April 20, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music] welcome everyone to the tuesday april 20th regular meeting of the boulder city council we will start as usual with a few quick announcements um the first announcement is as usual if you would like exposure notifications on your phone in case you have been exposed to someone else who has kobit 19 you can sign up or learn more at www.addyourphone dot com and if you would like more information on getting your um covid vaccine and sign up for notifications when you're eligible i think everyone is now um you can get updates on boco.org slash covid vaccine notify sign up and finally boards and commissions there are a few openings still on our boards and commissions and we're looking for volunteers to join us in city service on these

[1:02] boards the three boards that still have openings are the boulder junction access district two of the boards one for parking and one for travel demand management and the third board is the beverage licensing authority if you're interested in applying for one of these boards please visit the webpage at boulder colorado.gov boards dash commissions and with that alicia would you call the roll yes sir and good evening everyone council member brockett friend here joseph present nagel swetnick present wallach present weaver here yates here and yeah present mayor we have a quorum

[2:02] excellent thank you alicia and we have one um change to the agenda tonight that would be to add item 3g resolution 1288 urging passage of state and federal legislation to prevent gun violence so if i could have someone make a motion to him in the agenda so moved very good we have a motion a second any objections to amending the agenda great seeing none with that we will move on to open comment before we do that brenda i'd like you to please walk us through the guidelines for open comment you are on me brenda sure okay can you see my screen or not yet

[3:00] uh we can see you but not just your face okay great let me there we are there's our screen um and we're on the wrong side lovely okay so thank you so much for joining us tonight for open comment to keep these meetings safe from those who might disrupt who are not members of our community um we have instituted a few rules as we moved into virtual space more than a year ago so i'll just go over them very quickly this meeting has been called to order to conduct business of the city of boulder anything that disrupts or delays or interferes with the meeting is prohibited the time for speaking will be limited and you may only speak when recognized by mayor weaver each person must be showing their full name in order to be unmuted if you are not showing your full name currently please go ahead and send me your name in the q a box and i'm happy to change it for you

[4:02] no video is permitted other than employees city officials and invited speakers or presenters although we do know that a few of you have sent in presentations ahead of time and we will be showing those for you during your comments um the person presiding at the meeting shall enforce the rules by asking me to mute anyone who is violating those rules um the chat function is disabled but you may use the q a box to reach out to me with any technical questions that you have it should not be about the content of the meeting and only the host and individuals designated by the host will be permitted to share their screen during the meeting um sam we i've been informed that we're having a few troubles with channel eight um we're currently not on air so i just wanted to check in on that before we proceed further if you don't mind no look do we know how long it might be

[5:02] or any eta uh emily any word from brian um from ryan on what our needs are um not at the moment but i'm gonna check with him right now and see if he has a time frame for us great great and while we're waiting on that i think it's probably worth noting um that all of us and the city council all speak for myself um very happy to see that there was a guilty verdict in the derek chovron trial today regarding the murder of george floyd seems to me like justice has been done in this case and if any other council members would like to speak to that will we wait i would invite those comments aaron thanks for bringing that up sam absolutely agree but just say that i think it's more that the murderer has

[6:00] been held accountable and justice is a long way off um george floyd is no longer with us junie yeah um i was happy as well to see the verdict and i think i'm sure a lot of the country is happy to see it as well but even when i was watching it i think to me again i guess what was sad right it's a it was a bittersweet situation is that black people have to march they have to organize to get justice they have to fight years they have to be on the street and i'm looking forward to a time in america where we don't have to do that where justice is something that is normalized it's not we don't have to do all that work and i hope that i guess moving forward

[7:01] we have our own role to play as well not just be passive um what what's the word be passive to what's happening in our society we have to advocate lobby and even as a council as well we have to put you know we have to put what's we have to put actions behind our words um i'm also learning about the george floyd and policing act maybe that's something as a council we need to look into supporting and also as i was thinking what we can do and how we can elevate because what i heard today as well from i believe the ag of minneapolis was that's an act of accountability we're not there yet when it comes to justice so we have a lot to do and i was thinking even just looking at our own police department i have to say i don't know what is the makeup of our own police department but i've seen pictures in the pictures

[8:01] that i've seen it doesn't look as diverse and i think we can also do those little things that will take us to that point of accountability so again i think that accountability and justice that we're looking for it is not just in one thing it's so many things that we have to do in this country to get us closer to that justice to to get across the justice line so um i'm again i'm happy to see the verdict but we still have a lot to go and a long way to go okay good i'll check in brenda how are we doing on channel eight um we are still um tinkering a bit to see if we can get the sound up and running we have picture but we don't have sound so i'm looking right now to try and um get that connection going back um back and forth again so maybe just a couple more minutes okay

[9:01] we'll give it look at that one or two more minutes thank you sam do we have that slide that gives the other ways that you can participate by watching the meeting that we can put up in the interim that is a good idea i have no idea if we have that slide um brenda is there a slide that shows the different channels that people can use to watch the meeting i can find or build one quickly let me go ahead and do that when we have our channel eight technical difficulties resolved we'll be moving on to open comment um just a heads up for everyone it will be two minutes per speaker tonight because we have full open comment our first three speakers once we're ready will be beth reese maya raphael and matt benjamin

[10:00] so when brenda gives me the thumbs up we will start with beth um then so we are still not working sam so um i will go ahead and i'm i'm multitasking trying to find that slide adam sorry about that um so excuse me uh so let me um i think as we go we can start to put those materials

[11:01] together okay that's great and i believe if you go on to bouldercolorado.gov onto the city council page of the website that's linked on the homepage you'll be able to find options for viewing the meeting that won't help if people are trying to do it on channel eight but um if we get a slide up that'll be helpful so let's go ahead and move into open comment um as i said we'll start with beth reese maya raphael and matt benjamin beth you are up whenever you're ready you should be able to unmute that thank you can you hear me now we can my name is beth reese and i live in the tantra park area and i'm opposed to development at cu south cu's development of the south property requires boulder residents to pay 25 million dollars to destroy a critical habitat by developing a sprawling campus

[12:00] with no definitive site plan in a flood plain while boulder is facing 375 million dollars in unmet unfor infrastructure needs in return for an unproven flood mitigation attempt cu's project will destroy vital habitat at a time when we should be restoring and improving national natural biodiversity this development will require the taxpayers to pay for trucking in thousands of tons of fill dirt causing disruptions for months on end in our neighborhood this already congested part of town will have an estimated 7 000 additional vehicles per day the proposed 3 000 seat sports facility would impose overwhelming traffic and public nuisance risks the development will add more than 2 000 new residents as well as spectators and participants at sporting events and require parking needs for visitors employees students and staff light pollution from the congested area will destroy the dark

[13:02] sky conditions and noise pollution will significantly diminish the quality of life in my neighborhood and in all of south boulder 25 million dollars would go a long way to help with the current unmet infrastructure needs the city of boulder is facing i don't want to pay for cu to destroy this critical habitat my neighborhood and our beautiful city please take a step back and consider how residents of the future will judge the decisions made today and in the future thank you very much for serving and carefully weighing the issues thank you beth next we have maya raphael matt benjamin and eric tusey maya good evening my name is maya raphael i would like to ask that city council keep the streets around pearl street blocked off from vehicles for outdoor dining space permanently if that's not possible i would like to ask city council to at least keep the parking spaces blocked off for outdoor dining while allowing vehicle access i believe

[14:02] that the negative effect of closing off roads and reducing parking is outweighed by the economic and cultural community-wide benefits of enjoying a larger portion of pearl street's businesses especially when the weather is nice i understand that the city's ability to keep the streets closed off for outdoor dining may partially hinge on the temporary executive order 2093 however hopefully that order will be extended beyond the pandemic blocking off more roads downtown to vehicle traffic would alleviate some of the congestion on the sidewalks that are already being used for outdoor dining restaurants would also be able to bring in more revenue from increased seating ability and the restaurants that have purchased temps for outdoor dining and cold weather would be able to continue reaping the benefits of those investments during the winter months even as we inch closer towards herd immunity the prospect of being in a crowded bar or restaurant may still worry people as we've gotten used to spending so much time distance from strangers the atmosphere of pearl street was great before the pandemic

[15:00] but being able to walk around and see so many community members and tourists sitting outside brings a whole new sense of vibrancy to the downtown area i hope you'll consider making this positive change by keeping the streets or parking spaces permanently blocked off for outdoor dining purposes thank you for your time thank you maya next we have matt benjamin eric tousy and kristen eller matt i am not seeing matt benjamin on the list sam um we do have one caller who has called in by phone um i am going to um text that caller with my phone number to see if we can't get that person's name so if that's you please be on the lookout for a text message from brenda at the city um so we should move to eric to see please very good and here comes eric

[16:00] hi my name is eric tussey i just want to thank you for taking the time to listen to our our concerns i wanted to follow up on the recent crab neighborhood zoom meeting the neighbors wanted to say that the city and parks and rec does a lot of things well they have parks pools public spaces a great trail system events on the mall they make large investments in open space and they invest in natural place planners and these things are great but the new direction of the boulder reservoir is not one of the things they're doing well the city has spent millions of dollars on open space lands and parks and these spaces give us peaceful areas for the public to enjoy their places for wildlife to survive the reservoir itself is a very unique place people enjoy the space animals live there they breed nest there are seasonal closures to reduce human impacts

[17:01] but the res over the years has seen increasing human activities this year during covid there are already 30 plus special events scheduled and that's equal to back in 2012 when the boulder reservoir master plan stated that they would not increase events over the last three year period between 2009 and 2012. we're already there again during the time of covid this activity forces out wildlife we no longer have sandpipers visit here last week we had noise complaints at seven o'clock from an event may 7th there's a scheduled drive-in fundraiser it's listed as eight to ten on the city calendar but it's actually an eight o'clock and the ten o'clock show that goes till midnight the drive-in comedy where typically honking horns is a form of applause the organization's very upset to hear about these issues stazio ballsfield seems to be a better option we'll continue to hear from people and groups in the boulder area that do not support opening the res at

[18:00] night how sustainable is it to drive four miles out of town for such an event thank you hundreds of people thank you eric i'm sorry your time is up we appreciate your your comments thank you next we have kristen eller austin bennett and william carroll kristen hello hello council members i'm currently a cu graduate student and i support the annexation at cu south and your continued work to see this project to fruition i hope that annexation at su south will create new affordable housing in south boulder for workers like me who currently struggle to find housing in boulder and the proposed flood mitigation plan will protect many people in our community from the disaster that we saw in 2013. look we all love open space and dislike traffic but the city needs to start meeting the needs of its students and workers so let's hold you to developing

[19:02] affordable housing which would increase my quality of life not to mention increased housing close to where people work is environmentally friendly decreases community commuting traffic and encourages walking or biking to work so i urge you to know that you have a lot of support on this measure and the creation of new housing i also want to mention council's ongoing involvement with sb 2162 regarding gld population i was disturbed to read council member gates op-ed over the weekend which contained demonstrably false statements from sb 62. i urge all council members to check in with sheriff pele d.a dougherty and the colorado aclu and the other organizations who represent actual crime and racial profiling survivors let's make sure our discourse is rooted in truth it serves no one to instigate fear that's not based in fact thank you for your time thank you

[20:01] kristen next we have austin bennett william carroll and kim harmon austin um shout out shout out to the last person uh before me i'm gonna be repeating a lot of what she said um i know i'm a couple of weeks late that's the big meeting around sp 62 but i wanted to add my piece to the pile anyhow and especially make sure that city council members uh don't forget uh the dozens of testimonies that that were given uh weeks ago in favor of sb 2162. i wanted to directly address mr yates's recent op-ed which was frankly uh paco lies 2162 won't street smart dangerous and it's not going to stop arrests of violent crimes what it will do to prevent the full power of the castle state from coming down on working-class people like myself

[21:00] by flinging them in what essentially debtor's prison uh for the crime of not being able to pay bail it concerns me uh it really does that after several dozen of my fellow citizens defied in favor of sb 21-62 and talks at length about what bill does and does not do what the benefits will be that mr yates still wrote that article thank you thank you austin next we have william carroll kim and harmon and judith mcgill william i am also not seeing william um so perhaps we go to to come in um and emily if you are ready with that presentation i know you're busy in the background great and you should be able to unmute kimin

[22:00] uh i think i did are you good we can hear you okay great so i don't need a slides quite yet but i'll call for him thanks thanks council members and city staff for listening to the citizens of boulder i would like to express my concern with the city of boulder going into an unfair and costly agreement with cu for the sake of one dam first let me state that i have no problem with the city constructing the dam on the very outer edge of cu's property it is much needed what i do have a problem with is that in order to do this the taxpayers of boulder have to pay millions to make cu happy and only a small portion of taxpayer payers like about 2300 people will reap the benefit of this one dam what plan does the city have to mitigate flooding in other neighborhoods bear creek and skunk creek cause millions of dollars of damage to the martin acres neighborhood as is evidence in these slides first slide please as you can see in the first slide bear creek was roaring down along the bike path and soon over topped its channel next slide please and the next slide bear creek began

[23:01] overflowing into martin acres near martin park and into neighborhoods into neighbors basements and crawl space the flow was very violent and luckily no one was swept away but they could have been next slide please and this next slide shows next slide please okay yeah so this is the part where they where um people could been slept swept away and next slide please and this side next slide hello next slide please sorry there's a bit of a delay okay sorry um and this slide shows lake martin as we call it where drainage could not keep up with bear creek and ground water rising i personally live in the northern part of martin acres and the skunk creek drainage flooded our crawl space and many others there has to be a better use of our tax dollars than to fund cu's fourth campus being built on a flood plain and if boulder's going to pay 66 million dollars for a dam to benefit 260 downstream structures

[24:02] and 2300 people it should be ready to pay that for every other vulnerable neighborhood if the answer is yes where is all that money coming from if no why the special treatment for frazier meadows schools police firefighters roads etc are a good use of tax dollars because they benefit the wider community it seems your negotiations are flawed cu gets everything they want frazier meadows gets what it wants but the rest of boulder citizens are left with higher water bills increased traffic etc etc thanks for considering all this you guys i really appreciate it i know you're doing a lot of work so i really appreciate you listening to us all thanks thank you kevin and i believe that we have bill carroll now we want to go back to bill and then after bill carroll will be judith mcgill and evan rabbits against him just that i i heard i got a text from matt benjamin that he never received the zoom link and so that i i know somebody else didn't show up so i don't know if we have contact info

[25:01] for people who aren't present yet but if we can send out zoom information that would be great to those people i just want to let you know i sent benjamin the link just a couple of minutes ago and also sam we are back on air awesome all good news and i think we're ready for bill carroll okay um hopefully you can hear me thanks to city council for uh letting us speak i'm here today to talk about crime in boulder my car was vandalized recently with about two thousand dollars worth of damage and um at the end of the day my car is just a piece of property um but what i uncovered when attempting to report the crime is what i really found unsettling i've lived in boulder on and off for 15 years and i've been away in la for the last four years working for a company in hollywood when i moved back to boulder what i wasn't prepared for was drug use out in the open

[26:01] alcohol consumption and criminal activity um i'd experience that sort of stuff as the norm in los angeles but never in boulder in 15 years of living in boulder on and off i'd never seen anything like that but now bike chop shops operate with impunity on the boulder paths the multi-use paths especially in the goose creek area the paths are no longer safe for my 12 year old daughter this problem comes down to one common theme and that is no consequences i've spoken at length with the boulder police when attempting to report the vandalism to my car they won't even come out to take a report the reason they say they won't bother to take a report is because the prosecutors won't do anything so people aren't arrested people don't go to jail there are no consequences and so criminals come back

[27:00] and vandalize and steal again and again and again this is shocking to me because this is not the boulder that i left four years ago boulder as it is now resembles la more than it does boulder um so after speaking with boulder police what they told me no arrests no consequences i spoke with the property manager property managers are frustrated because no matter how much video evidence photographic evidence they compile the police can't act because the prosecutors won't act and what ends up happening is boulder residents get frustrated with crime because people who are removed from the properties are simply ticketed and they can return within minutes to continue so bikes get stripped of parts and criminals just continue

[28:00] doing crime a lack of consequences does not help criminals it's not compassionate and it won't help people living in boulder a policy of no consequences will only increase crime and boulder thanks for your time thank you bill next we'll go back to matt benjamin and then after matt we'll have judith mcgill and evan rabbits matt you should be able to unmute now matt awesome can you guys hear me yep wonderful thank you so much um thank you members of council for the opportunity to speak with you tonight my name is matt benjamin and i live in south boulder i wanted to start by thanking council and especially staff for staying the course and continuing to chip away at the multitude of challenges flood mitigation at cu has brought forth as of today we can say that every one of the eight guiding principles stated in the boulder valley comp plan has either

[29:01] been met or is currently being addressed this has been a long and arduous process and at times it seemed like flood mitigation was never going to happen or that the positions of the city and cu were irreconcilable and yet here we are we have come too far to walk away now since the 2013 flood we have had three presidents and nasa designed built launched landed the perseverance rover on mars not to mention just yesterday flying a helicopter on the red planet a testament to the limitless ability to accomplish immense feats when a group of people is unified around a common goal it is also a helpful reminder that in the same time frame we have not dug an ounce of dirt toward building flood mitigation this has been among the toughest 12 months in the history of our city we couldn't save those lives lost during covid or the shooting but we can provide the blanket of protection to save the lives of nearly 3 000 people that are still in harm's way along south boulder creek if there is one bright spot in the midst of all the chaos pain and grief it's that our community

[30:01] has shown tremendous unity and resiliency we have in many ways rediscovered our value of togetherness let us continue that spirit of togetherness in all that we do as friends neighbors and as a community a challenge before us is to not go back to the ways we used to do things where polarization and divisiveness has all but crippled our civic process now is the time to show that we can live up to the values that we give platitudes toward and as a community choose a new path forward this time together thank you for your time thank you matt next we have judith mcgill evan rabbits and tanya duary judith can you can you hear me yes we can very good good evening everyone i've lived in boulder for almost 20 years and i asked to speak at this forum because i want this place to remain the safe community we all love sp 62 as written is absolute

[31:00] insanity we must block its passage further we must stop the rise in crime by actually enforcing laws and reopening the jails late last year i was the victim of property theft on the one day i left my guard down let my guard down and didn't lock my gate someone walked into my driveway opened the gate to my backyard entered my garage through the side door and stole approximately fifteen hundred dollars worth of my property as my son slept a few feet away police couldn't do anything because the jails are closed a few months later i was a victim again when someone stole my mail including my w-2 bearing my social security number by then i had security cameras placed around my home and provided a screenshot of the thief's car but the police couldn't do anything because the jails are closed neither of these crimes is a felony but according to sb 62 these are crimes we should just tolerate there will be no accountability do we really think handing out tickets to

[32:01] criminals will deter criminal behavior enabling criminal behavior by looking the other way is not merciful to criminals holding criminals accountable for criminal behavior will protect our community sb 62 as written would destroy boulder it must be stopped and our jails must be reopened thank you thank you next we have evan rabbits tonya duary and ron deputy evan hi boulder lost 10 people it's not senseless it's because even though 86 of democrats and 55 percent of republicans want the assault weapons ban reinstated congress is inert bought off when i lived in guatemala in the 80s 200 000 were being slaughtered by their army

[33:01] with assault weapons from the u.s government 440 villagers were admittedly machine-gunned on the plazas the corpses stuffed in the town wells even on relatively peaceful lake atitlan where i lived and worked three friends were killed by the army one winter i gave up building a home for myself there and returned to boulder i read in howard zinn's people's history of the u.s that by 1975 all the polls showed that 65 of americans were opposed to all foreign military aid we learned it from vietnam laos and cambodia i thought if that was a legal vote not just polls then my friends and millions around the world would still be alive of course the people are opposed to war only the military-industrial congressional academic media complex wants it

