May 18, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music] it's one more [Music] in right minute i just got a text [Music] there he is right ryan are we ready to go

[1:02] we are ready to go i'll begin recording super thank you all right i will gather this meeting to order welcome everyone to the boulder city council meeting of may 18th we'll start with a couple of quick announcements tonight first as usual if you would like to be notified if you have been exposed to somebody with covid sign up at www.addyourphone.com if you would like information about getting a covid vaccine you can do so at the website that's up boco.org boco.org slash covid vaccine notify sign up and finally we are still looking for applicants um to join us on our city boards and commissions we have three of them left open boulder junction access district parking boulder junction access district

[2:00] travel demand management and the beverage licensing authority we would love to have you join us for one of those boards you can apply at boulder colorado.gov boards and commissions and with that um alicia could you please call the roll yes sir and uh good evening everyone councilmember brockett president friend here joseph prison nagel here sweat lick here wallach present weaver here yates here and young present mayor we have a quorum thank you very much and before we get going on our next item um that item will have language surf uh language interpretation for us and so

[3:02] ryan i'm gonna turn to you and see if you'd like to do any explanation of interpretation for us and then aaron i see your hand after that ryan that's good thank you so much um as let me mentioned we'll have uh interpretation for this evening's covet update and want to make sure to share some quick reminders and you can select an interpretation in the participate in a meeting in english or in spanish using the interpretation globe icon in your menu and a reminder to all speakers to clearly pronounce each word and to take a breath between sentences and to please not overlap speakers for ease of interpretation and sticking to one language is most helpful

[4:00] for interpretation and so that has begun and please choose your language using the globe icon below thank you thank you ryan aaron um i just got a report from a community member that their uh link to speak is not working um so i don't know alicia if how we can look is it for the is it for the public hearing or the open comment uh they did not specify all right i will go ahead and resend the the link to everyone i think it might be the public hearing because that's the last one we sent so i'll go ahead and take care of it while you guys are taking care of business thanks so much no worries thanks aaron thanks alicia and with that mary i'll turn it over to you thank you mayor today we have a quick update on our cobid i think we've got some friends and partners from the county to provide that update

[5:03] like see if you're ready i think we're good to go i am and can you all see my screen now yep all good so thank you very much my name is lexi nolan i am the deputy director of boulder county public health and i want to say uh thank you city council for for having us this evening i'm here with trina rueland our attorney and chris urbina our chief medical officer to provide some data updates as well as some updates on our public health orders and to answer any questions folks have i will say before we get started that we do have great news we did pass the 70 of eligible boulder county residents vaccinated last week so we're very excited about that um of course no sooner did we pass that that marker that milestone then we had another group eligible to receive the vaccine which is also wonderful news so now our 12 to 15 year olds can get vaccinated and from what we're hearing that's happening at a rapid pace so that's

[6:01] wonderful to hear and that was speaking too fast i'll slow down um so just to review some of the numbers we are at 71.2 percent of 16 year olds and up and 66.4 percent of 10 year olds and up have received at least one vaccine if we look at a breakdown by ethnicity and race this is a little bit of a busy slide but i this is a new kind of slide that we're using and what we like about it is that it not only provides information about how many folks have been vaccinated in each specific group it also shows the number of people that remain unvaccinated within that group and this is really helping us to think about how we target our messages how we think about where we're really doing specific outreach to groups to make sure that we are continuing to support everyone to be

[7:02] able to get a vaccine who wants one this is our geographic map and as you can see it continues to get darker and which is wonderful news we now have an area of boulder county where over 75 percent have been vaccinated i will point out as i usually do that most of the areas that are under uh 50 vaccination rates we have no areas that are under 25 that the areas that are between 25 and 50 of the folks that are vaccinated tend to be less dense areas so there aren't that many people there they are still important and we are still working to reach them but just so you have a sense of proportion this is a breakout of our different age groups and i think folks will remember that recently we've been very concerned about the high numbers of cases particularly among young folks so our 10

[8:02] to 22 year olds and even up to about 35 year olds have been high up in this in the number in the rates lately and what we're seeing is this dramatic decrease in cases and um there's a significant amount of this is due to the vaccination uptake including in younger folks which we're starting to make more progress with in terms of geographic distribution of cases you can see that those case numbers those number of individuals are falling that it's proportional across cities although we are still seeing um more cases in longmont than in boulder and this is just a really nice slide that illustrates the relationship between the vaccine up uptake and the changes in cases that we've seen so as we follow this orange line

[9:02] and we see the number of folks vaccinated the percent of folks vaccinated um we see this decline in cases and of course what you know the quick quick reaction is to say well wait a second you have a period here between march or during march when cases and vaccinations were increasing and that's true and that's because the vaccine takes a little while to work right you have to give it a chance to impact your body um and then so if we count out four weeks from the beginning of really seeing does that peptic can back the nations then we also start to see that declining cases that's just an indicator [Music] of of the value of the vaccines on our case rates if we look at hospital admission rates for boulder county and the denver metro region in adams county this is the pattern that we see going back to early march and i'm showing you these three to show you the

[10:01] extremes of the two of two counties in the denver metro region this orange line is boulder the pink line is the average of all the metro counties and the blue line is adams county just as an example because it's had some higher hospitalization rates and this particular metric is important because this blue level right here that goes across here this is the level that would create an automatic snapback from our current position in the level clear on the dial which allows us to gather without restrictions if we breach this blue line then we will automatically go back to more restrictions you can see we're not really in danger of that right now which is great news and our seven-day positivity is precipitously declining

[11:00] recently so we've been we were hovering between four and five percent for um a good five or six weeks which was making us a little bit nervous and now what we're seeing is that impact of the vaccinations there there is a decline in testing but the decline is not significant enough to make us worried that this positivity rate isn't accurate um for the people for the groups that are being tested we do want to encourage people to keep getting tested especially if you haven't been vaccinated and especially among kids which is still where we're seeing the higher transmission rates and you can see how the change in deaths has um how the vaccines have impacted the change in deaths and i just want to point out that we have not heard of a case in colorado to this point where someone who has had a vaccination has died of copiod all of the folks that

[12:00] are hospitalized with severe illness or that have passed away were not vaccinated and this is just really emphasizing that protective nature of the vaccine um you know it protects you from coming down with the illness it protects your family from having an exposure and it protects your family's ability to continue to go out and socialize and meet with your friends and go to work so just really hoping people keep on it a little bit as i was saying testing has dropped a little but not significantly and so these are just a few of the data resources if you're interested in learning more um i do want to take a minute to just really thank the city of boulder for all of the partnership that we've had in achieving this milestone we work with you guys in so many different ways and just deeply appreciate

[13:01] everything that you've done to jump in lend resources lend ideas work with us be patient with us um as we really uh you know explore some news ways of doing things together and tackling hard problems so just thank you so much to all of you for for the partnership and we look forward to continuing to move to address the the virus and to move into recovery um we do want to discuss a little bit tonight uh what's happening in relation to our public health order so i'd like to stop sharing my screen and turn it over to tina rueland from the county attorney's office hi i'm trina i am the attorney for boulder county public health i'm just going to briefly review the current orders in place regarding covid 19 and give you a little preview of where we think we are heading with those orders

[14:00] as lexi mentioned boulder county is now in level clear which means that all businesses may operate without those covid restrictions those capacity restrictions that we were so used to however the state does have a very minimal covid19 restriction order still in place it does apply to indoor public spaces with more than 100 people gathered in a single room that will remain in effect until june 1st the state order also still requires schools and early childhood education centers to follow case and outbreak guidance which means that schools are still subject to quarantine and isolation requirements hospitals are still reporting covid cases mentioning what lexi was pointing to earlier to make sure that our health care system

[15:00] is not at any risk of being breached the second component of this is the face covering order the state in response to the cdc's updated guidance that came out last wednesday updated its statewide face covering order and just to to clarify what happened the cdc issued new guidance for vaccinated people saying that if you are vaccinated you can essentially go back to pre-pandemic life in most situations this guidance was not intended for health care settings nor was it intended for um to supersede local or state orders and so state orders are still in effect i just want to make that very clear even in light of the cdc guidance so in response to that cdc guidance the state changed its face covering order and said if you are vaccinated we no longer recommend that you have to wear a mask

[16:00] however if you are unvaccinated we recommend you wear a mask and a mask is required if you're unvaccinated in a school setting jail setting congregate hair care facility and health care settings boulder county's public health local mass quarter is still in effect we have been spending the past couple of days uh getting stakeholder input talking to our partners and making sure that we fully understand the cdc guidance and how it interacts with us as a county and a local jurisdiction what we expect to do is to update our local public health order to largely align with the state as we put out in that press release last friday meaning that if you are not yet vaccinated we strongly recommend that you wear a mask if you are not yet vaccinated you will still be required to wear a mask in a healthcare setting school or jail

[17:02] and in fact in the school setting and in the congregate care facility setting and in the health care settings masks will still be required regardless of vaccination status because in the school setting most people are not vaccinated and in the health care and long-term long-term care facility settings those are just very high risk settings with high-risk folks in them the state's order the state's face covering order is in effect until june 1st and our local order will align to match that timeline for the most part happy to answer any questions about that great well thank you both lexi and trina we always love hearing from you and these updates are getting better and better so we'll just keep having you back so that's great um i turn to council and see if council has any questions any clarifying questions mary

[18:02] yes i um thank you lexi and um to boulder county public health and i just wanted to compliment you on how far we've come with the date of disaggregation compared to the beginning of the pandemic so i really appreciate that and thank you very much for the update great any other questions seeing none i'll repeat lexi your thanks always thank you back for all the work that uh boulder county public health has done with us it's been a long road and we had to ramp up pretty quickly and we leaned on you quite a bit so thanks for your partnership and your cooperation in getting us to where we are last call council members any further questions all right with that thank you yeah mark yeah i did uh but i also want to point out that my um ray's hand function is not working i'm not quite sure what to do about that at the moment and somebody can give me some guidance

[19:00] that would help um but i do have a question which is um it seems that um businesses are setting their own um standards for the conduct of business within their premises is is that the case that they're all free to do so require masks not require masks um however they see fit so until we update the order uh masks are still required in all public indoor spaces we expect the order to be updated tomorrow once that happens businesses in general do have the ability to still require masks and if you are a higher risk business you know younger clientele we would recommend that you do require masks in that situation um the same guidance from the state still applies there's actually some very helpful civil rights guidance for businesses if they require masks um can they ask you to put one on yes um that that kind of stuff that that all still exists there um businesses can

[20:00] also inquire about vaccine status in most situations okay thank you and sam i found an alternate raised hand function which i'll try to use okay great thank you if i could just add on to trina's comment we will be looking over the next few days about how to help um businesses think about what whether a masked policy or an inquiry policy is appropriate for their staff or for their customers um and we'll be working on some communications to help and support them super um and i guess i see chris urbina here chris i'll turn to you briefly and see do you have anything that you want to share with us we've got you here oh thanks mayor members of the council i'm just here as a pretty face and to hear answer questions so all right well thanks for being here with your pretty face we appreciate it um with that seeing no more questions thank you again boulder county public health and i will bring it back to council

[21:01] and i believe we are ready for open comment so with that our first uh people signed up for open comment tonight are donna george patrick murphy and jane wilson oh and before i call on donna i will let folks know that our interpretation services will be ending now that the coveted briefing is over so the rest of the meeting will not be interpreted and with that donna we are ready for your time you should be able to meet yourself man then i see you using the the zoom app

[22:02] and the phone if you're on the phone you can do um okay i just unmuted on the app so which one do you want me to talk about we we can hear you donna you are good to go okay so i'm gonna shut off the phone okay you can still hear me yep okay hi my name is donna george i live at 4661 tally ho court and i'm i'm talking tonight about the gun barrel community center plan iga which i believe is expiring this month and it needs to be renewed because um there's still a lot of work to be done for the gun barrel community center plan the plan protects the area from a lot of high buildings being built there and i know a lot of people in gun bureau don't want to just have a whole bunch of high buildings blocking their views in the gun barrel center area um in relation to that also is the gun barrel sub-community plan which we really need a gun barrel

[23:00] sub-community plan and i think that needs to be done before any more development in the gun barrel area is approved because the people in gun barrel dumbbell is a very unique area it's it has you know the city annexed a lot of areas especially mainly the retail and the commercial centers but many of the housing is in an area that many people want to remain as rural suburban and yet it seems to be that um the city and others may want to just turn this into an urban area to put in as much housing as possible to serve the employment centers of the city of boulder and that's disingenuous to the people who live in the gun barrel area this is where they live they should have a strong voice in what happens in their community and how their community changes and develops in the future it does not mean that they're against

[24:00] any changes it does not mean that they wouldn't even welcome some density but they do not want to be turned into a major dense area just for just to provide housing for the city of boulder because the city of boulder is bringing in so many jobs and with the tech industry it is happening more and more um i will be talking on the uh library district tonight but this is just an aside because i was reading over the library district thank you donna thank you your time is up thank you next we have patrick murphy jane wilson and ray bomba patrick my name is patrick murphy i live in boulder this is a reality check on the transparency failure of public access to email sent to city council i'm asking if this failure is due to incompetence intention or what slide two

[25:00] if you figure out the three-step process to get to the emails you're confronted with this a web page only a data manager could love this lists data fields that are available as if most folks know what this even means i do know what it means and after playing around with it for about 15 minutes i got nowhere slide three so i clicked the data tab i got to see something that represented emails but they weren't readable since the columns are locked not good i wanted to find emails i sent that included web links and graphics to see what they looked like i tried scrolling down 10 lines at a time through the 32 000 lines which was nuts it took about half an hour to figure out the filter icon versus sorting but i then found i still had to export the data to excel to actually work with it what i discovered was a huge flaw in the data and a total degradation of transparency compared to what it was in the past slide four the first thing i notice is that all the emails i've sent over

[26:02] the last six months are missing as well as additional large gaps slide five the city's website states that all emails are posted and nothing is redacted both of these statements are false slide six not only are images and links redacted but dozens of emails are missing slide seven this is what my emails actually look like not a string of text this needs to be resolved slide eight next time back to critical review of boulder's need for fast carbon reduction instead of just blowing smoke and nuria it's wonderful to have you here uh look forward to meeting you someday in the future thanks thank you patrick next we have gene wilson ray bamba and evan rabbits jane

[27:00] hey my name is james likes wilson i live on maxwell avenue in boulder i am commenting about the library funding issue this evening um i wanted to thank you very much for discussing the library funding issue this evening as many of us know it's been a long time coming and we have waited and watched one of our most loved and used institutes fade as the funding for the library as always is first to be cut and last to never to be restored i've been involved with the boulder public library for the past seven years as a library foundation board member an employee a donor a library commission member and now the chair of the library commission and of course as always as a patron i've seen firsthand how important the library is to this community and i've studied in depth the funding battle that the library currently faces and always has faced i'm urging you to create a library district by resolution along with the county commissioners this will allow the two groups to appoint a library district board and to work through the legal

[28:00] administrative and logical details of an inter-government agreement this will allow the boulder community to have their voices heard when it's time for them to vote the library is unlike any space in boulder it serves everyone from the computers that allow for job searches to the support offered to someone starting a new business to the five-year-olds learning to read and the new americans who are learning to read english to the most vulnerable of our society who rely on the homebound services doing nothing to address the lack of funding leaves our community without this vital resource among other things it will create a lost generation of readers who are unable to check out the books that excite them and to nourish their curious minds the ultimate community engagement on this topic is to let the community vote on whether they would like a library district or not thank you thank you jane and i will mention um this is open comment any further commentary on the library subject

[29:00] should be under the public hearing for the library district which will come later tonight with that we have ray bamba evan ravitz and lisa nelson ray hi my name is ray bomba and i live on 13th street i'm urging the council to take the 891 12th street property off today's consent agenda because the most important conditions for approval are currently not under cons consideration and were inadequately addressed in the last meeting 24-hour on-site management is critical to protect the neighbors from undue burden night time is the most important time to have an accountable person on site the only argument against this requirement came from the developer who comes who claim that they're in their experience it would be ineffective this is ludicrous around the world 24 hour on-site managers are able to enforce rules and if this landlord is not able to control their own representatives it is a statement of their own incompetence

[30:02] an alternative explanation for the developer's resistance to on-site management as was presented at the last meeting is the fact that they market their properties on facebook as party houses and it goes against the business model another obvious explanation is the additional cost but please do the math this property will undoubtedly generate three-quarters of a million dollars per year in revenue or more it is absurd to suggest that the neighbors should bear the cost of enforcement rather than the landlord consider the cost to the neighbors of having to get out of bed call the management property and the police and complain in the middle of the night these neighbors are adults with jobs and responsibilities it is entirely unacceptable for the city to place this burden for nighttime enforcement on the neighbors all the evidence before the city suggests this will be a problem the precedent for 24-hour on oversight is already in place in the neighboring sorority the only reason the pie fly house is a good neighbor by their

[31:01] own admission is because they have a live-in professional house director i urge you to take the opportunity to investigate the situation more carefully and strengthen requirements for approval thank you thank you ray next we have evan ravitz lisa nelson and rachel daly evan as lily tomlin said no matter how cynical i get i can't keep up now we learn from the rocky mountain peace and justice center that their open records request shows city council ignored all 119 citizen emails asking for an open hearing about the rocky mountain greenway which should be called the plutonium pathway instead city and county officials colluded to deny the hearing and endorse the plutonium pathway so you're being sued what a contrast

[32:01] with my open records request showing that in the first 240 days of 2017 the director of the boulder downtown partnership wrote 211 emails to counsel and got a reply to every single one we pay you to represent the people not boulders oligarchs and plutocrats to quote craig mundy sunday senior advisor to the ceo of microsoft member of obama's council of advisors on science and tech at boulder's famous gold symposium last week quote government is pathetic unquote here's how it works here rich and powerful governor polis is a pathetic toady to oil and gas which we saw when he killed off the anti-fracking ballot initiatives he sponsored in 2014. then certain members of city council are

[33:02] sub toadies to jared and city staff are sub-sub-toadies that's why the city butchered our first in the nation online petitioning which would make anti-fracking initiatives easier guess what you spent years to learn all this poison toadying and keeping your oath of silence and hiding behind government immunity and now everyone is growing to hate you thank you evan next we have lisa nelson richard daley and lynn siegel lisa hello can you hear me yep great thank you um hi i'm lisa nelson and i leave at tenth in college and i'm speaking tonight to respectful requests that you take marpa house off of tonight's consent agenda to allow time for further consideration there has been substantial community input submitted over the past two years providing information that would support denial of this application

[34:00] unfortunately that information does not appear to be reflected in the analysis and recommendations being made for example it is difficult to understand how approval of this project can be given based on a comparison to fraternity use of the property from a half a century ago without equal consideration of documented information from the most recent four decades of use my mother remembers going to parties at the property when it was the sae house 65 years ago however i'm fairly certain that at no time in the 40-plus years that the property was a contemplative community did any neighbor ever have to go over to marpa house in the middle of the night to ask them to meditate more quietly nor were neighbors subjected to the frequent presence of obscene graffiti trash and beer cups strewn everywhere which are common sites at the applicant's other properties in light of the strong and well-documented concerns about this project if you do decide to approve this proposal with conditions please consider this staff and applicant draw a comparison to the non-conforming use of the pi beta 5 sorority house next door to justify approval of this project if that is in fact the case then the operating characteristics of this project should reflect the same

[35:00] operating characteristics that pi-fi has which include no alcohol no drugs no parties and most relevant to this discussion a full-time live-in professional house manager who ensures that the rules are followed day and night to be consistent the marpa house development at a minimum must include a live-in on-site professional manager a student tenant acting as a manager or an off-site company representative designated to take neighbor complaints is not the same thing does not serve the same purpose and will not address the concerns of neighbors there's also a question of what will happen if approval is granted and conditions are not met it's not clear if there will be any meaningful consequences if the applicant does not meet the conditions you set speaking for many my neighbors we would love to see the next chapter of the marpa house property be something that continues the legacy of peace and community that existed there for over 40 years thank you for your time and service thank you lisa next we have rachel daly lin siegel and claire kelly rachel hi um my name is rachel daly and i am actually here tonight to talk about

[36:02] the library but i'll wait to talk about that for a moment i just want to comment about um our issues with housing i know that um there's a lot of controversy around density but i think that i would just urge you guys to please consider what what it means for the people who've lived in colorado who want to live in colorado who can't afford to be here who can't find a home we're experiencing a really incredible housing shortage right now so please whatever issues issues you're looking at please consider that thank you so much thank you rachel um next we have lynn siegel claire kelly and gwen barack lynn yeah um first marpa house

[37:00] do not rule on that do not follow the consent agenda it's clearly non-conforming increasing non-conformity and you know my brother paul lived there for 10 years um it was at the end it was 900 a month including food and um now my brother is basically homeless tom and bob basically homeless and guess what bob my brother does landscaping he doesn't have to go to school to go do landscaping he mows lawns but he can't afford to live here anymore so just saying if you're going to send people to culinary arts school or landscaping to get them out of the the unhoused condition they're in you better go further than that you better train them on a google job to live in boulder um let's see i can't believe everyone i heard tonight

[38:01] so right on gun barrel right on ray bambier and lisa nelson listen to your constituents this marpa house situation is the model of housing in boulder and you have just turned it into a frankenstein it's just so unbelievably unacceptable um rocky flats rocky flats you got one lawsuit with rocky flats do you want another and you and and you've got another one coming hopefully from holland and hart on marpa house this is just obscene these things are even listened to 11 marine there was debate for three hours over a dining room being used as a bedroom now luckily staff didn't approve of that but that developer will be back after bedrooms are for people probably

[39:00] trying to get five people into the place or four people thank you lynn next we have claire kelly gwen burak and valerie kindren claire hey um i'm here to talk about the library should i wait you should and i'll just ask um to make sure alicia can you make sure that claire is signed up for the library please thank you claire next we have gwen barack valerie kindren and michelle morrissey gwen hi i'm gwen burak and i have a presentation that i think is coming up right now i live at norwood avenue and i'm the deputy director of the boulder museum of contemporary art and first i just want to thank the city staff and city council members for all that you do to support the arts and cultural institutions in the city including bimoca tonight i'm here to invite you to visit the current exhibition that is open at

