April 27, 2021 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[27:40] okay so I do have 6 o00 on my end if Channel 8 is ready hello C from Channel 8 we're live on a you said we're live we're live thank you so much good evening and welcome to the Tuesday April 2 7th fer city council study session we have two announcements

[28:02] prior to heading into our agenda discussion our first announcement concerns the covid-19 exposure notifications ah that just took over my computer give me a second not uh our first announcement concern the covid-19 exposure notification and vaccination notification app to sign up or learn more go to www.you phone.com for more local information on getting your vaccine and sign up for notifications go to b.org back slid vaccine notification sign up our second announcement concern boards and commissions you still have time you still have time to apply to serve on one of of our city boards or commissions applications are still open

[29:01] for the Boulder Junction access District parking Boulder Junction access District travel demand management and the beverage licensing Authority anyone interested in applying please visit our boards and commission's website at https back Boulder col. V backboards in commissions all right so tonight we have three agenda items the first one is the youth opportunities Advisory Board fall 2019 spring 2021 action team accomplishments the second agenda item is the financial update and the third is our update on approaches to Safe Space Management of public areas and sanctioned

[30:00] camping please uh take it away Chris great thank you so much mayor protim Joseph and good evening council members uh for our first agenda item tonight I'm first going to introduce Kurt fobber our director of Housing and Human Services who will introduce the rest of the team uh good evening Council um so the the yoab program sits under housing to Human Services and it's uh led by brand Brandon blue who um will be starting us off and um uh he's joined by Audrey bahen she's a senior at uh at Boulder high school and Diego Smith who's a senior at Fairview High School um I know from previous uh presentations um uh in talking to previous council members this has always been one of their favorite agenda items of the year um I I think it will again this year and um annually um

[31:03] yoab does a dinner with Council and um we're hoping next year that it's going to be an awesome dinner um because two years since uh since doing that um so with that I will uh hand that over to Brandon thank you thank you Kurt appreciate it uh and good evening Council thank you so much for having us and taking the time to listen to some of the activities we've been working on over the last year and a half or so uh as well as a anti-bullying policy uh that we're hoping that the the city approves uh and with that um the stars of the show are are Audrey and Diego um and I will turn it over to Diego who will be sharing uh the presentation so thank you um so hi everyone my name is Diego like

[32:00] Brandon said um I was already introduced but I'm a senior at Fairview High School and this is my second school year on yoab and I I really enjoyed all the time I've spent as a part of yoab and again I'd like to thank all of you for taking the time to um to take to listen to our presentation and give us the time to speak here hi everyone my name is Audrey and I'm a senior at Boulder high school as Brendan has said and this is mainly my first year on yoab and like Diego has kindly stated I'm really thankful that you guys are here today and are listening um listening to what we're about to say um to start we're this is our youth opportunities Advisory Board 2021 2022 2021 activities but before we start we'd like like to tell you a little bit more about our

[33:01] organization so who are we yoab is an organization that promotes the youth voice and the community by providing opportunities for City Youth and Advising the municipal government on youth related concerns and I can take this one Paula uh unfortunately wasn't able to join us this evening um as she went on this trip last year but uh four years ago city council uh recognized that there was a lot of Youth commissions at the National League of cities conference uh every March and so approved UAB members to go and so for the last three years we've had the really cool opportunity to to go to this to go to this conference each year uh and meet a lot of our elected officials meet other youth commissions uh there's a bunch from Colorado that actually attend this uh which is uh which is super cool to see what they're

[34:00] doing and kind of look at Best Practices for youth commissions uh not only in Colorado but around the country for smaller municipalities uh so a total of 12 have now gone four each year for the last three years uh unfortunately I I was mentioning to Bob a little bit earlier uh we literally flew home when the pandemic went uh full-blown and essentially the country shut down so we're fortunate to go last year obviously not did not attend this year it was all virtual but uh really appreciate that opportunity I know it's a it's a pretty cool thing to to show to students that are interested in yab that this opportunity exists so we're really appreciated that dieo if you want to go to the next slide so this was um two years ago um and then last year and uh those are our members that were able to attend which is which is super cool to

[35:02] um I know after January 6 it feels a little weird to see these pictures considering we um the second photo is from Nancy Pelosi's um office uh but again just such a cool opportunity for our for our students uh and we're really grateful that that we were able to attend and so now we wanted to take the time to talk about a few the activities and projects that yab has been a part of and that yab has LED and so one of these was in relation to the 2020 census that was taken last year and so in response to the census a group of yoab members got together and we designed and helped translate local census awareness materials in hopes of better reaching all of Boulder and better informing everyone we could in Boulder about the census and so along with making these materials we also worked on dispelling common misconceptions about what's in the census and what's a what's asked in it and who who can access the information from the Census and so we

[36:00] wanted to dispel the miscon misconceptions about how answering the census might hurt you or your family and we wanted to educate everyone we could about how important it was that everyone filled it out so that everyone was counted and so we distributed this information and these materials throughout several Boulder area schools and different areas just to try to reach as many people as we could so one of our next activities was the covid social distancing awareness video in which we administered and produced a bilingual awareness video regarding better ways to safely practice and social distance and as well as reduce the spread of covid-19 in this video we contain safe practices to follow and helpful tips to stay entertained during quarantine it was also featured on all social media pages of the city of bowler the city of bowler's we Weekly Newsletter Bowler High Schools Panther TV and Fairview High Schools

[37:02] announcements and next is the [Music] video [Music]

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[41:14] and so that was just the video that we had made last year for the covid-19 social distancing awareness oh sorry about that um and so another project that we got involved with last year and one that I was personally involved with in planning was the climate change youth Summit um I really enjoyed this produ project um so prior to the pandemic in early February last year yoab hosted a climate change Summit for youth that took place at the main library and so we started off the summit with actually having Congressman Joe nus coming to speak about the importance of climate change and how it's very important that we address the issue and fight back against it as quick as we can as best as we can and so once Congressman Theus was done speaking we broke all the youth and

[42:00] attendance out into smaller breakout groups where they had the chance to voice their concerns about climate change and provide ideas on how the city can combat climate change and these breakout sessions focused on multiple different aspects such as energy usage or um waste materials and trash Recycling and compost and another project that yoab does every year is the Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service and so every January on Martin Luther King Jr day we organize a a number of volunteer opportunities for youth around the Boulder area and Boulder County to get involved in and we just we tried to Target Youth and just give them all opportunities to give back to the community in whatever way we can uh unfortunately we were not able to do this this year in 2021 due to covid-19 but last year we were able to do it and it was a great time uh normally every year we would invite all the um all the attendants and

[43:00] all the youth volunteers to a breakfast where we' all get together and just socialize and get to know each other and meet new people and then once the breakfast was done we would all split out into a number of different groups that would go to different volunteering opportunities in the area and we would just spend the day volunteering for those places and just giving back to the community in any way we could and then every year to appre to show our appreciation for all the youth volunteers that come out we design these t-shirts and they always look really cool there's an example of the one on the right there and I always think they look really cool and I think it's just a great experience to be involved in overall all right so another activity that we've done is the parks and wck master plan in which we created a survey to firstly understand what the Youth of Boulder wanted from The Parks and Rec Department of bowler based on different subject areas as well as we are currently in the process of creating a video detailing possible next steps and Parks inter future plans after we finish

[44:02] that we plan to create a survey a post survey asking the youth for their opinions on the future steps and any ideas or concerns they may have and we will then present those ideas to the parks and rec board you're welcome to see the preer Linked In This slide I will also put that in the chat for you our next activity is the Boulder police master plan survey where we conducted a series of ways to help gain feedback from the 2021 police reform one of which was the police or the police reform one of which was the police reform survey and this survey sampled feedback from high school students that live in the Boulder Community in regards to their thoughts and concerns towards the police the Boulder Police Department some example questions um were what's one policy you would like like the police to change or add in their practices how do you believe your peers view the police and

[45:02] if you have if you had had any experience with the police how was it again um there is a Sur the survey is linked in the slide and I will also put that in the chat but I would warn you a lot of the responses that we gained are very negative and they might be due to the fact that a lot of the responses were pre the king su's tragedy and so another project that yoab does every year is the outstanding youth volunteer Awards or oiva as we call it and so this is where we we find nominees all around the Boulder area of Youth that have shown outstanding volunteer service in their communities or their neighborhoods and normally this is recognizing youth yearby year but due to the covid pandemic and the situation as a whole the one we are planning to uh recognize youth volunteers from 2019 2020 and 2021 won in the upcoming OA Awards and so usually we would host a

[46:00] breakfast ceremony and we would we would invite all the nominees over and have a breakfast with them and then at that ceremony we would award them with all the OA awards that we um that we had and we were going to hand out unfortunately due to covid we are not able to do a breakfast this year um but we are still planning on um on recognizing those outstanding youth volunteers and so instead of the breakfast ceremony we are going to have yah members personally deliver the awards to the volunteers homes and just give them that recogn recognition that we feel that they deserve for giving back to the community in so many ways and so any middle school or high school student can be nominated and these nominations are usually done by their peers or teachers or volunteering supervisors or parents or anyone that knows them and knows what they do to volunteer for the community and help out the community and so these nominations are done by either emailing Brandon who's our coordinator at that email right there or we can or there's a

[47:00] document where people can nominate the youth on our website at www.you.org and so all the nominations for this year's OA are going to be due by May the 15 and we hope to collect as we hope to collect a ton of nominations so that we can award everyone who who we feel deserve it and then another thing about yoab is the membership normally yoab consists of about 16 high school students from high schools around the Boulder area and Boulder County uh this year due to covid we've been cut short and so we're down to 12 members but it's still a really great group of students and I really enjoy being a part of it and getting to know everyone that's a part of it this year and So currently we are accepting applications for the 2021 2022 school year and these applications can also be found on our website at the same link and we are soon going to be promoting these membership opportunities in a number of different areas throughout the city of Boulder such as schools and parks and other places like

[48:00] that all right so we believe that it is important to have an anti-bullying policy so with that said here's our idea for a policy prohibiting bullying so we wanted to start out this policy with defining bullying and so the definition of bullying that we came up with was severe severe P pervasive or persistent AC of conduct physical electronic or verbal that's based on actual or perceived differences in the victims um any of these traits that are described below and there are a lot so I'm not going to read all of them because that would take a while but just to name a few there's disability uh political affiliation race ethnicity religion um financial status and anything else like that and additionally the way we Define bullying is that it can reasonably reasonably be predicted to place the

[49:01] youth in reasonable fear of physical harm to their person or property cause a substantial detrimental effect on the youth's physical or mental health it can substantially interfere with the youth's academic performance or attendance and or substantially interfere with the youth's ability to participate in or benefit from the service activity or program that they are taking a part in and being bullied in So 20% % of of us students in grades 9 to 12 reported being bullied and I feel that it's safe to assume that so many others have gone unreported as of 2020 4.2% of students have been bullied by teachers occasionally 5% very frequently 3.2% of students have been bullied by other students occasionally 1.9% very frequently and finally 49% of children in grades 4 to 12 have have been bullied by other students at school at least once so we see these statistics as

[50:02] frightening and really terrible and so yoab as a group wanted to come up with a way and a way to respond to these and hopefully reduce bullying and so we wanted to create a policy that would prohibit bullying in all of the youth serving city services why you may ask while as an organization that values unity and safety amongst other things we want to stop the advancements of bowling as it is a violation of our safety and dignity in shared spaces like schools colleges and workplaces bowling can happen anywhere and this is why we want to emphasize a policy that not only prohibits bowling in youth city services but also prohibits it in activities programs and Facilities as it pertains to the youth and so we plan to do this by this so we hope that this policy would protect the dignity and safy safety of the youth in all of the youth serving City the youth serving city services activities programs and facilities and

[51:02] we would do this by prohibiting bullying harassment and intimidation of any kind in any of these services and so we wanted to achieve this by having leading agencies and departments helping leading helping to lead agencies and departments in providing Services activities programs and Facilities to Youth and we would hope that thirdparty organizations that receive city funding for you programs would establish a clear policy for reporting addressing and preventing bullying and this would include a requirement for annual training for all staff in the activity on that on said bullying policy and on the best ways to prevent bullying in any situation so acts of bowling including cyber bowling whether by youth volunteers or staff are prohibited in all youth servicing C youth servicing city services activities programs and Facilities it is prohibited to retaliate against youth volunteers and staff members who report information about an

[52:02] act of bullying or witness and AC of bullying so we hope that um we hope that with this policy we can regulate addressing and further implementing as well as limiting bullying amongst the youth Sur by the city of Boulder turning acts of violence whether it be virtual emotional mental or physical to two acts of compassion kindness and assistance so following this presentation to the city council and incorporating council's feedback yab will take the policy back to the city manager for approval and implementation and so for more information about the policy um we would ask that you contact Brandon our program coordinator U there's his phone number right there that you can text him at or there's the email right there if you'd like to contact him in that way and additionally we'd like to answer

[53:02] any questions that any of you may have right now at this moment and we will do our best to answer them in whatever way we can thank you so much for a wonderful presentation and yes our first question will be coming from council member Yates hey Audrey hi Diego that was a great presentation thank you so much I'm so sorry that the seniors didn't get a chance to go to Washington this year for National League of cities but I am I'm confident that we'll be back at it again next march I did have a question on the anti-bullying um uh uh resolution or proposal that you you made do you know if the um the school district Boulder Valley school district has um passed antibullying resolution similar to this as far as I'm aware of um just from my perspective as a student at Fairview I don't believe they have um I believe that there have been some efforts taken by teachers and counselors and possibly the superintendent to promote

[54:00] anti-bullying um like materials and just source and just having teachers try to promote anti-bullying in schools but I don't believe there's been an official policy or ordinance such as the one we're trying to create that has been put into place in the schools okay yeah sorry is there sorry I was just going to say I could also attest to what Diego said for Boulder high school we don't really have a a policy um for enti bowling but we do have like some clubs that are not really um highly promoted great okay thanks a I was just curious obviously what you're proposed is is for um youth serving um activities and facilities in the city so that's I get the fact that that's different from the school district I was just wondering if the school district had taken action on that as well and if so uh was going so um well thank you so much for that proposal I think it's just

[55:00] great thank you very much our next questions coming from council member young Diego and Audrey awesome presentation you guys have been busy all year long thank you for all your work and for being here tonight um my first question is is is that a new logo and did you guys design it um I'm not entirely sure whether it is maybe Brandon can answer that question for us yeah I I can answer that um so when I started in uh April of 2018 uh the students were saying that our old logo was uh quite outdated uh so yes we designed a new one uh we used a graphic designer uh that I was familiar with uh to create that uh so yeah that was that was um developed uh towards the end of 2008 18 well it's pretty awesome thank you for doing that yeah thank you yeah um and my next

[56:02] question is um in the proposed policy you have a list of um items that constitute bullying and I'm wondering how closely those align to the human rights ordinance and the the um yeah the ordinances that we have already in place in the city uh I I would have to read those again uh and I can get back to you on that um I would assume it's close uh but I without having it in front of me I'm not sure if it aligns perfectly with it but um my hope that would be that it is um but I will I can get back to you with that yeah thank you and just one suggestion that I would have is if they don't align to bring them into alignment either either um have us change the human rights ordinance so that we cover everything in the bullying ordinance or

[57:01] vice versa whatever is more practical thank you thank you that's all I have is there any other thank you Mary is there any other Council question please go ahead Mark no it's not a question it's a comment I just want to congratulate you guys that the social distancing uh film was astonishing good and frankly if we could have had that film shown to every family in America we would had much better compliance with social distancing practices and maske wearing Etc I it was it was a fabulous fabulous presentation and I thank you very much for putting it together thanks thanks Mike thank you is there any other council member questions no well I do have a comment I'd like in a question as well I'm wondering based on the

[58:01] presentation and I understand this idea of having for the bullying um the third-party data collection but what I would like to know how do you know and how to improve the system what is I guess the reporting mechanism coming from the third parties because I think you mentioned um um you know city services or or organizations that receive funding from the city um so if they even if they keep those records how do we keep them in check is there a process for that yeah so go ahead Diego I was just gonna say right now we don't completely have a process um but that's something that we hoping to take feedback or that's just feedback that we're grateful to take from this from this meeting and this call and so it's definitely something that we'll work on

[59:00] incorporating into it as we move forward well thank you so much for this presentation I have to say it's very inspiring your definition of bullying you know that's something that I I guess other cities as Mark mentioned around the country can take you know can learn from because again bullying it has so many different facets in the fact that you thought of all all of them or at least a lot of them it's really inspiring and it will protect a lot of young people in our community and thank you for all the work that you've done well thank you all uh we really appreciate the time and and insight and input in into um what we've done and listening to some of the things we've been working on over the last year and a half um we're we're really grateful your for your support um and thank you Diego and Audrey um as always great job uh and have a great rest of your

[60:01] meeting thank you very much thank you so much everyone thank you alrighty thank you um so there's no more questions coming from Council Chris will you please uh take us to the next presentation sure thank you uh for our next item is uh Every Spring we do a financial updates and so I'm happy to first introduce Cheryl patelli our CFO thanks Chris um so I think Carl is on the presentation thanks Carl thank you so um next slide please I I first want to just start start by thanking my amazing staff for all their work putting this presentation together

[61:00] as well as the financial strategy committee they really helped um with their great feedback on it so tonight we're going to start with the 2020 Financial results and then move into our updated outlook for 21 and 22 I'm going to hand it over to our senior budget manager Devin Billingsley for the American Rescue plan act funding and then we'll take uh then we'll talk next steps and any questions it is a longer presentation so feel free to to stop me throughout the presentation if you have questions on specific slides next slide so I'll start with the 2020 Financial results and first we'll cover our sales and use tax results for all of our funds and then get into a little bit more specific about the results for the general fund as well as a couple of our other major funds at the city next slide so as we present the city's

[62:01] Financial picture for 20 and 21 we wanted to recognize that we are heavily relyant on a local economy that's been significantly impacted by covid and this slide along with the next four slides that you'll see really speak to the fact that Boulder in many cases has been more adversely impacted than our surrounding communities so during 2020 we saw a greater than 70% loss in our in-person Workforce as you all know CU went remote um it also led to the cancellation of events at both CU and throughout the city we saw a significant decline in accommodation tax um many of our or most of our businesses adjusted their Staffing and or wages we saw negative job growth and also also as we'll speak to in the next few slides the lower wage jobs were unfortunately disproportionately impacted by the covid

[63:03] related reductions and also our brick and mortar stores were disproportionately impacted by covid so next slide so the next four slides we received from our partner CU as you all um are aware we went into a contract and they're helping us with our economic modeling uh throughout this pandemic and this first slide shows the employment year overy year as of March for the boulder um MSA stands for Metropolitan uh statistical area and as you can see on the slide Boulder's employment is lagging the state and other msas in terms of the employment recovery in fact it ranks in the bottom quintile among the msa's national Al for year-over-year growth and leads only the gy area MSA um within the state of

[64:01] Colorado next slide so this chart shows the percentage change in jobs by industry Boulder MSA is in gold and the state as a whole is in blue and you can really see here where we have been um impacted compared to the rest of the state so Leisure and hospitality and government Industries account for 87% of the losses among our six uh losing Industries for the MSA we do have a few that outperform the state um you can see on the far right manufacturing professional and business services and then trade transportation and utilities next slide so this shows the jobs um change in jobs for Boulder the chart on the left left uh represents percentage change while the chart on the right is the change in the actual number of jobs

[65:01] uh represented in thousands and again here it shows the Leisure Hospitality state and local government being hit the hardest next slide um unfortunately we weren't able to get this slide for Boulder itself but given the previous slide showing a Leisure and H Hospitality we feel it really is um a good indication of what the the graph might look like for Boulder this slide demonstrates the desparate impact to our low wage earners during the pandemic and um as you can see um many of the other middle inome and high income really didn't have a significant impact um at all during the pandemic next slide so now we're going to move into the the city itself and talk about our sales and use tax and this is for all of our funds it is our largest revenue

[66:01] Source almost 50% excluding utilities and it declined about 5% from 2019 um in 2020 I will say retail sales tax uh fared worse than as a whole and I'll show that in the next few slides and and really the losses or the the bigger losses in retail sales tax were offset by our gains in business use and construction use tax next slide so this shows the same information this is sales and use tax by fund um the percentage inside the graph is the total amount of s sales and use tax of of the whole that that fund gets so for example the general fund gets 47% of all sales and used Tax collections which is about uh last year 63 3 million and it sales and use tax itself represents 43% of all