[34:02] so i've worked 32 years for more direct democracy spearheading boulders failed 1993 voting by phone ballot initiative and boulder's 2018 online petitioning referendum which passed 71 to 29 percent direct democracy is ending the drug war we made cannabis legal direct democracy did close the gun show loophole in colorado way back in 2000 maybe if the city cooperates and makes our online petitioning work right we can someday say we help end mass murder locally and internationally by making government by the people work for ordinary people thank you thank you evan next we have tanya duary ron de pew and kathy joyner tanya yes thank you city council my name is tanya duary and i live in martin acres

[35:01] i have been a south boulder resident for since 1999 and i'm strongly opposed to any development at cu south i don't think flood mitigation should be coupled with this annexation agreement taking as much land is needed for the protection of our residents should be our city's priority i urge the board to consider boulder's core values of environmental protection and fiscal responsibility in relation to the annexation agreement instead of spending 25 million or more of taxpayer money for costs associated with developing on a floodplain a much better alternative would be to do a land swap with the north boulder area 3 planning reserve land not only does this land sit high and dry but it does not border any residential raid neighborhoods and would be a much better fit from a traffic standpoint with the already jammed up 36 table mesa and broadway options it's likely that a majority of the additional 7 000 trips per day will seek a short cut

[36:00] through our neighborhoods please consider how this will negative to negatively impact martin acres in all south boulder neighborhoods i am asking that it be written into the annexation agreement that when and if cu desired desires to build its next boulder campus the city and county fully analyze whether a land exchange for city-owned land at the planning reserve might be a win-win alternative for all parties we understand the land isn't currently ready to be annexed that should not be an issue considering c won't be ready to build for four to five years anyway since the planning department has begun the urban services study that's already the first step in this process in addition this should be able to be done quickly since only a portion of the land needs to be studied not only would the land exchange save the taxpayers millions of dollars preserve valuable open space and endangered wildlife but it would preserve the south boulder neighborhoods and the entrance to our beautiful city

[37:01] thank you for listening thank you tanya next we have ron de pew kathy joyner and riley mancuso ron hi i'm rhonda pugh i've lived in martin acres for 38 years constructing a full-fledged campus including housing for 2300 people academic buildings sports stadiums etc in a flood zone makes no sense whatsoever the annexation agreement that is written for cu south needs to be done with a land exchange in which cu gets land at the north boulder area 3 planning reserve and the city gets the land at cu south area 3 land is not in a flood plain unlike cu south a cu campus at area 3 will save boulder millions of dollars in campus area fill dirt and other site improvements totally unrelated to flood protection for fraser meadows those millions of boulder tax dollars are needed for improving city-wide

[38:00] infrastructure that will benefit city residents as well as provide affordable housing older traffic mitigation climate action and long overdue maintenance on open space lands the other issue is that traffic on table mesa is already beyond its capacity oh there should be some pictures that i sent in i don't know if you have those i don't believe so i don't think we received those ron sorry sent a i sent a powerpoint in um anyway uh the the traffic study that was done for cu was a bad joke it it chose the least traffic days of the year that it could possibly find with schools closed or only remote learning to make a completely false impression of the amounts of traffic in south boulder please don't build a new campus in south boulder thank you thank you ron next we have kathy joyner riley mancuso and dr michael tuffley kathy thank you

[39:02] thanks for the opportunity i'd like to thank council members and staff for the ongoing public engagement process related to the cu south annexation the city has provided an impressive number of opportunities for public feedback and you've heard a lot about the things that really matter such as flood mitigation transportation and housing to name a few we commend staff and the negotiating team for making the hard choices required to make this the best deal possible for both parties i'd like to acknowledge what appears to be significant action by cu which may serve to make decisions easier with a greater assurance of success from what i understand cu has agreed to the concept of the city's right to de-annex the property should the city be unable to complete the flood mitigation project and related to possible sale of cu property after annexation the city and cu are working on terms to establish the city's first right of refusal there are a number of significant issues

[40:00] many of which were identified through the public engagement process and on which the city and cu appear to be aligned i'll mention just a few first the designation of a limited impact zone with buffers on the west side of the site designed to minimize effects of development to adjacent residential neighborhoods second compliance with building height limits aligning with the city charter with buildings sloping gently from open space lands to the adjacent neighborhood and third the establishment of a traffic trip cap that would monitor traffic for compliance and implement mitigative measures should that cap be exceeded you have every right to be proud of how productive and helpful the public engagement process has been our comments have helped guide staff and the negotiating team to seek inclusion of issues that are clearly important to the public this is the very goal of a successful engagement process and i'd like to commence commend cu and city staff and negotiators for their hard work in ensuring that we are all being heard

[41:00] and that our comments matter thanks for the opportunity thank you kathy next we have riley mencuso um michael tuffley and brenda sohn riley hey what up city council um so i'm just calling in to remind y'all that all these from safer boulder are lying just like bob yates who printed a bunch of egregiously false information about sb 62 in the daily camera recently um we've been over this this bill affects pre-trial detention pre-trial detention with bail set means that it's meant to function where people are able to pay the bail and not be in jail while awaiting their trial because they are innocent until pr until proven guilty um so the only difference with sb62 is that where previously if a rich person broke into your car they could be out of jail by paying bail

[42:01] now whether somebody is rich or poor they'll be treated the same um and be out of jail while awaiting their trial prior to any conviction um the alarmism connecting homelessness with crime with drug use with a lack of safety in our community is all hysteria it is not evidence-based all evidence suggests that harm reduction approaches to homelessness and drug use are the solution not more criminalization i was talking to a man last night by goose creek in the snow who was told that he needed to move his tent or face charges for trespassing or camping by the next day at noon it was a blizzard um it took me an hour to drive home that night because i could hardly see in front of my car and this man was told to move his tent in that weather he said i'll take the charge because the alternative

[43:00] was dying was suffering exposure and frostbite so that's why criminalization doesn't work because if you locked that man up for a misdemeanor um you can either choose to lock him up for the rest of his life for not having a house or you have to admit that at some point uh you know you're going to have to let him back out and criminalizing him has only made his homelessness and his situation worse thank you riley thank you we appreciate your comments next we have michael toughly brenda sohn and deborah biasca michael michael asked us to is here but asked us to play a narrated slideshow thank you for giving me the opportunity to present some information that i have come up with

[44:01] from the draft traffic study produced by the fox tuttle transportation group in that report it states that the traffic along table mesa drive has been nearly flat for the last 20 years i used the same data in the fox tunnel report to calculate volumes at three locations i produced the same results but came to vastly different conclusion on these data and here they are so on broadway north of table mesa from 1982 to 2035 there's been a 12 growth in traffic on table mesa drive east of broadway from 1985 to 2035 there's been a 32 percent growth this is clearly not flat and finally on broadway south of the city limits from 1982 to 2035 there's been 110 percent growth

[45:03] that's quite a bit in addition fox tuttle group collected data at various locations in 2019 and november of 2020. traffic data collected in 2020 should be rejected due to the reduction in traffic due to the covet 19 pandemic finally fox tuttle group neglected to collect traffic data on key residential streets located in martin acres such as ash moorhead and martin drive these key streets link table mesa with baseline and also broadway and these are easily thoroughfares that would be used from people living in the cu south annexation thank you very much for your time thank you michael next we have brendan sohn deborah biasca

[46:03] and michael d brendan hi council my name is brendan sohn and i'm a law student at cu i'm here to request that once city council meetings return to an in-person format the public is still allowed to participate remotely for one of my year-long classes at cu law a course requirement is to participate each semester in a public meeting by giving public comment when i gave comment last semester which was remote of course i was nervous even standing in my bedroom in front of my computer screen delivering only my audio to city council and listeners even though it may have been a more valuable experience for me i have to say i was relieved i did not need to go to city hall and stand in front of a microphone to deliver my comment there are almost certainly many others like me who want to give input and have valuable comments to provide but are simply too nervous to present their ideas in person

[47:00] but aside from not having to face the peer of public speaking concerns for equality and democracy all point towards allowing both in-person and remote participation in public meetings first equality many in boulder who wish to give comment are unable to travel to city hall perhaps because of lack of access to transportation or because of a physical impairment allowing remote participation potentially puts those who cannot travel to city hall on equal footing with those who can't second democracy allowing remote participation allows participation by a larger community of people i think we can all agree that more public participation leads to better more democratic decisions those who fear public speaking might also find it easier to deliver public comment remotely thanks so much for your time thank you brandon next we have deborah biaska michael dee and sherry hack deborah thank you i'm deborah biasca and i live

[48:00] in south boulder first yes cu south is crucial to flood protection but the wise approach is not to kowtow to the university's whims as appears from negotiations thus far but to decouple downstream flood mitigation which virtually no one opposes from the construction of a cu campus which many see as a terrible plan for that location constructing a full-fledged campus including academic buildings sports stadiums and maybe affordable housing for 23 individuals no cu's vague messaging like it's complicated or it depends on what you call affordable this huge development in a flood zone is bad business it's not climate smart either as it would bring 7 000 more cars daily to south boulder roadways already gridlocked for hours each weekday and coupling flood mitigation with cu's expansion puts the taxpayers on the hook

[49:00] for upwards of 25 million dollars for the thousands of tons of filter cu is asking the city to dump there to raise their development area out of the flood plain let's think about that for a minute won't filling in low-lying areas have a displacement effect so that water which naturally seeks out low-lying areas would be diverted elsewhere toward the dam structure making the dam more costly to construct possibly less reliable i have no issue with proposed flood mitigation but the campus should be redirected to a suitable building site the land at the north boulder planning reserve cu publicly says that they don't want to wait for the land swap process to play out yet their spokespersons attempt to modify our concerns for their development by saying that their plans are in the future depending on the day those plans are 10 years out or 7 or 5. you and i both plan to be here far longer than each of those

[50:00] intervals please plan wisely for all of us we have the time it takes institute the land swap process immediately thank you deborah next we have michael d sherry hack and claudia team michael hello council can you see and hear me we can hear you you can't see me we don't we don't have video for our speakers so you're up michael that's a shame i got all dialed up well you have to trust me i'm very handsome um before i get begin uh i'd just like to thank all you guys for your hard work i know that you're all overworked and underpaid and what you're doing here is really a labor of love for the city and no matter what side of any particular issue that we're on i want to thank the council for its time dedication even though i'm a 16-year resident of central boulder i've never uh i've never done anything like this before so you know get involved in community issues

[51:00] so please bear with me while i i stumbled through this i was compelled to reach out to you because i've had a couple separate instances of violence and near violence um that i wanted to share with you i know you've heard about this from other residents but i think every story matters right uh i'm a pretty avid user of the boulder bike paths and on more than one occasion i've seen um residents of the encampments be aggressive and threaten feign violence to people using the past but most recently i saw that happen to a young mother pushing a baby and you know i'm a grown man i can handle myself but i really worried about how she felt and her safety around that so i'd like to have you guys consider those encampments even more um secondly uh about a year ago i invited my nephew to move here from california he's a he's a a craftsman and i thought it would be great place for him to to live and work and within about two

[52:02] months of moving here he as he was leaving the store he was slashed on the chest by somebody with a knife who was asking for money that he didn't give them um so he turned tail and he went back to california and i have to deal with his mom my sister about why this is happening in the city that she felt was a safe one to send him to um just a couple stories for you guys to consider as you deal with these tough issues i appreciate your time thank you thank you michael and thanks for taking the time to speak to us next we have sherry hack and claudia team sherry hi can you hear me yep great thank you we have an epidemic in boulder of homeless drug addicts living on our streets setting up illegal encampments burglarizing our homes hassling us for money on every street corner and just discarding used needles where people can get stuck by them boulders overrun by homeless addicts threatening our lives

[53:00] our livelihoods polluting the environment with their trash and camps going to the bathroom in public and being mean to their dogs one of these transients threatened to shoot me recently because i wouldn't give him any money he was later arrested and then released with a summons to appear in court which of course he never did i think everyone is fed up with a city council failing to do their job to uphold our laws and protect our citizens from what is happening why did city council ignore a petition signed by more than 8 000 people demanding you address this issue why are people being released from jail when they commit crimes against our citizens if you're trying to protect them from covet that's laughable considering the drugs they voluntarily put in their bodies this soft approach the city council has taken must end these are addicts who don't want recovery if they did they could go to any 12-step meeting for free you can't change someone who doesn't want to change that's enabling and enabling doesn't work these people enjoy how they're living and they don't want your help

[54:00] they sustain themselves by committing crimes and we law-abiding citizens of boulder are the ones paying the price people are moving away from boulder they aren't establishing new businesses here and they aren't shopping here they are fed up we are traumatized daily by the crime and pollution these transient drug addicts are allowed to inflict upon our beautiful city day after day after day a good start would be to make panhandling illegal and to discontinue the free needle exchange thank you for letting me speak thank you sherry and finally we have claudia team good evening council members this is claudia hanson theme i live in north boulder i'm somewhat overwhelmed to be speaking tonight as we grapple with both gun violence and police accountability on a national stage but like many others here i'm here to speak about cu south tonight so onwards

[55:02] in the last two weeks i've had the opportunity to attend multiple briefings and board meetings on the cu south annexation talks and i want to say thank you to everyone both council and staff who has been part of that listening effort i live about as far away from cu south as you can get in the city so i'm not affected by ongoing flood risks or any spillover impacts of potential development on the site but i think it's important for the city as a whole to bring this process to a close we need flood mitigation in the south boulder creek watershed and years of meticulous process have shown annexation to be the most viable path meanwhile other issues and at-risk neighborhoods need attention i'm encouraged by the process i've seen in fleshing out the annexation guiding principles and i see real concessions to neighbors concerns some like the height ceiling at the roof level of a low-rise subdivision are things i'd normally argue against as an urbanist and housing advocate but here it's a way of getting the job done generous buffers on the west side

[56:02] reduce the potential for needed housing but they are also a sign that neighbors are being heard and on the subject of traffic impacts i'm downright excited by a vehicle trip cap which would position a future cu south campus to leave the city on transportation alternatives there are of course more issues than can be packed into a two-minute comment or even the two-hour discussion you have planned but on the issue of neighborhood impacts where so many projects found are in boulder annexation negotiations are finding creative compromises on seemingly intractable issues i hope you'll affirm that progress tonight and support the process continuing on schedule thank you thank you claudia and with that we will bring open comment to a close and turn to staff chris tom do you have any responses nothing for me tonight nor from me thank you sam very good and council anyone have a

[57:00] response you want for what we heard tonight aaron well i just i think we'll address a number of the speaker's concerns when we talk about the su south issues later on this evening i think so so anyone else rachel just add real quickly um i think a person named brendan law school student um spoke about engagement and uh continuing having virtual engagement as an option and uh how much less stressful it is which i appreciate it as someone who testified to counsel often um so just wanted to let them know that there is a subcommittee meeting on engagement tomorrow where we will be discussing that exact topic and that is open to the public for anyone who would like to observe and then i think we will be bringing recommendations to council on may 11th bob's big yeah got a strong nod from bob so may 11th would be good to tune in for that one thanks thank you rachel anyone else

[58:02] very good with that alicia back to you all right sir next on our agenda we have the consent agenda which is items a through g very good thanks for that and i think we have a specific item uh tonight about um prevention of gun violence resolution and so i'll turn to rachel and aaron to talk to us about that um i'll take a stab at it erin um i think aaron is going to read the resolution but probably we want to talk through it a little bit first because we got a hotline post today and also wanted to uh invite any feedback or comments from our colleagues on it but um shortly after the mass shooting on march 22nd aaron and i were asked to co-draft a resolution around gun violence prevention as well as the appeal of the court's decision on our assault weapons ban

[59:01] so carl castillo kindly helped us to draft the resolution that is in front of council tonight um and we did run the resolution by giffords which is a national gun violence prevention organization to get their suggested edits and we incorporated i believe all of them that they advised um and we were also advised maybe it was the subcommittee on legislative action policy that was advised on this but in drafting the resolution we were advised or encouraged to focus on gun violence prevention measures that would have made a difference in our mass shootings so to propose additions to our policy agenda and emphasize things that would have potentially stopped our tragedy um so i think with that i'll turn it over to aaron it's a good summary rachel and i'll just

[60:01] mention we have already been in conversations with uh multiple of our legislators on on this topic as well i know sam has spoken to them and uh rachel and i have been in meetings we spoke with governor polis yesterday and impressed upon him our community's desire for significant new legislation including an assault weapons ban and communicated that message and he indicated he was very interested appreciative of our feedback and was looking forward to getting the text of the resolution that hopefully we'll be passing tonight so um after the incredible tragedy that our community experienced last month uh we feel like it's it's very important for us to step forward and really take up advocacy as much as we can for legislation at the state and federal level that would have some chance of preventing similar tragedies like this from happening in in other cities across the country so that's why we're bringing it forward and and um yeah i was just going to add

[61:00] that i'm hoping that we will share our final resolution um with all of our legislators all statewide elected officials as well as share it pretty widely with at least regional other city councils and county commissions in an effort to encourage some collaboration which was i think one of the points that mary made mary and jeannie made in a hotline post today so with that i don't know if we need to just open it up to general feedback and then talk about the hotline suggestions um yeah i i think that would be best that's my opinion um if we wanted to read it once we're done with the editing so aaron if you wouldn't mind trying to track the edits and what we what we say then when you read it at the end we'll have those incorporated perhaps um so mary uh we have the um resolution in front of us and you and junior sent out a hotline um would you like to speak to that and

[62:01] see um what what council's will is on that sure i'll defer to juni on the first couple items um since they were mostly came from her my edition was focusing on the um on the edition the section 4 edition however we did collaborate on the language for the others so i'll let juni kick this off all right thank you mary i'm looking at several screens here i thought it was a well-written resolution but i thought maybe a few things that i thought we could add or at least to make it more solid was um i believe it was d on march 22 2021 an assault weapon

[63:02] an assault weapon was used to murder 10 people in a mass shooting at the table mesa king supers well i thought this was passive language and i thought it could be more active because at the end of the day guns are inanimate objects and a person used the gun and so i thought maybe it would be best to have a language that expressed that because i just thought just saying that you know a weapon was used it was too impersonal and i believe the change i was considering was on march 22nd 2021 a gunman with an assault weapon murdered 10 people in a mass shooting at the table mesa king supers there is i just feel like this that's the language that's the language because it was a

[64:01] person at the end of the day who who did that terrible act and we want to keep weapons away assault weapons away from people who have who are ill intent so that was my thought on that and also for give me a second for the next one which was uh number d finding d we are called upon to prevent such suffering from reoccurring i thought that language at the end it was almost like too tall of an order and it felt slightly imprecise as well and i thought maybe we could use language that says for instance the boulder community call upon the city council the state legislature and the federal government to seek effective legislation to reduce gun violence and

[65:00] mass shootings in our community and i felt that that language actually follow up to the next section um as opposed to just saying that we are called to end suffering i just think that language is too strong and i'm an idealistic person as well i just thought we could be more centered in what we're asking and who we are um number three change the first sentence to say of the section now i think for me it's just the language that we use and we strongly urge the cds state and federal delegation to advocate for legislation that will preempt future mass shootings and i know it's like parsing language but i think language matters especially in resolutions and i was thinking well we do talk about gun prevention in this country but

[66:02] preemption i felt was much a much stronger language it's almost like stopping it not giving it not giving it the time to even grow if if you really think about it and i thought the national expansion of red flag laws in federal support of mental health program programs or programming should be part of the list i know in our hotline the way we send it it seems like it's um it reorders the language but that was not the intent at all actually it was the intent was to ensure that we mentioned red flag laws because i believe that's also part of the president's um proposals back last week and federal support of mental health programming i think it's a no-brainer because at the end of the day we want gun reform but i think there's also that mental health piece that is very very important part of it

[67:01] um also number four again that was just for clarity purposes because we mentioned city council we mentioned city which one so i just thought is it the city's position or is it the city council's position so that's up to um to us to decide but i just thought it would it's it's important to be clear on which of these two entities is it coming from city council or the city staff um and number five i think it's mary's idea i um and i think she'd probably be better at explaining it mary thanks juni and uh first of all i just want to um support um the changes that that junie mentioned i know that the language in the hotline is slightly different from what she just stated and i would totally support what she stated and item number three

