June 15, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:18] hi Alicia what up Miss Brenda hi Carl Jennifer let me know in the Q&A if you want to be promoted how are you doing this evening Miss Johnson I was telling Brenda oh do we have public on here too uh we have um yep couple folks all right well I'll tell you later very a long day yeah and so it says that my video won't come on you cannot start

[1:00] your video because the host has stopped it I'm usually on by now but I just got finished certifying petitions and trying to get that out before the end of the business day there you go you should be able to do it now all right yeah because you know I don't want to be looking like a hag on TV I missed a um missed a setting there to tell me ah you know I always come on expecting technical difficulties because you know it's just that that's the age we live in now the technical age shiny oh my God I look so shiny Shin only because you're Sparkle oh okay Sparkle I'm thinking shiny okay that's better you doing all right this even

[2:00] been yeah yeah it's been long day but I haven't done this in a couple weeks so I'm ready to go amen amen yeah very good break in a couple weeks so I'm sure Council will be grateful yeah I know I will yeah we get to catch up you know we've been one down for a while now so I know I know then petitions all kinds of stuff you get to post your position we'll talk about it later you can tell me about it very good so you're good at reading people right all right well I'm gonna go grab some water because I only have about seven minutes and then I'll be back very good thank you by right sweetie good to

[3:00] see you you too evening naria welcome Regina let me know in the chat if you would like to be promoted if you'll be speaking this evening are you talking to me Brenda uh nope I was talking to Regina ellner oh okay super thank you so much hello checking in hello glad to see you excellent and Adam wins tonight

[4:01] I don't know if I consider this winning well you're first how's that that's something you are first I you know I worry when you're not here first so I know I know I don't like people worrying oh and Tom is waiting to come in hello evening Tom that looks lovely where you are it is it's actually rained almost constantly since we arrived here are you there already yeah this is I'm in Oregon well then yes that's to be expected I think right

[5:00] yeah hey Adam I got out in the wamit this morning in a quad awesome yeah yeah good to get uh Row in the new water yep pretty lovely I would not go out in the current temperatures personally unless it was very early well they roll pretty early hello everyone ma good evening Mark Bob was neglecting my kindergarten duties right that Rachel Rachel calls them when I greet Everyone by name David it looks like you're in the office I am in the office

[6:02] you know I wanted a good internet connection and it took about you know I don't know five minutes before the zoom call connected so I was just wondering if it was really not a a great choice but I'm here and you both look marvelous hey Tom hi David hey Alicia how you doing Alicia I'm hanging in there how you doing good so so Alicia in your honor I am wearing my favorite bowling tie that's right so that means we need to go bowling before you retire yeah that means we need to go bowling before you retire that's what I say in your honor

[8:03] [Music] oh there's [Music] Mary I saw that Tom you saw what Mary something that would have gotten you in trouble last week last week yep was the different

[9:01] week different time here comes nearby okay now I'm really worried about juny because she's always right behind Adam everybody's right behind Adam well yes but juny is usually right behind Adam as far as a Ral goes so we're waiting for Rachel Aaron and he me here's [Music] [Music] Rachel

[10:15] [Music] so Brenda just to make sure I've got this right I'm GNA call on you after we're done with the Declarations is that right yep before open comment got it and I just got a text from Aaron saying he is almost in great good evening everyone Channel 8 is on air [Music] great

[11:01] [Music] everybody some technical [Music] difficulties awesome perfect I will start recording whenever you're ready Sam I Am Ready go ahead and kick us off and we are recording very good welcome everyone to the June 15 2021 meeting of the Boulder City Council um we're going to start tonight with a few announcements if we can go ahead and get those slides put up our first announcement is that covid-19 vaccinations are obviously being given and if you'd like information on getting your vaccine or just sign up for notifications you can go to the website

[12:03] which is shown on the slide um bouldercounty.org families disease covid-19 vaccines next announcement um boards and commissions um we are still accepting applications to serve on a few of our boards and commissions and we would love to have you um sign up to be on one of these um the boards that we are still recruiting for are the Boulder Junction access District parking Boulder Junction access District travel demand management and the beverage licensing Authority if you are interested in applying you can go to the website on the slide which is bouldercolorado.gov boards dasc commissions and the third announcement this evening is the city has launched a re-imagine policing effort and we are seeking Community feedback a

[13:01] questionnaire is available at the um website on the slide which is beheard boulder. org reimagine DP policing and that questionnaire is available until the end of July so about six weeks this is a great way for individuals to provide us with input on your own time and in a safe and Anonymous space if you prefer to provide your feedback verbally or to par participate in a conversation with CD staff and other community members please sign up for an upcoming online Forum you can access the sign up for those forums and the available dates on that same beard Boulders page and with that Alicia could you please call the role yes sir and good evening everyone council member Brockett present friend Alicia I'm here hi Miss Rachel

[14:01] Joseph here here can you hear me I got you yes ma'am Nagel here swl present wallik present Weaver here Yates here and young present mayor we have a quorum thank you Alicia so first tonight we need to add some item to our agenda the items that we need to add are item 1 c a declaration for Tom Carr item 1D a declaration for Chief Deputy City attorney David gear item 3j which is an update from the city attorney search committee identifying City attorney finalists and then a motion to accept candidates as finalists and then we also need to reorder the public hearings we need to move uh what had former been item 5c to be 5A so that's the landmark

[15:03] hearing and then uh we need to move 5A to 5B and 5B to 5 C so that's just moving the last item to the first item in our public hearings so if I could have a motion to amend the agenda so moved second we have a motion in a second does anyone object to uh changing the agenda seeing no objections that passes unanimously and with that I believe we will turn to declarations for this evening and the first one is about immigrant Heritage Month presented by council member wallik mark thank you mayor um just a quick note this um declaration is resonates with me very strongly I am the uh grandson of four immigrant grandparents I am married to a woman who is the daughter of an immigrant and so I am very grateful for

[16:01] the opportunity to read this tonight immigrant Heritage Month celebrates the generations of immigrants from every corner of the globe who have built our country's economy created the unique character of our city and are linked in a shared history immigrants have come here to work to learn and to find Freedom in shelter they're an important part of Colorado's history and continue to keep the workforce competitive businesses Innovative and the economy strong in addition to economic contributions immigrants bring diverse perspectives and experiences that make for a unique social and cultural influence fundamentally enriching this extraordinary the extraordinary character of our community immigrants have been steadfast leaders not only in securing their own rights and access to equal opportunity but have also campaigned to create a fair and more just Society for all yet

[17:00] despite these countless contributions the role of immigrants in building and advancing our nation has frequently been overlooked and undervalued throughout our history and continuing to the present day one in 10 Boulder County residents is an immigrant and this exceptional group of people adds to the variety of languages customs and Cuisines which contributes to the cultural diversity enjoyed in the city therefore the city Council of the city of Boulder Colorado declares June 2021 as imig as immigrant heritage month and urge all to join in recognizing the distinct value that lies in welcoming people of different backgrounds and treating all with dignity and respect thank you thank you very much Mark um we'll move on to our next declaration which I will present um the Declaration I'm going to present tonight is observe serving juneth Independence Day June

[18:01] 19th 1865 the day on which slavery finally came to an end in the United States we'll begin the Declaration with a quotation no one is free until we are all free which was said by the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1st 1863 yet news of the end of slavery did not reach the frontier areas of the United States and in particular the southwestern States for over two and a half years even after word had spread about the order some slave masters chose to withhold the information holding them as slaves through one more harvest season on June 19th 1865 Union Soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galvis Texas with news that the Civil War had ended

[19:00] and that the enslaved were free reactions to this news rang from shock to Jubilation as such African-Americans who had been slaves in the southwest celebrated June 19th commonly known as juneth Independence Day as inspiration and encouragement for future Generations over more than 150 years the tradition of observing juneth Independence Day Has remained the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery this significant day places a special emphasis on education and tolerance while encouraging self-development and respect for all cultures the fight for Freedom does not exist in a vacuum and the struggle against depression and force sovereignty is one we collectively share and are inextricably linked to juneth celebrates the unity and mutuality of American Liberty real life which makes juneth a celebration of

[20:01] freedom and justice for all Americans not only those enslaved and their Descendants the late Lula Briggs Galloway of Sagen Michigan author so social activist and curator of African-American history was the originator of the interim juneth creative Culture Center and museum in Sagen Michigan Galloway successfully worked to bring National recognition to Jun Independence Day and encourag Congress to pass a resolution in 1997 in honor of the day to help recognize this important day the city of Boulder human relations commission has allocated funding to support a juneth celebration hosted by the executive committee for africanamerican cultural events and the National Association for the advancement of colored people held on June 19th 2021 a.m. this free virtual juneth

[21:00] presentation will celebrate freedom acknowledge local community members in the fight for equity and Justice and pay special tribute to M opal Lee the 94 years old grandmother of juneth the city council of the city of Boulder first acknowledges the historical significance of juneth Independence Day second supports the continued celebration of juneth Independence Day to provide provide an opportunity for community members to learn more about the past and to better understand the experiences that have shaped our nation third recognizes that the observance of the end of slavery is a part of the history and Heritage of the United States and finally encourages people to join together in celebration and solidarity and urge all residents to actively raise their own awareness of the significance of this celebration in American history and in the heritage of our nation and City and with that I will now turn to

[22:03] council member young to present a declaration in honor of outgoing City attorney Tom Carr Mary excuse me we do have H representative from the NAACP and um thank you for the reminder and I apologize for overlooking that um Dr Taylor hello everyone I'm Dr DeAndre Taylor and thank you mayor for reading that wonderful uh declaration I'm here just to say a bit about juneth and first as I want I do want to thank the city of Boulder for uh the proclamation and the Declaration as we honor uh and as we celebrate juneth I want to put it in perspective very quickly you know we're going to be doing something great on Saturday and I'm so happy and delighted and elated that Boulder the city of Boulder can be a part of this we're celebrating 156 years of juneth excuse me 156 years of juneth to put it in