[67:00] revenue that the general fund collects so that is heavily Reliant but if you look uh to your left to the other funds you'll see they are almost 100% relying on sales tax so certainly these types of funds are far more volatile than some of our other funds and and we're far more affected by covid um than than some of our other funds next slide so you'll see um some graphs uh that look similar to this graph this is just retail sales tax it does not include construction use or business use tax in the blue is what we thought was going to come in at the beginning of the year so we estimated 113 million then after covid hit and we worked with CU we reduced our estimate down to9 998 million which was about a $15 million hit to retail sales tax Alone um luckily to say our yearend

[68:03] numbers came in better than expected so we came in at about 104 million still a $10 million hit um as you'll see in the slides coming up a lot of that relates to our online sales um that we saw in 2020 next slide so as we would expect um eating places had the sharpest decline followed by apparel stores and Home Furnishings in 2020 food stores for for we thought would be a lot stronger than it showed up um it was pretty strong the first two months and then really flattened out um in addition we believe the fact that the CU students weren't around really led to Food Stores being pretty flat from uh 2019 computer related business sector you'll see that high growth that came from institutional sales of software and Hardware General retail was not down uh

[69:02] very much but we'll see in the next slide a lot of that relates to our online sales marijuana Fair very well and um both Transportation utilities and all other were down in 2020 next slide so I think this slide is is a very interesting slide that really tells the story of how our local businesses have struggled throughout the pandemic this is retail sales by location and you can see all of the top in red are Boulder brick and mortar stores that have um quite frankly been crushed in 2020 um what helped save us as it relates to revenue is the out of state or the remote uh sales that we've had so we certainly know that Co really accelerated the behavior change to folks buying things online um we don't know to

[70:00] what extent this is new habits that will continue on but certainly something we're going to keep an eye on uh the growth of online sales came from our existing retailers that were already licensed in the city but it also came if you recall last year uh we passed the marketplace facilitator or um ordinance which allowed us to collect sales tax from party uh facilitators from Amazon eBay those types of things so that really increased our online sales as well but again I think this tells the story that our brick and mortar Stores um we have a lot of concern um we've seen stores and restaurants go out of business and and to what extent will this continue we don't know um but we're certainly going to keep an eye on next slide Cheryl this is Sam can I ask sorry I have my video off because of bandwidth issues no problem on the last slide you have both

[71:02] 29th Street and the Boulder Valley Regional Center called out is the 29th Street number a subset of the Boulder Valley Regional Center number um yes it is it we the Boulder Valley Regional excludes 29th Street okay great thank you thanks so this slide is um going back to the winners in 2020 it certainly was construction use and business use taxes and they came in um again the blue is our original yellow are revised estimate and and gray is our actual numbers they came in significantly over our both our original and revised um what we found there were a lot of permits uh prepayments a lot of work being done done on residential houses rehabs those types of things during the pandemic um and we also had several large unpitted

[72:01] projects from some big big names here in the city for business use we had a pretty big payment from an acquisition of a biot in the biotech manufacturing sector and then a lot of our larger manufacturers here in the city were U making significant Capital Investments that we in turn uh receed business use tax for next slide so that was the end of the section on sales and use tax does anyone have any other questions as it relates to 2020 no okay so I will move on to a little bit more specific information about our funds and how they fared in 2020 so next slide please for our general fund this slide's a pretty basic slide that shows uh we had actual revenues of 148 million and expenditures

[73:01] 157 which required us to draw down fund balance by about 9.4 million which I will explain a little bit more on the next slide thanks so this slide shows our general fund fund balance and I just want to point out two things uh um initially so in the blue we have our emergency reserve and this is what you're used to hearing about this is the 19.5% reserve that we keep um for unforeseen situations such as covid in the maroon that is really all of our other reserves so that would include we have some restricted reserves for example we keep money aside for um when we have a pay period 27 there's there some some legal reasons why we have to keep money separate from our emergency reserves and it also includes some

[74:00] excess reserves over our emergency that we've accumulated for some of the projects that we're working on uh such as Alpine Balsam but what this shows is we originally expected to draw down about 9 million and again that really came from two different things one from um mainly our Alpine balom the work we were going to do there as well as um money that we rolled over from 2019 so projects we didn't finish in 2019 that had to be spent in 2020 so that's was our projected on the second column and then once covid came um we quickly realized we had to make budget cuts but we didn't want to go so severe um that we we cut Services uh to an extreme so we did plan on utilizing some of our reserves to balance our budget so that's our 20 million there but what we

[75:00] came in is actually uh a lot better so we came in only needing to take 9.3 from reserves which is around what we budgeted for um and as you can see what's even more important than that is that blue line which is hard to tell but the good news is is we did not have to cut from our emergency reserve of 19.5% back in the summer we thought we would have to go down to 156% perhaps um because our revenues in some areas came in better as well as um our expenses we didn't spend what we were planning on to the extent we actually did not have to cut into our reserves so that's the good news um in a tough year next slide so I have a couple slides like this for our funds uh the first three columns are similar to what you've seen before our

[76:01] original budget for Revenue our midyear estimate in yellow and then our our um actuals in Gray and then the third Co or fourth I'm sorry fourth column in Maroon is our actual expenses we'll go into a little bit more detail for the general fund next slide so if we look here this is our general fund Revenue by Major Revenue Source we've talked about retail sales and accommodations if you look at charges fines and fees that the the two areas that were hit the hardest were parking fees and red light camera revenue and as you would imagine we just didn't have the people driving around and and we didn't have the people parking in Boulder and then other Revenue uh comprises of a lot of different areas most significant ly interest uh Revenue was down because of all of the FED cuts to the interest rate as well as um

[77:00] short-term rental Revenue next slide and here's the same information for our expenses what you can see in the middle uh column the post uh covid reduction we took almost an 8% reduction in expenses once we realized our revenues were going to be so low as they were we did come in better than what we thought in expenses we've we only spent 157 I will say the caveat some of that will be rolled over for projects that were not completed in 2020 um but for the most part overall our expenses came in lower than what our even our revised budget was next slide so we have a couple more funds here the open space and Mountain Parks fund um our actual revenues came in better because their their the sales and use tax came in better at about 30

[78:02] million and our actual expenses were 33 we did have to dip into fund balance but that was actually budgeted we had um a major acquisition along with some other projects that were budgeted uh to dip into our fund balance next slide transportation fund actual revenues 32.8 expenses 34.8 uh the the dip into fund balance here was due to the timing of our federal grants so we had um re uh spent money but had not yet gotten reimbursed so that is why we had to dip into our fund balance um a little bit in 2020 for transportation next fund I'm sorry next slide and then Recreation activity as we all know know um parks and W wreck was probably one of the hardest hit areas for our city we had to close wreck

[79:00] centers we had to cut programs uh they they immediately changed their spending as you can see they they came in right about where what they received for Revenue which was fantastic next slide so just a key takeaways for 2020 and then we'll move on to 21 um I think the re how quickly we reacted to the situation at hand to revise the budget the way that we did really led to what I feel we're in a strong financial um U condition right now we finished better than we anticipated yes we drew from fund balance but that was less far less than our midyear forecast and again our emergency reserves remain at 19 A5 per. so that's all I had for 2020 if you have any questions um before I move on to 21 and

[80:00] 22 I did have a question go ahead um Aon since you sorry sorry Mark if I beat you out but I'll give you a shot in just a second um sh could you go back to the um the slide about um the the reserves and the fund balances sure please it is um let me see if I can see the number here can you Carl I'll tell you when when we've hit it would you mind going back a couple slides this one that's the one yep that one okay so just looking at the graph it looked like there was a the 2020 beginning fund balance the reserves were I don't know looks like maybe 27 million and preco it looks like it was expected to go up to maybe that's 29

[81:00] million and and um and then it looks like the actual ending fund balance was more or less that 29 million so did we actually increase our reserves uh 2020 we budgeted to increase them because they're based on our operating expenditures so we initially anticipated that our expenditures would be higher and therefore had to increase um the reserves to meet our requirement of 19 and a half percent does that make sense well that was that was what our our budget was right but of course a lot of things didn't match what we budgeted so yeah but just the question was like did we actually increase our reserves in 2020 so I'm going to um ask either Devin or Cara to to make sure that what I'm saying is correct I I

[82:00] do not believe we increased over what we had budgeted but Cara can you confirm please and and I'm sorry my question is not about compared to budget but in actual numbers did did we increase our actual reserves over 2020 so now my answer might change um hi this is car Skinner assistant director um what's reflected in that second column is a budget number so I just want to make sure that that's sort of clear that where it looks like it jumped up that that is an expectation of how we would have finished 2020 so that was a budgeted number but to get to your question of did we actually increase our reserves um the answer is yes okay so no more than budgeted but we did actually increase our reserves in 2020 correct okay thanks for the answer I'll Mark I'll let you get um yeah just a point of clarification um if we maintained or actually increased our

[83:02] emergency reserves then the entire 9.3 million difference between our revenues and expenditures came out of other fund balances is is that what I'm hearing correct that's true okay um that was my question thank you thanks any more questions oh sorry that's my husband's phone it's not mine sorry no more questions well um is there another part to the presentation yeah we have a couple more parts but they're they're much shorter so um the next section uh we're going to focus on what are our up updated outlook for 21 and 22 next slide so we just want to start with how

[84:00] did we come up with this updated Outlook again we're partner partnering with CU and they really take an economic Outlook that is developed by Moody's um and then they add State regional and local factors to it to come up with our modeling so moody is um as is projecting as we all know that the economy is performing better than previously expected um a more rapid recovery is expected the recent stimulus along with the other stimulus packages and potential additional stimulus had had certainly proved to stimulate the economy in the way they were intended uh Moody is expecting that the US will largely have her immunity by the summer job growth will increase steadily and then there's a huge pent up demand for experiences and travel so certainly as we look in Boulder um hopefully we will be Ben um see the benefits of that pent

[85:00] up demand next slide so Boulder Outlook um it's it's a slightly different so as you've seen in the slides that Cu uh provided us we've lagged in the economic recovery we are hoping that the return and expecting actually that the return of student population in the fall will help mitigate um some of the lagging economy here at the city we're unsure about how quickly visitors will be uh returning and we really have some concerns about uh enduring some of the systemic shifts that we've seen throughout the pandemic in the last couple years so the first one is working at home as I stated before we had almost 70 or over 70% of our folks who were commuting into Boulder w no longer commuting uh into Boulder and how is that going to change we we know a lot of uh major companies have announced they're going to a full remote or a

[86:02] hybrid type work schedule how will that impact our retail restaurant uh service space Also our commercial property what kind of vacancies will we see how will the value of that property be affected and and the value has a direct correlation to our property tax revenue so if the values go down um our revenue is going to going to go down so we're going to keep an eye on that accelerated online shopping habits I've talked uh a lot about that and the impact to our brick and mortar stores and then something we've talked about for the last few years is the Aging population here in Boulder the shift to Services rather than goods and and how will that affect um our local uh economy next slide so um we just have two months of sales tax data giving given the lag and timing of Collections and as you can see

[87:01] in uh the 1 through February eating places still uh have suffered uh tremendously and continue to suffer apparel stores um those types of things that one would expect General retail on the other hand is up 22.95% and you'll see in the next slide again that really almost solely relates to our online sales next slide so here's by location again most of our locations year to date are down uh with a few exceptions which um is a bit promising and there's that out of state number we're up almost 46% from this time last year so um it's really helped us with our overall Revenue picture to have that type of online activity next [Music] slide so now I want to talk about 2021

[88:03] and um you know what are our expected revenues going to be over what we passed back in October for our budget and what are some of our needs So based on sales tax and some other Revenue we at this point and of course this can change um believe that our Revenue in our general fund so I'm only speaking the general fund is going to be about three to six million more than what we budgeted so that's good news um but we have a lot of needs and we cut a lot in 2021s so I'm going to break the needs really into two components the first is the adjustment to base that is coming to you in about two weeks and I have a slide next kind of going over some of the items but the majority of what is coming to you are new items that have come about um because some of what has been happening

[89:00] in our community uh during the pandemic so um The Adjustment debate is coming to you in a couple weeks is about $3 million included in the adjustment debase and we really wanted to point this out separately um if you recall back in 2020 we had six employee Furlow days for our employees that our employees have been working uh so hard during all of this pandemic we had to cut uh take six Furlow days um and then for 2021 to balance the budget there were no employee increases given um with the exception of our contract we had with our police force and um we also had two additional Furlow days and those were planned uh over the holidays upcoming holidays um in the winter time so what we will be proposing uh during the adjustment to base is eliminating those two Furlow days um for our employees so that's just something we

[90:01] wanted to point out uh today so then moving on to Restoration of what we've cut the services uh the programs they really fall into two categories so we cut about 5 million we made onetime cuts to ongoing cost so here what we did is we said okay we're uh for example staff we had a lot of vacancies that we are holding open the entire year but the expectation kind of was when the economy rebounds um we'll be able to read those staff again so they're ongoing Staffing is ongoing the one time cut is just holding the vacancy so um we have about 5 million that we had to take to to balance 2021 in the general fund then we have an additional 3.9 million that we just cut there are ongoing cuts to the budget um

[91:01] ongoing cuts to programs Services Etc so if you add all of that up we have and if you let's say you were going to restore the city back to where it was preco um we're looking at needs of about 12 million and a deficit from what our revised revenue is of uh $6 to9 million so it is significant and I think it speaks to the fact that we are not going to be able to restore Services back to where they were in 2021 and we certainly are going to have to prioritize next slide so here again I don't want to get into detail because you'll this is coming back to you in two weeks um but here's just a preview of the types of things that you will see on the adjustment to base uh the homeless encampment Services you'll be talking about tonight Public Safety overtime

[92:02] some other things are Insurance uh liability general liability and Property and Casualty Insurance has gone through the roof um those types of things will be coming before you you certainly don't have to approve all of it but I just wanted to make you aware of um those expenses that we have mainly new expenses we have coming down the pike next slide so this slide it's it's the same story but for 2022 general fund we expect with our sales tax in um estimates as well as other taxes uh I will say we just received from the county their initial assessment it's just an estimate but we are expecting about 2.7 additional in the general fund for property tax so our total revenue um estimate above our 21 budget is uh 7 and

[93:02] a half to 10.5 million however our needs again assuming we do pass some of these adjustment to base the amount that's ongoing is 2.1 if we were to restore the cuts to bring us back to preco that's another 9.3 million and then we've just put some um some Personnel estimates in there so you can see a 2% employee salary increase for 22 would cost the general fund around 1.4 million and a 10% increase in health care um which is what our Brokers are estimating before we were to make any changes is 6 and then the needs do not include any new funding so anything else that's out there that council is wanting to fund is not included in this number so again even

[94:01] though we see a strong Revenue growth um it certainly would still put us in a deficit position if we were to restore back to where we were pre pandemic NE I think that's the last of my slides before I turn it over to Devon um Bob um thanks charl if you go back to slide number 30 I didn't didn't quite follow that one so okay this is similar to the last one um and I apologize this slide has been a tough one for us to to get right and um help make it understandable but what we're saying is we're going to get about 3 to six million additional mostly sales tax based on our most current estimate um up and above beyond our 21 original estimate so our needs though um fell

[95:02] into the two categories we are bringing to you an adjustment to base which would eat into that revenue and if we were to restore the cuts we made to the general fund in 2021 to bring our services and programs back to pre pre pandemic we're looking at needing over $122 million in um additional Revenue which would put us at a a potential deficit of 6 to9 million does that make more sense yeah I I follow that math I I I can take 12.2 and subtract from it six which is the optimistic number and see over in the right hand side 6.2 million and similarly with 3.3 so I followed that part of it what I was wasn't quite following is what the actual ask will be are we going to this adjustment debate is going to be um 3 million and and then we're limiting the two Furlow days so that's takes us up to 3.3 which is the low end of your

[96:00] additional Revenue estimate and we're not going to right now restore 20201 onetime or ongoing cost is that what you're you're saying that is what I'm saying um I think throughout the year some of that may change as more things get online or get opened more um we may come back to you um and ask for more things to come but our our initial thought for 2022 is going to be looking at those onetime and ongoing Cuts we made and really just prioritizing which ones can come back and which ones can't because there will be as you can tell a lot of things that aren't going to be able to come back well let mebe more a little bit more specific will there be a possible adjustment to base later yet this year that could restore some service Cuts yet this year is that is that a possibility or probably not in the Cs well it's a

[97:00] possibility right now how we feel is we only have two months worth of sales tax revenue so we're a little uneasy um bringing more at this point in time but certainly as as the year progresses and the picture gets more clear if if we need to do that we would come back to council and and you I know you don't know what what it's going to say but but I'm ask this is more of a when question when do you think you're going the crystal ball is going to be more clear such that you might feel comfortable restoring uh service cuts um yet in 2021 is that kind of a July August time frame I would say late summer given the lag in in sales tax which is the biggest Revenue but I I'm I'm GNA defer to Chris because this really is his call on what on what he thinks Chris yes thanks Cheryl and uh I do

[98:01] agree with Cheryl I think there is the possibility of that um I think that's the the the real bottom line that you're getting at here Bob is is the the reality that based on our estimated revenue for this year even revised with the new projections and looking at what we project as revenues for 2022 we will not be able to restore everything we cut from the pandemic um so we are going to have to make some hard decisions about um what services uh we or or or things that we cut come back now um or which ones are maybe going to need to wait a little bit longer so um I think there is the reality that we could have a conversation later this year about uh another increment of services to potentially bring back back um it's my hope that Revenue projections continue to come in higher than we've estimated uh and I think Cheryl's timeline that she uh uh said is is the

[99:02] right one which is probably late summer great thank you all right Mary thank you juny and thank you Cheryl um just I have a couple questions one of them is just to get a little more clarity around what Bob just asked asked um which was he said that the we wouldn't be restoring the one-time cuts to ongoing expenses and the ongoing cuts um I'm wondering how that came through in this slide I didn't see it that way so I'm just trying to understand how that conclusion and maybe this is a better question for Bob um because you concluded that the 5.0 uh the five million and 3.9 million wouldn't be restored um so how did you conclude that that's I think I think that's what I heard Cheryl say I I think

[100:00] I heard her say the the adjustments to base that will be tackling next month are just the three three million at the top plus potentially eliminating the Furlow days and then we're parking the $8.9 million um uh cuts for the time being we may revisit some of those later in the summer if I heard Cheryl correctly and Chris you did but I didn't say there are some restorations in the adjustment to base it's not the it's not um the majority and Devin I don't know if you want to speak to that but I do believe there's a few positions that folks are asking to come back earlier than um planned yes um sure uh thank you um uh Cheryl yes um so the three quarters is um the one time or um for

[101:00] on going ads for needs that we have now going forward so they are things that are kind of new um there is about um a quarter of it that is um uh uh re re restoring um uh Cuts both uh one time and um ongoing from uh last year and uh this year as well but the vast majority is is not that great thank you so there's um what I'm hearing is that there's little bits of the 5 million and the 3.9 milli million that will be restored in the first adjustment to base and that's correct okay cool and then um my second question um has to do with um just

[102:02] curious about examples on the ongoing Cuts you gave an example of the onetime cuts to ongoing expenses which was holding positions open but I just was curious about examples on the within the 3.9 million um yes uh Carl um could you actually please this I believe it's slide 45 and that will show you a list of um of uh some of the cuts uh certainly not all of them but um it's the cuts by um [Applause] uh uh department and if you want more uh detail on what um all those cuts um are

[103:00] uh spefically um I could certainly uh proide that I um I I will say so it was included in the the uh the 21 uh budget book and the list is quite long um so it would be um a matter of um either Pro providing you the entire list or choosing a couple of things that are the um large ones but um we couldn't really fit that into a slide because um unfortunately it was a tough year and we made a lot of cuts no I think this this is um I just wanted some examples and this is um plenty good um and thank you for anticipating my question with a back pocket slide sure thank you Mary next is Aon yeah thanks for all this additional information CH it's really helpful can can you go back to the slide that we were talking about Bob was asking a

[104:00] question about before from 2021 please and then the next one is the 2022 correct or second next one more Carl thanks here we go so um this has the restoring the onetime cuts and that um and what I'm one the 5.2 million there is that the same one-time cuts that was on the 2021 slide it is and we include inflationary um factors associated because a lot of it was Personnel so there was Health Care increases Etc and then also just contractual increases that we would need to um have got it and so we wouldn't add the 2021 and 2022 potential deficits up for total deficit because there's some numbers they're including both correct that that's good to understand is that

[105:00] it's a makes it the numbers look a little better that's good uh can you go back one slide then on the adjustment to base item so these are the things that you're going to be bringing forward um shortly about this 3 million additional expenditure the first item the homeless encampment Services is that like assuming that we green light things that we're talking about later tonight or is that other things that is exactly that if you Greenlight what you're talking about uh this this evening so if we picked a larger or a smaller number then that would mean a larger or smaller adjustment to base that you'll be bringing back in May correct okay thanks for answering those thanks please um Adam yeah and let me know if I'm getting ahead but um is any of our lost funds uh refundable through the federal

