission they're very much interested including the sidewalks on broadway from university college they are looking to make um the hill much more friendly for pedestrians and

[63:00] they felt very strongly about keeping the dismount zone in place and to not mix bikes and peds and for peds to feel comfortable when they're walking through the university hill area they also want us to include the alley a of the hill commercial area enhancement plan let's take a look at the dismount zone for downtown boulder undergoing quite a change since we last talked and so the input from the downtown management commission and downtown boulder partnership they support the draft dismount zone map for the kg area and before we hadn't identified the area on pearl street between 7th and 9th and they asked us to include that and we did that made a lot of sense we also got input from community cycles about this about the dismount zone they were very interested in the dismounts owner for downtown they asked us to include the

[64:01] to exclude broadway from the dismount zone and also requested a time of day restriction we didn't move forward with those requests from community cycles mostly because broadway between spruce and canyon is a high pedestrian volume area and includes two usually active transit stops which produce a significant number of passengers alighting or waiting the board there's also usually a significant number of pedestrians waiting to cross broadway at pearl street mall in both directions and so there would must be a lot of conflict between bikes and pens at these locations and then we took in close consideration of the time of day restriction or even an exemption of the dismount zone for people riding with children or children riding by themselves but this would complicate the public understanding and associated compliance with creating potentially safe and still would create potential safety conflicts with people walking or using wheelchairs on the sidewalks staff as i mentioned before really recommend keeping the dismount zones

[65:00] simple and streamlined so that people can understand okay so our next step so here we are tonight um april 13th and the second reading with the public hearing um if council passes this ordinance this evening then it'll go into effect and in may and then we'll begin to implement the communications plan um dismount zones which wheels go where and in the way of the path um installing signing and marking on a multi-use path we can come back to this slide here but our suggested motion language for tonight and i'll end the presentation and thank you for your time and looking forward to our discussion thank you dk and now we will turn to council for questions i see bob uh thanks d.k that was a great presentation really appreciate it very much uh i we mark uh walk and i are both the representatives for liaisons to the business improvement district and we

[66:00] presented the discount zone to them a couple of days ago at a board meeting one of the questions that one of the board members asked is um specifically signage about dismount zones downtown you talked a little bit about signage and communications plans specifically could you let us know what dismount zone signing in addition to what we already have there might be downtown we continue to have a lot of problems downtown and the board felt that additional communications and education would be helpful yes most definitely we'll ramp up the um the outreach the education but in terms of signing we'll continue to use the thermoplastic markings that are on the sidewalk today we'll wrap up the number of locations where we have those and reference those that design that's on the pavement today in conjunction with our safety messaging and our outreach regarding the dismount sounds great thanks dk and then just a suggestion i know that we'll be talking about a potential ambassador program for downtown in the civic area in a a few weeks one of the things that you might

[67:00] your team might do is is as those ambassadors are trained and deployed if that's what council wishes to do uh we might enlist their assistance in um reminding folks about dismounts downtown absolutely bob it's a great idea and we've actually been in talks with community vitality about including this topic um uh for our downtown ambassador so they can help and enforce where people can ride and um and where they can't great thanks tk that's all i had thank you sir thanks bob mark dk thank you for the presentation it was excellent i have a couple of questions um the first is uh reflective i think of my confusion why vehicles they're not designed for use on streets or off road or sidewalks where are they to be used yes mark i'm sorry i was having a little technical difficulty here could you please repeat your question sure i was

[68:00] looking at at the restrictions on toy vehicles um which are apparently not designed for use on streets off-road or sidewalks where does one use a toy vehicle they could use one on private property okay fair enough um my second question um do we have any cost estimates for the signage required for dismount zones you know new signage required we we costed that out we actually have yes we're looking between twenty thousand and thirty thousand dollars uh to install additional thermo plastic markings in both the downtown and also the university hill okay and my last question is with respect to bikes and e-bikes am i reading this wrong they are permitted on sidewalks correct they are are they unless it's unless it's a dismount zone then you can't be in the sidewalk but are they permitted on

[69:01] sidewalks even when there's a bike lane yes they are why did we do that well the current regulations um or the ordinance allows people to ride bikes on the sidewalk if they don't feel comfortable um riding in [Music] in the street and so sometimes riding in a bike lane adjacent to traffic can present um traffic stress issues and so that we have that option in our residential areas right now and we've kept the dismount zones as is so that they could not ride their bikes on areas that have a higher pedestrian volume okay i mean it seems to me we spend a lot of money on our bike lanes and we're looking to spend more it just strikes me a little odd that we're having bikes and bikes right on the sidewalk when there's a bike lane available well there's some situations um that necessitate that um and so uh conventional bike lane if you are out

[70:01] with a child for example a you know three or four or five year old and um or you're you have a trailer behind you and you may not always feel um safe um in necessarily a conventional bike lane without protection and so the sidewalk does allow that option for those people who would prefer to ride in the separated condition okay i got it you've convinced me thank you thank you sir okay and you mark then we've got mary thank you all for the fine presentation and for waiting until mid-april for this um i um was curious to understand um what constitutes a residential street and how is um saying that you can ride on residential streets decoupled from the land use

[71:02] right so we've um there's an arterial cloud or there's a roadway classification we have arterial roadways collectors and residential residents are also known as local streets they're basically our neighborhood streets and all those streets where we have the current speed limit of 20 miles per hour um we don't typically put um traffic facilities on our residential or local streets and so it's basically parking and then a swath of street and so the difference here is those streets are much calmer in traffic compared to a collector street which may have bike lanes already most of our collectors do have bike lanes and then an arterial um which a majority of our a majority of our um arterials also have bike lanes and so collect as i just say and then in terms of land use typically businesses are located along collectors it's a mix of businesses and residential are along

[72:00] collectors and mainly for arterials it's commonly businesses so for just a lay person out for a ride and they are in on um like say um east pearl where there's some residences and some businesses and it's kind of a mix so how do they know that that is or isn't residential you know the best we would be able to do is to help communicate where they can ride through the outreach that we do for the private use and then when we bring on a new shared micro mobility program or refine our existing shared micro mobility program this information can also be conveyed to the consumer to the customer through a mobile application okay and um was there any consideration given to um defining where you can ride

[73:00] based on speed limit you mentioned the 20 miles per hour yes and that's why we feel it's okay to ride on residential streets because there's lower vehicle speeds on our residential streets um so they can ride in the street and there's no facility and then where they can ride on collectors and arterials is only in the bike lane there's no bike lane then we don't want them riding micro mobility devices let's say for example on broadway or foothills that's another example what we want them to use in that case if there's no facility then the sidewalk or the multi the adjacent multi-use path so like say on folsom just south of where the the changes were put in um where there's a bike lane and then there's all the lanes of traffic so you could unfold some going north or south ride micro mobility along those bike lanes you may be in the bike lane

[74:02] and so that seems to me like a place um where there's a huge speed differential and that was a concern a safety concern of the police department so i'm just wondering um when you're thinking about where micromobility devices can or can't be ridden what role does the speed differential play or did play in those decisions right well with the bike lane there's a designated space for the person to ride the device versus other streets that don't have a designated space they in effect would have to share the lane with a motor vehicle um so we felt like with collectors and most collectors that we have are between 25 and 30 miles per hour and so we felt that that was an okay space for them to use the bike lane on those particular corridors if if pd would like to

[75:01] to address this question too and to reiterate their concerns i do believe we have representation from ptpd tonight both commander jack walker and then deputy chief carrie weinheimer thanks dk and thanks council and first of all i want to state that we're very happy with the job transportation the city attorney's office did developing this ordinance and they were very receptive to all of our recommendations simply put our concern is that if you add these vulnerable users to the roadway we're going to have accidents i'm going to have injuries and possibly serious so despite all the great work that's been done we still have concerns in those areas thank you for that information thanks commander um that's all i have okay thank you mary adam

[76:02] hey sam sorry i don't have my function available i have a question in a similar vein do we have sort of statistics about injuries between these different modal types and pedestrians or between bikes and bikes i guess all the you know do we have sort of a dashboard of what we're looking to improve upon dk yeah you know it's uh and so when we talk about the different users um bicycle and pedestrian conflicts between bikes and pedestrians we do have some incidents that have occurred on our multi-use path system today and then of course we have far greater more interactions between vehicles motor vehicles and bicycles we don't have a lot of data suggesting at this point probably because of the low use still with some of these other vehicles of crashes involving

[77:01] these lightweight electric vehicles or other human power vehicles though i know that pd has responded to crashes with vehicles and and skateboarders for example in in the past and so you know the way the path program when we look at safety and addressing how these different users [Music] share the path we've developed some some primary messaging that we would continue to reiterate but then also go into the field and install signing in markings with something we've been wanting to do for a while and has been somewhat um we've had budget constraints in order to move forward with this but this is something that would help in the field help users understand how to interact with each other and practice courtesy and etiquette and and where to be positioned in the multi-use path and whatnot so is our primary source of those reports just through the police department currently yeah so um there's two ways in which we

[78:01] um gain understanding of what's happening on the field one is through close call reports that we get through our inquiry boulder system and then all the crashes that are reported and so someone has called the police we get our crash reports directly from the from pd and have a record of all those crashes and currently our safe streets report documents um all the types of crashes that are occurring where they're occurring and who they're occurring to gotcha okay um is there going to be any messaging along those lines just to make sure you're reporting where you have incidents as part of this package oh yes documenting um understanding where crashes are taking place and then addressing you know understanding how they're taking place and addressing how we might mitigate those crashes is something that we do every day when we get these crashes we we evaluate what you know what what has happened then is there anything that we can do to mitigate is it a one-off is there a

[79:00] trend and so we work within the transportation division specifically our transportation operations staff works on this on the daily basis of how we can you know document the crashes and then also mitigate them it's number one for us great thanks dk thanks adam and i have a few questions as well first of all thank you for the presentation and thank you for taking on the issue of where to ride what um which wheels go where is great um so i think my first couple questions will involve maybe both udk and the um police department so one is on slide 10 you had showed a left turn protocol and that left turn protocol looked to me like it was all vehicles except for cars have to make a two-part left turn um and i was curious what the thinking was there because i don't know that that's been a rule in

[80:01] the past and so a is that the current rule that yeah that's it thank you that's the slide i was talking about so it looks to me like vehicular turn can just make a straight left at a permissive green however you want to call it but that non-vehicle assuming it's a human-powered device has to make that two-part turn what's the justification how's that enforced what's the thinking around that right so this is actually a pretty common maneuver um that we that we see in in europe a lot a lot of folks do this um just to this two-stage turn and it's also something that nacto our national association for city transportation officials urban bikeway design guide or urban street design guide recommends for those users who are uncomfortable entering into a traffic lane and so what they can do is then stop at

[81:01] the light and then proceed across position themselves and then continue left on their journey um and so this is a new something that this is something new that we are requiring for people who are riding lightweight electric vehicles and human power vehicles this does not apply to bicycles bicyclists may still take the lane if you will but being the low profile nature of scooters and people on skateboards and mixing with traffic at different speeds um we felt it was best safer to keep them in the bike lane at all times and not enter into the travel lane when they're on these collectors or arterial roadways got it and i guess my concern here is similar to the concern that kind of brought this whole thing up of not knowing what you can do where it seems interesting that the left turns for bikes and e-bikes would be different by law

[82:00] than what say uh uh powered skateboard can do so i guess maybe i'll turn to to commander walker and hear how how do you plan to enforce this and um it seems like a very fine distinction how are you looking at this if it's a new law so mayor i agree that um it's going to be tough to enforce and we've been up front about that from the beginning i think it would come through complaints uh community complaints about certain intersections that that that would be how we would focus our enforcement but as you know we just don't have the staffing to go out and randomly look for this but i do agree with dk that a skateboard human-powered skateboard trying to make a left turn when you have two left turn lanes two through lanes and then a bike lane for them to come from the bike lane and clear that intersection in time before they lose the protected left turn would could cause a lot of accidents so

[83:01] i think it's a good idea got it and i guess i guess my concern i should have phrased it better isn't really about enforcement it's about what happens when there's an accident there so you know one of the concerns had been as far as bikes on sidewalks a couple bikers got hit you know in crosswalks off the sidewalks and and they were cited for that infraction so similarly here if electric powered skateboard tried to make a left turn like a bike would be allowed to and they got hit would they be at fault uh if the vehicle had the right-of-way and and they had lost their right-of-way they probably would be at fault and decided under this one bits okay and then that that's a key point if they had the right-of-way as if they were a bicycle right so their electric skateboard but if they made a turn that was compliant in every way and they were hit by somebody say going in the opposite

[84:00] direction would they be at fault or would would the the vehicle that hit them be at fault some of those to be honest with you mayor if both parties they they're very difficult if both parties have some right away but if if the skateboard clearly made the correct turn according to the ordinance and had the right of way and we could identify a violation for the motor vehicle we would cite the motor vehicle okay perfect thank you um tom did you want to weigh in i see you well i i just that's right so you you've hit the nail on the head it's it's the if someone's violating the law they're generally the reliable party in any dispute between in after a crash so if someone were turning inappropriately and were hit by a car and the car was driving legally the person turning would uh be sighted and probably not be able to recover got it okay that helps me with that thanks very much for that um the next one also has a little intersection with

[85:02] law so um low speed evs so like a golf cart like electric golf cart um they're pretty much allowed most places bicycles are but my question but in some cases they have to be in the street like residential streets or local streets they would they would be in the street what what is the case if they're not street legal like they have no running lights for instance and they have no tags um are are they is there a conflict there with the fact that they're not allowed to operate like a motor vehicle but they're on a roadway i was just curious about what is the deal with a quote not street legal vehicle operating like a car thanks don so i'll answer the usually if it's if something that doesn't go to the contributing cause of the accident there they would not they would not be allowed they could be sighted but they probably