[68:02] i do think that the additions present a more holistic approach to the mass shootings and i think it's important to approach problems in holistic manners so i support that and then the changing the city's position to the city council's position the legislative agenda is um a council document that can actually change from council to council so it's not the city's position it is the council's position that is then supported by the city staff so that's my comments on those items and then the intent and i'm totally open to um changes in the language the intent of number four is to create some sort of a national um collective collaborative

[69:00] of cities that have been affected by violence either through mass shootings or in the daily shootings of um of people in in in street shootings or in or by suicide so i had a list in there initially but i i think that um just calling on cities who are inspired and perhaps that's another place that we would want to send the resolution and um and to encourage other cities to write their own resolutions and send them off to the president's office so that's the intent of number four and um the language is definitely totally up to us very good well thank you juni and mary for that um i'll just say one quick thing i support all those changes um

[70:02] my comment on number one is i like what was written where it says a lone individual with an assault weapon murdered ten people i like that a little bit better than gunman um and then i will just say on the last one i'd like to suggest a friendly amendment to one word um it the the new section four would say something and then say they are backed by collective intelligence and service of collaborative initiatives i'd like to change intelligence suggests that we change intelligence to actions so it's are backed by collective actions and service of collaborative initiatives so i would make that um suggestion personally i think these are all positive changes so thank you for bringing them and thank you rachel and aaron for bringing the resolution forward with carl's help anyone else have thoughts aaron yeah well mary and she appreciate

[71:00] the input i did have a couple kind of kind of responses to them um in terms of the specific language changes that maybe i'll just share with you here um that i thought that that first sorry about the dog in the background that that first change uh i thought worked well uh sam i i'm gonna go with either individual or gunman over lone individual because i feel like the word loans sort of promotes the idea of um misguided lone individuals who do terrible things rather than kind of the systemic culture of gun violence in our society so i would i would stay away from the world again that's fine i think individual to me at least in gunmen maybe two implies the leverage that an assault weapon gives to a particular person so i i'm fine with either individual or

[72:00] gunman great um and then this for the second one the the one thing was that um the very first sentence of the next section talks about how we're calling upon our state and federal delegations to make changes so it feels like the the language is somewhat redundant um so um i wonder if we could preserve like ginny your point about like that we are called upon is too vague to sort of change that to something like you know our um you know it's it's our responsibility as the city council to you know put forward measures to reduce gun violence and prevent such suffering from reoccurring so so some different language but then you know not have the whole we call upon thing because that's really the next sentence of the resolution um

[73:01] could i um could i offer some language on that one um in let me go back to that screen to um to your point of of the redundancy to instead of we call upon the state of colorado and federal governments to strike that um and to instead say it our primary responsibility as elected officials in the city of boulder um is public safety therefore we seek effective bipartisan legislation onward something like that i know rachel what's your thought i mean i kind of like that

[74:00] we're sort of going a lot of wordsmithing here but um the the preventing such suffering from reoccurring i thought i thought was good language i'm concerned about the bipartisan word i think we want effective legislation you know and who votes for it whether it's all republicans all democrats or some mix is not the critical thing yeah i am i don't have very strong uh attachment i do think that um for this one um you know we were we were sort of in the the why part of you know like the background the findings of of why so that's why we were saying you know we're moved to do this um because of these things and then you know the how is sort of in the next section so this seems like it's it's a little bit muddling those two um i would strongly object to bipartisan not because i object to that end but because we have no control over whether legislation is bipartisan and so by focusing on that we may you

[75:02] know maybe ushering this into um a dust bin somewhere because we have no ability to control how who's gonna sign on to effective legislation so i think our our goal should be to focus on what it is we're asking for um and and then i think we lay that out in the next one so that's what i would say in that one you know i'm not i don't have any pride in authorship on this um but but want to make sure that we're kind of separating out what goes in you know the background section and then the action section so however you want to do that and again i wouldn't for this one use bipartisan i do have a couple more thoughts but i can share them until you nail down this language all right so mark i see your hand is it on this um sentence well it's on the the general process um i i cannot imagine any version of this that is not approvable and will not be approved and rather than word smith it

[76:00] this way would it make some sense for either aaron or rachel to wordsmith it with either juni uh or mary and come up with mutually agreeable language um because i'm just not sure it as a as a productive uh process to be doing it this way and i cannot imagine that we would not come up with something that is mutually agreeable to everyone and as i said this is this is going to be the easiest approval i have encountered in a year and a half on council um and i would just ask the parties to get comfortable with each other's language and bring it to us and let us read it but i i there's almost no circumstance under which i would not support it wholeheartedly my only concern there mark is like the there's only about a month left

[77:00] in the state legislative sort of season and so the longer we hold off issuing this the the less likely we are to have any impact um imminently okay i agree it word smithing doesn't seem like the most productive use of our time i agree with that well i i also agree wordsmithing is not the most productive use of our time that one of the points of doing it now was what rachel said another point of viewing it now is we have a deadline on filing any appeal that we're going to um do for the assault weapons ban question so i think mark at the very least what i would hope we do tonight even if we don't adopt a resolution i would like to i'd like to let aaron and rachel make the kind of editorial calls and and adopt it that's my position but if we don't want to i think the most important thing that has a time sensitivity is that we check in with tom about the appeal

[78:00] so um so i'll turn to rachel and aaron how would you like to close out the word smithing part i'm perfectly willing to defer to your judgment on this um well it seems like i don't know how much more we'll have to go through tonight to just it seems like it would be more optimal to adopt a resolution tonight and and get through it so that would actually be my vote is to spend another five minutes if we need it and and get to the unanimous resolution support hopefully is does anyone disagree with that right seeing no disagreement then judy do you have any i see lots of hands still up so mark you said your bit juni is your hand still up yeah well i was just going to make a comment that the process wise i don't know if we could go back and work as a foursome or threesome anyway so yeah figuring this out right here right now is probably the best resolution yeah for the resolution the the only

[79:02] other two things i was going to share sam is number one the language as presented was vetted by giffords so i think the less we veer away from what we had um approval from by uh an agency that was looking at it to make sure that it it kind of complied with the the goals that we were setting forth as well as didn't like create any legal issues like there was one version where they were like well you don't want to say that because that like you know could create a ripple effect of x y and z so i think the the closer we stay with to their vetted language the best and then the other is like in terms of the red flag law and mental health i i think we all do support that but it wasn't relevant to our our shooting situation and so there were a lot of other things that we talked about that stripped away um from including because they they didn't directly impact this and so if we're going to open up to other things that we prioritize as that aren't even i think currently in

[80:00] our legislative action guide i think that's a much longer conversation so i wonder if that could maybe be just something that we say the subcommittee should consider the legislative action subcommittee look at whether we want to add back in red flag i think we maybe took it out after it was passed at the state level again because we already have that one in place uh would not have impacted our situation um and then mental health is you know it impacts so many things in in our city not just gun violence and in our world that putting it just in here i think is a maybe a meteor discussion for the subcommittee so my thoughts would be you know a couple of the changes i think that are just stylistic are probably fine but um anything meaty should probably go back to subcommittee for further consideration i was going to make a process a suggestion maybe along the lines of what mark um offered why don't we pass the resolution tonight as originally drafted

[81:00] um that gives tom the instruction he needs that gives us a position with respect to state legislation and then we designate um one among rachel and aaron and one among juni and mary to the two designees to go back and work on potential amendments so we passed something tonight and if if those two people are determined that that um it's important for us to mend some of our language we can bring it back in two weeks and do an amendment but that doesn't hold us up on legislative activism that doesn't hold up tom's work i i think that's good what do you think juni rachel aaron mary got a thumbs up from mary thumbs up from juni all right i think we'll go ahead with that then um that's a good suggestion aaron would you like to read the current um state of the resolution and we can move forward sure i mean since marion juni you both

[82:00] said that was okay i do i appreciate your feedback i think we've got i was starting to mock up a revised document um with with these changes and so i think i think we can incorporate some of them in a way that'll make the resolution even better um so why don't we go ahead and i'm really not having to read and edit it on the fly version so we will read the original one and we'll collaborate and we'll come up with some some amendments and and then pass those next time if that's right with everybody yep good suggestion bob okay so resolution number 1288 a resolution urging passage of state and federal legislation to prevent gun violence findings the city council of the city of boulder colorado hereby finds that a in may of 2018 the boulder city council adopted an ordinance banning the sale and possession of assault weapons large capacity magazines and multi-burst trigger activators within the city limits boulder's assault weapons ban

[83:00] it also raised the age for legal firearm purchase and possession from 18 to 21 years of age b in the years since the city has also advocated for a range of state or federal gun violence prevention legislation that could extend that would extend the impact of the city's ordinance see on march 12th 12 2021 a state district court declared that colorado state law preempted boulder's assault weapons ban and consequently enjoined the city from enforcing it d on march 22 2021 an assault weapon was used to murder 10 people in a mass shooting at the table mesa king supers e the weapon used in the shooting was considered legal to purchase possess and use in colorado but had up until 10 days earlier been prohibited from being purchased possessed or used in boulder f the mass shooting in boulder was one but was but one of hundreds that have plagued our state and nation over recent years

[84:12] sorry each has inflicted profound pain on the surviving victims the families and loved ones of those who did not survive as well as their entire communities we are called upon to prevent such suffering from reoccurring resolution the city council of the city of boulder resolves as follows section one we strongly urge the city's state and federal delegation to continue their efforts to pass legislation that could prevent mass shootings this includes first and foremost a ban on assault weapons it also includes regulation of short-barreled firearms equipped with pistol braces a waiting period for firearm purchases of at least six days the addition of a 10-year firearm prohibition for individuals with conviction of or outstanding warrants for violent

[85:00] misdemeanors or crimes that are linked to an increased risk of gun violence a repeal of the state preemption on local regulation of firearms universal background checks on all sales of firearms requirements for a firearm owner to keep his or her firearm in a locked container or secured with a locking device a requirement for firearms owners to report an unaccounted for firearm and an increase in the minimum age to purchase and possess firearms section two the city's position on gun violence prevention contained within the city's 2021 policy statement on regional state and federal policy issues shall be amended as described in section 1 and this position elevated to this the top of the state and federal priority list section 3 council supports an appeal of the district court decision that enjoined the city from enforcing its restrictions on assault weapons that's it very good thank you for that aaron and thank you to everyone who took part

[86:00] in pulling this together um this is part of our consent agenda um are there any bob is your hand still up or is that left over just up it up to move the consent agenda great awesome is there a second again alicia is this a roll call or a show of hands it's a roll call sir very good um sam um is there any discussion that we can have with respect to appendix j which is part of the consent agenda um what would you like to say about it mark well um i am comfortable with the basic premise of extending the uh the area of appendix j uh to include uh ball aerospace and certainly the extension of time i think is quite appropriate

[87:01] but i do want to point out that a planning board voted against at this time inclusion of diagonal plaza and i thought that might merit a little conversation uh we we tend to be um very supportive of planning board and and its decisions um until we're not and this appears to be one of those times and i'm wondering if people have actually looked at the um the resolutions passed by planning board and given any thought as to um their significance bob yeah i did mark and thanks for for reason that we should probably have a discussion quick discussion about this issue i was a little unpuzzled by the planning boards um uh vote which was four to three i didn't go back to watch the video so i don't know the reasons that those who did not want to extend independence j to um diagonal plaza the thing i would say

[88:01] about dagon plaza is it is a probably our most problematic um part of town and um it's public information that there is a concept plan that has been filed with respect to a large segment of of um plaza that will provide market rate and um low-income affordable housing on-site in a number of units and so i think we want to encourage that type i don't know what the concept plan will will turn out to i don't know if they'll follow site plan but i think we don't want to discourage that type of redevelopment of our probably most blighted portion of town nor do we want to discourage on-site affordable housing so i think including diagonal plaza as part of exhibit j would further that effort from planning board that they were concerned that there needed to be more planning and more discussion of how to provide not simply housing but diversity of housing and housing types and that this was an opportunity to

[89:01] actually do the planning before conferring the benefit and i i suspect that at the end of the day it's going to be a very appropriate spot for uh additional height uh considerations but i think as i understood what they were doing they were saying yeah but not yet and i'm not sure there's a particular time urgency in making that inclusion now mighty make a suggestion that we have jacob lindsey um speak to us about his view our director planning about what um planning board said jacob well um good evening mayor we are members of council um i'll also uh bring into the the discussion uh the voice of charles farrow as well um for feedback on this as as we discussed previously uh uh mark and as well as members of council the vote by the planning board was not a unanimous

[90:00] vote there was quite a bit of discussion around the extension of appendix check and in regards to uh the specific project that's proposed at diagonal plaza the proposal that is currently on the boards does not include a request for height above three stories it does not include an a request for height modification planning board since was at their vote was that further study could be helpful at diagonal plaza but they did not specifically address the issue as related to the current proposal simply because that proposal does not request a fourth or fifth story so i hope that's helpful in terms of clarifying the discussion i would also uh go to charles farrow if you'd like to add anything additional to the discussion no jacob i think that's a accurate summary of the board's conversation very good so let me just ask a

[91:00] clarifying question if you don't mind if we were not to include diagonal plaza in appendix j at this time would it to the best of your knowledge um slow down the process for the concept plan well thanks sam um to the best of my knowledge no it would not because again they're not requesting for additional height i'll also add that the inclusion of uh the diagonal process site and appendix j going back to 2015 in fact uh predating my time here in boulder was done to enable the redevelopment of that site along with sites like ball aerospace the downtown city center around pearl street these were areas where council and staff anticipated future redevelopment taking place so that height potential at diagonal plaza was granted to enable a larger scale redevelopment the current proposal at diagonal plaza is only one parcel it is not the entirety of the site and it in fact leaves intact most of the

[92:00] retail in that location so the appendix j uh designation of diagonal plaza is something that was done years ago to enable a larger scale redevelopment the current proposal only anticipates three stories so i do not believe um that it would impede the current proposal that's there it could move forward presently if i could ask one more clarifying question i think i know the answer to but i want to double check for all of us if we include diagonal plaza in appendix j that only means that a development is allowed to apply for a height exemption but it would still have to comply with all the other requirements of that height exemption correct that's correct okay thank you and then i see i don't know what should be used first let me get it up aaron and then rachel aaron yeah i was just gonna make that point sam that um there's no harm in adding it back in because uh we have total discretion on whether

[93:00] to accept an application for a height modification the planning board could still turn them down and we could turn them down um on appeal if we decide it was necessary so i would go ahead and take staff's recommendation and the at least the vote of three of the four playing board members and go ahead and include them thank you rachel and then bob rachel um i appreciate mark bringing this up because it was a good idea to talk about it um so thank you i guess i'm a little confused i my recollection is our last discussion of appendix j was that it was it was sort of due to expire in like august or we were gonna let it sunset in in the coming few months so it seems like if it's if that was if i'm remembering correctly that that's the will of of council that it's likely to um to drop out then i wouldn't i don't know that we want to hold someone to those standards for just the next few months i guess and and limit in that way so i might seek clarification for

[94:00] from jacob or anyone who can clarify if that's if that's even accurate well that's correct rachel this is going to come back to council for a vote and you all will have the choice to decide whether or not appendix j stands or whether it should dissolve so um that will be back on the plate in front of council so you're correct in just in a couple months right like it's not third quarter or some second third quarter that's correct again i would go to charles but i believe this comes back to you in august if my recollection serves correctly and uh charles may have uh he may have a better memory yeah that's correct we're um hoping to bring forward community benefit phase two for uh the board's consideration in august so um that would be the idea is that the appendix j um the council could consider whether or not to sunset that or reality okay thank you thank you rachel um bob i'm going to do something very dangerous and i'm going to disagree slightly with jacob lindsey i have looked at the concept plan and i think there is an alternative um

[95:00] that does um uh would require a um height variation um i think there's a couple of options that are presented in the concept plan and i think one of them does does contemplate that so i agree with aaron that on let's let this go through its normal process and go to concept and and council you can call it up if it like and then same with site review i i just wouldn't want to type in that we we've been waiting for years and years and years to detect literally decades for someone to come along and redevelop diagon plaza and i hate to um to quash this at a moment of opportunity um again council may not like it bloody board may not like it but um i wouldn't want to foreclose our options here including the option uh that is in the concept plan for a potential height variation very good aaron i see your hand still up is it left over okay very good so mark we've had the discussion um we have a motion and a second on the com i'm sorry the consent agenda

[96:01] so why don't we go ahead and vote anyone who um doesn't want to support any of the um items on consent can vote yes on the consent agenda but no on any particular item they'd like so if we've had enough discussion alicia i'd turn back to you for the roll call yes sir council member weaver aye councilmember rocket hi friend yes joseph yes nagel i but no on f sweat lick yes wallick aye but no on f yates yes and young

[97:01] yes the consent agenda is passed sir with the nays noted on item f very good thank you very much and with that um you can take us on to the next item please all right sir next on our agenda we have um item number 6a matters from the city manager the cu south discussion of key issues great and for this item i'm first going to turn to our senior planner from planning and development services phil kleisler who will begin the presentation yes i'm going to share my screen good evening council it's a pleasure to be here today um let's see and one moment brenda are you able to see the actual

[98:01] slide yes we are phil thanks um so good evening council phil kleisler planning and development services on behalf of the project team for the cu south project south boulder creek project we appreciate the opportunity to be before to visit with you tonight and have this discussion this is an update and an opportunity for council to provide input on the direction and focus of the cu south annexation before getting into the proposed agenda we'd like to we thought it'd be helpful just to have a quick note around the anticipated structure of the annexation agreement what we would anticipate this would be an agreement negotiated by staff and presented for approval or denial to city council later this year we would anticipate the agreement being structured in kind of several different categories one of which would be general terms and these would be terms that apply to the entire site such as wetland standards

[99:00] administrative processes and then there would be other terms specific to geographical areas of the site and so and those geographical areas would be likely pretty similar or identical to the land use designations found in the boulder valley comprehensive plan shown here and so we wanted to mention that just um because we'd like to structure tonight's discussion in a way that's similar as we're working like we're working through the annexation agreement and so to use the next two hours what staff proposes is a very brief introduction by myself and then we're going to hit each of these topics in order and so i apologize to interrupt your uh slides what you're showing is just the not the slideshow mode so it might be sharing the wrong screen yeah there you go okay there's no screen option so i'm just gonna do this for now is that okay sure yeah um so we would anticipate that and so what

[100:00] we would do is to have a brief presentation and then we'll pause for q a and council input and then move on to the next topic once we're finished and we'll work behind the scenes to try to figure out the um presenting function once we're finished with the introductory uh part of this we also have staff from several city departments as well as representatives from cu boulder including derek silva assistant vice chancellor for business strategy abby benson associate vice chancellor chancellor for strategic relations and support rachelle riley acting interim campus architect and bill fox principal at fox tuttle transportation uh the university's consultant so a few notes about where we are in the process overall there are two very much interrelated projects happening concurrently the annexation and the south butter creek flood mitigation project um we anticipate um having a vote on the annexation later this year and depending on that action

[101:00] um this team of city staff and consultants would proceed with the design permitting and ultimately construction of the flood mitigation project which uses a portion of cu south uh by 2026. this is our anticipated and uh review review process for the annexation we last visited with council back in 2020 in november and it's been a busy few months since then we're very grateful for the community members who have visited with us through neighborhood meetings group meetings drop-in sessions and the over 900 um people who have participated in an online questionnaire that feedback is included is summarized as attachment b to your packet this evening and we were also listening along the way and as we were hearing things brought other items to the table as a result of that community input that we look forward to discussing this evening we've had several public meetings over the last week and a half or so leading

[102:00] into this meeting including a transportation advisory board meeting last monday and a planning board meeting on thursday open space board also took some kind of minor action that we'll get into later on wednesday moving ahead we will expect to have a process committee meeting in may and we'll also be actually visiting with the planning board on may 20th as well so there are there's a lot of history with this project and what i would um you know kind of in the more near um past in 2016 2017 the university um the city and uh the county boulder county partnered to facilitate a public process that ultimately resulted in the cu self-guiding principles and those principles included high-level vision statements for what we would expect to happen on cu south in early 20