[106:00] government money that's goingon to wind up going to cities eventually just you know it are we getting the full picture with that in mind too here we believe so so there's still and Devon's going to be presenting that next there's still some questions exactly but they did um indicate generally that you could use it for lost lost funds um that the government had uh for covid we're still waiting on specifics what exactly does that mean what exact areas can we spend it on and that's something that the treasury um has promised to give all of the municipalities um and entities receiving this money by May 10th it's one of the four areas in the legislation so we'll have that information for when we make the adjustment to base decisions hopefully okay assuming we get

[107:00] it yeah right of course thank you thanks I don't think there's any more questions Cheryl so please thank you thanks juny and I'm gonna turn it over to Devon we just have a couple slides on the arpa funding uh thank you for that uh harl uh please uh advance to the next slide um so yes so we do only have um a a few uh slides on this because um there's a lot um uh about the uh uh American Rescue PL plan Act of funding or arpa as we are um calling it there there is a lot that we yet do not know um but so as you know um it um this act was um passed earlier this year

[108:03] um there is a a 65 uh uh billion uh dollars that was um allocated to uh to cities and we here in uh Boulder are um uh ex expecting to receive about uh uh 20.5 um million dollars um at this point um there are four main um areas that it um that um as was uh written in the legation we can um uh use the funing four so um Adam to

[109:03] your point um uh we um can use it for um for uh Revenue uh uh [Music] repacement um we um can also uh use it for um uh co covid uh 19 uh ex expenditures um or or to um address the the uh negative economic impacts of um covid and that really runs uh runs the uh gamut from uh small uh businesses to uh households to hard hit uh in uh

[110:01] Industries um and uh so forth um we um can um uh use it for uh premium pay for uh essential uh workers um and it does actually uh uh spefically uh in uh encourage us to um uh invest in um our water sewer and our Broadband infrastructure but as you can see those are those are four very uh broad areas um sort of defined but not to the point that um that we would uh uh prefer so um if you could advance to the next slide um but we are set to receive our uh funding in uh two uh in installments the um first will um we should receive this

[111:01] year actually fairly soon I believe in the next couple of months um and the second uh will um come one year after that um uh really the the one um guideline that has been made crystal clear to us is that we need to have it spent by um the end of 202 for we don't think that's going to be uh a uh an issue um uh for us um and as uh Cheryl had indicated uh the US uh treasury is um set to uh release its uh official guidance here in the next few weeks and so we are going to be um keeping our eyes out for that um but as we are um uh approaching it from um this point uh

[112:02] uh forward and we um don't have that uh that guidance yet in um hand there are there are um sort of two key themes that um we really want to or want want us to um keep um in the uh uh back of our minds um one is that um you know we feel that per perhaps this uh funding is uh most um uh uh appropriate for uh long-term uh in Investments that um that could in some way uh cont reute to uh Financial St uh stability or to to uh re uh

[113:01] uh reestablish um some of that uh stability that we did lose um and one other point and this is something that you hear from us a lot um the same drum beat is um these are onetime funds and um being onetime fund um we um we really feel that they need to be um allocated toward uh onetime [Music] uh uses um and I will leave that at the Hat um could you advance to the next slide please um so the the uh process that um we are uh currently uh in the middle of is um we are uh uh de developing our our um own uh city of uh of Boulder guiding uh principles and

[114:02] we are um using our tools uh such as the uh sustainability and resilience uh for framework um as well as the uh racial Equity tool and there are um four main um areas that um that we think this uh this funding should uh should Target that and um those four are uh community members uh city employees uh government uh services and uh City infrastructure um and as I said um um earlier we have not yet received the uh guidance from the US Treasury to really help us inform um how we may uh fund

[115:00] those those uh uh for categories but um as soon as we do get uh guidance um we we uh we will be uh coordinating with our uh our uh Regional and community of Partners um and we in our Our Hope and our uh uh in intention is to um come back to you with a um a high level funding recommendation by by maybe late May into June hopefully um and then uh by uh June or sometime in June um we would want to seek your uh your input um and then ultimately um uh we

[116:01] envision this um um uh being uh uh presed as a u public hearing um shortly uh thereafter um Advance next slide please uh actually you can go to the next slide after that um and so um here we are now um on uh April uh 27th um and we um hope that we were able to um uh give you that um ever so important uh fi Financial context um as we move uh forward in the uh the budgeting uh process um and as ferel had mentioned you will be uh

[117:01] hearing from us again um in U mid uh May for the first adjustment to base um as well as uh an update on our um uh ballot issues that um we may uh uh propose uh come uh November um and then we we uh do start our um our 2022 uh budget de de development uh process we start in May and we work pretty hard all the way through August um at which point um we will be uh bringing you um a draft uh of our uh recommended uh uh budget um

[118:01] in early SE uh September and then we have our um our two uh potentially three sometimes uh uh budget public hearings uh in um October and as you see um in the June and July uh uh time frame we will hope to have some more uh clity on um arpa with which we can then um [Music] uh work that um into the uh the budget uh process uh Advance next slide please um and so with that um we are going to or uh we we would um like to leave you with some very uh uh broad

[119:02] uh questions for us so if there are things that we have not already answered um we are interested to know if you have any um uh questions uh regarding our uh 202 Financial uh results um if you have any uh uh questions reging our uh outlook for um this year and um through 2022 and if you have any um uh questions uh regarding the um American Rescue plan act although on the third third bu bullet point um I hope I've made somewhat clear that we have a lot of questions ourselves so um um but

[120:02] but perhaps there are questions that you would um uh like us to uh to specifically seek answers to um as soon as we get the uh guidance from the US uh treasury that is set to come out in May and so with that I will hand it back over to uh juny thank you for this presentation Devon and our first questionnaire welcome from Adam thanks juny um this question is for Chris Andor Council uh it's a timing question looking at the slide previous to this one uh we have our public hearings for the budget in October do we as this Council vote on our budget before uh the next council is seated I just don't remember the timing

[121:01] of that and was wondering what that is yeah that's a great question Adam and uh it you will the budget hearings are typically the two business meetings in October uh and so um that'll be prior to the November election okay is that normal just it is normal actually in the charter if I recall right we have to have the budget adopted by the end of October um but I'll look to Tom to correct me that's correct it the charter says it must be adopted by November so before November all right sorry I didn't remember that but that is just such an interesting thing to approve a budget for a different Council but that's how it is thank you Adam or next uh question welcome from Aaron so it's actually a couple comments but first let me thank you for continued excellent presentation and also to the financial staff for steering us so ably

[122:03] through the choppy Financial Waters of the last year or so it's been really tough time and you've done a really remarkable job so thank you for that so U my my comment is just that you well in the American Rescue plan act I appreciated the timeline and that makes a lot of sense you know we're getting the guidance in May and looks like you're moving on that pretty quickly which I appreciate and and just a a thought that it is one onetime funding well actually it's two-time funding right it's like one this year and then next year so I totally get that that we shouldn't try to establish some brand new $5 million year program that we then be left on the hook for after the funding dried up right that we want to focus it on more onetime needs but just to plant the seed that um making up temporary shortfall and revenue I think is is something we could think of as a short-term um expense so you know if we those deficits that we're seeing um in the needs in terms of restoring Cuts we

[123:02] don't expect those to last forever so I would like us to consider that the rescue act funding could help bridge us to when our revenues come back to normal and might uh assist us in restoring some services and and to not be too conservative in this you know the the service Cuts have um definitely been challenging for the community you know we've significantly reduced Library services and Parks and Rec Services we've even reduced our fire funding and the list goes on and on and those have real consequences for our community and so I was a little surprised to see that we were continuing to add to our reserves in a year when we're cutting so many services so just to think about how we can try to bring those Services back particularly the ones that that have the most direct impact on our citizens you know more quickly rather than more slowly so thanks for keeping that in mind I appreciate it thank you for your comments Erin uh

[124:02] Mary thank you juny and I just want to um support what Aaron just said and um and to that I just wanted to um add comments with respect or I I guess they would be comments because we don't have much information right now on on um the essential workers part of um those four guiding principles for the arpa and I'm wondering um you know would that be in the form of backpay to essential workers and um that that seems to me like it would make sense and would it be for only for public employees and to the extent that we can um create some sort of assistance in the form of some sort of back pay to um employees of U private businesses that I think would be very helpful as well especially since we saw that the

[125:03] lower end of um wage workers were the hardest hit so that's just a comment there thank you thank you Mary um I did see Mary by's hands up earlier did you take it down mayor by it was just all right thank you then our next speaker is Mark Ju Just A a quick uh question I in reading the staff memo um there was an explosive growth in tax revenues from $60,000 to 1.5 million uh relating to the airport um a can you tell me what that represents and be to what extent does that kind of skew our projections going forward as I assume it's not a um an expectation of a continuing Revenue

[126:00] Source at that scale um uh uh Mark I will um uh conf to be 100% certain but I believe there was a grant that the airport uh had received okay yeah I believe it was the Federal grant for the um um runways runways yeah um so that's not something that we're going to be seeing on a repeating basis uh that's correct okay because that that then reduces our expectancy of revenues by about $1 a half million doar going forward does it not um we don't really um so the airport is uh is an Enterprise so those we do not include in our um our uh

[127:00] our larger uh uh Pro uh projection so we don't necessarily uh count on those okay all right thank and we say the the numbers we presented for increased revenues all were ongoing revenues um we did not include any onetime um revenues in our projections there and I guess my other question was I I thought I saw uh that you're projecting an increase in accommodation taxes for 2021 at about 5% over 2020 I guess that's a pretty low bar to start with but are we seeing evidence that in fact um there is some Resurgence of accommodation taxes so I think Cara might be able to help with this one I know we are in direct contact with the cdb to get these estimates and we're relying on on what they're providing us Cara can you answer that hi yes um and I hope that the memo

[128:03] reflected this um and I think the 5% is that the cvb's current Revenue projection for 20201 is 5% over what we budgeted for 2021 and what we did budget for 2021 was significantly more than 2020 um adjusted budget so we did anticipate when we built the 2021 budget that Accommodations Tax would bounce back during 2021 somewhat um so we did count on that and and the convention and visitors bureau did help us with that 20121 estimate as well are we expecting that to happen during the summer months or I guess it's hard to read the tea leaves after only a couple of months but are the te leaves telling us um that we're along that that path for so I think in

[129:00] discussions with the um CVB their current forecast is um less based upon say the first two months of experience this year and more based upon um conversations they've had with the industry and um some industry organiz ations that um forecast uh occupancy and daily rates based upon what they hear from their members in terms of pre-bookings and such um so I think it is it's a combination of just forecasting um growth but also I think there is some um basis in there in terms of there are conversations with the industry and and there are pre-bookings that they can rely upon if I can jump in I'm I'm the council liaison to the Convention of visitors bureau so I attend the monthly board meetings and have been privy to some of those forecasts that Carl referenced um

[130:00] somebody mentioned the word bounceback I think the the better ver would be crawl back um it is a very slow and painful and gradual recovery that is expected to take many years not months um what we are seeing is a gradual improving um uh condition with respect to Leisure Travel Leisure Travel seems to be coming back not anywhere close to where it was in 2019 but it is gradually edging back and so as Carl said some of the bookings um out a few months for leisure travel um seem to be um pointing in the right direction at a very very slow but gradual increase what is not coming back yet is business travel we've seen very very little growth in business travel um we've seen very little interest in Booking conventions where um scores or even hundreds of people come into town for a big convention um we're just not seeing that recovery yet hardly at all and so I think the forecast is um 21

[131:03] will be better than 20 um but it'll take us well into the decade to get back to where we were in 2019 thanks Bob you thank you Mark our next question from Rachel comment comment um I just wanted to thank Cheryl and Cara and Devin and the team it has been an incredibly stressful job you've had over the last year and I think that you uh kept level heads at a time when um a lot of us were sort of dear in the headlights you know frightened of of covid and and where we were and also wanted to take a moment to thank Jane Jane Bram in the same vein who I think led us and shephered us very well early in pandemic so thanks everyone thank you Rachel is there any more Council questions no seeing none I just wanted

[132:02] to add I fully support um Erin's comment earlier about adding to our reserves while cutting services and again as a council where we believe in racial equity and all different type of equities I think it's very important that we keep that in mind and I appreciate Mary's comments about essential workers we definitely have to take care of our people um also as someone who's participated in the National League of cities and I've been doing my due diligence and I've spoken with uh council members from other communities and they're doing a lot of work as well to protect their communities I've heard of um for sense paying utilities for community members so I don't know again as you mentioned earlier what we can spend the money on but I hope it is really to protect the community and also ensure

[133:01] the equity that we talk about so often on Council and again as someone who's been a member of the financial strategy committee with uh Mary and Mark wallik I have to say this team here at the at the city is amazing Cheryl you've done a lot of work we had a six-hour meeting last week as preparation so thank you for everything that you've done I have learn so much from you and so much from your team so thank you so much well if there is no more but did you get everything that you need from uh from Council Cheryl we did thanks and thanks for all the support okay perfect well thank you again and we will pass it up to you Chris for the next presentation thank you great thank you and thank you for that discussion so our our third agenda item for tonight uh I will turn over first to Kurt Fern hobber uh who will

[134:00] kick off the presentation uh and then hand it off to the rest of our team members uh good evening again Council um if I could ask for the uh presentation to be brought up so you can stay on this slide for a second um I'm going to give a bit of an introduction um and uh sort of set the stage for this uh this presentation a bit um so I'm uh again Kurt fower director of Housing and Human Services um I'm going to be joined this evening um by uh Joe tchi director of Public Works and and utilities uh Chief Harold of the Boulder Police Department uh ali rhods uh director of Parks and Recreation and Chris Jones uh deputy director of community Vitality um all of them will be presenting tonight and it really represents the interdepartmental work um

[135:01] that goes into the questions that we'll be um looking at this evening I'm also joined by Vicky Ebner who supports our programs that serve those uh experence experiencing homelessness and Mark Davidson uh of open space and Mountain Parks oversees their park rangers and lastly Carrie Weinheimer who supports much of this work for the Boulder Police Department um all these individuals will be able to answer questions this evening that may arise I wanted to remind Council as well as the public that the conversation tonight is a continuation of the council meeting uh that occurred in January in January we heard from many members of the community related to their concerns on on uh camping in our community and particular the impacts um of this camping we heard from many members of the public concerned about the care of our Greenways and waterways uh from

[136:01] parents and children that use their playgrounds from the business owners on Pearl Street 29th Street in the Hill area whose employees and customers uh were facing security concerns we heard from uh Chief Harold about the challenges of increased crime not only in these areas but also with the residents of these camps who are often victims um of crime but lastly and importantly we we also heard from members of our community they want to ensure that we have the most robust programs and Housing Solutions for those experiencing homelessness in December last year and again in January city council directed staff to come back with approaches and solutions to enforce the camping ban in our city to better maintain our public spaces for all users and to support the business community and do all this work with respect for those experiencing

[137:02] homelessness tonight we will bring you those recommendations um as you've directed I'd also like to remind uh city council and the public that we have intentionally connected the discussion uh this evening with that of next Tuesday where we will be um offering a look back at the last year of solutions for individuals experiencing homelessness uh the plans for the coming 12 months and the areas of challenge where our programs need to continually evolve and improve next week we'll be focused on programs to help individuals into housing and services and homelessness is a national Challenge and tonight we are having a local conversation homeless is a complicated issue and the discussion tonight I expect will also be complicated within Boulder we have many areas of intervention from keeping people housed

[138:00] and preventing homelessness with rent support services for mental health interventions and Care diversion services for the homeless helping with car repairs to help them get to work daily meals uh emergency shelter housing Focus shelter and many approaches to outreach as we discussed the first two recommendations tonight we can't lose sight of these other supports within our community which we will discuss next week and then lastly uh before we begin at the city council Retreat uh earlier in the year Council requested that staff bring back to you information that could help you discuss um the possibility of a sanction camp program this will be the third item uh for discussion this evening so if you could go to the next slide so this is um how we've structured the the presentation tonight um we'll

[139:00] start off identifying some of the issues and then the the three questions that will be presented to council tonight that we would like to receive um feedback and Direction on um the background um of the challenges um and then Pro proposed interventions that staff um will are recommending to councel and um as mentioned the third item um we'll be discussing is is sanctioned camping and um then we'll have um depending on how this goes we'll have um all questions there um for Council to discuss as well next slide so some of the key issues um uh the encampments in public spaces as you heard in January are unsafe and they're um illegal within the city of Boulder as as they are um with other similar communities um the current resources that we have in our various departments

[140:01] really can't um keep up or address um the public spaces um as welcoming and safe and the current staff are are really impacted by this work partly because there's not enough resource to do it all um and um it is um difficult work for for the uh for the staff that uh address not just homeless encampments but you know everything around it and um uh so we'll be you know touching on those things um this evening as well next slide so I'm just going to read these out these are the three questions that we'll be putting forward uh in front of you this evening so the first one uh for enhanced Effectiveness in ensuring Boulders public spaces are clean and safe this Council support an internal encampment cleanup team including uh

[141:00] police support and that will be the first part of our presentation uh then we'll go into for enhanced effectiveness of Safe Place Management in Boulders public spaces and Commercial districts this Council support coordinated efforts that include an ambassador program Park Rangers and dedicated uh PD staff and our third question does council want staff to work toward approaches for the development of a sanction Camp next slide in here I will uh pass it back off to um Joe tauchi um again with public works and utilities thank you good evening city council C can you hear me okay uh thanks and uh thanks for that introduction Kurt again I'm Joe tauchi a director of utilities at the city and I have a few slides to talk about the

[142:01] proposed internal cleanup team and this first slide provides some background on our current state and as you know we have a a software system called inquire Boulder where members of the public can submit issues to the City encampments continue to be a frequent topic of concern for community members and at the time that we were putting this information together uh and we checked and we had 335 reports so far in 20121 uh about the encampment issues from the community which is similar to some feedback we've gotten through our uh storm waterer and Flood Master Plan update where people have uh cited flood maintenance and and encampments as issues there many of those reports site concerns about the the effects that the encampments have on on our Park conditions Andor conditions along our

[143:00] stream corridors including concerns about stream health and and water quality and while those water quality impacts are hard to quantify our our staff share those concerns and there are so many complicated social and human aspects to conversations on homelessness and encampments and for for every Point there's a Counterpoint but uh one thing that is certain that hopefully we can agree on is that the life safety issues associated with having people living and sleeping in our our utilities and and storm water and flood infrastructure um is not a safe situation and as I've been brought into the conversations on this topic in the last year uh I've learned that the encampments really present a safety concern for the for their inhabitants including uh victims as of crime as noted on this slide um and while we

[144:02] can't generalize and say that everybody's involved with with the with these things um it's definitely a a presence that's there and Kurt alluded to it in his introductory remarks but the encampment cleanup efforts have have been managed uh to date mainly by departmental staff who are being diverted away from uh the core Mission work that we hired them for um which brings us to our internal cleanup team so next slide so right now our resourcing approach for the cleanups has been to rely heavily on an external contractor to support the work work and they've provided great service to the city and have been responsive but there are limitations and scheduling challenges the same contractor that does this type of work and and contractors that do this

[145:01] type of work are often uh called to duty when there's a natural disaster somewhere else in the country and they leave for a while and we just have often have difficulty uh effectively coordinating and SCH in the work so in our memo we described the makeup of an internal cleanup team and the the left box on this slide shows the makeup of the crew and we'd have a crew lead and three support staff that would work with them um when the cleanups occur there's often a fair amount of accumulated trash and uh personal property that that we gather the lad we temporarily take possession of and have a system to try and get it back to its rightful owner but there's there's uh material to to collect and so the trucks and the UTV are the equipment that would help collect those materials and this is a similar setup to

[146:02] what our outside contractor uses and the the middle box addresses what the the cleanup crew in utilities would do and and their primary Mission would be to support the work with with the encampments but when there are no cleanups or if there was a pause in implementing or our policies or other gaps we're designing This Crew to be able to Pivot quickly to regular utilities maintenance work and we'd be hiring with the the skills in mind to do both the the cleanups and regular maintenance on the on the latter part I've been working on an assessment with our utilities maintenance manager uh for the past year to assess the resources we have for our flood and storm water maintenance work and we have some significant Staffing gaps and needs to

[147:00] be able to proactively cycle through the maintenance of our flood and storm water systems so in in that sense the crew is is kind of a no regrets action we'll have we'll have work for them to do whether it is uh associated with the cleanups or regular maintenance and then the last box on the right addresses the supporting resources and and the key Point here is that the police resources are essential for for our utilities or or Parks or other departmental staff to be able to perform the work safely uh there really isn't an option to make the internal crew a workable solution without the the police support that we'll also be discussing this evening and with the with this with that last point in mind I also want to acknowledge that there is definitely a a human component to all of this work and one thing I have observed in in all of