[23:01] perspective America is 244 years old and we're going to be celebrating 156 years of juneth so you can do the math and why particularly juneth is very important to African-Americans but just as it is important for African-Americans it's very important for the nation and our and our history of our nation to understand juneth while we celebrate July 4th as our nation's independent and of course we honor that date but we also want to honor June 19th 1865 because that's when African-Americans and over and millions of people were enslaved throughout that period and that's when African-Americans truly when we truly got our freedom and so on Saturday we're going to be bringing something wonderful it's going to be educational that program but it's also going to be celebrating black Excellence black Excellence through Talent black Excellence through service and black Excellence through history we have Miss opal who's 94 years old and she's leading the charge to make juneth a national holiday uh for the country she's collected over 1.5 million

[24:00] signatures and she need only just a minimum of 1.5 more and I'm so under I'm so uh excited that she can get there we're gonna highlight students from the boulder from Boulder high school they're blacks in the liance we're going to have uh dancers from CU Boulder we're going to even have a poem from a Denver public school student but it's also going to feature uh Miss Alice Fe dunan who's a who's a children author and she actually wrote a book about misle so if you have children please have your children uh log in on that time too so that they can partake and understand the history and behind me this is the Jun te flag that is flying outside of the municipal building in Boulder it's also flying outside the Civic Center in Longmont and as you can see the the the what the the Flag represents you can see that burst and that burst there represents the new dawn when African-Americans received their freedom from slavery and being enslaved for all those hundreds of years and so I just want everyone on this call to as we as we embark on June 19th we

[25:01] heard a resolution about immigrant day for Mr wallik and we thank you for that Mr wall for honoring IM immigrant day and America is filled with Rich history and we have to make sure that each segment of our history is honored and understand the importance of how it makes it the fabric of who we are I'm looking around this call right here I see so many different faces and so many different identities that are represented which is awesome and as we march to 156 years celebrating juneth which is this Saturday it's going to be virtual and we want you all to partake in that we want to honor the history of America because juneth is American history and I'll turn it over to back to juny and I believe we have Miss Woodly on the call as well from the nacp I'm go ahead waiting for juny no I it's for you actually all right no thank

[26:02] you so much thank you for having us I am mateline strong Woodley okay there you are awesome you see me now yeah uh good afternoon good evening everyone thank you so much for having us we are so elated to join you and have you join us in this effort you know DeAndre said it well and he pretty much said it all I'm just going to say that the executive committee for African-American cultural events in partnership with our Boulder County um and and that is a Boulder County um organization as well but the um in wacp um Boulder County Branch headed by um Annette James as our um president uh is is very very very much active and we're all very interested in joining with you and you joining with us

[27:02] uh Erin I see you hi y'all probably did probably didn't know Erin is a singer and you'll asking here at some point you'll see him with my choir uh but I want to thank the uh city of uh Boulders uh Human Resource Commission for supporting us um and um everything that we're doing the um ease is the acronym for the executive committee for African-American cultural events because of course as you can tell that's a mouthful uh uh but we are an answer to a call to action that call to action said well why is it that we only have celebrations for Dr M and black history is there nothing else or can you not present things to the to the community the community is interested and we want to embrace with you so the U the

[28:04] creation of ease is um as a result of that call to action it uh is absolutely my honor to be here this evening to um councilwoman juny Jose up thank you so so very much for all you've done and all you're doing in support of our efforts and in turn we're here to support you as well and the council um as I said that's about it for me DeAndre said everything I think that needed to be said um I will say e case is predicated on of Five Pillars they are education celebration uh tribute solidarity and service those five pillars are the pillars uh by which we uh springboard all of our activities so check it check

[29:00] us out on Facebook if you would and by all means please join us and please spread the word to everybody you know your networks your uh social media platforms again thank you and good evening thank you so much Dr Taylor and Miss Woodley it's a pleasure to have you here um with that I will turn to councilwoman young to present the Declaration for Tom Carr all right um so it's my honor to read the Declaration in honor of Thomas a car's service to the city of Boulder June 15 2021 in June 10th the city of Boulder in in in 2010 the city of Boulder had the great Fortune of hiring Thomas a car as the

[30:00] new City attorney during the past 11 years Tom has been un unwavering source of leadership legal Mastery respect and integrity for the city prior to 2010 Tom was the City attorney for the city of Seattle for eight years and prior to that an assistant United States Attorney for the eastern district of New York specializing in Prosecuting organized crime and civil racketeer influenced and corrupt organization cases born and raised in the Bronx Boro of New York occasionally you might hear his endearing East Coast accent sneak out to everyone's Delight as the City attorney Tom Carr was the primary legal adviser to the city council and city manager and skillfully managed the city attorney's office staff and outside Council Arrangements

[31:01] Tom is a member of the board of directors of the association of Prosecuting attorneys and a regional vice president of the international Municipal Lawyers Association during his tenure with the city Tom brought a collective a collaborative problemsolving approach to a variety of complex legal issues to name a few outstanding representation of the city in many lawsuits including arguments to the Colorado Court of Appeals and the Colorado Supreme Court provided excellent legal assistance at more than 500 City Council meetings and study sessions provided invaluable legal direction to implement a robust electronic format of petitioning called Boulder direct democracy major role in implementation of a voter approved program providing

[32:01] eviction prevention and rental assistance services to community members successfully shephered countless ballot measures to election provided First Amendment legal advice during various protests participated in mean meaningful tribal consultations drafted High a high-capacity magazine and assault weapon ban ordinance principal legal adviser to the city's climate municipalization effort that spanned 10 years guided the city's electric utility effort Excel franchise and settlement agreements with Public Service Company renegotiated the Colorado shiaka lease covid-19 disaster declaration and emergency orders medical and recreational marijuana Boulder Community Health Campus acquisition Community Broadband

[33:03] initiative when asked to describ Tom Chief Deputy City attorney David gear was quoted as saying Tom is a gifted leader Mentor teammate and friend his passion for justice combined with his Superior legal skills has served Boulder well from the perspective of the city attorney's office he will be remembered as a supportive and caring person who brought positivity good humor and energy to all of the staff he valued healthy work life balance and helping people grow and cultivate their talent under his mentorship staff had the chance to learn and develop into leaders of Tomorrow Deputy City attorney Erin Poe said the value you place on our families has made a world of difference for so many of us I don't know what I would have done without your kindness and

[34:02] empathy another city Department staff said you always took my team into consideration valued our input and approached challenging situations with an open mind and heart you are truly one of a kind and will be missed we the members of the Boulder City Council recognize honor and appreciate the service and significant contributions to the city and Community made by Tom Carr thank you for your many years of hard work and commitment to Boulder the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado declares June 15 2021 City attorney Tom car day and we urge all members of our community to wish Tom well in his new Endeavors thank you Mary Tom would you like to say a few

[35:01] words uh my connection may not be great so thank you so much I'm I'm I'm humbled and honored by the the the Declaration Mary thank you so much for reading it reading it so well uh it's been a great honor and privilege to work with the great team at Boulder and the many city council members and Mayors I had the opportunity to serve um I will miss you all greatly and thank you very much and Rachel I didn't know if we were going to be invited to individually say a few words um good I would like to so um I want to thank you Tom for always answering the phone and always having um quick and ready wisdom at your disposal um and for those who don't know that was true um of Tom even when I was just a a Community member and not everyone calls like nobody's back and Tom Carr does uh so I want to say thank you from the bottom of

[36:01] my heart for the work that you do and the um generosity and wisdom that you have shared with me um and and also want to briefly say that the first time I I really paid a lot of attention to Tom was during the assault weapons ban which was uh as a gun violence prevention activist in area that I knew well and Tom very quickly like got up to speed and then knew more than the rest of us so I was so impressed and wilded by by intellect um and and uh just ability to pick up something new so um I I will miss you a lot Tom and wish you well in in your new Endeavor thank you Rachel Mary and then Aaron Tom thank you for all of your hard hard work you may very well be the hardest working person I know and I know a lot of hardworking people so um thank you for giving your heart and soul to the city and I know that um the county

[37:01] of Washington will get the best City attorney and the hardest working person that they can possibly get so thank you thank you thank you thanks Mary Erin yeah just thanks so much Tom it's been such a pleasure to work together the last five odd years and I've benefited enormously from your extremely sound legal advice and all of your expertise um so very appreciative of the partnership and and uh best of luck in the next uh next phases which I see you're already embarking on in what looks like a cooler place than than we are here right now so take care thanks sarin Adam uh I've thanked Tom many times but uh I felt on a personal level it's really important to do it just once more and I will many other times because I would not be on city council without Tom's help um the first time I ran when nobody knew who I was Tom taught me all that he knew about the city so that I had something to talk about and some

[38:02] background to know for when I ran so um and even before then I was coaching him as a rower so before he uh coached me I was coaching him which is a pretty fun little backstory but thank you Tom for all you did not only for me but for the city thank you Adam and nearby and then Bob mayby I just wanted to say a quick H thanks Tom I know I didn't work with you as much but like Rachel said whenever help was needed or questions um were asked you were right on top of it and ready with multiple options and ways of looking at things so I really appreciate um everything that you've given to the city and how willing you were to work with everyone um no matter what the topic was so we wish you the absolute best moving forward and H have a blast enjoy enjoy what your next step is thanks mayor by um Bob and then juny Bob

[39:02] hey Tom um a few people um appreciate how hard a lawyer's job is um than another lawyer and uh I've observed You Through The Years both before I got on Counsel and on Council how hard is Mary said you work and and all the things that you do behind the scenes that are not known not recognized not thank it's it's a little like an iceberg 10% on the top and 90% is below the water so I want to thank you for the 90% uh below the water the things that you did to make the city look good make the staff look good make Council look good um that often was not recognized by most of us so thank you so much Tom thanks Bob juny oh my goodness Tom I think just hearing everyone saying goodbye to you really sound it's painful for me because it's almost like losing a family member because again when I joined Council I meet all these wonderful people and little by

[40:00] little people are leaving and you know just hearing that conversation and people making comments today just makes me sad um you know thank you for your service thank you for all that you've done for the community for Boulder and you know I wish you the best of luck in your next opportunity where you going I hope you enjoy it as well and when you come back to Boulder um I hope to get an opportunity to see you again thank you jie Mark Tom I think my enduring memory of you is going to be you are sitting up uh at the de during a council meeting answering questions looking up statutes um giving us Alternatives all at the same time um I I find that to be a remarkable skill I gave up the practice of law many years ago and watching you do this has confirmed the wisdom of my choice um so I I wish you the best I uh I hope