[103:00] or in early 2019 the university submitted an application for annexation and that application was largely structured around those guiding principles and so there's been a lot of back and forth between the staff at both parties and our goal in this has been to translate the guiding principles into enforceable annexation terms last october we received some new information and published what we called a briefing book that is basically a snapshot in time about where we are in the process and um we recently refreshed that briefing book and that's included as attachment a to your memo this evening after tonight's meeting and leading into the following months we will be kind of picking up the pen and the the attorneys and the staff from both the city and the university will be drafting the annexation agreement moving ahead there are several new things in the briefing book there's a key issues map we'll get into this evening we heard from planning boarding council and interest in additional

[104:01] information around financial impacts and so we added some more information there the university did submit design guidelines recently we have a recommendation from the open space board of trustees additional information around transportation as well as some of those emerging issues that came out of the public process so there are several this is the first topic um and so we'll just have a few slides as an introduction and just as a reminder um we'll let's see cu boulder is also asked to just say a few words to council um relating to this item as well and so back in 2017 during those guiding principles uh we there were several written relating to transportation um and they were written really to state the city's expectations for mitigating transportation impacts uh and given the long-term nature of the project and really the unknowns around specific development plans we felt that performance-based standards

[105:00] were a reasonable approach for ensuring that the future transportation needs of the site do not unduly impact the city's transportation network and some of those examples are shown here that we'll get into in just a bit we also identified the site as a potential opportunity to construct a multimodal hub to help manage the employee and resident access and mobility we wanted to ensure that when that a safe multimodal system is designed on the on the site it's done so in the context of the overall city transportation network and also keeping an eye on impacts to adjacent open space and lastly um discouraging or preventing a bypass between from the north part of the site around table mesa down to the south part of the site towards colorado 93. a transportation study was submitted by the university in january of this year and staff responded to that study several weeks

[106:00] later the the universities consultant is here for any technical questions that council may have but the study in in a nutshell did include a land use scenario that that included 1100 residential units and that's consistent with our guiding principles it also did include 500 000 square feet of academic facilities it recommended two primary points of access one would be the existing access to the site which is south loop drive the other would be on the south portion of the site colorado 93 with limited and secondary access to tantra drive it also provided some additional information around a multimodal hub and again it will staff has shared those comments and we've also been sharing comments that we've received and council has also received from community members um and we expect our expectation is that the revised study will be responsive to all of those comments the concerns around the neighborhood are really around some of the uh methodology used in the study as well as some of the impacts associated

[107:00] um with potential increases in traffic uh particularly in the martin acres area south creek seven moorhead um those areas of the site generally within the vicinity of cu south lastly the briefing book includes some high-level information about where we are seeking to go with the transportation program on the site and so really in addition to ensuring that those transportation impacts don't unduly impact the city's transportation networks we also wanted to determine ways to ensure that advanced phases of development are contingent upon meeting those performance-based standards so the next phase would be responsible for example for meeting a trip cap program the trip cap program and practice would limit vehicle trips to and from the site at those specific access points and so it would be a specific number that would be permitted through those there would there need to be some annual monitoring and reporting to the city that would be established as well as a

[108:00] compliance process for what happens if those trips are exceeded the university is we're also looking at transportation demand management strategies and i believe cu wants to mention some of those in just a moment we have got an agreement that the university will construct a multimodal hub on the site and some of the basic requirements for what we'd be looking for from the city's transportation master plan are included in the briefing book and additionally we will be looking and having a discussion around necessary off-site and on-site improvements once the study is finalized as i mentioned i'm going to stop sharing the screen the transportation advisory board and planning board met last week both had a fair number of questions for the university and its consultant i think overall the tabs discussion transportation advisory board it really focused on ensuring innovative approaches to mobility that includes some flexibility for future conditions given the long-term nature of the project so kind of testing

[109:02] things out and making adjustments down the road tab also suggested more creative thinking around morehead avenue like changing it to local only with bus bike pedestrian and micro mobility improvements and the planning boards seem to agree particularly with emphasizing bike access and slower traffic the planning board also suggested de-emphasizing car traffic to tantra drive and including language in the agreement that anticipates that down the line conditions may change and further studies would may be required prior to any development actually taking place so that's my my introductory presentation and transportation what we'd like to do is pause derek silva from the university asked to um address council if that's okay with the with council um and um we appreciate your time and once we get through this topic we'll go to the next great thank you phil and um my opinion

[110:02] is we'd like to hear from derek specifically about traffic right now and transportation any objection from council great seeing none let's have derek talk to us yes uh thank you mayor and thank you council um i wanted to just address a couple of points about the traffic study there certainly has been a lot of public dialogue about it but just a few clarification points one is is that the current study is a draft study so we anticipate taking the public input council input tab input and considering all of that whenever we go to revise our final study so the the current study out there is in draft form uh it's not final form and part of uh what will lead us to that final study is exactly this getting feedback from you all and getting feedback from the public which we have and from tab and then uh just to let you all know as well is that we did we didn't create the scope

[111:01] and the assumptions and all that in a vacuum we actually worked with city staff to develop those for that traffic study so before the study was ever run we did we met and collaborated with city staff transportation staff to get those key assumptions in that study and then just a couple of other things cu boulder has very extensive tdm programs that includes includes bus passes for all students the campus pass the eco pass van pool car share programs bike share programs vehicle charging stations so both fleet and public charging stations our single occupancy vehicle rate is 50 um so there's a lot of tdm activities that we currently engage in to help reduce the impact of the campus and the traffic that it generates and then i'll just like to point out as well that um there are many instances where we've also collaborated with the city of boulder on different transportation related projects uh these include the 30th in colorado

[112:00] underpass which is now underway the college underpass baseline underpass euclid underpasses we've also partnered as a stakeholder on different transportation studies including the arapahoe corridor study the highway 119 first and final mile study and the 30th in colorado corridor studies and we're currently partnering with the city uh to evaluate micro mobility options specifically scooters in the city so thank you that's what i wanted to add great thank you derek and i'll turn to council first for questions does council have any questions for either phil or derek or i believe um phil you said that we had a representative from fox tuttle here correct so can we ask questions of them i believe so right derek yes okay super i see mark and then aaron mark yeah phil um the the uh i'm a little confused about the trip cap concept um

[113:00] how exactly does it work i mean does a gate come down when you start to exceed the uh approved number of trips i mean i think it's a great concept i just want to understand a little better about how it works we i don't think we've done it here in boulder it's i think it's fairly popular in some of the areas in california like we've had some we've talked with people who've done a similar program like for facebook and some of the other areas companies there and so what would happen there would need to be a monitoring period set up and that monitoring period would do a traffic count and if it's above that specific threshold what we what our thoughts are initially is that there would be a cure period where the university would need to retool its transportation programs in an effort to reduce those number of trips and those later phases of development would generally be contingent upon getting that number back down other areas for example those private

[114:00] businesses there's been actual monetary fee that's come into play but from the city's perspective it's been preferable to really focus on enhancing the multimodal aspects of the site rather than just assessing a fee and living with the traffic okay thank you i i think it's a great concept so i applaud it thank you thank you mark aaron yeah i agree with that i think the the trip cap is a great idea and we've talked for years about tdm with teeth and this is a great example of that about transportation demand management has actual consequences if it's not fulfilled so that that's great to see um and so derek i appreciated what you're saying about taking um feedback into account in terms of doing a final traffic study so maybe if you or bill uh thanks for being here uh could just address you know people have talked about when the trips were counted and what day it was things like that and just can you confirm that you're going to be looking at those issues and make sure we

[115:01] get those exactly right for the final version yeah absolutely we can confirm that um bill i don't know if you want to say anything else about what will what will occur between now and the final study um but and as well as some of those the concerns around the data good evening bill fox with fox total transportation group can you hear me okay thank you great um i just want to say that you know and just to reinforce that all the key assumptions of the study were done collaboratively with cu and city boulder staff in early november before we started on the study and we've been scrutinizing and potentially preparing to update all those key assumptions based on the input that we've heard including trip generation rates uh multimodal assumptions about how that will influence the trip generation rates trip distribution assumptions and where the traffic might come and go from and the surrounding networks all of those things have been scrutinized as part of this update

[116:00] process and we've also heard a lot of concern about the use of traffic counting during covet conditions and this is the topic that we have to deal with on every study we do in any any community uh for the last year year or more um unfortunately we had to take some traffic counts in november we had our study area has nine uh intersections in it existing intersections we had pre-covered signalized counts at six of those nine intersections and those six intersections account for over 90 percent of the approach movements in our study area so the lion's share of our study is based on pre-covet traffic counts and that in and of itself is conservative because i don't think we'll ever go back to commuting the way we did before the influence of covid we figured out how to work from home as office employees but we we had to take some counts during covid

[117:00] uh we did that on the six on-ramps along table mesa onto onto us 36 and foothills parkway and we had to adjust those to pre-covered levels and we made some comparisons based on historic uh counts and i would love to go into more detail but it's probably not for tonight but um we've brought those those additional uh counts forward into pre-covered estimates and and having to take counts during covet was unavoidable but it's not changing or significantly influencing the the traffic projections in this in this study we also had another thing that was of concern was uh projecting the future growth of background traffic with even without cu south and in that case we were able to rely on some historic counts the city has been counting uh traffic in all of these corridors in our study for since 19 early 1980s and so we've looked at that

[118:00] those the the change in traffic over time to help us predict the future background growth without even before cu comes into play and uh we've been criticized a little bit for not for being for implying that traffic has been flattening out in many of these corridors particularly table mesa and broadway and but the fact of the matter is that traffic grew faster between 19th early 80s and the year 2000 and it's been flattening out since so um going forward we're really looking at the current projections of traffic and that's based on all the hard work that city boulder's been doing the c has been doing with your tdm uh measures and changing the culture of how we travel in boulder and and so to think that we're going to go back to 1985 and travel the same way doesn't make sense when we're looking to the future so that that helps explain some of the concern about projecting future background traffic but those are and then the last thing that there was a significant concern is we did not

[119:00] project that a ton of traffic would use neighborhood streets like moorhead there are a couple different alternatives to moorhead one being us 36 the other being table mesa to broadway both of those routes are significantly faster both physically measuring those and then relying on some of the google maps information that we have electronically and so it's a significant time penalty to to use moorhead as your route between cu south and the main campus so we don't think a lot of people want to do that certainly in congested times there may be the incentive but you have to overcome between a one and a half to three minute time deficit to even want to go on morehead we just don't think that will be the case but so anyway with with the input from tab with the input from planning board and with the input from citizens we'll do much better job explaining all of our assumptions in our updated report and we're going to be turning the crack again uh here shortly

[120:00] with the updated information any specific questions that i could answer on what we've done no that was really helpful bill thank you so that's great to hear that you'll be taking that feedback into account both in terms of updating the traffic study and maybe writing some analysis of why you get the numbers you did which which would be i thought i did but i'm going to do a much better job thanks so much just one more question which is that so it look it seems like the residential units here will be a little different from our typical new residential units like if you if you build an apartment complex at you know 30th and pearl there's a decent chance that that a fair number of people live there are you know moving in from out of town but but my point being that uh student housing that's uh students who are living there who would already be going to you and would be living somewhere else but traveling in to see you anyway and so some number of those students

[121:00] would be coming in say from you know broomfield or along the us 36 corridor already right so that while some number of those trip those trips that are coming from the site some of them would be coming through that intersection anyway um if the students had had to live further away down that quarter are we taking that are we making any guesses as to that trips that we're removing from the roadway system by having the snow housing in these traffic studies well we haven't specifically set out to do that although that's certainly worth trying to do put some numbers to that we have tried to accommodate um the reduction in automobile traffic based on the the parking uh management that cu has the difficulty to find parking on the main campus and so um certainly we're trying to uh be make a realistic effort uh to project the impacts of or or the potential to not travel by automobile between but as far as an intercept from the

[122:01] other trips that might have already been going farther into boulder it's something that we haven't specifically tried to account for in the first draft i understand that this may be something worth considering at least in the narrative of the traffic study i don't know derek i imagine you have pretty good numbers on how many students live uh outside of the city of boulder and maybe in what parts of the region so you know maybe we don't do a hard and fast reduction in roadway trips because it's so hard to estimate but it might be worth a couple of paragraphs in the study to say how many you know some number of hundreds of trips daily may well be replacing trips that have gone through here anyway sure okay so if i look at a minute oh you want to do that too sam i was going to call it queen as well but go ahead rachel i think a really small one but just i also wonder like i live right near the area and um often drive my son to fairview high school which is sort of on the other side of broadway and i would imagine that some

[123:00] number of trips will also be eliminated if there's a much better uh bike path sort of that connects fraser meadows area to table mesa shopping and and fairview area so how's that being factored in if at all kind of like what some some changes in current residence habits by that maybe having better um bike paths and pedestrian paths if i make colloquy on the colloquy um because i was i was going to ask a question along the veins of what um aaron and rachel are asking and i just want to go ahead and put it out there so so you can answer it all at once um so my question has to do with has there been has has any thought been given to needing to revisit the city's connections plan and if so what kind of thought has been

[124:02] given to that so it kind of goes into both the questions that um aaron and rachel asked sure and i don't know derek if you want to start but i i can certainly jump in as well um yeah i can say that um to answer rachel's question rachel i think was yours specifically about extension of the path across um south boulder road to connect to the site into south boulder from that direction generally if you're making improvements that make it more attractive for people to walk and bike from one part of town to the other and it's safer because right now like if you're traveling table mesa like my my son doesn't usually bike to high school because it's especially at that time in the morning as we've heard from a lot of people it's so congested and and not a real safe route so if there becomes a really viable path for families to use especially that are getting over to um high school or middle school over there just i just wondered how that

[125:00] if that is taken into account when you're looking at these numbers or or how that's taken into account it hasn't been the in the current study uh but it is something that i think that is it does seem to be a a gap in the connection there um i'm not sure how how to handle that it's a that i know that if i'm if i'm thinking about what you're speaking about correctly rachel it's um the there's the path that comes down 36 essentially and runs parallel to 36 but then there's that path does not make it across south boulder road right there i mean and i'm not sure um i'm not sure what how to solve that problem it seems like something that maybe this the city and cu could take a look at down the road when we start developing here and start to look at looking at different tdm things we can do um i think it seems like a a good fertile ground for collaboration um but i do recognize that as an issue that kind of gap between a bicycle transit between the you know

[126:00] between campus toward the i guess that would be toward the north toward campus and back to the to the south campus yeah and and that may be mary's point is like it's only going to be you know as good as the connections between the spaces right so um i don't know how that's looked at holistically as part of this but i also just wondered for the numbers for the the counts how how does that get factored in one one other question mark one of the conversations i've had with city staff mike sweeney and i have talked about how to shed some light on that issue and then the updated report you'll see a figure that that overlays the city's multimodal connections map on top of this part of town and to help highlight the potential to improve those bicycle and pedestrian connections and and so that will be incorporated we have also um heard from city staff that maybe we haven't been aggressive enough in focusing on some of the bicycle and pedestrian or particularly

[127:01] bicycle and transit connectivity between the campuses and so we'll be scrutinizing the assumptions we've made there as well um but beyond that i don't have a specific path or a specific a number associated with a specific connection mary did that get to your question or yeah somewhat especially the part about overlaying the connections plan on this and and seeing whether or not that needs to change someone adjusts to um the needs of um this area or the the the upcoming needs of this area um and and i have another question but i'll wait my turn great and i have a colloquy and then we'll go on to adam mary and nearby but my colleague would build just about your assumptions that were made there will be on order if the build-out

[128:00] happens in the way that the university and the city have been discussing there's eleven hundred units a little more than two thousand people whether they're students or faculty or grad students the question i have is did you ascribe a different traffic pattern to those residents because they're mostly presumably going to go either to east campus or to the main campus as opposed to traveling kind of new build at 30th and pearl those folks could go anywhere right for for their trips particularly for their work but it seems like the folks who live here are going to be traveling specifically to the other campuses in town or to that campus so did you have any different travel behavior for the residents of the site yes yes we did and we were asked specifically to start with institute of transportation engineers trip rates that were most appropriate for a college type senior upperclassman housing or

[129:01] married student housing but we started there but then looked at what we know where we studied other other types of housing areas in boulder at cu campus camp of the various cs campuses and then compared the rates and made sure that at the end of the day we had uh trip generation rates for the housing specifically that was representative of of what we thought um would occur and and is consistent with what we saw occurring in other housing areas for cu in boulder and then with the non-housing academic uh portion of the trip generation we specifically used a trip generation rate that was based on observed trip making on the east campus and because there isn't an ite uh cookbook for uh academic facilities um in boulder colorado so we we there we used what we saw happening for automobile trip generation on the east campus and then applied that

[130:01] for the 500 000 square feet of of academic space that's anticipated or at least was included in this study thank you very much and then i've got adam mary and nearby adam thanks sam uh one of my just quick questions and i think one of the bigger concerns about the traffic study was um one of the only non-coveted uh times where there was uh data taken was while there wasn't school in session right which kind of is you know a big deal since we are a school-based town both high schools and a major college so um was there any reason particularly behind that date and will that sort of you know be bored out in the data in a certain way well yes there was a very good reason why we picked that date to count because that was the absolute soonest

[131:00] day we could count after the work scope was approved by the city and cu it just so happened to be um in the week before thanksgiving was the first week that we had authorization to get out there and we needed to count those six on-ramps it's the only thing we needed to count and because we had pre-covered information at all the other 58 out of 64 movements that we are interested in so we have but we wanted to get some numbers for that those six on-ramps and the only time we could count was that week before thanksgiving we compared that traffic count in during covet to um counts from a year ago before covid and came up with an adjustment factor we actually used a comparison to october counts from the previous year on purpose and we've people i think we're trying to finesse some some underhanded comparison there but really what we're trying to do is avoid the holiday season adjustment we're trying to adjust for covid not to adjust

[132:01] for covid and the impact of the holiday season because as traffic engineers we never count from the the thanksgiving week on in november so when we had a count before thanksgiving in november it compared well to some previous uh accounts that were from october in the previous year so we we that was one of the things we tested but we also took and did a count during covid at the intersection of of loop drive and table mesa and compared that's one of the intersections where we had pre-covered information so we were able to compare that covid versus precovet in november and we saw an adjustment uh an appropriate adjustment of 1.33 to take the current counts and bring them up to pre-covert conditions that's that's and that's the same comparison we saw between the october of last year to the early november of this year the pre-holiday um covet adjustment so yes we have and we're doing this for every study all over

[133:00] colorado that we have to do right now we have to go through this covet adjustment process it's nothing specific to this study but we had good data to make those adjustments and it was only done on six of of the of the 64 movements that we have in our study and and yet at the end of the day we believe our pre-covered estimates are conservatively high if anything because of the the fact that i don't think we're ever going back to commuting like we did before kobe thanks for that bill yep great um mary and nearby mary thanks sam so um similar to sam's question about the trips coming out of this area would be mostly inter-campus trips um so i'm just wondering in terms of um the the planning piece of it is what work is being done to um address potential routes

[134:02] or changes in um in our connections plan um with respect to that inter-campus travel well i'll start and then there can can jump in too but um we have projected the logical routes between the various campuses based on their physical proximity in boulder and and who might want to go where and and so that's part of the trip distribution portion of the study and then with that information that would lend um that would help define where the transit routes are put in place the high frequency transit and shuttles that will connect the various campuses and what routes they'll use to connect the campuses and we've talked about that whether it makes sense to use foothills parkway or us 36 or broadway to and there may be different shuttle routes um so certainly some thought was put into where traffic might go and how it might be accommodated

[135:00] and when we overlay that connections plan that'll help us with the bicycle portion as well and i would say that um i have nothing to add i would just dumb down what bill just said so he said it well okay thank you um and i'm not sure what with the scope of the questions we're allowed to ask here is it um and this is a question for um sam is it just wide-ranging on all of the pieces right now i think we're focused on traffic only so traffic and trips is is this part of the presentation okay um so the other question i have with respect to um traffic is um i think we can all recall the the little tight spot that we got into with c-dot in the initial phases phases of um this planning so i'm just wondering um a um is c dot at the table