[148:00] our staff across the Departments who who regularly are involved uh with the encampments is that they do establish a respectful and supportive relationship with the people in the encampments uh there can be issues at times but by having some of these in-house resources I I think there's an opportunity to en enhance that uh next slide so this slide shows a breakdown of the budget and the the memo went through kind of the details of how we got there uh but the bottom line is after we pay the onetime expenses for the equipment that I talked about a minute or two ago our net ongoing additional expenditures would be about $130,000 per year so I I believe that is uh that is the end of my part of it and I think Chris is uh Chris Jones may be up next I

[149:02] am thank you Joe if you go to the next slide please so I'm Chris Jones the deputy director of community vitality and I'm going to provide a brief overview of another intervention that we've been developing and we're proposing this evening um focused on integrated presence so I'm going to share some information about a proposed Ambassador pilot program Ali rhs is here to talk about an urban park rangers program and um we acknowledge that any additional eyes on the street that we're proposing through this work will require additional presence uh from the Boulder Police Department um as we are focusing on our ambassador program folks that will be contracted uh to provide services that we've seen successful in other communities um focused on downtown in the University Hill area um to provide Outreach and education um these uh folks could help with basic maintenance and graffiti removal but

[150:01] they would not be providing any enforcement uh Services the presentation that Ally will will focus on will talk about some of the services that Park Rangers can provide it would be focused on um minor violations in Parks areas um but again fully commissioned officers that could address um some of the bigger challenges that we know inevitably we will see sometimes in our public spaces um next slide please so it's important to point out that um when we're talking about a pilot program in the city of Boulder we do a lot of pilot programs but we want to be really clear that with this particular program um we are starting out with a clear scope and identifying key Milestones um and desired outcomes through this 18-month pilot um we're going to be collecting data throughout the process so that we can report back about six months into the pilot to check and make sure that we're accomplishing what we wanted as we consider what to do beyond the 18 months next slide

[151:02] please so for the downtown and University Hill Ambassador pilot program we have identified the problem about what's changed in the downtown and we know that because of covid-19 there's been decreased space activ due to less events less Shoppers less visitors coming in from out of town and then of course as K mentioned an increase in population of people experiencing homelessness um combined with less capacity with the Boulder Police Department to be dispatched to some lower priority offenses that we regularly see in the downtown from bikes on sidewalks to pets on the mall and and things that we get complaints about but we're not as necessarily having the capacity to address and so we want to acknowledge that we have increased increased concerns and complaints from community members including downtown business owners so our proposed response um for downtown in University Hill is an 18-month Ambassador pilot program this is modeled after similar programs

[152:00] throughout North America um we would work with the business improvement district they would actually contract for these services to provide improved hospitality and safety so this is more eyes on the street um given the the lower amount of activity that we've been seeing um and these FS could actually also help with periodic bathroom monitoring downtown and in the Civic area they could also provide cleaning and maintenance so they'd be on hand to help quickly remove graffiti and trash because we know that as um if we're able to quickly remove graffian trash it's less likely to be replaced with more graffiti and trash um they also can provide Outreach and education so this could be in addition to the Outreach um that we see for people experiencing homelessness uh through the Citywide be their program this team could work very closely with that resource um with uh folks that we see in our special places downtown University Hill and Civic area beyond that they can also be the eyes and ears on the street so um the team

[153:01] leader of the Ambassador team will have direct contact with the Boulder Police Department um and they can be readily available to be the eyes and ears on the street when things do escalate in the event that they do escalate they can be available to to work with the Boulder Police Department to to be a partner um immediately whenever anything comes up and we need to dispatch for that again with the budget we were focused on downtown in University Hill um but this is an incremental approach um if we want to go to the next slide I'll just I'll describe uh what that looks like so we are proposing for the downtown a $670,000 pilot program that's will that will hire a team lead leader a operations manager and its number of ambassadors that can be dispatched incrementally to other parts of of the city so the bulk of the program is proposed downtown if there is resources available we can expand that to the

[154:00] Civic area in University Hill uh so the total program ask is $568,000 from the general fund but the downtown bid is proposing a $300 contribution for the total cost so the total program cost is $868,000 but the the ASCA city is $568,000 that is and that is the the ambassador program I will hand it over to Ali for the urban park rangers thank you Chris so I'm Ali rhs director of Parks and Recreation good evening so if you move to the next slide I'll give an overview of the urban park ranger if you go back to the or just picture that that slide from the the beginning of this integrated presence strategy this would be that middle tier where there is some limited enforcement capacity so growing visitation across our public lands as you're all well aware is a thing and we love that more people are visiting our public spaces

[155:01] but we are however also dealing with increases um to many issues in addition to encampments which we discussed thoroughly in January we are managing significant increases to vandalism to Graffiti damage to E ological areas and code violations for issues such as open containers and so the proposed mitigation is an pair of urban park rangers for this 18-month pilot Urban Park Rangers exist in many communities like Boulder half of our peer agencies have some classification of Park Rangers and at least four have limited commission officers who write administrative tickets including our neighbors and golden and Fort Collins several who do not have a program are like us and that they were eliminated during the recession and they're working to restore that service there's an overview of the key areas of impact on your slide and certainly in the memo and I want to highlight that simply uniformed presence can Pro promote more positive behavior

[156:00] and and address issues we have tried this with just uniformed security um for example at e andg fine over the past several Summers and it's not been effective due to the lack of any enforcement capacity and so we've relied on on PD as we mentioned we've partnered with Police Department to staff overtime officers on weekends for the past two summers and that's had some Effectiveness when we're able to fill it however again it's dependent upon overtime officers which is is challenging um and so the program would be designed to promote positive visitation and land stewardship with the ability to write administrative tickets and of course for threats to Public Safety we would continue to rely on our partners in police the pilot would be designed as Chris mentioned to monitor throughout the 18 months some of the measures for this area could include um decreased vandalism which um and graffiti and police involvement and our uh CRM tickets through inquire Boulder so if you go to the next slide I'll give

[157:00] an overview of the expenses for this part of the program over 18 months it is $186,000 and that again is for a pair of Rangers who would be focused in the Boulder Creek Corridor however they would be ability to um address issues that might arise across the system the onetime expenses are pretty streamlined because um again this is a pilot and so they we would rely on some of our existing resources to fund figure out a vehicle but it would include uniforms and training um I want to note we've we've said that we've reflected a $10,000 savings from the overtime officers that we funded the last two summers but we are spending a rapidly growing amount of resources both staff time and money to address vandalism and graffiti we've spent $155,000 so far this year which is a significant increase to address graffiti um we're having to use a contractor because we do not have the resources to dress it inhouse and um the within the time

[158:03] required so we think that there will be more direct and indirect savings but it it's hard to measure that now that would be one of the things that we would monitor through the pilot and so I think that's all I have to say about the park ranger budget and I'm going to toss it to the chief of police mayor's Herold thanks Ally good evening council members I um if you could go to the next slide please um I just want to start out my portion of the uh presentation by saying that Boulder Police Department Staffing levels are significantly down this year and so our problem identification is really clear to me to uh do the encampment cleanups support the efforts of other City departments and to enforce um the encampment ban um we are really taking officers from um already depleted units which includes my San Juan team my

[159:00] University Hill impact team my Mall team and A lot of times we have to take the entire traffic uh unit out of um operation and have them assist other City departments to do these cleanup enforcement to make sure that they are done safely um this causes uh a lack of specialized training um and skills to do work productively with encampment community members um and current Staffing levels will not permit additional cleanup efforts or enforcement efforts so our uh response is pretty clear-cut U we need at least a dedicated unit of six officers to do a few things these officers um would most certainly be um involved in a lot of other activities uh for the police department but they would support the safety and success of the internal Cleanup Crew they would um uh provide uh safety and uh rapid response to the ambassadors and park rangers they

[160:01] would also provide high visibility Patrol for the University Hill area downtown business Corridor and the downtown Corridor but lastly and probably most importantly for me it would provide me with the group of officers that could begin proactively problem solving some of the uh problems that we all see um uptick this year um including burglaries and other significant crime increases that we've re seen in all of these areas including the downtown business Corridor the San Juan uh Community the hill Community and also the Central Park area as well next slide please and I'm going to turn this over to deputy chief Weinheimer who has worked on the budget and staffing issues for me evening Council um Carry one hammer Deputy police chief so I'll quickly walk you through um the budget here we have the um for 2021 the impact would be just

[161:02] under $500,000 uh that reflects $385,000 in salary and benefits for six officers at six months of salary assuming a July start date and one time of expense is of about $114,000 a large portion of that is Academy training costs and the rest is a cost of upfitting and outfitting new officers uh for 2022 uh that budget reflects the full year of salary and benefits at $843,000 and the one-time expense of 159,000 to add three cars to the fleet to support the six officers so the total cost over the 18-month project would be $1.5 million thanks Carrie and I do believe I turn it back over to is it Chris or Kurt I I'll take it uh Chief Harold

[162:03] thank you um if you could go to the next slide um so here we have um all of these uh components list listed together um so you can see the um um the budget uh impacts in totality for um the various recommendations um of staff and um I think next we're going to um if there's unless there's any questions on this slide we can move on to the uh the questions uh for number one and two which is the next slide and then I will um I'll pass it over to you um council member Joseph can you go to slide 17 please there we go so these are the the two questions um that we we would have for these recommendations and I would welcome any um

[163:00] clarifications or additional information that that Council may desire thank you Kurt um is there any questions at this moment um first we have we do have Mark but before we go to you Mark I wanted to ask Bob because um I wonder do you have any is there any clarification when it comes to the order of the items that you'd like to bring forward I I think we probably just sounds like there's four proposals we can probably tackle them in the order they were just presented I did have a question but if Mark was ahead of me and Q for question question he can certainly go first all right thank you all right go ahead and uh Mark I just thought it was a clarification coming from B go ahead Mark I have a few questions that I'd like to understand the proposals a little better

[164:01] um how are the ambassadors first one is how are the ambassadors going to interact with members of the homeless Community is that simply an informational uh process or is this or is this project mostly geared towards tourists and people seeking information uh thank you for the question council member and it's it is both um and we actually also have chip from the downtown Boulder partnership on the call um and he is actually very familiar with these types of programs as they are quite common with business Improvement districts and if you don't mind I would love to hear from him on his experience with that approach will be terrific thank you very much uh thanks for the question mark it's a great question I think the the core focus of the ambassador program is to engage with everybody uh in the downtown uh in whatever you know role they're playing so I think in terms of specifically

[165:01] engaging with the uh unhoused Community a lot of the work the ambassadors would be doing is uh striving to connect folks with uh resources as needed uh make sure people are safe and and know what resources we have available directing folks towards uh coordinated entry or the be there program or any other services that are available so I think just having building the relationships with folks downtown uh including the the business owners but also the unhoused community and and the other folks in the district is is kind of the the main focus of the ambassador program well while I've got you here um if we're going to use an independent contractor what kind of standards are we going to employ uh in doing so what are we looking for that's a great question as well um we have been in conversations with uh um an organization who runs uh programs who's kind of one of the one of by far actually one of the leaders in managing

[166:01] Ambassador programs in the country uh called Black by block where we've been engaged with them to help us understand the scope and build the scope um and you know we get a lot of information from our peer cities around the country country um so we'll be building uh the metrics of of what we're trying to aim for based on the needs of the community as they change in the needs of the downtown all right my last question with respect to the ambassador program C can you describe the scope of P of what constitutes Public Safety support um are the ambassadors supposed to intervene in a difficult situation uh though the ambassadors will have extensive training and in deescalation training and and um other uh ways of engaging in the moment when needed um you know we will really be relying on the police department when

[167:00] appropriate or whatever other agencies in the city whether it is as I mentioned Outreach but in terms of Public Safety you know would would rely heavily on the police department for that I think the ambassador's role is having a presence in knowing when to call uh the police and when there are other resources as well so I think but certainly um there would be extensive training uh but we'd absolutely rely on police department for when it's appropriate all right and before I yield the floor I have a couple of questions for um Chief Harold um the first is how does this request for additional officers coordinate with larger efforts to restaff the department after um the many resignations and depart depes and the impact of covid on the budget thank you for the question I think that what this does is it my hope is that we have much success in doing this and this these officers become the

[168:00] fabric and we rebol our numbers in these very important groups that I've discussed and these are my most proactive problemsolving crime prevention officers so it's my hope that we can kind of tackle two issues here with these officers um so both doing helping with the internal cleanup and the park rangers and the ambassador program but also bolster my number in these very specialized units okay and um will I be receiving a different kind of training than our officers are normally receiving uh prior to their um going on the job yes I you know um this is probably the riskiest type of work that Boulder Police engage in um because the level of offense that we're asking the officers to do is a very minor offense with the camping ticket but if the officers would have to engage in any type of force the courts would

[169:01] frown upon that and um that's my biggest concern so these officers it it they really need to be trained um in legal standards for this um they have to be trained in crisis intervention and deescalation and they really should be uh the elite officers that don't allow um for uh use of force situations and really provide a presence and strong visibility while we're doing these encampment cleanups um because it is it's constantly on my mind um the risk involved in in enforcing the camp encampment ban and lastly how difficult do you anticipate it will be to recruit officers for what is really a a narrower scope of service than than the general police officer uh thank you very much Mark for that question because it's going to be challenging to recruit officers I think on a lot of fronts and this one will be as well I am hoping though that the

[170:01] enhanced training program the certifications and Crisis Intervention training and we get service oriented officers that really want to impact this problem proactively and compassionately um I see it as you know one of the reform mechanisms that we change the dialogue in policing and make this much more about service driven and Ambassador uh policing than we have in the past so I am hoping to remarket this and that we have success recruiting officers that have much more of a service-minded um aptitude okay thank you Chief and I'm taking up enough time I I yield the floor thank you Mark just a point of clarification for the rest of us um we're asking questions at first and then we can come back and give directions because it's so important and I appreciate all the questions that Mark asked but I just wanted to make sure that we eventually get back around and

[171:02] answer these questions and give staff directions so ask away all the questions and then we'll come back around and answer each question and give the right direction so thank you go ahead um Bob thanks juny and I will have some opinions to offer in a bit but I'll Reserve to questions right now my questions are along the lines of what Mark was asking a chief if I can um build on those So currently we we budgeted a certain number of sworn officers I can't remember the number was like 180 190 or something like that and and you're down 27 U from that budget is that correct I let me um ask deputy chief wi he just did a complete um Staffing level Carrie yes Bob if I can sort of walk you through the numbers um we are currently authorized 184 officers of that 184 as of today we have 145 who are what I would call fully operational in other words they're full officers fully trained solo qualified

[172:01] can be out there on their own so that gap between 145 and 184 is made up of 14 actual vacancies where we don't have officers in any positions 10 that are in field training uh who should become fully operational in mid to late June we have six in a post Academy so they won't be operational until late November once they complete the academy in field training then on top of that uh we have nine that are out on either extend extended family leave or injury leave so that leads us to an effective number of 145 thanks G that was real helpful and so if if we if we were to approve six additional officers P per the staff recommendation tonight would that increase the so if our budgeted FTE is 184 would that effectively increase our budgeted FTE for sworn officers from 184 to 190 is that kind of what we would do yes okay and then Chief then I guess the

[173:00] question really then is around where are these folks going to come from in other words we're going to go from 27 or 29 vacancies or of various types to six more than that um and are you envisioning that these six highly trained and specialized officers would come from you have the right disposition that you'd bring over and then you'd backfill for them is that kind of what you're thinking yes sir that's what I'm thinking great and then we already have a two officer homeless Outreach team how would these six new officers that you bring in under this program interface with homeless Outreach team would would we effectively have an eight member homeless Outreach team or would their remit be broader or different than the Outreach team they would be a much broader um you know that the hot team does remarkable work in and that work is completely separate from this group and for a good reason um this group would be highly specialized in other issues affecting the city as well not just the encampment cleanups but other things that were starting to see

[174:00] cracks in because we were so down in these specialized areas so these this group of officers that um I think that they will receive a lot of training from the hot team on services and you know how to interact and who are your you know who who are the people that you know have drug addiction problems who are the people who are the people that will be uh accepting of housing where are the services so they'll they'll receive a lot of training from the hot team but I think the work will be completely separate and it'll be much more robust as crime prevention and problem solving officers thanks Chief and final question um I think I read that um these six officers would be dedicated not only to downtown but also uh to University Hill as well is that correct that is correct we're just so down in all of those specialized units that do such good work um but we're really significantly down in all of those units so I it sounds like that that we we had um given a KN of five I think a few weeks ago after the after the riot up on the hill to do some

[175:00] enhanced work on the hill this would be a step in that direction is that correct yes sir great thank you Chief that's all I have thank you Bob our next speaker is Mary than you juny um I'm not sure who this question will be directed at um and probably it's it's it falls in everybody's um Camp so I'm trying to Envision how current interventions encounters um approaches um occur right now versus how they would occur with all of these um the ambassadors and the Rangers and the new police officers in place um so I'm wondering if someone could describe to me how what what what does it look like right now and what would it look like

[176:01] with all of these interventions in place and what kind of a funnel if you will would exist in terms of who does what when um there seems to be a lot of not a lot but some overlap um among the the Rangers the ambassadors and the police officers um and then the mention was made of limited commissions and how does that work into all of this another thing that was mentioned that I was very intrigued by was um Chief Harold's mention of how these officers would be trained very differently and it sounds to me like they would be trained in a um kind of a more of a reformed approach um than current policing so I'm not sure if I'm articulating my question correctly but basically I guess

[177:00] in the nutshell is what does it look like right now what would it look like with these interventions in place for a given scenario um maybe I'll just start and then I'll and then I'll pass it over to Ally I think she's probably best uh position to answer um what appears to be a very challenging question um but um one of the things I'll mention right now so the um as far as addressing what's currently there um so the hot team as um uh Chief Harold has mentioned um I'll just add on to that and they work with specific individuals um and they work with those individuals um sometimes over many many months um to um get them towards

[178:00] services and in housing um it it it looks like um sometimes it looks like you know driving them to Lewisville to help them get their social security card it's um getting them connected in services it's driving them to a lease signing um but all of those things take um weeks and months um to accomplish and um they have several different individuals that they're working with there's also the um the court Navigators um who work um uh somewhat in collaboration but those who um um have a high frequency with the court system um they do similar work um and um and then the be there program is also ensuring that there is lots of Engagement particularly with individuals that may be new to our community um about um the services that are available to them um there's coordination between

[179:02] all of these different um Outreach areas and um but I would also agree that more coordination is necessary um next week you'll hear a bit about um sort of our high utilizer list um those are individuals that um are most challenging for us to get into housing and services and taking a very coordinated effort um on those with the different approaches um it's also worth mentioning that Mental Health Partners um um visits um encampments and works with particular individuals that need that support that's been more challenging under covid um but that's a a regular um Outreach that they have um as well as a a physician who also visits um encampments from um one of our local clinics um but we ALS the last thing I'll say is the the Outreach um is intentionally um

[180:01] separate from encampment cleanups and um if we know that there's an encampment cleanup um that's occurring in a few days we also ensure that um that there's proper Outreach um again um to individuals to make sure that they're aware um of services before the cleanups would come um but I'm gonna pass it over to Ally because she's um she'll be very well versed in sort of the new programs and how those um are intertwined yeah thanks Kurt Mary what I heard you ask is is what does it look like now and and why would it be different why are we making this proposal to to spend this money and and what happens next now and I'm going to speak specifically about the Boulder Creek Corridor eban and the Civic area and and talk about that briefly as I can and then I'm going to let chip kind of paint the same picture for downtown so right now what happens in the Parks is um that as I mentioned before there is

[181:00] growing visitation council's were aware of our regular struggles at EB and G Fine park every summer and growing every year as is as happens along waterways across the state every director I talk to has water in their Community they're dealing with these issues and and trying to figure out how to address growing visitation without the eyes on the sites without the ability to enforce we and social media support we end up with situations that are out of our control and and so the hope would be in a future state with the eyes provided by ambassadors in the Civic area and and really the hope is with the scheduling of that it would support those high-intensity days right um a Saturday where there's a farmers market and an Arts event an Outreach all happening at the same time and it's one wonderful and ambassadors can support that and you know do some walk by the bathrooms and check things out and um up at Evan you know Rangers could help address some of these issues write tickets for open containers which which can be a deterrent and so that's really the hope there in addition to and I don't want to