[40:00] the moca's flagship facility at 1750 13th street on the east side of the civic area thank you for going to the next slide the exhibition is entitled from this day forward and it closes on may 31st and features the work of eight artists from around the metro area next slide please the exhibition is guest curated by tia elisa anthony and she offers an invitation for us to consider the exhibiting artist's responses to our current reality tia anthony's curation and the exhibiting artist's work respond to the reality that the global pandemic and race gender and civil equity conflicts of the past year bring to light the urgent need for change and how we respect humanity next slide please vimoca is excited to hold space for contemplation and encourages visitors to move through the galleries while thinking critically about where we see ourselves going from this day forward

[41:00] next slide please this slide features the curator tia lisa anthony in the bottom left and a number of artists that are exhibiting work as part of the exhibit from this day forward as the city's contemporary art museum bimoka is committed to amplifying the voices of artists in the dialogue about social issues and challenges of our time and we feel that this exhibition offers this to the boulder community next slide please we hope that you'll have an opportunity to come visit the exhibition before it closes on may 31st and thank you so much for your time and all that you do for the arts and cultural institutions here in the city thank you thank you gwen next we have valerie kindred michelle morrissey and hope mickelson valerie good evening this is valerie kindred 1212 cascade and regarding the marpa house you know we used to love it when the students got back in town the traffic was bad and

[42:00] they would hoot and holler for weeks and then be gone until graduation and now it's different many are destructive they're loud they're inconsiderate and sometimes mean and this is year round sometimes three four times a week so now we dread the students coming back we already have a battle going on with this so i asked myself why has our civil city council chosen to allow 48 more students in a single family neighborhood why would they do that and your answer was students deserve housing too 48 out of about what 33 000 students is not worth ruining our neighborhood this makes a huge difference to our lives if you allow this so we're dismayed that our community has not been heard and that you can't understand or won't that you are making a decision that will impact us in a detrimental way for many many years we are willing to work with the developer to come up with a new plan that works for all and yes we know that's daunting and it's going to cost money but it's worth it to get it right we need to get it right now to preserve this neighborhood for generations to come so i ask you to please deny the

[43:01] application but if not then at least take the next two weeks to work on the conditions to strengthen and make those enforceable that's parking live in manager reporting for more than three years and consequences as it is it will be too difficult for us to monitor and also there seems to be this rumor that we're a bunch of privileged folks that don't want this in our backyard and this is really far from the truth many of us bought our homes 20 30 40 years ago and put in the work to make this a great neighborhood we have jobs drive old cars and some of us struggle to pay bills so there are all kinds of people here i ask you again to please reconsider your vote and deny the application thanks so much for your time tonight thank you val next we have michelle morrissey hope nicholson and sharon procopio michelle

[44:00] michelle is calling in by phone michelle you'll just want to press star 6 to unmute yourself michelle sorry i beg your pardon uh city council members i was so looking forward to seeing your faces it's been so long um my name is michelle denae sierra garcia morrissey and i was hoping to see you all tonight but um here i am so i just wanted to sort of speak up on some things that have been coming up for me personally based on my love of boulder and my dedication to this community as you all know i was very disappointed

[45:01] to see a million and a half dollars to um additional positions in the police department when there are positions yet to be filled and that that money could have gone a long ways in getting these people back on their feet that does tie in a little bit of the library for me because the library has gotten me back on my feet more than once and i just want you all to really consider who you're representing and who you're showing up for because i know i think i know you all at least relatively and i hope that you can take a step back and really assess if if we're working for the people or if we're working for the the institutions that sort of suppress the people or oppress the people depending on who you ask and i wanted to just remind you

[46:00] of the work that is being done has been done by the task force and is being done by the oversight panel and that that budget delegation was not in line with the values that created the task force or i i wouldn't speak for the the current oversight panel but i can't assume that any of them would be proud to say that boulder just allocated over a million dollars to more policing when we have a relatively peaceful community and i was very disappointed to hear that and i hope that you would consider allocating those funds towards something like the library or towards something like housing or i heard some people speaking against increased dwelling but the reality is if we don't address some of these housing issues then that's the only alternative like

[47:00] we have to you have to rent a room at this point you can't you know if you're a young adult trying to start your life you can't go rent a house in boulder you know you have to be i mean we're approaching san francisco prices and it's just really disappointing to see thank you i'm sorry to interrupt your time's up thank you thank you next we have hope mickelson sharon procopio and alicia murray hope hi my name is hope michaelson and i live at 805 13th street on the hill i'd like to request that you remove the reconfiguration of the marpa house 891 12th street from the consent agenda and further consider conditions to limit the negative impact the project will have on our neighborhood previous discussions by the city council and planning board has prioritized the need to protect the applicant's investment and limit restrictions on his development some of the commenters the development solicited for the last meeting tried to portray the hill neighbors as unsympathetic and

[48:00] overprivileged on the contrary i find my neighbors to be caring honest hard-working people my husband and i have met residents teachers artists writers single moms cu staff and faculty and many retired educators we are as hard working and as deserving of consideration as the students and the developer whom this plan favors as much as we love our neighborhood we have found it challenging to live on the hill even without dense student apartment complex in the middle of the neighborhood there are many streets we cannot walk with our dogs because of all the broken glass last week while we were walking a student turned into a driveway and urinated on the fence over the past year the frequent fireworks have been nearly unbearable when one of our neighbors posted on next door about her struggles with mental illness because she couldn't sleep because of fireworks all night several students told her that quote students rule the hill and that she should leave the neighborhood if she doesn't like it we set up a soundproofed room in our basement to help us make it through the nights last summer and the students who were the source of

[49:00] that noise were several blocks away i have never lived in a town where i need to call the police on my neighbors to be able to split to sleep but this is exactly what the plan you're putting in place will require there will be no repercussions for the developer when this development turns out just like all their other properties please do not approve the reconfiguration of the marpa house without finding better enforceable ways to minimize its impact on our neighborhood thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to speak tonight thank you hope next we have sharon procopio alicia murray and lisa spalding sharon mayor i do believe that taran and alicia have signed up to speak to the library great thank you ryan hi ryan do you have the um presentation oops thank you

[50:01] and and can you oh okay you can turn that on in a minute um i i joined the neighbors who preceded me in asking you to remove marpa house from tonight's consent agenda the conditions staff has drawn up are not adequate to protect the neighborhood from the impacts of the applicant's proposal to expand this non-conforming use around midnight last friday daniel harberger shot the video that follows of cedar house the applicant's rental property at 14th and euclid the occupancy is 28. 20 people less than he proposes for marpa house this was just a typical friday night no special occasion and ryan if you could turn that on it would be great thank you

[51:06] oh the last shot in the video shows the quiet neighborhood around marpa house as it is today if you could show the the photo now ryan it would be great without a professional adult manager residing at the property full time calm nights will turn chaotic and daylight will reveal trash and other remnants of the night before as written condition d does not guarantee the management will take full responsibility for protecting the neighbors from impacts either at night or during the day that is cedar house on

[52:00] the left and that is my house on the right as it is today thank you bye thank you lisa and with that we will bring public comment to a close bring it back to staff and see nuria or tom if you have any response to anything you heard tonight no i'll assure the staff if they have anything they want to add don't see anything tom anything from you i have nothing sam thank you thank you council uh aaron and then rachel i had a question um ms george uh referenced an iga that's expiring and um i don't think that's on my radar anyway my other council members may be uh aware of that is it possible to get an update don't expect people necessarily know offhand but um on the status of that that iga require regarding gun barrel

[53:05] chris uh yeah uh aaron thanks for asking that question and uh jacob could jump in here as well um there is an iga related to the gun barrel community center plan um and i think jacob's got a little more info on it that's correct and and thank you chris um i am uh by no means an expert in the topic however the information that i have at hand is that that iga with the county related to gun barrel was signed in 2006 and it has a term of 20 years so it will expire in 2026 and it just applies to the retail core of gun barrel and it's only for any development that's over uh three and a quarter stories tall and it allows for county review in those conditions so it's relatively limited and uh there's another five years left before it's expiration great thanks i was a little bit familiar with the iga itself i just hadn't heard of it expiring but it sounds like we got five years left so there's some time to renew that hopefully that'll

[54:00] come up on the work plan in three or four years thank you chris and jacob thank you aaron rachel i just wanted to say thank you to i think it was gwyneth from b mocha that was a delightful presentation and hope that she will do it again keep us posted thanks very good and with that alicia i'll turn it back to you all right sir thank you next we have our consent agenda item number three on our agenda items are a through o very good thank you alicia and we have a few items on the consent agenda to discuss tonight the first one is item f um that is a first reading of an adjustment to base which is a pretty routine budgetary thing we do but there's a subject that we want further discussion about for that i'll turn to councilmember

[55:00] brockett aaron yeah thanks sam i appreciate you um team this up for me to address uh so as council members know and as community members may or may not know um uh the the second reading of the adjustment to base is scheduled for a couple weeks from now and was scheduled to be on the consent agenda and i i had sent an email to the council agenda committee uh requesting that we move that to a public hearing and my justification for that was that we've been putting things on the consent agenda that either have already had a public hearing or that have minimal community interest in them for them which i think has been working really well but there are some new uh proposals in the adjustment to base that are of significant community interest that i felt merited and outreached the public on and um so i put that out there with that request and since then have uh been thinking about the matter and had some discussions with some other folks and kind of uh honed in on my thinking regarding

[56:01] that so specifically the the uh the adjustment to base it has a lot of routine changes and some some great uh changes and then some some things that we already talked about at a study session regarding um kind of how to work with encampments in our community and other ways of kind of improving the public experience in public spaces and and how to improve that experience so um and it as i thought it through that most of those things have garnered wide community support so for example the downtown ambassador program proposal everybody seems to think is a good idea similarly the park ranger issue are the new urban park rangers or restoration of those people generally think those are a good idea the one area that has been controversial i think is the additional funding for six additional police officers to be added to the police force and uh there have been some

[57:01] strong opinions from the community on in a lot of different sides um different perspectives uh on that matter and so that's the item uh that really had the the strong community interest uh and so that that was my you know effectively my uh primary reason for requesting that be a public hearing so um here's what i'd like to to bring forward to council because i've heard from some of my colleagues that maybe public hearing isn't necessary or desirable we did when we worked on this issue at the study session we heard from the police department that they have a significant deficit in the number of officers on their force right now they're allowed to have they have an approved amount of 184 sworn officers and um i think that depending on how you count who's in the pipeline or who they still need to hire there they're down more than 20 on that number and have some significant hiring left to do which will take some time and

[58:01] i reached out to chief feral today she says that she's working hard her department is working hard on getting new officers hired and onboarded that process will take some time she thought that she might be able to hire up to that 190 level but that it's going to take a lot of work to to do the hiring and it will take some time uh regardless of whether it's a 184 190 level so here's my uh proposal um that i don't believe that it is uh necessary uh at this time uh to add the additional police funding um in this adjustment to base because of the additional hiring that needs to happen already for the police department so um my proposal would be to not include that additional police funding in this adjustment to base instead you recapture those funds for additional restoration of services

[59:00] in some of the areas you know it's not a huge amount of money in the next few months but some amount of money to maybe restore some parks and rec services or help the planning department get back up to speed or human services funding etc and so what i'd like to hear from council about is would people be amenable to removing that from this adjustment to base and saying that um if the police department is able to hire up to their 184 level and um and wants to come back uh for a request for funding up to the 190 level um you know while being able to state how things are working and how that would be very helpful that they could come back in a future adjustment to base or other budget cycle with that request um so so my proposal today is to remove that from the adjustment to base um today if possible and um and then move forward with the rest of the adjustment to base uh on the regular schedule and then let the police department come back with an additional request if that it is necessary at a future time so

[60:01] thanks for bearing with me uh through that uh explanation and like to hear from my colleagues super thanks aaron um yeah we'll just go with um colleagues i'd like to turn to staff at some point but let's start with council questions or comments bob my my question thank you aaron for that um proposal i think it's an intriguing proposal and worth considering um my question really is for staff sam if that's okay sure okay um i don't know if chief harold is on or somebody from the police department oops yes oh hi chief how are you i'm so chief um uh considering aaron's proposal um would you if we were to pass as aaron suggested right now we um we would uh do all the things we talked in april 27 except for making the budget adjustment now would you still be able to redeploy the six police officers that you've talked about i think i think you um shared with us

[61:01] that you would redeploy six existing officers to um some problem areas we have particularly downtown and civic area and on the hill would you still be able to do that um subject to er and suggestion that we could revisit the um the budget question uh no sir i would not unless i took uh resources from other departments like i talked about on april 27th um i i think that the main point is historically the police were never had the expectation to clean encampments or post or provide safety the additional ambassador program the parks and the cleaning of what we discussed is three to four days a week i would have to take an entire unit out of the police department to be able to provide that level of service so i would either have to take my traffic section away which currently is nine officers or i would have to take my university hill impact team which

[62:00] includes the downtown group the university hill group uh the san juan group and so you know it's really priorities it would come down to priorities but i could not provide that level of service and protection and safety and posting and cleaning the encampments for that level of service with what we have now and it would take a massive hiring spree like we discussed on april 27 to make this happen and to do it the right way to do it compassionately and make sure everybody is safe and then also to support the ambassadors and the new park rangers for the first year or the 18 months pilot project thanks you if i could ask a whole question i want to make sure that i understood the the original plan which we talked about on april 27th was um i think there was two parts to it as i understood it one was um you were going to redeploy six officers

[63:00] existing officers to these these problem areas and then um effectively backfill for them by increasing your budgeted head count from 184 to 190 um and i know that you're you're down significantly from the 184 but you're working real hard to hire up to that point and maybe ultimately to the 190. were the were the next six officers that or some uh group of the next uh officers you hire going to backfield for those six i'm trying to understand if they were to be the last six or the next six or some middle sex how that was going to work so they will to provide some level of service to support parks and rec the downtown ambassadors um i would need to take six officers that i can train up within the next month um like we discussed uh last time they're gonna need legal training they're gonna need more icat use of force training they're gonna need more tactical training they're gonna need more legal training and so i would take six of my veteran

[64:00] officers from different locations within the police department and backfill that with hires that we'll be having coming out of the academy so i have people coming out of academies that by mid-summer i'll be able to backfill and then we've been working hard by contacting police academies across the state to provide to get people in um as quickly as possible and then it is my desire and hope that we are able to hire lateral transfers which only take you know six to eight weeks to get up and running with our field training officer program and those are officers that already have post certifications in colorado so that that is the plan and when you think about staffing to do this right my target goal is more like 200 because we are constantly losing officers almost on a daily occurrence right now thank you chief mary so yeah i have a

[65:00] quick question for the chief just to understand the timeline so i'm understanding how you would take more experienced officers from some sections and redeploy them into helping with the encampments and the ambassadors and the cleanups um and then you would then replace those redeployed more experienced officers with the recent hires so there's going to be it's going to take some time so how much time do you expect it to take before you would reach the 184 well if i'm if i'm successful i hire all everything that we have open right now in the next hiring phase which we have going on right now so i would need the funding right now to offer people positions in academies and offer lateral transfers

[66:01] now and that's the problematic part of hiring in police departments you have the openings and you have you make job offers to as many people as are qualified to do the job and that would be my desire is to have that many people hired in the next hiring cycle and right now we are diligently trying to get more academy openings to put people in those openings i can't guarantee you that we're going to get everybody in this first hiring cycle but we will continue the hiring cycle it will not close so what you're saying is that if you if we're successful then you would reach the 184 within about six weeks i would hope to reach the 190 um as quickly as possible is as fast as and it comes down to doing a really solid recruiting and background check on everybody but if

[67:02] i i'm dedicating a tremendous amount of resources to get these people up and running as quickly as possible because what you have to keep in mind is i'm losing people at the same time i'm trying to bring people in so again the important thing is right now is to really target for 200 that's that's what my goal is knowing that i'm losing people pretty regularly in the police department okay thank you thanks mary um adam and then rachel adam yeah i'm not gonna try to relitigate the vote because that happened but um i am still a little confused on the timing just because i don't know many departments that we try to pre-fill or uh have a hiring system that goes above what we're actually trying to fill you know if we're having a problem of hitting our cap that's when i think it's appropriate to talk about

[68:00] budget expansion especially when we have so many services that aren't currently being provided that we normally do um so if that were a problem we were running into where we needed more officers because we had hired as many as we're already allotted i think that makes a lot of sense but until that point you know i'm not sure it makes a whole lot of sense to put budget somewhere where it's maybe going to be spent especially when we have a second adjustment to base in a matter of months um where we could approve that again and as chief said uh the hiring is not going to close until it is full so it seems like we have multiple bites at this apple but uh why would we spend the money or a lot the money when it could be allotted elsewhere um why not wait a little bit in my mind thanks adam um do you have a response to that chief

[69:00] the only response i have is if i don't start hiring now we're talking another it just pushes the hiring process back and back and back um so you know it is standard practice and policing is to have a target over your number knowing that you're losing people that it's just a standard practice um to to ensure that you are always at least keeping your policing levels consistent and that unfortunately does not it has not happened in boulder but this is a standard practice across the country is trying to target above knowing that you're losing and knowing that how hard it is right now to recruit and to retain uh police officers thank you chief rachel um i'm without him i also don't want to relitigate um and and understand that the complicated hiring dynamics here it does sound a bit like we're in like quicksand where we are

[70:00] losing faster than we can hire replacements so i do wonder about um this kind of pre-hiring and not waiting to see when we get to 184 but we already litigated that at april 27th so understood that i wasn't on the on the kind of winning side of that argument but overall i guess um in terms of of aaron's initial request to have a public hearing i don't know that during my tenure on council we've had a public hearing on either homelessness or policing and those are obviously um both areas of intense public interest um so i think you know we we haven't voted on this yet my my experience has been that we've we have a vote on something that has significant public interest we have a public hearing on it so um it seems like we would need to have a public hearing on this either in in two weeks if we're going to move forward with it or maybe when we do the second adjustment to base if we are waiting

[71:00] um but i i think it's very clear based on open comments and emails that this is an area of intense public interest and that seems to be when we hold public hearings so i don't i don't know why we wouldn't for this thanks mark yeah i'm reluctant to put the chief in the position of having to rob peter to pay paul um and to strip down already undermanned departments in order to achieve the uh six officer compliment that she envisions for um the homelessness issue so i i would not wait until the second adjustment to base i would prove this now and give her the resources that i think she requires in order to carry out the policies that that we have approved and uh you know that's just my view thank you very much

[72:00] yeah i'm just trying to um understand um something that adam said that he said he's not aware of any other departments that do this so my question is is this something that is specific to how police departments operate or are there other departments that do this and what is the characteristic of police departments that they have to hire in this manner versus other departments chief i think that might be to you first that was for adam um mary that's a great question i don't know if this is a standard practice in other other uh city departments i can tell you in policing throughout my almost 30-year career this has always been problematic um and especially problematic right now um with the national policing crisis um and the king supers incident um people are just um deciding

[73:02] not to retire from the police department to resign from the police department and so we are we are losing people and um there's you know we retirements and resignations but this for my entire career has always been problematic is to keep your staffing levels up to what your compliment is it has always been hard to keep officers um you know at the proper staffing levels and unfortunately what that's indicative of is not providing the community with consistent policing services and so right now you know if i was asked to do the encampment cleanups with the other departments and provide safety i would have to take another unit um out of service to make that happen on a consistent basis and i am trying to hire um you know as quickly but also due diligence because these are important positions for the community and to do that right as well but

[74:03] we will be in a hiring cycle um to keep these numbers up and yeah and i just was i was looking to someone on staff to answer the other part of the question i i'll defer to chris if he has additional uh information but i know just from experience that other departments like fire departments generally have this issue and they over hire because of their academies i've been in other cities where traffic management is in the similar case i believe that boulder fire does that as well but perhaps chris has more detail nuri is correct and it it's there's a couple of pieces the first is especially with fire and police departments where you have um the applicants or the the new staff going through an academy process um there are some that through that academy process will drop out and so a lot of times especially like with fire and then as maris described with police

[75:00] there are multiple academies and you can you can draw from those there's other times where if we know that there is a planned retirement say of a staff member um we'll do what we call an overhire which is essentially hire that person's replacement before that person has officially retired for a short overlap period um and so that's the other thing that will occur sometimes in departments is uh there'll be a short period of an over higher um just to ensure smooth transitions thank you um aaron well and chris just developed on that i mean that um that kind of uh over higher is something that the departments can just do right i mean you don't need special dispensation or budget in order to have some overlap like that to you uh internally we still go through uh an approval process just to ensure that the funding is there and uh and it isn't going to put a department over over their budget right but it doesn't you don't come to

[76:00] city council for approval on that that kind of thing right it's something that departments can do okay so i want to remind us that any council person has the ability to cause this to become a public hearing on june 1st so we don't have a vote here and we don't have you know approval so rachel to your point should you want a public hearing you could cause one to happen um aaron i'm gonna go back to you this is your um item do you have a suggestion you'd like us to move forward with hearing what you've heard so far yeah well chief held i mean i thank you for that perspective and and i appreciate it and i hear that your your hiring as as fast as you can which is good like we have a deficit right that needs to be filled and it seems like the um you know some amount of like over hiring like chris was talking about you know seems like a very reasonable

[77:00] kind of thing to do um i i just did i still my fundamental point i feel like stands and we have we have so many departments in the city that provide important services to the community that have been cut deep over the last year or so and so um i i still would would like to you know give you the chance to to staff up um to that 184 level and um and and look at how we can spend a little bit more money on restoring some of the other services we've lost in the community so sam my proposal would be to you know to approve the adjustment to base with that with that one additional allocation um uh removed okay so um what i'm gonna suggest is that you make that into a motion and that you don't do it at this very moment because we have a couple other consent things to talk through but by the time we are

[78:02] done with the consent i think we maybe somebody should move the consent with all uncontroversial things and then we have a vote on on whatever your motion is at that point does that sound fair yeah that works okay and i i have a question that i want to ask staff before we go on and i'll direct this to you chris and then others can follow up but um chris i heard from staff i think you in fact that there was threats made to park staff today who were giving notice and encampment could you give us a little bit of information about that yeah or ally either one yeah i might look to ali rhodes who who knows more of the details sure i'll just share that it had nothing to do with encampments the employee was mowing in a park near the adjacent civic area um and was threatened with a metal pipe and some pretty awful words okay very good um i just wanted chris