[136:01] or attending some of the meetings and what kinds of and if not how will we be consulting with cdot mary can i just ask is that mostly directed to bill as a traffic item or are you asking that more to phil and the project management team i think that would be more to to the project management team got it so phil if you wanted to speak to that yeah and i might i have a colleague garrett slater joining us from transportation and mobility and he can provide some additional information about that so garrett slater principal transportation projects engineer with the department of transportation and mobility and the uh the interaction we've had with cdot to date has been very preliminary in nature and primarily regarding the access that's been proposed at state highway 93 the uh the uh the areas that have been

[137:00] focused on in the traffic study are largely the domain of the city and so the state would not be involved in that type of a review um they might come into play a little bit with any sort of uh timing modifications that would happen at the uh at the ramps to the interchange at 36 but uh largely um the the focus is going to be on the axis at state highway 93 and uh we have had preliminary coordination with them and then we'll be following up with them in more detail as the process continues great thank you that's all i have thanks mary here bye um thanks sam so i have a few questions um first i guess i'll address the easy one so i maybe am not understanding this all the way and so happy to if this is going to be updated when you come back to us um bill but you stated on two different on topics now about

[138:00] your thoughts um that you don't think people will be going through moorhead um in some of the neighborhoods because it could be a one to three minute travel time longer which i can tell you personally if it's less traffic and it takes me longer i'll do in a heartbeat um and i'm guessing there's other people who feel the same way and then that you feel that you don't think the levels are going to return to covet which i can tell you i just was in tucson arizona and it's the worst it's ever been in 25 years my husband who travels i-25 and 70 it's right back to where it was and family members who have just been back to chicago it's worse than it's ever been so i don't personally experience that maybe well there's a bubble but i highly doubt it so i guess the question comes down to on your thoughts on this are you gonna what happens when people actually when this i understand we all hope that they don't use the neighborhood and we hope the levels of traffic don't return but what happens if it does is their contingency plan and are we going to be receiving an update um on this when you guys come back to us

[139:01] so that's my first part of my question so i will say that um i'll start at the this the second part about kovid my opinion about the the pre-covered uh going going back to pre-covet for office workers i don't believe we'll ever go back to commuting the way we did before covet we found out how to commute and how to interact like we're doing right now and none of us drove to downtown boulder to be in the same room and so we're conducting business without having to drive and it's not saying we that there won't be peak hours it's not saying that traffic won't go up and down during the day but i don't believe that the office component of the commute will be as as high as it was before that said there will still be congestion and i'm not saying this solves all the problems and in in that context there may be incentive to find a faster route and maybe that route is to go down moorhead to get to the main campus and i can tell you i spent three and a half years living on

[140:01] that the southeast end of moorhead while i was attending cu and if i didn't have to go down moorhead i wouldn't have because it's a circuit it's the right turn a left turn another right there another left turn to get through um where there are other two other routes that are much more direct in terms of the number of turns and a better and in my mind a better way to go but i'm not saying people won't try to go through moorhead but we have heard tonight we've heard others talk about it in other meetings about the potential maybe to make morehead a neighborhood bikeway where it's it's just discouraged to have cut through traffic non-local traffic using a road like moorhead when there are more arterial based uh connections so i can't speak to when that's done or how that's done at this point but certainly there are there are potential options to try to mitigate significant neighborhood cut through okay so i'm understanding that there's

[141:00] no technical contingency plan it's just that there might be some plans in the work to mitigate this um and adjust how the traffic flow is i mean i'm not sure what you mean by a technical contingency plan but i mean i could route tr some traffic down moorhead in the updated study i could do that i don't i don't think i don't think that will really happen to a significant level but if the group thinks that's the appropriate way to distribute traffic i can try to put some there but again i don't think and i don't think that's going to be the route of choice for many people and i understand that i think it's just one of those it'd be nice to see it in the option because what we always think would happen sometimes is not the case and so for the neighbors who are concerned about this it'd be nice for them to have an understanding of what could actually happen or a model at least so that's just a thought there um the second question i guess would be

[142:00] regarding 36 um so often we see that the on-ramp to 36 is completely backed up so i mean is again is this coming back to us how how are we planning on mitigating this i understand that it's um again maybe a special time with covid but the on-ramp to 36 is always backed up i mean that's just a fact of life so is is there a way for this to be worked into the plan a little bit more or addressed further can can i ask which are you referring to a specific on-ramp the on-ramp that goes toward denver or the on-ramp that goes back toward boulder from table mesa well to be honest both are often backed up i was going more for the morning on-ramp into denver okay well i think the good news is that from this particular site i'm not sure that that's

[143:00] a very high demand in the morning to leave here and go toward denver it could be for spouses that are unrelated to this to connecting to cu but most of the the traffic in the morning is probably going toward the other campuses um but the other on-ramp onto us 36 which may be of concern and we have identified as potentially being of concern in the future is the on-ramp to turn left to go back northwest toward cu main campus and we have identified a way to mitigate that left turn congestion it'll likely require a traffic signal much like the signal that exists at broadway in college where one direction the travel never has to stop because there's never any conflicting traffic but the oncoming traffic is stopped to allow the left turn to go onto the ramp and we believe that's a legitimate um mitigation measure for that on-ramp congestion okay all right thank you for clarifying

[144:00] that i appreciate it great and aaron well just a quick colloquy in terms of uh nearby you're asking about contingency plans if it doesn't work out and and certainly if your guesses are wrong about moorhead maybe not so much but there is the trip cap though right cu is is held to a maximum number of trips and they they have to decrease them if they exceed them right so if bill somehow you're wrong and commuting goes to 120 of pre-coded conditions they're still stuck with that trip cap right derek's not in his head so that's my understanding yeah question yeah great things great we'll see no other mary your hand's still up you have another question nope okay um then i have a few um bill for the um traffic study you did what assumptions did you make about tantra the connection from tantra to cu south we assumed um a relatively small amount

[145:02] of traffic would use tantra say from sea south to get onto westbound uh table mesa and i don't have that volume open in front of me but as i recall it's probably three percent of the traffic uh might want to go through that way and and we did that because at the time we didn't know we don't have a finished site plan we don't know how that route might be mitigated but it was always done with the understanding that at very least that would be an emergency access into the the cu south campus but it could also potentially maybe serve a little bit of the say residential development if it were right there at the end of tantra because tantra right now stubs out into the edge of cu south and and so we did assign a little bit of traffic to go on tantra um but in the management of how to enforce or regulate that would be a site planning issue and or whether or not it's reserved for just emergency access

[146:00] got it and so towards that end and maybe derek this questions for you as well is there a desire on the part of cu to have that tantra connection because i think as far as neighborhood concern about auto traffic through neighborhoods i would think that would be one of the points of concern so what's the cu perspective on the tantra connection uh so we've had that as um look at it both as both a um connection to the site just an open connection to the site and an emergency access i think right now where we're leaning is on the emergency access because we have uh i believe bill correct me if i'm wrong but there were only seven trips that were accounted for on that uh during the peak hour we didn't assign a ton of traffic there as i imagined it was a fairly low volume and it's through a school zone and it's it's past existing residences and so um and that's why we didn't assign a lot

[147:01] of traffic there yeah so i think that we would look more toward really highway 93 as adding that as a primary access from the south and table mesa having those be the primary access for residents and the traffic coming in and off the site tantra we would be okay with that going to more just emergency access okay i i think that would help erase some questions about what would happen there if that were that way and and i i guess then bill this last questions for you if you are imagining folks taking um morehead as some kind of shortcut um from south campus to main campus i guess that's the only one that would make a lot of sense would you imagine they'd come south luke drive and then go on table mesa and then on to moorhead is that like the um alternative to going on 36 or broadway that you'd imagine well that would be the only choice the way to get

[148:01] to moorhead right would be to go from loop drive to on to make a left onto table mesa and then make a ride onto moorhead and that would be the route they'd have to take uh to get to moorhead and right and so they turn off of off a table mesa rather than going over to broadway say and and traveling of broadway and they've already made a decision not to use us 36 because they turn left instead of right coming out of loot draft great and just out of curiosity and maybe for people watching who are concerned about this how do you simulate that like if your obvious pathway that's usually quicker would be to take a right off south loop and then a left and get on 36 versus the longer as you say three minutes longer down morehead how do you have a simulation that takes that into account well we don't have a very detailed calibrated simulation model to say where you might go that the the level of

[149:00] effort to calibrate a model to make that decision would be pretty significant um and most of the travel models are not at that level of refinement to make that decision but it would it would pick particular corridors one over the other but uh we don't have a reason or we don't have a regional or a city-wide travel model to run in boulder so we had to rely on conversations between city staff and cu staff get an idea of where the desire lines were first and foremost and then then look at the grid and it's a little bit of my crystal ball too on where we think the traffic might go looking at how people are going today looking at the turns that are happening onto moorhead today versus the turns that are happening over onto onto broadway so there's not a a travel model that i can point you at it says ah that's what we ran and that's all we did but it was based on a lot of conversation and uh estimation but that's how big studies are done

[150:01] okay very good um i have no more questions i don't see any other council questions so phil i think we're good to move on and phil before so should i stay or might there be more traffic questions in the future or should um are we good for tonight i would go ahead soon i was gonna say the same thing i think i think you're probably good any other comments that come tonight that are requests to you i think will come through phil and derek to you sorry i think you've answered our questions all right thank you yeah thank you very much um so i am going to relinquish relinquish the power of technology to our more capable staff and emily if you want to put the slide up to slide 13 that would be great appreciate it so the next topic is the general terms and so we mentioned earlier that we would anticipate the agreement having some kind of general terms that impacts the entire site a few new concepts though came out of

[151:01] the public engagement process that we wanted to flag for council that we're working on one of which is affordable housing and so council's well aware that we have a policy and a comprehensive plan around annexation and affordable housing is one of those kind of center pieces of annexations particularly ones that have a lot of development potential like this like this application does other community benefits that we would also consider would be things like open space and land for public dedication and so this project is focused largely on those latter two um community benefits but we heard through the engagement process and obviously city staff agrees that affordable housing is critical and if that can be a part of this package then it would um it would certainly strengthen the community benefit package at the end uh the university is aware that we're interested in this and is also aware of the the need in the community for this type of housing and so it's basically in the queue now to be discussed

[152:00] um another thing we heard was what happens if cu boulder sells a portion of the property after annexation or the entire property and so what we have preliminary agreement on now is that if that happens the city would receive a first right of offer or first right of refusal to purchase the property um additionally if the city is not the ultimate holder of the title if it goes to a different property owner then city regulations processes would apply to that new owner annexation contingent on the flood mitigation project in just a moment we'll have a slide on that so we'll touch on it there some minor changes we are working with the university to determine how to best apply our outdoor lighting standards and wetland standards to this site as well as opportunities for the city to review and comment on this future seeing south master plan and future development plans for the site the review of plans would offer a formal

[153:00] opportunity for the city staff to review and get council and possibly also planning board input and provide those to the university it would probably include two different topics one would be a more of a compliance check like the buildings are this tall but we also wanted to work into the agreement and understanding and intent that we don't know what we don't know now in in in or what what will be important in 15 20 years from now and so the university has agreed that we'll also have discretionary comments and if the university cannot meet those then we'll receive a response explaining why um there's also no change to two other items one is the fire station and the other is a payment in lieu of taxes wanted to mention that the fire station um you've likely received some emails what is on the table right now relating to that item is two acres of land and see you south for a public safety facility um it's probably gonna be up to the city and the university to work together after the annexation at the appropriate time to determine how to

[154:01] best use that those two acres of land if that's a new fire station and um we also want to emphasize that it by receiving two acres of land in south boulder it doesn't automatically trigger a closure of any fire station like station number four so i wanted to just emphasize that the payment and low of taxes is a point of disagreement currently with the city staff and the university staff the back story there is that the university does not pay property taxes and so early in the process the city staff proposed that we enter into a voluntary arrangement in which the university would provide an annual payment to the city for city services like fire and rescue services that has not been something we've been able to reach agreement on we did provide more information in the briefing book attachment of them to the packet tonight that includes some additional information about that and happy to answer questions too emily can you go to the next slide the

[155:00] annexation contingent on flood mitigation if you could go to the slide 14. um under this scenario for example if the property were annexed in 2021 there would be a period of time probably several years maybe it's 2024 we not we're not quite sure yet where the university would forego all development except for recreation fields during that time the city would would be pursuing an earnest the final design and permitting for the flood mitigation project and there'd be a set point in time where the question would be called of is the flood mitigation project approved if the answer is yes then the university would proceed with the development of the site consistent with the annexation agreement but if no then the city could take action to de-annex cu south and so that would make it then outside the city under the in in the unincorporated boulder county emily you can go to the next slide and then stop sharing the

[156:00] those are the only slides relating to some of the general terms and so we could probably stop sharing the screen now and the question we have is that council members agree with the direction and focus of those general terms acknowledging that the final agreement will have more things but those are probably the most important great thank you phil um so i guess questions or comments on the general terms mark i i think uh uh the negotiating team and staff are making great progress on a number of issues um i have a question relating to uh a subsequent sale of the property uh phil in your in your correspondence with me you indicated that the annexation agreement will run with the land that is correct yes okay then my question would actually be for tom uh tom carr um tom if that is the case what is the practical impact of that in assuring

[157:03] that we don't get a use for the property and a user for the property that is inconsistent with what we're negotiating in the annexation agreement the question is if the subsequent sale to a third party is that what you're saying yeah and and if the annexation agreement in effect is running with the land does that require any subsequent purchaser to build uh to comply with all the traffic requirements to build 1100 units to stay within the the uh the buffer zones and the uh limited development zones um and and all the other design guidelines in effect can it be converted to one office park or a um or even an educational use that is vastly different than what we're negotiating so that let's show what runs what the land means is it's a it is a binding on future purchasers you would also mark have the option as a council to legislate restrictions uh for that

[158:02] area by by zoning it or building in other restrictions uh the challenge of course with cu is that uh they don't abide by city zoning so the annexation agreement is designed to restrict them in the future by agreement in ways we couldn't do legislatively uh if uh if you were worried about futures transfer to non non-governmental entities you could draft regulations that zoned it in a way that would protect it uh appropriately okay that belt and suspenders would be what i was recommending thank you can i can i calculate on that for a second um so just want to make sure i'm following what you're saying tom so simultaneously with annexation could we pass an ordinance say that says this zoning applies to this you know cu south area that says it's limited to um ownership by or i don't know use somehow that's educational related

[159:00] or university related or somehow gets it like ensuring that um you know part of our assumptions are that people who are living there are going to be basically working at cu and going to school there and sort of encapsulated within that region and and use so is there some ordinance that we could pass that would sort of lock that in in the event of of a future sale and limited in those ways so i'm going to hesitate yes from a legal standpoint you could um i would defer to my colleagues in planning to talk about how we would do something like that usually doing that kind of zoning is a heavy lift so and since it's not necessary for this because cu wouldn't be subject to it uh you could put it on the long-range plan or you could pass an ordinance that basically did it on for on an overall overarching basis uh i'd have to think through how you do it but yeah the basic answer to your question is rachel yes you could do something like that

[160:00] and if i can colloquy back for just one second i obviously a lot of people are very concerned that this property not be used for something other than what we are negotiating with cu if 10 years from now um cu wanted to sell the property whether it's developed or half developed or not developed at all to the toll brothers development company back east would would that be able to occur in light of the obligations that are being imposed upon that purchaser would they be able to come in and say well we'd like to do instead of of 1100 units and a couple of educational buildings we'd like to come in and do 4 000 market rate condos so right now yes um the city would have a right of first refusal which is what we're negotiating but what i'm suggesting is that council could could zone it in a way that an applicant

[161:01] would be subject to those restrictions as long as you do it before the sale before the before somebody makes an application um as long as you're not depriving the future owner of all all potential value of the land you can zone in a way that's consistent with your your goals for the community well tom can you clarify the difference between doing this through zoning and doing this by having this annexation agreement run with the land i was under the impression that every covenant contained in the annexation agreement if it is running with the land would be binding upon purchasers successors and the signs and you wouldn't be able to come in and make that proposal for 4 000 condos because you're obligated to follow this plan is that incorrect no that's absolutely correct mark as i said before belt and suspenders if you want absolutely certain you could do a legislative approach that would bind non-governmental parties got it okay thank you we're also getting the intent from the planning side too of it's sold the next day this proper private property owner has

[162:00] public zoning for a hundred and acres or so what can they do there and that may not be what we had in mind now and so what are the mechanisms to to kind of address that and so i think it gives us something that you want at least mark okay i appreciate it aaron yeah well i'll start with the colloquy that's an interesting line of questioning so i think if if this all proceeds we may want to consider changing the underlying zoning to something that would not be terribly attractive to a third party that would you know on top of the annexation agreement right so that's an interesting idea to look at down the line if this continues um my question was uh just about the the uh de-annexation in case of not getting permits process i think this is a creative idea so appreciate uh people looking into this um my question though is that to what extent are we uh required to make a good faith effort with these clauses to obtain those approvals

[163:01] like let's say that we applied for permits and one of the approving bodies came back and said you know what we can't approve that as is tweak it by five percent and you'll be fine you know what what if some future council decided well hey this is a great excuse to dnx you know for some reason how do we bind ourselves to a good faith effort to cure any problems that are found during the permitting process tom so david gear is on the project and he is researching this concept it's in its infancy right now we kind of identified it and wanted to in the spirit of transparency just share everything we're talking about um so i don't know what the answer is but um it would have to be something that both the city and the university would be comfortable with if it's in the annexation agreement and what you're describing gives more latitude to the city so but um i'm not sure legally speaking what that

[164:00] would mean well i'll just convert that into a comment and say that we should chase that down a little bit right to have something that's not just 100 like hey that they didn't grant the permit but something like you know including good faith efforts to to cure you know problems with them yeah and as phil said david's looking at this we don't have any experience with the annexation so it's a concept they're working on we'll we'll provide updates as we learn more it's a new term to me thanks that's it okay adam thanks sam uh i hadn't realized that we had moved on from comments too in the last section so i'll just save we need a traffic mitigation on moorhead just put a three-way stop at every intersection along the way and i'm not sure anyone would ever use that street again um so that that's always an option if we need to go for the nuclear option there

[165:00] and as far as this number of slides i remember bringing up the [Music] sort of fees for usage of city services since you use the city services but doesn't really contribute to them and i i realize that's a tough point but i think that's a very very important point to negotiate simply because the impact of cu in general on the city i think needs to be you know repaid in some some way along the lines just because it is a huge city entity that uses a number of city services so just want to reiterate that great and i apologize you're right adam i had not um called for comments on transportation so in answering phil's questions on this um deal terms please feel free to weigh in with anything that you didn't get in on transportation mary

[166:01] yeah thanks salmon i'm where um adam is both in not realizing we hadn't provided the comments on transportation and also on the comment regarding the the pilot fees um but my comment on um transportation is to just make sure that as we're moving forward that we're looking at the big picture and looking at how the uses in this area will be affecting our connections plan as well as looking at the travel the inter-campus travel and making sure that we have the right mitigations in place so that's my comment on that my questions uh my question has to do with affordable housing and um what are we thinking to this point and is there a um some sort of a thought to address

[167:03] a broad [Music] set of incomes for the people that would qualify for the affordable housing so in other words all staff that might be coming into the campus and not just like the um upper level staff derek this may be a good time for you to chime in i think the universities comments around affordable housing are a little nuanced and i don't want to misspeak misspeak here uh yeah i can say mary to answer your question directly we we recognize that that is a concern and we reckon we have the same concern with how to uh most equitably uh create if we're going to create housing here how do we do it for uh across the community not just for one segment of the community so that is foremost on our minds uh with