[182:02] skirt around the the piece of addressing encampments we are pulling staff from across our system every time that we're doing this work one because of the burnout on the team downtown but also because the work that has to continue to happen and so um this issue continues to grow and our resources are shrinking and so the hope would be that in a future State we're addressing a growing issue with growing re resources and so with that that's that's the parks picture and I think it would be helpful for tip chip just to talk a little bit about what it might look like downtown thank you Ali and thank you Mary for that question I I think uh essentially what it looks like right now anytime we do have criminal Behavior or even antisocial Behavior or any kind of behavioral issues essentially what our business owners and and managers employees downtown uh have is is 911 essentially call the police and often that is very appropriate and sometimes it's there are other interventions as

[183:00] Kurt mentioned a number of resources we have in the city uh the ambassador program downtown would really be that funnel that you ask about and be able to help people understand when it is a 911 call or a non-emergency call or uh other issues so I think having a presence uh and being able to help coordinate all those services that the city does have uh for the appropriate response I think is a big part of of the role of the ambassadors so hopefully that answered your question yeah that that that's helpful um and I'm I guess I'm wondering um where where would where would the new police officer ERS enter into this scheme yeah so Mary in the city of Cincinnati we had ambassadors both in the downtown Corridor the um over the rine Corridor which was north of the downtown and we

[184:00] also when I transitioned to the University of Cincinnati we had them we had them for the University of Cincinnati as well they're multifaceted uh you know it's a multifaceted program and um basically they just become more eyes and ears for the police department um we trained the ambassadors in Cincinnati um and uh like chip or Kurt indicated that they have constant communication with our radio systems and so um not only do they provide eyes and ears but they can tell us when um something worse is happening that we can rapidly uh deploy to those areas and help and I think you know looking back to my time in Cincinnati with without the support of the police and the ambassador program in the beginning when when everybody's trying to learn new roles um it would have been um you know a hard program to continue just because of the complexities of the issues and an urban core and so we had a

[185:00] lot of success in Cincinnati with the Ambassador programs working closely with the police um and you know some of the other things that they do is they go into businesses that are having disorderly patrons or um they really just become an extension um you know eyes and ears for just higher visibility and for the for the business community and so I had a lot of success doing that great thank you and just um just kind of another follow-up question um The Limited commission what would both the ambassadors and the park R Rangers have limited commission and um what would their Commission capability consist of yeah thanks for that question Mary the the ambassadors would not have the limited commission that would be for the park rangers it would be similar folks may not be aware that some of our employees up at the Watershed the city's water um Water Resource and then also at

[186:00] the boulder Reservoir have the ability to write uh administrative tickets the police of Chief can the chief of police can uh commission employees to write those administrative tickets and so the it depends um we've reviewed Fort Collins materials pretty closely but I would suspect that the most frequent tickets would be for things such as open containers or um violations perhaps related to Wildlife or ecological areas or pets sometimes so those types of things nothing related to and I'm guessing the chief can chime in with more of the um law enforcement language here um related to the more serious offenses yeah Ali they would just mostly focus on quality life uh citations that negatively impact the community and so it's sounding to me like um the new police officers would be really spread out throughout the city

[187:01] and that they would be um reinforced somewhat and relieved somewhat by the park rangers and the ambassadors um so that the primary interventionists so to speak are not the police officers the primary um intervention is is is a lighter touch so to speak is that a fair description that's exactly it Mary and adding that um the intent would be to chip mentioned the word deescalation earlier right to an extent that they can however acknowledging that what Maris has described around the highly trained unit you're not going to have in a park ranger or an ambassador and so there would always be that back stop and so um I I guess this is a

[188:00] question for Maris these new police officers would be trained in that model that you um presented to us way back early um earlier in the year maybe last year where it was instead of the pyramid it was more of a circle yes these officers uh already trained in the icat model that critical decision-making model the sanctity of human life um but they would become even more specialized in legal training around um you know people experiencing homelessness um they would become you know our Elite officers with the escalation they would be tactically elite um and you know this group will have it my hope as we move forward and we continue with our reform efforts is that we are capable of of doing this type of training with all of our officers um but this would be a priority for me because again the work is is very uh risky and

[189:02] I'm a risk mitigator so I would put this at the top to get done uh so we can do this work compassionately and ethically and that people all people remain safe great thank you all for um answering my complicated question and I apologize for its complicatedness thank you Mary our next speaker is Adam Adam you have the floor thank you jie yep I got it um so I have a few questions and this these are pretty much blanket questions since this is being offered sort of as a a blanket um approach so uh my first question is how will like percentage wise what is the approximation that these policies will decrease illegal

[190:07] camping I'm not sure who to direct that to I know that um um chip had um met with the um with the uh block to block program I don't know if he receives some feedback um I know that Ali has talked to other uh cities with with Park Rangers [Music] um I think it would be unfair for us to put out a percentage um but um I'll I'll see if they have um any kind of feedback I definitely don't have a percentage and and I don't have input on whether it would contribute to um decreased camping what I have heard from significant research and talking to other agencies and the gel Institute who has done some research with the KN Foundation is that this layered approach does impact people's

[191:01] perceptions of and comfort in um public spaces including the unhoused and and Adam if you don't mind I'd add that um it's a great question I think a very fair question and I think the answer is we need to we need to evaluate the work we need to we need to see if it's making a positive impact and we need to set goals around that and we need to be data driven around this because I think what you're asking is very fair and um I think that's why we're looking at this as a pilot project program that needs to be evaluated and uh we should be very outcome measured on this with very specific uh goals in mind thank you all for that um yeah I understand that's a tough question to answer uh but I I feel like when we're making such big decisions with such large you know sums of money involved

[192:00] especially having a goal or having something that is going to show that this is being effective over the course of the 18 months would sort of need to be a requirement um along these same lines um how much you know do we anticipate this policy is going to decrease our overall crime rate I assume it's probably a similar answer to the last one well there's so many things going on right now um and we've talked about a lot of them and I think that I just have to go with current research and current research would suggests the more eyes and ears and we've talked about this a lot Adam um more eyes and ears um always you know reduce uh crime and disorder issues to the to the level I don't know we're facing um you know other issues in the criminal justice system that we've never

[193:00] faced before uh and the pandemic has been very hard uh to measure but all I can tell you right now is crime is not going in the right direction um and that you know there's a lot of things uh moving against us right now but I just have to go back to basic research on policing and the more eyes and ears on in the community and the more high high visibility police officers are um and that we engaged in legitimate practices crime rates go down and so um I just have to go with the research that's available to me now I wish I could give you a percentage but I'm very hopeful that we'll have a positive impact on crime and disorder especially if other things uh you know as we move forward out of the pandemic you know more people are out we get some utilization of our jail system again um you know we get staffed uh to normal levels then I do think this will be

[194:00] positive thank you Chief uh and my last question if these policies are enacted and camping continues do you anticipate we're going to come back have this conversation again and more enforcement is going to be the suggestion is that directed at me Adam it I think it's directed at everyone since everyone's sort of taking this all on as a comprehensive policy the one thing all these policies have in common are they're enforcement based so I'm just asking broadly if these policies don't seem to improve things are we going to be going down the enforcement road again in the future I'll offter my response and just say that that's the intent of the 18 month pilot to see what works in Boulder what is helpful communities across as council is well aware communities across the country are are struggling with this issue and I know we're all hoping for

[195:01] National solutions to address all the Upstream issues that contribute to homelessness right this proposal is really specific to addressing the conditions in that we're seeing the public spaces in downtown and in the Parks and so what we would be watching for and monitoring is are we impacting those conditions you know when it relate when we get into camping that's when you get into the broader questions and conversation about homelessness that as we all know is incredibly complicated I know your council's going to get a um comprehensive update on that soon but again in in about March you know a little less than 11 months from now our hope would be to be comprehensively looking at what has changed what is working what isn't and that would inform the next steps in the development of the 2023 budget thanks Ellie yeah I appreciate I realized these are yeah tough questions to answer and there's a lot of you know things happening that are not normal um due to the pandemic but I

[196:01] just yeah I I'm interested to know what the actual numbers based outcomes are anticipated so I appreciate all your answers though and do you mind if I jump in and try to um guide Adam to a resource that might be um responsive to his question please Adam um Fort Collins has for for the last several years had um a ambassador program called Outreach Fort Collins and you can just Google it and see Outreach Fort Collins and on their website you'll see something called the community impact dashboard they've been doing this for five years and they break down each one of their interactions um I mean literally every like how many times do we are we interacting with somebody whether it's um a tourist a uh resident a homeless person who's has an issue and they identify each of those interactions and then they classify them into um you know was there a safety concern was there a law enforcement issue was there um a mental health issue was there a just a

[197:00] um a welfare check and they they break them down by by interactions by outcomes um they track crime they track um contacts with with uh with everybody they they really reach and and what the resolution and result was and it's a very interesting dashboard so I I encourage you and anybody else to to go to the Outreach for Collins website and and click on the community impact dashboard because you can see five years of history there and how they have had a positive impact up in for Collins I appreciate that Bob yeah I realize a lot of this is going to be data driven so to have an example is helpful yeah I I would really hope that I know that we're going to doing a little bit of a measuring period over here over the next 12 or 18 months I would hope that a dashboard like what Fort Collins has would be part of our system so that we could um track um uh interactions and outcomes okay well thank you uh Bob and Adam Chris did you had a comment you were wanted to

[198:01] make I saw you came up I did but um uh I think Bob covered uh in much more great detail so uh I'll I'll leave it there okay great thank you Rachel you have the floor thanks um and that and following up on Adam and Bob is a a good spot for me because I my first questions are around data and uh measurable outcomes so one data question I have is um i' I've read that it is pretty important that communities basically know every single individual unhoused Community member within the community um but I think we do not get good information or data on people who are outside of coordinated entry um so I so I guess first to Kurt is that accurate that other than coordinated entry like people who are living in encampments we don't have like individual data on information

[199:02] on uh thank you for that council member friend um so um as you as you've uh pointed out our main data system is is actually a county system so it it it collects data from individuals um not just in the city of Boulder but throughout the throughout the county and um any programs that um have intervention with uh with individuals um however we don't have information on people that um don't interact with um our services or systems um one of the things we're looking at with the be there program um their individual that program um is is really working with individuals to try to get them to coordinated entry and services so we're looking at ways of collecting information um um to answer some of the questions you're looking at however I

[200:01] I'd also mention that the be there program as well as the hot team and Court Navigators um their primary goal actually isn't to collect that it's to build relationships and um so they have to be careful in the way in which they um collect data along the process of building relationships um they don't show up with clipboards um to work with individuals um however that is something that we're working on we're um our high utilizer team um which is under housing uh Homeless Solutions for Boulder County um is actually working on ways to um address individuals who are not engaging in the system who were aware of um I think if you were to take a walk with the hot team which I think you did at one point um they know the names of lots of individuals many of them who are not um who have not engaged in

[201:02] Services um that same type of information will be available be there and it would be our hope that we could start to use um that type of information while not in a database um it could start informing um you know how we're working with individuals and the success we're either having or not having so I I think we are working in that direction thank you okay thanks for that um but at this point we don't yet know like if the 150 people say who are going to be camping tonight are the same individuals who were here last week or last year or maybe you know cyclically coming back seasonally or something like like that is that outside of anecdotal information we don't have that data that would be correct okay um so I think it will be important for us no matter what direction we move in um to to figure out if we are kind of moving the same people around town when we clear encampments um like is there complete turnover and all

[202:02] new people every few months um so I guess maybe the big question I have on data is without that sort of of really concrete drilled down data how how do we know in terms of people who are not in coordinated entry if whatever steps we're taking you know we decide to take are working like how could we if we don't if we don't start getting the really specific information and data if that's not part of this how could we have any measurable outcomes it looks like Maris maybe want feel free anybody that could go to anybody yeah Rachel that's such a great question and I couldn't agree more and um we're actually looking um Joe's new uh project manager um Emma we actually the analysts I'm Contracting with is actually um seeing the suitability of an

[203:01] app that would start collecting um it's used in San Diego but it gets to the heart of your issue um and it starts collecting and focusing our attention on the exact issues that you're talking about um I think it'll be an easy lift for us to to do this um and it'll be part of this this uh strategy um but you're absolutely right we we need a lot more data we need a lot more research um and so I've looked at this app that San Diego Police are currently well it's not their police but their their comprehensive team as well and um it's it's pretty cool and I think it it will give us some some data sets that'll be very Valu Val okay that's good to hear um and then in terms of outcomes kind of what we do with the data and figure out whether our steps are working I think that we as a council will need to kind of crisply identify our targeted outcomes and and then staff would be measuring them um so I'm I'm wondering

[204:00] what are the outcomes we are hoping for um as a result of the changes that we are being asked to implement what are the measurables um like frankly clearing encampments doesn't seem to directly tie to getting people housed so I don't know that that is like the the measurable or or the targeted goal of of a lot of what we're talking about tonight so I just would love for staff to clarify what is what are the targets what would a successful outcome look like if if this all works is it people just not visibly camping in Boulder um and so if and there are Ripple effects to that if they are just camping elsewhere in the county is that still considered a success for this um program so I my question to staff is do you have outcomes in mind before Council digs into what are the outcomes we're looking for in this discussion I think you keep hearing pauses because we don't want to step on each other right but I'll so I'll I'll

[205:01] just jump in and share the immediate ones that make sense to me and I'm I'm certain my colleagues can add more but you know each with each of the options we identified what the problems are and so I know that I would certainly want to be tracking vandalism graffiti um other other other of the Maris you know quality of life crimes that we mentioned some of the things that we're seeing at eban the money and time we're spending addressing the behavior we see every weekend in the summer at e andg Fine park so those are all just off the top of my head I'd love to see um a reduce in trash just left around the park again I'm I'm thinking of eban not just encampments but people we we are working really hard to get educate people in the park pars about leave no Trace principles right if you have more trash than can fit in a bin then take it out with you right don't don't just leave your trash around the park so those are all things that that a park rangers can impact and that's what what I'd be hoping we're measuring y helps from a policing perspective uh Rachel I'd be very concerned I mean very um interested

[206:02] to know um Community complaints that we receive through inquir Boulder that Council receives are we lessening uh the complaints Community perception of cleanliness and and the feeling of safeness their perceptions of how safe um and then ideally less citations and less interaction uh with the police um would be really good and then I'm sure Kurt has measurements that are in his mind um but those would be my my big ones thanks Kurt any anything to add or yeah the other thing that I'll add is um and I had the meet I had the opportunity to meet one of the gentlemen from block to block last month and um they um they also have a very good system for collecting um data and um they um have metrics that they've used

[207:01] in other communities and I think bringing in um sort of an experienced partner in that will will help us to find those and um and and also help bring in the systems um to collect that kind of information which we don't currently have I can just add on to that having worked with block by block before and knowing their understanding their program the data can be really catered to the community and what we want to uh perceive and some ways the ambassador program is really focused on the quality of life issues that are some in some ways uh less measurable uh but they're also really the ambassador program does create an opportunity for create for collecting really good data uh so that's something we we'll take full advantage of uh you know getting back to the question of metrics they're just one of the things that we found and experienced in tarting with other communities often there's really great data once the Ambassador programs have been in place

[208:00] but the Baseline hasn't always been there so a lot of the things we will be counting moving forward we just don't know where we're starting from uh but to reiterate the chief point about just increased eyes and ears is really a big part of the what gives that quality of life and and the the feeling in the built environment of just being more secure all right thanks and then I don't Chris did you have any anything you wanted to add to that I mean nothing that hasn't already been said but just around the themes of Clean safe and welcoming um we do know that we've been having challenges in this area and and the Ambassador team specifically is is will be very well attuned into to asking the right questions and documenting their interactions with all types of people um and so we will look forward to learning from their experiences and um you know counting the number of of stickers removed and graffiti removed and and pounds of trash that's picked up

[209:01] just as a measure of the benefit that this is provided um as an example um but I anticipate that we're going to have a lot more um to report back on once we've gotten this underway okay thanks for that um okay so I think those are all my questions on kind of the data and outcomes um so then it seems like um a lot of the you know Financial asks are are targeted at at sort of getting obviously clearing encampments getting people to to not be in public spaces um living so a broad question is do we expect and Adam asked this a little bit differently do we expect that the number of public encampments will decrease through all these efforts or are we assuming it's just going to continue to increase like are we doing this with the hope that that a year from now we have fewer people camping in public spaces or do we think this is this is going to be a sopan

[210:03] task um I'll take a stab at that um I think the answer is yes um which way EX our our our our expectations is that there would be a decrease um in camping in our public spaces um but but as far as measurements as well we're we will certainly be looking at ways to measure um the number of individuals that are are um able to um engage in services in coordinated entry but also understand better the reasons why individuals um would not be engaging um in those Services um but um there's um there's an expectation in the community um around um a decrease in um the illegal camping in the city um and and what you have just heard are

[211:02] being able to measure what the impacts of that would be okay thanks for that Kurt um then I have a couple policing question questions um I think I read in the memo and have observed in real life that police currently uh attend encampment cleanups I I wanted to verify I think I read that we have something like between three or four to 12 officers at cleanups is that did I read that correctly yes yes you did okay um I hope you didn't just call me ma'am great if I did it's just because of my bwestern upbringing okay uh thanks for that H so I guess why do why do you feel that we need three to 12 police officers at encampment cleanups and we are already doing that so you know a separate

[212:00] question I'll have is is like why that's not already built in to to officers that we have doing this um but you know if I visualize a lot of going through the world I don't have any police officers nearby like you know we've gotten requests for having police officers at the grocery stores you know every every store now and and you know just I I'm probably not particularly inclined to like a a a militaristic um worlds um or city so I just want to understand why when when faced with a tent we need a a more than even one you know without without something you know developing or or some I don't know somebody showing violent tendencies why do we need any and then why is it why is it three to 12 yeah I I can answer that and then I'd love for my colleagues to kind of tell you what they see when when they're there as well but um depending on the

[213:01] size of the encampment is really how we um staff the encampment cleanup so the larger the cleanup the more officers um when we have intelligence that say that there are people from other areas that um have weapons or have a propensity for violence we have more officers there um and so you know when you have the large encampments and you have a lot of intelligence or the the actual encampment members saying they will not leave um they will you'll have to use Force against these uh community members to make them leave and we get that constantly um with the encampments um and in fact when we're not present uh people just tell the staff that they're not leaving and so that leaves them in a precarious situation um and so obviously those factors play into how many officers are are going to the encampment cleanups and a lot of that is driven by intelligence that we work on before

[214:02] because um there is no doubt that because of the uh drug addiction problem and the mental illness that is going unaddressed in the encampments that the behavior um at times is very unpredictable um staff members have been assaulted um the the behavior toward the officers is even um assaultive in nature and research would demonstrate that the more visibility by um police officers the less likely that force will have to be used and so I will always side on the safety of not only uh the staff members the community members but the people in the C ments themselves um because if I have enough officers there to deter that behavior um I'm going to do that every time and that's that's just the ethical thing to do in my opinion I'm must certainly open it up to people that have been on scene and have seen their staff members be assaulted um in fact um we

[215:00] just had a person um with very assaulted behavior um and this is not a this is not an uncommon occurrence um uh the math addiction um in Boulder is real and the behavior when you're um coming down off math um people are very agitated and I just don't want to see anybody get hurt um including the people that are in the encampments themselves sure um I appreciate that and I look forward to hearing some more perspectives I guess I I still don't understand why um again like a lot of um Arenas just of going through life you call call the police when when a situation uh escalates and and you know you you step back until they get there so I it's it's hard for me to understand if you've got like a single tent and um the person doesn't decline to leave why there have to be three officers there automatically that it just seems like a

[216:00] lot um it it's Rachel I it's really not in fact I think the presence deters us using Force um you know if Joe's still on um they just they just had a situation where somebody came out of the tent and with a some type of metal pole and started going after um you know the the staff members um and they had to leave the area um so this happens frequently um and I just have always um you know my training will just tell you that to have an ample supply of officers there usually deters this type of behavior and makes it safe for everybody and I I do understand what you're saying um but that's just based on research and my training okay um I I appreciate that I'll I'll um probably get return to that

[217:00] in comments um so let's see it I guess the other piece I'm I'm struggling with around the policing request is it seems like a lot of what we're trying to do is sort of relieve relieve the pressure from police officers who are currently responding and so there would you know I would expect that there would be less involvement and less time um from the the police department in responding to some of the run-ofthe-mill things on Pearl Street or at encampments um I think we're also looking at a a um 911 you know emergency mental health response um and and I understand we're down 30 officers so it seems like if we or roughly if we got up to full force and and some other things you know and I think we eliminated a couple of SRO you know farming out and so I would think that those officers are also back in there like if we expect that that the work load will be lightened on a couple