[79:02] had texted me about that so i just wanted more details this wouldn't have been anything um related to that wouldn't normally have been a police presence with what that staff person was doing is that correct okay yeah okay very good so aaron you have it to do by the time we're done with the consent then we will deal with the specifics at that point um with that moving on through the consent agenda we have item in which is the continuation of our hearing on the non-conforming use review for 891 12th street and staff we gave staff instructions at the last meeting to prepare conditions and we gave some detail about those conditions so i think staff has those and we have 30 minutes roughly set aside here to talk through those

[80:00] so i'll turn it to staff so i'll see sloan are you ready i'm ready all right um so good evening so as you described the item tonight is a continuation of a discussion regarding an application for a non-conforming use review to renovate the historic structure and convert the boarding house to 16 dwelling units ryan or emily is there a powerpoint there we go um so the intent of the presentation is to go through the additional conditions and modifications that were prepared by staff to address comments made by council at the hearing on may 4th next slide please

[81:00] i might be able to get control here we go so the application as you know must be reviewed for consistency with the criteria set forth in subsection r 9215 of the land use code and a determination on this application is a criteria-based decision planning board approved the application in february with a list of conditions which were intended to address neighborhood concerns and ensure that the use would be compatible with the surrounding area with an acceptable amount of impacts council called up the planning board decision in march and on may 4th held the quasi-judicial hearing to review the proposal council closed the public hearing and continued discussion to the meeting tonight to allow staff to draft conditions as was directed um planning staff has been working with the city attorneys to prepare the conditions and modifications um

[82:02] which were forwarded in the memo those were also reviewed with the applicant and their legal representation and they have agreed to the changes so i'm just going to talk quickly through the modifications that were made since the last hearing maybe go back all right well the first one is the quiet hours um so the modification is intended to address concerns regarding noise impacts and general disruptions to the neighbors so the duration of quiet hours have been extended to 8 p.m until 8 a.m 7 days a week the next modification is that the entire property will be considered comprehensively as a single address for enforcement purposes rather than as individual residential units

[83:04] the next condition um is regarding marketing materials which has been modified to indicate all forms of payment are acceptable including section 8 vouchers a condition has been added that requires reporting to the city on an annual basis to ensure compliance with the conditions of approval in the good neighbor agreement the check-in would consider at a minimum noise complaints police visits and code violations the first check-in would be to counsel and then the two subsequent check-ins would be to city staff next just requires that the good neighbor agreement would be updated to reflect all of the modifications made to the corrections and then lastly additional minor changes were recommended by staff to provide

[84:00] some clarification for enforcement purposes and just based on input provided at the hearing and also from neighbor represent representatives so some additional clarification was provided around the on-site management which would be required 24 hours a day seven days a week the parking permits and how that would interact with the neighborhood parking program and with staff or with that staff recommends approval of the case with the motion provided in the memo and we're happy to answer any questions as always thank you sloan and with that bring it to council questions comments feedback mark yeah um did i correctly read it that the uh the applicant is only going to be required for three years to report on on its compliance with the good neighbor agreement or a million error that's correct that was um what staff heard in the last hearing

[85:01] was that it would be for three years okay thank you thank you mark mary yeah thank you sam and thank you sloan just a quick question we were shown a video of the oak house having a party and what is the likelihood that something like that might occur given the quiet hours of 8 00 pm to 8 am all the time um i'm not sure i can comment on the likelihood i could say that it from what was shown that that would be a violation of their approval if at 12 30 at night there was amplified music and yelling and so forth and then so that would be a violation and then it

[86:01] would go to that address and um and and so that would also be a case where there's the 24 7 on-site management so presumably the management would step in prior to that it and that's the intent of that um so okay thank you i guess i'll see him i i can't get my raised hand button up either right now it was working right now it's it's not and you know obviously we don't have a decibel reader on that video but maybe to tom like to me that already looks like it would violate our um city noise ordinance is that so i guess i'm i'm a little bit confused as to how this will make this um better for the hill if we've got quiet hours i understand

[87:01] there's going to be the you know the internal enforcement but shouldn't that already not be happening basically assuming it's over a certain decibel level which it looked like it probably was it's hard to say i mean what the decimal level is from a video like that but that's that's entirely possible rachel we've got lots of noise complaints and the police investigate that okay thank you so so tom i'll call aqui on that if this uh quiet hours condition is in place and something like that occurs where police are called for midnight noise violation um and it's clear that two things happen there was the noise violation that the police can intervene on and there was the violation of the um conditions what will happen as a result of the violation of the conditions if those hours are not maintained well sam i believe the law is that someone can file a complaint with the

[88:01] planning board and the planning board can uh issue a sanction including uh prohibiting occupancy got it so it is a pretty severe um list of consequences that could be um uh levied if this is an ongoing problem yeah i would say it's more severe than our general noise code that's that's what i was guessing nearby mine's not really a question it's just kind of colloquially on that in terms of yeah that can happen but the question is especially knowing this planning board and whoever knows what's going to happen with future is that really going to happen just because a resident files a complaint doesn't mean the planning board is going to go in their favor and so once we put this in it's a forever thing and this neighborhood that was somewhat enjoyable forgetting the fact that they're having to sleep in noise proof rooms and having ptsd or mental problems from the noise that they're experiencing from lack of sleep this is just gonna i don't know i i don't know why we're

[89:01] not listening to our residents and instead supporting people who don't vote and pay taxes here but that's it mary yeah um so miramai's comments raised a question for me and um if the i guess the question is is there criteria clear criteria as to um how the planning board would make a judgment on such a complaint uh mary i think the criteria and the conditions so they would they would just determine whether the conditions were violated and so there's no um subjectivity a party is being held um between 8 p.m and 8 a.m and that would be a violation

[90:00] that would be my view okay thank you and mary i'd like to follow up on also the mayor by his point if somebody makes a complaint to planning board does that set it up so that council could call up their decision i don't know the answer that sam david gears on the call he might know and i can also take a quick look at the law that'd be great david do you know he's probably studying the library stuff let me go take a oh there he is yeah i can look it up okay we'll come back to that thank you um counsel any other comments questions or discussion adam in mary's first comment she said something about 24 7 on-site uh presence and that's not the case if i remember correctly right no there's no there's not not a

[91:00] condition we asked to be drafted right well there is that language about uh 24 7. uh condition d at least one on-site manager shall be present on the property generally 24 hours a day seven days a week when tenants are residing on the property so and that came from planning board is that correct uh with some additions okay that's where i missed it i appreciate that clarification thank you okay any more discussion of this because if we move on this will be part of the motion to pass the consent agenda so mark yeah i want to first acknowledge that the new conditions uh for the good neighbor agreement do improve it considerably um however i still have um a number of reservations about this transaction

[92:01] first um you know quiet hours are only going to be effective to the extent that they're enforced and i'm not sure why this set of undertakings is going to be more enforceable than our previous efforts to control noise trash and poor behaviors this gna pushes the enforcement obligation down to the applicant but as we've just discussed it is the city that will be required to determine whether the applicant is in compliance i am not assured uh given our history of not rigorously enforcing um restrictions on these kinds of behaviors that this gna will be any more enforceable simply by imposing penalties on the applicant number two i don't understand why the reporting requirement expires in three years um it seems to me at thirteen hundred dollars per bedroom as a rough number the applicant will be

[93:01] receiving rental income of sixty two thousand four hundred dollars a month at that level i don't think it's unduly burdensome to require an annual report going forward the community concerns remain constant but the identity of those that are leasing space in marpa house is going to be constantly in flux and the behaviors of those residents may be different from one year to the next i i would ask that neighbors should at least have the minimal security of an annual report and again to the extent that we've required on-site management i'm a bit encouraged by that um and lastly um i'm afraid that then in going down this path we've once again abandoned the hill community and take in an expedient road despite our continual lip service that we offer them uh you know again we've communicated the message that this community is on its own and the

[94:01] next time a developer offers to buy their property they should take the offer because their days as a vibrant residential neighborhood are numbered i i respect the contrary view and decision of this council but on that one i simply have to dissent thank you mark rachel uh thanks to sloan for the option y to get my andres to work um so i'm gonna agree a little bit with mark and then disagree a bit with mark i agree that it it does feel like we are giving paying lip service to the hill um you know we did an out of five and and said that we're gonna you know kind of send some help in the cavalry and um we're still getting you know they're still putting up with constant noise issues and and you know quality of life issues there um and and i can understand why they feel abandoned so i agree with that and hope that we will bear that in mind when we're looking at things like the budget um

[95:01] because we need to to budget some code enforcement and help there um but on this particular property it sort of feels like we would be trying to sort of hold one property owner uh for what ails the whole hill so i would like to see you know sort of the the fixes that we're trying to come up with for this property applied more broadly to the hill and put our time into that issue and and broader solutions than what one property can can hope to accomplish and i think that you know a lot of these um agreements sound like they've they have been i think approved by the property owner and that's great and should be a helpful model but um i don't want to conflate sort of the hill issues with this one property um so that's where i'm coming from very is there any reason why we could not

[96:02] change the three-year reporting to annually so so just to be clear mary it's annually for three years do you mean to extend that annual reporting requirement indefinitely right to just remove four or three years and just say annually okay got it correct is sloane or tom is there a reason we couldn't change that here uh no i'd want to make sure that you to just give the applicant an opportunity to object to assume the applicant has somebody on the phone that they could call they could speak to but you could do that that was a i think a specific one from council i had missed that and wrote it originally is every year and then sloan caught it and fixed it based on what council said so we were just following council direction yes yes okay anything else mary okay bob uh just two things i i if mary's proposal was to make it beyond

[97:00] three years i'd be fine with that too i think i was the person who suggested three years but i just pulled it out of the air um you know uh if if that's the will of council i think um perpetual annual reporting would be just fine uh and then i just i couldn't um i can't pass the opportunity to respond to rachel um calling the calvary um that's exactly what um item i on our consent agenda is is to provide additional police force for problem areas so that is the calvary and if you want the calprey to help our problem areas including the hill vote yes and item i thank you could i call a tweet on that sure because i actually had a question about that um rachel mentioned we need code enforcement in the area and is it code enforcement or is it police enforcement that's required well um if that is to me i will say it's to staff actually okay and i'll stand corrected that's item f not i so tom i think that might be you um

[98:03] code enforcement is actually part of the police department although there's a separate zone in court enforcement uh i think mary could answer you from my view we need both um the police handle some things other things like trash and snow removal and stuff is uh code enforcement but i of course defer to marist that's why we're being quiet thanks tom but i would agree with your assessment it we need both um and rachel the the issues on the hill are very complicated too and uh unfortunately that requires uh police intervention as well as code and some type of abatement process as well thank you so i'll just i guess ask because then i'm a little bit confused on um what we're being asked for it uh my understanding with the six additional police officers is it is um you know specific to homelessness solutions and not um things like parties on the

[99:02] hill at night so that that's that feels different than what we have discussed so i'm just hoping to get some clarification to bob's point if we're just gonna keep going back and forth we can thanks was that was that a question for me rachel i'm sorry i think so i think you're probably the best person answer it so as i presented on 427 um i saw this team as multi-faceted multi-dimensional heavy emphasis on assisting with the process of the encampment posting the encampment cleanup providing safety supporting the new ambassador program because that will be vitally important for their success i've been i've done this in cincinnati if they don't have proper police support that'll be complicated and then um as i discussed i thought i would try to reinforce our low numbers on our impact team on the hill and also try to impact our san juan

[100:00] community which i feel is very neglected due to the lowering of the numbers over the past two years in that specific neighborhood and so i kind of saw this as a multi-functional multi-dimensional team of officers that would be highly trained uh in those areas that we discussed on the 27th so i would just say that i would support the continuation of an annual meeting for the neighbors if this um passes which it looks like it will um and just to kind of state that yes we had promised to send the cavalry in and by allowing this property to move in we're just extending the border of the problem area and though i hope the good neighbor agreements and the guard rails that we've put in work um but

[101:00] seeing as there are so many completes so many police complaints still continuing and the parties happening as we saw i don't have high hopes um i think that as we continue to allow each little bit it has a massive impact and the noise just moves further and further into these quiet neighborhoods that as many of these residents have stated themselves they're not entitled nimbys they work hard for what they've purchased and and what we're doing is just it's it's just unreal to me that we're not listening to our residents i i mean we're getting lambasted for the homeless issue so maybe but that one's so split on half and half but this is very very clear that the neighborhood does not support this and those are who vote for us and those are who who pay taxes to this town so i'll just leave it at that i think this is extremely unfortunate okay so what i've heard so far

[102:02] is either people don't like this at all or they like the conditions uh with the possible exception of extending the annual reporting requirement indefinitely tom do you want to see if there's any response from the applicant on that potential change uh yeah is there anybody from the applicant team here this is ryan there are a few folks here let me let them in and then they'll be able to speak one moment mr johnson we can see you good evening

[103:01] mayor council um the applicant is not opposed to the continual annual reporting requirement thank you that's excellent chris answer um so with that we have the applicant agrees and tom um would you be able to include that tonight just by a deletion of a few words or would we want to bring it back on june 1st i think we could do that if you give me a moment i'll look at it and make a suggestion i just wanted to ask whether or not there should be some limit on this whether it's it's 10 years or 20 years so that we don't have a plan department wondering what they're getting every year in 30 years um we'll take that into consideration tom and discuss it right now mary yeah i have another question for tom um is there any reason

[104:00] why we could not put a limit on the number of violations that could occur at the address and and in addition say that if you have more than this number of violations something really egregious happens which could be something like losing your rental license i don't know um but is there any reason could we do something like that you you could i'm not sure we could do that drive something like that tonight uh the the one of the remedies that the planning board can impose uh is revoking a rental license so that's already a possibility that there's a whole list of remedies and david was kind enough to pull up the section that says the planning board reviews these complaints so they have already have that in there what you'd be suggesting i guess is some objective measure to direct the planning board and if you

[105:01] wanted to do that you could um i i'm not sure i'm not all that comfortable with drafting it on the fly yeah and that's that's kind of my intent because i think to meribey's point to leave it kind of as a subjective decision by a body that is constantly changing makeup i would feel more comfortable with this if we had some objective criteria and i'm open to some criteria other than the number of violations well mary there are some objective criteria already in the conditions for example the quiet hours are violated as anybody has amplified sound outdoors so that that that to me is an objective criteria so there aren't a lot of them but there are those things that that are either sure they're false and i think what would assess whether there

[106:00] was a violation then have to decide what the penalty was and to answer sam's original question there is no call-up provision for counsel from a planning board hearing on a violation it's a quasi-judicial hearing that ends with them review would be to the courts under a 106 action thank you tom rachel um and i'm just thinking more broadly is that something that we could have in an ordinance that you know any property owner or any property that has x number of noise ordinance violations and x amount of time loses their rental license as we're looking at at hill issues broadly we have to limit it to this particular address no and we already have a provision for revoking rental licenses i i believe um both basically for violating the conditions of the license and there may be something on occupancy as well if i'm gonna remember it correctly but yes that's something you could do all right thanks okay um i'll just speak

[107:01] for myself i think these are pretty good conditions um i would propose that we put a 10-year limit on the annual reporting for tom's suggestion because i i think that having it be infinite is doesn't make sense things could change in a lot of different ways um and mary i guess might discomfort with having something that's like a criteria-based kind of harsh penalty for a certain number of violations is it does not allow for um mitigating circumstances whatever they might be say somebody else put uh amplified music and did a pop-up or something like that is it the fault of the um the property operator that that happened so i i guess i'm just a little concerned we've seen in the past historically that strict guidelines around sentencing

[108:01] can have unintended consequences and i'm just a little nervous about that but i would suggest just to put it to bed that we put ten years tom instead of three and i'll see what other council members have to say to that mark um just i like mary's suggestion of defining um the obligations and and the penalties um i think that would go a long way towards reassuring a lot of people that there's some teeth to this um and that it's actually an enforceable agreement i have a question for staff what is the rate or the incidence of revocation of rental licenses on the hill that's something that that's happened is it like finding a unicorn or is it something that that has been done and happens every once in a while you know i don't know that it happens much anymore when we first started short-term

[109:01] rentals we did a bunch of revocations of licenses where we converted them to long-term because people weren't living there that was basically our preferred remedy we haven't had that problem once people realized that it was something we were enforcing very strictly i don't remember i i obviously i don't keep track of this on a daily basis but i don't recall seeing any of those more recently okay and again going back to mary's comments um i think having standards matters if it becomes purely a judgment call you don't really have much if you've got a standard based um agreement in which a certain number of violations carries with its serious consequences i think that would be if not entirely satisfactory to the community would certainly be somewhat reassuring to the community and

[110:00] i think it would give some teeth to what we are negotiating um with with the applicant and so i would be very supportive of anything along those lines um and i urge us to do that thereby um i'll just second what mary's idea and what mark just said regarding that i think something that has teeth would go a long way in making um this more palatable for the neighborhood i hope um and then just regarding what you stated sam about the 10-year sunset on on the annual meeting what i would like to do instead is to see what happens in 10 years so on the 10th year if this goes through that the neighbors voice whether or not they would like to continue having this if it's been useful or if they feel like things have been fine they can let it go i think that it should be assessed at 10 years rather than just saying no because what if it's been 10 years of

[111:00] turmoil and all of a sudden now they have absolutely no voice other than if the laws are broken and they have to go to planning board so i think just having that kind of in there to say let's assess it at the 10-year mark and see what we want to do would be something i'd be more in favor of you know going back to the the point of the criteria i i think where sam and rachel are i'm i i think we should have some criteria um just city-wide um and so we don't um uh so that we don't fall into a trap of of being accused of being subjective i'm not sure that doing it on one property makes sense number one it seems a little inequitable to that particular property and not having it apply to all the other properties that might cause problems so i i think i'm with rachel and sam to say i i'd be happy to revisit um our noise ordinance and consequences of that but i think it should be a a ordinance in in city-wide rather than doing it on a property by property basis and i'm happy to

[112:00] commit to have that taken up in the next council if that's the will of of the majority of that next council thank you bob i'm going to try and bring this home if i can so um i'm going to do a few straw polls just to see where council as a whole is at if that's okay um the first straw poll that i would like to do is to see if a 10-year sunset is acceptable to folks on the annual reporting requirement so i'm just going to ask you to raise your hand if a 10-year sunset is okay just flat out one two three four and five one two three four five so i see five of us so i think that will be okay tom if you want to change the three to a ten um condition number six changing the number three to a number ten yep and so i think we have that

[113:01] and then next mary would you like to frame up a uh question for a straw poll about your idea about criteria do you want to move ahead with that well it sounds like um and i i agree that it needs to be city-wide and i'm also thinking um that going forward as part of the initiative for bedrooms that maybe it could be addressed then the change in the ordinance but i do feel that we need to have either strengthen the objective criterion that tom mentioned or add something additional and i'm not coming up with anything on the fly right now but um but if we could add something to that criterion where it's amplified

[114:00] music or or um i'm looking for ideas here um and i can i can i can tee it up with just um yeah i guess i'm withdrawing my suggestion of um adding the the other criterion on the number of violations okay that's withdrawn so i i think we're ready to be able to vote on this tom do you feel like uh with that one change that we can vote on this if we want to tonight yes i i would just like mr johnson to confirm that the applicant has no more objections that he wants to voice at this point mr johnson we have no further objections thank you thank you rachel i just wanted to clarify something that bob said um i'm sorry that i don't need to keep going back and forth but mention that the next council would take

[115:00] this up and we did do another five i'm getting a little bit out of you know out of the quasi-judicial area here again but um i guess i would just push back a little bit like why does it have to be the next council that looks at that because we did give an out of five to add this to the work plan i think so just timing timing-wise wanted to flag that yeah well we'll we can come back to it but probably not on the content agenda so um so as far as this item goes i think we're teed up for a vote um when we do vote those of you who wish to vote against it can say yes on the content agenda except for the items you do not want to pass so i think we're good to move on from this one last chance to object all right we're moving on and then i think our next item that we want to speak to is city attorney correct and so we've got bob and rachel on that one bob rachel um i'll kick us off real quick um just with an update on the semi-finalist interviews which we are

[116:02] slated to have on this thursday friday and saturday um each of us is paired with another council member for the interviews and i believe everyone already has their uh time slot and partner lined up and i think we've also received an email with some interview materials and we will get another email probably from heather gantz the day before we have interviews part of the materials that she will send will be some interview questions um but the subcommittee which is myself and uh council member yates are asking that each council member also prepare a unique question that you will ask each candidate so for the pairs there should be you know between between the two of us like i'm with mark wallach i'll have a question mark will have a question so we will have two unique questions that we will ask each candidate and and we ask that you ask each candidate the same questions to to kind of keep a level playing field for

[117:00] um so that they're answering the same questions and you're asking the same questions to each candidate so i want to see if there's any questions or concerns about the semi-finalist interviews schedule or materials or questions adam when will the semi-finalist interviews be completed saturday at 2 i believe perfect thank you um and if anyone has significant concerns about coming up with a question for your teams bob and i are happy to make some recommendations over to bob take that back over to aaron oh sorry maybe i'm speaking of turn just remember there's always what's your favorite color if you're really stuck um but sam do we need to amend uh the agenda at some point to get this 3-0 on there i don't know that we did that earlier it's a good point that wasn't on my script so we probably do need to do that so before we do anything else

[118:00] um i'll ask briefly alicia is there anything else that we've added since this was published it actually was at the top of your script sir that was it i'm sorry i missed that that's okay um i didn't know if you wanted to do things differently tonight but we know i missed that i'm sorry it was after public health grieving yep it's this one so i apologize it was entirely on me um so i guess i will look for a motion to amend the agenda to add item 1a which we've already done and add a move item 8a to the consent agenda as item 3o and update the title so could i get a motion i moved second any opposed none thank you and apologies for missing that thanks aaron for flagging it and um okay and with that it's over to bob