[168:02] regard to affordable housing uh you know this is something that i know the city has mentioned that is very important to to them uh what we don't haven't gotten yet is a specific ask for what that affordable housing could look like um but another another point and i've made this in other meetings recently which is that the university as a public entity cannot avail itself of the of the federal tax incentives that actually incentivize the development of affordable housing and so it's a challenge for us to to develop what is what people typically refer to whenever they mean whatever they say affordable housing so it's something that we currently we don't have an answer for it but again i'll make the commitment that we are looking for the most affordable attainable product that we can put out there for our community great thank you is that all married yep nearby

[169:03] um yeah and i'll just wrap up my comments for traffic because i didn't know we're completely done with that um so i will just say that i would prefer to go off of what our residents um are stating and their concerns rather than the thought of people who don't live in boulder uh our residents do live here and deal with this on a daily basis especially when um traffic's at a standstill or going five miles an hour and backed up like it usually is so uh i would strongly urge us looking at ways to mitigate moorhead and other areas that could be impacted uh by the traffic that's always going to back up i'm sorry it doesn't matter if coveted or not we're going to continue to increase as the population continues to increase so um for thoughts to be brought into this rather than facts is not something i'm interested in addressing so um doing this in a factual way and and with hardcore uh evidence and

[170:00] and listening to what our our residents say is more important to me all right thanks um i i only have a couple of comments um none on traffic here um derek i just mentioned that the way um nonprofits typically deal with the tax credits the light tech tax credits is they get resold at a discount so you can usually get 85 or 90 percent of the value by using a third party that can monetize those tax credits so i'll just put out there that i think you can get a lot of the value as a public institution it's not 100 for sure but that is definitely something to explore when you're looking at financing for affordable housing is how to monetize those with partners um so that's one bit and the other i'm just going to emphasize that um i agree with the point about impact fees um you know we will have to provide the the water and the sewer and everything that

[171:00] that goes on there in the flood control obviously is the main point of the project so um we will need to be discussing you know what the how to make that all square up over time i think we're all well aware of it but i'll just say it out loud here for that um but i think you know i i like the general terms that we're talking about here i think it's going in the right direction with the annexation with the first right of offer i really do appreciate uh mark the concept of looking at the zoning i think that's an important way to back up whatever we get in the annexation agreement so that's all i've got on this part mary your hand's still up i assume do you have one more no okay very good so phil i think we're ready to move on to the next section okay um emily if you don't mind going to number 16 there'll be some animations with this one this is the um the area designated public and the comprehensive plan it's

[172:01] it's of the 308 acres of cu south it represents 129 acres and so this is coming up thank you emily um you can press next once um so through the various recommendations and it's outlined there in in the darker line um we city staff are recommending through the totality of the agreement that upwards of 40 of the site be conveyed is open space flood mitigation and for the public safety facility we we just discussed um and so that's land that we're negotiating around um of the 300 acres 380 acres 129 are anticipated for development with housing being the predominant use in small-scale academic buildings being constructed after a significant amount of housing is built we can we assembled this key issues map to highlight that some of the constraints we're imposing

[173:00] on the site would actually further limit that and so emily can press next um city staff is proposing um and press it again that a buffer along the western property line be established so after meeting with some of the neighborhoods we were initially thinking about that certainly around the high view subdivision to the southwest but we also heard from the south creek 7 folks but they were interested in that and so we have proposed that and are negotiating it it'd also be a good location for a multi-use path per our transportation master plan you can hit that again emily um so that would also there's also going to be some areas the university is um developing consistent with our wetland standards and so there are some wetlands on the site shown there you can press it again emily and the universities also agreed to limit any development away from steep slopes and so that's that southwest hillside on the southwest portion of the site again and we've also

[174:02] have a preliminary agreement on and you can hit it again too on a limited development zone on the southwest portion of the site and so there that that's looking at really compatibility with the adjacent single family neighborhood and limiting some of the uses to residential and likely not multi-family residential you can hit it one more time emily um and what that would probably leave it would be kind of pockets of development when when all is said and done um given the constraints that were noting on the site so next slide we are also the guiding principles has a section around prohibited uses and so some of those uses include things like a large-scale sports venue like a football stadium that was a big concern in 2017 when we were adopting the comprehensive plan and so our task at this point is to define what that actually means

[175:00] so recently the university proposed that large sports venue be capped and so no larger than a 300 or 3 000 person seating venue the definition of this would also need to be included in the annexation agreement for what exactly we mean by by a sports field but overall that would have a similar intensity likely of potts field if that cap were to to make it into the agreement next slide the guiding principles also detail that large research complexes like those on the east campus will be prohibited what we're seeing here is um is being proposed is just for context the sustainability energy and environment community shown on the bottom photo on the top is 292 000 square feet and the sustainability energy and lab environment lab just next to it is 142 000 square feet combined that would certainly be a

[176:00] research complex and what's being proposed by the university is 175 000 growth square feet which when developing that i know there were discussions around the aerospace building as being a potential example of what that may look like on cu south in terms of the overall size of non-residential buildings you can go to the next slide please there'll be other um prohibited uses as well um the first three are in the briefing book as initially proposed by the university and we'll need to work on other definitions like enclosed buildings in a flood plain we've agreed that no enclosed building will be in a 100 or a 500 year floodplain on the site and we'll also be looking at specifically defining industrial uses to prohibit those uses as well next slide okay you can hit next until those two boxes are just filled emily um the guiding principles also talk a

[177:01] bit about balancing residential and non-residential and so the box on the left is talks a bit about phasing and ensuring that except for the recreational facilities that development will be phased only after a non-residential space will be phased only after a significant amount of housing is built the university recently proposed to construct 100 residential units before constructing any non-residential space with an exception of ground floor retail as part of a mixed use building the rationale there is to really try to limit some of the off-site trips and so that's something that we've been talking about of accessory uses that would limit some of those trips to the grocery store the other guiding principle is around housing being the predominant use and emphasizing housing units over non-residential space we don't have that one resolved yet but in the spirit of transparency wanted to share what we're talking about and that's a square foot ratio and so at any given time on the site we'd be looking at a square footage overall of housing and

[178:01] a square footage overall of non-residential space and if you thought about it as a ratio or a scale it would always be leaning towards the housing how much it leans towards the housing is still a topic of discussion and that if you have any input around that tonight it would certainly be useful next slide emily [Music] this is the other concept that you've heard about a little bit in public comment is that the university has agreed to comply with the city's 55-foot charter height limit and measure it consistent with city code however we did recognize that as the elevation increases to the west so this is a cross-section looking north and that limited impact zone is that southwest portion of the site we just saw those tall buildings like that may not be appropriate and so what we have agreement on is to limit the overall roof lines of buildings as it at roughly the height of the single family homes

[179:02] one or two story homes at the highview subdivision and so you can go to the next slide emily um and so what that would look like is this is that the highest point of the site looking north you can press next once emily and if you could just imagine a horizontal plane going over the site and no building on the site regardless of location would be able to exceed that particular limit you can hit next two more times emily that fence there is i believe the property line and so what you see on the left side of the fence is a strip of land owned by the city and in our transportation master plan there's a multi-use path coming through there but we're also talking about that buffer area which would be additional kind of additional buffering from those homes that could also include a path landscaping and so on next slide emily and that those are the key points so we

[180:00] could probably stop um sharing there i did want to provide some a couple of notes um the community input on the development of the site i think there's a wide range of views on whether or not whether or not the site should be developed i think there's there's a lot of community members who do not feel that it's appropriate a lot of concern around neighborhood impacts like traffic and the loss of the undeveloped space in this area others that are more supportive of it often cite benefits like housing and gaining more facilities like recreational fields the planning board did note some preference for more housing in less non-residential space as you'll remember the scenario and the transportation plan assumed and there seems to be some interest on capping the amount of non-residential space that could be built on the site from the planning board there was some interest in open space within the development itself and addressing that and not having a sea

[181:01] of parking and lastly that the development limitations like the height limits and things seem like a reasonable approach so that's the tee up for that item and questions and input would be greatly appreciated mark um first i think the the height ceiling is a terrific concept i'm glad you guys are getting to agreement on it i think it's it's really excellent um are you planning to put any operational constraints on this 3000 capacity facility because i i assume that the noise from that will be um heard uh throughout the neighboring residential areas so we have talked about applying outdoor lighting standards but operationally with hours of operation noise that's something that did come up

[182:00] at the open space board of trustees and would certainly be we'd be interested in hearing council's opinion on it it's not something that we've dove into with the negotiations yet well then i then i will express a view that we ought to give some consideration to those constraints because um a a sports contest in front of 3 000 rabid fans if it happens to be at 10 o'clock at night is is entirely disruptive to communities next door different types of activities there will generate different types of noise levels and both in terms of hours of operation and types of um activities we ought to be looking at i in my hotline i i facetiously you know talked about a uh a heavy metal band concert you know and uh i don't think that would be uh that would go over really well so i

[183:00] think from the from the perspective of those neighboring um communities we ought to be looking at ways in which we can um you know both keep the light and sound ought to be um uppermost in our minds is is that all mark that is it great i i have a colloquy on something that you raised that i i didn't um i just wanted to ask a question maybe it's for derek you know the um kind of outlines within the site we've seen the transportation hub and then i saw most recently there's a circle for a parking garage and so my impression was that there would be a concentrated site for parking one or two that were garage oriented is that correct or will there be parking kind of distributed throughout what's the view on auto traffic and specifically parking

[184:02] we don't um we don't know just because we don't have plans out there yet it would follow our i think what we're looking to do on campus is to is just place parking in the most strategic locations and the accessible locations uh and keep the more around the perimeter now i don't know if that'll translate out to here but i don't think that we're not planning on building a giant parking garage there i think that was uh certainly there was a parking garage that was in some earlier renderings from a number of years ago but that's not something we've discussed or have any plans for at this point we do have with regard to parking we want parking to play a big role in the tdm program so that's going to be limiting limited parking and it'll be shared unbundled and uh managed and it will be paid parking um so those are kind of the principles that the acronym is sump that's used for that but those are principles that we use on campus to discourage uh vehicle trips um

[185:01] and discard and discourage people having cars bringing cars to campus so we'll use those same principles here on the site and those are part of the design guidelines they're part of the design guidelines i'll just make a comment while i've got the floor it seems like parking might be something that we want to put into you know the annexation agreement so we understand what principles will be used and they're they're well understood going forward so next i've got mary rachel and aaron mary thank you um i was curious as to how the 3 000 number for the sports arena was arrived at and mary that's probably a question for me so i'll jump on and answer that um it so and this is um it may be just a misunderstanding uh and certainly an understandable one because where we came up with that three thousand number and a

[186:00] possibility number is we were trying to define what the threshold is for prohibited use it's not that we envision that we will build pots field out there at some point or replicate that there it really is is that as we're going through we had this list of prohibited uses and one of those was no large sports complexes and so we got into a dialogue with staff about okay so what is large and so we were really then it really depends upon a number and we chose potsfield as what seemed reasonable because it wasn't a stadium it's not like um folsom field it's not like the event center which holds 11 000 pokes for basketball games so we wanted to find something that was much smaller than that but how can then have everything above that be the prohibited use so it really was about establishing that threshold and not necessarily planning for a specific field to be developed out on that site and that's not saying it won't be in the future but we're trying to establish parameters for those prohibited uses and has thank you for that derek and has

[187:02] the um in connection with this parameter has parking been considered as one of the parameters that would go along with that we've thought about parking we don't know yet what wreck facilities would be developed in that area this would be in the area where we will have other recreation facilities uh that would be other say a tracking field that could be shared with parks and recreation city and bvsd that's one thing that's we've had discussions about um so we don't necessarily know what the parking would look like there but we think it would need to occur most likely on the public side of the line uh and have those fields aligned on the pkuo side and there's a there's a boundary there that i can envision and i apologize if you can't envision that but it's we would have to build things like parking on the public area and recreational fields would be on the in

[188:01] the pkuo area so wherever that parking would be it would not be on that in the same area as the rec fields um but we'd have to develop the rec field so that the parking was close by so if people were coming to see a certain event there or to participate in in rec sports or intramural sports for the university that they have easy access to that okay great and um as long as there are some parameters that are being um considered is um the time of day another parameter that could be considered it's definitely on the table okay great thank you um thank you for that and my next question probably is for you as well um in the building 100 units of housing before building any non-residential um how would there be kind of a leapfrogging process where you build a hundred and then you can build so much non-residential and then you've built

[189:00] that much non-residential now you got to build more housing or i how is that envisioned i don't really know those are good questions um it's a complicated math problem that we haven't solved yet to try and figure because it was a guiding principle that was fairly ambiguous that there would be a a substantial number of housing units built before any commercial units we built and so really we're just trying to come up with a with a again a parameter or a threshold of what is that number what does that mean that uh a substantial or significant number of housing units will be built before commercial um and this also plays into the the ratio that bill had talked about earlier um because there will always be and it's that's a struggle right we don't know in the phasing of development whether that you could take if you could look at that and have that ratio applied at any given point in time or if it just needs to be at certain stages and overall the development out there meets that so it

[190:00] those are still questions that need to be answered okay great thank you for that and that's all i have thanks mary rachel and then aaron yeah it was kind of colloquially on mary's points um so for one thing i i guess i would just say somebody who's um you know in the rooms and following along on these negotiations that staff are having um nothing set in stone yet so like to me 3000 sounds kind of high and um as a neighbor not a number that i i am in love with yet so i would just say to council like part of what we are doing here tonight i hope is getting feedback from you all on what you hope to see staff negotiating for um and again like that though you know i think we get a lot of emails like this is high i can't believe you're doing that and like you know nothing's been agreed to so just wanted to highlight that um in terms of i think maybe mark made the point

[191:00] about um a heavy metal band i this is maybe a question for staff but i assume that our general noise ordinances come into play here and like um sort of as we've seen happening at the um rez and they're expanding services out there into the evening hours like they're doing serious like sound level checks as to um how far away you can hear what decibel and what impacts it will have in the neighborhood so just wondering is it accurate that that um at a sports venue if if a heavy metal band was playing outdoors at 10 pm and all these new residents we know we're going to have at least 100 new housing units built before anything else there um what will that look like in terms of ordinances and and requirements for noise so i don't know the specific answer about whether or not a heavy metal concert would violate our noise ordinance but i assume that it would um at 10 o'clock and um i think really the open space

[192:01] board recommendation which is concerned about amplified music hours of operation outdoor lighting ball field lighting it's a concern about impacts the open space but it's very similar to what some of the neighbors have concerns about and so it there's very much overlap overlapping um concerns there and so i i do want to just say that it is how to apply the noise ordinance is in the queue for the negotiation discussion and so if there were even it doesn't have to be technical or specific but like what sounds acceptable and reasonable and what doesn't would be helpful tonight and we can translate that into decimal readings and stuff in those discussions thanks and and i think one place to start may just be what's in our code and is that directly pertinent to an outdoor venue on on a campus um and at various hours and then also just to add from the neighborhood perspective there's there's discussion of of these being ncaa certified fields and things and

[193:02] i will say that it has been appealing to me at cu south that um there would be fields available for recreation for people who live nearby and community members and the way that the tennis courts are structured there which i believe are ncaa um compliant those are not open like i can't go play tennis on the c south tennis court right now and so i'm hoping that um whatever is put there or most of what is put there is rec fields are public amenities and not like gated off um and then wanted to just agree i like the idea of having the parking principles put in the agreement because i could see if if we don't do that um you may get overflow at the table mesa park and ride and things like that that we don't anticipate so there does need to be adequate parking i think um conceived of for on-site and and not overlooked that's all i got thanks thank you rachel um aaron uh am i okay to go with comments yeah

[194:02] both questions and comments here great i'll just write in the comments i've gotten all my questions answered thanks for for the information um well i'll just say that that the uh 3 000 attendees does seem like a large number for sports facility to me that feels like a large sports facility so i'd encourage us to see if we can't work that number down i don't know what the magic number is but maybe it's more like i don't know 1500 or something i'm i'm not an expert in sports fields but i you are we are noticing it already in uh input from from the public there people are talking about the proposed 3000 seat sporting field which of course is not what's there's nothing specific proposed but it would be allowed under that proposed number so i encourage us to to limit that um i do um i appreciate some of the the the buffer and limited impact zones uh ideas that we put in there those i thought were creative and well designed i'm glad to see those moving

[195:00] forward i had a meeting with somebody who lived up in this uh one of those neighborhoods a few months ago who had some suggestions about uh ways they could mitigate impacts on their neighborhood and you've done them all already in this proposed agreement so that's um that's great to see just some thoughts on the the residential versus non-residential uh that maybe we do go with um a ratio i mean i think uh our community uh has a really desperate need for uh additional housing um in in in town so i would we do really want to see it tilt in that direction um so maybe we can set um are you all hearing me i'm getting real frozen okay great i can't hear you you're good um you know so maybe we tilt it to some maybe it's a three to one or a four to one ratio i don't know what's acceptable but i think we want more than you know you know 1.1 to one for housing versus non-residential so whatever kind of numbers we can get the

[196:02] university to agree to and in terms of staging maybe there's uh say that well you generally have to follow that ratio all the way through site development but you get a 15 or 20 wiggle room for up to a couple years you know like if you if you need to develop one major non-residential building that's going to put you over the the cap you could be that way for a little while as long as you brought it back uh by the the time of the eventual completion you know you could have some some formulas with some allowances maybe either a percentage on either side um or a time frame or both so that they could still practically come to implement a set of development plans so those are my thoughts i think you're you're you're going in good directions here so i appreciate the collaborative work that's all i got thank you thank you aaron mary your hand's still up it's up again good um okay thank you um so yeah comments

[197:03] i um agree with everything that aaron just said and um especially the the ratio portion of it it'll be tricky with allowing non-residential to leapfrog over the housing because non-residential generally would yield more need for housing so then you get out of balance again as well as yield more need more need for parking and all of that stuff so so it has to be done in consideration of all the other ratios so um with respect to the sports field i agree with aaron there too um that 3000 is too high and to say that that sports field um a smaller number of potential

[198:03] size would not have any lighting need for lighting so that would necessarily limit it to day use so to consider those things so that there is no potential for an evening concert or loud game or or lighting that is going to um upset folks and and wildlife and things like that so um yeah so the consideration of no lighting and therefore therefore defaulting into deus only and that's all i have thanks mary um i don't know the answer to this question so i'm not asking for an answer tonight but i think it for us to wrap our heads around it would be interesting to know what the seating is at the fairview stadium as well as at the boulder high school stadium just so that we can you know get some

[199:01] kind of scale pots field isn't probably a good one because not lots of people go by it and i don't remember many big sporting events there so anyway i will try and dig in i haven't been able to find it but what the seating is at fairview in boulder high would be a just a reference for us to have i agree with everything aaron said um so most important that the focus here be residential because i think that's the way that the the development was conceived and talked about for the longest time and it is very appealing um to have residential much less appealing to have um academic and non-residential space so i think there are two parts to it i find the idea of 100 dwelling units before you can begin building non-residential not to be substantial enough you know i would want to be thinking more in the line of 250 or 300 dwelling units just as a starting point because 100

[200:01] dwelling units i can't imagine what non-commercial building you're going to put up there of any significance that you're going to have less than 100 dwelling units needed for it so anyway i would say 100 seems small the ratio is important as aaron said and i think the focus really does need to be clear in the annexation agreement that we want residential first and predominantly um and then on the field i think mary's idea is one well worth considering of not having lighting at all um or if we do have lighting on a field that that um be the furthest away from uh residences both on the site as well as off the site so i think that's all i've got on this i think i want to re-emphasize what mark said um that the height ceiling concept was a really important i think breakthrough of a way to conceive of this and it

[201:01] really does limit the more intense parts of the development to be out of the flood plain but not adjacent to the existing residential neighborhoods that are there so i think that's all i've got and juni i see your hand up yeah um i agree with everything that's been said that housing is very important and it should be the primary focus i just wanted to just make a comment about the lighting that i heard earlier and i think as a woman thinking about safe space for women i think lighting is something that is very important especially at night time so i think that's something that we have to consider or at least ensure that if we do it we do it in a way that is that protects the safety of women and other people um who were impacted by