[86:00] wouldn't be liable so if you if you don't have a tag and you get an accident you're narrowing out liable if it's a contributing cause for example you're driving without lights in a in a vehicle that's required to have lights and you get hit you probably are not going to be able to recover okay got it um commander walker did you want to add anything yeah i don't recall after these many months of looking at this ordinance that there's any requirement for the low powered electric vehicle to be street legal the state does have those requirements but we always rely on the municipal code when those two are in conflict so okay that's great to know you rely on the municipal code if there's a difference and is because we're a home rule city are we allowed to have slightly different rules about what's legal in the streets it depends on the street i think janet did you want to add something you turned over your mind right thank you tom janet michaels with the

[87:00] city attorney's office um the first point i wanted to make is that this micro mobility ordinance does not apply to golf carts we have the authority from the state to regulate golf carts but it was not a part of this package if golf carts aren't street legal then they can't be operated on the streets they're not lawful there are other kinds of electric vehicles the low speed electric vehicles that used to be called neighborhood electric vehicles those can be operated on roadways but not golf carts right now so that was um yeah that was one of the points that i wanted to make and i lost track of what your other question was i apologize i i think that's covered everything that's super helpful um you know i said golf carts because some of the pictures look like golf carts but there may be minor differences there so i just had two more um small questions um i guess i'll just ask one so looking at the dismount zones everything makes

[88:01] perfect sense the only question i had was was any thought given to walnut in the downtown area so walnut's a one-way street and as kurt nordbach and others have made points in the past to a biker that's like a dead end right you hit that and then you're either circling the entire mall or you're having to go you can't go off the canyon right so it's like a big impediment is walnut if you're on a bicycle you're trying to go west and you hit walnut at whatever 15th so i was just curious on on that particular um street if there's any plan going forward to make that easier or is that just uh you have to learn it and know it kind of thing sorry i'm just getting to the dismount zone slide here very much aware of the the one-way issue for people who are coming down um east pearl heading west and um or walnut and they come to um

[89:03] a point where they have to um do the sort of the loop around in order to go further west and and so at this point in talking with the dmc and also the um the downtown business partnership they felt it was still very important to maintain the dismount zone in these particular areas because of the high volume of pedestrians it is something sam that we do need to to look at in terms of access in our downtown and but it should be done on a more holistic scale versus that one particular issue and this is something we've been talking with community vitality um about and it's not just in the downtown it's also beejad boulder junction then also the university hill that we look at holistically access you know to and from the downtown for for all um for all modes okay super well that's it for my questions um i don't see any other

[90:01] council questions so i think we're ready for the public hearing and with that we have two people who are signed up for the public hearing lynn siegel and andrea manigel so ryan i'll look to you whenever you're ready don't you bring lynn in all right so begin our click hearing here then you should be i'm still waiting for videos um if you had my video on now you would see my 30 negative uh sleeping bag and my wool hat which i wear 24 7 because it's cold six months of the year here and i am holding until we mean a supplies in 2024 to get distributive solar so that i can justify getting

[91:00] mini splits so that i can be warm so it's stressful sometimes for your community members when they're 68 years old to have to wait four more years to be able to get warm again just to let you know um i really appreciated uh um sam's comment on the left turn lane i wondered about that too and now i know that it's like critical mass i can hit the street sweet because i'll get into that left lane in the center and i'm ahead of the car um i found also a lot in times in boulder pedestrians run into me when i am stopped with my bike and they're apologizing to me so you know it goes two ways can you hear me okay yep we hear you okay um let's see um i wonder how many people are this meeting i have no idea you know you can turn my video off but i can't turn your video off if i don't want to see you i can't turn it off and i can't

[92:02] know who's at this meeting that is a problem big problem um now as far as i i approve the micro mobility plan um the um the problem is here you're you're watching out for the health of boulder people with a recreational bend to be on light mobile devices and on bicycles but bolder people are going to rocky flats and boulder people are breathing the air at rocky flats and my mother died of leukemia i believe because she was exposed in 1957 when we lived in denver to the biggest fire at rocky flats and ingested plutonium and got leukemia so this has a very personal issue for me if you're concerned about health between pedestrians

[93:01] and and mobile devices in boulder you ought to be concerned about rocky flats and this week the county commissioners approved funding for an underpass that the city council will use as precedent for them to approve further funding for this underpass to help to help people out like loachamen marta said to help you know facilitate the underpass but thank you lynn thank you lynn lynn your time is up thank you next we have andrea manigault andrea go ahead and mute and you'll be able to speak all right thank you can everybody hear me yes yes all right thank you uh mayor weaver members boulder city council this is andrea menegal representing boulder chamber at 2440 pearl street

[94:00] and um i'd like to thank the staff and all the hard work that went into this and thank the council for all your questions around this improving boulder's workforce mobility and expanding transportation choices is a key priority of ours at the boulder chambers over the years we've engaged in collaborative efforts with cu boulder the city the county federal researchers at nrel industry experts and other partners across the region to explore solutions um as the covet 19 restrictions are going to be lifted and our workforce returns to the office we need to meet the mobility challenges head on through policies and innovative solutions that will allow for a variety of ways that individuals can make their trips this is especially important for employment centers in east boulder and gun barrel that currently experience lack of mobility services and connectivity from regional stops we also see our regional transit

[95:00] agencies struggle currently making it imperative that we do what we can locally to allow for greater access to a variety of transportation choices we believe the city's transportation staff and transportation advisory board have made a good recommendation for this ordinance and provide us with the opportunity to achieve the micro mobility goals outlined in boulder's transportation master plan if new forms of micro mobility are managed appropriately and utilized safely not only can they be a valuable tool for addressing boulder's first and final model challenges but they can provide a new fun and environmentally friendly way to connect the community in fact just um in the first five weeks that our community partner and boulder chamber member boulder b cycle introduced 100 e-bikes into their system we saw more than 10 000 trips taken that's 285 trips a day this gets us closer to the tmp goals of helping to reduce auto trips expanding access of environmentally friendly modes

[96:02] to more members of the community and the more we expand that access to travel options for our residents workers and visitors the more we begin to improve the mobility landscape in boulder we want the implementation of new micro mobility solutions to be successful and that means they're safe accessible to our workers and we'll do our part as a partner to help communicate and connect with our employers and businesses to promote these options our goal is to fully explore new opportunities improve mobility for boulder's workforce and residents and as always we'll continue to be a dedicated partner for advancing transportation solutions that address our workers needs as we move towards that bright future that we all encourage you to pass this ordinance tonight and thank you thank you andrea with that seeing no other um people signed up we'll bring public hearing to a close and come back to council so with that counsel any further questions

[97:00] comments or motion wow i see no hands up so i'll make a few comments thank you to staff for pulling this together i know there was a lot to it and it took you know a lot of cross um departmental work to get it done so thank you this has been a concern of mine um particularly with a couple of cyclists who were cited for um being on a sidewalk when they entered a crosswalk and were hit by a motor vehicle so i appreciate it for that standpoint i also think it gives a lot more clarity to a lot of the emerging types of electric powered micro mobility um vehicles so i think this is great it brings our code up to kind of current thinking on ways to get around without uh automobile so that's fantastic i just will make a couple quick comments as well i think the e-bikes being added to b-cycle is enormously impactful i i predict that we will see kind of a

[98:01] resurgence of interest in using that service so i think that's great and i think the dismount zones now make so much more sense even than the way they were designed before both on the hill and downtown i think they're clearly laid out in a way that's intended to avoid conflict without uh restricting mobility in places outside of those core areas so i think this is fantastic i give great thanks to everybody who brought this to us and and worked out all the details of which there are many and with that i see mary and aaron mary yeah thank you sam i just wanted to second everything that sam just said um and to that i wanted to add um if there's the possibility of in the communications plan to convey to folks um especially on the skateboards and e-scooters that to convey perhaps a hierarchy of streets

[99:00] so the residential streets to say where there's two you know the best place to to use these vehicles is in areas where the speed limit is 20 miles per hour so that's like number one and then number two um where it's 25 and we don't really recommend going where it's 30 and above so um if there's something that you can do to convey that and perhaps that can encourage people to take alternative routes um and keep themselves out of danger so that's one thing and then i thought the point that sam brought up with regards to walnut is worth considering i know that um when you exactly as sam said when you hit walnut and you're heading west you you either get on the sidewalk or you go around and um and usually people get on the sidewalk so um so if there's any way that

[100:03] um we might be able to handle that particular route sooner than later and i really like the idea of addressing it holistically however that is kind of a a choke point in terms of heading west so um other than that thank you very much and um onwards with communication thank you mary aaron we'll just echo what my colleagues have said and just say i really appreciate your extraordinary work here in the transportation department and the other staff members across the organization that were involved i mean we had a kind of a thorny problem of like well how do we move our transportation policies on micro mobility devices into the next century and we said step can you figure this out and you just did so i really appreciate that um fantastic work uh very much and it's it's great to get our dismount zones um

[101:00] to a point where they make sense now so that's a great step forward to appreciate you taking bjd out of that list i didn't think that made the huge amount of sense i think what we've got now is is just the perfect balance um i will agree that walnut is a tough nut to crack but you know we'll come back to that another day um and then i'm happy to make a motion since nobody else has yet so um i'll move that we adopt ordinance 8447 the regulation of human electric powered micro mobility devices on streets pads and sidewalks second that all right very good um we have a motion and a second any discussion right seeing none and predicting where i think this will go if you do not want to pass this raise your hand see none yes i'm sorry alicia stole your thunder go for it i'm sorry i just want to make sure you're legal when you do it yeah i appreciate it

[102:00] all right so we'll start with uh councilmember wallach uh hi weaver yes yates yes young yes brockett i friend yes joseph yes and sweat lake hi 8447 has been adopted anonymously unanimously thank you sir thank you for the reminder alicia and on to you for the next item thank you kylie all right so next we have item 5a which is the east boulder sub community plan progress and next steps and for this item i'm going to first introduce jacob lindsay our director of planning and development services who will introduce the team well good evening uh mayor weaver and members of council i'm so pleased to be

[103:01] here to with you tonight um to present this in progress update on the east boulder sub-community plan this of course is a major effort that began in 2019 and tonight you'll hear an update on the current progress and this will be presented by kathleen king who is a senior planner with planning and development services and with that uh kathleen i will turn it over to you great thanks so much um good to see everyone tonight uh great to be with you i'm excited to talk about east boulder um we have a presentation to share with council and then we're hoping to get your feedback on some key questions so um i'm not sure who is changing slides but you can go to the next one so uh the last time we were together in the fall we took a look at some of those concepts for changing land uses in east boulder um we shared those concepts and

[104:00] collected a lot of community feedback that we're going to go through tonight i'll talk about how that feedback is starting to shape a draft concept for land use and um we've also been meeting with other city boards and collecting their input as well so we'll look at some of that before getting into the questions uh next please so here's the um key questions to consider as we walk through the presentation in the current draft of the land use concept does council feel that we're striking the right balance between achieving our citywide goals and meeting community desires and then you know if not what should really be modified or how can we improve upon this draft and then as the the project progresses forward what are the essential topics that council wants to address in order for the plan to be supported so we will jump in next please

[105:00] as a quick reminder the purpose of sub-community planning is to really take the big city-wide goals of the boulder valley comprehensive plan and consider where and how they can be implemented in a sub-community at the local level next the final sub-community plan will include a few key deliverables so um first is a land use plan which updates the city's land use map and guides decision making about land management capital improvements and development review and then the second is a connections plan and this updates the transportation master plan and similarly guides decisions about management and investment in our transportation network next please so another major deliverable of this process is the plan's implementation matrix which is a tool that

[106:00] includes key recommendations for implementing the vision and describes who's responsible for those recommendations this tool will help to inform work plans across various city departments in the years to come as we help implement key pieces of the overall project next please so i think i think by now probably everyone is familiar with some of the basics on the sub community but just as a reminder our area of study is generally north of arapahoe avenue and east of foothills parkway the sub community includes some major landmarks like boulder community health the foothills campus the boulder municipal airport belmont city park and flatiron business park the sub community is about 1 600 acres it includes around 700 parcels and there's within the boundaries there's just a small residential community at san lazaro mobile home park

[107:00] and the sub community is a key employment area in the city so um we're supporting about 17 000 jobs out there next please so we've talked in the past about the big challenge of this project you know it's it's really trying to find balance between all of our our citywide goals and prioritizing how east boulder can make the best contribution to achieving these goals so this conversation around trade-offs was the basis of our recent engagement window next as part of that conversation a main goal of this process is to consider whether the currently planned uses included in the bbcp will provide the types of opportunity and changes that the community wants to see take place in this area over the next 20 years or you know whether we should make some changes to this plan to better align with those community desires

[108:01] so this is the land use plan that we're considering updating this currently envisions that over half the area will be industrial land uses um there's a significant amount of designated open space in parks land and then some land that's categorized as public like the the airport in the hospital and then um we also have just a few uh community business parcels around um 55th and arapahoe so what we've seen happening under this plan over about the last 10 years is that the area has been transitioning from an industrial area to more flex and office space so with the exception of the hospital and newer medical uses near that campus this change has taken place primarily through property renovations and improvements rather than redevelopment we've also found that some of the more traditional industrial tenants in the area have migrated to newer buildings in

[109:00] other locations or other cities um and that you know the office and flex tenants like um research or tech companies have moved in and repurposed some of those industrial spaces so you know i think it's also noteworthy that there's there's a perception that this area offers affordable employment space within the city and um that's true in some specific sites in general office rents here are lower than than the city-wide average um but for some of the industrial flex base our economic consultant has found that the rents are actually a little higher than other places in the city like gun barrel despite the fact that much of the building stock in east boulder is pretty dated so you know i think some of these trends are part of the reason that council selected east boulder for sub-community planning in 2019 there's an understanding that change is happening in this area and we want to find ways to