[119:02] i think thanks so the second part of our two-part report um is um some great news um we um have uh received a a confirmation from um sandra yanus to serve as our interim city attorney um you all know that tom will be leaving us next month and because we don't know how long it will take us to get through the interviewing and hiring process for the city attorney we wanted to ensure no gap in coverage and so sandra has been with um has been a lawyer for about 23 25 years he's been with the city for almost all that time as the deputy as a city attorney deputy city attorney now and um and and uh rachel and i and jen sprinkle have talked to her and and agency hr director and uh sandra seems very excited about doing that let her speak for herself in a few minutes so we wanted to make a motion that sandra yanus be appointed as his interim

[120:02] city attorney effective may 24th so that she and tom can have a period of overlap before tom's departure and then she'll serve in that role until um until we have a city attorney permanent city attorney hired and so that's that's why we moved this up to the consent agenda so we could make that motion very good thank you um any questions feedback um sondra i see you i thought i'd turn to you and see if you want to give us any thoughts about the possibility of us voting to appoint you as interim uh yeah i'm happy to make some comments i'm um i would be happy to do the job and i would be looking forward to working with all of you and so if you so are inclined to uh to make the appointment then i will happily serve very good thanks very much rachel

[121:02] i just wanted to say uh thank you to to sandra for being willing to serve in this capacity assuming that this motion passes it it really uh makes i think all of our jobs a lot easier and we have a lot of confidence in you and i'm just deeply grateful so thank you i'll echo that as well thank you all and thank you sandra um so with that i believe that we are ready to have a motion on the consent agenda it will be roll call so you will be able to indicate your thoughts as we vote on it rachel i had one question on a non-controversial piece of the agenda and i'm trying to pull up and view my notes um it is i just hadn't heard of it before so i just wanted to ask a couple questions on possession and consumption of alcoholic beverages in public prohibited um it looks like we would be

[122:00] changing to or expanding where you cannot drink alcohol like on open space if i'm understanding it correctly so i just wanted to know yes i can respond to that you can answer that yeah i can answer that so um it's really just clarifying the law that this it's something that we've been doing um for quite some time anyway which is enforcing alcohol restrictions on open space land um but there was a phrase in our ordinance or in our code that indicated that it could only be enforced within the city limits so we removed that and then um there's also some more less substantive changes to park names and that sort of thing um and actually ali is here she might be able to address that as well okay um that's awesome and so if i'm hearing you correctly and and look forward to hearing from ali too it's not really a change in

[123:00] um practice or procedure it's just clarifying because i thought maybe we were um proposing a you know something that might impact what people currently i don't know if people drink on open space and it sounds like it's already illegal so that they are not um but was wondering what the impetus was for doing it now um and it sounds like the impetus is just cleaning things up that are already happening is that accurate and and the other thing i guess i want to add is that um there's always been the ability to uh request an alcohol permit for like facilities and that sort of thing so that would still continue um but but there's been a bar of no alcohol forever all right thanks okay very good bob i was just giving a process suggestion um i would be happy to move the entire i

[124:01] know that aaron has an alternative for f and we'll need to test to see if that alternative is um garner's majority or if f as presented by staff governor's a majority i was going to suggest moving the entire consent agenda see how the votes come out if people would like to vote in favor of aaron's um alternative uh uh they can vote no on f and then we can vote on the alternative um or we could vote on aaron's alternative first and then vote on the consent agenda but i'm happy to move the entire consent agenda if that's that's the easiest way to do it um i hate to mention robert's rules but perhaps this time it might be easier to use them if you just move the consent agenda aaron can then make a motion to amend your motion and if that passes then it's amended if it fails your original motion gets voted on brilliant i moved the consent agenda i was about to make the same suggestion for the process

[125:00] okay we need a second second okay we have motion and a second aaron great uh so i uh move that we um amend uh item f uh so that we amend ordinance 8463 by striking section 2 which is the general fund appropriation for additional police officers from additional revenue in the amount of 384 860 uh aaron would you like to speak to your motion your amendment uh well i think we had the conversation earlier so you know just reiterate that that desire to give the police department time to hire while we devote some additional funds to restoring other service cuts that have been made in the community okay so we have a amendment on the table

[126:01] uh motion and a second so i will ask all in favor of aaron's amendment raise your hand one two three okay uh opposed one two three four five six so aaron your motion does not pass um the consent agenda has been moved and it will bring us back to a question about june 1st but it doesn't affect the motion on this consent agenda right now so um alicia i guess over to you for a roll call now all right sir i'm sorry i'm sorry to interrupt but doesn't someone want to make an amendment to the uh marpa house conditions yeah i'm sorry i i meant to embed that into my motion so i my my motion for the consent agenda was with the uh one change that tom's made on the

[127:00] annual reporting on marvel house second okay so we have that moved in second with that embedded in it thank you aaron okay i think we're ready to go anything else i've flubbed so far okay if not alicia maybe we're ready for a roll call if not sir we'll start again it's all yeah all right uh councilmember young you caught me off guard yes rocket i'll vote i on everything except may on 3 f friend i'm the same as aaron yes on everything with the exception of 3s f f as in frank i think thanks joseph hi i on everything except for nay on november

[128:04] november on end on item and okay thank you all right i'm a military spouse i should know that sweat lick i on everything no on fn i'm sorry no on f and n and and okay no fm wallet you're on mute mark of course i am um i on everything except item n weaver aye yates i am the entire consent agenda all right sir the consent agenda passed and what were the counts on f and n please f had

[129:00] three nays and n had three nays okay very good so everything passes unanimously except six three on f and six three on n juni i see your hand yeah i i just wanted to make a comment on aaron's proposal and i listened to everyone's conversation earlier and i didn't add very much because i thought i couldn't go back on my vote from the previous week because i was thinking of the consistency of voting yes for something and then turning around and saying no knowing that maybe the police department or chief maris is already making plans based on that funding so i just didn't want to go back on my words thank you juni and with that before we move on i want to turn tom i'm sorry go ahead

[130:01] tom sam i just wanted to thank you for appointing sandra as interim city attorney she's an outstanding lawyer she's been on our management team i think now for four years and has so well improved the management of the office the office is in really good hands and i appreciate your appointment thank you i'm also going to say since david gear is here to run to do the rest of the meeting i'm going to leave so good night everyone good night tom thank you before you leave tom can i i'm sorry i don't know yes sandra don't go for it but i just want to thank council i'm really excited for the opportunity to serve as interim city attorney and i really look forward to working with you all i'm also thankful that tom and i will have some overlap time before his time before he leaves on june 11th he's an unbelievably helpful and supportive resource and we have a great team of attorneys and paralegals at cao they are incredibly talented dedicated and collaborative and i'm confident that we'll have a

[131:01] smooth transition in the interim and eventually to a new city attorney so thank you all i appreciate it congratulations sandra congratulations and thank you that's awesome and thank you tom okay so what i was going to turn back to do and aaron this is totally your rachel's call is before we leave the subject do you want to go ahead and and pull off the adjustment to base from the june 1st reading thanks for asking uh sam i i think uh maybe i'll sleep on it to consider my options forget we've got a couple weeks sure i just thought we'd do it in public if you already knew so okay very good with that elisha back to you all right sir and congratulations sandra um on our agenda item next we have the

[132:01] public hearing item 5a is the public hearing and direction regarding next steps on library funding and governance all right well i will lead off and good evening from the municipal building i have to say the fluorescent flights are kind of cast me in a rather brutal tone but yeah i guess we'll get through it you look good david it's okay um well as i said i'm david gear i'm with the city attorney's office and with me tonight is our light library finance and governance staff team from finance we have cara skinner and devon billingsley from the library david farnan and jennifer ferris is here from our office janet michaels who has been kind of the laboring war and a lot of the legal work on this project and then finally kim setter who we have invited to our meetings a number of times before but kim

[133:01] is in private practice and an expert on the law of library district formation and governance so we hope with all of these people together with the information in the packet we will be able to answer any questions that you may have regarding tonight's agenda item so next slide well i guess somebody i always told somebody would run the slideshow whoever is in charge of that i'm on the second slide all right tonight we look forward to hearing from our community at the public hearing in our presentation we'd like to recap the council's discussion at the february 23rd study session and will focus on funding and governance options there are essentially two options on the table beyond the status quo at this point first is funding through a library district and in the alternative through a dedicated municipal property tax

[134:01] slide three please as i know we are looking forward to hearing from the public tonight on the funding and governing options that we've identified for our library services uh the in terms of the governing options that we have in front of us today there is the library being governed by you the city council with the advice of our library commission or it is governed by an appointed library district board so we hope to receive some direction from the council to guide the work plan for the project for the rest of this year and into 2022 slide four please at the february 23rd study session the staff and the council discussed stable funding sources to address community goals

[135:00] that were adopted in the 2018 library master plan staff presented a number of options for establishing library districts either through city and county resolutions or by a petition of the registered voters we also presented information on service areas for for the city and life and district type approaches and we also provo provided an overview of our library services and the total cost of those services both presently and as anticipated by the master plan and finally we discussed the approaches to governance that include a city option and a district option slide number five please i think actually that is slide number five simply for discussion purposes staff drafted a proposed ballot measure which is an attachment d that would amend the charter to increase the property tax

[136:00] middle libby mill levy limitation create a more four mills property tax revenue earmark and together with all the associated tabor language that's necessary for a tax increase this is just simply as an example if a municipal option is selection selected of course the library will continue to be operated as a city department with city support the council governing it again with the advice of the library commission and it would be those two bodies that would be responsible for making budget and policy decisions for the direction of our library city property owners would fund the whole cost of library services through a property tax and although revenue would continue to flow into the city city and county residents and other visitors would no longer be contributing to funding library services

[137:01] by sales taxes on purchases made in boulder as is the case now but of course if we do have additional sales tax the council could also use any of those additional revenues that it may find available to fund library capital needs and then depending on the mill i've been selected which i'll talk a little bit more about later the council may need to look at alternatives to fund expansions to the library sys system including local library services to areas like gun barrel these are the types of policy considerations that would need to be addressed in the future slide six if the city went with a municipal property tax option we anticipate that it would provide a very stable funding source to meet community goals for library services one of the advantages of this approach

[138:00] is that the governance is very well established and will not change and then of course our library staff members will continue to be city employees site seven so this slide uh is a work plan for a municipal option and it's actually a rather simple work plan the main work item would be to engage the community to determine the appropriate mill levy and the preparation and presentation of a ballot question related to raising property tax taxes and associated uh city charge charges and as i noted we provided just an example of what that might look like in the attachments to the staff memo slide eight please then there's also the library district option which we've discussed a lot in the last year or year and a half

[139:00] simply again for discussion purposes staff prepared a sample resolution for the creation of a district which is an attachment b as well as a sample intergovernmental agreement between the city boulder county and the library district and that can be found in attachment b of your materials the example that we drafted there's nothing magic about it but it is based on recurring themes that have been addressed in the creation of numerous library districts across the state if the library district idea is pursued the library will be operated by a new governmental entity with a board of directors that will be responsible for those taxing and policy decisions the inter intergovernmental agreement as we've talked about in the past must be established between the city the county um and the district to address the issues relating from changing the library from a city

[140:00] service to a more regional service that would be provided by the district library district employees would be or city library employees would be transferred to the district and then of course if the district develop affiliates with colorado public employees retirement association the district would assume the resp that responsibility for its employees all right next slide please so if if we go the library district route and it's established with an approved revenue source staff anticipates that again since it's a property tax that the district would have a very stable revenue source to fund um the library and the services that uh the cities would like that the city would like both within for property that is within the

[141:02] city limits as well as those in unincorporated boulder county that are also in the district there's an appointed board of directors that will govern a district and it has much more of a singular fiduciary focus on library services as opposed to the city council that you know has to balance a number of priorities and then of course there's a clear path to funding library services outside the city limits and within the district boundaries which may include areas that use the library including unincorporated gun barrel nywot and some of the areas in the mountains west of town so there are two different options or two different timelines for district formation in the packet materials the

[142:01] slide up summarizes a work plan found in attachment c option a the primary difference between the two work plans is when the district itself is formed option b has the district formed in the summer of 2022 this would allow a little bit more upfront community engagement option a has the district formed in october of this year so if the council directs staff to begin the exploration of of the library district staff would attempt to implement a work plan to form some type of iga process committee this summer to explore terms and conditions that will need to be addressed in an iga and the iga will address the city services that would be provided to the district in the short term the transition of employees services and property in the longer term over the course of the summer in the

[143:00] early fall staff will engage the community to learn the preferences for library service services and the revenue necessary to provide them the engagement will need to be inclusive of all the people that would be taxed by the district in the fall then the county commissioners and the council would form the library district in the new year with the district board appointed the iga between the city county and district will need to be finally negotiated and approved and then in the summer of 2022 the library district will need to coordinate with the county assessor to prepare prepare for the collection of taxes for the for the year of 22 as part of the 23 property tax collection efforts if the tax is successful the staff will start the process of implementing the iga and transitioning from city to district service provision

[144:00] [Music] all right next slide um this slide presents a number of different funding options options that have been discussed and i'm going to walk through this scenario by scenario scenario one is a funding option where the city's municipal library would have a dedicated property tax that would fund the total cost to meet community demand service levels as defined in the master plan and deferred capital maintenance it also includes funding the budget gap from the kovic 19 reductions and funding the north boulder operating expenses the total cost of that is about 15.8 million dollars and it includes

[145:01] all of the costs for administrative overhead that are provided by the city the mill levy needed to generate 15.8 million dollars is about 3.53 mills which would result in about 194 dollar increase to the annual property tax bill of a home that has a value of about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars and that eight hundred and fifty thousand dollar number is what we will use to compare the cost to a household throughout the other scenarios scenario two demonstrates if the city's municipal library had a dedicated property tax that funds the total costs of an expanded service level level generating approximately 20 million dollars a year which would again since it's a municipal tax it would only apply to properties within the city the mill levees needed to generate about

[146:02] 20 million bucks is about estimated to be about 4.56 mills which would result in about a 257 000 increase to the property tax bill um on that 850 000 house then the final scenario is a library district and it's a comparison much like the the municipal uh scenario two above is but it would have a dedicated property tax over a larger area that includes the city and portions of unincorporated boulder county that would be a part of its service area it would also fund the expanding the expanded service level of approximately 20 million dollars a year that's described in scenario two above for a district the middle levy needed to generate 20 million dollars is estimated to be

[147:02] about 3.85 mills so to demonstrate the impacts of that mill levy on the residential property owners um a residential property owner of a home that was worth 850 000 um that it would be about 214 increase for a city property and that's in part due because in the charter we already have a .33 mills library dedication so we're already funding part of that and then in the county it would be uh a 3.85 mill in increase in property tax which would cost that 850 000 home approximately 234 000 or 234 dollars in additional

[148:02] property tax all right next slide all right so in close so a lot of this is about moving forward and developing um the staff work plan on how we're going to go forward um and explore sustainable funding and governance of the library we're looking forward to your questions public comments and of course your discussion after that again helping us are helping helping we are asking you to help guide us in what our work plan is going to be on this project for the upcoming year and a half or so um and i guess with that said i'll just close it and turn it back to the council great thanks so much david and uh

[149:01] questions from council bob thanks david that was a great presentation thank you very much for that two questions david one is under either scenario under option a or option b that you just laid out for us there would be some degree of public engagement i assume that public engagement could potentially include a statistically valid poll i know that there was a poll done in 2019 um there was some criticism of the methodology and the interpretation of that poll plus that poll's gone a little bit stale it's more than two years old going on three years old i assume that if it were the will council and and if we could find uh financial support for it because i know polls are not free we could pull the community on their preference on option a versus option b versus versus not doing any anything is is that a possibility yeah i don't i don't see why that would be a problem um i would ask my colleagues in life the library who managed the last poll if they have any comments or thoughts on

[150:02] getting a a survey or a poll together before at a minimum we would address the you know if we were going to do district formation in the fall or next summer it looks like david fernandez yeah good evening council uh mayor thank you for the question bob of course we could do it if the funding was available the cost of doing a poll is about fifty thousand dollars i think for the last one um that would make it difficult to meet i think it would probably make it difficult to meet an october timeline so you'd be pushing it back to 2022. yeah just a question on that thanks david um if we went with the the district formation kind of committee um that would explore these things i was a little curious um about what the sensitivity around october so it sounds like under either scenario there would be no tax vote in 2021. what's the um what's the what's the

[151:00] driver around having that work done in october because we'd still have another year to do the iga and and tee up the tax vote yeah the the the separate dates for scenario a and b on the district scenario were merely if this council uh wanted to take action on formation of a district rather than going to another council um with potentially new members okay okay that's fine but there's no other than that um there's there's no reason why that district formation couldn't be in december or january and still have a 2022 vote is that right that's correct and that's where the timeline be lays out okay great thanks dude um and then my final question could be probably for you the one of you is um if we went down the path of option b and formed a group to work on uh community engagement and thinking about the iga and so on and so forth um would if we did if we said that tonight would we be

[152:01] effectively saying that we intend to form a district and and we're tasking that committee with the mechanics around it or are we tasking that committee with exploring whether there is community support for the district or potentially other options that might be available in other words are we telling them we're going to form a district tell us what the details are are we saying go figure out if we want to form a district because those are pretty different questions in my mind i would anticipate that it would be both that there would be some level of community engagement and then i think also the idea would be that you would have you know a group of people that's interested um in library in the provision of library services um basically helping us draft what you know turned that iga into something that is that would be more kind of

[153:00] a reflection of that we could present to council to be a reflection of what the city council feels like that both the relationship would be and then of course how you would separate but i do think that the public engagement would be a very big part of that oh okay and and so would we give that i'll call the committee committee the option of also recommending um to not form a district um that is maybe they fall back to what's now option a which is to do a dedicated tax but keep it within the city or potentially based upon the engagement community engagement they they undertake to um to not do anything in other words are we are we telling them figure out how to do a district are we saying tell us what's the best way to provide stable funding for the library i think that we were thinking of it more in terms of doing it through a district if that's if that's the approach the council wanted us to take

[154:00] and then what we would do is we would try to figure out what that looks like and bring it back to the council at some point and then the council would say this is acceptable or it's not um and that you know ultimately the decision about whether or not we're going to form a district or go the municipal option or you know continue balancing priorities as priorities are balanced through the general fund that that would be a council decision yeah i mean you can see where i'm kind of going with these this line of questioning i'm a little bit concerned about whether this could all be done by october maybe it can be um and if it does feel beyond october i'm a little bit concerned about binding future councils um and and so that's that's why i'm asking these questions about trying to understand what this committee would do particularly if the committee's work is not done under this council on a a future council may have a different set of direction or different pathways to go down so okay thanks can i just add one one last

[155:01] thing on that so i think the option of the later option or the the the benefit of the later option if you will is that you have you have time for a lot more community engagement before you take that action of actually forming a district if you form a district earlier as we work through the summer in the early option i think that the district itself you know you'll have a board of directors appointed that you're going to have the district involved with the engagement process as well as the council and you will have a district formed of course thanks thank you bob um next we have mark nearby and rachel mark my first question i guess is for staff um if we were to move this year uh what work plan items would we not be able to complete that are already part of the work plan and would be supplanted by this this effort and process

[156:01] um i can take that i believe it was addressed in the work plan city attorney's office and the library staff are able to take on this issue through 2021 um the finance department and hr would likely have to have higher contract help to facilitate the committee and have we costed out what that would look like in terms of expenditure we have not okay my next question is what conversations have we had with the county commissioners on on this i mean ultimately they're going to have to approve and it seems a little silly to get too far down the road if they're going to have a different view of this district than we do either in terms of the mill rate or in terms of the the boundaries of the district um it seems to me that some of that conversation should be had now um not later yeah david do you want to

[157:00] take down or janet yeah um well i'll i'll start and if janet wants to turn her uh camera on she can finish but we have had some initial conversations with the county staff and i think that first and foremost for the you know and this this is through the county staff not the commissioners but i i believe that um first and foremost on their mind is um i i didn't get the impression that they were particularly interested in talking to us a whole bunch until um we commit to a a process um and then once we commit to a process and we get behind it they have just said you know they have statutory responsibilities under the library law and they said that they would fully cooperate to fulfill their responsibilities um you know we've gotten a lot of complaints this year about increased the property assessments

[158:00] and people are obviously grousing about the contemplated increase in their real estate taxes as a result um how valid is it to be using an 850 000 uh average home number as representative of what the impact of the tax is going to be uh probably not um you know i would ask um devin or kara to help me out with this but you know we used 850 000 with the last um you know at the study session that was kind of what we used as our comparison model um we all we all we all got a little shocker i think uh earlier this month when we opened up our property tax assessments we talked a little bit about that but we just decided that we would continue to try to keep a uh continue you know a consistent set of numbers but but i to your point mark i i think it's it's a fair it's a fair point

[159:01] yeah i think it's it's probably time to update that so people yeah understand and acknowledge and know what it is they're buying into um yeah and mark it's it's relatively simple to figure out i mean i think it's if you look at a residential property it's about um 260 dollars per it's 26.26 per 100 dollars of value so for a million dollar home is 260 dollars for a commercial property it's uh slightly more than four times that amount so you'd be looking at roughly 1016 uh dollars per 1 million dollars of value of commercial value so it's it's a it's a it is a simple formula and we could adjust it upwards um with the new property tax increases um likely the anticipated mill rate would drop the mill rate required to generate 20 million dollars a year and lastly once there's a board of directors for this library district

[160:03] can they subsequently raise taxes again are there any limitations other than the people's vote uh on their ability to to raise taxes going forward in the future if they decide 25 million dollars is the right number or 30 million dollars the right number for whatever reason yeah they would have the authority to do that and they would have to you know comply with the voter approval requirements of the taxpayer bill of rights okay all right thank you that's all for now thank you mark uh nearby and then rachel nearby yeah so this also for staff just a quick question and i'm sorry i may have missed this um or not understood it um if we move forward with a dedicated tax for the city and it goes to a vote and let's say the residents don't vote

[161:00] it in what would happen well it would put us back at the drawing board it would require the city to either look at a different you know the property tax is one revenue mix um so we could look at a different revenue mix we have of course you know the ability the status quo option which is um that the library would be funded through a balancing of interest is as is always the case with everything that gets funded through the general fund um that would probably in the short term be what we would do in terms of library funding okay and so hold on sorry um do we have any i i don't remember this just from 2019 when we had done the original survey was there any questions asking if the community was in favor of this at