[41:00] there's actually less stress uh in the job than we we're always putting on you um in your new job and uh the best of luck be well and one question I I hadn't realized that you were um from the eastern district and had been in New York um can you still curse like a New Yorker I take the fifth it's very like a true attorney Tom um I'll take my turn and say thank you very much for all your years of service um you were the one who oriented me when I first got appointed to planning board so as far as the face of the city goes you were the first one I officially saw and taught me what I could and could and should and shouldn't do so thank you for that and of course for the next decade that I've had the chance to work with you you are an excellent attorney and as everyone has said you have one of the the most outstanding work ethics of anyone I've ever worked with um I was

[42:02] able to call you in the evenings on the weekends or during the work week and know that you would pick up and that was a great source of comfort so congratulations on your new career move and best of luck and as Junie said when you come back to Boulder let us know so we can all get together with you thank you again you thank you everyone thanks Tom and with that we will turn to council member Brockett who will present a declaration in honor of David gear Arin all right well it is a great honor to be able to read this declaration for David I'll just mention that uh when I was appointed to planning board 10 odd years ago David was the planning board attorney and I have benefited from his uh wise and scious advice uh the whole time ever since so it's been 10 10 good years so let's let's launch to the Declaration here all right declaration in honor of Chief Deputy City attorney

[43:01] David Gear's service to the city of Boulder June 15th 2021 after over 30 years of service to the city of Boulder David gear will be retiring on June 30th 2021 after joining the city attorney's office as an entry-level attorney in 1990 David's role in the office grew in scope and responsibility including positions of assistant and Senior assistant City attorney Deputy City attorney and Chief Deputy City attorney and David also served as interim City attorney in 2010 and interim planning director in 2017 over those years David advised and provided leadership to the city on a wide variety of important initiatives and projects including the exploration of alternatives to fund the library the Long's Garden conservation easement acquisition the Valmont be cleanup efforts the development of the St Julian hotel and parking project election reform efforts and the community culture and safety tax to name just a few provided legal counsel to many planning initiatives in the city including

[44:00] numerous Boulder Valley comprehensive plan updates the Alpine Balsam vision and area plans the North Boulder subc community plan transit Village area plan numerous planning efforts in the Boulder Valley Regional Center and supporting in intergovernmental agreements and implementation plans participation in numerous projects that support City goals to provide affordable housing in the community and to provide shelter and services to persons experiencing homelessness provided guidance to efforts supporting downtown Boulder in the hill most recently with the Hill Hotel Redevelopment attended numerous meetings drafted countless contracts and ordinances and worked to find Equitable outcomes for many problems and disputes served as legal adviser to landmarks board and planing board Project Lead on the city's climate municipalization efforts and subsequent partnership with the Public Service Company showed leadership and humor by volunteering to host the annual employee vision and values award ceremony helped build and enjoyed working with departments that are full of wonderful

[45:00] and talented professionals during his Decades of service David is proud of the solid and fair legal advice that he provided to City councils boards and commissions especially the planning boards and landmarks boards and city managers and staff David has also provided advice and counsel to colleagues in all areas of the city on a wide host of topics David is widely recognized by leaders in the community as a person of character and skill Boulder City attorney Tom Carr hailed him as a man of honor and integrity Deputy city manager Chris meschuk said David makes the difference in making the workplace a nice place to work he always provides history humor Sage advice perspective and forgiveness in all interactions Mayor Sam Weaver says David's exemplary service has enriched the City by his many years of late nights collaboration and work with the community it is clear that as a resident and employee he always kept the needs of the community at heart interim City attorney Sandra Janes says David is the

[46:01] best kind of attorney a guy who wants to make sure all ideas are heard and to be fair David himself is modest placing the credit for his success with the community council and the organization our job is to give voice to our community and Council he says surround yourself with good people and trust them listen communicate and Trust the process so the city of Council of the city of Boulder Colorado declares June 30th 2021 Chief Deputy City attorney David gear day and we urge all members of our community to wish David well in his retirements David with that do you have some words you'd like to say sure thank you very much Erin that was very nice and very nice um thoughts and words that you have conveyed to me um you know I just want to uh kind of acknowledge the fact that I think I came into this organization with the certain amount of humility and I I hope to be departing with a with a similar amount it's a

[47:00] wonderful Community we it's so engaged um and I have to say that over the years um the community and all of you and all of the boards and commissions have done a great job in in demonstrating why humility is a good trait to have when you work in this organization but with that said um you know I really look up to all nine of you and as well as your predecessor professors as um the ultimate leaders um and you know everything that you do for the community in terms of making decisions and um putting us on the right path is nothing but inspirational so um I I'm again humbled that I had an opportunity to serve serve you as well as serve with you um you know as we have tried to hopefully make Boulder a little bit better place as we move forward so thank you so much thank you David for sharing that

[48:01] and we have a few people who like to say their own words we have Bob juny and Mary Bob well David there's um there's two types of people in the world there's nice people and then there's lawyers and you're one of the rare rare lawyers who's also nice uh you're one of the kindest um most Pleasant people I know but what without uh with with with a sense of humor too you I know when you get that little twinkle in your eye and that little smirk you're about to say something that's pretty funny and pretty wise and I am just going to miss you as a human being I know that you'll be hanging up your uh your your gloves as a lawyer um but you'll always be nice and uh I think we've all each of us have had opportunity to interact with you um have been enriched by it so thank you so much for for being um our lawyer but also being our friend thank you Bob jimy David um thank you for your service thank you for everything that

[49:01] you've done for us as a community and also as a councel I also have a special affinity for you even though you probably didn't know that um when I was running for councel you were actually in the room giving us information on how to run for councel and the different rules and I remember there there were times I was really scared um and I won and for some reason everyone who I met along the way during my race I have a special affinity for and you are one of them so um I wish you best of luck in the future and enjoy your retirement your time off and I look forward to seeing you if you're still around Boulder thanks thank you jimy Mary so David lives pretty close to where we live and um throughout the pandemic I

[50:01] would um run into David and his wife Rachel walking and we'd say hello and then sometimes even twice on the same walk we'd run into each other so um I'm assuming that we were doing the same Loop in the neighborhood and um my husband and I called that called that Loop the hooton Weaver Loop because it goes by Edie hooten's house and by um Sam Weaver's house um so in honor of David's retirement we have renamed that Loop the gear Loop so I hope to run into you often on the Beloved gear Loop and see you and Rachel smiling away enjoying the fresh air thank you Mary thanks Mary Rachel thanks Sam um David as I was

[51:02] listening to Aaron Reed he mentioned I think planning redevelopments building codes landmarks and annexations and all of that in Boulder where it suffice it to say those are intense topics um they are also um in my experience as an attorney uh in addition to being intense very rigorous very detailed and very dull so I want to say I think you deserve more than even although I like what Mary just did she named a a you know route after you and we've named a day after you I feel like maybe you should be sainted or something like that because what you've done for the city for decades is pretty incredible so I am grateful and um I've enjoyed working with you recently on a you know small annexation issue so you will be missed there and throughout the organization and I thank you for all your service thank you thanks Rachel mby David I just wanted to say that you

[52:01] are always one of my favorite people again I I know I didn't speak with you all that often but you just your personality just shines through you're just again like kind of what Bob said you're just you have a kindness about you and a humility that is um probably to be learned by many others uh including myself and it's just appreciated and 30 years is incredible so thank you for giving your life um to Boulder and I don't think we could ever pay you back for that so we wish you the absolute best moving forward thank you Mir thanks Mir Adam yeah David uh as several of us have alluded to you're kind of a by the Numbers guy and uh by the Numbers you've been serving almost as long as I've been alive and you've been serving almost collectively as long as all of us have been on Council uh together like number of years into total so uh none of us can live up to that level of commitment you know you are far outshined what any of

[53:01] us can possibly do so thank you so much for everything you've done and you know the city is forever indebted thank you Adam thanks Adam Mark David I I think it's extraordinary that you've managed to do this for 30 years um and perhaps even more extraordinary that you've been able to do it for 30 years um with good humor and Grace um uh not to mention an extraordinarily high level of of confidence and skill um I I think this Council and this city are going to be somewhat diminished by your absence on a personal level we're going to miss you and I hope you've got some good plans for the future thank you Mark thanks Mark Aaron well I already said a few words but I just couldn't resist just a final thank you and and and best of luck with your next steps David I look forward to still seeing you around town though I I

[54:02] I I look forward to that as well and I I guess in closing just in terms of the theme that Bob Yates um brought up and you know I would say present company of lawyers excluded um I don't know why 90% of the lawyers make the rest of us look bad so so David I I I can't let you go without a few words on my part as well um I think um what I most admire about you and would like to emulate is your ability to find the good in other people I think one of the reasons why everyone admires you so much is you can see the light in everyone and that is a great characteristic um I'd also say that um I first cut my teeth serving with you while I was on planning board and your knowledge of of how things came to be in Boulder and um where things are going

[55:01] always helped guide us both on planning board and on Council because you were kind of The Keeper of the flame of the context of all of our land use regulations and as others have alluded land use and Boulder is a contact sport and you played in there full contact and we're all the better for it so thank you for your many many years of service and I look forward to seeing you around the neighborhood as well perhaps other Loop Sam thank you so much all right thank you all okay well with that happy note um Alicia what do we oh I think before we go next I want to turn to Brenda and Brenda rittenau is going to talk with us about the meeting rules for the next phase of the meeting Brenda thank you Sam um so I have slides to share and um in line with the ongoing conversation that we've all been having together since the retreat um we have adjusted these slides a little bit so you'll be

[56:01] seeing um new slides this evening addressing what we're hoping to see um for helping create and maintain a productive atmosphere in these meetings um are you seeing the full slide Sam or are you seeing the presenter view I'm seeing you right now you're seeing me because I haven't shared yet that would be why um let me TR that one again how about that it looks like it's coming up there it is yep great thank you so um so the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive Civic conversations this Vision supports what we see as physical and emotional safety for community members staff and Council as well as supporting democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives um we have more information about this