[110:00] manage that change that will benefit our citywide goals in the community next please so we um last met with council this past fall to look at some potential changes and talk about modeling projections and scenario testing we modeled three alternative future land use scenarios and a no change scenario to provide some metrics for community members to consider we put all that information out there and ask the community to weigh in next please and because we're still operating solely online our engagement methods took a different form this winter than i think um what we're you know all used to doing but i'll say i think the program that we provided although it was new to the community and knew his staff was was pretty effective next please

[111:01] over 500 people participated in the engagement process over the past two and a half months and we still have engagement that's ongoing over 300 people completed our online questionnaire through be heard boulder many of whom took a lot of care and time to submit some really really thoughtful comments um as part of the project we we created informational videos uh in both english and spanish to describe the project and the land-use options some of those videos had almost 200 views and then we also hosted uh four live events to get you know still try to get that face-to-face time with community members so three of those were held in english and then one in spanish so i hope you got a chance to review the engagement summary included in the packet but if not please check out the project webpage where you can review all of the community comments we received there are a lot and and people gave an

[112:01] enormous amount of thought and and time into their participation in the project so it's it's really worth reviewing um i'm going to focus on a couple areas of feedback that i think will be um important to our conversation for tonight so next please so the first the first focus area that we'll talk about is housing um as you know some big questions for this plan have been do we want housing in east boulder and and if we do how much of it and and where should it really go go so what we've heard is yes most people support developing new housing in east boulder especially if we can find a way to provide affordable and attainable housing aimed at people who who work in the area who are commuting to the area so i think in general we got a lot of feedback about commuters coming to east boulder for work and community members are interested in providing housing as a way

[113:01] of reducing commutes reducing traffic and thereby you know reducing some of the emissions generated by those trips as well we also heard that people want to see housing in mixed-use areas they want they want residential opportunities mixed with other uses the idea of 15-minute neighborhoods in east boulder is is widely supported there was really very little interest in dedicated and dedicating an area to residential only uses people want to provide a mix i think because it's you know a convenient way to live but also again because of the opportunity to reduce car trips which we heard a lot about there was also some great input and feedback about the san lazaro mobile home park so as i mentioned earlier this is the only residential community that is within the boundary of the east boulder sub community it is however outside the the city limit and located in boulder county so the area is

[114:02] eligible for annexation but it is privately owned there's a lot of support for um improving quality of life for the the residents there by working to protect the park for mobile homes keep their rents relatively low and getting residents access to city services and programs so um right now we're we're limited in what we can offer for those residents um since they are outside the city but residents of the area have been really really willing to participate throughout this process and staff is looking for ways to create a win-win situation for that property owner and the residents another idea that garnered a lot of support was co-locating new housing with area green space so belmont city park is the city's largest active recreation park and it's located in this area and then we also have access to boulder

[115:00] creek um and the boulder creek path as well as south boulder creek uh next please so then on the flip side of our our houses to job scale is is the idea of east boulder as a place to do business as as a real job center so community members really value east boulder business space and it came out um loud and clear that it's really important to preserve and prioritize this kind of space for a variety of types and sizes of businesses related to that variety many community members would like to see new retail in the area especially related to food and beverage places like markets restaurants bars were frequently cited we also heard through some focus groups about interest in expanding medical uses in east boulder there's a major demand for medical and medical office space in the area because of the close proximity to services at

[116:01] the hospital and so this topic came up with some frequency as well next slide please so the there's also a lot of concern in the community about how changes in the area could impact impact east boulder businesses people want to make sure that east boulder isn't just a place for startups we want to allow businesses to evolve and grow and boulder after they experience success there's some worry that introducing new housing to the area will create real conflicts with the realities of industrial and manufacturing businesses like noises truck traffic and security so it's important to community members that real thought goes into citing any new housing in in strategic locations and there's also a lot of worry about how future changes redevelopment or investment will impact the affordability of some industrial spaces and the rents in the area the

[117:00] idea of gentrification in east boulder and losing some of those east boulder businesses and industrial jobs to more affordable surrounding communities is a major concern that we that we heard a lot about next please so then um you know how do we tie pieces together and make it all work we look at we look at parts of the transportation network as well so in general there is support in the community for increasing and improving connections for all different modes of mobility in east boulder and a recognition that the network out here is is lacking people want more walkable areas so we need the facilities to support that but we also need the places or the destinations to walk to east boulder has a lot of surface parking and maybe not surprisingly there's some tension around this topic some people would like to see less parking and want to use that space for something else

[118:01] but for others the availability of parking in the east boulder is a major contributor to why they've located their business in the area and that kind of access is very important to those those business owners and employees next please commuter traffic along arapahoe was mentioned um a lot and you know i think it's important to recognize that into the future this roadway will continue to be a major corridor for commuters commuters coming to boulder from the east there's some concern that this traffic could increase as redevelopment happens um and then you know similar to some of the feedback we've received on housing community members really support this idea of a 15-minute neighborhood as a way to to help reduce trips next please so you know lots and lots of great input

[119:01] um i think when i started working on this project i really wasn't sure how that balance of workspace and a desire for new housing was going to shake out in east boulder but i think for me one of my biggest takeaways from this last phase of engagement was that people really value east boulder as a place to do business to come up with new ideas and to build a supportive network for local businesses and for people to be successful i think part of that network is providing housing that people who work in the area can afford um but community community members want to be really strategic and intentional about about where that housing should be located so that's part of what we're going to look at tonight i'm going to share the draft concept for the sub community in a moment but just want to be clear about our process we're still at a draft phase and we'll be iterating this draft through boards and community members

[120:01] city staff in our working group until we get to a place where all all the parties have a level of comfort and confidence in the plan that boards and council can move forward with adoption so next please so um coming out of that winter engagement session one of the big ideas driving our concept is the idea that east boulder could be the city's steam zone so i think the working group has been searching for a way to identify east boulder as its own place in the city and this is one concept that we've come up with the idea actually came from a conversation with the city's airport manager who mentioned that the airport hosts stem programs for cu which is pretty cool so stem is an educational program that focuses on science technology engineering and mathematics but we've we've kind of modified that for east boulder to incorporate the arts and our important um medical uses in the area

[121:02] and then one of the working group members also recommended that we call it the stream zone so to to also incorporate recreation since we have so many recreational businesses located in the east boulder and it's kind of reflective of being near the confluence of um boulder and south boulder creek so that was a pretty pretty cool idea as well next please so um here we are that takes us to some key concepts for change in the area on the eastern end of arapahoe there's a lot of interest in the community for creating a better gateway or an entry into the city from the east and we've been working with two graduate students at uc denver to consider you know very very long-term visions for the future of the area around belmont power plant this concept would kind of build on that legacy of energy production

[122:02] to inspire a place we're calling the energy innovation district so this end of town would remain um really industrially focused and then moving west the next key concept is the mobility hub at 55th and arapahoe so as many of you know as part of the east boulder project we're doing some greater detailed planning for the area around 55th and arapahoe and looking at different redevelopment and mobility concepts that could help this area evolve that project is grant funded and we have a great consultant team working on this um right now we're in an engagement phase asking for community preferences and feedback around transit oriented development concepts and then building off of opportunities at 55th and arapahoe we looked at the flatiron business park as an incubator zone and i think you know this idea of incubator is meant to inspire both the growth for

[123:00] new and existing businesses as well as the growth of community so um then if we keep moving up 55th we have this area around belmont city park that's really focused on transforming into a live work play neighborhood we're building off the idea of pairing new housing with existing green space looking for ways to bring live work options into the community and really wanting to connect that san lazaro neighborhood into the city and into a great future for this area next please so you know what does that mean for for our mobility network we know um arapaho today and well into the future is going to continue to be a key connector into and out of the city um but now 55th street becomes much more important for connecting these other areas of investment and building a spine for a

[124:00] more walkable and mobile community it also calls to attention belmont road as a place where existing and future residents will likely travel more frequently so how do we make that experience easy intuitive and you know just more pleasant to to travel on next please so we've taken those general concepts and built a draft lanny's plan for your feedback there are eight areas of change identified um i'm going to talk through the land use changes being proposed and describe some of the thinking behind these and the feedback we've already received to date next so the first is the stationary at 55th and arapahoe for this area we're actually proposing a totally new land use category which we're calling mixed-use tod or mixed-use

[125:00] transit-oriented development this land use would provide a mix of residential office commercial and retail as well as some light industrial space that will support and is supported by the regional mobility hub that's planned at the site as part of the future vision for brt along arapahoe avenue in general there's good community support for transit oriented development in this area people are interested in seeing a greater mix of uses but want to make sure that the last mile connections from this brt station are prioritized in the planning we're continuing to work with the consultant team to study this in greater detail and i'm sure we'll have some more information about that in the next couple of months next please so the next area we're looking at is on the east side of belmont city park bound by valmock belmont road 55th and pearl parkway

[126:01] so today this area is designated light industrial and we're proposing a change to mixed-use industrial so this change will direct a greater mix of light industrial residential and retail uses in the area it is envisioned that the future redevelopment would incorporate both a horizontal and vertical mix of uses um recent feedback from the working group includes wanting to prioritize the area sort of immediately adjacent to the park for residential so we're exploring different opportunities for how that might play out and how it could be accessed appropriately next please so this next concept isn't a land use change this is actually looking at the the san lazaro mobile home park for annexation the area is eligible for annexation as i mentioned it's privately owned and our annexation process and requirements can be quite expensive so staff is currently considering ways to provide

[127:00] some assistance that would help guarantee long-term affordability of the area while also gaining key improvements that we've heard residents strongly support next please so now we're hopping over to the west side of belmont city park and looking at an area between belmont road and pearl street today the mapping for this area includes some community industrial um a swath of open space other which we believe is misaligned with some of the existing conditions along ditches in the area and then some light industrial as well so the draft concept for land use here is again a mixed use industrial category intended to retain key business base but build opportunity for new residential and retail with access to the park um and the existing residential community to to the north so for both this area and the other

[128:02] mixed use industrial on the east side of the park we've gotten feedback from our working group and the housing advisory board that these two areas have great potential to provide the kinds of housing that might be attractive to a lot of the commuters in the area next please so the next concept is for a light industrial area located just west of koa of the koa recreation site excuse me today this is light industrial and the majority majority of this land is located in the high hazard and conveyance zones so um one idea that received both positive and negative feedback during the engagement process was setting a long-term vision to evolve lands in these areas of the floodplain to green space so this area is currently outside city limits so we've been meeting with colleagues at the county to consider

[129:01] this change but the intention is to expand the recreational space near koa lake and provide additional passive green space for workers and potential residents in the area um we were just at prab perks and parks and recreation advisory board last night and we received feedback that this concept didn't particularly align with what we've heard from the community about pairing green space with new residential um and i would say that the idea also didn't receive a lot of traction at the recent working group meeting because of the loss of industrial space so it's it's perhaps not trending in the right direction but there's still some interest in exploring this concept further so i look forward to to hearing your thoughts on this one next please so the next area of change is flatiron business park again this draft proposes a change from light industrial to mixed

[130:00] use industrial in order to create a place that allows for more retail which is a key desire of community members and allows for both a horizontal and vertical mix of residential uses the working group really would like to expand this area of change and apply the change out to both sides of 55th street corridor so that's something that we'll be looking at in our next iteration next please so this next change would align um the land use plan with the recently approved site and use review application for um the water view project so the changes is from a light industrial to a mixed-use residential area along east arapahoe just west of south boulder creek next please and then this is the last one this last change was not tested in our last round of engagement um but came

[131:00] through as we reviewed some of the community input for changes along arapahoe this changes a small area that's currently used for storage facilities and has a light industrial land use to mixed-use residential as a way to create a continuous area for residential opportunity between the jcc and 63rd street which terminates at um the columbine mobile home park on the south side of arapahoe so in general the working group is supportive of creating a continuous area for for residential here next please so that's that's where we're at with the current draft plan um i've described some of the feedback we've recently received from the working group um but i want to highlight a few more points from from some of the recent board meetings we've been to next please

[132:01] so the housing advisory board reviewed the concept two weeks ago and wanted to prioritize a few key issues in this plan so um creating a mix of housing types that could be suitable for a range of incomes was a top priority looking to some of the surrounding residential neighborhoods and building density around those to better foster changes that would support 15-minute neighborhoods and thinking about and and you know i think getting creative in our approach to this mixed-use industrial category and figuring out what types of structures could be created in these areas that would maintain a light industrial or flex use but incorporate residential opportunity and some live work options next please and then um just last week we had a great uh joint board work session with planning board and transportation advisory board so i wanted to highlight

[133:00] some feedback from those groups as well the term human human scale design came up a lot so thinking about how the form of the built environment will impact the experience of future places in east boulder um there's a real interest in seeing more diversity and uses but also um architectural character as well i think we know that changes in east boulder will happen kind of incrementally over time we don't have any huge areas that are all under one owner and can be sort of master planned it's going to continue to evolve a little more eclectically um the group really honed in on a need not only for connections to improve the travel experience in the area but also the need to take some initiative in creating destinations in the area so people have more places to go we talked about this area continuing to be a major employment hub and how we can effectively manage and plan for parking

[134:02] there was great interest in programming and doing some events or temporary installations that will inspire change and invite more people to just experience east boulder and then i think in general um there was real excitement around that idea of experimentation you know building on the steam concept or the stream concept and and letting it play out in the redevelopment of the area was something both boards had a lot of excitement around so next please um lots of exciting stuff lots of hard work ahead uh we're closing in on the end of our fourth phase of the project and the planned deliverable for this phase of work will be a final land use plan we're hoping to have that and what we're calling the 60 draft recommendations ready for community input and another um