[162:00] that time and if so what was it favorable do you know um there there were favorable resort results the the the question that council came up um around methodology but the pollster who conducted the poll which was a statistically valid poll um felt um that their favor favorable results at all levels tested um now favorable to win an election uh at the highest level was was something i think anybody would question um but the highest level is far beyond anything we would have asked for anyway it was asking for something closer to i don't know 20 more than what um the current ask would be okay great and then my last question is if um would resid residents with lower incomes

[163:02] how would this impact them because if the taxes are passed on to renters and and whatnot um by the landlords i mean this is going to have an impact right on our lower income community or have or is that getting too into the weeds at this point well no i i think that uh it would you know when you raise taxes it comes out of someone's pockets um and you know i think i think it will have an effect on um you know certainly everyone who owns a home and it's another expense to a landlord that you know rents a home so you know i'm i am guessing that if the landmark lord is you landlords would probably be trying to you know make some of that up in um the rents that they charge thanks that's it for me thank you nearby uh rachel and then mary rachel i think i have a question for david farnan i'm just trying to remember the history

[164:00] a bit um what i'm hearing is that we have been considering this for so long that surveys are still and property evaluations are no longer accurate and we had already had a hearing on this i want to say january or february of 2020 and it seemed like we were on track to to move it forward so my my history question is sort of i think that there was something with the library champions were maybe gonna just bring it to the ballot and then the city decided to maybe work with or something like that do you know what i'm talking about can you refresh my memory on the timing and history it has been a while and so the library champions brought forth a petition i believe to the county in 2019 uh later in conversations with the city manager's office they elected to withdraw that petition to put the ballot uh to get it on the ballot uh in exchange for um commitment to make this

[165:03] a topic for council in 2020. um we did not have the public hearing in 2020 we were interrupted four days ahead of that public hearing by covet i was taking notes thank you very much that was my only question thank you rachel mary yeah thank you everyone for your work on this issue my first question is about the repeal of the gallagher amendment what consideration has been given to the potential impact on property taxes um with this new i mean talking about surveys being stale i mean a lot has happened since then so what might the impact be on property taxes with the repeal of gallagher you know the submarine i'll let cara jump in i don't think the

[166:00] immediate impacts are to be obvious there won't be they won't call fall at once but long term the desire of that bill was to stabilize commercial property taxes so they didn't jump up at larger percentages than residential because the way gallagher was con cara do you want to jump in there hi yes car skinner assistant director um basically it's just gonna hold the assessment rate constant and so even though there was a large increase in residential values with this most recent assessment the residential assessment rate is not going to go down the way it would have in the past and so people there used to sort of be an offsetting effect in many years when residential assessed values increased substantially the residential assessment rate would go down slightly because of gallagher and that did not happen now so residential property owners are going to bear the

[167:00] full sort of of the full effect of the increase in the market thank you and um my other question is um so say we go the route of um forming a district regardless of whether it's a or b um and it goes to the voters on cable what happens if the tabor measured question does not pass well so part of that will be how we negotiate the iga and what kind of what we've learned from other communities is oftentimes that the iga will say something along the lines of you've got a shot at two or three table elections in the you know the next three or four years and if you fail to get a revenue source in place during that time period that

[168:00] it's basically a poison pill for the district and then during the interim the city would you know retain um all of its assets so you know we would continue until until a district actually had a revenue source the city would continue to operate um the library system as you know municipal library system okay thank you that's all i have thank you mary so i see no other um counting i'm going to suggest this is an opportunity for a 10 minute break and then we can come back and do the public hearing is there any objection from council to a break okay seeing none let's be back here at nine o'clock and we'll be ready to start the public hearing thank you all

[169:24] oh foreign

[173:36] sam you're muted mark yeah um i don't know if it's because i have an especially exotic tv but uh my wife was unable channel 8 conked out on her and we're getting every channel and i don't know if that was a problem particular to um our

[174:01] television or if it's something of greater application i just want to [Laughter] well i have to pay her a retainer um you know on a monthly basis oh i'm getting i'm getting an update it's down again from the person who reported to me as well okay we got a channel eight problem they are on it and trying to fix it now just an update that that's like a voice from heaven sounded a bit like taylor to me but i could be wrong okay they should just periodically chime in actually it's emily from our office she's handling the presentations tonight so who was that alicia i'm sorry

[175:01] richardson oh cool i'm sure she appreciated the voice from him because she has truly been an angel to me in the last few days he is equally celestial all right it is nine o'clock let's see who we got back one two three four five six already on mary juni and aaron there's mary when we see juni and aaron we'll be ready for the public testimony which means i should probably get myself ready there is aaron there's juni all right we are all here let me pull up i can find we're carrying did you get the updated list you know i need to make sure i got the updated one alicia give me just one second while i pull this up

[176:03] no i got it okay thanks very much there we go all right so we will begin our public hearing now on the library district question our first three speakers are julia honkey gina mcafee and nicole spear we will start with julia and everyone will have two minutes because we have 46 speakers signed up tonight julia you're able to unmute yourself and speak now okay thank you um hi my name is julia hanke i live in an incorporated area of gum barrel i received my first boulder library card in 2000 while attending cu as a freshman

[177:00] it has been my pleasure over the last two decades to utilize the library services when my children were young we visited the children's programs offered at the main branch weekly this offered literacy education time for community building and exposure to diverse groups of people as well as sanctuary for parents and caregivers of small children as my children have gotten older the library has been a wonderful resource for accessing reading materials that interest them this has helped fuel their interest in reading since it is difficult to purchase so many books when they can read through them so fast and during the pandemic my children's school library has been closed due to coven 19 restrictions and decreased staffing levels the boulder library holds this past year have been a happy source for entertainment and education i support the library district because despite the drastic cuts as a result of the

[178:01] pandemic and years of underfunding the library continues to be a critical resource for our community helping to provide free public services like remote internet access digital resources and book hold services it needs a lot more funding to start backup services again to its previous level the library needs funding as well to expand and grow into communities that cannot that currently don't have access like gun barrel where i live i hope that creating a district will make having a branch in gun barrel possible so that youth will have a safe place to go to study and access resources i urge city council to vote to form a library district and let the voters decide thank you thank you very much in just a moment here all right next we have gina mcafee nicole speer and johnny teeter gina

[179:01] um yes this is jenna mcafee and i wanted to first say that i'm on the speakers list twice so you can remove me the virginia mcafee that's i'm the same person so you can remove that one got it i my husband and i lived and raised our children in the table mesa area for 25 years my kids grew up using both the main library and the george reynolds reynolds branch of the library and they fell in love with libraries 20 percent more is how much city of boulder households and businesses would pay should a dedicated tax be levied only within city boundaries but broadening the tax base to include a larger percentage of users lowers the cost for those within city boundaries while providing a broader set of services the boulder public library is more than

[180:00] a city service and in fact 30 of library card holders are not within city limits that includes me i now live in the county in the el dorado valley area but i would like to be a part of the community of voters who gets to decide on long-term sustainable funding for the library that i and my lab neighbors love so much in a previous meeting about the library you said you wouldn't want the library funding question to compete within the year's capital tax on the ballot but when will we hear this council say that the library must be the priority on the ballot as bob yates pointed out in his newsletter the amount the city would save by the library becoming a district would be roughly equal to the amount council is seeking with this year's capital tax i asked kent's council to enter into a binding intergovernmental agreement around

[181:02] forming a library district and let the voters decide on funding it and no more delay please thank you jenna next we have nicole speer johnny teeter and bruce norconne nicole thank you good evening council and thank you for your time this evening my name is nicole speer and i'm a boulder resident i'm asking you to support the formation of a library district which is the most equitable and sustainable way to help our libraries serve the long-term needs of our community since some speakers with young children had to leave due to the lateness of tonight's meeting i would like to highlight our library's importance for families as a parent who struggled to find a space in boulder where i and my young children felt welcomed our libraries were literal lifesavers there are no other free indoor spaces in our community where parents can take young children and find people who are happy to have them around even now it brings me a sense of calm to think back to the afternoons i spent

[182:01] sitting in the libraries while my children played and roamed the aisles looking for books and new friends it isn't only families with young children who find a sense of community and calm in our libraries older folks english language learners teens unhoused residents students low-income residents disabled folks all of these members of our community find welcome in our libraries that can otherwise be hard to find in our city our libraries are spaces that bring us together and i cannot think of a better investment in our city's future than finally putting our libraries on a financially sustainable path we've been discussing our library's financial future for years our failure to create a library district years ago left our libraries dependent on our city's general fund during a financial crisis and now our libraries have suffered a permanent 20 cut this is unacceptable treatment for an organization that provides such critical services and benefits to our community i urge you to move forward with forming a library district by resolution so that we can take action to sustain our libraries before the next crisis

[183:00] hits our community's well-being depends on our libraries let's show our libraries they can depend on us thank you thank you nicole next we have johnny teeter bruce nor connie and nicole perlman johnny hi 200 pawnee drive i have a simple message just do it this is the seventh council meeting on library funding in the last three and a half years good questions have been asked and answered and a lot of great analysis has been performed including the most comprehensive analysis of any department's finances that i have seen in over 30 years we know that the city has been digging a budget hole for the last 20 years costs to deliver services are going up faster than revenue growth and that's without including the new initiatives added to the budget with every council election that budget hole is not going away

[184:01] boulder's days of double-digit sales tax revenue increases are long gone costs to deliver services are not going down citizens will continue to expect that potholes get filled public bathrooms get fixed and that the city provides safe spaces for people to gather because that is how community gets built we need additional revenues to deliver city services a library district is the most equitable and transparent way to raise taxes it's equitable because the cost of delivering this set of services is spread across a broader base of regular users it's transparent because details on how those dollars are spent must be shared with the community and council each year by law so be leaders be bold just do it thank you thank you johnny next we have bruce nor

[185:00] connie nicole pearlman and joanne sullivan bruce hi um thanks for allowing me to speak my name is bruce noracani live at 6th and north street and i am a strong supporter of a county-wide library funding district let me explain why when i was young i loved roaming through the stacks in library i could pull out a book browse through it and even if i knew nothing about the book or the author i could take a chance it was free and so i'd walk home with an arm full of books and in this way i was able to read you know great authors unknown authors etc i was exposed to such a wide range of information and vision and voices and without the public library i would have never seen those books i would certainly have never read them

[186:02] and uh frankly i would not be who i am today and today i'm even more enamored of the library because of the online card catalog and uh the uh the flatirons lending system where we could look at information from many other libraries i mean it it's even better we can um access access things put things put them on hold and then pick them up later uh and the reason i i want to expand this to the entire county is i think we need the funding to get small branch libraries in more parts of the county expose more people to them and therefore we can utilize the resource that we already have the books and uh videos etc uh expose them to a minor wider audience we obviously need the funding from a greater area but with the technology that we have we can exp

[187:00] we can utilize the resources over a much larger area so i strongly urge you to support the countywide funding district thank you thank you bruce next we have nicole pearlman joanne sullivan and renee morgan nicole thank you everybody really appreciate it and i know as usual it's been a long evening my name is nicole and i live in north boulder and i have a five-year-old and prior to covid we were literally at either the main branch or the north boulder uh the north boulder location probably every other day i mean we knew the staff members by name um my son knew the isles and what was where we named the fish we named the trains um the library is literally a lifesaver not just for parents but for um you know for everybody in our community and you're going to hear that over and over again tonight i think from everybody uh that that has stuck around to speak

[188:00] um so i have two key questions for everybody on council tonight the first is why aren't you listening to us as the residents and the voters and the second question is why are we wasting our time with this conversation again so why are you wasting your time i've been on this zoom three hours tonight to get to this but you know three years ago the commission unanimously said that we need a library district and since then we've had i've lost track a dozen meetings maybe where we've discussed this and i just i'm perplexed by council just doesn't listen to the overwhelming support for this and keeps having this conversation do we do this how do we do this when do we do this it's very very clear that there's very strong public support for this so whatever it takes please just put it before the voters let us vote up or down and then figure it out and please stop wasting our time in

[189:00] yours having these roundabout conversations when you have over 40 people signed up to speak tonight and you've had dozens signed up every meeting that this topic has come up there's overwhelming public support so please stop thwarting democracy and let us vote on a district thank you nicole next we have joanne sullivan renee morgan and timothy williams joanne hi my name is joanne sullivan and i live off of j road in north boulder my two young daughters and i are weekly visitors to the main library we relied on it before covid not just for books but as a gathering place to meet other young families seven years ago i was lost in this world of parenting um my oldest is seven now i met with an amazing group of friends at story time and these friendships were so crucial for my mental stability at the time

[190:02] many of those friendships are still growing strong as our children grow together families need access to their local library branches and i'm asking council to invest in my library for the past year with both of my kids learning from home the library has been essential to their education and their stability our home homeschool curriculum is literature-based and there's no way i could afford to buy all of the required books and the boulder public library had about 95 percent of them amazing growing up in brooklyn i could walk to my library branch for my family's apartment and their young reader programs and librarians made a lifelong impact on me i want that for my kids growing up here in boulder and to get that i need council to commit to investing in the library's financial stability i learned that 66 staff members were

[191:01] laid off in the wake of covid and as more and more folks get vaccinated what is the plan to bring these branches back what's the plan to ensure that the library doesn't endure deeper cuts in the future and what more does council need to know about the financial benefits of forming a district please don't delay any further on this thank you thank you joanne next we have renee morgan timothy williams and carolyn alden renee hi there um i'm renee morgan and i live in boulder county but i'm going to read a letter um from a woman who lives in boulder proper the city of boulder sarah fardy um so she begins dear council members i'm writing today to express my concern outrage and heartbreak over hearing that the council may prove unwilling to save the county-wide branches of the boulder public library

[192:00] i could tell you a compelling story of growing up the daughter of immigrants in boulder of being a child of working parents who needed somewhere to go of being able to find escape education and friends at the george reynolds library but you should already know the power of the library to elevate communities to improve early literacy for children to support small businesses language learning for immigrant communities support for families who cannot afford monetized enrichment programs to bridge the gap between elite academic institutions and the independent researcher to provide a free communal and safe place to go when other areas may not be accessible libraries are the cornerstone of healthy caring communities they help create equity through opportunity and in the midst of a pandemic of civil unrest of pandering to marginalized communities in boulder with promises of prior prioritized agendas and commitments to equity you are sitting idle in the face of the exact kind of opportunity you are committing

[193:01] to make closing neighborhood branches the ones that can be walked and biked to and parked near without worrying of cost or time limit of parking is actively creating inequity and limiting access libraries and their programming are examples of the kind of redistribution abolitionists call for redistributing funds can be honored by investing in libraries in their programming that brings culture and community and opportunity for free to any community member that needs it allow us to vote on the formation of a library district it is really your only remaining conscious action sincerely a concerned tired frustrated and brown resident of boulder sarah fardy thank you renee next we have timothy williams carolyn alden and rachel daly timothy thank you i'm tim williams gun barrel resident and vice president of the boulder library foundation

[194:00] as a child i grew up living along the lewis and clark trail i was fascinated by them and their expedition i could not understand what would motivate someone to trek off into the great unknown with so much uncertainty and risk i became so intrigued my parents took me to the library so i could check out some books to learn more about them i'd never been to the library or even knew such a place existed not only did i discover books on lewis and clark but i realized i could become my own explorer traveling toward whatever interest i desired while there i stumbled upon a book about paper airplanes and learned techniques that allowed me to enter and win a competition i was hooked i went on to learn about music geology the weather languages electronics all manner of things i would have never had exposure to otherwise i dare say i would not be the person i am now without those experiences from that beginning i've been blessed with a lifetime love of learning and growth and i've been fortunate to live in communities that have supported that via libraries and other community resources boulders libraries are a treasure but they've been treated as an afterthought

[195:01] for far too long as council chases other more shiny objects the funding decisions of the last decade have strained the libraries and the crippling effects of the pandemic have laid that bare yet in the face of that the library has persisted and provided wi-fi access to hundreds of families on the wrong side of the digital divide work to keep kids engaged in reading and learning and strive to keep seniors engaged in the community in the face of isolation and loss a wise friend of mine has always said that change occurs when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain brought about by the difficulty of change we are at that point with our libraries the pain of staying the same is far too great to continue with the status quo the library's future is not currently sustainable nor is the future of boulder's overall budget with so many priorities to juggle i urge you all to evoke your own inner explorer and explore the district possibilities to achieve sustainable library funding we must act decisively to ensure we continue to be a community of explorers rooted in

[196:00] curiosity learning and growth thank you thank you timothy next we have carolyn alden rachel daly and andy saylor carolyn hi my name is caroline alden and i'm really excited about the prospect of finally seeing improved long-term stability for the boulder public libraries with district formation about every other weekend i take my three-year-old to the main branch and first we grab my stack of books from the hold shelf and then we go head over to pick out books from the curated staff favorite stacks then we head out to play in the playground and now that coveted restrictions have been lifted we can also go to the kids section and check out the fish practice spanish with a librarian and do community arts and crafts i actually just yesterday um i learned that the very first customer of my startup company here in boulder actually found out about us by reading one of my academic papers in his local library in tulsa oklahoma and that was when he was tasked with you know going to research some methane detection technologies by his

[197:00] ceo so bottom line i mean as you already know and all the other folks tonight have said libraries are an incredibly valuable public resource in so many ways um i'm super lucky to be able to live really close to the main branch here in boulder and i just think it's so important that this resource be expanded to others in in the broader area so i'm asking the council this evening to please take the steps now to start the district formation this will let people like me who so value this fight this vital community resource to vote on more sustainable long-term funding so please form an intergovernmental agreement that's binding and and take these steps to forming a library district thank you thank you carolyn next we have rachel bailey andy saylor and patty bonnet rachel hi um my name is rachel daly i'm so glad the library is getting the attention it deserves tonight

[198:00] the last normal pre-pandemic outing i had before kovac shut everything down was taking my seven-year-old daughter kate to the stuffed animal sleepover at the main branch of the boulder public library we met friends there and all the kids had a blast singing dancing and reading with their stuffed animals led by the friendly and fun librarians the kids left their stuffies at the library for the night and when we returned in the morning the librarians gave my kiddo photos of her stuffy doing all kinds of fun things at the library my daughter was absolutely tickled we checked out a pile of books and went home all without spending a dollar out of our own pockets in the coming months as we isolated at home during the pandemic i would see that pile of books and my mind would go back to that last get-together we had with our friends at the library our libraries are a vital part of our boulder community any parent no matter their age their gender their race or economic means can bring their children to the library to enjoy

[199:01] these events to check out a book or to use a computer before kovud my older daughter amy learned how to make a hat at the boulder public library maker space with the amazing people of the sewing rebellion if you look at the library calendar now in this time of covid the events are fewer and virtual but the library is still managing to reach out to the community on the calendar you'll find opportunities for people learning english to practice their speaking and listening you'll find musical story time in citizenship classes in queer themed teen book clubs if we want boulder to be a center for creativity educational attainment equitable opportunity and technological savvy we need enduring accessible community spaces and i urge the council to support a library district to ensure long-term funding for our libraries thank you so much thank you rachel next we have andy

[200:01] saylor patty bonnet and heather ridge andy hi thank you my name is andy taylor and i live in the dakota ridge neighborhood in north boulder i've long been an avid fan of boulder's library system from the maker space at the main library to the wonderful story times and multilingual services provided at the nobo corner library in this age of disinformation i cannot think of a more critical institution for the protection of our democracy than our public library system unfortunately boulder's library has long been at the bottom of the list when it comes to the city's funding priorities the disproportionate cuts the library suffered during the coveted budget crises underlines how when it comes to what the city is willing to pay for the library often comes last i'd like to ask council to take this opportunity to move forward with the formation of a library district providing stable sustainable funding for our library system is critical to the long-term security and prosperity of our community i also think this is a great opportunity

[201:00] for boulder to start to move away from its over-reliance on regressive sales taxes which fall most heavily on the least affluent members of our community in favor of more equitable property tax-based funding mechanisms a library district funded by property taxes achieves a level of stable and equitable funding for our libraries beyond what the city can achieve under its existing funding models i'd also like to address a common concern raised around the formation of a library district meaning we must seek control over this valuable community asset that is not the case under the proposed district model the library will remain under the governance of those it always has the residents and taxpayers of the regions it serves indeed a district is better able to ensure that the community the library serves are represented in decisions about its operation since the district's board of trustees could be drawn from a wider patron base including the proposed district boundary stable funding for our library is a can we have kicked down the road for far too long please take the opportunity before you this evening to move forward with the formation of a library district and a community vote on its funding

[202:00] as soon as possible stop the delay and thank you for your time thank you andy next we have patty bonnet heather ridge and alicia savelle patty hi my name is patty bonet and i live in central boulder when i was a little girl my mom would take us to the library every saturday as part of our weekly errands the librarians knew us and would carefully help me select a new batch of books each week which transported me to other worlds they sparked a lifelong love of reading and learning from me that continues to this day today i'm a documentary producer and the boulder library has been the host of a number of my creative endeavors including the indigenize your eyes photography exhibit and screenings of my film come back to sedan about our local lost boys of sudan and has served as a meeting space for numerous groups i'm involved with like right relationship boulder the library has helped me use art to teach our community about our fellow citizens who

[203:00] normally don't get a lot of exposure or the opportunity to tell their own stories in addition i've attended a wealth of events there including countless movies and concerts and events like the jaipur literature festival and biff that have made this city a much more vibrant and interesting place to live i use the library weekly i'm constantly checking out films and books for research in my work and i'm extremely grateful for what this place and its people bring to my life the library is the heart and soul of boulder i love that i can see so many people who i might not normally encounter in my daily life here kids learning to read immigrants taking esl classes seniors learning how to use computers or students writing resumes or taking advantage of the maker space shared public spaces matter the library matters i'm dismayed to see the recent layoffs and cutbacks we are a wealthy city we can do better we have to do better if there's any hope of saving the soul of this town every other library in colorado similar to boulder has