[218:01] of fronts why why is it necessary to add officers in your view um so just keep this in mind and and Carrie can jump in too because he's been looking at the Staffing numbers it's going to take us a while to get back up to compliment um and so you know I'm trying to staff this and also staff not only the um requested enforcement of the encampments but also do that safely also make sure that staff is protected but I'm also trying to um reinforce uh the specialized units that have been depleted um so that is my University Hill impact team that is my San Juan team that is my Mall team and so when we do have to clean encampments um and we have to do it safely I'm removing those specialized

[219:01] units to come and do that if the ask is for us to do more of that then I have to have additional resources to make sure that everybody's safety is in play and and that's all I'm trying to do and so um I I don't know any way around it if the expectation is is that we um are requested to do this type of work um because I don't think it gets done adequately and safely without having police presence there but I must certainly open it up to my colleagues to give their perspective yeah I I would just add uh everything that uh Maris just said is correct including the last exchange and the experience our our staff had with um somebody coming out of a tent and I think again I'm I'm sort of on my learning curve with all this but it it can just escalate really quickly and um

[220:00] in working with the my colleagues here and the staff members doing this work it's just it's just not safe to put them in that position uh without the the support there for reinforcement and I I don't think we lead with the police support but the the presence matters yeah and what I'll offer I mean I certainly could tell stories our staff have been assaulted they have been threatened it is um traumatic it's and the thing I guess I also want to highlight is just how challenging this is what we what we do know and have seen is that when teammates try to address even just the lone tent on their own because you know it's just it's just a tent it could just be one person that one person you don't know the behavior and the risk to Joe's point it can change really rapidly um we had a situation recently where police had to leave because they were called to a more urgent life safety issue which is

[221:01] certainly appropriate and um our team described that within you know 101 15 minutes the tone completely changed and um the the folks that they were working with became very combative and they they abandoned they you know and they all they all know like your safety is never never put your safety at risk to accomplish this work it is the work we have to do if the city is enforcing the camping ban and we want to keep our public spaces saf and your safety has to come first and so they they they stopped that day right um so I would just add [Music] that all right thanks I will move on to um my next question I only have a couple more I think um are are Rangers are we expecting that they would be armed they would not okay thanks um okay I think that's all of my questions thank you thank you Rachel are there any more

[222:02] questions from Council no um I do have a question but I wanted to make a comment based on everything that Rachel said um and not to take us on a tangent it feels or the impression that I get that the narrative around cleaning up is focused on output instead of outcome and it's so important that for us to engage that outcome piece because as I was listening to Rachel asking the questions you know I think some of the answers I guess you you know staff were able to respond to them but I thought to me wow to me when I think of cleaning up I thought part of it as well is promoting healthy living and encouraging outdoor activities and also um mitigating conflict because part of it

[223:01] is that you have community members regardless of whether they showed up here in Boulder for one day or just they've been Boulder for a week they're camping in a park whether we don't know whether it's going to be permanent and then we also have community members who wants to use the park and I've heard from community members who say the same thing they'll say to me you know hey there is a bunch of people camping out here and I can't really use the park so I think to me the cleaning up part is also about conflict mitigation and ensuring that people as well when we engage them they will have access to to housing which we often talk about but I think spending some time as well talking about that outcome piece is so important and I think Rachel just highlight that for me tonight um my question is for Maris I believe Chief Maris Harold that's right you mentioned your the mall team and the

[224:03] Sunan team and I think I do know what the mall team does I have an idea based on all the emails that we've received and I'm wondering what does the sun team that's the first question just you know broad overview and how important is having that team there um in in in in that area because we've heard from you know businesses on the mall and they've been very vocal and I hear you said if we were to support this you know the cleanup team I would be taking officers away from my Mall team and my son Juan team and I can from what I've gathered before is that that might not be something that would work because we've heard from the business businesses on the mall so now I'm asking the for the sun one team what does it do and how

[225:00] important is having that team there to provide security and safety to the people of that Community well it's very important and it it should be a priority of this police department and um My Hope Is that I get a Spanish speaking officer to San Juan so we can actually start engaging the community and I do have Spanish speaking officers don't get me wrong um and and they do a good job but we are trying to build collaboration and and Community there um and it's just it's an area that I feel is is neglected um and we are down officers there and it's an it's an area that there was a lot of buildup to get really strong Community collaboration and it's uh you know it's stalled out because we don't have the resources there and it's a community that's very deserving um and I think they um you know they want to understand

[226:00] policing um and I have met with this group um with uh council member young and it's a it's an area that we could do so much work and they are a community that really wants to be part of Boulder and um I just see it as a big gap and it it breaks my heart because I think that we owe it to this community to collaborate with them on not just policing but city services and and in general so yeah could I um yeah if if I could just add juny um this is a community that has as as um Chief Harold just said has been neglected for a long long time and um it's something that a group of us has been working on for a long long time as well and definitely the police presence is part of the solution and um the reason I'm interested in it is because

[227:01] it's it's a police presence that is that would be building community and helping community members as Chief heral said access Services um and there's a lot of um I guess institutional neglect um and this community has often been forgotten so um it it is something that needs attention and I think that um the community building that can be provided by officers that are trained in a specific way would be essential to um to getting things on a better track yeah thank you so much Mary for this comment um thank you uh Chief Maris uh Chief Herold for uh your explanation it really shift things for me as well just hearing from you because again um

[228:00] we have issues with overp policing we also have issues of under policing in America as well and I think you know just this discussion bring that up um but we're moving on to talk right now we've asked all the questions and I think right now it's time to move on to comments um I think the best way to engage this might be let's try to answer the first question which is does council support an internal encampment cleanup team including police support so whatever comments you make at that moment let's try to give some direction to um to staff for that particular question and get to a consensus on that one and if that doesn't work we can use Rachel's um strugles all right where is uh who's who's first Sam Sam please go

[229:03] ahead thank you juny and I'm gonna leave my camera off and if someone would chat to me if uh you're having trouble hearing me because of bandwidth um I think for me the answer is absolutely I would like to see uh internal cleanup team I think it will be more responsive than our contracted team I think there will be duties that they perform in addition to encampment cleanup I think that's one of the key things that kind of got glossed over but I want to bring it out is that one of the things we heard from Joe and Ally about this was that the cleanup team would be able to do additional things besides encampment cleanup which would include clean up of waterways um and just general cleanup um there's a lot to be done in in keeping our Greenways and waterways um cleaned up as well as Park so I to me the answer is yes I think maris's answer about

[230:02] having police support during clearing of encampments was extremely compelling it was very clear was fact-based and I think you know um interviews with people who have been part of these uh cleanup processes will attest to the value of having police support there um so not getting into the question of additional officers simply about whether we want police support during encampment cleanups I think the answer is extremely clear um that we need that kind of support I for one don't view all police presences in any way militaristic I mean militaristic to me implies certain kinds of equipment and I think generally police on patrol often don't have militaristic types of equipment um and often police don't need to engage in um the encampment clearing itself but may

[231:01] need to come in to support if there are are folks who are unruly or resistant to the process that's going on so um I have a lot more thoughts about the conversation we've had um but if we're talking about outcomes of encampment cleanup I think absolutely we would like less people camping on our public lands so that's one outcome to look for from that um I think generally there's a whole bunch of other outcomes um that we're looking for out of this process which include um not only few are people camping in public spaces but less violent crime less property crime less screw FD less trash in public spaces that they're more welcoming um in particular things like um needles at playgrounds those tend to discourage parents from bringing children to the playground so as an example I think um that wouldn't necessarily be related to clearing an encampment but it could be something that an internal cleanup team

[232:01] did which is Patrol problem playgrounds as an example and problem areas so I think for me the answer number one is a clear yes which includes police support during those activities um I'll have more to say with the other questions that's it for now thank you thank you Sam um next is uh mayor by you have the floor thanks juny um so for I'll just answer number one for now as well um absolutely I support number one 100% And I think that having an internal cleanup team uh that's run by the city of Boulder hopefully will add more Buy in um for those members to care about the members that they're working with um to have it be a smoother uh cleanup and um safer for everyone all around I will say that I mean there's a lot to say on this discussion but and trying to keep it short and simple I think that um having the cleanup team to help protect our

[233:01] natural resources that are getting damaged I didn't realize that that was also happening so that's just beyond sad because there's already much of our natural lands getting destroyed um by humans that um have this continue further was just devastating um and I think that having the public safety um aspect back for children and our community members um and I think what Maris was saying uh just having very very very minimal um contact with the police working with the fire department myself um you know I do see some of the more um dangerous situations that they have to be in from time to time and it just makes perfect sense that for everyone's safety uh no matter which side of the coin you're on that uh having the the presence even if it's not milit militaristic um will help support everyone in in going home safe or um hopefully finding a safe housing option

[234:02] or um whatever is best for that individual based on what they choose to do so um I welcome number one look forward um to seeing the results thank you mayor by Rachel yep um so I support uh safe and clean spaces obviously and um so I'm supportive of an internal cleanup team uh I think like most people who um move around the city you know you you see that bike paths are are unsafe when there is debris on them and um that the creek is is Det deteriorating from from some mistreatment so I certainly support our our city taking steps to um maintain a clean safe environment um I'm not supportive of I think additional police being hired I um can understand um police support sort of as needed um

[235:00] and I'm sort of jumping ahead a little bit to question two here but like the Ambassador and park rangers programs were sort of Ed to me by a m by several people as an alternative to policing so we will do these things and that will be in lie of policing so I'm I'm disappointed that this request came with um a request for more officers in addition to what I was told would be in lie of heightened policing um and and just for like context or perspective and again you know what I'm saying like we often move through the world without police um my daughter and husband both work in an emergency room and um they frequently go into rooms um where there are people who are violent or refuse to leave they get spit on and peed on they do not go into those rooms with three police officers even though that's a common outcome so they do have you know police officers you know nearby that they could call if they needed it if somebody exhibits that violent Behavior

[236:01] or refuses to leave when they're discharged so I'm I'm not sold on just because something is happened um a number of times you need to then bring in guns when you are dealing with a situation that requires compassion um and and meeting people um who are having a a really hard time much like people go to the emergency room like these people are going to be having a bad day so I just don't understand why we need um armed people there without something having escalated um and and I'm not insensitive to we don't want to put staff in danger we don't want other people to be in danger I'm not saying we should have no police ever at encampment clearings I just don't understand why we would automatically default to if we're dealing with basically somebody who's unhoused we need police presence and that that is it just feels sort of inherently targeting a population and I'm not very comfortable with that so

[237:01] supportive of the clean space is not supportive of of additional police officers being hired um I I would hope that as we hire these new 30 people we can find resources as needed to um to have people there when we need them thank you very much Rachel Mark you have the floor thank you um you know in a in a better world I would prefer that we not add additional police but I'm not sure that that's the the state in which we find ourselves um I I do agree that we we cannot send staff into these situations um without adequate support it's it's simply not safe and I really don't want to go there um I do understand and support the value of the cleanup team um and with respect to the officers I am a I am impressed by uh Chief Harold's

[238:01] explanation as to why they are necessary and I am I take some comfort in the fact that they're training will be different um and specialized for the purpose to which they're being employed and I think that's that's very important um to to some of Rachel's earlier comments I I happen to agree that it it's critical to collect real data and both to track outcomes and determine the efficacy of this program it's not a cheap program and if we're going to spend this money and go down this road uh we do need to know that it's impactful at the end of the day um so that we can make a determination as to whether or not it's renewed after 18 months or we take a different uh path um so I I think that that aspect of it in terms of understanding um what we're doing um what our outcomes are uh defining what we consider to be

[239:01] good outcomes are all critical components of doing this having said that though I I I fully support the uh cleanup team and I reluctantly acknowledge that a police presence is required a police support is required um for them to carry out their jobs and so I would support that as well thank you Mark Mary you have the floor thank you juny and I um first of all I want to say that um I appreciate Rachel's um requests for good metrics and measuring outcomes and as I sit here I I I did go over to the Outreach for Collins um dashboard and there is a um relationship or between um seems to be as client contacts go up disruptive behavior goes

[240:04] down um and that as time goes on they have seen just the number of service calls go down so I think those are important metrics and the metrics will be very important to um to be determined by staff I I don't know that Council determines what those metrics should be I think we should State our um concerns and then staff can come up with the appropriate metrics but I think that those metrics will be very very very important um as not just locally too and to Rachel's point of how do we know that the decrease in camping here isn't causing an increase in camping elsewhere and that's where a regional collaboration and effort is critically important um so that's just to to start there and and just say that I support um

[241:02] Rachel's comments with respect to keeping good metrics um I support support um the um cleanup team as well as um the police officers to provide the support um and I the reason I I believe those police officers would be essential is because as um Chief Harold stated in my questions um they will be trained differently and they will be trained in a manner that I think we should be moving in in this country they will be um trained in a model that is new and furthermore they will be going out into different communities using that different um approach so it's not only a um a pilot project for the cleanup team it is a pilot project for a reformed um approach to policing so um so I support

[242:03] it for that reason um I think the other thing is that when you are um one of the things that we do know about a lot of the folks that are in these encampments is that um they have meth addictions um and oftentimes it's combined with mental illness and when you bring those two together um there is some there there's higher possibilities that there could be some um behavior that could escalate and that could be harm ful to the people that aren't equipped to deal with it so um so I think that police officers with a new approach to policing um that could more compassionately handle folks that have the meth addictions combined with the mental illness are essential so for those reasons I support um number one

[243:02] thank you that's all I have thank you Mary Bob you have the floor thank you um first of all I think the decision to to bring the um the cleanup crew inhouse is a no-brainer um it'll undoubtedly save us money and more importantly to give us greater flexibility Joe I don't know who you annoyed to get stuck with this but congratulations uh it's now your baby um but um but uh and Ally congratulations for getting rid of this because I know it's been a thorn on your side but I um I I think it it makes a lot of sense to bring that in house and Joe will do a great job of managing that I I think um Joe and and Maris and others made some very persuasive arguments about why um we need to protect our staff when they're out there in those dangerous situations um I come from a management background and um uh you either you either trust your staff or you get new

[244:00] staff and I trust this staff um it's our job as as Watchdogs and as representatives of the community to um ask hard questions um to make sure that our staff recommendations are sound and are well thought out and we heard a lot of hard questions tonight and uh staff didn't Flinch at answering any of these questions they obviously have been thinking about this very deeply for the last several months since we tasked them with this um and uh they knew the answers to the questions and they they have real world experiences and uh so when they say that they need um protection when they're out doing this dangerous work I'm not going to second guess that um and then finally with respect and I guess this is kind of jumping forward a little bit because we've started to talk a little bit about the the um there's four recommendations one's the internal cleanup which is an easy one um the fourth one I guess we've started to touch on so I'll just go ahead and and and close out with that one and that's the increase in number of officers I actually think there's a little false Precision here um we have aund we have a budget of 184

[245:02] officers that number's gone up or down a little bit over the years and the five and a half years I've been on Council we have never been anywhere close to full staff we've always had 8 10 12 15 20 30 short um and that sounds like it's a Perpetual situation um and that's I think police departments up and down the Front Range uh deal with that shortage so it's almost a paper number it's almost a paper number whether we take that from 184 to 190 because we're not GNA if we if we made it 190 we're still going only have 145 officers are actually working for us and and marrison Cary and others will have to continue to scramble to to fill back fill for those positions and it sounds like we will never get to our full budgeted complement of um police officers so what really what I think Maris is really asking for is not so much give me more budget dollars because I I don't think we'll ever spend all the budget dollars that she's allocated I think what she's actually saying is let's redeploy some of these officers into a different um type of work and as Mary said this is

[246:01] the type of work that we want our police doing um and I don't think the chief needs our permission to redeploy her office offers or retrainer officers this is her job uh to manage her Department as she sees fits and if she would like to have some of her existing officers move from one area to another area and retrain them and redeploy them I don't think that's a question for Council that's a micromanagement that I don't think we want to get into so uh it doesn't matter to me whether we're budgeted for 184 or 190 because um we're not going to spend that anyway and I think Maris you have um my blessing not that you need it to deploy your officers as you see fit all right thank you Bob Aaron shy do you mind if I just go ahead and address both questions since a lot of people have been been doing that sure yes but please do respond to effectively both of them thank you I will thanks um so yeah I think the the

[247:00] idea of um bringing cleaning in house U makes sense can it's just a from a budgetary standpoint um I think it's reasonable Joe you mentioned that that this would be a group of people that would be cross trained for multiple maintenance and cleanup responsibilities you know throughout the city right so I just want to be clear that this is a team that can can help with um not just um encampments but with um other problems with our waterways and parks and such like that so I think that kind of multifunctional team being in house where we don't have to rely on outside contractors who are maybe unreliable or not always available and such makes a lot of sense um I want to commend uh the of cross departmental and private Public Partnerships that've been at work in creating the uh ambassadors uh proposal um chip if you're still on I think you are I really appreciate you uh working with the city to help put that proposal together I think it'll be a really nice addition to downtown uh for everyone who

[248:00] spends time downtown um and help make our um uh the Pearl Street Mall an even better place to spend time you know I think about like when you go into Dia and one of those friendly older people welcomes you and ask if you have any questions like you just feel a kind welcoming at home and so it'll be great to have something like that here and I think the um the park ranger program uh will be a great one to bring back into our city sounds like it's been successful in a lot of other places and what uh is kind of what Rachel mentioned earlier I think the what what these two sets of people can do is also take some of the load off the police Police Department for kind of low-level problems where sometimes they're the only resources available and so they get called in but now we can have other people who can take care of some of those lower level problems probably more on the park ranger side than on the Ambassador side but um but yeah and I think I think that'll be really helpful um and then to the kind of the question about you know additional officers you know I've spoken to you know downtown

[249:02] business owners and we've gotten many emails from community members who are concerned about you know crime and um illegal Behavior downtown and and on our U uh bike paths and waterways etc etc so I I think it it is important that we lend additional um you know police resources like to the downtown for regular patrols we've heard the need for that um so you know I definitely there's a role for the police to play uh throughout these issues um but I do want to say that actually to Bob's point he he said something I was going to say which is that we throughout my you know five and a half years on Council like Bob um the department has not been able to fully staff up so um you know I support the department certainly filling their full compliment that they're allowed to fill at this point which uh from deputy chief W har was I think uh there are maybe 14 positions that um are completely open and and need to be hired

[250:01] into and um she farell sounds like you have some um kind of innovative ideas on how to train some new officers in you know new ways of interacting with with the public and I appreciate those ideas um but I I would I would look to uh fully Staffing the current Police Department's um complement uh as the next steps um you know the the budget ask uh for the six additional officers is approximately a million dollars a year and from our um financial report that we got earlier uh you know that's $1 million additional dollar that are being asked for in an adjustment to base I mean plus or minus there's partial years and things but um but that would mean other city services that have been discontinued that we would not be able to bring back back online because we allocated those dollars you know things like reopening the libraries or adding additional parks and recck services and and other other services that the community has been missing so I I would

[251:02] not look to add um additional police funding um I'll also note that we've got the police master plan uh underway you know which can look at kind of the the best size of the force for our City's needs out into the future so my my request would be to you know go Full Speed Ahead on the Ambassador and the park ranger programs and you know we support our police and in their new approaches uh but not add additional uh funding to that budget line item at that at this time thank you thank you um Erin before well before you go away what was your response to number one do you support staffs uh going forward with the cleanup team yes I thought I said that yes I do thanks for clarify thank you I just needed that uh please go ahead um Adam thanks JY um I'm G to do the same as Aaron did here and uh for most of the same reasons uh

[252:01] I'm taking the same approach as him um you know I'm looking for new Solutions and additional police isn't a new solution it's not we're not even at full staff as we've gone over multiple times and if we were going to spend 1.5 million on it I would much rather take that money and try to balance the equation between enforcement and additional services so to me you know if that 1.5 million is still on the table I would love to put that towards transitional housing or you know start eliminating the things the reasons why people can't go to shelter or won't go to shelter um there's still holes in our Sheltering system you know there's still holes in our transitional housing system there's still holes in our system for healthare especially around substance abuse and mental health issues and I I really think it's important that we

[253:00] balance our approaches so it's not just enforcement based but it's also service-based um and I'm hoping that we can still utilize that money and put it towards a more balanced approach um but I I am in support of our safe and clean spaces uh with bringing the team inhouse and The Ambassador in park ranger programs because they're new ideas they're something we haven't tried and I think they are definitely worth trying thank you Rachel do you want to go back to question one uh I do and happy to go into a question too I just I might need to is it still up on the screen I don't remember exactly what it asked um well I just want to make sure that we Rachel yeah so on number one I just wanted to clarify something that Bob and Aon said which is you know we've never been fully staffed so I want to understand with this if there's it