[202:00] you know um feeling unsafe or at night time great thank you anything else juni that's it okay very good i think that's all for this section phil yep and i what i'd like to do is maybe just combine the next two and we can hit them some they're kind of related emily if you could get us to the next slide it was number 24. the next area is the park urban other area and so this is 60 acres of the site the actual footprint of it is the old um floodplain uh flood mitigation uh footprint which was known at the time as option d um the what you're seeing here is just the city's flood mitigation project that was accepted by council last july that includes both the area of inundation excavation and also the area of phil the area phil being outside the flood plain right now

[203:02] and it would be raised um to a level that would be protected by the 500-year floodplain and that's within the public area that we just discussed emily if you could press next once please um so in this area we would recommend that it primarily be used to prioritize the construction of the city's flood mitigation project and secondarily we're also exploring areas for recreation fields the university has a stated interest in 30 acres or so of recreational fields and it's not specific to citing them but really reserving the land to use it later and design them through a planning process so what we've been able to look at is really outside that excavation area being about roughly 15 acres or so again these are kind of rough numbers with this particular map and so there would be a balance that would have to be made up and what's proposed by the university

[204:01] which is a point of disagreement between the two staffs is to locate 10 acres on in that open space other area and so this is an active part of the negotiation it's something we're working through and we're trying to look at other areas even areas in that excavation area that would be appropriate for recreational fields if through our engineers and other staff were able to to find room adequate room for the university we could we could solve that particular point of disagreement um but more discussion is needed we're also in some discussions around a publicly available track so whatever's built there it would include something like that and that's something that we're discussing and we're also we've heard a lot obviously it's a lot of dog walking there and so we've talked about having a publicly accessible dog park and so those are under discussion right now too um emily if you could go to the next one um and then hit next again please

[205:02] um so that that's a might be a quicker conversation there might be some other um questions we have joe tattayucci with our utilities division here for any of the questions around flood mitigation but i thought that we could probably also go through open space as well and so this is 129 acres of the site it's designated open space other and so this is a land use designation that indicates land in our comprehensive plan in the boulder valley that the city and county would like to preserve through various means and methods the open space other in this case is really split kind of in half by an existing levee system and so when you hear us say inside and outside the levee outside the levee is to the south and uh east adjacent to city open space and that's 44 acres and then inside the levy is 75 acres so as part of the annexation proposal the university is offering 80 acres of land to the city at no cost for the flood mitigation project what's not needed for the flood

[206:01] mitigation project can then be kind of applied to this open space area for city open space and so right now we think we'll need 25 to 35 36 acres of land for the city's flood mitigation needs and the balance of that 80 acres then would be 44 acres in this area that the city would receive at no cost for open space under that scenario then we have the 75 acres left that are kind of in play in the negotiation and so we do have a recommendation from the open space board of trustees that recommends that the entire 119 acres um be be conveyed to the city as part of a comprehensive environmental mitigation plan and that does include also the water rights for dry creek ditch number two that runs through the site and city staff and the board also really sees that as being critical to restoring the area and the vision for that so overall what

[207:00] the the staff's vision for this area is that while the city would hold title to the land we would develop a partnership with cu for a comprehensive mitigation plan so in practice this area would be restored and enhanced to offset impacts from the flood mitigation project ncu's future development part of that vision does also include removing that existing levy which is something the city wants to do to reconnect the flood and the adjacent high quality open space that the city owns adjacent to the site so around all of those we are now moving into the point of of discussing those with the university and again working to resolve the issue of acres of rec fields in in this area there's also some interest from this university around solar or community gardens and solar installation that we are working through um let's see the only other points i think we need to hit on here is that the roughly the boundary of this open space

[208:02] area is roughly the 500 year flood plane and we've agreed through the guiding principles that no structure enclosed structure will be built in the 100 or the 500-year floodplain um the open space board and their recommendation we sent meeting summaries of the planning board and the transportation advisory board and the open space board or meeting summaries of those meetings and the open space board recommendation to counsel yesterday via email but as i mentioned earlier there was a lot of comments around view shed protection so with removing the levy there will be some vegetation that'll be removed and so the board has interest us working into the agreement some screening requirements for development on the site particularly to protect the view shed from the east from the open space that city the city-owned open space there's also a lot of interest in minimizing light and noise pollution with the particular comments around the city ordinances may not be sufficient to

[209:02] mitigate those impacts successfully and so that's something that we are going to be talking about and then ensuring that any trail connections follow a standard city process we think that the community input that we've heard so far around open space is support for keeping the existing natural character of the area and and certainly support for enhanced and additional environmental protections the planning board supported also staff and the open space board of trustees recommendation and they also noted that we should consider a specific term that we will collaborate with the university on some research and learning opportunities in this area so it could kind of be a living lab in in some form or fashion emily if you go to the next slide this is the last slide of the the slide deck for tonight the open space board last week did make just a minor tweak to one of their

[210:00] recommendations that's underlined here um we do have members from open space staff here with us today um and um emily you could probably stop sharing the screen now and we could break for questions and input um on both the park urban other area and the open space area and that would conclude the meeting super um council questions on park urban other which i think we're thinking lots of fields there or open space questions or comments great well uh there we go mark and then aaron mark um i guess i would want to discuss the elephant in the room which is um there's widespread dissatisfaction with the concept of um boulder paying for phil

[211:00] to be placed on property to be used by cu has that conversation changed at all um because i see it's not part of could i suggest i was gonna bring us to that the the question of cost um after this so if we could do park urban other and open space i i i have a bookmark myself to bring that up and i'll call on you first i will defer okay um aaron and rachel yeah so um appreciate your negotiations on figuring out the the rooms for those recreational fields and if there is room for them in the park urban other space and maybe even an excavation space great um and well but while i appreciate the open space board's recommendation um to to put nothing in the oso area my understanding the guiding principles uh has some allowance for

[212:00] the possibility of recreation fields within the oso areas providing that they are in areas that are of kind of lowest ecological quality and with a restoration uh possibility so i just want to make sure that we keep that on the table that if if you know if it fits great but if it doesn't if you need five or ten acres on the edge of oso and places that are not suitable uh for restoration i think that would be worth considering um i had one comment about that because i it's a really good point aaron so the continuum of the timeline for this is that when we did the guiding principles there was an expectation that the flood wall along us 36 would be completely in the c dot right of leg and then we adopted the guiding principles and then we find out we actually had to move it onto open space and i think it's that that triggered probably additional um needs from the open space board to

[213:00] to be firm on it and i think that's and i'm not it's ultimately it's council's decision but i just want to provide the context i think that's where they're coming from yeah i i'm aware that phil i appreciate the comment but i understand where their concerns are coming from but i i do think that the the the guiding principles were written that way as i recall with the with the idea that that there are areas of that oso area that are less psychologically sensitive and that a relatively low impact recreational field would not be incompatible with that so i'm just going to disagree a little bit with the open space board's recommendation in that area um uh i mean if we don't need to fantastic you know don't rush there but i i just don't i don't want to break the deal because of because of that um and that also um appreciate their advocacy for getting um the entire oso area granted to the city along with the water rights and if we're able to accomplish that fantastic um but you know see how that goes i it's i

[214:01] don't think it's in the university's office offer currently um if we can trade for other things fantastic but i i would not walk away if we're not granted that request thanks aaron rachel i think this maybe is a question for um open space staff or parks and rec if anybody's on the on the call um you know i i use cu south a lot um and and it is a very convenient place to walk dogs in a loop that's flat like for for people that want to walk that is um you know i don't know maybe have knee issues or you just want a flat walk or whatever it's it's a great spot in um in our region that is safe to have dogs off leash and they're you know they're not going to run into traffic so just wondering when we connect open space with the other available open space and it's great that there may be a dog park that sees south in the in the future

[215:00] um incarnation as well but that won't quite have the same feel as like you know you getting a good um exercise loop in yourself so is there any thought to maybe recreating some of what's there now as potential when we um convert it to boulder open space understanding that um it you know it's not currently open space but we do appreciate it as sort of used as such right now in the neighborhood hi dan hi uh dan burke director open space mountain parks uh john potter is uh on standby too so he might want to chime in on this but uh a couple of things uh uh rachel on that is first i'll just go back to the board motion that they passed in march they did make us provide a feedback statement in regards to trails uh future trails and it was basically saying it would be to plan for what the trail system would be on the cu property would have to

[216:02] take in context how it may or may not affect open space so in essence it would be very difficult to uh plan just a trail system on the cu south property if it ended on open space without then going into a trail planning process for the open space land so the board was making a recommendation that when it comes to trails especially trails that either would go on oso which would be conveyed over to the city or that would end at open space lands that the typical planning process that the city uses plan open space trails would be utilized and that's a pretty robust property which would uh get stakeholder feedback community feedback board and council feedback and so that would uh in essence that we wouldn't design isolated trail systems but we would use a robust public process uh in order to look at trail design okay and and would

[217:00] you know right now you can park at sea south and and you know take dogs some some people uh arrive with like nine dogs that hop out of their trunk right now see south so would the vision be that we would the public would use cu south parking or like i guess have we given much thought to sort of from our side as open space once we get these acres what it might look like to try and and have some level of community access that's that's akin to to what we have now for people who live in that region yeah we fully anticipate that public recreational use of any land that would become open space is is definitely going to be deserving of a very robust discussion i would also say that the restoration of the land is also going to have to come into play because uh right now we're contemplating reconnecting the flood plain which would be a really robust restoration project so the timing for recreational trails

[218:01] uh in terms of the uh the restoration project too and how those overlaps would also have to come into consideration so i would suggest that yes it's definitely on our minds um but that that would be a pretty much a a public planning process in and of itself once we get more details of what is going to be conveyed to us and and and what the timing of the restoration project is look like what's the phasing of the restoration project and how trails and recreational use fit into that overall uh picture all right thanks dan hi john okay great um aaron i assume that's a leftover hand is that correct great so on on these subjects um the fields i think it would be super great to not have any fields on oso and i think it's super great uh enough

[219:01] that we should make that a is something that we definitely work towards um the the other reason that i have that in mind is if we are going to use oso inside the levy as a mitigation bank which can be used to mitigate some of the development on the other parts of the cu property that do have ponds and wetlands on them now i think that we want to have as much of that available as possible so not only cu's development gets mitigated but we do as much as we can to restore the values that were there before it was a gravel pit so i think it's well worth trying to get as much of that oso land to be preserved not only for um the values that we want for our open space but also because it can be used to mitigate some of the land that will be developed as well so i think there's a double upside to being able to get all the oso into preservation so i

[220:02] agree there and we don't want it to be a deal breaker but i think it should be a strong area of emphasis that if we can we want to do that um so that's what i've got on oso you've already heard about thoughts on fields that could go and park urban other i am very interested in knowing the excavation area you know i don't know how we are going to terrace that what that's going to look like but it certainly seems like i know that part of the excavation area we're thinking we can put fields in but to the extent that we can maximize that in some terrorist way i think that that would be good i can even imagine not to get too far ahead of ourselves that you could have what's in the excavation area be more rec fields and then if you're going to have intramural or things where there will be standing or seated um but not bleacher spectators that that could be up and out and places that that get flooded less than what's in the excavation area

[221:00] so i think that's all i've got on those subjects that were right in front of us adam what have you got process question um there's some additional slides about some interesting topics i was just wondering if we were going to go through those as well that were listed under uh uh i forget what it's listed under but it's like the fire station and stuff just wanted to see if we were actually going to cover those or if we needed to ask a question to bring those up um yeah we included sometimes we just throw a bunch of slides as backup slides in case we had to refer to something and so we can do that if needed my screen sharing hasn't been 100 today so you can get it so adam i was going to go to cost next and then we can go to anything else we did touch on the fire station but if we want to go more there i think that's totally appropriate so um do you have anything on the the fields or us okay so why do we do this if it's okay with council um i would say that cost is an area that

[222:02] i think is big enough that we need to touch on it explicitly and at least make our feelings known to staff and see you about that and then i would say anything else as a catch-all that we didn't touch on so um are we good with going to cost and phil are you okay with us going into costs and then other things okay um so i think um we'll make sure and circle back adam to go into anything else that you want to cost um mark brought this up so i think i'll just turn to mark and mark why don't you tee us up and and give us your thoughts on that and other council members can react there are a couple of areas with respect to costs um one of course is is the the cost of the project itself which um i would contend is probably not the most accurate given where we are in the in the conversation um

[223:01] the second is with respect to uh the payment um for bearing the cost of fill foresee you know i had understood that it was the recommendation that we take down the berm and if we're taking down the berm and you would like that fill uh if it is applicable to their needs i we either have to dispose of it somewhere else we might as well provide it to them um but i think there's a lot of sensitivity in the community um to the concept that we would be paying to raise the level of a portion of the property um to get it out of the floodplain and and i had also thought of the concept of should cost at any point be a contingency for completion of the

[224:00] transaction um and i'm not talking about it if the costs are you know 15 or 20 percent higher but if it turns out that they are very very substantially higher we either have to take the position that cost is not a factor and we will raise the utility rates to whatever is needed to pay for the project or if there's a level at which cost becomes a limiting factor for us should we build that in as a sort of a de-annexation possibility and again if it's the will of counsel that that this project and it's reasonable to say this this project is so important that whatever the final numbers come in at we don't care we must proceed then that's the way we should go but if there is a level of expense that goes beyond what we could reasonably bear even through the bonding process through utilities we ought to figure

[225:02] that out and and build that into the process those are my cost comments uh so far okay very good any other council members on our way in because nearby thanksgiving service trying to get my hand raised up um yeah i i guess i'll just kind of jump in with mark and and throw my head into the ring on this i and i guess i'll extend it to further stating that i'm more not only am i concerned about the costs but i'm also concerned about the environmental impacts of the amount of truck travel and loads that this is going to be um to carry all this dirt back and forth and we've heard a lot of this from the residents so i'm mainly raising this from a residential standpoint of how much work uh pollution and cost this is going to cause the city so again i'm still i understand that it's

[226:03] an off point from from where we're at and that we've done a lot of work but still keeping on the table that there's planning reserves that we could have switched this to that would be out of the flood plain and better situated to handle a project that's not even planned yet um and by the time it is planned the planning reserve would be ready to handle it so just throwing it that out there um there's a relatively large concern when we talk about trying to mitigate our greenhouse gas impact to to the city and the planet thank you nearby um i guess i'll weigh in and say i think costs are a big deal um i i think the fill cost is definitely one that we're going to want to both pay attention to and monitor i think there are options that we will want to return to as council and talk about and think about um i would say that i i know that we've got some preliminary work on this but

[227:00] we have talked about filling to protect against 500-year flood which is consistent with the guiding principles however that's not regulatory so we are opting to do that so we need to probably understand the difference between 100 year and 500 year fill requirements and look at what that difference is for getting down to brass tacks i think in addition to phil there's all the other components there's pilot there's impact fees that are not being charged there's construction use tax so i think there's actually a long list of items that fall under cost i don't think we're prepared yet to talk about them because i don't know that there's been much more than just listing them and knowing them and and estimating what those are but i think this will be a key conversational point because not only is there the question of what are the costs

[228:00] and what's the appropriate trade-offs between the city and the university there's also the legality of the costs and there's what might be paid if anything from the open space fund for open space land and then there's what it will end up adding to people's water and flood bills as well so i don't think we have the information yet to be able to have a robust conversation about it i'll just flag that it's going to be one of the most critical items so as we get those developed we might think about a study session where we focus on those later once we've got a lot more clarity on on some of the other issues because to be quite frank some of the other decisions we make will drive costs so i don't want to gloss over it but i don't think we have enough information to do a deep dive tonight but i think we

[229:01] can't lose track of it um nearby's point about trucking and all the work and uh missions that go along with trucking phil in point to mark's question which is if we take the berm down who pays for that and if we do remove the berm which i think we all agree is something that we want to do how much does that mitigate the fill trucking requirements so that's another component so a lot comes down to berm phil those are part of the drivers for costs but i think we're going to need to definitely return to this and return to it within the next six to eight weeks because we can't let this one lie too long to get to the end so that's all i've got to say about costs but we have a lot of hands now aaron can i just one of your points real quick sam just make sure that we're all um following along you mentioned um

[230:01] the 100 versus 500 year fill requirement and the guiding principles i think require us to fill to 500 year and to kind of you know bring their level up to being outside the 500-year flood plain for their buildings and so my question is if we wanted to look at allowing cu to build in the 100-year um floodplain which is essentially the protection that residents are getting in the city and it's a cost that we would bear to go up from 100 to 500 so we have heard a lot from community members about that what would that look like given that i think it's in the guiding principles um would that require for body review to undo that is that something that if we even wanted to think about we would need to um take action on sooner than later or is that just a normal point of negotiations i want to clarify one thing

[231:00] and then turn to tom when you say build in the 100-year floodplain i i don't think you quite mean that you mean raise enough phil that you're just out of the hundreds between the 100 below 500 but above 100 yeah right and then tom we have guiding principles if we wanted to make an annexation deal that did not adhere 100 to the guiding principles but made some changes in the annexation would we have to change the comp plan guiding principles in order to make that annexation i'd have to think about that sam it's really not my error and i didn't work on this you guiding principles generally are advisory but phil do you have a thought that that's my thought too if we had to change them the chapter in the comp plan that they're located in is a city decision so the planning board and council could make that decision um but they are guiding and so and we we are consulting with our county colleagues and they'll have a referral as well but yeah great and i'll just say rachel one

[232:02] other thought around that as we have that conversation um could also be the types of facilities that are there so you know if they're critical facilities you might say in if we're going to build between above 100 but below the 500 you might also be able to talk about what kinds of facilities could be there so just a thought um aaron rachel mary and adam aaron i'll start by continuing the colloquium on this issue um because i think it's a good point and rachel to put a fine point on i don't think the principle was that we would elevate all of their buildable land to the 500 year but that they would not build any enclosed structures within the 500-year floodplain which is just a little different um but also my when when we passed those guiding principles my understanding the intention was that uh cu would not build any enclosed structures on the

[233:01] existing 500-year floodplain or 100-year floodplain was how i sort of understood it's not how it's written but i understood that to be the intention um rather than that when the mitigation project was constructed that we would have to elevate any land to the 500 out of the 500 year level um that was put into it by the excavation project so i think it's worth looking at i mean if we could i don't know how much it varies the cost but if they could be uh their their area were in the 500 year but not the 100 year and it saved eight million dollars in filter that's worth looking at so i think it bears investigation for sure um sam i thought you were all on target with all your comments uh so i won't repeat any of those uh the costs are going to be critical obviously you know mark had a great point of if we uh take down the levy can we use that dirt and mitigate some costs that way you know that's really worth looking into um although i would not go to the point

[234:00] of putting in a de-annexation clause if we think the project ends up being too expensive it's a kind of a subjective or you know the financial requirements or may change over time so i don't know what that magic number would be so i wouldn't wouldn't do that contingent but we got to keep a very careful eye on that i just wanted to to come back to something from open comment if the person is still around some one member of the public was asking uh why what's so special about the people in this floodplain and why are we spending a bunch of money uh here and not other places just to be clear we spend a lot of money on a regular basis on flood mitigation all across the city and and city staff can back me up here if i get anything wrong or correct me but like we finished the wonderland creek project in the last handful years in north boulder the there was the goose creek mitigation project uh before that a little bit further south of that all of these are many multi-million dollars projects they

[235:01] don't protect as many people but they cost less anyway we just the point being that we spend a lot of money on flood mitigation all over the city on a regular basis um and so this is you know this is taken depending on how you count 20 years to to get to this point and planning for this project now we're at this project we're going to spend if it all works out a bunch of money on this one in a few years we'll start on another one in another part of the city and spend a bunch of money on that so joe is that affair as you pop up on the video is that a fair characterization of how we approach this yeah that that is a fair characterization and and good evening council and joe tatachi utilities director and um yes the the south boulder creek project would uh benefit the 2300 people as mentioned in open comet but really the the flood fees go to the flood protection and it's also the storm water which are two two distinct things the pipes that