[204:00] in size and user base is now a library district these established library districts saw little change in services due to budget cuts when the pandemic hit while boulder's library sustained significant job losses now is the time to fully fund the library when i think about how the library helped me develop and grow as a child it breaks my heart to think of all this in our community who might lose their opportunity to learn and thrive due to cutbacks and loss of services thank you patty next we have heather ridge alicia sadel and anna seeger heather thank you my name is heather ridge and my pronouns are she hers and i've lived in boulder county for about 20 years in the park east neighborhood for the last 17 years i've been a science teacher for boulder valley school district and i wanted to use my time tonight to bring an educator perspective about the services that our library has been able to provide for our students and their families and my fellow teachers and urge you to support the library district as part of an inter-government agency to

[205:01] make sure that those services remain stable as a science teacher i have students write research papers and now more than ever it's really important that they're able to discern credible information the library databases that they're able to access for free are crucial and those are services that other schools have to pay for in order to have available to students this space for student projects after school getting together to study to meet with tutors also the incredible teen space to support social emotional learning for students it's also a great support for families it's more equitable it's a place for families to come to study to access the internet to learn english to read so it's a pretty critical space as you've heard tonight obviously we all care very much about our library because it's many things to many people uh much like a school district right it's got an incredibly wide range of needs that it's trying to meet uh across and it's it's differentiating us across a wide range

[206:01] of people and demographics um imagine the council running our school um the idea of uh of creating a library district that is solely for the purpose of these services uh makes a lot of sense much like our school district right is is is governed and created independent of our city council asking [Music] in the current model and looking at the municipal model we're asking them to compete for services rather than supplement and so i urge you to vote for the library district to help expand these services to more people into more area and uh create a stable funding environment so that these are services that we can count on as a community in the future as well so thank you for your time tonight thank you very much heather next we have alicia sadle anna seeger and lynn siegel alicia hello my name is alicia gibbs seidl and i live downtown

[207:00] first let me see how excited i am public hearing is taking place boulder's been waiting years for this public hearing so thank you for letting us have that i was a library commissioner in the past and now the on the boulder library foundation board as the president i know the history of the library funding issues and shortfalls well i hope you have all read our letter in support of the library district through resolution the summary of which is that we know how incredibly thin the library is stretched in funding and staff and we know how incredibly popular the library is with the boulder public the foundation continues to fund more and more as the city cuts and cuts from the library budget this method of depending on the foundation to step in and give the taxpayers what they want is not financially sustainable i'm also a mom in boulder one of the things i've missed the most throughout the pandemic is the library my daughter has outgrown lap babies during the pandemic and it will it was a cherished product a cherished program for me to bring my kids to she will never know that program due not due to budget cuts but the pandemic

[208:00] but those two things aren't that far apart it could have easily been budget cuts prohibited the program from existing i don't know how we'll continue to to do all the foundations programs with the staff cuts that have happened due to cobin we used to uh my family used to go there on a daily basis and we'll go back as soon as we can to read play and learn the programs are priceless to my children's education the staff is pure gold our library is such a gem it was named library of the year i love paying taxes taxes make our society run please let me pay taxes for my library we have such an amazing library here our library even has a maker space the library is a bright welcoming inclusive spot for so many of our citizens older needs to fund it through a district and let the people vote lots of other colorado libraries and cities have created districts successfully and we can too it's time to stop kicking this can down the road to a new city council or we will never move forward with funding for our library thank you very much for listening thank you alicia next we have anna siger

[209:01] lynn siegel and nami boston anna um hello yes um thank you for holding this session tonight about the library district uh my name is anna seeger and the boulder public library has been important to my family and continues to be important when we first moved here from el salvador my husband took english classes at the boulder public library with intercambio he later took his citizenship classes at the boulder public library with um volunteers from intercambio and um since the pandemic started uh my son has had an extremely difficult time with online learning um working on a computer just doesn't it's not a productive for him he's he's very easily distracted and he was recently diagnosed with adhd and his therapist said that one of the things he needs to do is have be taken to the

[210:01] library regularly and have a steady supply of books so that he is able to do some offline focused uh reading we requested a hold um of some books the librarians were very helpful and picked out some books for him and set them aside for us to go pick up but he since the teen section is still closed and the adult section is closed he can't go and pick out and walk around and get books on his own um i'd like to see that change um so i think the library is definitely a central part of community life and um we need to um bring back the 13 full-time jobs that were eliminated and the 50 part-time positions that had been eliminated over the past year as well as increase the funding back to the 2019 funding levels i heard that it's about 1.3 million dollars that is needed to bring it back

[211:00] to the 2019 levels and um yet we spent almost the exact same amount on funding more police officers and new police vehicles to deal with the homeless population so i am asking as a library user and city resident that the councils take steps to begin the formation of a library district that can provide sustainable long-term funding for our library system it could free up millions of dollars in the city's budget by removing the need for the city to fund the library and then thank you so much thank you anna your time is up um next we have lynn siegel nami bazin and i love the library it's not a matter of how much i love the library i probably will get to go to the library in my next life because i spend my whole life at the

[212:01] planning board at the water resources advisory board at the open space board of trustees fighting cu south fighting for people's housing value in boulder to be equitable and for social and racial equity in this community this is a regressive tax whether it's sales tax or it's property tax it's regressive because property tax or goes up when the land value goes up and all of these projects in boulder and all of these needs in boulder you know and why should we have a library district in extending to other counties we send the homeless outside of our county and then we expect them to come back and we're going to make a trade now and they can use our libraries no our services need to be met we need to not have these things as

[213:00] afterthoughts we need to have libraries in gun barrels in every community why should people from gun barrel commute to boulder we can transfer the books from branch to branch as people need them it's a matter of how not that we don't all love the library of course we love the library i wish i knew caroline alden who next door testified for this project tonight because i would have talked to her but i don't have time to talk to her because i'm at planning board and everything else trying desperately to keep things affordable in this town before it becomes a town of elon musk next door to elon musk let the developers pay let the developers pay you know someone spoke of saving our soul you know our libraries are sold well so was red letter books that got taken over by

[214:00] a condo that wanted an electric car elevator to save the space for their overpriced condos because a ramp takes up extra space this is obscene what's going on in this town i have watched condo after condo after development after development get every subsidy and the city council can't do enough to help them along marpa house tonight that was obscene that you accepted that obscene marpa house was the model of affordable housing in boulder and yet you're scrambling to do more affordable housing the more that you're upping the value of the land in boulder and increasing the cost to people thank you lynn your time's up next we have nami basin

[215:00] miho shida and kelly donovan nami hi i'm nami basin um i'm here today um also to voice my support of the formation of a library district um i have personal stories and i can talk about my child but really what i want to say is that the thing about libraries that's really cool is you can have two different books with two opposing arguments sitting on the same shelf and leave it up to a reader to decide what to make of the information presented to them you can even have two different people read the same book and take away two different things that's because libraries are democracy in its most pure form there's no conclusion there's no voting there's no end of discussion um and i think that that's sometimes why there's a feeling of being affronted when individuals in our community register complaints because they perceive impropriety misuse or what they feel like is over occupation by certain

[216:00] individuals of library space but just like those two books on the shelf with competing perspectives the practice of learning to live with each other's different uses of library space is also the practice of pure democracy and it's something that we need in our community so i believe boulder needs to allocate resources in such a way that it's in alignment with our core values and if you all truly value intellectual freedom which i believe you do i know that you'll do more than say tender words about our library and you will make deliberate choices to ensure that all branches reopen and are well funded i personally believe that the best way to do this is through the formation of a library district thank you thank you nami next we have miho shida kelly donovan and nathan seidl mijo hello my name is miho shida and i live at 6783 ida wild court

[217:00] in gunbarrel as one of the wealthiest communities in colorado and the home to the state's flagship university i think it makes civic sense for boulder to have a healthy public library system the library empowers and benefits all segments of our community especially those with limited means so why not create a robust library that we can all be proud of not one that has to cancel prospector the service that delivers books to residents mailboxes during a pandemic or is unable to open branches for lack of funding the place that i visited the most when i was raising my two kids was the boulder public library i have no doubt that the library instilled a love of reading to them and has helped them to become the knowledge-seeking inquisitive young adults that they are today i can't think of a more important function that a public institution can provide for a community than this a healthy library is an investment in the future and has the power to shape boulder's legacy

[218:01] therefore i urge council to support the formation of a library district thank you thank you niho next we have kelly donovan nathan sadel and claudia team kelly hello my name is kelly donovan and i live in unincorporated gun barrel some of my earliest memories are from going to my local library and picking out books in the children's section since then i've always had a love of books and immediately got a library card when i moved to boulder 15 years ago once i had children i was excited to introduce them to the children's room at the main branch knowing that it could create fond memories for them as it did for me sure enough my kids who are now 9 6 and 6 have such a love for books and read a ton the library is a big part of their lives pre-covert they would go for story times play at the main branch and pick out books to take home they were disappointed with the covet shutdown and as we as we just didn't have enough

[219:00] books in the house to keep up with their reading they were so excited when the library opened up again and we could start putting books on hold and even more excited when the children's room opened and they could go out go there and pick up their own books i ended up getting my oldest a library card so we could help manage their requests but it's still me who has to drive across town to pick them up which can be a challenge for me as a working mom and with the library's reduced hours i'm in favor of the library district as i really want to see a gun barrel branch open as as it would be a much needed addition to this area it's quite shocking that such a wealthy and progressive community like boulder has a library that is so underfunded especially when library districts have been set up in other towns across the state of colorado as a long-time library user and supporter i am asking the city council to begin the formation of a library council district for boulder to provide sustainable funding for our library as an investment to both the library and to the community thank you thank you kelly

[220:00] next we have nathan sadle claudia team and henry corrin nathan hello my name is nathan seidl and i am the founder of sparkfun electronics a business in boulder county with 104 employees we own and operate a 80 000 square foot manufacturing facility in gun barrel in 2021 we paid 304 000 in property taxes to the county while this amount has been increasing at a staggering rate we would love to be taxed more for a library district in addition i don't know any business owners in my network who would be against increasing taxes for the library increased funding to a library means a more educated workforce and to me a 2019 survey represents the will of the people the people that love the library in 2019 want to continue to use it please don't waste more time and money doing nothing please do something as a business person looking at the predicament both the library and the city are in financially it just makes sense to form a library

[221:01] district thank you thank you nathan next we have claudia team henry coren and donna george claudia good evening members of council my name is claudia hansen thiem i live in the holiday neighborhood and i'm speaking tonight in support of a library district i think about the library the most as a parent and my two children have known it since birth it's a staple of family life in boulder it's a place where we've not only found books lots of books but also inspiration respite and friends but it's so much more when i sat down to write this comment i started thinking about all of the other reasons i visited the library in pre-pandemic times and i came up with a picture of the library as a center of civic life i've walked through to see friends and neighbors artwork on display i listened to police chief candidates

[222:00] introduced themselves to the community in the canyon theater and i've attended board trainings and plan boulder candidate forums in the boulder creek room and i've even had coffee with mayor weaver in the seeds cafe presumably because it was a neutral place to meet every person advocating for stable funding tonight has some version of this list and together they weave the fabri fabric of this community like many people i was amazed when i learned that the library has maintained its high standing in the community in fact expanding its programming and user base despite years of stagnant funding i did not want to believe it was that bad but the pandemic budget crisis shows what supporters have been arguing for years the library is the first to be cut and last to be restored when sales tax revenues decline this is no way to treat a heart of our community three years now advocates have asked you to green light a library district and to let them make the case to the public for funding that matches the library's reach

[223:00] and value in the community this has always been a sensible ask and with time it's become more urgent the boulder public library deserves a stable financial future and a district gets us there please support it tonight thank you thank you claudia next we have henry corrin donna george and sarah george henry my name is henry corn i live in table mesa our libraries are the milk and honey of this town my family visits the main library every week in normal times we check out around 700 books a year to read to our kids my two young girls have learned to read with the help of our library for them it was a pre-preschool it was their go-to for education and play long before they got they were eligible to be students in our school district when my kids were just one year old they met other children who would grow to become their lifelong friends at a library story time now my girls are thriving they have become incredible readers

[224:00] because of the resources the library offers my eldest maya has figured out what she wants to do when she grows up she wants to be an author and illustrator the library has made a tremendous difference in so many children's lives the quality of our library will echo into the future as our children grow into responsible young adults who are less likely to require policing the library is an essential resource that contributes to our communities mental health where people can find sanity meet others get lost in a book or work outside of their houses as residents of south boulder my family would love to see george reynolds branch reopen so we can make it's a library on foot instead of a 10 minute drive gun barrel also deserves its own library branch without adequate funding a whole generation of boulder's children will miss out on these sorts of opportunities this will do serious harm to our community a small increase in property taxes dedicated to funding our libraries will be worth every penny i encourage those who are concerned about the tax to consider the indirect long-term benefits that a fully funded

[225:00] library system will have in our community thank you for your time thank you henry next we have donna george pooling time with sarah george and mark george um which will give four minutes to donna um i would like to confirm donna that you're here and then hear sarah and mark here as well hi yes um hello can you hear me this is donna george i can hear you donna if you have sarah and mark say hello thank you sir hi i'm sarah hi this is mark george perfect donna you have four minutes okay thank you my name is donna george i live in unincorporated gun barrel and i strongly support a library district the increase in taxes is worth it for me even when i am utilizing the library much less than when my daughter was younger libraries provide a great service to all citizens young and old and creates community i see the library as an important

[226:00] community amenity that needs to be supported by a reliable budget from year to year and not relegated to the whims of the city budget the library has been neglected over the years it is usually one of the very last items to consider in the budget and gets whatever money is left over the creation of a library district would mean that the library would have its own budget funded by the district i see the creation of a library district as having a great library system supported by the citizens within the district i strongly believe that the board of directors of the newly created library district should include representatives from uncorporated areas like niwa and gumbarro the mountain communities and not just from the city of boulder in the future the independent libraries of longmont lewisville and lafayette may want to join in the district further spreading the cost and providing for more efficiency in the cost of purchases and services this could reduce the tax cost to all

[227:00] citizens and benefit all the libraries longman i hear is looking at um doing its own library district for its library and maybe boulder should talk to them and see if you can combine their library district with boulder's library district i have used the longment library in addition to the boulder the lafayette and the lewisville libraries so i think that a a library district that's actually county-wide would be fantastic um 200 to 300 more a year in property taxes is worth it for me for a great investment in important library services for the boulder county community you know i've been going on recently i had 200 dollars a month in in my comcast bill that was just a month which was internet phone and tv and i had to try to lower that as we all know how that goes so to me an investment in my community for 200 300 a year is as a strong investment and a library is important for the community

[228:02] the gun barrel branch should be located in the gumbo community center plan area close to the grocery store the post office etc today i just saw spaces for rent in some commercial buildings across from king supers or it could be in the area of shops next to king supers i also want to know note that when my daughter was young she took piano lessons next to the meadows branch that was the branch that we mainly went to and when we went to that we always it was a it was a weekly thing we'd go to piano lessons and after piano lessons she'd go to the library and you know take out more books and return the books that you know she had taken out before and we also went to the cafe by there or we went to the grocery store it was like a combined trip and that's what got i believe gun barrel should be um and it's important to to support libraries so i hope that all you on console will vote to start work on a library district because i think it is the smart and the best way to go for funding for

[229:01] the library thank you for your time and you donna next we have juana gomez jeff cahoon and michael green wanna hello i'm juana gomez um at 1127 crimebrook court in boulder thank you for your attention to library funding tonight at this public hearing um i am a strong advocate for our public library and for stabilizing its budget lately our national discussion has been focused on infrastructure on expanding our understanding of that term and i'm paying for all that we take for granted as a basic platform for our lives just as we take care that our bridges and traffic lights continue to perform

[230:00] and allow for our transportation through town we need to take care of our city's living room our engine for innovation the public library we wouldn't think of building housing without providing it with water and sanitation likewise we wouldn't think of building neighborhoods and towns without public libraries a library district is the most reliable funding model and the most equitable forming a group to draft an iga for a library district will be a step in the right direction but in fact forming a district by resolution would be two steps in the right direction an iga will help us arm ourselves with facts without it answers to questions about the details of a library district remain murky this is our chance to think global and act local in ways

[231:00] that can have tangible impact and leave a legacy for our children thank you thank you anna next we have jeff cahoon michael green and caitlin mcquaid jeff mayor what is it city council can you hear me you're good to go yeah thank you uh oh this is jeff gerhard uh i'm a resident of polder living at 1420 elder avenue and uh i'm president of the boulder area labor council i want to comment from a working family's perspective the um the effect of a library district is substantial uh for one thing i will confess the

[232:01] boulder area labor council has been meeting for years and years in the very nice conference room and basement of george reynolds library it will zoom etc we have not been meeting there we would like to return to our own i'll tell you that much and the george reynolds library and their staff has been very kind to us over the years that's it must be recognized that we need our libraries and i must endorse the prior two speakers in their regard um one yes voters should explore creative alternatives to really uh tie into the excellent library systems in longmont lafayette louisville um superior

[233:03] not so much i mean you know we we have gaps we should fill and an independent district can do that and i think that's why uh the labor council definitely wants to support uh the idea of a library district and open up our libraries and fund them properly with that i'll close thank you jeff next up michael green caitlin mcquaid and stephen frost michael hello uh this is michael green i'm at 19th and canyon and first i just want to thank you council members for all your hard work this is my first time joining the zoo marathon and i'm blown away that you do this every week so thank you so much and

[234:00] i want to say that i'm strongly in favor of library districts as a way to create more sustainable funding for the library and to expand its services to more people in the area although i do deeply value all the benefits the other speakers have highlighted i want to highlight the value the library services have brought to my small business i've used the building 61 maker space to do a variety of things for my business that would otherwise not be possible from cutting 10 000 straws on the laser cutter for use in my product to prototyping new packaging designs with the same laser cutter the library has provided me with immense value and i know from my interaction with other folks in the makerspace that it has provided immense value for them and their businesses as well so with that i request that you please support the library district so we increa so we can increase access to these wonderful programs and help other small businesses access the world-class tools that they

[235:01] wouldn't otherwise otherwise be able to access thank you michael next we have caitlin mcquaid steven frost and kristen eller caitlin hi uh also a first time caller here um i'm a south boulder resident and a regular contributor to the library foundation um i have a whole list of things that i love about the library that i do there um but you've gotten a pretty complete catalog of that so i'm just going to skip to the thing that is the most the best thing about the library for me which is there is not a single place in boulder where i have felt a greater sense of belonging to a diverse community there's every kind of people there it's a great feeling and i'm grateful for it every time i visit i'm here first of all to thank you you are looking at two options for providing greater and more stable funding to our library it's clear that you recognize the library's value to our community

[236:00] secondly i want to let you know that i support the creation of a library district over the option where the city maintains control from what i can tell the library district option would bring in more money it would expand the number of people who are contributing to the library's needs many of whom are currently getting its services for free and it would create a governing body focused solely on the library's financial health and on its fulfillment of the community's needs it also seems like the library district option would free up more money in the city's budget than the other option and relieve city government of the responsibility and headaches of managing the library as an institution the heart of a library beats in service to a free and civil society a society whose citizens have access to resources that improve their minds and their lives please do the most you can to provide boulder with the best possible library even if it means letting someone else take control thanks thank you caitlyn next we have

[237:00] stephen frost kristen eller and lila hickey stephen good evening mayor weaver members of the city council my name is steven frost i'm a resident in the holiday neighborhood uh in nobo i'm faculty at cu boulder i'm also vice chair of the library commission and founder of the colorado settling rebellion which is of course hosted in the library's makerspace i want to thank everybody who's taken time out of their evening to advocate for the library tonight thank you all so much i'm here tonight to join them and to speak to the need for sustainable funding for our public library system library advocates and city commissioners have made this request to the council for years and now is the time to form a library district as all of you know sales tax revenue revenue has fallen dramatically due to coven 19 and huge cuts have been made to keep our city in the black and while the library accounts for less than four percent of the overall city budget it sustained 20 percent of the cuts that

[238:01] were made city-wide of course our library staff may do within budgets and less staff but still hours were cut programs had to be shelved and professional staff were fired senior positions were vacated but not replaced and now the library does not have enough funding to return to normal operating hours at all of its branches highly qualified staff members with international reputations for their research and scholarship have been have left and um have left and we're forced to move on to new opportunities in other cities we won't get these people back the thousands of dollars spent on recruitment training and development it's all been lost it is easy to blame the decimation of our libraries on covet 19 but the reality is that these losses are the result of our current funding mechanism throughout colorado's nearly 60 existing library districts you will find that many of them actually most of them are fully open well staffed and operating at near pandemic levels

[239:01] why hasn't the city formed a library district by resolution most members of the council value the cultural social and economic and civil contributions of our library and i ask you tonight to form a library district by resolutions that we can begin the work of bringing our library up to sustainable levels of funding thank you all thank you stephen next we have kristin eller lila hickey and eric budd kristen hi council my name is kristen eller and i'm a resident of gun barrel and i'm someone who loves libraries and i specifically love boulder library system i volunteer at the boulder public library and i know we've heard from pretty much everyone that's spoken about how important libraries are but i really don't think we can get enough of that so i'm going to tell you a little more as a child i moved constantly and do you know what's something we did every single time we moved somewhere the first thing we did is we went to the library

[240:00] we went to the library we got our library card and before all the boxes were unpacked at our house before we had internet we went to a library we got internet access and we read books and that is a critical part of my childhood and it's still part of my life today and libraries are an investment in our community and their investment into the people of boulder and enriches our city our libraries have been underfunded for decades and this council not next council this council has the power to change that for the future children of boulder residents of boulder and the community of boulder three years ago in 2018 the library commission recommended forming a library district and i support this as you've heard many other people support this and i hope you all support this the formation of a library district can provide sustainable long-term funding for our library system that will only enrich our community thank you for your time

[241:02] thank you kristen next we have lila hickey eric budd and um then we move on into new folks with jane wilson so lila hello good evening council and staff my name is lila hickey i'm a resident of north boulder and i'm here to speak in favor of creating a library district when i moved to boulder in the spring of 2019 one of the first things i did was get a library card why because if you want to know the heart of a town you go to its library for libraries as those who frequent them know are about so much more than books they're about ebooks and internet access access to professional librarians to help jump start a student's research project or help a retiree begin mapping their family genealogy they are a safe space for people who