[135:00] engagement window later this summer next and um that's it that you know that's a a longer presentation than i usually like to give but uh thanks for hanging in there with me there's there's a lot to consider um i'm happy to answer any questions at this point and uh look forward to the discussion and getting your feedback great thank you so much kathleen that is a great presentation a great overview thanks for keeping us abreast of what's going on there um i i am why don't we start with questions and then after questions let's just go around and see our comments uh juni and then aaron thank you for this presentation um it's well thought of i just have a few questions i'm wondering is there any plan to annex san lazaro into boulder to include as part of the east boulder

[136:01] um i think i think that's one of the recommendations we're considering um you know the um city's had conversations with that property owner uh kind of on and off over the years there's been interest um but yeah annexation is um challenging and expensive so um we're trying to figure out what the best path forward is for that okay thank you also you mentioned next engagement window well well the community members get the opportunity as well to end to answer that question or to give you feedback um yes so in the next engagement window we'll be getting um feedback on that preferred land use alternative and then some of these key recommendations so yes things like um whether or not to annex san lazaro could be something that we we asked for more feedback about as well as you know

[137:01] other other topics yeah no thank you i think i just wanted to make the comment you mentioned tab and have in one of your um slides i think you know they could be great resources again talked about mixed use and different types of housing availability to um community members so that's you know annexation would be ideal or at least it would support or community values as long as it's not against the comp plan thank you thanks jenny aaron kathleen thanks for that comprehensive presentation it's very informative um a couple questions for you so we're we're talking about land use concepts here um so and i've seen a lot of mixed use industrial uh mixed use residential what are the particular zoning districts that we would have in mind that would fit in with those land uses so um you know as this plays out and as we've been

[138:01] thinking about some of those things when we look at the area for um that we're calling out as mixed-use tod that's something we're exploring right now that there might not be a fit in our current zones that um perfectly align with what's being envisioned for that area so that we may be exploring creating zones but for the mixed use industrial category i think some of it's going to depend on how it it shakes out and how some of the pieces come together but you know the um the service industrial category i think is something that um we're getting a lot of value out of and that folks feel sort of protective over that we've we've kind of heard of that um during this engagement process so figuring out how that plays or doesn't play well with

[139:02] some of our our [Music] medium or higher density residential categories will be something that we'll look at as well um but i think you know that's part of what we're exploring right now the the mixed use industrial land use category isn't um super well defined right now and we don't have great examples of it in other places of the city so we're we're kind of crafting it as we go and and trying to find that right fit okay thanks for that because i saw you called out the tod would probably involve a new zone but i didn't hear that about the other ones but uh yeah i mean the one example the main one that comes to mind is in the steel yards which has some of that um you know industrial mixed-use approach um but yeah so i guess we refined that as we go along i'd certainly i'll just throw in a quick comment here that uh it's certainly worth considering creating new zones as part of this you

[140:00] know we did that with the t-vap right we did a number of new zones as part of that area plan so that could be a good fit here too um so i'll just throw that in there uh next question so the there's that bit you know proposed potentially to have the land use changes as park but it's currently developed and it's in the county it's a little unclear to me how that would work like if if we're interested in actually buying it for parkland like we get that we can make offers on land but with existing developed land i mean how does only park play out it's really clear to me yeah it would um it would be something that would certainly have to progress over time and we'd have to get pretty significant financial commitments to make something like that happen and then also as if if we were to pursue that and transition that previously developed

[141:00] space into into either active recreation parkland or try to restore it to something more similar to the adjacent area along boulder creek that would be it would be a a pretty big lift but not impossible it's been done in other places okay thanks for that and then uh last question um so the the flatirons business part that was uh proposed for the industrial mixed use which that made a lot of sense and um i heard the feedback from the working group about extending that to both sides of 55th and that kind of jumped out to me as well when i looked at that proposal so here's what the thinking is for about potentially just changing flat iron's business part versus also changing the to me very similar um developed areas to the west yeah so um

[142:00] the area that's outlined for change in our current concept plan um i think part of it is you know we got all that feedback about being um a little bit more strategic and careful about where we start to introduce residential opportunities into the area and so trying to put put a little bit more of a boundary on that um but in the conversation with the working group and as they're considering you know how 55th might evolve over time they thought that um increasing or extending that flexibility out to both sides of 55th would be appropriate and and um they think that that should also be considered for for a potential residential in the future as well so that's that's sort of that evolution of that conversation i think okay that's helpful that's all i had

[143:01] thank you thanks aaron and mary and mark mary thanks sam and thank you kathleen for the fine presentation um so and um thanks aaron for asking the question about new zones because that that was something that came up for me um especially in the sense that um i'm wondering um how the retro retail strategy has informed um the the plan so far and what accommodations might be could be made for um different uses like um retail spaces that are really small for smaller businesses and they're um affordable by virtue of their smallness and i don't know if that's currently in any allowed in any of our zones um so that was um that's my first question

[144:02] yeah so um thinking about how the citywide retail strategy played into some of this you know we have um gotten a lot of great input from the community vitality department about what the business community i think is looking for in terms of retail that would support some of the existing employment and thinking about as we transition some areas and allow for more residential what are the also you know kind of supportive um retail elements or features that would build upon the the city's retail inventory i think part of what we're sort of exploring and maybe adding to that strategy is giving some of these industrial

[145:00] businesses that um kind of front of house opportunity that they can't um that they don't have today so um for instance um uh great business in east boulder is choco love they make chocolate bars really really good ones um but you can't just like walk up to chocolate and buy a chocolate bar you have to go to a store in a different location so there's some barriers to um to allowing um our industrial businesses to also be retailers in the area and so we're trying to figure out how to to best make that happen and what's the experience for customers as as they visit as well so um there's you know i think there's certainly some exciting ideas um related to that that interaction um but then also you know we worked with community vitality to look at

[146:00] um where these kind of food grocery deserts are and east boulder is certainly one of them and so have been talking to different retailers about you know what do you need to convince you to to get a grocery store there how many homes do we have to provide and what are the different grocery or market sort of formats that might fit with this neighborhood as it transitions so um there's there's a i think there's a lot there to explore in terms of in terms of retail and and um we're trying to be creative about it because that you know retail is changing and to be successful in retail is getting harder and harder right right and and hence the question so and then another question i have has to do with city-owned properties in the area through this process have you all

[147:01] identified what properties the city owns that might be something that could be used for housing yes so um the city owns a couple of areas out there um one area that we looked at in particular um with housing and facilities is the msc site and kind of the southern area of belmont city park um to think about you know is there any great housing opportunity there and we couldn't piece together um uh a level of density or or create the type of neighborhood character that would also support that 15-minute neighborhood kind of conversation and so while we sort of

[148:00] have the space um in that in that suitability analysis it wasn't a great match and then we've also you know the msc site um is a a really important kind of essential service site for the city as well and so um it just didn't it didn't play out um so yeah and then you're talking about the maintenance service center is that what msc yes i'm sorry the municipal service center yep and that is the one along um the that would be the south side of old pearl that's right okay yeah sorry no that's okay i just wanted to clarify yeah and then um you know the the other area that the the city owns um a lot of uh land around that's come up you know um probably every couple of weeks every couple of months is the boulder municipal airport and there's just a lot of limitations on the type of

[149:02] uses that can happen out there and the implications of changing uses there that i think have prevented that idea of um exploring housing up at the airport from going much further um but i also think throughout this process and throughout our our conversations with community members um the airport has sort of kind of you know kind of risen as a a great community place that um probably i really wasn't familiar with before but you know during covid they hosted um drive-in movies there um they do all kinds of uh youth programs um and so as their master plan process comes up i think

[150:01] it's coming up in 2024 2025 um they'll be looking at at how to kind of celebrate that a little bit more and extend the airport terminal into potentially um more space for for community so it that that conversation evolved as well um thank you for that appreciate it and um one of the things that you mentioned came up in the joint planning board and tab meeting was the the idea of connections and i'm wondering um in the 60 draft plan that you're planning on bringing later on um will that include a connections plan yes that's the intention and and i think that's why we tried to bring those two groups together at this point is um we need to really start pairing um new connections some of our tmp planned connections um

[151:02] with these these changes in land use and so yes we will um we'll start working on a connections plan to go with this as well great um i believe that's all i have thank you okay thanks mary mark yeah just a couple questions and thank you for that presentation it's very very clear um one of our boulder valley comp plan principles is 706 which is to promote a mixture of housing types as we increase housing in this area are there any plans afoot to fulfill that that goal so that we just don't get large-scale market rate rentals you know we'd like to provide opportunities for lower-priced ownership opportunities the missing middle all of that sort of things it seems to me there's an opportunity here have we

[152:01] given any thought to how we might access that opportunity yeah that's definitely something that has come up in a lot of community conversations and certainly came up at housing advisory board um at the recent meeting we had with them and i think um that's part of this next phase of work as we get towards that preferred land use concept we're going to do some site testing and really start to figure out how much of what type of housing can be accommodated can be accommodated under these revised land uses and you know i i think a wide variety of sort of structures and unit types will be explored but we're also you know we're also trying to figure out how to create new ones i think um

[153:02] and you know that that's really related specifically to that combination of a light industrial and a um and a residential unit type um uh you know thinking about how that might come together in a vertical structure is um there's not a lot of examples of that but there's we've heard a lot about wanting to see this type of live work product um so that's we're looking at that as well okay thank you and my next actually my only other question is of the eight areas that you're looking at uh with the exception of san lazaro everyone involves a conversion of light industrial to mixed-use industrial the other seven areas all propose that transition um

[154:00] i'm assuming uh housing and retail are going to be much more profitable than you know the current kinds of light industrial uses we see now so my question is where where are the true light industrial users going to go and are you not concerned that they will be crowded out by uh higher profit opportunities whether it's retail uh or uh or housing yes we are concerned about that and i think part of this next phase of work is bringing on our economic consultant that we've been working with to conduct some feasibility studies and really test how the market might receive some of these land use changes and you know

[155:00] part of that is to to um learn what what that type of the working group has used the term commercial gentrification what those implications might be but also you know this area as a light industrial area as office spaces flex space it it already performs really well people property owners are making money today so um wanting to introduce a new use type will likely require some incentive to make that change happen and so we'll have to test that test that as well in this next phase of work okay i think i would assume the market will be very responsive to the to the prospect of putting uh housing or retail in these zones man you know i i would ask you to keep in mind or an eye on what happens to the actual light industrial users because i don't

[156:01] know where they're going to go and if we are concerned about being able to um have our residents access some of these businesses and not have to go to longmont or superior for these purposes i think we ought to be cautious thanks mark are you done anymore okay um adam yeah just have a little follow-up to mark's question with these new uses switching to mixed industrial is there like a percentage cap of what other uses can actually take up that space like if we were to switch something to mixed industrial um i realize that's not a zoning change but uh you know could it happen that all residential and commercial take its place and then it's no longer industrial at all like i just don't know enough

[157:01] about the land use component of this um wondering about that yeah so we we don't um typically have caps like that that some of our land use categories have limitations on the amount of residential that can happen there so we do a dwelling unit per acre maximum so that might be something that we'll explore right now the mixed use industrial category does not have that dwelling unit per acre description but that may be something that we look at adding as part of this okay and i'm a little less worried about the residential component and a little more worried about the office commercial type usage outweighing the light industrial usage for sure um yeah i think that that is a trend that we're seeing now and that's something that um

[158:01] under current conditions can happen now there's nothing to um you know outside of the some of our our zones that would limit a lot of the owners or or folks who lease the property from converting light industrial space to office space we see we see that happen pretty frequently now gotcha yeah um thinking about barriers to prevent that from happening would definitely be a priority for me okay great and i have two questions of my own and a whole bunch of comments so i won't do the comments i'll just do the two questions right now so first is when i look i'm looking at slide 22 which is the overview of the whole east boulder sub community and i've seen this on some other slides as well for flat irons business parks number six here

[159:00] you drew that circle well to the east of 55th street and i know there's a whole bunch of buildings between your yellow line that circles six and fifty-fifth so why how did you pick the area to circle and why don't you include the buildings all the way up to 55th street to the west yeah so um you know i mentioned a little bit earlier that um a lot of the feedback that we got um folks had wanted to be um pretty strategic and sort of limit the areas of change where we would introduce new residential and so um looking at that flatiron business park there's some um kind of natural barriers there so the the railroad um the ditch and then the creek on the other side that sort of created a natural um

[160:01] little island where maybe we could start introducing residential and and um and see how those uses kind of play together but as i mentioned that the working group wants to expand that area and they want to include those businesses or those um parcels on on either side of 55th and really extend that out to allow for i think both um more flexibility in the change that could happen out there but also wanting to tie 55th more into um the opportunity for residential and give people that greater access to the mobility hub at 55th and arapahoe so that idea kind of evolved or is evolving now got it well i appreciate the wanting to test new land uses before we apply them

[161:00] everywhere i was just curious what the thinking was but you're right there corner of arapalon 55th um that's part of your mixed use tod but the largest kind of community hub is on that corner and there's others so i'm generalizing but is that northwest corner community plaza or whatever it's called out there forget um is that owned by one land owner or is there a big land owner within it or is it a whole bunch of little ones so again northwest corner rappo and 55th it's where the credit union is that's where the quiznos is and oh at the corner um so uh the majority of it is owned by um one land owner but then there is a second that has um parts of like where the um boulder um or uc health um building is so there's

[162:00] there's just a couple got it so that's that's interesting because unlike um diagonal plaza which has six or seven this one has a couple okay that's good to know and we've um just just for everyone's knowledge we've been coordinating with those those owners pretty closely as part of the stamp project awesome so um with that we've got the two questions to answer and any other feedback that council might have um so i would open it up for anything that you'd like to say on east boulder sub community plan do not see a lot of hands so i'll go with mine then real quick um so i think annex san lazaro makes all the sense in the world if that's possible so i think that is a no-brainer and i think we need to do whatever we can to get that in and as far as the park idea for the currently