[236:01] are underground that convey water and really the community members benefit from the the systems that we have in place and that we're building all across town it's it's not just does it protect your your neighborhood or an adjacent neighborhood as you drive around bringing people to school or or shopping or that kind of thing we we all sort of benefit from the collective components of our flood in stormwater systems so i think that's an important point to consider as well as we're thinking about the fees we pay and the rate structures and things like that i appreciate that and just the last thing while i i have the floor just just to remind everybody we get a lot we're getting a lot of emails right now saying like why are you doing this why would you consider doing this and fundamentally we're all in it for flood mitigation for our residents it's those protecting those 2 300 people's uh health and safety and property so that's why we're here that's why we do

[237:01] other flood mitigation projects around town it's all about protecting the the life safety of our residents and that's why we're talking about annexation here tonight and aaron i'd like to call it way a bit just a teeny bit and ask a question of joe joe we saw some pictures of bear creek you know the bike path flooding and so on i believe that that's the way that those um locations are designed right to convey the flood water a way that comes out of in that case bear creek but all along goose creek and boulder creek um could you talk a little bit about you know how we designed those greenways to help convey water and so i guess the question is in the pictures you saw bear creek is that functioning the way it's supposed to the the short answer is is yes it's functioning the way it's supposed to and i believe the the greenways system that we have uh is something that uh council had a

[238:00] big part of back in the mid 80s i believe in in establishing our flood and drainage ways and there's definitely a fundamental purpose to those systems of conveying flood water but we have multi-use paths in them we have environmental habitat recreation opportunities and all those things and in in normal weather conditions the community gets to to enjoy all of those different benefits but when we get into a major flooding situation their their purpose is to convey that flood water and some some level of flooding when you see the multi-use use paths underwater that that's an expected condition in in a major flooding situation and so is it fair to say that there has been some um flood mitigation effort and money spent in the south boulder area

[239:01] there there has been all across town and and i i have some backing up slides and i think at this point in the meeting you're probably not wanting to go into a lot of detail but there's there's a whole life cycle that we do in our flood planning and we talked about it in april of 2020 in a council study session there there's a mapping part of the process there's a flood mitigation part where we look at the design alternatives that are available for the specific drainages and then there's the actual design and construction of projects and there there's a series of slides i have in the backup that goes through all of that but uh and staff has put that together going back to 2004 we have made progress on on all of those fronts and a couple of the significant ones in recent years are the elmer's two mile and the

[240:00] wonderland creek which were designed to a level of 100 year flood protection the wonderland creek project was a 20 million dollar project and elmer's two mile i believe was was 9 million so those are some of the recent ones and if you travel around town on the multi-use path the there's a big portion of the goose creek path that's been developed in the past so we we are making progress on these on these planning studies and the implementation of project but there's still a long way to go all across the city thank you joe um rachel mary and adam rachel joe while you're there good evening um that's really interesting about like uh the multi-use path could look catastrophically flooded and yet as functioning as designed i hadn't known that so that's really um an interesting point but i do i'm obviously very sympathetic

[241:01] to people's concern that that they need need better flood control in their region um or part of town and i think that we are that that we started a community work group with flood mitigation effort so i'm just wondering if if maybe you can share for people who are still watching and have those concerns like where they could plug in or get involved or get information that might be helpful for the long-term planning yeah thank you for reminding me of that and right now in our in our utilities department one of our priorities in our work plan um is updating our comprehensive flood and stormwater master plan and uh we're working on that and planning on getting that finalized in 2022 i believe and we formed a community working group and a big effort uh a big goal of that plan it's an overarching master plan for that

[242:00] utility is to re-establish how we prioritize projects across the city and historically on on these types of master planning efforts yeah you look at the benefit cost ratio how how many structures and what costs are they that are being protected and what is the cost of the of the construction of whatever project you might be looking at and that that has been kind of the the central point of of planning those things historically but um our thinking has evolved really as a society and that the equity and racial equity and and like if you do it just purely on benefit costs then um the the higher damage occurs in the more affluent neighborhoods and so there's there's just different lenses that we're looking through and we're having conversations with a community working group those people are going to go out as part

[243:00] of the process and talk to their neighbors and we should have some good feedback to bring back and that council or that plan will eventually be in front of council for review and consideration that's that's awesome that um they will be applying that lens it's it's long been a concern of mine on this project that there's so much affordable housing right on the front lines of the flooding here so um that's just good that that's going to be a lens um so i i had one question for tom and then also just wanted to speak to mark's concern about you know if the cost gets too high do we consider that a de-annexation trigger and i mean i i get it like we don't want to annex this property and then not get flood mitigation like that's why we're looking at de-annexation um but i do think it would be hard to build that in and i think it would be um something like if it if the cost was too high from cu side to build housing

[244:01] like we would not expect them to take away flood mitigation like i would hope that at the end of the day if we have a you know approximately half of the property given to us as open space um and then affordable housing on a lot of it and and still get the benefits that we could hopefully find another flood mitigation um strategy that would work there or something it just it would feel like a bit of a a slippery slope if we gave ourselves and a future council um be out to say well if it goes up by a penny or a percent or whatever that we can undo it so i'd just be concerned about um people manipulating that feature from kind of within and then my question for tom is um somebody raised the question of you know is it legal like is our cost structure legal and i just didn't know if you could speak to that or if that's a question mark so i'm not sure i understand what you mean by cost structure well somebody i think raised um you know maybe how we're gonna do the um

[245:00] the rates of flow mitigation and i'm not sure what their it was it was maybe sam i don't know it was me and i was just pointing out that you know open space expenditure going into flood rates is questionable so i mean there's just some open questions i think we need to be clear on i'm not sure that i i feel like we're running a foul of anything but i just think it's just a question yeah and we'll have to keep an eye on that as you go forward okay so it's not there's not there's not like a huge question mark that that gives us great pause just something that we need to design around is that or or be not seen something that gives us great pause uh you use flood mitigation dollars for flood mitigation and we'll have to make sure that we account for it and aren't using it for the wrong thing but that that's down the road as you get further towards the actual plan okay and and just to clarify um if we can't use flood mitigation

[246:01] dollars for open space we can use open space dollars for open space purposes in conjunction with this i assume yes okay thanks rachel can i colloquy with you on one point um my comment on sort of a cost contingency was not based on whether the 40 million becomes 50 or 60 but would you have any qualms if the 40 million became 95 or 120. i wouldn't expect it but i i guess to me it's not the principle it's the price mac holla quebec yes so yeah i do think that that it's a proper consideration like at some point it's it's too much money right and so to me the question then is how do you um change the mitigation strategy to be workable still to protect lives because it is a health and safety question and this is why we're doing it um so i my concern is just coupling it with de-annexation not saying at some point

[247:01] it's too high of a cost but i think that um i just don't know that that that's one that i would run with the dnx station no i i understand i i guess the implicit part of what you're saying is that there's some sort of value engineering that we can do with respect to the flood mitigation project if we found that it was unreasonably high i don't know whether that's true or not but i would certainly you know want to do that if it became a number that was really just unsupportable um you know by increases in our utility rates yeah i mean i think that the whole thing is sort of a balancing act right that's why we went from 500 down to 100 is because 500 became too expensive so i would think that we would have to yeah if if costs spiraled i would look to joe i might want to comment on that uh definitely the the costs have elevated over the

[248:01] years that we've been planning and looking at design of this project and and really some of the things like the the fill and the road and the tennis courts and and those things should have been in our cost estimates when we were talking about this uh in previous iterations of this study because those are real costs right now the university has 129 acres that is not in the in the flood plain the pub land but when we build the the flood wall and the detention facility it's going to change the floodplain and so the the the reason for the fill is is to kind of make them whole again back to that 129 acres i realized that that has been a real point of contention for the community and it has been an area of focus in our staff to staff conversations with the university we're we're exploring every option and looking for creative solutions i i don't know if

[249:01] there's a silver bullet option to deal with the fill and the costs but [Music] we're in discussions on that as as we speak the other thing i would say is in this latest iteration of the cost estimate i would never say never that it can't go up but we have tried to err on the conservative conservatively high side and um we have talked internally among our utility staff if it starts going up uh much more from here then i think we would we would come back to council and and there's a point where we would say we're really starting to have some concerns with this fitting into our future funding right now at the cost that we have we can fit this into our plan and our bonding capacity and there's so much planning in process with all these projects that it's going to take time to develop other

[250:00] projects and so we have a workable financial plan right now but if it if it doubles as as mark says or or gets in the 100 million range then i think we'd have to come back and have a serious conversation thank you joe thank you mark thank you rachel um mary and then adam mary thanks sam first question is about the role of the mile high flood district in the um payment or or coverage of the costs for this project how what role do they they play and how does that work into our um plans so the the mile high flood district is is partnering with us on this project we they they provide funding for a number of agencies in our

[251:00] area and we make requests for their funding yeah for specific projects and they evaluate that and and and they make grants uh for us to use use those funds and there's uh there's a few million dollars that are allocated for this project right now so and they're also in addition to providing the funding they have a staff lead that is assigned to this project and they work with our engineering project manager and are involved in in some of the agency discussions and in in meetings with us and helping helping us uh partnering with us on and some of the other agencies on those things so they are definitely involved in this and so that that money to pay for this project has already been allocated uh it it is in the annual budgets it's

[252:02] in our in our process i don't remember the years and how much is allocated but some of it i think they have already applied some funding i would have to get back to you on the specifics of what years and and when yeah because as i recall what they do is they they bank it up um you know a little bit every year targeting that year in which it happens to have the full amount if i recall correctly is that how they're doing it you know i might i might defer to um uh bob or juni who are the board representatives on that um and i'm getting a chat note here from my staff it is it is part of their cip planning and i i'm not sure if they if they bank it up but i've i've seen it in rcip in certain years there's there's an amount yeah okay well i was

[253:01] just curious about how how that um works into our our planning but it sounds like it's all that they're they're at the table basically and um and then um my other question is about the the timing and the plan for coming back to council with respect to costs because as you just mentioned a little while ago that if you see the cost starting to go up you need to come back to council and you know and raise the flag so what is the plan there and um and how does that work into um meeting scheduling and my if it's necessary to have like a special meeting because our calendar's full and we have to talk about this um i'd just like to have an idea of what the the planning there is in terms of the costs sure and and going back to the

[254:02] question on the mile high flood district so every year when we do our budget the capital improvement projects are a huge element across all of our utilities of our overall funding needs and so when we show our fund balance for the flood utility we know what we're getting from the mile high flood district and which projects they're allocated and what year we're going to get them and so when we bring our our budget and our rate proposals forward for council approval those are factored in in there and those contributions are are part of our bottom line that we that we count on as far as when council would know if if there was an issue with the costs and how it relates to these negotiations i i would echo what sam said it is a big part of the discussions

[255:02] with the university and it's something that we hope to resolve before uh council has to take action on this uh annexation agreement uh later in the year so that that is our our project team our whole project team and including phil's goal of working through some of those creative ideas that we're throwing around with the university around phil and what options we might have so um [Music] if i think we have to dig deeper into those discussions and negotiations before we would come back to council so sam or rachel i don't know if you have a thought on that but sometime in the next couple months i think you would hear from us if if we saw that there was a big problem with costs or resolving them yeah thank you and um and then just finally just a comment

[256:00] about as we're going through these negotiations and um hoping that as we do that that we're connecting the dots on things where um the city doesn't want to pay for this and the universities want to pay for that how can we connect those two to maybe even come up with some sort of bartering situation where where we can you know we can do a win-win sort of connection there so to keep in mind where those things are happening so that if there's some serendipity that they can be connected and we can um save some money there i i think we should be looking for that definitely i think it's in both the universities and uh and the city's interest to keep working on these costs as i i think it's a big factor in getting community support as well exactly so thank you for that and that's all i have thank you mary i've got adam and then

[257:01] rachel adam yeah i have a quick question about dirt um how is the negotiating process for the dirt going to work because that's not something i've actually heard a lot about who gets to control who buys the dirt who sources the dirt it's a dirty sort of situation so i i think as it stands it's our our project is changing the flood plain and the concept is that we we would place it as part of the as part of the project the city would but i think when we when we get down to it and it's probably going to be cost that is among the last issues that were we're working on with the university uh somebody said earlier tonight nothing's been agreed to yet so it's kind of all on the table how how all that's going to work

[258:02] gotcha i just don't want to run into a situation where cu gets to choose where the dirt comes from and then the dirt comes at a substantially higher price for no apparent reason or someone gets favoritism and sourcing the dirt something along those lines i just want to make sure we make it a transparent and you know easy to follow process um also you said you're trying to think of all the creative solutions you can i'll just provide one comment that you know seems to make sense if we have any really um excavation intensive projects for flood mitigation or anything else that we could line up with this to try to do that as best as possible um if this is actually you know what we decide to go forward with eventually um or if we need to have a dirt drive let's let's do it

[259:00] but we we definitely do that in our in all of our projects if there are sources for things and there's uh synergy between projects to to use materials from one area to another uh we do that the contractors that that work on our projects are creative in sourcing materials so um that'll definitely be in the conversation okay um rachel well just to follow up on adam's point there obviously that's part of why we're talking about looking at maybe just 100 years worth of dirt rather than 500 years because that's less dirt that would be required there and also that if the berm comes down it's just so close to it that that would be really nice to be able to just shuttle it right over to the filter and i don't know how much synergy is is an option there but just to say that we're definitely thinking about dirt and thinking about making dirt cheap um and also just wanted to

[260:03] say from my perspective or my understanding is we've heard many people say why can't you do a land swap and you know the the shorter answer is we can't do that right now but um i don't think we're precluded from doing it in the future if people wanted to if it was a win-win for the city and cu i don't think anything about this annexation means that we couldn't come back to each other in in one three five ten years and say actually that's better so just putting it out there i don't i don't think that doing this annexation forecloses us looking at the planning reserve area down the line um and then also just wanted to ask procedurally sam um might it make sense to invite derek or abby to respond to anything tonight so that we don't um get back into negotiations and wish that we had had something lifted up to all of council from their perspective so that's a good idea i'll come back to

[261:00] everybody's staff from see you in the city once we're finished so yeah mark just one more question about dirt for joe um that seems to be the the main topic um the berm is the berm it's just sort of sitting there do we know enough about it yet to get a a really a firm estimate as to what it would take to deconstruct that berm since we're talking about cost is that a cost we could actually ascertain yes and uh i don't personally have the details of all those uh those types of things but brandon coleman our project manager is is thinking about that and working on it um that i asked him about the the material from the levy and could that be used in the in the fill and definitely a thought that it could be used in our earthen embankment for the dam itself there there is not a significant amount there

[262:02] to to really make a huge dent in the fill placement that we're talking about but um it all helps and and sourcing what's available on site from our excavation area and and from the the levy would be potential options okay thank you thank you mark and then i'll come back to you adam um i'll let you kick us off with anything else that council wants to ask about or make comments about yeah uh i want to talk very briefly about the fire station um kicking off with the understanding that mark and i went and visited fire station number four and i think we were both pretty blown away by what it is [Laughter] and so yeah i just wanted the three very brief two sentence answers to these three questions you have on this fire station

[263:00] slide um and if you need me to read them i i can do that it's slide number 30. if you want to put those up and i think maybe staff could kick us off with the first one how did the discussion start yeah i do have talking points from our fire chief but to not dwell not to read through those for two minutes um the discussion started um when we made our initial sponsor response to the annexation application in 2019 we identified that there's just an opportunity for collaboration between the city and the university on something here it seemed like a mutually beneficial arrangement to have additional capacity in south boulder and then also its benefit for the university to have a closer fire station too and so it seemed like a win-win situation that the university was open to um it progressed throughout the

[264:01] year or so and and they ultimately had made a firm offer of two acres of land and so in practice i think we annex the site if it's annexed with that arrangement and then there needs to be further analysis by our public safety personnel and others to figure out what makes sense there but again it doesn't require us to close station 4. insurance rates there was some discussions around whether or not they will increase insurance rates and so without the talking points in front of me i would say in general it's the city doesn't have as many um as much leverage or influence over the rates of insurance but makes decisions um to increase coverage and ultimately which the actions cumulatively will ultimately decrease insurance rates if that makes sense um yeah that's that's all i needed and just

[265:01] for anyone who doesn't know fire station number four is a relatively small single-family home with a glorified rv garage um that houses our fire engines so it seems very insufficient for what the the needs of boulder are yep i think that's an understatement so anything else adam any other council folks want to ask questions raise issues if i could just say one thing sort of yeah um i i think it's important to recognize that a lot of community members don't want anything here at all like we get emails saying that all the time and i totally understand that i probably fit in that sort of group of people that doesn't ultimately want to see anything here but i also understand that there are competing needs in the community

[266:00] and to work on a good faith basis to try to find the best solution to those competing needs is super important so um just understand community wide that your input is being heard and we still have a process here that we have to go through to make sure that we're sussing out the best solution for the problems we have here so just wanted to say that adam okay i don't see any other council hand so i'll turn first to our staff anything else that you want to ask us or want to let us know any responses no we um will be working we appreciate um aaron and and mark helping us out with the process committee and so we'll work with them on some scheduling matters um with the cost i think there's a lot to chew on with the questions around cost and if that's more focused on

[267:00] utilities and flood mitigation or is there additional information around financial modeling with development activities and things like that that we have not done but instead of relied on impact fees and so i think as we're leading up to that study session we'll try to figure out a way to understand council's expectations for what that should look like and what sort of analysis should be completed okay thanks for that um now i'll turn to see you derek any anything you want to leave us with any answers you want to give or comments uh sure thank you sam uh i'll say something and then i'll turn it over to abby see if she has anything to add but i would just say that um based on the conversation tonight what we've heard this has been very good information for us to hear and i think that we are optimistic that we're all working in good faith to reach an agreeable solution

[268:00] to to to this transaction to find out how we can get annexation how we get flood mitigation how we can make all this work in a way that will work for both the city and cu and so really appreciate your efforts and um yeah yeah this has been very a very uh positive uh meeting for us to be involved in super happy thanks derek and yeah i'm not used to introducing myself at the end of a meeting but i will because i haven't met all of you my name is abby benson and uh i know many of you know francis draper who has been working on this project for a long time and recently retired so i'm attempting to step in her very large shoes and and help work with derek and the rest of the university to move this project forward and i just want to echo what derek said i think this has been really useful to hear your direction in the comments um i think you know we're very optimistic about the progress has been made and have appreciated the commitment of staff and council to work together i say i agree with you

[269:00] i think costs are going to be a big issue so i look forward to digging in on that so that we can make sure that we're you know bringing an agreement to the campus leadership and also our board of regents who have the fiduciary responsibility for the university that we can all come to agreement on but it's uh it's important for life and safety and it's important for the university and our future so look forward to the opportunity to keep the discussions going so thanks for letting us be here tonight super well thank you for being here to see you staff thank you for a very good presentation on a very complicated subject thanks for breaking it down into chunks that we can manage in our heads um i will echo what adam said i've been doing a lot of that lately i think that this is a project that has a lot of disparate interests involved life safety first and foremost how this floodway fits into our management um we are a city with the highest flood risk of any major city in colorado so we have

[270:02] to recognize that being situated right up against the flat irons is beautiful but it also has the um issue that we have drainage ways that come into our city from those mountains and we have to manage that risk so i i think all of us on council recognize that in a perfect world we'd all have open space outside of our back door and we are working with the university to come up with a deal that is fair and does the best job possible of preserving open space both for recreational use and for the natural and environmental values that that we care about so much but sometimes you know when you have competing interests the job of government is to balance those competing interests in a way that gives everybody the most that they can get in a deal and so that's what we're working on we're working very hard to listen to input from the community to help us do the best job we can at

[271:00] that so it is a complicated difficult project it's got a long history and we are working as hard as we can to make sure that we represent the interests of the whole city as best as we can so with that if i don't see any more comments i don't see any i'll say thank you again to staff and council and everyone have a good night man everyone [Music] you