[242:00] don't have a safe space or just a space for your meetup boulder's main library delighted me it's a place with so much promise but i was shocked and surprised to hear that boulder has no library district coming from fort collins where voters created a library district more than a decade ago i have seen first hand the benefits of stable funding proportionate to the growth and success of the community the fort collins library district is thriving even in this pandemic boulder's library is not others have already quoted some of the budget reductions i was deeply dismayed to hear we now have 30 percent less staff than we did almost two decades ago in 2002 a library district will allow the boulder community to directly and consistently support this precious public resource and ensure it grows in step with boulder i urge council to support a library

[243:00] district by resolution thank you thank you lila next we have eric budd jane wilson and mitchell garcia morrissey eric hello uh eric budd i live in south boulder uh a place where our library is currently closed um so many of the speakers tonight have really talked about the importance of the library and its services i i wanted to talk about how important it is as a public space in our community um libraries are a place that drive equity in our community they are a place that we fund that anyone can go anyone can learn anyone can use the resources especially people that don't have them and i think one of the reasons i really support the regional district is because we see how we provided this service in boulder and that service really extends out into the county

[244:00] beyond the city limits and it absolutely makes sense to provide a dedicated funding resource for not just boulder but the greater community as well and that dedicated funding is incredibly important so many people have said during the pandemic that we've essentially lost our funding because of cuts to the city budgets which could have been avoided with a funding mechanism like this and it's just it's it's a travesty to me that in this time where where our budget has been come under such pressure that without this dedicated funding we've essentially got a decision from you all to increase funding for the police force several million dollars to enforce on homeless people people experiencing homelessness while our libraries remain closed while people can't get access to those services and that's why we need this kind of

[245:00] dedicated funding for what is a public space for everyone thank you thank you eric next we have jane wilson who's already spoken to us on this mitchell garcia morrissey and rachel daly jane hi i'm jane sykes wilson um maxwell avenue i've already spoken to you today so i'm not gonna repeat what i had to say i just had one comment to add before this public comment there was a discussion about creating a committee to research and find out what the community would like whether they'd like a library district or not my only comment is to that is that i am a library commissioner and i'm sitting on the third library commission that has recommended this to the council so um in the discussion of creating more research around this and reaching out to more communities

[246:00] i'd really ask you to look to the last light three library commissions who have recommended this who have looked deeply into the funding looked at the issues and have recommended to city council that we move forward with the library district thank you thank you jane next we have michelle garcia morrissey and then rachel daly and claire kelly i believe rachel bailey has spoken to us already but we'll start with michelle uh michelle is not present i recommend we move to claire kelly okay sounds good hi my name is claire kelly and i live in boulder on the corner of mapleton in folsom and this is my first city it's really wonderful to be here and thanks so much for all the work you do i am here to support the creation of a lab district i'm the mother of two young children and we love spending story time with both

[247:00] librarians melanie and alice read with us which has been recorded online been saver about the pandemic and i work in book publishings i know how essential libraries are for recovery and i'm all a masters of library and information science student and so i have an owning appreciation for the powerful role that our library plays in this community's social social infrastructure i'm so fascinated by the idea of the model of a library just fun local news which is something longmont explored i'm also a home delivery volunteer at the boulder public library and i see how i elderly pain really benefit from the books and she checks out each month and i'm an enthusiastic library patron myself one of the first things i did when i moved here was to get a library card but so i was sad when library funding was cut when the pandemic hit and when i looked at librarians were laid off and i was

[248:00] also disappointed that as a result of the funding because i was no longer able to use interlibrary loan because that service was cut at the boulder public library so i went i packed my kids in the car and i went to golden library to get a library card access to pikes peaks library district so i could have access to prospector and request books for my grad school research there so i just want to say that as others have said a library district is a tried and true method of sustainably in colorado from pueblo to fort collins colorado springs park they've decided that the district is the best way to govern fund their library boulder please do it too thanks thank you claire next we have sharon procopio and alicia murray sharon hello all can you hear me yes hi everyone sharon procopio 4954 10th

[249:00] street here in boulder um i often attend these meetings wearing my design hat as a civil engineer for various projects and in full transparency i've had the pleasure to work with staff on the library the north boulder library is a civil engineer on the site project and i'm proud of the design team for including really all the stakeholders that work together to prove construction but today i'm here as a citizen of boulder for the past 15 years and a homeowner here in north boulder in the dakota ridge neighborhood and a mom of an eight-year-old who loves the library almost as much as i do he's still sitting here next to me reading because he wanted to wait for me to finish this to put him to bed um he loves choosing library books uh he loves the playground at the civic area he took part in the library's winter reading challenge and we followed the many covid friendly online events and spent the past year missing our favorite librarians and our maker space and we look forward to their return and while the capital funds for the new library construction

[250:00] in our neighborhood are approved without the library district the staffing and resources to actually operate that and other libraries may not be available we funded the structures but not the social infrastructure that funding the library district would help secure for the longer term and that's really important i think to reflect on the libraries are a key pillar in our community and we need to fund them if we want to help our own house our kids our lower and middle income families and all the other varieties of citizens we have in between if we want us all to flourish rather than to flail here in boulder so as a library user and supporter i strongly encourage council to take action now on the formation of a library district that can provide sustainable long-term funding for our system you've heard it from others and i'm here to just add on and say that i wish you all a speedy uh deliberation thank you thank you sharon next we have alicia murray and it looks like riley mancuso has shown up uh so we'll

[251:02] start with alicia and then go to riley okay i think i am second to last this is alicia murray uh nice to see you you can't see me but i had interviewed you with for library commission um it's a shame i actually had props for you all but you can't see me so i might have to describe that a little bit later um i at this point i imagine your brain's a little bit mushy so i actually encourage you to go and listen or sorry go to your email and you can find an email from me alicia murray gmail.com and i actually sent my thoughts on this last month when i thought this meeting was happening so obviously many many things have most things have been covered in this public comment i did want to speak um on one thing and many many moms have spoken interesting mostly moms right i don't know how many dads spoke but clearly i think most of us agree

[252:01] that early childhood education pays dividends for the long term and so you know that's one thing that a library does but the other community that a library really serves that i see i'm a librarian i'm a substitute librarian boulder public library is more marginalized communities immigrants people who don't have internet and you probably didn't hear from those people because they either didn't have internet access or they didn't feel comfortable speaking so i just want you to think about all of those people um as you know i think david farnan has the best you know really the best quote that libraries are the last great unbroken promise of a democratic society you know and this year uh because of covid we're we're not doing that um it's definitely not equitable service it's extremely limited service and you have to work very hard to access services this year um i did

[253:02] want to point out one other thing oh 18 seconds okay 50 000 for a uh for another um another survey please don't do that i i can't stand the thought of that i want you to not only form the district i want you to campaign for this ballot ballot measure thank you thank you alicia and our final speaker is riley mancuso hey council um so yeah i mean like you know so many people have spoken out tonight in support of libraries um you know uh libraries are a universal public good librarians are the best people on earth and if you give them more money they know how to spend it for the good of the community um a library district is kind of a no-brainer as people have pointed out lots of cities in color lots of regions in colorado have them um and have been using them very

[254:00] successfully i also don't really understand why the city of boulder would not want to make more people outside of the city pay for stuff like that just seems like a no-brainer win-win for me you know you love saying like that these like 30 of library users who aren't in the city are like mooches or whatever so like you know bring them in uh create a library district um and um yeah i mean you know it's been a long night libraries are good create a library district makes sense solidarity with our sister city nablus palestine resisting the israeli occupation support bds boycott israel peace thank you riley and with that we will bring the public hearing to a close and bring this back to council so council questions comments suggestions next steps you're up

[255:04] rachel all right i'll kick us off here um so my feeling is that this council does not agree on everything but i think that we are really good at not kicking cans down the road so that is what i would ask us to stay true to tonight um this particular issue has really dragged on and while we cannot control that covet happened we can help to make up for lost time by voting to form a district by resolution tonight um i agree with the speakers who've touted the benefits of libraries and i will not belabor their points except to share that i have spent a ton of time in libraries as well and i especially appreciate that people who are most in need can get their needs met at libraries from de facto shelters to free toddler activities libraries are amazing

[256:00] and i firmly believe in supporting libraries as a provider of crucial social infrastructure i also have a sense that most of us probably love and want to support libraries just like i do and i don't know if i differ on this or not but based on my lifetime of encounters in libraries where i have always felt safe and supported and kind of free to like whatever i like and not judged and where i always get good advice i just deeply trust library folks they're telling us that forming a district by resolution is the best thing that we can do for libraries and i'm just going to trust them on that and so i would say let's vote to form the district by resolution and get moving on the iga and let voters decide and in any event let us not kick the can down the road to a future council or eat up more council staff and community time looking again at this threshold issue thanks

[257:00] i ask you a question clarifying rachel you may um staff doesn't suggest that we create a district by resolution tonight um are you suggesting we do something different than steph has recommended beyond um i i think that uh david gear answered that that all of them maybe were um looking at at the supposition of forming a district by resolution and i think that's been a threshold issue that we keep coming back to on this council and if we um sidestep it i i just fear that we will have to revisit it so yeah that's what i'm asking us to do is to form uh district by resolution um and my preference would be to get it done by the october timeline um so that the next council doesn't have to get up to speed and we have another you know year of studies and more information getting outdated so yeah that's what i'm asking for thanks if i might add um

[258:02] i think one thing that would be helpful for staff is in attachment c there's a couple of work plans related to library district formation you know and i talked about it a little bit earlier in my presentation that there's one that starts it sooner one that starts it later and then we also proposed a municipal option so to the extent that you could give us some guidance on our work plan or on a work plan that would be thank you david aaron in the nearby yeah and i agree uh with everything that rachel said i mean we we all know what wonderful things uh libraries are and what a great equalizer they are in terms of providing access to to knowledge uh for everyone and and so many uh people in public testimony who spoke eloquently about that so i won't i won't attempt to repeat all of those uh marvelous sentiments um but i think

[259:00] it's it's really compelling that the experts in this area are all telling us that a district is the right way to go so um our current um library commission the last library commission the commission before that have all endorsed this unanimously is the best way forward for our library system and it's in uh written into our library master plan uh their recommendation uh as well also the very hard working folks in the boulder library foundation who've been supplying enormous amounts of critical funds to the library for many years and have stepped up enormously in the last year during the pandemic as well also unanimously recommend a library district uh and uh 100 of our speakers tonight uh were in favor uh and in with many uh inspiring words uh from folks from the uh the local area labor council uh to local residents to uh people in unincorporated

[260:00] boulder county i i thought it was quite inspiring to hear from a number of people outside the city who are uh users of the library that are not currently taxed and who are saying form a district and add our taxes please to the tax base of the district i thought that was really impressive so i do think it's the the best track forward for sustainable funding for the library i hope we've moved forward on it expeditiously it is a well-worn pathway there are many library districts in the state and fort collins most recently did an almost identical move 10 years ago and it's been extremely successful so i agree with rachel about not kicking the can down the road and um you know to david's point let's do that that quicker time frame uh you know to to move forward um you know somebody referenced the question about buying a future council you know future council if they really felt compelled to could always undo something if they uh if a majority felt like they really had to

[261:01] but i think we can go ahead and move forward on our own uh without doing anything um improper so i hope we'll take a good first step tonight thanks and sharon nearby and then adam nearby mine was just a question does staff have a um page they could put up in terms of what they want answered from council sorry i didn't know if there was a slide for that it'd just be helpful to see it for a moment whoever's running the presentation put up the motion slide i think it's around 11 or 12.

[262:02] dog thank you and just to put a little extra on this um you know with the library district motion um we we didn't specify frankly we wanted to hear from the council in terms of which approach you wanted to take um but we do have two different options that as i described just a few minutes ago one that would have um the council taking action this fall and one that would a work plan that would have council taking action next summer everybody did that answer your question yeah so i just i don't see so so under the second one um

[263:01] library district governance and funding there are two options one of which has a district formed in october one of which has a district formed in summer of 2022. so there's two options shown but the second one has two different versions no option then to vote put it to a vote about the library district the only vote that would go on the ballot is for the municipal governance and funding am i understanding that correctly well actually eventually they both go to the ballot um the municipal funding option is just would be just basically a tabor and the necessary charter amendments that you would need to do a municipal funding option with the library district the way that the process would work is the council would pass the council and the county commissioners would pass the res pass resolutions forming the district

[264:00] as part of that you would appoint a board of directors that would operate the library district or that would basically be the governing body for the library district um so that now you've got a government um we would negotiate the transitional iga um and then after that you know once we had that part done then the library district would put a ballot measure on to raise a property tax a tabor measure and and that's how the voters would vote if you were going the resolution route and so just sorry this is i just want to make sure we're getting this right so is there a reason we can't put it to the ballot first to even find out if the community i understand that we just had a ton of people sounding like they were for it but i just i've heard so much against it too that before we go do all of that work

[265:01] there's not just a way to put it on the ballot to find out if we even want to create the governance well um at uh when we all got together in february to talk about the library district i think we went through um you know there's two approaches one the the residents within the district can circulate a petition um and then ask the county commissioners to put it on to put the question of whether to form a district um on the ballot um and i think that uh david fernand earlier was talking about the fact that the boulder library champions in fact created and circulated such a petition and then um rather than you know basically go through and and have an election um they worked with the city manager and you know various council members to say hey

[266:00] let's have a con let's rather than push this onto the ballot let's have a more broad encompassing conversation about how library services should be governed and funded so that's where we are right now i think in february what i took away from the council's discussion was i heard you guys say we don't want to talk about petitioning anymore we want to talk about either doing it by resolution and then the subsequent paper election or a municipal funding option and that's what we're here tonight okay thanks david i appreciate it thank you adam uh thanks david one of the pushbacks i've heard is you know that we're giving up the library as an institution um is there any sort of way even if we're forming a library district that we can maintain the library as a city

[267:01] you know just the property itself owned by the city and rent it for like a dollar a year or something along those lines is that a possibility still yeah sure i mean you know and that'll be something that that will be the transition of what will be negotiated um but it could be a long-term lease arrangement it could be a sale it could be just a gift to the district once they have a revenue source and from you know kind of the my understanding of what i've learned from reading about library district formation in almost every instance when a district is formed the municipality either gives the assets to the library district or they do some type of long-term you know lease with nominal consideration and i believe um kim setters is on the call he's a he's a much better expert on this than i

[268:00] am but i believe that there was one instance where the library district or the city actually sold its assets at more of a fair market value yeah that's all the information i just want to make sure that that route is still an option if we were to go to the district red wow yeah just follow up on adam's good question um so i just wanna make sure that i know we've been through this a bunch of times but it's this is complicated stuff um you council formed a district at some point time uh the trustees are appointed and the city and the trustees negotiate an iga what what um what happens if they don't reach agreement so let's say you know per adam's point there's a sticking point on value of assets or some other detail what what um what what what happens if there's not a meeting of the mines well i would ask kim setter to turn his

[269:02] microphone his microphone and his camera on right now but um from what from what i understand um just to start with um you know there's a 90 day time frame in the statute to actually negotiate this i don't think you know what the formations that i've looked at i don't know that anybody's made that timeline so that that often gets extended and they work a deal and kim do you have some thoughts that you would like to add to the conversation no i think to directly answer councilman yates question um the assets belong to the city if there's no agreement the assets stay with the city and the district has nothing okay thanks kim and i just kind of follow up question for either one of you um i think we've talked before about um uh the the ultimate question of course is the tax question and so this goes to the voters on a tax taber tax question next year or at some

[270:00] point in the future and if it if it passes obviously then they're off and running if it fails um i think you've told us that some some district formations have said okay you get two goats at it or three goes at it where is that um where is that embedded that kind of how many times uh they can ask for tax and then what happens is there kind of a self-destruct that is in the ordinance that forms a district is there a provision that says and if it doesn't pass uh get funding by 2025 it automatically uh dissolves or once the district's formed it exists forever and council no longer has jurisdiction over it even though there's no money and there's no transfer of assets and uh you're exactly right that the euro formation resolution is where that's a condition of the existence of the district and i believe uh mr gear and and the and the city's lawyers have drafted in the

[271:00] sample um that there's a several attempts at getting funding through 2024 of course they're just they're just pulling numbers out of the hat at this point because it's up to you to decide uh if there's no funding at that point the district automatically dissolves great thanks kim that's it [Music] mark um i appreciate all of the speakers tonight um i i want to point out that i'm not sure there's anybody who's against libraries um or who doesn't value our libraries as a cherished community asset and you know almost beyond price in terms of their value to us but to me that's not the only issue timing is an issue for me um i would not want to see the ballot measure uh the tapered ballot measure

[272:00] coming on this fall um i think we have a heavy enough lift in terms of the perspective community culture and safety tax renewal and i think that's that's a critical um measure for this for this city in terms of other infrastructure needs that are not being met to the tune of about 300 million at this point so i really don't want to do them both at one time um in terms of the actual agreements the iga itself i i still think there are a number of questions that need to be answered and and so i'm negotiated and i'm concerned about those uh a do we convey assets which i would not be in favor of um at least the buildings um do we lease them do we lease them for a dollar a year if the district is raising 20 million dollars um

[273:00] is there a good argument for not paying a fair market value on the rental um or if there is let's understand what that is um i'm a little concerned did i correctly read the the memo david that if we move forward quickly this year that a couple of city departments would have to actually outsource the work that they're going to do to stand this up well i would so from this from the perspective of the city attorney's office um we stand ready to implement whatever direction we get from the council now um speaking for finance and um the library i would i would just ask them to pipe up in terms of what their own work plans are for the remainder of the year yeah we stand ready as well to do whatever council issues

[274:02] um can somebody from finance chime in hi sorry this is kara skinner um we would just be challenged if it really began straight away in june through the fall and that's why we said if it did we would probably have to contract with someone to help us meet some of the needs because of the timing with the annual budget process and um staffing realities of of the staff that we have right now can you can you give me an order of magnitude is it one person consulting for five thousand dollars or is it a significant outlay um we're not exactly sure right now you know i think we'd have to probably talk with possibly kim cedar who's on this call he's done this for a number of districts of what type of support is out there and what the price tag might be i think hr would be similarly um challenged and

[275:02] might need some and i think they do think they would need some assistance work on um what the input that they would need to provide into the iga committee with regard to the transition of employees all right so i would have something so we would i i guess i i don't know if it would be ten thousand five thousand ten thousand twenty thousand we haven't really explored it and i i think we we just don't have a good feel for what the time commitment would be that's that's an area of of some concern um in a financially strapped moment in history um if it's de minimis you know that concern goes away if it's substantial i would have a little more concern about it um you know i i understand the impatience with this

[276:00] one speaker basically said just do it and that's a great sports slogan but i'm not sure it's a a good methodology for governance um and i would want to be a little more measured than sort of just doing it um so i'd like to know what's going to be involved in terms of extra expenses i'd like to get some resolution on some of these questions and issues and i'll get a better feel for exactly what it is we're proving and having said that i'm still ultimately you know prepared to have this go in front of the voters of boulder and they will decide whether they wish to tax themselves for the library they very well might it's possible they won't but that's a decision of the electorate and i'm happy to get it in front of them i'm just a little concerned about the timing and the expense thanks thank you mark kim would you like to weigh in and let

[277:00] us know how much it costs for our finance department yes um in the beginning there really isn't a lot of cost because the iga is mostly conceptual dealing with how a transition would take place once the funding is approved and then that allows you to have something that you can campaign on because you've got it pinned down where the real cost for the city would come in would be later when you're going to need legal work to transition assets and employees and all of those things but that wouldn't be until after there's a successful election so kim if i could colloquy on that which successful election do you mean the tax election yes right but wouldn't we need to have a plan um for that transition because as i look at the option a or option b there's a para piece of this the public employee

[278:01] retirement association so wouldn't some of these financial and personnel items need to be known before the taper vote yes in a conceptual way though so what it would say about the employees is that the library district is going to hire that the city is going to let all the library employees go the district is going to hire them you already know what the cost of that is in terms of what the district needs to know and it will take over and utilize pera and you already know what that cost is so on the district side they know what the expenses are on your side you know what you're moving away from your your finances could you explain why it usually takes more than 90 days to get an iga worked out after a resolution is best if it's as simple as you describe i would think the iga part would be like a cookie cutter piece

[279:02] yep um it usually takes longer because you've got you take some time to inventory all the different assets inventory the employees and include that in the iga a list of exactly what you're dealing with and mostly that's so that you as the city council know what you're transitioning so that you can determine how you want to do it is it a dollar a year is it a fair market value is it a sale um and so there's a lot of not a lot there's some back and forth to you while you determine what the city can and is willing to do to support the library and that just takes time so three months is not a lot of time considering the back and forth that takes place and then again watching the iga it's not very difficult in fact the the one that's in your packet is pretty comprehensive already it's

[280:00] based upon ones we've done in the past several times and then um i've lost my thought we got two more folks rachel and then erin um just a couple thoughts on the you know dollars and cents of forming this and getting to an agreement it seems that we always hear that staff time is kind of stretched thin so i i wonder might there be outsourcing regardless of what months we we choose to do this um like i know and it's sort of routine with the um city attorney's office we're already planning um at the subcommittee level at least for or discussing that there will be some outsourcing just due to to um people coming and going so i i guess i don't i don't know that that's a huge deal and i would um welcome feedback from staff on like is that abnormal is that a huge concern is it possible that if you got to this in january of

[281:00] 2022 you'd still need some extra help and then also would note that um time is also staff money so if we decide to revisit this again and slow it down and have three more meetings like tonight's that's also eating staff time and that does cost our organization real dollars and it costs again the community staff and us all a lot of time erin and then mary aaron yeah um i just wanted to uh mark if you don't mind just offer a couple of follow-up thoughts um to you to your points i i think one of those unit i think all the options in front of us involve a taber voted in 2022 i think i heard pretty clearly from staff in the memo that that we could start the overall process earlier rather than later but that we would still need to wait until 2022 to put a vote to the people so david wright i mean that's all our options include 20 22 voted the soonest is that right that's correct yes aaron you're right and i thank you for for the clarification