[163:00] county land i don't know if i think it should be a park or not but it does seem odd that that's not part of the city so it also seems like if we're going to look at annexation of san lazaro it might make sense to also look at that west of koa kind of area so that's one thought around that i really think the heart of all of this and one key is going to be what you have is mixed use transit oriented development at the corner of arapa on 55th i i mean that's where everyone in this whole area who works out here in commuters and people who live in boulder alike that corner is where most of the food is it's where much of the coffee you know meeting place that is a gathering space and there's only a few others out there at least that i used and those are in flatirons park so i really do think a lot of attention

[164:00] needs to be paid to that corner because i think you know if you could get a grocery store in there even if it was small i think that would be an amenity which would kind of change the complexion and i expect as you talk to the neighborhood south barapo you might find that desire as well so i i would just say whatever you do spend a lot of time trying to get that right and sadly like in a lot of the surrounding area to that shopping center is a lot of very nice kind of startup space and there's a robotics company out there i mean to mark's point about being careful i think you might want to break down that mixed-use transit-oriented development even more granularly when you dig in there maybe it's done with zoning but i think you know the stuff that's near the streets is going to have high appeal as service but the stuff that's a little bit back behind it is stuff where startups go

[165:00] also companies that are concerned with their rent and lease costs would look at that area everything from range all the way down so i think that that that is a key component and that you want to be careful there and maybe more granular um i i think the ideas of these mixed-use industrial are fantastic i really do like it um and i i think it takes a ton of care to get those right because the um you know having some office space become housing can make a lot of sense i mean there's a lot of office available but when you get into the flex or the industrial it gets much harder to find in boulder right and so that is those are the parts that i would be very careful about displacing so you know measure three or four times and cut once with

[166:01] that so watch the light industrial and watch the flex because once that's gone it's gone for good with the office i think office can come and go a little more easily than that flex at least that's the way it appears from the development pattern um so i i support all three of the major mixed-use industrial industrial but i i also think you might want to get a little more granular maybe there's a couple different flavors of that but i'm not so concerned with the office much more concerned as adam mentioned with the light industrial and in the whole area but in particular rezoning those three i think the other thing to think about is the reason that there's separation of use in zoning is because of some of the negative external impacts whether it's noise or smell like there's coffee roasters out there there's at least a couple coffee roasters in the area those aren't great places to be next door to when they're

[167:01] small and then even when they have to put in pollution control there's still some smoke so just another thing is we don't want to drive all industry out i don't think a boulder and so we have to be careful with that so you might want to subdivide some of those big gray blobs based on the different age or what we hope to see there but i also think you know there could be a lot of residential come in over time out here so i think having that on the radar um is is really good so let me see what else i had here um one thing that i just want to point out i've said it before i don't know if it's a pipe dream or not but you know one of the challenges with getting down into flatiron's business park or anything on 55th street not in a car is that there's no easy connection you're having to figure out the way around like if you

[168:01] want to go a little more on the arapahoe side of that area you'll end up cutting through parking lots behind ball to be able to make the connection all the way to 55th otherwise you have to go down the path that runs along pearl parkway and it's just if there were a way to follow the easement of the power lines so if you go and look you look east from kind of where the goose creek path that ends into the boulder creek path you just look east from there there's an obvious set of power lines there's an easement so i have no idea if it's possible but that would be a connection when you look at the connection plan that would be great to be able to make and because going through those parking lots is a pain but it is the easiest way to get from the boulder creek path over to 55th street um and then i think that's most of it oh airport um

[169:01] for um reasons that are not particularly happy i've been at the rocky mountain airport a couple of times recently and they do have nice community space out there so i think it would be an improvement in the kind of integration of the airport into our community writ large if there was a reason for people to go there if there was a you know an upside and i know there's a small meeting room out there i've had one meeting out there but i really do think making the airport more of an amenity to people who aren't pilots in boulder would be something that would would create benefits down the road so the rocky mountain airport it's obviously bigger and they land some small jets there but it's worth going out and looking at that facility and seeing if there's a way that could be improved and then to the mix of housing question and i totally concur with both ownership and missing middle it seems like we should try and learn from alpine

[170:00] balsam right and so try and replicate some of the learnings of the mix of housing types they're going to end up with there and see if that's a prototype that could be used in these mixed-use industrial areas wouldn't be the whole area but it could be parts of that that make the most sense for housing can we you know somehow incentivize or require a mix of housing so that it's not all high-end apartments which is what it will be if you let the market make its mind up you'll get park mosaic everywhere out there if that's what you zoned for so i think it's important not to get park mosaic everywhere in that area and then just a final comment you said something that i want us to be careful about you talked about dwelling units per acre as a mix that's a density limitation and i think we want to be careful that what i think what we're after is more of a use direction so that we get what we want and that dwelling unit per acre it's a

[171:01] blunt tool and i think we're trying to get rid of that generally speaking um just well i know that open space for dwelling unit we want to be very careful about and dwelling units per acre is density it's not necessarily typology so i think um typology is at least as important as density generally speaking and i'll say i think the stream district idea is really cool i mean i think there's a lot to that and i think arts i know that there's like t-shirt printing shops out there near the koa business park and there's all manner of you know pop sockets is out there which is totally different so i think that arts would be great to be able to figure out how to incorporate here in north boulder it's kind of naturally evolved out there and i don't know if there's a a home for that um out here as well um i think that's most everything i had i

[172:01] think this is fantastic to be thinking about this because this area has a ton of potential so good job on this and then aaron oh hold on let me make sure i got the order right here aaron and then mary aaron yeah same things for those comments i thought those those were excellent i'll agree with what what sam just said and throw in a few more here i'll specifically echo the uh sin lazaro annexation and like you say it is expensive but we may have opportunities with the rescue act funding and uh the infras infrastructure act if that passes um that we might be able to get grants from a variety of the different buckets of money that are in those two that would support uh defraying the cost of annexation and improving the infrastructure there so i think we should be looking at for our other mobile home parks they're already uh in town um just as an aside but uh like for their water infrastructure but

[173:00] definitely here for san jose because that might move that up by years our ability to to annex them and improve their infrastructure so i'll leave that out there um so yeah i agree with the the working groups thought about expanding um the industrial mixed use area from flatirons park west to 55th because i think those do have very similar current uses and have similar potential to evolve and um and i'll say that a lot of how well it works out is how well we design the zones or changes to the zones when we get to that point right so that a lot of the our ability to make this work out really well will be in that detail work that will come you know some some distance down the pike but i think i'd i really encourage us to get really creative with

[174:00] how we design those as we move forward because our our existing zoning tends to be a little black and white you know this is allowed this isn't allowed and and then we have footnotes and things that allow for some creativity but um but to the extent that we can break down barriers like that example of chocolate was a great one you know that okay they manufacture the the chocolate bars there they are extremely good um but why wouldn't we allow them to have a little on-site shop you know like like celestial seasonings does for example so to the extent that we can can tune the rules to allow for some creative innovative mixed-use districts i think that's the kind of thing that we should be looking for so i'd love for us to keep that in mind as as we move along and and that's that's partly about the like that retail integration but also very much on the housing right like uh like mark was saying earlier you know

[175:01] the goal is not to replace existing light industrial commercial buildings with big apartment buildings everywhere the goal it would be the mixed use and that doesn't mean every single building needs to have a mix of uses but the district as a whole has a rich mix of uses that it still has you know the room for the flex space like sam talked about which is rare in town and still has room for the light industrial but also supplies room for for some substantial additional housing which we desperately need here in town um to help with our pricing problems and um one of the one thing i think about with that is you know there are a lot of big parking lots in those areas right now you know the i forget exactly what the far allowance is but it's something like 0.5 you know yeah that's it yeah so so that that means that we have lots of big parking lots in that district well um can we tune the rules

[176:02] such that the only option isn't just tearing it all down and building from scratch but that we can fill in all those spaces because you could you could fill in half of the parking lots and create an enormous amount of housing and retail space and things like that um and and still have a lot of parking left over so i i think uh a lot of how this becomes successful is is how we we write those rules i really want to encourage us to be creative so i think the structures that you're setting up or pointing us in that directions i think that's fantastic um and those those mixed-use districts i think will serve us well and as we flesh them out and the i think the the tod the transitory development concept is a fantastic one you know we're a number of us are working very hard on getting the bus rapid transit implemented you know from boulder all the way out east to brighton and you know the vision there is within a few

[177:00] years that we're going to have really high frequency high quality bus service through there and so having a district oriented to that can take advantage of it a great place for people to to live and then commute into downtown or east or you know a variety of different places um and then just one thought about i know you're thinking about it already but then when we create the transportation connections plan you know that's going to be really important because we do have a lot of bigger blocks through there right now that don't have a lot of connectivity in between them and as things redevelop or change we should make sure that those you know multi-use paths go through that that connectivity happens um and also just think about how we can encourage the the last first and final mile solutions like 55th as a spine will be really important you know for long term for how things change and so what can we do to 55th over time to make it super easy for somebody who's working in one of those

[178:00] business parks now and in the future to get down to the rapid um high frequency uh bus line down on arapahoe so uh to keep that keep that in mind um as we're developing the the connections plan and then i'll agree with with sam on on the density calculation you know that you want to be careful about that that we have a lot of zones right now that where our rules encourage fewer larger units so if we want to make sure that we don't have a monoculture of any use residential or or otherwise you know maybe that operates more on the overall parcel level like the percentages-wise or in the district or something i'm not sure exactly how to make it work precisely but um but to avoid kind of launcher tools like just a maximum you know drilling unit per acre that kind of thing i think that covers it this is really exciting i think you all have done amazing work in the planned design and in the

[179:00] community outreach um so i'm really impressed with what you've got so far and i'm really excited about the future of this as we move forward thank you thank you aaron mary thanks sam um so i want to echo what both sam and aaron said um and i also i particularly want to stress the annexation of san lazaro and thank you juni for bringing that up so i want to um also particularly specifically echo the the connection from um boulder creek and goose creek over to 55th street that is really tricky and as sam mentioned there's a way that you can cut through those parking lots but it's not particularly um pleasant and so i think i think that'll be a something to pay attention to as you come up with the connections plan in in particular in the mixed use tod to

[180:01] come up with new zoning if we don't already have something that will provide for those micro businesses that could be really great particularly in that um that section number one as people are waiting for the bus hopefully the brt will happen and there'll be a lot of activity there so um that's one thing and then um one of the things that um is has been an issue out there forever has been the lack of amenities as sam mentioned there's the the kind of the restaurant hub there on the um the south side of arapahoe right the i guess it's the southwest corner yeah i think where are where all those businesses are and um but that's really the only place and to be able to um

[181:02] perhaps make some near-term changes like perhaps to the the food truck policy to allow um some of those uses kind of to bridge between now and whenever this might begin to be implemented um and i believe oh one more thing is i know it's way off um on the east side but the whole idea of the energy hub with the old belmont plant that is behind your screen there um yep um it that i i like the stream idea but to add to the a out there i don't know if any of y'all have been to uh massmoca but they turned an old industrial building into really cool art space so if um if that could be both the energy and the arts um together that'd be kind of cool um

[182:00] anyway that's far off because that's a big cleanup project so [Laughter] anyway thank you for the fine job on this looking forward to it well thank you all um i i want to um point out um there's natural pull to have food trucks out there um there's one or two that come by periodically and park in the parking lots out there so i think that's that's a natural fit and i did have one comment that i missed um you've got the flatirons park in your bubble as an incubator zone and i don't think that's particularly accurate there's a whole bunch of like established running businesses out there and i don't like incubator as the concept it often falls flat so i like innovation zone you've got energy innovation out there i would prefer innovation to incubator because i i don't think that's very accurate out there um but that's all anyone else any other

[183:01] comments before we close up this is great kathleen and all the planners who have been helping in all the outreach it's cool cool stuff good work great thanks so much thanks to thanks to everyone for your input this is really helpful thank you super okay alicia want to take us to the next of course sir um next we have under matters from the city manager 5b which is the update on city plans to move forward with prior commitments to collaborate with regional partners for construction of rocky mountain greenway connectors great thank you alicia and for this item i'd like to introduce mark gershman from our open space and mountain parks department who will give the presentation

[184:04] and mark we see your screen but if you're talking you're muted right now mark it looks like you're still muted go ahead and admit yourself and then you'll be able to speak sorry about that i had my screen up so i'm gonna now share my screen can you hear me yes

[185:02] there we go sorry about that um thank you chris um thank you council members uh thank you alicia my name is mark gershman i'm a senior planner with the open space mountain parks department and uh and the project manager for the city's involvement with the rocky mountain greenway um federal land access program grant um although you're seeing me or at least hearing me um i'd like to acknowledge and thank the community members the open space board of trustees my colleagues here among city staff and at the many partner agencies for their work on this project in staffs january fifth um information packet memo on this topic we committed to provide and update the council on uh plan move forward with prior commitments to collaborate with our regional partners for construction of the rocky mountain greenway

[186:00] connectors specifically around the city's participation in a federal land access program or flap grant to construct an underpass at colorado highway 128 to connect open space and mountain parks as well as boulder county parks and open space trails with trails on the rocky flats national wildlife refuge i'm going to spend some time uh providing a little background about the rocky mountain greenway i will have a consultant that's been working with the partner team uh jason andrews gave a brief uh presentation on the soil sampling um and then i'll wrap up with a couple of slides and then open the conversation up to questions from council the rocky mountain greenway concept was proposed by then secretary of the interior salazar and then governor hickenlooper in 2012 as part of the obama administration's america great outdoors initiative which was set up to encourage people to spend more time

[187:00] recreating uh in nature in 2015 uh the the rocky mountain greenway was integrated as a priority in governor hickenloopers colorado the beautiful initiative to strengthen communities and economies by providing greater access to open spaces and outdoor recreation uh the rocky mountain greenway is a vision of a trail connecting the rocky mountain arsenal national wildlife refuge with the two ponds national wildlife refuge a small refuge in arvada and the rocky flats national wildlife refuge with rocky mountain national park you can see that general concept illustrated here on this map the sections of the greenway from adams county where the rocky mountain arsenal and that wildlife refuge lies through denver and jefferson counties have been largely completed this project focuses on some missing