[254:00] sounds like a not of five to hire six additional police officers will money be spent you know that that wouldn't be spent or that's in in addition to if we stay underst staffed so like we're down 30 let's assume we can hire 10 so we're still down roughly 20 six of whom are I guess targeted to this new specialized training from or you know people coming to replace people from internal who are moving over there like I know we'll be buying three new police cars as a result of this um are there other is this really money on paper or does this have an impact on the budget if that makes sense like like Bob Bob said this is this is sort of on paper because we're never going to get fully staffed anyways or or we haven't yet um so I just want to understand like is this 1.5 million really not going to impact the budget or or is can it be moved around is it just targeted at these six officers and if we

[255:00] only hire 20 then it really doesn't matter and it's just on paper or are there ways that that it it is off paper Rachel I was wondering if we could answer that question on number two and respond to number one first and then move forward because I feel like that question is responding to number two would that be okay I can't I can't see what number two is but I thought number one was about you know do we want to have internal cleanup with police including police support to be supported by the police as opposed to the dedicated PD staff that's two different questions okay can somebody is it possible to get the second question put back up on the screen can we yes yeah it can get answered whenever that's fine okay thank thanks for putting that back up um okay great then Kurt did you get the response that you needed from from Council on number one or would you prefer straw poo um yes uh thank you I I think we can

[256:03] go on to question two um I think there are questions that have been put forward um around how PD supports both one and two um that we'll probably want further Direction on okay thank you all right great we're moving to question number two and I don't know if Rachel you want to respond back to your um to re ask your question or if Kurt can just respond to it I think it might be a question for Maris more than Kurt um but yeah just wondering like how does this really impact the police budget um if there are dedicated PD staff and then um I I I think many of us answered number two in the first round but um I do support the ambassador program and the park rangers um just not the dedicated additional police staff it's not even a lack of supporting possibly dedicated police staff just not six new

[257:00] positions but still curious to know the answer to the question about is is this you know essentially meaningless question in terms of of hiring six additional or are implications for the budget and maybe Carrie can jump in or or Chris can jump in Bob's Bob's right uh it's going to take it's going to take a long time for me to get back up to compliment there's no doubt about it so whether this has an impact uh this budget cycle or next um it'll be it it will probably even if I'm really good at marketing uh for new police officers it's going to take me every bit of two years and then Bob's absolutely right I don't know if I can get to compliment because we have so many people leaving the police department um and so this will this becomes a very challenging question um I am trying to support the work that I think the city wants to engage in and no matter how you

[258:02] look at it I needed I need additional people to do this work there there's no other way to look at it if we're going to if if if we want to enforce the encampment B ban have clean and safe spaces I need additional resources and so maybe Carrie can jump in um on that yeah um and Bob's right in some ways it is a a bit of a ghost Target and every I think every Police Department faces this issue so we can ask ourselves fundamentally do we think 184 is is the right Staffing number if we think that's the right Staffing number to actually operate at then we should be staffed closer on on paper closer to 200 because we're always running at a deficit so as as the chief said um even if we were given the go-ahead for six that means we be looking at trying to hire 20 in July um that's a tough

[259:00] Challenge and it's going to take us a year year and a half probably to reach that number if we do but again it really gets back to what's the effective number and what we need to Target in order to reach that number knowing that we have constant turnover constant vacancies um you know going back I remember very few times in my 30 years with Boulder PD that we were ever fully at staff and we know that if if we're going to get to a certain effective number uh we have to be basically over strength and always over hiring to and try to attain that number okay um I appreciate that I I guess my my preferred approach um if I um if there is a need to increase the the policing staff and and given that you know this isn't a really a new issue that we're facing like we've been there's been police presence at at

[260:01] encampments and we were hoping that there's going to be some reduced um impacts on placing them I would really prefer for this to come you know in a natural part of the budget cycle rather than us sort of adding it um at a weird time and and when we don't have a public hearing on on the issue so just reiterate my my preference would be as as I think Aaron indicated like get to full staff see if you know if the changes that we're implementing really do net a a reduction in what police need to do and if at that point we thought we needed more than then I I would hope it would just come in the regular budget cycle so uh my answer juny is I I am supportive of uh the Ambassador and park rangers and not the dedicated additional police staff thanks Bob you have the floor thanks I know I know we're driving you crazy Junior you're trying to keep us on target so on task so I'll answer the uh the two questions that I haven't answered yet um I fully support the ambassador program and the park ranger

[261:02] uh proposal and I do want to thank um chip and the downtown Boulder partnersh for um not only um partially funding the um the ambassador program but also managing that contract I think that's going to take a lot of Burden off the city so thank you very much to downtown for for that I do have a comment moving forward and and and maybe that's a comment to all of you how would you because now question number two is has three different items attached to it there's the ambassador's program the park rangers in the dedicated PD staff and from what I'm hearing from you and and Rachel is that you support the first two but not necessarily the PD staff so would would Council prefer that to be detached and ask that as its on standing question because I think staff is looking to get an answer on that question as

[262:02] well that probably makes sense yeah okay go ahead Aon well I already I already answered the question I just supported your idea of splitting it off I think many of us have already addressed it separately but I think if you if you track like who's supporting it or not I think we we do want to it's worth everybody registering their opinion on that that third piece okay thank you so maybe just give your I guess your comments and then we can come back and then just do a stle when it comes to these decoupling these items and just do a stole for ambassador's program and one with the PD staff because the comments are coming so much and it's just not cohesive enough for me to pick up on who supports what so a stole at the end actually will be helpful on these two items thank you sounds great

[263:00] Mar that's all I was going to give I support everything under one and under two so just to make it easy thank you uh Mark yes just to be uh entirely clear I support both the the programs on number one and number two um and I'd be very concerned actually at setting up any of these programs in the absence of having uh appropriate um police support for them I would be very reluctant to send our staff uh into action as a cleanup team um without those resources ources available thank you Mark Sam thank you juny um so I I'll make a couple comments here real quick I I do think we need a straw poll on the police department Staffing question so I agree with that um to be clear I've answered one on number two I also support the ambassador program thanks to downtown

[264:00] for their help with that and for wrestling up some grant money for it along with our staff Park Rangers support that as well and when it comes to Dedicated um Police Department staff I'm going to say yes as well I'm G to say it with a caveat that I think Bob was was aiming at which is um I would defer to the Chief and um the the entire team that's setting this up as to what the necessary Staffing level is so in other words if the team thinks there need to be six dedicated officers who support the Ambassador and park ranger program I would defer to them as the professionals about that um what that means as far as overall Staffing and cost I don't know that um we have enough information to understand that we've been given a number and we've been given a few police cars and six staff but I think what Bob the point Bob's raising

[265:00] and we've talked around is that we're never full Staffing um you know if we raise the the total from 184 to 190 we're still going to be struggling around 20 or 30 officers underneath that so when I say yes to all of these it means that the I suspect I I want the chief to tell us how many police officers are needed to effectively support the ambassador program and the park ranger program and I support that judgment and so if it's two or four or six and half that interfaces with the overall budget I agree with Rachel in the following sense that we will see that um when it comes to the budget requests for 2022 and then we can talk about that again there but for the purposes of planning I'm GNA say I want the chief to have the latitude up to the six officers to to support this program and the way the team dictates and if

[266:00] that goes if it starts at two and goes to four and then to six I'm going to trust her professional judgment on that um call so the answer is yes I support one and two and when we come to the straw poll I want my vote to be understood as giving the chief and the city manager the latitude to staff up to the point where it effectively supports that and um when we talk about the next subject I will have more comments to make about Services versus enforcement but I will say for one and two if you're going to have a law you have to enforce it if you don't enforce it you should take the law off the books and so we do need a balance of enforcement and services but I think what we're hearing from staff is hey if you want us to enforce the law to the level that you're asking for and the community is asking for these are what we need and so in the spirit of that I'm saying yes to one and

[267:01] yes to two and we can have the straw poll and the encampments question shortly thank you thank you Sam Mary thanks juny um and yeah I think I think that um Bob raised a good point as well as um Sam in the caveat on number two so let me just start by saying that I support one and two in all its components um and I think what Sam said makes a whole lot of sense to me given that um this is a pilot project a pilot that begins now and goes for 18 months and so um we couldn't wait until the next budget cycle to do that we'd have to wait to begin the pilot program until then and um given that these particular officers will be trained differently I think the approach that is being taken is appropriate I

[268:00] also um think that um providing um sta with the latitude to determine how what the correct level of Staffing should be um that's another piece that is informed by the pilot so I think we need to keep in mind that that's what we're doing is we're testing this we're going to learn a lot from it and I hope that um that it does improve the situation so um yeah we can do um a strap hole if you'd like but I do support both of them fully thank thank you Mary just um I wanted to make a comment as well because I didn't earlier when it comes to one and two I will support both of them which means that um we do get the five that is needed but we'll still do the stle and I want to explain why I support both of them um I support one and one number one because of everything we've

[269:00] discussed earlier you know keeping um places clean and outcomes that we've mentioned earlier but the reason why I end up supporting number two is because of what I've heard from Chief Maris Chief Herold we understand she she mentioned that officers will be taken away from the mall team and the Sunan team and we know just a week or a couple of weeks ago we had the downtown area requesting support and help and I I just think this these wellbe in conflict and especially thinking about son Juan and Mary just mentioned how important it is to have police Support over there and I understand some of the challenges for some community members when they talk about Safety and Security but I again it goes back to for me it goes back to the under policing of as

[270:00] well of certain areas Safety and Security means providing safety and security for all community members not just some community members in some areas because I can see where if if if given the choice or if Chief Maris had to choose okay I'm gonna take the team out of sanan and keep the team at the mall well the mall feels safe and secure yet the team is removed from Sunan so I just don't want her to have that choice that decision to make so keeping the community safe to me is giving her those six offic ERS if that's what it takes um um I I will support it um and again I think well Chief Maris has a very tall order which is the police reform that she you know she's implementing here in Boulder I think this is an an opportunity for her to show us that reform to show us how it works and and and I fully support it because of that so um yeah that those are my comments on

[271:02] that issue so we are heading now to the drle if we don't have any more comments coming from Council Members so just to be clear let's do the first drole will be does council support coordinated efforts that include ambassador's programs program and park rangers can can I suggest that we take the presentation down so we can see each other a little better thank you all right um we've already responded to question one so we're only responding to question two can you please uh raise your hands and let us know if you support um the coordinated efforts that include ambassador's program in park rangers you get it um

[272:04] Kurt thank you um yes thank you great um for the next one does council support a coordinated effort uh for dedicated PD staff so juny would you like everyone to raise their hand physically I'm not sure if yes that's well since we've done that I can see how many people it's um six of us um the only people who did not responded Yes is um Aon Adam and Rachel so it's 63 to move forward with that do you have a comment Aaron yeah well just based on that i' I'd have a request for um kind of City staff when we get the adjustment to base next month so um if we can just

[273:00] look carefully at when you know since majority Council supported that request when that that might actually phase in and require spending the money because I mean given the the hiring challenges I'd hate to withhold um services from the community if we're not going to be able to hire those officers for a long time right so if that if that's going to take a while to implement maybe we can spend the money while we're waiting on on other services in the community so if you all could explore that please I'd appreciate it all right and I didn't I didn't hear any words but I think I saw a couple nods sorry Erin yes there were several of us that nodded we'll uh we'll bring that back thanks I appreciate it okay thank you is there any other comments coming from Council on this issue if not we'll be moving on to the next segment yes Mary just a real quick one I just wanted to comment on your

[274:01] comment about underp policing being an issue as well um I think that's absolutely true and that some folks are um provided with safety and others are provided with neglect and I think that's a very important point that you made so I really appreciated it thank you juny thank you Mary thank you all right well if there's no other comments coming from Council I give the floor back to Kurt uh so council member Joseph I'm I'm hoping that we're halfway through this agenda item um I wonder if we could take a fem minute break is it okay with Council yes okay we got four Toms two of them are mine yes we'll take a five minutes thank you thank

[275:04] you

[278:54] I'll give it a maybe 30 seconds more because it was around actually we still have 1

[279:00] 07 so we'll give it a minute juny this is Sam I'm here welcome back Sam we're waiting on Aaron and Mary and Mark perfect they're back oh great I think we can get back to business um thank you if I could ask that the uh presentation be brought back up and um if you can go to full screen that would be that would be

[280:03] great thank you um and thank you for that break um so this uh this last item here um we will be uh discussing uh safe camping and um uh staff did some um looked at other uh safe camping um that occurred in other um communities and um this slide shows you know some of the uh the communities that we looked at and um overall um I would say that there's there's some communities that have um uh successfully um implemented um camping options for people experiencing homelessness and what I would describ as

[281:00] successful um is looking at sort of the um the outcomes of those individuals as far as being able to transfer into uh services and housing um as well as being able to manage the camp as far as the scale of the camp and um the safety of the camp you'll see in this slide there's um a variety of different approach different approaches as far as services and how they um address rules and that sort of thing um if we could go to to the next slide I'll talk a bit about some of the outcomes of of these communities as well as others so in in Denver um this was started um in late 2020 so it's only been open uh for a few months um staff visited this um this camp and um um they were having uh some success in getting individuals into both

[282:02] services and in some cases housing and um I think one of the the reasons for the success was um having services on site having staff there 247 and as far as cost for this um approach um there was an article a few months back um indicating 28,000 I'm sorry $28 per night um per per individual when we um uh visited with the with the organization um that was running um this Camp it's called Colorado Village collaborative and Earth links um that $28 represented the sort of investment by the by the city of Denver and um not really the full cost of of running that and so you'll see later on that we have um a more comprehensive that includes all the the

[283:01] various components um it's it's difficult to um understand the um the success of this yet because it's very new but what we what we have observed and what they have been able to demonstrate um was some of that success um in Ontario um they started um a campsite after after they had identified about 140 individuals that were camping um in their Community what happened a couple months later after starting it though is it it grew to um over 400 residents and um the they had challenges with the nonprofits um organizations that were supporting that and and the safety of it um they sort of reset and started over um and put some rules in place um individuals weren't allowed to stay longer than than 90 nights and they

[284:02] also um were serving individuals who were residents of of that area and um you had to demonstrate um sort of those residential ties um they also had a lot of challenges with um with pets and so they um they disallowed pets because of safety concerns um so Hawaii looked at this as well um and they um did research and considering this and then um they made a decision not to go forward with this um so Madison um had a site that they that they also began um they didn't have they they provided sort of basic Services um and um it was ultimately um uh shut down and um they weren't able to sort of um maintain the the size of it

[285:03] and it grew Beyond the capacity um that they were able to um to manage um so Portland obviously has a um a longer history and more experience um they they probably have the most mature uh programs and looking at this um and they have several different sites under the dignity Village um approach and um they have had s some success with um individuals who have been been able to successfully exit um um homelessness through this but they've also decided to close many of the locations and instead shift that those resources towards um um Housing Solutions um Fort Collins um under a covid approach um opened up a a camping area and um that that closed a few

[286:00] months later they weren't able to um control sort of the the the growth um of that um of that camping um so Gainesville uh Florida they um they they started with 3010 and they they grew they grew to third 300 um and then they sort of had to re-engineer that um approach as well um they got it down to um to 9010 um they did get some individuals trans positioned into into permanent housing um but then they implemented an approach where anyone who sort of successfully left or or left the pro or left the uh the camp um they didn't um refill that spot so they've reduced that down to 13 uh campsites um San Diego had um a similar experience

[287:01] to some of the other communities um and um uh it grew to um a fairly large scale and then closed after three months um I and we're I'm going to talk next about you know what what are the um sort of the successful approaches um that one would take um but it seems pretty logical when you look at it um communities that invested properly as far as the amount of resources and plan planning um had much better outcomes um but if we can go to the next slide I can go through um what we learned from that and I think if you look at the um the work that the Joint Committee of Hab and HRC did um you'll see some um some similar um recommendations that that that we would have as

[288:00] well um so um one of the most important is finding a a organization a strong organization who has experience with this um has good staff and good policies and track record um the second is um controlled access and security um as you can see with many of the the communities that tried this um being able to um limit the um the the um the growth of camping um either within the location or surrounding the location um can be challenging so what what we also learned from Denver as well as you know Portland is keeping the the campsites to a manageable size um for budgeting purposes um you'll see that we looked at a number of 25 tents um but any you know 25 to 30 or even slightly larger than that um seems to be um a

[289:02] good size from what we've seen um with those um communities that were successful um uh residents need to be committed to commun communal living um a harm reduction approach needs to be taken for drug usage which means um and we saw this in Denver um people um it doesn't mean that um you're not going to accept people who have um a substance abuse challenge um but they can't be selling or or using or purchasing such drugs um in in the public realm um prohibition on propane heating um um some some of them will have a one Outlet in each one of the tents um and then also um connecting them to services so CV screening would be important and then also um what we

[290:01] what we learned is um in in the the Denver location had this is a backup heated facility for those um somewhat rare nights um that we get where we have extreme cold um where um it's really unsafe to be in a tent okay next slide and so I think you know when looking at um if a city should move forward with um with this type of solution um you know one of the questions that needs to be answered is you know what's the goal what are we trying to accomplish I think what we've seen from other communities is if the goal is to uh eliminate camping within the community um that's not likely to occur um and um so are we um are we serving you know individuals um that

[291:00] don't want to abide by by rules um that challenging individuals with PTSD we know many of those members um have a challenge with communal living and um while some of them Camp um they often Camp um by themselves um and um people with acute or active substance disorder use disorder um are challenged by this as well what we've heard uh in part from the community um and feed feedback that we've received as well as that from from HRC and Hab discussions um our community members that can't access the shelter because of pets um or couples that don't want to be separated in the sleeping environments um or cannot contain uh obtain permanent housing and for many of those those are individuals um with

[292:00] criminal records many of them with um uh as sex offenders and um um what we've noticed is in successful camps their rules are often very similar to those of a shelter and um one thing we'll talk about next week um at our council meeting is the um the focus that we're really working on this year for um individuals who do have criminal records gaining housing for them and um um starting off some residential meth treatments as well which will start to sort of scratch the surface of um addressing those challenges for some individuals um in our community next slide so um considerations um on the left side um considerations would be you

[293:02] know PRI prior ization of of Staff resources um and I think what you'll see next week as well there's a number of different initiatives we're working on um so it's either a tradeoff of um doing this activity versus others or it's additional staff um that would be required for that um um offsetting the resources these These are expensive programs if you want to do them correctly um finding a good nonprofit um that can do this work and um and then scoping a location where's a where's a good location in our city um where um it would be acceptable to run this type of um facility so the proposed sanction Camp um we uh um uh looking at including all of the cost for um the uh the C the uh camping

[294:02] approach in Denver as well as looking at costing from from Portland we came up with a cost of $59 um per individual tents uh per night this number could go down um if you had a nonprofit that also put re resources into it um or if you had a larger um facility um that had more tents this cost per tent would go down um but your total cost um may go up per Supportive Housing so that's our current program for individuals who are in sort of a housing first approach um and um many individuals um in chronic homelessness who go into a housing solution and Boulder um will have services that go along um with that housing that's that's a um approximately 18 or $19,000 per year or about $52 uh per night um our

[295:04] city support to um uh the shelter in North Boulder is about um $12 or $13 per nights um per individual and hotels you're you're aware that we have been using hotels um this year for certain individuals and to uh increase our capacity that's about $60 per night um and as you're as you're aware and I've communicated uh previously uh most of that cost is actually being P paid this year through through federal funds uh next slide um so again this is the um uh budget that we put together if we were to go forward with a pilot of of 25 um individuals um this would be a full cost

[296:01] with an approach as if we were to put an RFP in place this is what we would expect um to pay um as a as a range of cost um to cover all of the um the services that that would be required um in a successful um camping approach um so it's it's um onetime expenses of purchasing um you know tents and Facilities um to get it going and then the uh the ongoing cost so over an 18month period that would be um just over 700,000 next slide um so this slide may not be uh relevant at this point we've already um spoken about the first two um uh initiatives there this is um the total cost of of all initiatives um which would add up to 3.4

[297:00] million over an 18month period next slide so this is the uh the question um for this um um initiative does council want staff to work towards approaches for the development of a sanction camp and so I'll stop there to see if there's any questions of clarification thank you Kurt for your presentation and um please raise your hand if you have any questions also I just wanted to make the comment I I apologize We've ran through the four hours that we've scheduled um or meeting for and we're 30 minutes into it but we only have one question left so um please as we go into discuss this discussion please be mindful that our staff have to work tomorrow and some council members as well have to work tomorrow so thank you um Aon you have the floor thanks for