[282:00] yeah thanks mark so so yeah so starting earlier doesn't mean a 2021 vote for for taxes anyway so um we can start earlier on on that side and and just that i agree that there there are a lot of details that need to be worked out and that would be what the iga process development process would hammer out right there'd be a a subcommittee that would work that through and then it would be you know subject to approval of council as a whole so uh we totally agree we have to work this through but the process incorporates time for that and if we started earlier then we have more time to work through the details and make sure we get them right we get the support of counseling so a couple thoughts there um mary your hand is down did you have something you wanted okay all right well i'll just weigh in here briefly um i do want to proceed with the district pathway i am more inclined to go with option b than option a when i look at what this council needs

[283:01] to complete we not only have our normal budget cycle which will be especially difficult this year because of the recovery from covet and the uncertainty about our projections what kind of recovery we're going to have so we have the budget remaining in front of us and all the discussions we might have around policing and homelessness that would go with that then we have the um funds that we've got from the american rescue plan act that are coming in that we are just beginning to start to wrap our heads around what to do there's cu south if we intend to move forward with that that's going to take a lot of council time a lot of staff time and a lot of outreach and when i look at two of the three of these and potentially the third those all heavily involve finance staff so i'm prepared tonight to move ahead with the district formation pathway but i'm inclined to use option b that staff has proposed

[284:03] i further think that that gives us the time and the space to do a good job rather than trying to rush for an october deadline which is an odd time to be doing it one of the last actions this council would take would be to form a district that this council will then not weigh in on at least not um the folks who aren't running again or re-elected so i'm not quite sure why we would try and create a fire drill to do this in this year when in fact the vote won't be till 2022 anyway so if we've accepted that the vote won't be until 2022 i cannot imagine why we would kick this whole process off in this year i'd also say that the community culture safety tax we're going to need to tee that up that will also have finance folks in and it will take a significant amount of council time to set that up and and move it forward and campaign for it if that's what we

[285:01] choose to do so when i look at everything i think staff has given us quite a good option here which is option b um and we would give certainty that that's the pathway that we are directing staff to prepare for so um i am prepared personally to support the district formation pathway but on the option b recommendation by staff and with that let me see i think it's mark and then nearby mark yeah i would also be prepared to move down the path towards a district um there seems to be a lot of support for it and i do want to put it in front of the electorate at an appropriate moment to get their determination um but i would also choose option b in terms of timing you mark nearby i just want to be clear one more time and again maybe for me or maybe for people who are watching so

[286:01] let's say we went with b and this is for staff i guess the government body would be formed they would work out all of the information and then it would would it come to council first or would it just go directly to the voters and the voters could then vote it up or down it would go to the council first so the first step would be that you would um well first the main advantage of option b if there's an advantage there is that there would be more upfront community engagement before you took action on the resolution so just it would give us the more time to do that um so hopefully we would kind of finish up the community conversation about kind of where everybody's landing in terms of the district in the summer time of 22 you would pass the resolution hopefully and we would probably have a pretty good plan already kind of laid out and thereafter we would um

[287:02] we would as part of as part after the resolution we would do the fda or appoint the board of directors and do and then do the iga and that would set the basis for the tabor election in the fall of 22. okay so when it comes to council so let's say council votes it forward then it goes to as a tabor on the ballot as a taber measure and then if people voted no on it then it would go away and we'd go back to the drawing board is that correct it pretty well you would still have the iga and you still may have kind of basically a district that has no assets and has no money and that kind of goes to how many times in the you know when we do the iga how many opportunities would you give the district to go back to the voters because they could go back to the voters in 23 and make the same request how many times do you do that before you say we're all done with the district

[288:01] conversation and we're going to look at something else for finance for the library okay so what i'm ultimately hearing you saying where i'm trying to get with this is that it ultimately is up to the residents of older whether or not so even if we move forward tonight with b option two b it's ultimately up to the residents of boulder whether or not they vote this in or not it's not council doing this is that's correct that's correct and it goes beyond boulder a little bit it's to all the voters within the district boundaries of boulder county then yeah well not all of boulder county the you know the proposed district um you know it would include like uh eat on the eastern side would be kind of the gun barrel nywot area and then it would go up into the mountains and then at some point you hit the boundary for the netherland library district so we would kind of be everything in between right that that general map that you guys had showed us back at one of the meetings yeah that's correct

[289:01] okay that's that's where you're going to get was that it's up to the voters if we move forward with this direction so thank you very much for clarifying for me mary and then bob mary thanks sam so i'm inclined um to move forward with the district path as well and to support option b for all of the reasons that sam mentioned in the context of everything that's already going on and i've been on council long enough to know that when you bombard the community with way too many things there's just there's just so much bandwidth that people can put their attention towards so so that's one thing um i think it would be advantageous in terms of getting a read on a broader slice of the potential electorate on how they feel about the

[290:01] district and and doing that outreach and getting a better read on that prior to forming um the district so um i also one of the speakers spoke about longmont forming a district perhaps there is some um advantage to having a little more time to have some conversations there um and you know backing up just a little bit about the outreach we also know that there were a lot of i think legitimate questions that were raised with respect to the previous survey um very very legitimate question so i would like to see better outreach and get a better read on the electorate as well so i think i had read or maybe staff had

[291:02] mentioned and and please correct me if i'm wrong that the commissioners didn't have the space on their work plan to do it as early as um option a proposed is that something i'm making up or did i hear something could somebody just help me out on that one um i would call upon janet michaels if she's on the call if you could turn your microphone on janet has been our primary contact with boulder county staff yeah thank you and thank you council janet michaels with the city attorney's office i don't remember them saying that it is not on their work plan that okay the the county didn't have time to do that i don't remember that being a part of the conversation that i had with county

[292:01] staff okay great thank you um in any case i think that we would be better off to do some real due diligence in terms of formulating the iga and and primarily you know picking the committee for the iga process giving ourselves enough time and thought to to do that well and make sure that we have a really good group of people working on it so that's another piece of it um so for all those reasons i would go with option b you're mary i got bob and then adam bob i'm exactly where mary and sam and mark are on this i think that we do have a lot of community outreach engagement to do and on top of the laundry list of big things that sam mentioned we also have one or two pretty big site reviews that are coming down the road and we still have to wrap up community

[293:00] benefit and we still have use tables to do so we have a very busy five months remaining i just don't see how we could jam this decision in or at least do it justice in between now and october i'm not sam said i'm not sure what the magic of october is uh if we're not going to put this to the voters until november 2022 at the earliest so i think we should do the type of engagement that mary talked about um and i would actually take it a step further i would like to see i i'm not sure if i'd be hard to know how i'll feel in six or nine months when this comes back to us but um i'd like to see you know council at the the moment of formation actually have a form of iga that's presented i wouldn't want to just appoint some people as trustees and then hope that we could reach agreement uh and find out there were two ships passing in the night uh under some sort of 90 degree shot a 90-day shot clock i would actually at the moment of formation actually have council's preferred substance of an iga on the table and say hey dear trustees you're hereby appointed this is the iga we would

[294:00] accept we can talk about the margins but this is what we would want and it may be some of the things that that mark talked about and maybe some other things but i would want the iga to be kind of effectively pre-approved by council and the community and then the trustees can look at it and say yeah we can live with this or no we can't rather than just leaving it to an open-ended negotiation um but i i agree with with the previous speakers i think the uh plan b on the on the alternative timeline that david laid out makes the most sense thank you bob adam and then juni adam yeah i also agree it seemed her best recall uh in our meeting last february that this is the approach we were sort of reaching consensus on so i think it's good we follow through with that um plus uh i do think we need the extra time and to keep with council tradition i think we just have to make sure the next two years of work plan already decided before the next council even

[295:00] gets voted in so that just you know seems to happen each council so why not keep it going thank you adam junie well i think at this time i already see where we are heading um when it comes to b i mean i would have preferred a but i see that the will of council is for b um the only thing is what if it's gonna be a new council they might decide not to go any further and it's gonna be a lot of time wasted so i would have preferred just putting it to the ballot create a valid measure for voter approval and i think as well when i think of community outreach i think a ballot measure as well serve as a level of community outreach it's either it's past or it's not because people choose not to vote it in um so it is what it is that we will be

[296:00] moving with b um but i hope that it works i think the library districting is very important and i think um just hearing from community members and i remember you know there was a time where i didn't have a job and i worked at the library as a volunteer so libraries are really important and i know we all agree that libraries are important but i wish we're moving more much faster but i understand the constraint of times and some of the challenges that we may face so thank you juni and if i could ask for a motion to extend the meeting past 11 no moved second any objections besides mark okay [Laughter] nearby and then rachel nearby um so i'm along the same lines as juni as i would have preferred to go with option um a but um i think david has at least

[297:02] put my concerns to rest and knowing that the voters ultimately will get to decide that's really where i wanted to go with this i didn't think it should be something that council made that decision on because this is such a big decision i i hope that we keep the asset of the library within our control meaning renting it out i would not ever support it in any other option um with it being a district but i i think it's um i just think it's something that it's so important to boulder that to relinquish control is inconceivable to me so um i i guess i can go with the will of counsel for option to be rachel just a question um i think i'm maybe more optimistic and that things don't always have to be as slow as as we plan them to be and i appreciate um like

[298:00] mary's point that um you know you don't want to rush things and i get that but what if staff gets into this and they're like oh no this is much faster than we thought it was going to be like we can just move through this dude do they have to go slow or by saying option b if it just goes faster can it come back to us in october i don't know who that's too i'm just asking like is it possible that it just flows quickly and and well here it is david well i think you know i guess anything is possible i'll just start with that but um you know the way that we laid it out in the memo was we laid it out as a series of um work tasks that we would do and really it's a difference in how we engage the community with option b you know the second option option b it's there's more engagement before you actually

[299:00] form the district um so i think that you know with that being the case my hope would be that it will make everything kind of along the lines of what council member yates said um after you form after you take the you know you pass the resolution to form the district that it will make everything after that go much faster and hopefully with much more consensus thank you david and david farnam yeah i just wanted to ask a clarifying question i because i from your study session on february 27th there seemed to be consensus from council that they wanted to begin the discussion about what the contents of the iga would be and i believe that came from you mayor weaver that you wanted to have knowledge in advance and bob uh yates counselor yates uh kind of seconded that and then just now mentioned

[300:00] uh additionally wanting to know so is it your is it your instruction to the staff um do you i guess this counseling informed that committee and for staff to begin working on uh a draft of an iga which would then be you know wrapped from the city because you know february 27th the discussion was forming a committee of people who would responsibly represent the interest of city council the interest of the library the interest of all these different groups and i'm wondering if you're instructing us to begin that work in 2021 or to wait for that work to 2022 because as david has pointed out multiple times i think that crunches our timeline again right so if you go back to waiting entirely to 2022 we're going to be crunched with a timeline to get a ballot measure in place and an iga if we haven't begun that discussion so david just in a colloquy to your

[301:00] question i i was just looking at option b as presented by staff and option b is presented by staff has that iga process committee put together in december of 21 presumably after the new council's seeded i suppose there's a hybrid between a and b because a has that iga process committee put together in june i suppose we could do something in between but i was just going with the staff outline when i suggested option b which would have that iga committee seated december 21 and then it would have seven months as as i read it would have seven months at least to get that iga to the point um people would vote on it so that's only if i'm reading the staff recommendation correctly does that make sense are you suggesting

[302:00] a hybrid between the two or what was your question david my question yeah i was wondering what it was you were wanting to do and so i don't i mean to be clear and david gear can correct me on this i don't believe there is a staff recommendation we're putting in front of you to look for direction sorry maybe i missed maybe i misspoke i just meant the option that was described by staff option b in the packet yeah we tried to work out the work plan scenarios which was the request in february 27th about how we could achieve these ends um yeah any hybrid would work as well it all depends upon what council wants us to do great um hang on just one sec aaron and then mary aaron yeah well first david i just i think i heard you say that option b involves more public engagement did i hear that right i think that that was that's my understanding yes yeah okay because i'm just so confused because option a it actually involves a longer

[303:00] time frame but anyway i i i hear that the the will of council is to to do the kind of option b time frame and um like we can work with that i appreciate essentially consensus on moving the district direction i think that's fantastic i i think it's worth considering a little bit of a hybrid though i i i'm hearing from the majority of council does not a desire not to pass a resolution you know um this year but if we could lay some of the groundwork for what an iga might look like um you know and not kind of start do a standing start in december sometime right before the holidays i think we might give ourselves a little bit more room for a you know a roomier timetable in 2022 so hearing that there's no kind of 100 web to exactly option air option b i just suggest that we get a bit more of a start in 2021 uh well it's fine to mostly follow the option b time table but and and we can do that

[304:02] i mean this it's a guideline you know i think that really i think that the option b is more about when you do when you do the resolution what we do beforehand we can start that earlier and in fact part of part of the intent of just putting together sample igas and resolutions that are in the packet tonight was to start that cut you know really to start that conversation and that was very helpful having those right now it helped me visualize them for sure mary yeah thanks erin that's that's a good segue into um a proposal i wanted to make and so my proposal is is that we form the committee in the october time frame and that we take our time forming the committee then we would have this council appointing that committee

[305:01] and they could get going you know as soon as some some date between december and let's see when is that anyway we formed the the committee in in october and that gives us a little time to really be thoughtful about that formation so that's my proposal and then the rest of the the schedule can fall into place with that yeah and mary i just want to call a queen and agree i like the idea of seating the iga committee because it does demonstrate that this council you know we're not just saying it and then punting it to another council we're starting the process within this council so i i think that's a helpful suggestion and and it's like along the lines of what aaron said

[306:00] as well so um i i'd be happy with um a hybrid of that sort i think it's a good idea and um i i don't know if there's anything magic about october maybe september would work as well just something you know after the break after we get back and once we've got our feet under us with all the things we have to do maybe we can then as councils say when we want to recruit and seat that committee but i agree i think that would be good to do on this council to see that committee i suggested um october because i was thinking september is when we're talking about budget we start having the budget um conversations and there's going to be some tough conversations around that as well as all of the things that you mentioned there's cu south there's the the site reviews there's the community benefit there's um the use tables all of that stuff

[307:01] and we can hopefully get the majority of that stuff out of the way and then in october have some space and then you know maybe staff spends a little bit of time putting out the the announcements for applications to the committee i'm not sure what that process looks like mark yeah for all the people who participated tonight i hope uh you will see that the takeaway tonight is is not that we did not pass a resolution this evening but as i look at it all nine members of council have indicated a willingness to go down the path of creating a library district and putting that in front of the voters of boulder and so you know i i hope uh people who are participating tonight and listening will not think that this is somehow punting it uh down the road um it's simply a

[308:02] reflection of the workload that staff has and that we have between now um and the next council and we're fairly heavily burdened as is um but every member of this council has expressed a willingness to move down that path and i think that should be the primary takeaway from this evening's conversation thanks very good thank you so i would invite emotion maybe mary or aaron would like to make it that um synthesizes the discussion we've just had and maybe we can move ahead i will just point out mark to your point and to an earlier question i asked there was no idea that tonight we would pass a resolution that would form a district that was not in front of us it wasn't a staff recommendation it was just that we pick a pathway if we want to go in that direction and give staff direction about a

[309:00] schedule so just for what it's worth i don't think we were ever likely to pass a district formation resolution tonight just to launch a work plan i just want to make that clear to people listening as well but just to colloquy on that it's that we were getting a number of comments that were basically suggesting to us that we act now act immediately and yes i understand that was not in contemplation for us but at the extent that people have made those comments and feel disappointed that we did not act i think there's good reason for that in addition to it not being part of the uh the scope of what we were going to do this evening all right bob yeah as long as we're clarifying um you know why we're doing what we're doing while all the speakers tonight um were i think all the speakers tonight were advocating for a library formation of a library district community should also know that we received a few dozen emails from people in the community who were opposed um so um i would say that the emails

[310:02] were probably two to one or three to one in favor so there was certainly a a more people that contacted us either in writing or or this evening um who were in favor um it wasn't um it wasn't an absence of opposition it was a significant number of people i think those are the people that we want to hear from in addition to the proponents under the community engagement that mary was talking about i think we want to open it up and listen to everybody in the community and not um limit it to those people having to speak at a public hearing on a particular night and you bob we've got mary rachel and aaron mary i'm going to put a motion on the table so i move that we direct staff to begin work to create a ballot measure for voter approval for a new dedicated municipal property tax to fund library services using option b as the main path

[311:03] forward with the formation of the committee um in the october time frame thank you may i ask a clarifying question please you said a dedicated municipal tax i was reading the motion language did i say i said a dedicated municipal property tax it should be on the motion page on uh page two of the memo if you're looking for the district one it is ah it's the first one yeah oh okay sorry about that um i was i was thinking back on the slide but um all right so erase what i just said um strike that from the record or whatever um so i move that we direct staff to begin the work to form a library district by city

[312:01] council resolution using option b as the main work plan schedule with the formation of with the exception of a formation for the process committee in october of 2021 okay good is there a second yes second okay emotion and the second um if it's okay rachel and aaron i'll let mary speak to her motion and then go to you mary would you like to speak to your motion yeah um i i think that this is the right way to go i i do think that we need to conduct more outreach that is a little bit more widespread i think a lot of the outreach has mainly focused within the city of boulder so we need to reach out to the broader community that the district would consist of so that's an important piece um

[313:00] i think also that to go with the shorter time frame would put a lot of pressure not just on staff especially finance staff but on council as well our schedules our our meetings are pretty packed already with a lot of um stuff that we need to get done in this council and so i see forming the process committee as a kind of hybrid way forward very good and if it's okay i'll go to rachel and then erin and then i'll come back to you mark to speak to your second um rachel um well so i didn't realize i'd be like going after the motion and was more responding to um mark wallach's last statement um about you know community members and people who maybe didn't understand what we were doing tonight um and and that we weren't really teed up to form a district by resolution um i also said that and so i want to make it clear that i wasn't misinformed or

[314:01] under-informed or saying that accidentally um you know i requested in february that we receive a staff recommendation on this on whether staff wanted us to form a district by resolution um and we didn't get a recommendation um i don't know if staff couldn't do that or what that was about but given that we didn't have a specific recommendation it was entirely within the scope of possibility for tonight to have that vote so i just wanted to make that clear and we did have a public hearing and and it would have been a very fair thing to vote on tonight and also just to clarify i have not received dozens of emails um opposing this i saw a handful i feel like um in the last day or two but that doesn't so just want to clarify those points and i will support i'm glad that we're moving forward with this um and and hopefully not creating too much delay so we'll be supporting uh mary's motion

[315:02] aaron yeah oh i just wanted to address the the email question i did a real quick search on on district and in my council email box but i think maybe there was maybe 12 or 15 in opposition i did a quick count of maybe 80 in supports i think it was a little more a little more skewed um about than maybe but we we could get we could do a uh an official count maybe definitely had some opposition but i think it was definitely more skewed in sport uh and then i am happy to support the motion uh i'm really glad we're moving forward with the library district and i look forward to the formation of that committee in october thank you aaron mark do you want to speak to your second and then i'll go to bob yeah very very briefly um i obviously support uh mary's motion i um i think it's uh appropriate for staff given their constrained resources at this time but i also think it's

[316:00] important to actually get the show on the road and i think that's what we're doing tonight and um i'm very supportive of doing that so i am happy to vote in favor thank you mark bob i just wanted to observe that some of us receive direct emails from constituents that come to individual council members that don't go to the council uh general mailbox okay thanks i thought you were just talking about the general counsel emails thanks for the clarification bob now yeah i just wanted to also add that um one of the two of the emails that i did see come through were emails that were asking people to email counsel in favor of the library district i did not see any emails that were going out to people to vote not in favor of or to speak not in favor of the library district so that gives me a little bit of pause um that there has been encouragement for

[317:01] one path forward and doesn't seem to be encouragement for the other one not to say that there is or there isn't but um i think that is cause enough to want to do um our due diligence with respect to outreach good and before i call for a vote i'm just going to make one small comment i'm glad that we're moving forward with this we may as well um get the iga worked out because those details are important and take it to council and then to the voters i will point out that um one of the challenges that this is going to face in 2022 will be a likely county ballot measure and now one or more of these could come this year but i do know that the county has got at least three ballot measures that are being discussed one around

[318:01] mental health funding one around affordable housing and one around transportation so another thing that i'd encourage everyone who is hopeful about a library district to do is to think about what that's going to look like and how whatever level of mill levy is ultimately kind of tested with voters for acceptability and run probably should contemplate whatever the county is thinking about doing in 2022 so that's just kind of a contextual comment that there's a few things to do here get the iga right figure out what the city is going to do as far as assets and employees and the transfer and i do believe that there's good models for all of that but then the next part of this is getting the voters to weigh in on taxing themselves and it's not free money it will create room in the city budget if we have a district funding a library for

[319:01] sure but it is a tax burden and so you know it is just worth thinking through what the other asks are going to be of taxpayers both in boulder and in the district with that if there are no more comments i will call for a vote on mary's motion anyone want to weigh in okay uh all in favor of uh the motion on the table raise your hand it's mine's up one two three it is unanimous all right well congratulations thank you staff thank you both david farnand and david gear and the rest of staff who supported this it is good to see this moving forward and i see david would like to say something first of all i just wanted to recognize our staff team it took a great deal of coordination to bring this forward to you this evening um and i i would also just like to thank the council for the direction because i

[320:00] truly do believe that the tweaks and modifications that you made to the work plan that we put together um has made it a much better product so thank you thank you david um any other comments from council before we close this item okay with that this item is done alicia i believe we're at the end is there anything else we have alicia you're muted yeah you keep meeting me okay okay sorry about that no problem all right no sir i think that was our last item okay very good um so debrief and comment adam yeah i just wanted to flag something we got an email update from the beginning of the meeting about the gun barrel iga and the commenter was actually correct that it was expiring in 15 years not 20 jacob lindsay pointed that out so that's a discussion we'll have to

[321:00] have in the future too very good and i just want to put that out there publicly yeah thank you thank you adam that's a good reminder yep jacob did by email let us know that um he was mistaken and that staff will be coming back to us with um information on that so thank you adam for that aaron thanks and i was just gonna add that staff is working on it now now that it's on their radar so thanks and thanks to the public who come into tonight um both at open comment and the public hearing your passion is noted and we appreciate your input for sure with that i'll gavel this meeting closed at 11 26. thank you all so much for your time everyone have a good evening good night good night thank you thank

[322:00] you so [Music] you