[188:01] links associated with the rocky flats national wildlife refuge which i may call the refuge from this point forward highlighted here with the red box the rocky flats national wildlife refuge trail system was approved through the u.s fish and wildlife services comprehensive conservation planning process which includes a robust a robust community engagement process uh and is also accompanied by uh nepa reviews so either environmental impact statements or environmental assessments are typically required for major developments and and there were both uh eis and eas associated with the planned trail system um over the time period from 2005 through 2016 i believe um the uh the the trails program uh at rocky flats uh national wildlife refuge anticipates the rocky mountain greenway

[189:00] and connections with trail systems in the north and east these connections are shown here on this map in the red circles labeled a and b circle a is the junction of the multi-use colton trail managed jointly by open space mountain parks and boulder county parks and open space and colorado highway 128 the underpass will be located in the colorado department of transportation right of way and access trails built for connections to the trail system uh on open space mountain park slash boulder county open space and then with the refuge uh circle b shows location of the indiana street crossing which is uh an overpass what you see here in orange shows the portion of the plan trail system that's been constructed these are largely along existing roads or two tracks on the refuge here the existing trail system is shown

[190:01] in orange and these trails have been open to the public since september of 2018. there are also existing trailhead parking areas at the refuge excuse me sorry about that at the refuge um entrance off of highway 128 and along the southern boundary um where the refuge is uh approaches the candelas development these large peas show these trailhead parking areas ongoing public access and use of the refuge trail system will continue uh whether the conduct connections are constructed or not and uh staff from the refuge and open space mountain parks and some of the partner agencies have already observed trail users crossing highway 128 traveling in both directions to access trails on osmp and and on the refuge uh the underpass that's proposed uh will improve the safety for visitors um to open space in the refuge by providing a

[191:00] great separated crossing of highway 128 uh where the speed limit is 55 miles an hour and the actual speeds of the vehicle often far exceed that the fish and wildlife service has secured funding for the design and construction of additional plant trail sections to connect the existing rocky flats trail system with the connections at points a and b uh the additional build out of the plan system that's been approved through the process is shown are shown as these blue trail linkages from the existing orange trail system as you can see here so that will also build out more of the trail system at the refuge in 2015 jefferson county approached the city staff in boulder to discuss our participation in the flap grant which would result in most of the project costs being born um by the federal highway administration the grantor and

[192:00] and and the 17 cost share shared among the other partners a proposal was drafted and presented to the open space board of trustees at a public meeting the board unanimously recommended that city council approve a wrestle a resolution calling for uh calling for support of the grant application and a commitment to help fund the local match uh city council's consideration in may of 2016 included comments from 18 speakers the issues raised and discussed at the public hearing included concerns over the potential risks to public health and safety resulting from exposure to radioactive contamination at the rocky flat sites and concerns over the ecological impact of trail construction opportunities discussed included the access to greater access to trails how an underpass would create safer conditions to cross 128

[193:01] and former council member marzell who had been working for decades representing the city and working with elected officials on the rocky flat stewardship council and its predecessors emphasized the importance of the project as a way to demonstrate boulder's willingness um to make commitments to shared objectives with our neighbors and neighboring municipalities also discussed was how the grant and partnership reside result resulted in responsible use of taxpayer funds um because of the relatively low cost to the city compared with the overall cost of the project so the overall cost of the project uh is in the neighbor of about four million dollars the cost to the city is about 94 000 so about 2.4 of the overall cost of the project uh the outcome of that meeting was that council approved resolution 1182 conditionally supporting boulder's participation uh in the grant

[194:02] proposal for an underpass at colorado highway 128 connecting city open space and mountain parks with the rocky flats national wildlife refuge as part of the rocky mountain greenway trail project council support was conditioned upon factors described in an accompanying set of response guidelines these conditions included soil testing to address concerns about public health and safety and environmental analyses and citing requirements to address impacts to ecological resources and both the response guidelines and the resolution are contained in your packet materials if council's conditions could be addressed and funding was awarded by fhwa the response guidelines directed staff to negotiate an iga between jefferson county and the other participating local governments to address matters such as funding and other conditions that could

[195:00] affect the project in march of 2017 the federal highway administration fhwa notified jefferson county that the project had been included in their program for flat grant funding so funding had been awarded and from 2016 through 2020 staff from the partner agencies took the necessary steps to address responses to council's guidelines and the conditions of approval set forth by the other partners governing bodies most conditions were addressed through the soil sampling and analysis plan and the environmental assessment which was followed up with the finding of no significant impacts a full description of how council's conditions and the response guidelines and resolution were met is included as attachments c to today's staff memo for this update and and as i mentioned the fiscal commitment of the city is estimated about 95 000 well below the 200 000 threshold uh established in the resolution

[196:02] both the city of boulder and boulder county's resolution called for the procurement of an independent contractor capable of epa approved soil sampling and analysis this contractor was sought out through through jefferson county's uh procurement process to develop the sampling and analysis plan to confirm or re refute that radioactive radionuclide concentrations in the areas to be disturbed for the flat grant purposes were below the human health standards established at rocky flats jefferson county hosted the procurement process and a team assembled um including a representative of a health department selected engineering analytics as the contractor engineering analytics developed a draft sampling and analysis plan or sometimes just called sap or sap that was made

[197:01] available for community review uh from june through august in 2018 the partnership hosted two open houses during the comment period to provide community members with the chance to meet share information and ask questions of staff and the consultant team one open house was held in boulder another was held in westminster 90 people attended these open houses in addition to that a total of 369 responses were received to the online request for input about a third of those provided technical comments on the sampling and analysis plan a compendium in public comment and a comment summary was prepared and posted to the rocky mountain greenway website which is maintained by jefferson county and you can see the link for that here on this page um i'm going to hand the presentation

[198:02] over to jason andrews to walk you through um a brief summary of how the soil sampling was done and the results that were developed through the analysis so looks like you've already activated jason thanks mark uh thanks member of council for the opportunity to speak to you this evening as mark indicated i'm jason andrews with engineering analytics and we were the firm that was selected to develop the sampling and analysis plan and complete subsequent sampling so i'd like to speak to a few slides to speak to the results of that sampling in front of you you have the map that we've been looking at for a few minutes here that have the two proposed locations for the underpass at 128 and the overpass in indiana street so in early july of 2019 our staff completed sampling soil sampling

[199:00] at the locations a and b to collect 25 soil samples in agreement with the soil with the sap with the sampling analysis plan next slide please this table here presents a summary of the results of that sampling completed at colorado 128 the proposed underpass in indiana street proposed overpass there's been a lot of sampling done in this area for a wide variety of projects we've completed sampling for other projects out there as well however i want to focus on these two locations for the purpose of my presentation at this time i want to work across the top row so i want to spend a few minutes on this slide and just kind of define some of the terms that are presented there and kind of walk through what what's trying to be shown here so obviously the sample there i think that's fairly self-explanatory

[200:01] those are the two locations we saw in the prior map the next row is the sample maximum so that's the maximum result we saw for plutonium-238 or sorry 239 and 240 in the respective areas so for this column would be uh colorado 128 in the indiana street so you can see that sample maximum our maximum sample result for the those plutonium isotopes was 0.045 picocuries per gram at colorado 128. working to the next column i'm going to kind of stay with 128 for now not to mix and match then we'll come back and talk about indiana street here in a second and it says the project samples less than background so the background were established from the rifs project a process which is the remedial investigation feasibility study work done back in in 2006 which was part of the whole process to to clean up and determine what the cleanup standards would be that was completed back

[201:00] a number of years ago so you can see here colorado 128 the background levels that were established our samples came back less than background and then we moved to the next column and says sample mean less than the rifs mean the rifs mean once again that's the the the project or the process and the report that was done by kaiser hill in 2006 that's the mean of their sample so our sample mean results were less than their their sample mean results and then if we move over to the next one we have our project sample mean is less than historic maximum results or our project maximum results are less than the project maximum results their max results in this particular area were 7.25 picocuries per gram you can see that the results the maximum results from the left-hand column that we obtained were 0.045 so significantly less than the maximum results that were

[202:00] retained from past sampling and then we get all the way over to the right column and i think this is kind of where the rubber meets the road for a lot of people is is that are the sample results less than the cleanup standard that was established uh during the as part of the rocky flats cleanup agreement and the rocky flats cleanup agreement came up with a standard of 50 pico curies per gram so we can see here is because we're evaluating this and working across these columns here from left to right our maximum is less than the cleanup standard our maximum is also less than the past historic maximum and then our mean is also less than their mean and our our max is less than background so um kind of working through that and we can do the same process through indiana street as we come down um our sample maximum for indiana street was higher than background for for the site wide background however it was less than the mean and it was also less than prior maximum results for that particular area which

[203:01] was about 49 picocarries per gram so we're we're a little less than half of what it was or what what what was the prior maximum measure and then coming to the right column again once again we are less than the 50 picocuries per gram so we went through this process we're trying to look at how how does the sampling here how do the results compare to what was used to establish the cleanup criteria what was the maximum what were the means and how to in the background and how do we compare to that so if i can get the next slide please so our conclusions are as working through these results and looking at the results that we had in comparison to those max the medi the mean and the cleanup standards that were established uh for the site we did not see any indication that there's a higher risk level than presented in the 2006 kaiser hill report which is that rifs

[204:00] report or that a remedial investigation feasibility study report or the doe 2017 report that allowed both those reports allowed for public access and unrestricted use from the site now the doe report um that 2017 report that is a five-year review that is part of the circle process and that was the fourth time that five year review had been done um in that report so they they went back in every five years they go back and reevaluate to make sure the criteria that were used to establish the cleanup are still being met as part of that process mark that concludes my remarks thank you very much um thank you very much jason um i would say also that in the packet materials are corresponding information for the other radionuclides that were present on the

[205:02] rocky flats national wildlife refuge site we chose to highlight the results for plutonium because of the level of community concerns associated with that nucleotide radionuclide sorry i'll now quickly describe the recent actions by the other partners and staff's next step after earlier excuse me after um withdrawing from the jefferson parkway project in february of 2020 the city and county of broomfield withdrew from participation in the flam grant project in october of 2020 in their resolution uh it stated that the reasons for their withdrawal were due to new concerns about the level of plutonium detected at the indiana street crossing through soil sampling and other rocky flats related issues

[206:02] broomfield's withdrawal did not have a significant fiscal impact to the city as they were not contributing to the match for the colorado highway 128 underpass just the indiana street underpass um in november of 2020 the fish and wildlife service issued a finding of no significant impact on the project uh through the uh on the project uh based upon the environmental assessment that had been prepared um in december of 2020 jefferson county board of commissioners um approved a draft iga requiring uh in addition uh to some standard conditions that had been developed that radionuclide testing would occur during construction um that there would be uh testing protocols developed with the assistance of the colorado and i have it misspelled here i'm sorry department of public health and environment and jeffco

[207:00] public health and that the testing costs would be shared among the partners the estimated additional fiscal impact of this testing requirement set by the jeffco commissioners to the city is about estimated to be about 6 600 then in february of this year westminster approved participation in the iga followed by arvada earlier this month and then just last week boulder county approved participation um in the iga so where the partner remaining um and as uh i'll present here staff is next steps would be to negotiate and execute the iga participate in federal highway administration led design and engineering and construction of the trail connections and work with the partners to develop

[208:01] and execute agreements regarding operation and maintenance of the crossing as we look further into the future the rocky mountain greenway keeps going we would participate in county boulder county-led efforts to establish the route northward to boulder and from boulder to lyons and work with transportation and mobility actually working with dk who you heard from earlier um to uh finalize the route through the city of boulder on existing multi-use trails paths and bikeways and so that's the um the end of the staff presentation and uh we'll just uh stop now for questions and so that i can see everyone i'm going to um close uh the presentation for now because i don't uh see folks with it on great so thank you mark for the presentation i want to say thank you to all of our um

[209:02] partners who are here from other organizations thanks for being here um and with that i will turn to council and see if there are any questions mark i i have three or four questions um we've been getting a lot of emails um that are addressing this issue again uh and i'm i guess my question is is there is there anything new out there or is this simply relitigating something we properly examined and resolved at an earlier stage because i don't follow the science all that well i think that uh it's the position of of staff at least that the public hearing held in 2016 uh provided community members uh an opportunity to share with council their input

[210:00] many of the issues related in general to concerns about access to the rocky flats area and risks associated with exposure to radioactivity is are our messages that are the same to the degree that there is is new information out there as jason said there's been a lot of sampling conducted for the jefferson parkway for the trails on the refuge for the connections um and each of these uh sampling events have resulted in in new results and so there there is uh new information associated uh with those however um as um as as those have happened uh we've been in consultation with the colorado department of public health and environment and would be

[211:00] happy to have lindsey master who happens to be here today respond if you had comments or questions about the degree to which the results of that more recent testing are new information well i want to go back to your slide um regarding the levels that were found at route 128 versus uh um the the other overpass uh indiana street thank you so much indiana street um i couldn't read my own handwriting um are you at all concerned that at 128 the maximum level is appears to be using my shaky math less than one thousandth of the cleanup level but at indiana street um the maximum level appears to be only one half of the cleanup level there seems to be a big disparity in what we're finding at the two locations is

[212:00] am i missing um what what i can say mark and then uh i'll i'll open it um to um to lindsay or david lucas from fish and wildlife is that what we were directed to do by council was to do confirmatory sampling so that what we were looking for were levels of contamination by radionuclides that exceeded the public health standards set by the regulatory agencies we did not find that we did see a range of um levels of contamination but none that exceeded uh those standards uh so i don't know if that's a direct answer to your question but that's that's what um that's what we're asked to do and and that's what we did and that's what the results say well then let me ask you one more question which is assuming we go forward is there going to be any ongoing testing um to ensure that