[57:00] full vision as well as the rules of decorum that are in the boulder revised code on the participate page um on the city council page a link is here but to find that if you're looking at it online right now you would go to bouldercolorado.gov click on city council and then click on the participate button from that page the following are some examples of those rules that are found in the full rules of decorum as well as items that are supported in that Vision that we want to highlight for you tonight um and these will be upheld tonight during our meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimity against any person obscenity dehumanizing language racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are

[58:00] prohibited and participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they are commonly known by and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online if you need help changing your name I can help you with that just reach out to me in the Q&A box currently only audio testimony and pre-submitted slides are permitted online so thank you um we know this is a slightly different way to look at these rules than we've had before and we hope that it enhances both the productivity um as well as the inclusion of our meetings thank you thank you Brenda it's much appreciated and with that we will move into open comment period of the evening we have five speakers signed up tonight the first three are Evan rabbits Lyn seagull and Timothy Thomas Evan you're up when you're ready hi no wonder Council loves its

[59:01] lying lawyers when they're leaving what city hall needs is a good exorcism the motto of the Washington Post is democracy dies in darkness it's also the practice of this city government here are five examples of your secrecy and manipulation the city is actually being sued for for colluding with the county to deny public hearings on the Rocky Mountain Greenway also known as the plutonium pathway the city negotiated the new franchise with excel in the dark in Gross violation of the city Charter the result is full of holes and we hope the Public Utilities Commission will stop it former city manager Jane Bram at least took responsibility for making a a trump opportunity zone out of East Boulder behind the Public's back

[60:01] longtime former city councilman Steve pomeran says the city quote went dark unquote over two years ago about the online petition software refusing the city elections working group request for a technical working group the system was designed by Tom Carr apparently contrary to three recommendations of the working group and Civic groups and the result is that over 1,200 people were unable to use the system and two of three campaigns decided to use paper petitions instead number five there was no public hearing on the $2.7 million in the new budget to hire extra cops and Rangers to sweep the homeless From Misery to misery like garbage while Denver and Longmont have stepped up and

[61:01] spent a fraction of that on four legal camps for the homeless Boulder needs new Council candidates to step up and bring Sunshine into this dismal swamp thank you Evan next we have Lyn seagull Timothy Thomas and Lisa Spalding and for open the time limit will be two minutes Lynn you are up when you're ready my sentiments exactly with Evan and good riddens Tom and but my only regret is that he's going to Washington County which unfortunately my son bought just bought a home in Lake asgo and the Western portion of lake asgo is in Washington County dang I hate when that happens he's in molma and Portland's in clamus um so Tom's going to go do his damage there I remember also we lost the movie

[62:00] theater at the Daily Camera Evan forgot to mention that um now I hate to be the kedan but it seems like I can never get my point across enough so I just keep on saying it and um that's what I'll just have to keep doing um water view East Point marpa 30th in Valmont East Boulder working group 17th Street the condos with the electric elevator Ballam the Ballon Alpine ballson the crown and Glory CU you South these are all just called growth for the sake of growth and Gun Barrel now with inra urban sprawl as distinct from Interurban spr which is where you send it out you know the inl of our affordable housing goes to the L's or to Kansas or anywhere but not in Boulder but now we get the

[63:01] inl in Gun Barrel and Gun Barrel is not happy they don't have the infrastructure and they're the other steps sister that you know the bad annexation that we can't handle and that caused a lot of commuting and transportation issues um the Hill Hotel the CU Conference Center water view all these places you know let's go to the the choice we have today on the consent agenda 4 a there's 177 Workforce Apartments thank you Lyn thank you Lynn your time is up appreciate your commentary next we have Timothy Thomas Lisa Spalding and Patrick Murphy Timothy uh Tim Thomas Boulder Colorado I've lived in Boulder for over 28 years first

[64:00] of all I'm surprised that the open comment does not include video as well as audio of those who come to speak before you as I mentioned before in uh earlier emails Denver School Board does allow video and I suggested that someone from the city attorney's office contact someone from the Denver School Board to see how they were able to do it uh I've heard nothing back on that I'm here to talk to you about the inter ction of Cu South racial equity and sustainability as many viewers know CU is proposing to build hundreds of housing units to be occupied by faculty and staff of all Races and income levels in South Boulder currently the average home in Boulder is in the high six figures and for and for detached homes the average price is well over a million dollars it is no wonder that CU is desperate to build this housing yet there is organized resistance in the community to this project especially by plan Boulder we claim as a very liberal City

[65:00] to be socially just and Protectors of the environment unfortunately the organized opposition to this undertaking shows that many in our community do not understand how promoting racial Equity goes hand inand with Environmental Protection tens of thousands of cars commuters come into Boulder each day to work at CU and the federal Labs but also to work in restaurants and retail shops they are diverse population when we for when we force a diverse group of Bolder workers to live farther and farther away vehicle miles traveled increases and so does air pollution and racial segregation is also increased why would members of our community oppose this project thank you Timothy next we have Lisa Spalding and Patrick Murphy Lisa Lisa Spalding speaking for plan

[66:02] Boulder plan Boulder County urges you to remove ordinance 8469 from your consent agenda this evening in order to discuss Community benefit phase two in more depth we support planning board's decision to deny the ordinance as written and agree with the reasons enumerated in their motion we also support member Wallock hotline post and agree with his concerns the problems with this ordinance are far too serious to be dealt with on second reading how would the public even begin to comment on an ordinance this complex we commend your work on community benefit phase one you created an effective program to increase affordable housing Boulder's most important Community benefit this ordinance would divert the inclusionary housing portion of linkage fees for bonus commercial space which rose to 40 3% under Phase One to a tiny amount of space that would serve a handful of

[67:00] businesses at best the eligibility criteria for businesses is far too broad and the proposal to allow landlords to choose their own tenants could be easily manipulated we are concerned that nonprofits and arts groups would not be able to afford the below market rate rent especially after buildout costs and the portion of the property taxes property insurance and maintenance fees included in boulders ubiquitous triple net leases density modifications and other land use changes should be removed and dealt with separately they raise serious questions about density and open space which cannot be given a full critical appraisal in the context of this ordinance in place of the program under consideration we recommend an evergreen fund that would charge an annual fee on bonus commercial space it would be difficult to structure a one-time payment of cash and L that would provide an equitable benefit for the community we support creation staff's creation of ordinance 8471 to deal with appendix J and request that

[68:02] the sunset be extended to January 1st 2022 and include an exemption for bonus space requests and lower density residential and any any other inappropriate Zone we believe it thank you your time is up appreciate your input and then finally we have Patrick Murphy I'm waiting for the PowerPoint my name is Patrick Murphy I live in Boulder actually if you check through the emails I've sent to city council since January my name was replaced with bdc4 C1 de08 e37 49 f2b well that's part of it anyway thankfully that issue has been resolved but additional issues remain the auto reply falsely states that nothing is redacted and in fact Graphics like bar graphs and Pi diagrams are

[69:01] deleted and thus redacted slide two issue three the ability to filter letters to council and download them is also a fail slide two please why am I the beta tester this reminds me of the city attorney's response when I asked him with Witnesses why the negative munity outcomes at the Pu were ignored and only a positive spin was provided to the public back to slide two please his response was a chuckle and a statement that the city didn't have to since that's what I provided the arrogance and attitude of transparency only if we weigh through the propaganda hopefully ends with a change in leadership attitude slide three back to my real issue that some on city council rightfully call existential climate change the headline in the Sunday camera was City to adjust climate approach thank God I read the article back to

[70:00] slide three please I read the article some was good and some was mental gymnastics without the clarity of real action in other words a bit of hot air slide four remember that the leaders of the current effort are the same people who spent 60 to 100% of their time on the mun instead of actual carbon reduction like they should have I'm skeptical for good reason you should be too we're 10 years behind solar incentives wind incentives renewable energy certificates and energy use reduction give us LEDs to start thank you Patrick and with that we will close public comment and I will turn to staff and see if there's any response I see shaking head from Nua anything from City attorney great seeing nothing turn to

[71:00] council Council any response to our open comments okay seeing none Alicia you want to take us to the next item all right all those testy buttons You' got to pick my apologies next here we have our consent agenda agenda for tonight and that includes items a through J very good and before we get started down there um I see Commander weimer's hand up uh Commander did you have anything you wanted to say is that a errant hand or there you are that was an errant hand my apologies okay no problem so uh Aaron thought I'd follow an Aon hand with an Aaron hand um so just before we get into the one by ones I sent out an email this afternoon about um item C uh

[72:00] which was the amending the council rules of procedures and and such we got some significant additional amendments to those this afternoon and I was just going to propose that we um remove this from the consent agenda for tonight just so that we have time to consider those other changes and come back to this in July and August or August very good Rachel we'll say that I haven't I didn't even see that email come through yet so I would support what Erin's saying because I I would not have prepared then tonight very good so we have a couple folks who have spoken up on um pulling item C from the consent agenda and rescheduling it at CAC Mark yeah I will jump on that bandwagon as well great and I'll just ask does anyone object to rescheduling uh item C to a future meeting I do not see any objections so Aon thanks for bring bring that up we will go ahead and do that um all of council would like to see this pulled and rescheduled so we'll proceed with

[73:00] the consent agenda tonight without um item c on it and then on item D um I think we're going to turn to staff and see if somebody can walk us through briefly um how we picked the folks who we are going to appoint for the CU South um planning board hearing I will ask staff defer to them to step up and [Music] share thank you Nora uh Jacob here from planning and development services um while without going into extreme detail I will just say that the process of appointing alternates for the planning board is a prescribed process that goes backward in time on the basis of previous board members and in this case there were board members who were excluded in the uh selection process process due to their affiliation with University so that they were in fact um recused from the process so that is the