[298:01] that reminder jie um Kurt appreciate that presentation and I particularly appreciate you laying out what a possibly successful program could look like so I thought that was very well analyzed and put together so so thank you for that just want to follow up on one thing that you said in terms of cost which was that potentially some of those costs that you mentioned those are if the city provided all of it but you know if we were to obtain uh nonprofit Assistance or grants or donations you that cost could go down potentially substantially is that fair to say uh absolutely I mean I I don't know about substantially but um C certainly it could with the with the right kind of supports okay thanks because I know like in Denver they've they've had a lot of that right that their their cost their per day cost is substantially lower because of a lot of the donations they've gotten I believe so it wouldn't be guaranteed but it it would be

[299:00] possible that some of those things could happen to lower the impact thanks yep any more questions no going twice nope okay um so maybe should we do a straw pole because staff was looking to get directions on this one as well right um all right does council want staff to work toward towards approaches for the develop velopment of a sanctioned Camp please raise your hands are you raising your hand Adam or you have a question I was just wondering if we could make comments real quick first yes before we do the straw P please um can I also ask for the slide presentation to be taken down so we can see each other thanks thanks for that juny um so I just did quick back of the hand math

[300:01] we're intending to spend 1.5 million on additional policing at $60 a night for camp or for uh even hotels which is the most expensive option that's 25,000 nights of hotel stay so I'd have to imagine that that would have some sort of impact but you know what I'm looking for even if we don't go along with this is the fact that we're spending a whole lot of money on enforcement and not a lot of money on alternatives to enforcement um whether that be this or something else or 25,000 hotel rooms I I don't know but um I just wanted to throw that out there as a quick little math piece thank you Adam and thank you for the reminder I was U thank you Rachel yeah I am I still don't think I have a a good

[301:00] answer to the question where do people so we've just voted to spend a lot of money to sort of um enforce you know you can't Camp here much harder and and more thoroughly and more consistently if I understand what we did tonight and I don't I don't think we have a solution for um where we expect people to go if we're saying you can't be here and um I largely in life believe in like getting to yes and I think we were just putting out a ton of no and and as Adam said we're not like looking at both sides of the coin on just this issue of of encampments and and would also add like we don't even have a convenience spot nearby that if you want to like spend 10 bucks a night you can camp and and most places that I've lived in my life have um have a pretty convenient like KOA camp BR ground and so I think it's something that's really missing overall here and it's probably part of

[302:02] why people are um camping in our public spaces so the fact that we we don't have that um and we know we have a lot of people camping and we know we're about to start getting harsher on that means to me that we need to at least pilot uh trying something uh dovetailing with it getting data seeing you know if we if we do a small sanctioned encampment do people who go there transition into permanent Housing Solutions so permanent of housing like without trying it uh I think that we're missing uh an element of the data I think we also we kind of like we fear that there's a magnet effect and we don't really know that um I think there's evidence that says there's not so you know as as as part of this data collection like by having a a you know fairly small to make it workable sanction encampment um that hopefully we're getting a variety of

[303:01] funding sources for does that help people's outcomes um and so I think we're missing an opportunity to just look at at enforcement and not um figure out what happens on the back end if we don't provide a different place for people to go so the answer the question I I can't remember if it was phased as a yes or no question but I do support us looking doing more research and coming up with a proposal for a sanction a safe outdoor space thanks thank you Rachel Bob thanks JY um I have um I'll be mind ful the fact that we are late hour but I do have five things to say and I'll say them quickly um I'm opposed to sanction Campground for five reasons number one um we have more than an adequate number of Shelter beds available we have dozens of beds unused On Any Given night I went back we have a dashboard a wonderful dashboard that shows how many beds uh are available how many beds are used each night we have 282 beds um available during the uh severe weather Sheltering season and I look back to see what the

[304:00] high high water mark was and each of the last three months in January it was January 25th when we used 137 out of the 282 available beds on February 25 we used 131 out of the 282 beds and on March 12 we used 134 out of the 282 available beds and those are just the high watermarks many many nights we had far fewer people um so we're using less than half of our available beds so unlike some of the cities that Kurt um put up on the screen earlier including Denver which simply ran out of shelter beds and had no choice but to to provide a sanction Campground I really struggle with why we would have a sanction Campground and ask people to sleep outside under canvas tents and we have perfectly good bricks and mortars that we have spent millions of dollars on and beds that are available and unused every night number two I do understand that there are some people who won't go to the shelter some reasons I think are a little specious other reasons are are probably quite legitimate and the one

[305:00] that I hear most often that's leg it is PTSD um let's take care of that issues headon rather than creating a a sanctioned campground to address people with PTSD who may not even Avail themselves of the campground as Kurt mentioned um let's address let's those people's unique problems in with unique Solutions um staff observed that a sanction Campground would cost $59 a night per person a hotel room cost $60 a night per person and that may be a perfectly adequate solution um for a person with PTSD until they transition to a more permanent solution number three as Kurt observed um a sanction Campground would have policies very very similar to what we already have um at the shelter uh uh drug use would be discouraged um very little limited nighttime visitation rights and criminal activity would of course be prohibited so the people that that oftentimes we find in our campgrounds I think our police tell us are people that are engaging in those types of activities

[306:01] and I I puzzle to understand why it is that someone who won't go to the shelter because they want uh engage in criminal activity or illicit drug use would suddenly go to a a campground where the same rules would apply number four um as Kurt has demonstrated and we and I we've all done our independent research city after city after city has tried this and almost in every instance Portland's probably the one exception um that there these have just been abject failures millions of dollars have been wasted people's lives Liv have been adversely affected when when they believe that they had a place to stay and then that was taken away from them I don't know why we would undertake um a program that city after city has has found to be unsuccessful um I often ask my colleagues my my fellow council members or peer council members at National League of City conferences um who have set up sanction CG grounds what do you think do you think we should do that and every single one of them has told me the same thing don't do it don't do it it's

[307:01] a disaster and finally I think that um Mark hit the nail on the head with his hotline uh post this is about prioritization prioritization of limited resources and we um Adam Adam raised a good point which is which is we have to spend money on Solutions and we do spend millions of dollars on homelessness Solutions K could tell us probably off the top of his head how much we spend the question is should we spend more money on this solution which would have limited um positive impact of any um every hour that we ask staff to work on something like this rather than uh solutions that work every dollar that we ask staff to spend on Solutions uh on this rather than solutions that work is an hour or a dollar that's lost to um solutions that um are helping homeless people get out of home out of homelessness um we have helped hundreds and hundreds of people exit homelessness we need to continue to spend the staff time and the staff money and our our budget money on those programs that we

[308:00] know that work rather than exper expent with a program that we know will not work thank you Bob Sam I'm sorry Aon Miss JY um can you hear me jie sorry yes please okay Pardon Me Sam I'll go ahead um see I mean I am in favor of exploring this I mean I think Bob I think we we don't know that it wouldn't work there are successful examples with the most recent and most nearby one being uh Denver where where there safe outdoor spaces program um in the last uh you know nine months has has been quite successful um both in in providing places people with an alternative place to sleep and and for transitioning people uh some some number of people in the permanent housing and you know we're we're we've been talking tonight about various ways of stepped up enforcement

[309:00] uh of of the camping band of saying to people well you you can't uh you can't sleep here it's not legal to sleep here and and so but I think we need to also have answers for where can you go and and and the shelter obviously is a really good one and it's a good facility and it works for a lot of people but it does not work for everyone we we do have people that fall through the cracks and and don't have options available to them so while we're stepping up enforcement I think we should also be looking at providing some Alternatives um alternative services that can they can work for people for whom existing Services don't so um I think you know the solution that Kurt uh proposed was a very reasonable one like with the wraparound services and some rules you get a good nonprofit involved I think it's worth exploring there have been other successful models and I think it's worth having as part of our suite of um possibilities for people experiencing homelessness in our community thanks

[310:03] thank you eron Sam thanks juny um so I guess I'll just start out by saying that um I thought this was a good idea once years ago and I have changed my mind um the reason that I changed my mind um is because another council member and I spent a long time trying to find a nonprofit that would work with us to set up one we couldn't find one and as we saw from Kurt's um slides the most important indicator of success of one of these is a strong nonprofit partner I don't believe we've ever identified one there have been people who um claim to be willing to do it but I haven't seen any kind of history or background that they were capable already so we're missing that key element that um we've tried to find and without that I just don't think there's any legs to this um the city isn't um built to do uh such a

[311:04] campground on its own um so I'll just say that I think one reason I'm not going to support anything like this is because we don't have a partner who's willing to step up and run it um you know I I think the the point mark made in his hotline about we have to prioritize where we spend our money is a key one um I will point out that every dollar that we spend on our affordable housing program is um keeping people from being homeless and is exits for people who are experiencing homeless so you got to account some fraction of our affordable housing program and the the services we offer have improved continuously and the data that we collect and and um pour over has improved continuously um if I had dollars to spend I mean I I feel like you're right in a sense the folks who are saying that we are talking about enforcement tonight

[312:01] we're actually talking about things holistically as we said we would we have this piece of it on the table but as Kurt talked about um you know some of the ideas that staff is thinking towards is not only continuing to work hard on the folks that have the most um barriers to being able to go from shelter focused housing focused shelter to actual housing but it's also the folks who have substance abuse problems and we hear a lot about meth addiction and if I were thinking about how to work on folks that have the the most barriers I would be thinking very hard about substance abuse treatment and I believe that's what I heard Kurt talking about as a future direction is how do we work with nonprofits on residential substance abuse treatment so and when we talk about Denver realize that Denver took a funding question to

[313:01] the people of Denver who voted to do it and one of the things that they voted to fund on the list was um sanction campgrounds so you know there was a voter mandate to do that I don't feel like we've done any such thing um at this point so when it when we talk about we need to balance services with enforcement I feel like we have done a whole bunch to improve services that we've been offered not only have we had a ton of exits like it was over a 100 exits the last time we were looking at an annual report um we know who's exiting and we know if they're exiting so it feels to me like we have done a whole bunch to improve Services um there's more to be done I don't dispute anything that anyone said about folks do fall through the cracks um and so we need to keep working on that that's what residential substance abuse programs would be part of so I guess I just think

[314:02] this is the wrong answer it is an answer it's an answer that's very hard to make work it's an answer that's arguably as expensive as um permanent shelter um like a a homeless shelter um so it just doesn't seem to me like this is a very good place to spend our limited time and effort and I will just say when it comes to Camping if folks are really looking for a free place to Camp the national forest is free and you know I don't dispute that land is expensive in Boulder it is um but the right solution isn't to turn our Parks into campgrounds it is to give people Pathways to exit homelessness and I just don't think the um Campground is the best way to do that so I'm not going to support it thank you Sam are there any more qu

[315:03] comments for tonight on this issue Mary yeah I'll go ahead and weigh in I don't have a whole lot um to add to what Bob and Sam had just said other than um I'll just counter that $133,500 divided by 60 is 2,225 Hotel night um and if you're looking at just 25 people so that's about 100 nights worth of hotel rooms for those 25 tents that we might be talking about um the other thing is the location that would be difficult to find um so that would be another challenge in addition to the nonprofit Kurt mentioned that um

[316:03] the camping experiments um that have had the better outcomes have been because they have put a lot of resources and planning into it and we have very limited resources um and so I don't know that we the city could put in the resources and the planning to have the better outcomes and I'm not sure that the outcomes would be better than um being able to work with people on an individualized basis and provide them with a hotel room if they have um the issues that um are stated oftentimes that um they are couples that there are people with um animals um that they have PTSD so I um I think what we need to do is work

[317:01] harder and work with um Partners at a regional level to be able to begin to and to push and to push upwards towards the federal government to provide more um Holistic Solutions um providing camping isn't going to help people who have problems with mental illness and addiction and if the reason they can't go they don't want to go to the shelters or can't go to the shelters is because they don't want to follow rules when place with rules isn't going to be place for them um all these points have already been stated by others um so I won't be supporting this but I do support um the housing um for people that are addicted to meth which has been one of the focuses and one of the things that

[318:00] has been um determined by staff based on the data that they see out in the field that people with meth addiction need places to be able to kick the addiction and that currently they are very very difficult to house because no one will rent to them we need to solve that problem and I think that problem would help more people than a 2510 Campground where the rules are the same as a shelter thank you Mary mayor by thanks juny so I also supporting this um pretty much for the same reasons that Bob and Mark and Sam have put out Mark more and his hotline um I'll just say for three points that I would like to see some work um with tracks I guess is or areas

[319:01] to focus on is I mean I will agree with the PTSD topic um it would be nice to as as finding some alternative options from for the for the shelter for those who have PTSD who are not able to stay there um as well as um those who have animals um it seems unfortunate that just because you have a pet in your care that you've decided not to dump at a kill shelter um that you would be penalized and not be allowed to stay and have hous housing um and then the third option is I also think that it's much smarter for us to use our resources as we have been doing to actually House people um the statistics that I've seen since I've been on Council have been wonderful um our staff has done an outstanding job and um everybody involved that has worked together to create that has it's just been phenomenal and so to continue to support that is much more where I'd like to see things going and then um focus on again the addiction side um I think

[320:02] that's going to be a lot more helpful in the long run than providing a rule bearing shelter for 25 people so I think actually focusing at the root of the problem is going to be a much stronger fix thank you mayor by Mark yeah I also will will not be supporting this and there are there are a couple of reasons one um I I was very I wasn't aware of the statistics that Bob uh articulated about the usage of our shelter um we have spent a great deal of money on that and the fact that the available beds are being utilized at less than a 50% rate um to me argues against the further commitment to doing the campground um I want to do a quick shout out to uh Hab and HRC because I thought they they actually produced a very interesting and well researched report

[321:01] on this and in part they quoted the United States inter agency Council on homelessness uh which advised cities um to consider a number of issues uh relating to sanction campgrounds uh including the fact that these environments have little impact on reducing homelessness um and the creating these environments can be costly in money staff time and effort and they they they um are difficult to manage and maintain um and so there to me there's just not that much um good argument for going down that path I I also think we're attempting to solve a much larger problem with a micro solution if you read uh district attorney Dow's oped uh over the weekend he points out the Dismal uh state of funding that Colorado provides for better mental health

[322:00] outcomes and Addiction Services and I think that's where some of the uh activity and pressure has to be uh brought because uh we are in the something on the order of the bottom five of all states in terms of the resources we're bringing to bear on these problems I don't think that a a sanction Campground is going to address those issues um the same as been pointed out the same people who don't want to go um to the shelter are probably not going to want to go into a structured Campground and those are the people suffering from mental illness PTSD and drug addiction um and so I don't think that the standing up the campground is going to be addressing the very problem we want to address um and we don't have the resources for it we need more resources and we have to get them elsewhere because this is a problem of both States and National scope and you

[323:01] know we're not going to solve it in in tiny Boulder and we're not going to solve it with a sanctioned Campground um so I just don't see this as an effective solution um and I don't see it as one that's targeted um to the problems that we are actually experiencing and on that basis I don't think I can support it thank you Mark Rachel yep I'm sorry to double dip I will try and be quick um but there some people corrected some misstatements so I wanted to take the opportunity to do that on a couple things as well uh but first want to say that I agree that we need to I think as Mary suggested kind of work to push some of this Upstream to the federal government level that it's it's not a really great um local level solution so I'm very supportive of that and um agree with marabi about not wanting to force people to separate from animals um to make a choice to go into shelter and I think largely this discussion you know should be about progress in not

[324:01] Perfection and I'm hearing a lot about like some people are you know going to do what they're going to do and they're not going to be good fits for campgrounds so let's not do campgrounds and campgrounds aren't a ridiculous idea because a couple people you some people will work for them and some people won't you know not everybody has to benefit from every solution we come up with so um but on the misstatements there were we looked at statistics around um unused shelter beds and I think that leaves out um sort of a a gaping fact of our system which is that you have to be a resident here for six months to qualify and there are some other disqualifiers from going to the shelter so the fact that there are open shelter beds doesn't mean that we are adequately um serving our whole unhoused Community um and the fact that we implemented that that residency requirement I think we could argue um likely increased the number of people who are outside in intense and I'm not sure that we're like following the Ripple effects of one decision and and

[325:00] you know possibly increasing the numbers um second um you know we talk a lot about it's it's not really Humane to have people live outside that's not a good solution but I think it's more inhumane to live outside and be moved around and like you know heavily policed I think that people who are living outside would would feel it's a step up to live outside in one spot that is legal rather than to be you know moved again and again because what they're doing is is in the wrong spot um and then somebody mentioned not wanting to turn Parks into campgrounds and I don't think anybody tonight or since I've been on Council has suggested that um we should turn Parks into campgrounds like we could turn parking lots into campgrounds that are legal um and and I think all of us are trying to find solutions that aren't turning our our Parks into de facto campgrounds so I just wanted to clarify that I don't I haven't heard anybody suggest that we convert parks to campgrounds thanks

[326:00] thank you Rachel Bob I just wanted to ask Rachel a question um because could you you um put a thought in my mind first of all I did did want to correct your correction Rachel um we well there is a six-month residency requirement for the transitional housing there is not a residency requirement for severe weather Sheltering I I just want to be clear so no one thought that you had to be here six months it was really really cold out and I think our severe weather Sheltering we just recently expanded that to six or seven months of the year but here's my question Rachel um uh our residency requirement right now for the transitional housing is 6 months and you correctly observe that outside in during the warm weather months those folks can't go to our shelter uh and therefore if they want to be in Boulder I suppose camping's an option would you lower that six months to another number would you make that three months or one month or zero I mean would would would would you say that it's Our obligation to house all comers or where would you call that line I'd probably um seek to see what other communities are doing first before

[327:00] I answer to that question and see what the best practices are my understanding is that we are in a minority of communities that have a six-month residency requirement like ours is most with housing first principles you know say let's get you into housing and the first step of that is often a shelter so by by not offering shelter to kind of any Commerce um and imposing a a decent length um requirement it's it's um you know it's it's not getting people um off the streets so it looks like Kurt might have the answer there sorry I'm just trying to lower my hand here as well thank you um so the um if if you're new if you're new to our community um you um can stay for for two months um at the shelter um that was increased from one month to two um the um the interesting thing with our

[328:02] new weather triggers is that the shelter was open almost every night um this season um I can't remember the exact dates but it's um I think it's towards the end of October to um uh sometime in March um but because of our weather trigger that um for severe weather shelter um it was basically available pretty much every night um and so um for people who are um new to our community they do have two months um um to be able to use the shelter um they can also um engage in Services um during that time I want to clarify you mean severe weather shelter right 60 days total across the months at sever weather shelter not like you can't just come to town and go to the shelter if it's August say that's correct clarify okay that's correct but they could um they they um

[329:02] they would get a few nights anyways um uh even even during August um if they're engaging with services but we can we can um we're starting to get into next Tuesday night's discussion as well um but just wanted to give a little Clarity um around that okay well thank you for all the comments made and from what I'm hearing I don't think we need to do eron no I was just going to see if we could do that that vote that you were going to do earlier yeah well I was going to say I hear five NOS Mary Bob Sam marbi and Mark so I don't think we need a straw pole for this one do you have a question Aaron now okay uh great um j i I may I

[330:05] ask um has everybody weighed in I believe so well I I think just me I think maybe um I hear all the discussion in the room and you know coming into Council I was a proponent and this idea of a pilot sound good to me um but I think your Mary's thought about location to me was a bit about Equity as well I had a conversation with a Community member and she asked me where it where would that um sanction Camp be located is it going to be in surely it's probably not going to be in some of the rich areas where there couple of million dollar homes it's probably going to be in the areas where there are a lot of minor minorities or people who are not

[331:02] making a lot of money workingclass people in those blighted areas of Boulder where you know it's gonna even lower uh the area even more so I thought to myself wow that's interesting that you brought that point forward because again as a community it's great to bring ideas as as Community leaders it's great to bring ideas forward but at the same time we still have to think about the impact of our ideas um or policies on other people in in the community so I think that Equity peace is very important um also I've been sitting on a lot of the discussions as well whether it's at the National League of Cs or or Regional discussions here as well in Colorado um and also I've met with people who work in surrounding cities here in in in you know in in Boulder County and I I think they have an important role to play as well so they

[332:00] need to be part of this discussion and maybe moving forward they need to be part of this discussion about sanction encampments because at the end of the day some of these communities don't believe that they have a homelessness issue um maybe somehow we are contributing to the fact that they don't have that issue in their Community which is good um but again they might it might be important to have them as part of that discussion so um all in all I hear everything that this Council said and I I just think we don't have the we don't have the will of council to move forward with this and there's still a lot of things that hasn't been answered that I would need an answer to so um not to be any lengthier than I have been um I think that's where I leave the discussion so I don't think there is any more questions or comments uh Kurt do you have a question or comment moving

[333:02] forward um I don't thank you joury thank you so much and um seeing that there is no more questions or comments this meeting is adjourned at 11:05 and thank you very much every thank you J thank you all thank you staff thank you Jenny thank you everybody [Music]

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