[213:02] there's no change in condition particularly at indiana street where the the margins seem to be much lower in terms of um [Music] you know maximum results found versus cleanup standards mark i i believe your question was um could you could you repeat the question in terms of what would our response be is that what you're asking well i don't know as we go forward because the the margin for error at least at indiana street is so much less is there contemplative any ongoing testing or subsequent testing to make sure the conditions have not changed no um what we're planning to do on the basis of jefferson county's direction is to do air quality monitoring for radionuclides during construction and we haven't developed the protocols

[214:01] for that but we're currently working with uh the health department in jefferson county and with the colorado department of public health and environment to do that but there's no further uh soil testing plan and um uh and jason andrews is is um kind of on on board ready to maybe provide a better answer to your previous question if you'd like yes certainly jason uh could you please yeah thank you mark um i i you know the the concerns between 128 and indiana street with regards to our sampling results in what we've seen if you look at the historic sampling um historically there's there's different exposure units out there um as part of the sampling in it and a lot of it has to do with wind direction so um at at indiana street that's the win-win exposure unit the concentrations historically were higher in that unit in that direction so our

[215:02] sampling results the trends that we've seen are in agreement with the trends that we're seeing during prior sampling events so they they they tend to mirror each other as far as the what we would expect to see between the two different sites so each exposure unit has a different level of sample results if you will different concentrations associated with it okay well i the only comment i will make is you might want to consider some prospective sampling going forward to make sure that that indiana street remains well under the level um of the cleanup standard yes definitely appreciate it and i think um you know mark had mentioned that that we're contemplating at the request of jeffco to to do air sampling during construction um and mr valdez or miss merritt may be able to to discuss that more if that if that piques your interest

[216:00] and i saw andrew valdez's hand up andrew would you like to jump in here yeah hi everyone i think i can speak to this uh so andrew valdez jefferson county open space planner uh as part of jackson county's resolution we committed to do a dust sampling protocol and at this point we actually do have a scope of work that has been uh reviewed by cd phe and we're also willing to make this uh available to any other public uh health body that wants to review the work and sort of the the framework of that program is you know we've we've characterized what the residual contamination is in the soils at this point and we will use that to develop a lung dose model to extrapolate any health risk as a function of dust suspended in the air due to construction and as this will be accomplished through particulate matter sensors

[217:00] uh and then as a double check we will actually take the dust collected after the project and take it for laboratory analysis to confirm model was accurate thank you i'm done sam super um next we have rachel and juni rachel yep uh thanks uh mark for the presentation and my questions are are probably similar to mark wallach so thanks for bearing with me but we have received a lot of emails and feedback with uh health concerns around this project and they're understandable and sound pretty alarming so i just wanted to clarify a few things when the decision was made in 2016 it sounds like but i want to confirm did it include uh public hearing and robust engagement and board feedback and input um yes it did uh rachel the open space board of trustees held a public hearing uh there were updates uh both to the board and to council prior

[218:02] to that and then city council held a public hearing at which 18 members of the community spoke some folks who were representing the rocky mountain peace and justice center as i said people with concerns about the public health risks associated uh that they and then as well there were the boulder area trail boulder area trail coalition and the boulder mountain biking alliance uh who expressed support for the project as well so there was um community um involvement from a range of perspectives all right that's helpful um those are kind of the same perspectives we're getting now so would you say that the concerns that we're hearing now have been were vetted by the council and osbt in 2016 are they pretty similar or are they new i would say the general concerns um are are very much the same um

[219:04] okay um and then a couple maybe uh technical questions like like uh councilmember wallach said this is not my area of expertise with the uh science and understanding some of the soil sample results and things but i'm pretty sure it showed that the soil sample results uh showed that the levels are going down is that a very basic yes the levels are trending in the right direction i i don't know that the um that the information shows that i would pass that uh to to jason to respond to the the concentrations shown on the figure are lower that's that's correct um okay um i wouldn't i wouldn't go so far to say that they're trending down um due to radioactivity and radionuclide behavior uh pretty long half-life so we can't necessarily make the

[220:02] the leap to say that there's some attenuation or or decrease in what's out there okay um and like how do the numbers that you're seeing there compare to like what you would find in my backyard would i have any like is there some just in in any reading that you do or is the fact that there's any mean that that that's unusual yeah um and and this master's may be able to to address this better than you should with the cd phd statewide but they're plutonium is a is a man-made substance if you will um it's it's part of the nuclear arms race right um and it's my understanding that there's plutonium kind of worldwide as a result of a lot of the above ground testing that went on uh during that process so it's during that fallout process so yeah there is quote unquote background um

[221:01] plutonium globally um as a result of that testing i don't know specifically what's in your backyard but they're they're it is found globally okay rachel would it be okay if i called on lindsay masters um yeah absolutely from cdphe um she's been texting so lindsay would you mind uh answering rachel's question or at least what you're putting in the text sure of course um so i'm lindsay masters i'm the cd phe regulator for the central operable unit that's the doe plant area that we still oversee in partnership with epa i do provide some technical information and resources to members of the public and local governments so i'm happy to help and be here tonight so councilwoman friend in brief uh you're correct there is plutonium distributed globally that's from the fallout of various atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the pacific nevada test site

[222:02] it is indeed multiple times above background at rocky flats but it is within the federal risk range and so we as regulators were bound by laws and regulations and in the case of a circular site a superfund site there is something in federal regulations that says for carcinogens environmental contaminants like plutonium you have to meet a federal risk range it's not a hard number it depends on site it depends on the contaminant but those numbers that we see are compliant with that federal risk range they are indeed multiple times what you might find in your backyard assuming that that's consistent with data i've seen if you want to know the exact um kind of background numbers in the area i can find that email that to the council i have that data somewhere uh if you'd just like that to compare to the numbers

[223:00] you're seeing for the greenway uh sure that's great um that would be welcome um so keeping with that theme broom broomfield city and county cited according to the slide we saw numerous concerns about level of plutonium in soil sampling and i guess i'm just wondering given the information that we have that that like the rates didn't increase say and and they're within their proper ranges where are those concerns coming from or given that they had previously signed on what was the best case scenario for these soil samplings or sort of do we have an explanation for if they signed on and it doesn't sound like things have gotten worse what changed their uh approach here well i i can't unpack broomfield's approach so i'll um perhaps defer to someone working on the greenway project but i will say that uh jason is correct you wouldn't anticipate that plutonium or other metals would degrade over time there are

[224:01] certain chemicals like volatile organic compounds dry cleaning chemicals when they're exposed to sunlight they can degrade or be treated other types of contaminants they'll persist for thousands of years and plutonium will do that um so i will defer to perhaps jason i'm not sure who the right person would be to address the more regulatory or excuse me um political part of that question okay thanks i i think what we know is is what was placed uh in in the revolution uh rachel we we don't know uh elements associated the the resolution makes reference to a previous study session at which a wide range of information was presented uh including by community members by many of the same people who are here to respond to your questions um the uh the resolution was past consent with no conversation uh among council members or

[225:03] um conversation with the community so knowing exactly which of those um items of conversation that came up it's pretty difficult for us to say staff there may be council members who have had the opportunity to speak with uh your counterparts in broomfield that would know more about motivations okay thanks just two more questions um are we being asked to take any action i assume that we're already in the iga has something changed or if we do nothing will we just proceed along with the 2016 direction the uh staff is uh prepared to proceed according to the direction the council provided uh in the resolution in in 2016. okay and then last question um by us taking action if we were to say let's drop out of this iga would our decision have any impact on the rocky flats or greenway being used

[226:00] for recreation or being open to cyclists it's my understanding that we're more limited to considering funding a bike underpass and not really any of the the bigger decisions about whether that is a an appropriate place to recreate is that accurate it's correct that the city's choice on on how to proceed uh and next steps wouldn't affect um the fact that the trails on the refuge uh will remain open uh for uh public uh public use and access there probably would be some complexities associated with um the grant uh and arrangements because where the um where the underpass ends up is city of boulder land manages open space the trail is shared runs along a shared abandoned right-of-way the colton trail so that would that would also have implications and um i know that andrew

[227:00] valdez is prepared to give some um some other responses of some of the implications um if if the city uh were to withdraw from from this um commitment okay thanks so much that's all i have so rachel rachel i think that's a really important question i was going to turn to a few people david lucas i saw your hand up did you want to speak to anything about whether this would affect trails on rocky flats whether our decision would affect anything about the status of trail access at rocky flats well mayor weaver it's good to see you um i actually am struggling to use one one monitor at home and manage zoom and chat boxes and everything else so no i uh mark took care of that i was just preparing myself to answer that but um as he stated at present the rocky flats national wildlife refuge is open um it was required by the rocky flats national wildlife refuge act of 2005 that we would accommodate

[228:00] um public recreation um we we are here um as we've been in the past uh seeking support for those regional safe off-road trail connections and that that is really the matter of business right now thank you david and then lindsay i saw you put something in chat lindsey masters from cdphe did you have anything you wanted to add yes i just wanted to state uh maybe generally since i'm not sure how familiar everyone is with the rocky flat site the central operable unit again that's where the former plant was located that is still subject to ongoing groundwater monitoring surface water testing and his legal land and water used restrictions on it the refuge lands in the parkway corridor from a regulatory perspective have been released from the superfund site list the national priorities list and have been determined to be suitable for any use so um just for that perspective that is

[229:00] through the regulatory positioning of the wildlife refuge and the parkway corridor thank you lindsay and then i'll turn to juni joseph you have your hand up this is me thank you i just have um [Music] i have a couple of questions actually um i gotta i wanted to ask do you know anything about any cases going through the board system at this moment for this uh relating to the rocket flats um i'm going to ask david to respond um to that i believe there may be some uh court cases associated with um the trail system yeah yes councilman so i can respond only limited um as we do not discuss ongoing litigation as as you guys wouldn't

[230:01] either but i think it's very appropriate for me to [Music] mention the way that boulder county's county attorney explained this exact same question because i'm assuming you got the same you know comment from someone and basically uh their county attorney explained the process that there were several cases several cases were dismissed most important was there was a request to block this the procedural term i don't know a stay or whatever the correct legal term is and that the judge denied that um and that occurred but there is one outstanding nepa um case out there um and as the county attorney explained that is a nepa case um and it's sort of tangential to what we're talking about this evening okay so i think that's what i wanted to know is whether it would impact the iga process moving forward

[231:02] according to the county attorney in boulder um it would not okay okay perfect yeah that answers that question i have one more question um [Music] about the indiana street crossing it's not really a question but more of a clarification because from what i'm hearing is that indiana street crossing site level of plutonium has not met standard but at the same time it's within the range of fed risk so i was just wondering what standard has it not met and councilwoman joseph is that a question for me i think it's a question for whoever yeah if i can jump in i i think it's worth clarifying um so it the 50 pico curies per glass gram of plutonium and soil has been mentioned as a standard that's a bit of a misnomer it is not a currently in effect standard

[232:02] it is actually something called a soil action level that was used during the cleanup process it's not a currently in effect standard it's used as more of a guideline at least by cd phe what is legally binding and what uh circlotype cleanups look at is the federal risk range and we can delve into soil action levels a little bit but basically that was a level that was set at the more conservative the more protective end of the federal risk range during the cleanup process and that was then used to trigger further evaluation and or remediation potentially during the circle of cleanup does that answer your question thank you i think i should have stayed awake more in a science class but thank you so much can i make a comment now uh sam what should i wait okay i i i probably wait if you're okay jenny but

[233:01] um adam thanks sam um i had a couple questions one we've gotten in some of these emails questions about whether or not the soil sampling is actually enough to sort of show the potential risk from an actual inhalant um is there any testing that is directly sort of corresponding to the inhalation of these particles rather than just whether or not they exist in the soil i i can jump in on on that um as well councilman swetlick during the rocky flat site investigation and cleanup there was an actinide migration panel comprised of scientific experts from across the country in actinide is just another scientific term for radionuclides or radioactive particles various elements and they looked at plutonium this was a contaminant of concern

[234:01] something that members of the community were very concerned about at the time and so inhalation and ingestion were specifically considered as part of a comprehensive risk assessment that is required as part of a circle of cleanup you look at human health risk and ecological risks what are the risks to the environment that risk assessment again look to see if the cleanup would be compliant with this federal risk range and it was and while we have new data from all the soil sampling in 2019 it is consistent with previous soil sampling data and the findings of the cleanup and does not would not change the conclusions of the risk assessment so there was inhalation and ingestion that was considered there have also been various cancer incidence studies that have been conducted by our cancer registry that's not a direct measure of inhalation risk but it's looking at real

[235:02] epidemiological data and health impacts in areas we also have some information from other studies looking at risks to animals etc so there was specific consideration as the ultimate takeaway there also with respect to the parkway and our 2020 parkway analysis there was a dose model so you can think about radiation a couple different ways there's radioactivity which is what we're talking about with soil sampling there might be five pico curies per gram of plutonium and surface oil that measures radioactivity in the environment but then you want to understand what does that mean to human health and so you look at radiation dose and that that dose measurement takes into account the various effects of different types of radiation like alpha particles versus beta or gamma radiation and potential impacts on different types of organs so our parkway analysis did

[236:02] look at that as well and determined that even if you had this 264 picocarry per gram uh sample everywhere this hypothetical model said well let's assume worst case this is down to six feet everywhere would that trigger some kind of exceedance of a dose standard for the state radiation program and looking at that hypothetical worst case scenario it was still well below dose regulations gotcha uh thank you for that my other question is a little bit more general just because i'm not as familiar with the trails themselves i realize people are already recreating on this area clearly there is a higher risk of plutonium inhalation than in your average place you would go biking in colorado um is there any signage or indication of that risk even if it may be you know technically within the range of