[74:01] the order in which we are proceeding members who uh were previously on the board uh excluding those who may be recused and that process is being uh followed accordingly very good and happy to answer questions uh uh as followup great thanks Jacob and I'll just put a little more context on it there are two current members of the planning board who have conflicts um because of their affiliation with CU so we have gone to replace them according to our process it is technically a mayor's appointment but um it's prescribed in Council rules so we're just bringing it up here making sure the public knows that there will be these Replacements and getting Council input if there is any so any other Council Aaron and just for the public the the two members who are coming back are Brian Bowen and christop gray you eron okay with that we will move on I

[75:00] believe the next item oh Adam sorry sorry you may be talking about what I'm gon to talk about but I want to talk about um 3F real quick that's what I was gonna bring us to so um W you go ahead ahead no no go ahead we just have time set aside for it sure I have some concerns um and I wanted to see where the rest of the council was at as far as I don't know if we need to pull it completely from the consent but maybe even a brief discussion about some of those concerns would be beneficial that's very important Adam thanks for bringing it up um I I I'll just kick us off here on this as well um obviously Adam brought it up other council members have brought this up um this item which is community benefit this first reading of the community benefit ordinance for phase two um there's two items here officially one is about implementing the community benefit Phase 2 program the other is about lifting appendix J which is a moratorium

[76:02] on the ability to apply for um extra height or extra density uh the concern from the planning board involved a lot of the specific details around the community benefit program and so we wanted to take some time tonight to talk about what we want to do as far as Direction so that this is first reading second reading is scheduled for July 13th and CAC thought it would be important for Council to weigh in kind of on the direction we want staff to go so that we will have things ready for a public discussion on July 13th so that's the context I'll turn to Mark Mark I mean if any of you had The Misfortune to read my hotline post you'll know that I'm a a very deep skeptic about this program um not in its entirety I think the The Joint uh View of uh staff and planning board with respect to appendix J is something we could Implement um by

[77:00] itself uh and I think is is something that's worth doing um but as far as the community benefit program uh itself goes uh I I think it's it's just badly undercooked I just don't think we know enough about what its impacts are going to be I don't think we know enough about how it's going to be working in in practicality I don't know if the kinds of Economics that are involved at 75% of market rate rentals are going to be sufficiently attractive um that they can be accessed by most of our social services organizations and arts organizations and I I think um to design a program intended to help those um those groups in particular that may not help any of them because even at 75% the rent may be too high um is just not a productive use of uh staff's time or or

[78:00] Council time I I have no problem if staff wants to continue to pursue this and think it through and um and try to get some substantial backup for some of the things that they are proposing but at the moment I I just don't see that it's there so thank you thank you Mark we got Bob Rachel and Mary Bob well first of all I just wanted to thank staff um for all the hard work on this I know this was a tremendous amount there's a lot of math involved in all this but there was a tremendous amount of economic analysis and a lot of work uh to put together uh a very uh complicated proposal and I don't think this has ever been done before anywhere so I I know we're we're kind of making this up and and I know the staff brought this to us oh I don't know three or four months ago and we gave you the green light to work on it more and this is the product but as Mark has said and I agree with Adam and Sam with their concerns this is this is probably something that just quite frankly is not ready to go forward now maybe it'll it'll be ready to go forward in a year uh maybe we need

[79:02] to change gears we already have an affordable commercial Community benefit and I EXC me affordable housing community benefit and that's something we put in place about a year year and a half ago and that that one I think we're all happy about um this commercial one seems to be uh maybe not ready for prime time um and and we've talked about other uh Community benefits things like art and culture and those types of things that might be better substitutes than the commercial um affordable commercial so I I would concur with my colleagues that this is something that we can probably pull for now and not complete in this Council I would like to see the moratorium expire when it when it's naturally supposed to expire on August 31 of this year um and then let's just put this on the work plan for the next Council um and that that Council can decide if who would like to bring forward either affordable commercial if that's the will of that Council or perhaps um shift gears and look at other community benefit in addition to the U affordable housing that we already have

[80:01] in place so that's that's where I'm going to be thanks Bob Rachel Mary and then I'll go thanks Sam um so I guess if can I ask a question of Staff one thing I'm wondering is you know with Community benefits we obviously want to be getting benefits that we seek with the community and so I had asked probably a year ago like how many people have used the affordable housing phase one Community benefit how many have applied for it and had that green light green lit maybe Jacob answer that well thank you Rachel um I do not know the answer to that question about in terms in terms of how many people have actually utilized phase one Community benefit I would look to um either Charles phoh Carl guer on my staff or our community Vitality um uh staff to answer that question and I see trolls coming on as well yeah thanks very much for the question um Rachel um I I can think of

[81:00] one off the top of my head that's recently been approved that uh took advantage of additional height uh through the phase one Community benefit uh program that's the rally software project um Redevelopment that Boulder housing Partners just recently got approved earlier this spring okay thanks for that and I'll add the the Hill Hotel is also subject to the phase one Community benefit regulations okay awesome um I guess I just want to make sure that we're structuring these programs in a way that they actually are usable by the the entities that we want to use them so we get the community benefit so I'm Bob said we're all happy with phase one and I guess I'm um my jury's a little bit still out because I don't know how much we would have expected people to use phase one so maybe when this comes back I would be curious you know to do some some um maybe Outreach and find out is is that working is it is it being used as much as people wanted um or or how

[82:02] could we have done that differently to to um Shore up its use as we look at again it sounds like the will of council is going to be to to kind of put put a pin in this phas too um and which I I I want to make sure that it's just a temporary pin because you know affordable housing is not our only issue and the the benefits that we're going for with Phase 2 I think are very important and so I would hope that we structure this in a way I think eight out of nine current council members and the previous Council all wanted this phase two of community benefits to happen so how do we make sure that that we do get back to it is maybe just a procedural question um and then I agree with Bob I I um would want the moratorium to still expire in August so I think that's a consent agenda item F2 I would I would scrap the 8471

[83:00] thanks thanks Rachel Mary and then Al go and then Adam Mary thanks Sam so um after Mark raised all his points in the hotline po post the other day I read through the memo carefully and um and then thought about it and what I think we're doing here fundamental we're violating one of our city policies and that is to um use onetime funds for one-time expenses what we're trying to do here is exact um some money from a developer one time in term in in form of the the cash and L option and then use it for payment to keep a um affordable commercial space affordable in an ongoing manner so I think that's that's one of the difficulties um another one of the difficulties um that that um I think is

[84:03] part of of why it's so difficult is that um it's a very dispersed it would be a very dispersed program so to manage all of the affordable commercial it would be the same problem as we find with managing um the on-site affordable housing which is another thing that we always hear from the community is why don't we have the on-site affordable housing um and we don't partly because it is um expensive and difficult to manage dispersed properties so that's another um another issue that I see um and then also um to Mark's point about the 50% or 75% rent is still really high and then you have all of the additional expenses and it's fundamentally I think just really hard to make um a space

[85:01] affordable in a brand new building so that made me think about um Jane Jacobs and what she wrote in uh life and death of Great American cities where she writes a chapter on Old buildings and the functions of old buildings and how they are um they serve those businesses and organizations that don't have as much money and um so it really made me think as I've been um I have worked at a couple of nonprofits that were the beneficiaries of old buildings that were rented at a reduced cost um by um by the property owners and there's there's quite a few property owners that have quite a few few properties and they will often times rent some of their spaces for below market

[86:01] so that is how our affordable commercial manifests itself currently and um and one of the things I'd like to put on the table tonight is for us to consider um instead of trying to shoehorn Affordable commercial in a brand new building um let's see if we could instead create a fund that would then help these organizations that get that reduced um rental space u from from benevolent Property Owners um to do tenant finishes um so that's one proposal I agree um with everyone who has said that this ordinance need to be scrapped it's really complicated it's convol uded um and I haven't really heard of anybody who really likes it um and and the other thing I just wanted to mention um that

[87:01] the difficulty in not getting a whole bunch of um takes on the affordable housing um Community benefit is appendix J so whatever we do um I would hope that we take a direction that will allow us to lift appendix J and therefore then begin to get more takers on the um affordable housing community benefit um that's all I have for now great thank you Mary and I'll jump in here and say also thank you to staff um especially Carl I know you put a ton of work into this um it is as Bob said one of the first times that any city has tried to implement this and the complexity almost certainly is because there's so many competing interests the developers themselves the potential users and then trying to design a program that fits all of the circumstances we can Envision is super hard so what I'm going to propose

[88:00] follows on similarly with Mary um I would propose that we make sure that um new commercial developments that seek additional height or additional density above by right contribute to a fund um that could be either the affordable housing fund or or one like Mary described which is intended to fund whether it's tenant finishes or rent support for nonprofits some way to um help nonprofits be able to afford to operate here in Boulder so um I think the most important thing to decide is the funding source so what I would propose is that staff come to us on July 13th with a proposal for all commercial developments that um has the same kind of excess charge for height and density that current housing and mixed use projects do so that there's a commercial linkage fee for the whole property and then whichever part is commercial that goes above height or density pays extra

[89:01] and that extra money then goes into uh a community benefit commercial fund and as Mary described those uses of funds are something that I think um we'd like I'd like to staff to think about how best to use that money and go out to the community and hear from them about the best way to use the fund but I think in order to lift appendex J we need to make sure that there is a a level fee playing field so that the funding that we get from all development that's above a byright size or density contributes that excess to the community benefit fund and we can figure out how to use that so for me I also want to see appendix J expire at the end of August like Bob and Mary have said um but I think the one thing that I'd like to see before we um proceed to let that expire is that all projects that are above byright height or density are paying the community benefit fund that right now housing is

[90:01] and that could go into affordable housing fund if Council desired or from my perspective it could go into a new kind of community benefit fund that does what Mary described but I think if we get the funding collection right we can let appendix J expire and a future Council can work on the program design there so those are my thoughts next we have Adam Aaron mirbi and Rachel Adam I share many of the same ideas as all of you have um I agree uh I don't want to keep extending appendix J moratorium um that was supposed to be probably a lot more temporary than it ended up being so um that's one issue if we need a stop Gap measure we could just say temporarily that everything um we essentially just have to match the same requirements as for the affordable housing that we ask right now and then over time we can add a commercial aspect to that because I really do like the

[91:00] idea of a grant program with probably like a diverse board that is in charge of um giving out those grants and um yeah that's following along with a lot of other people here I think just Simplicity is really important I certainly want something in place before we open up appendix J I don't want to extend to exchain any more so like I said if we need a stop Gap let's just do that um and I it'd be great if we didn't have to shove this to another Council I want them to have some time to do something they want to do too but uh you know happens thanks Adam uh Aaron mirbi and Rachel Aaron yeah well I I support you know doing something potentially s simpler than than where we're at with the the first reading ordinance um this it is quite complicated I so you know Sam something like what you were talking about you know could be a straightforward way to go I I do think

[92:00] it's it's a little unfortunate though that I mean staff has worked super hard on this right I mean um Carl and Charles and all the rest of your department I mean and know you've you've worked uh long hours to craft a first ever um program that that is quite complicated but I think it kind of had to be so I just want to register first a thank you to all that work and I think we did we did uh give a kind of second green light to this back a few months ago so so it's unfortunate um to not carry that forward I guess but if a future Council wanted to take this back up uh separately you know the work could um could be picked back up if if a future Council wanted to do that um just the other thing I I want to say is that I think it's important to kind of register officially in our code that uh there are other forms of community benefit that our community needs and and and is improved by um in addition to affordable housing obviously affordable housing is extraordinary need for us in our community uh but our

[93:01] nonprofits um who do such good work in town struggle uh to stay afloat and stay in in town and to afford office space and others um and uh many of our arts arts organizations do as well we make do with a desk or two in some corner somewhere in order to to keep the kind of magnificent you know performing art that we have in our community going so I just I want to make sure that that we recognize that um you as what Sam described if we started setting up a fund that could assist some of those um organizations I think um that's a it's a potential Next Step um I just want to make sure that we make it clear that we do get community benefit from from those others organizations and um at least ens Shrine that at least a little bit in this step that we're taking whatever will council is right now um and then maybe we can pick back up to do more more later and I also like others um I think the moratorium should lapse in

[94:00] August keep in mind that um that any any project that wants to build above the bught height limit would still need to comply with phase one requirements until we do something additional for phase two so uh you know hopefully we'll we'll come up with something you know in July for phase two um but it's not like if we let it last in August that there'll be some hole that we have to plug where people can do a project that doesn't have any Community benefit requirements so um I would like us to not move that um delay forward of the penex sh expiration thank you Aon um we by Rachel and Mark mby thanks Sam um yeah first off thank you to staff for uh all the hard work I know that probably took a lot of time and energy um I do feel similarly to many of my colleagues uh especially about uh part two on this so um I support taking it off and looking at it further um I have not

[95:00] supported letting go of appendix Jan in um August just because I don't personally think that it's protected enough uh with the height issue but um I know that that's probably not going to be the will of council and can accept that so um just make it quick and easy that I I support taking this off thank you mirbi uh Rachel and Mark Rachel yeah um Aon actually got to most of what I wanted to say which was really more than thank you to staff I'm sorry to staff like we I think we asked for a very complicated ordinance here and and you know like when we last discussed this we talked about you know inl and we were very you know specific that we wanted things that were on site and it wasn't going to be good enough to have a fund you know and things and so I think we're sort of going back and if I look look through a tipped in report lens I could imagine this is very frustrating to staff and so I just want to say I'm sorry for the frustration I'm sorry that we're changing direction I think we're

[96:01] trying to get to a good outcome we're very grateful for all the work that you did um and uh I can't explain exactly what what has happened but um I I I can imagine that it's it's you know people some of you may want to throw things when you hang up this call and and uh we we appreciate you hanging with us and um sorry for sorry for changing direction thank you Rachel Mark and then Mary Mark I have a comment and a question the comment is is basically building on what Rachel said I uh I want to apologize to staff I think we put you in a relatively untenable position and did not provide enough structure and guidance to make this a a reasonable ask uh we simply said you know design it and I don't think we had looked at at some of the implications of doing this and the difficulties of doing this how it would affect the development Community how it would affect the businesses and I

[97:01] am sorry that we did so and and were unable uh to give you better guidance and in effect put you to the the task of spending this much time and I do thank you for those efforts and I again I'm I'm sorry that that in effect that we contributed to to the situation that we're in my question is with respect to appendix J um if we are simply moving forward on appendix J uh both uh planning board and staff had indicated that uh they would provide or suggest some um clarifying language with respect to where um uh the height requests could be located um uh and it's probably Belton suspenders language but my question is um can that language be part of a termination of appendix J within the

[98:00] August time frame um is there any reason under the circumstances if we're not going forward with the rest of the community benefit package that we could not have all of that done by by August so Mark I'll just briefly respond to that and first of all offer a thank you to council members who have expressed your sympathy to the staff I do believe that the staff have Faithfully executed the request that was given to them um and know that that that is that is heard um loud and clear and thank you and in response to that yes staff have prep prepared um both an analysis of the zones that are affected um and those that will remain unchanged we have mapped those zones and to be clear many of the residential zones including the RL zones are still subject to the existing requirements for site review and that they are unchanged regardless of the actions that you take there will not be 55 uh foot Office Buildings in the RL zones to be very clear about that staff have the supporting evidence for that and we can

[99:01] present those things to council and and I believe that we would be able to do that by the August meeting and uh for further clarification I would refer this to Carl if you'd like to add anything um I'll hand it over to you sure uh thank you for the question uh we did include language in ordinance 8 4 69 that made it clear that there are certain zones uh where the community benefit program would not be applicable uh we could certainly transfer some of that language to the appendix J ordinance or revise appendix J to leave those areas out um another option could be to um add that language in as part of the site review criteria update that we're uh hoping to to work on and conclude in the coming months um so it's definitely on our mind we we don't normally see height modifications in these zones anyway but I I I appreciate that there's a a desire to um leave certain zones out okay and

[100:01] all of this can be done as I understand by August I mean if we're divorcing this from the uh the more difficult conversation on community benefit this can all be done we no longer have to to wait till uh January 1 2022 in order for us to expeditiously address appendix J I mean I I think it depends on the the direction of council tonight we certainly could create an alternative ordinance that might address some of these concerns and include that language that when we uh discussed the matter on July 13th it could be a first reading of an of an alternative okay ordinance and if the council is interested it's certainly um an option that we could try to address the in lud uh contribution issue and some of the level of complication in the ordinance um as the mayor had um

[101:01] requested or or proposed uh we could make some modifications to the ordinance and bring an alternative ordinance that could be considered on the 13th and I think I would also add that in consultation with the city attorney's office recently we feel like there's a solution that we could probably bring forward with relative e okay great and Mark if I could just cqu on that um Charles your answer I just want to make sure I understood it if we give you direction to create something along the lines of what Mary suggested and I talked about as well um for a fund that receives um money for Community benefit from commercial development that's something you could have ready for us to look at on the 13th I believe we can okay very good thanks that's very helpful next next I will go to Mary and juny Mary thanks Sam yeah and I wanted to extend my my gratitude to staff as well

[102:00] I do think that we learned a whole heck of a lot I mean that Kaiser Martian report is such an education in um and helping un understand um the complexity of the economics to make something like this work so um I do think that it was worthwhile um so but I but I would like to have us move in in a simpler Direction such as um Sam mentioned and um I have just you know a little bit more feedback in terms of perhaps what to see in in another ordinance um on page let's see it is page 12 of the memo page 99 of the packet um there's the qualifying non-residential community Community benefit uses um so to that you know that it that could be part of something that we move forward with I think um and one

[103:00] of the things that I um saw a gap that I noticed was including um the racial Equity strategy so um that would be some an addition um to all of those Community benefit uses um and then um something that that can be done quickly and if we could come back and so that we can lift appendex J by the end of August would be awesome I also think that um that working on the use tables and the site review criteria um is what really would be a better use of time if we can get wrap this one up because um it really goes hand inand very nicely with the work that the planning department has been doing so if we could Implement those um the use tables and the site review changes um that would be a huge benefit to a lot

[104:02] more um community members um and then the other thing I wanted to just mention and remind my colleagues about is the um one of the call-ups tonight is the diagonal Plaza and um the the issues that the planning board raised Ed with bc1 and bc2 um and that was included in this particular memo so I would think that that's a piece that we likely would like to move forward as well um so that's all I have thank you thanks Mary juny and then Rachel juny thank you [Music] um I'm not sure how many of us just from listening to the convers ation who agrees on this fund proposal programming so Sam I would like to maybe see a poll on that to see how many council members

[105:00] agree to that and also I want to thank staff for their the this great um for all the research and all the work they've done I am also not in favor of extending appendant J and also when I think of having a fund it feels almost like buying height and I'm not sure if that's the right way to go um because I think I mentioned before I believe it was sometimes last year the importance similar to when we talk about affordable housing the importance of you know having diversity within let's say for instance in a in a building um having people of different income living in that particular building as opposed to having cash and L and I feel something similar when it

[106:01] comes to commercial as well that having that diversity uh having diversity of uh programmingsoftware and you put it in a fund and somehow it might benefit and also part of it is what are some of the perimeters around that fund even though I disagree with it if Council were to decide to go with this idea of funding um putting it you know having a program it will be necessary to have all type of perimeters on how this money can be spent uh so that's my comment for now thank you thank you Jenny Rachel all right I'm I'm truly sorry to triple dip here um a question for staff if we do at like nothing will

[107:01] appendix J just lift on its own in August like because we're we're talking about like coming back with new language and stuff like my first question is can we do nothing and it just lapses uh yeah it'll just lapse on August 31st uh what happen in that case is obviously the eligibility for height modifications would go from less than 5% of the city which I think is one of the reasons we haven't seen many of these yeah appreciate that point and it would go you know to Citywide and it would be the phase one requirements that would apply so you it would be we would still get community benefit it would just be phase one Community benefit versus if we if we either affirmatively lift or let it expire in August after implementing phase two we would also have the phase two options but either way anyone building out those extra two stories has to give a community benefit anywhere in the city that is qualified when a penex j lapses yeah correct okay so just