[237:00] safe um it's different and exceeds your average area so just wondering about that there um adam there are um signs at the trailhead parking areas and access points uh to the refu to the refuge um detailing the history of the site uh i i know that we provided an update to council um boy it was a number of years ago with the actual wording of of those signs so i don't know if it actually um outlines that there is a greater risk but um there's information about the history of the site david probably david lucas probably knows a lot more about what the the signs actually say councilman i cannot uh without doing a little more research to tell you exactly what is on said sign but yeah mark is

[238:00] correct according to our plans we will maintain signage on the history and the background um as well as regulations and other things at all trailheads even the new ones being created under flap i think the sign actually articulates well that there is a history related to the production of radioactive you know nuclear um war war materials and i believe there is a discussion about risk on there i don't think it necessarily says exactly what you are saying um that the risk is higher than maybe a different trail um but it definitely it uh explains in general terms um where you are coming and uh that the history associated with it and it also provides you know links to additional information gotcha okay i yeah i wasn't sure what to expect i just wanted to know um i i had approximately i can uh i can either display that text

[239:01] here i have it or um send it to the council members if you'd like and send it yeah send it that's fine and is that all adam yeah that's all for me thanks tim and i only have one question and that i think is probably to you mark i know you're busy um and you may have to punt it to somebody else but on slide 15 which is the trail crossing soil sampling results um it has a column that says project samples less than background what does that mean that there's a check mark in there that means that the the project samples even the maximum project samples came in less than the background level for um that site that has been established for the site so if you need more than that i am going to have to ask jason or lindsay perhaps to

[240:02] respond jason or lindsay if you could explain what the background is that would be great yes uh so i'll take that one background i think is used there i didn't develop this presentation but i think what it's referring to is that global fallout that global level which does have some geographic variation from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing so during the cold war when france the united states russia exploded all these bombs above ground on various islands in the nevada desert that threw a bunch of radionuclides up into the air and that then fell back down on the surface of the earth and is it's everywhere in the face of the planet in some concentration and so so just wanting to cut to the chase this is less than the background of plutonium that was measured for the 0.05

[241:01] picocarries per gram program 0.045 so so is the background is the background apples to apples we're talking about plutonium background which is fallout from gas nuclear the testing presented here um mr mayor is the background that was established in the rfs report from 2006 based upon their sampling for the site so the background value here is 0.066 for the site um in this area and we're specifically talking about the plutonium 239 240 in this service that's the example that's the answer i was looking to get clarification thank you that's all my questions so um mark are we ready to turn the council for discussion is there anything else you'd like to say oh um we'll follow up with uh the

[242:02] information um uh on the background levels of plutonium that uh rachel requested and the uh the language on the sign um that council member swetlick uh requested thank you very much and rachel when you're interested i have some answers to questions you raised but if you have comments go ahead i'm just going to kick off comments unless unless it's out of order now no go ahead okay um so as someone new to council who wasn't here in 2016 i appreciate this background and it seemed to me that it was mostly those of us who are new who had questions so uh not totally surprising but i do support um underpasses for cyclist and pedestrian safety and it sounds to me like that is the only thing before council and that we already decided to modestly contribute to the funding of the underpasses in 2016. so for me i think it's important when we give our word on something as council

[243:01] and nothing significant changes that we need to honor our commitments otherwise i think that regional partners are left holding the bag and i would assume that that erodes trust that people would have in the city of boulder as well it also would have meant that we if we were to pull out would have asked staff to do work um and and then changed direction and i think that that erodes staff trust in council um and and we certainly want to promote staff trust um and lastly i think that if we were to reopen this and relitigate it it would eat up a lot of our time and it is not um something that is really a big project that's before the city i think in the next item up we'll be discussing bumping library library district efforts um we already have kind of too much on our

[244:00] plate to get through so it'd be very hesitant to relitigate an issue that a previous council decided unless something significant changed or unless a previous council made a very gross misstep but here it sounds like we're just doing an underpass and that the um soil sample tests came in at an acceptable range and that nothing significant has really changed so that's my input is i think no decision really needs to be made on this because a previous council already made it so thanks anyone else juni yeah thank you i think um the conversation tonight has answered a lot of my questions and i really appreciate the memo as well um and i do respect the decision of the previous council but that of

[245:00] course i'm still concerned because again as i mentioned another city not too far away withdrew out of concern for the plutonium level in one site so to me that's still very concerning again but i still respect the decision that was made by the previous council super and if it's okay i'll jump in here i'm i'm our representative on the rocky flat stewardship council and one thing that i'll say is the sampling results that we see here that that talk about colorado 128 and indiana street are pretty consistent as jason andrews said with the wind patterns and the distribution of the plutonium on the site so one of the reasons i believe that broomfield withdrew is because broomfield's support was around the indiana street crossing and broomfield also has land which is not too far away

[246:00] from the indiana street crossing which is going to be um potentially developed and so one of the discussions broomfield has to have is do they allow residential development close to the site where that indiana street crossing would be um so anyway there's a little context for broomfield i asked the mayor of broomfield if he could give me background on it and so i think the level of concern uh the radioactivity at the indiana street crossing as you can see is many orders of magnitude like 500 times higher than what is at the 128 crossing so i think there is more concern around what's going on at indiana street and that's consistent with the wind patterns and i think also with the water transport of some of the um the waste that was there i guess i would also say that the fact that the project samples less than the background is quite telling um that is one reason i have very little concern

[247:00] about the 128 crossing and this testing is part of the conditions that council put on it in 2016. we wanted to see these results before going forward and then i think further what jefferson county has done in addition which is that extra six thousand dollars or so is a requirement that there be testing during the construction radionuclide testing during construction which is an additional level of safety so i agree with rachel and juni generally with what they said but i will also go a bit further and say that unless something is detected during construction i think the chance of being hit by a car crossing this road is much greater than dying of cancer because of an exposure that you got while you were on the the rocky flats um wildlife refuge so i think we're actually doing something that's quite responsible with having done the pre-testing and then as we

[248:01] support the construction of the underpass jeffco will be monitoring what's found during testing during construction so i think that we're proceeding prudently and i think that what rachel said about you know wanting to give people a way to cross dangerous roadways on bikes and other mobility is more important in a sense um because the refuge is open aaron well actually i'm going to mostly reiterate the point you just made though just really quickly i have talked to people in the community who are concerned about this a number of times and i appreciate their concern and advocacy i think fundamentally it comes down to the question of relative risk about what what is the what is the most dangerous thing and what is the most dangerous path that we pursue and the the trails at the refuge are open and um people will go from um our trails to those trails and the the question is

[249:01] whether we're increasing people's risk by building an underpass in between those trails or decreasing people's risk and um uh busy roads like that are extremely dangerous and and i think that we are on balance decreasing um people's risk by giving them a safe way to connect between two existing trail systems that are open and that's really our only threshold question here i think so i respect people's concerns but i think we're not adding to people's risks overall by doing this thank you aaron anyone else all right seeing no other comments mark could turn to you do you have the direction you need from council i believe so um double check with uh dan uh if you're still online and uh we've got what we need council yeah i think we're good thank you council thank you dan thank you mark thank you council

[250:00] um and thank you to all the other agencies that were here supporting this tonight much appreciated okay with that alicia back to you all right sir next we have matters from the mayor and members of council which is the scheduling discussion for april 20th and may 4th regular meetings very good thank you and i apologize um i failed to do something that we talked about at cac on that last subject but it can be done right now um which is for council members who had talked about wanting more background and so on on rocky flats you can make a request to cac if you would like us to think about when to schedule something additional um i did not want to um not respond to junie's request at the last council meeting that there be an opportunity to discuss whether we should have more discussion or a session on rocky flats so i just want to put out there that if

[251:01] you would like that send a note to cac i'll bring it back to council and we can discuss it but juni had asked for it last tuesday and i just want to make sure that we don't ignore that if if others or juni if you'd like to speak now if you're interested in any additional work on rocky flats before the end of this council you should let cac know and juni do you have anything you want to say about that okay very good and then the the last two items um cac decided but i wanted to bring them to council just to make sure everyone had a chance to weigh in and the first one of those is um april 20th we had two huge items on we had the discussion of the library district and we had cu south and um there was no way the meeting was already scheduled at five and a half hours and that was with 90 minutes for cu south and per the note we got from

[252:02] mark wallach cec took into consideration all of that and because the library district discussion did not have a timeline or any deadlines that would be affected by moving that we chose to move that off and keep cu south on and extend the time to 120 minutes for cu south at the april 20th meeting i just wanted to bring that to council because i know that the library district discussion is very important to a lot of people in the community and on council so if you have an objection or want to talk about it this is your opportunity if you have input on that schedule adjustment aaron i think that makes sense i just i know there are a lot of people who are going to be disappointed to have the library district discussion put off but i think if we tackled both of them we'd be doing in one evening we'd be doing both issues to disservice so i think it's it's the

[253:00] better thing to do okay thank you rachel when is the library rescheduled for it is on may 18th currently okay and i guess i would just say let's commit to not rescheduling it again because it already got bumped once this will be twice right i think no uh i don't remember it's all a blur recently rachel it is a blur at any rate i hate to see things get bumped and bumped so that would be my my uh vote for cac is don't do that to the library discussion again please okay thank you rachel mark yeah i agree with that um i think it's just important that we not push something else to that made discussion uh so that we can give the library district conversation it's due um and i i just don't think that it's fair to have people waiting around till 10 30 11 o'clock at night for subjects

[254:02] as important as either one of these would be and each one is a headliner and deserves the attention of a headliner so uh but i i support rachel's suggestion that we try to stay firm on this one and whatever else we want to put on uh that date um we'd be careful about it and move something else off if necessary uh not just keeping not just continually kicking this can down the road okay very good and currently just fyi with it moved to may 18th at 120 minutes it's a four and a half hour meeting so perfectly in line with our scheduling so as far as we know it should be able to hold that so got that and then the only other items i wanted to call to everyone's attention that came out of cac is on may 4th we discussed the um marpa house hearing um and

[255:00] that we have it down and there had been some discussion about separating it so that we did the public hearing uh sorry staff presentation applicant presentation and public hearing on one night and then continue the meeting and on another night which would be the week after um have a special meeting in which we take the time to just um deliberate and make a decision so that's just a heads up that on may 4th um the approach for cec landed on for marpa house is presentations and public hearing in questions um on the fourth and then on the 11th we have a special meeting and part of that special meeting is deliberations wanted to make sure we're all good with that okay very good tom i see that you came up did you have anything you wanted to add no i just watch it okay super bob

[256:00] yeah i just had another schedule item that i wanted to throw out there um this is for april 27th um we are scheduled to receive a briefing from the staff on uh our current financial situation which is great and i was looking forward to those um but i also am aware of the fact that we're waiting to hear guidelines from federal government on use of funds that we will receive under the latest um uh aid act and um and it sounds like we may not have that information by may april 27th so i guess i just throw out to the i think the um financial strategy committee is meeting later this week perhaps if it if it still looks like we won't have that guidance by april 27th it might make some sense to have our financial presentation when we have the um the guidance from the federal government because otherwise we're going to have two discussions we'll have one on april 27th and they'll say this is the situation we have some money coming in but we don't know what we can do about it then we're going to have to have another discussion when we know what we can do

[257:00] with it so if we want to be efficient we might think about postponing that financial discussion by two or three weeks whatever um that seems to be pretty pretty keyed in on uh when we're going to get guidance so i i really kind of defer to cac and the financial strategy committee on that i want to throw that out as a suggestion great and um we did discuss that at cac as an item that we wanted to track as part of this so chris maybe i'll turn to you i think what we decided at cac was we wanted to get the status of the um american rescue plan funding at that financial update but we weren't sure that we necessarily needed to fold it in do you have any thoughts on whether we'd want to postpone that financial update to later yeah i appreciate bob's recommendation or suggestion on that uh the i think it's important to still have that financial update because it's really the the beginning of the context

[258:00] as we go through uh the the summer uh in terms of the budget development um right now what the u.s treasury has said is that the guidance will come out somewhere around may 10th so assuming that guidance comes out on time or if it's a little bit delayed then there's going to be time to absorb and analyze all of that guidance so that i think that really puts us probably for too far into the summer to hold our financial update but i think what we can do is once uh we get more clarity on maybe the timing of that guidance um we can work with cac to find when the appropriate update to council could be that makes sense that's i didn't realize it was that far out so it doesn't it does not make sense to have our financial update as scheduled at the end of april and it sounds like maybe a late may or early june report on the federal aid thanks but but we we have asked staff to tell us what they know on april 27th about

[259:00] the american rescue plan and we do know a rough dollar figure for instance so we can throw that in the hopper but we don't know whether it can be spent on yet um that's there's one more item um there has been ongoing conversation about senate bill 62 we made a determination at the last council meeting have carried that forward there was a meeting today between senator fenberg carl castillo a few representatives from the aclu junie and myself at which we discussed the um the amendments that we had requested and we are um supposed to hear back and receive language on at least two of those and potentially three um within the next week or two so i can keep you updated about that as we get language i'll be sure and put it on hotline and share it so that the

[260:00] public knows um as long as that's okay with the the sponsors who provide that so just a heads up there is ongoing conversation where juni and i and carl at least right and and i'm sorry chief harold was there as well so we tried to communicate kind of the the detail behind what council had said and we are now in a mode where i think they understand it and juni can add in here if there's more that we need but i think they understand our concerns clearly they understand the requests clearly and will be coming back to us with we think language for two of them and maybe a yes or no on the third junior is that fair yes okay so i just wanted to give you that update and when i send you know the um information that we get back out to council it may be time to consider what we want to do with that but i just

[261:00] wanted to give you a status update on on that and um that d.a dougherty could not attend as it turned out today but he did have some input that came by email so that's all the scheduling items and loose ends i've got anything else from staff council okay with that we are adjourned early um 10 21 so pretty good for us you guys have a good night good night everyone buddy everybody right all right [Music]

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