[108:01] wanted to to clarify that and then I guess in light of that my my inclination would be that I don't think we should rush to have something new here by July 13th um it it we have the the phase one guard rails and it seems like we want to make sure that we're getting the research right on like what dollar amount to put on it I wasn't here when you all established the um the the fees uh for um blanking on the term what what is the the housing $35 fee commercial linkage fees um thank you uh but I remember there being you know some debate around that and we were looking at what the other I was just watching but um there was was robust debate and I just don't know that we will have the research and and ability to get through that intelligently in a couple of weeks we have a recess I don't know if staff takes time off around that too but um I guess I would just say my my inclination would be uh just put a pin in this shortterm let a pendex j lapse and and

[109:02] let staff have the time there they're also working through CU South stuff right now um and other things are heated up so I guess I'm just sensitive to I don't know why we have to do anything next month we could we're okay I think Aon this Mary brought up a Point um about the couple of the other measures um that were in here uh related to how density and open space is calculated in the BC zones and a couple other zones I thought those were great Common Sense ideas i' I'd love to see them continue to carry forward um because I don't think they're definitively linked to the um the other bits of the community benefit stuff thank you Aon so I have a question for staff and then I will try and bring us home a little bit Carl this is for you um so if we went ahead now and did nothing for Community benefit Phase 2 let appendix J laps what would a

[110:00] commercial all commercial project that got a height bonus would they pay the additional Community benefit fee on top the linkage fee into the affordable housing fund they would okay so so then I guess the question I'll bring to council is really just an earmarking and funding question we could as Rachel suggested just go forward do nothing um let appendix J laps and uh meaning that anybody could apply for height or density anywhere in the city and then um go through site review and if they receive that height they would pay into the affordable housing fund so that's one way forward do nothing do nothing and that's what happens the other way forward would be to take um monies which are part of commercial development um which would normally be paid into the affordable housing fund and put them in a separate fund and

[111:01] decide how to use that at a later time so not as part of this project your Market collect it separately and then a future council could decide that they didn't like the idea and they put it all back into the affordable housing fund or they did like the idea and Implement something along the lines of what Mary described or I talked about which is other community benefits um supported so I think those are two main branches that we could take um and if others have other ideas I'm open to those otherwise I would take a poll between those two and see where we wanted to go and Mark I see your hand as well yeah um I think you kind of alluded to this suggestion I seems to make some sense to me uh a commercial building that asks for hey um has the uh the linkage fee increased by 43% for that portion of the building that's the bonus square footage um it

[112:00] might make some sense to take that increased increment of linkage fee um allcable to the bonus height and use that for the uh the affordable commercial fund that's what I was proposing by the way is exactly the way you said it okay and and I would be supportive of that um I'm not very um uh I don't really care when uh appendix J expires but I I do think we ought to um look at what both planning board and staff suggested with respect to that and look to um some language that clarifies exactly where uh those poer buildings are eligible to be applied for uh And to clarify that there are some districts where they are not eligible to be applied for um and as I said since that is a a joint recommendation of both

[113:00] staff and planning board I would urge us to uh to consider that other than that I don't really care the date on which appendix J lapses it's going to lapse in some fashion um but I think it should have um that clarifying language attached to it and if I could offer a clarification um we want to make it clear that the ordinance before you tonight does set up an affordable commercial fund um that's where there are inl um Alternatives in the code uh in order to have inl you have to have an actual onsite below market rate requirement but one way to simplify it is that it could just be made easier in the ordinance to enable applicants to do an inl Fe contribution so what um council member Wallock had suggested about that bonus going to Affordable commercial that's already a mechanism in in the code if they were to do in L um the way it's set

[114:01] up in the ordinance is that if a project is more than 50% residential phase one requirements automatically apply so everything would go to affordable housing fund and if more than 50% of the floor area above the ground floor is non-residential that would go into the affordable commercial fund so when we suggest an alternative ordinance we could remove that eligibility criteria and make the option for inl a little more obvious and simpler but we would have to retain that below market rate space requirement to have that in I see that's interesting and helpful Erin do you have something you'd like to say um just one thing on the when we're clarifying um what zones you'd be like allowed to ask this in I just had to get in one detail that um I noticed that rmx1 and rmx2 zones were proposed to be exclude from where you could ask for additional height I just I happen to

[115:00] live in rmx2 there's a building across the street for me that's like 41 feet and it has affordable housing in it because it got those extra like six feet so i' I'd I'd hate to remove the ability to do something like that from in that zone so I'll just put that in there for when we get back to it okay so um what staff is heard from Council I think they have a sense of where we're going here and what I would ask Council for is would you like staff to bring us an option for having the the money in the commercial Focus projects to go into a a different Community benefit pot than just affordable housing so we don't have to decide whether we like that completely tonight the question is do we want to direct staff to do that and um ALS also similarly do we want to direct staff to do what Mark said and what Aaron asked for clarification on which is to specifically clarify for us and for the

[116:00] community which zones would and would not be eligible for the additional height when appendix J lapses to even apply for the he so um let me just take a straw poll first and see how many are interested in staff bringing us an option which is different than all afford housing for the bonus funding I'm interested can't see my hand Mark Sam Aaron no Rachel Bob Adam Mary okay so that's a majority so I think staff um if you could bring us an option for July 13th which I think as you described Carl preserves the requirement makes it very easy to do cash and L um into a separate fund and we can discuss the merits or otherwise of that option um and then Mark do you want to talk a little more about what you're hoping for

[117:00] and it can be a separable option as well but as far as what kind of protective language you want above and beyond what's already there for um asking for height in rl1 and rl2 zones I was simply keying off of both planning boards and and what I thought was sta recommendations with respect to appendix J which is to Simply articulate where the height requests are eligible and where they're they're not um and as I understood those recommendations there are certain residential zones where they would not be um where you could not apply for the extra height and the both the rest of the city would would be available for that um I thought those were reasonable suggestions um and since it's the only point of of substantial agreement between uh the staff presentation and the planning board presentation it seems to make some sense to

[118:00] me okay so Jacob I'll turn to you and see did you get enough from us to be able to bring something back for July 13th or do you have any questions for Council well I I think we have enough Sam and I appreciate uh you and members of council giving us feedback and I'll also just defer to Carl and Charles but for myself I think we have enough information to go ahead and run with us and prepare an alternative ordinance for you to uh to look at in July Carl Charles anything to add yeah I appreciate the feedback in the direction this evening I think we have what we need but Carl I I totally agree we I think we have what we need very good and I've got a few more hands I'm gonna start with you nura and then we'll go to Erin nura thank you Sam I just wanted to um take a quick minute to thank you all for the conversation there are certainly times when a project or an initiative pivots policy discussions change and while there is some frustration at that at times I will say that overall and I I you know I think I um heard Rachel said

[119:00] this we're all trying to get good outcomes right and so I just re I I wanted to just share that I appreciate so much you're valuing all of staff's work and commitment and I wanted to also just thank those that gave us feedback on this from the planning board to the emails we receed from Community because I do think it's these kinds of discussions that get us to better outcomes and there has been a lot of learning so just wanted to take a quick moment and thank you all for that recognition and value of staff's time and effort great thank you nura Ain yeah thanks Nia and and all the planning staff is very gracious of you for um pivoting and being open to the feedback I I just wanted to try to get a put another plug in for getting those other um small changes to the land use code brought back as part of this ordinance so unless Council was majority opposed to that i' I'd like to see that in the revision as well please thank you Aaron Mark yeah I don't mind if we if we look at it one of my problems with with

[120:00] where we are is is that I I didn't see a whole lot of context or community outreach or uh or background with respect to those changes and and if we can have a little more time for staff to uh actually look look into it um I'm happy to to give it a you know consideration um and um again I I I am I am feeling very apologetic at the moment in terms of of how what we have done with staff and I would say you are all owed a great number of beers uh purchased by Council um for your consumption um at the next time we can see you so thank you again all right thank you all for that um appreciate the the det tour and all the thoughtful conversation so with that if we want to move on the next item that we have flagged for discussion on the consent agenda is City attorney search committee

[121:01] Aaron I'm sorry sorry to interrupt Tim but just how are you proposing that we move forward on this do we are we voting for this I what we're asking for is quite different from what's on the on the agenda right now on the consent agenda so what do you think we how we should proceed um my suggestion is that we uh take item F entirely off the consent agenda with our instructions to staff about what we get on first reading on July 13th that that's how I was going to propose to tie that up does anybody is that okay Aon does that meet that sounds good yeah thanks okay so so we will when we vote we can say it but I would propose that we're going to remove item F from the consent agenda tonight just as we removed item C okay all right back to City attorney search committee I'll turn to Bob and

[122:01] Rachel thanks Sam and uh Jen sprinkle our HR Director also is here and Jen if you want to kick us off feel free otherwise I'll start us un Council I'm Jen sprinkle HR director and um just want to um say that we've had a great opportunity to interview some outstanding semi-finalists for the City attorney recruitment process and tonight uh the subcommittee is prepared to make a recommendation to you on um a couple of really well qualified finalists and so I'll turn it over to Rachel um she's going to say a few words and lead us through um this process Jen and actually Bob and I will uh take turns on this sub commmittee so well um so as Jen mentioned we interviewed five very qualified semi-finalists for the

[123:00] City attorney position and that is resulting in a subcommittee recommendation for two outstanding finalists um and just as a reminder to uh colleagues in the community semi-finalists are not subject to open records and their names and application materials will not be released or discuss so I'll pick it up there and just to clarify when we say we um um interviewed five semon finalists that that those interviews included all of council members uh not obviously in the same room at the same time but all all council members had the opportunity to meet all five semi-finalist um as did um a large number of Staff members the city manager number of people from the city attorney's office number of senior staff members um and so we we received input from a lot of people to to narrow down to uh two finalists that Orin and I as the committee will be recommending tonight um I'll give a brief bio in one of them uh and then uh Rachel on the other the two finalists are bre

[124:02] mang and Adam mingle uh Bina um has interesting background currently she is the assistant uh City attorney for the city of Chandler Arizona which is a city of about two and a half times the size of Boulder about 250,000 um before was assistant City attorney in Chandler Arizona uh Bina worked here in Colorado um she was assistant County attorney with the arapo County Colorado uh organization and she was um in fact when she was doing that she was one of the principal attorneys for the Aurora theater shooting um before serving as assistant County attorney in Arapaho County uh Brina also served as a law clerk with the Arapaho County District Court uh and she has her law degree from the University of Denver Rachel do you want to talk a little bit about Adam mingle sure um Adam mingle is a newer arrival to Colorado he comes to us by

[125:01] way of Washington DC he is still actually serving remotely as a general counsel for the city of Washington DC uh which is a city of approximately 700,000 uh Adam works in the department of aging and community living and he's been in that post since 2015 he's been with this City for about 10 years previously he worked um with the Washington metropolitan area transition Authority and the US Department of Justice um I would say that his work experience and his passion for the types of priorities that we in Boulder hold beer uh especially including equity and climate resiliency spit out during his interviews and we really look forward to welcome welcoming him back as a final um and I want to sorry Bob if you want to say something else go ahead just want to ask does council have any comments or feedback for the subcommittee at this point thank you for all your hard work

[126:01] how's that and um we're not quite done I that was just the moment that you were you were going to be invited so ready move us on though um so I'm hearing no specific feedback or comments so just a matter of process U by the way we've given just very high level bios here um tomorrow uh the city staff will if if um Council approves these two finalists uh tonight um staff will um be uh issu a press release tomorrow with more information about both Brina and Adam and uh and then Rachel will talk in a minute about the process for the community to meet them um and so I I guess from a process standpoint tonight I would just ask that whoever moves the consent agenda um also include a motion to accept um bro mang and Adam mingle as the finalist for the City attorney position as part of your motion on consent agenda and uh Rachel do you want

[127:01] to maybe bring us on with a little bit of process for the community sure um so we will invite community members to meet and provide feedback on our finalists um by meet unfortunately we still mean virtually um so there will be a virtual community meeting on Monday June 21st is 00 to 7:30 p.m. and at that meeting the public will get a chance to hear from each of the finalists and ask questions um and community members who are interested in attending that event uh can find additional information on the city's website tomorrow the event will be will include interpretation in Spanish and we will record it and also make it available online afterwards if you have other questions about that that process feel free to email or Bob as okay very good thank you guys again go ahead I was just going to move us along here um so I think we have gone through

[128:02] the items that we expected to have discussion on on the consent agenda so I would invite a motion to accept the consent agenda I would propose whoever makes the motion removes items C and F from the agenda and then for item a proposes and moves that BR M and Adam mingle be accepted as finalist for the City attorney position Bob yes I'll make that motion I move the consent agenda with the exception of items C and F which are to be removed and with respect to item j i I move that uh Council uh declare that the finalist for the City attorney position be Brea mang and Adam Mingle second thank you we have a motion and a second and I believe that this is a roll call vote is that correct Alicia yes sir

[129:00] it is very good I think we're ready to vote all right thank you sir council member Brockett Hi friend Hi Joseph hi n hi stick yes wck hi Weaver hi Yates yes and young yes the uh consent agenda sir was approved removing items three C and 3F as amended excellent thanks very much and I think we're ready for the next item all right next we have on our agenda are our call up and check-ins we have item 4A which a is a callup

[130:00] consideration of the concept plan review and comment for the Redevelopment of a 9.27 acre property located at 3320 28th Street and 3265 and 3267 30th Street as a mixed use development that includes ground floor retail along 28th Street and proposed Street a along with ground floor amenity space with upper story Workforce and permanently affordable apartments there are two options proposed the first option includes 177 Workforce Apartments within five buildings and with 9,942 square footage of amenity spaced a shared deck and a clubhouse and 58 per permanently affordable options I'm sorry affordable apartments the second option matches the first but includes an additional residential units with approximately 195 Workforce apartments

[131:01] and 64 permanently affordable apartments it also includes a fourth story on one of the buildings with an additional roof deck reviewed under case number l221 d11 thank you Alicia um Nia does staff have a few words to say here they do and I'll call Elaine mlin to um come forward great thank you so much uh yes I'm elain mlin I'm case managing the concept plan review and I'm just going to share my screen um so we can go over a couple of uh background slides here um so as um was described in the agenda the applicants proposing to redevelop a property that's part of the diagonal Plaza shopping center um and as some of you know there's quite a number of property owners in diagonal Plaza this

[132:02] particular one is on the the west and essentially wraps around in an L shape to the back um and then would connect to the BP diagonal Court Town Homes U and so there are the the two options um and as um was described one of the options actually has quite a bit um of additional floor area through um the appendix J opportunity to add a fourth story um among the considerations that were discussed at planning board it's helpful to understand that the challenge with this particular proposal is that um the current zoning of bc2 and I'll just go back a couple slides um rather bc1 the current Zoning for bc1 has an open space requirement of 1,200 square feet of open space per dwelling unit and so

[133:00] to achieve what's shown on the plan would require essentially two-thirds of the site to be open space so obviously that um is not something that would work U the applicant also brought forward some options BMS zoning mu4 zoning um there's some challenges with uh doing a resoning on this particular property and if Council calls it up there's some uh key issues and discussions to be had a couple of different options um and with that I'm happy to take any questions very good so Bob I see your hand is up is that a leftover or new no um I was going to actually um make a call up request I don't have any questions for laye so if someone has questions I'll yield and then I was going to make a request to call Super anyone have any questions Mary I seen your hand go up

[134:00] and down yes I was trying to get to the raised hand on the um on the menu but so I raised my hand so I I did um so Elaine um you mentioned um that if it does get called up there's several issues to discuss could you um just describe those a bit please sure so as I noted bc1 zoning wouldn't yield the types of um numbers of units both um in total as well as onsite affordable and one of the things the considerations that uh planning board discussed is perhaps rezoning it to bc2 where the open space per dwelling unit requirement is much less the challenge with that is that as we know rezoning is fairly atypical in the city of Boulder and it's generally based on the opportunity to have a more comprehensive

[135:00] look um at a proposal through um land use and rezoning and so in this particular case both bc1 and bc2 have the same land use designation of community business and so it doesn't meet one of our resoning criteria and that's sort of an unusual aspect so there's one conversation there the other piece is that um interest in doing an mu4 BMS would require a comprehensive plan land use uh change simultaneous to a rezoning and so um that tends to lend a little bit more additional process to this we heard quite a bit from the community about wanting to get affordable housing particularly onsite affordable housing without a lot of uh additional process as we know we have a pretty robust process so uh the goal would be to to determine if this is truly an

[136:02] opportunity site as it's been viewed for um a couple decades actually um since it's a fairly undeveloped or underutilized uh property lot of vacant spaces and parking spaces if it's um intended to be an opportunity for residential how can we get there to provide density and maximize on the opportunity that's there thank you Elaine very good any other questions Council okay seeing none Bob you're on yeah I'd like to call this out I this is probably one of the most consequential um land use matters that that uh this Council will be called on probably the most consequential as as Elaine mentioned this is a property that's been looking for a more appropriate purpose for uh as long as I've lived in Boulder that's 20 years uh this is a property

[137:01] that has struggled uh to be successful um stores have come and gone we have a massive massive parking lot Acres of of asphalt and I am just so delighted that someone has come forward with a proposal that does something different it'll obviously be up to council and planning board to determine whether this is the right a proposal but I want to at least have the discussion and so I'd like to call this up um uh consider the zoning issues that elain identified look at this from the standpoint of U bulk and mass and height and do all the things that we normally would do on a concept review of this me on a pro project of this magnitude with over 300 potential dwelling units or up to 300 potential dwelling units plus another 27,000 square feet of um retail space and with affordable housing on site so it's it's a it's an intriguing project I think it's one that we need to dig into and spend time on so I would very much like to call this up and have a community dialogue about whether this is the appropriate use for dagal closet thanks Bob I've got Mary and Mark

[138:00] Mary yeah um I agree with Bob and to that I would just add that um you know this is an area that we've talked about um creating creating an area plan for and um so we don't have that area plan and this particular site would be kind of a catalyst and it sort of begins to sketch out what an area plan might have been like so um and then additionally with the policy issues that Elaine pointed out um if there ever was a concept plan to call up this one is it so I would support that thanks Mary Mark and with both Mary and Bob on this um the property is obviously a difficult property with with multiple owners and it's a bit of an isore and I'm I would prefer to have an area plan but I'm also

[139:00] loath to let the opportunity pass um to address this this very very difficult piece of ground um so I would like to call it up I'd like to have that Community conversation um and hopefully we find a path forward that uh uh might actually that might serve um stated goals that that we have for it and possibly have it serve as a catalyst for uh the rest of the diagonal Plaza so I I'm on board thanks Mark and I agree with all of that I will say I will miss the Acres of undulating cracked asphalt if something does go in here but I I would also it would be fantastic if other property owners in this area would take a look at what is being proposed here and consider what they'd like to do in context because there's certain properties that maybe should be included in Redevelopment and I would encourage

[140:02] the property owners to consider that as well so with that we have a motion and I believe Mark and Mary I'll count your comments as seconds to call this up is there anyone who's opposed to calling up this project great seeing none we will call up the concept plan for this development and move on Alicia all right sir thank you item 4B is the vacation of a 11,150 ft waterline easement and partial vacation of a 9,153 sqt portion of a waterline easement located at 350 Ponka Place ADR 2020-17 78 any interest Council I didn't see any Alisha all right item 4C vacation of an approximately 4,37 sqt public utility easement at

[141:02] 6,400 a rapo Avenue the vacation is associated with a water main relocation associated with Tec 20203 o33 ADR 2020-2 four Council any interest I see none Alicia moving right along 4D is the landmark alteration certificate consideration of a proposal to construct a 338 sqt accessory building in ground pool retaining wall and fence at 933 Mapleton Avenue Council any interest I see none I think we're ready to move on item 4E is the landmark alteration certificate consideration for an on-site relocation of a contributing accessory building at 406 Pearl Street any interest I see

[142:01] none all right thank you sir next we have on our agenda the public hearings item 5A is a second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8466 designating a portion of the property at 96 of rapo Avenue as an individual Landmark per section 99-115 of the boulder Revised Code 1981 and if okay with you mayor we will invite uh Marcy Gerwin to come in and share certainly uh today is showing the strength of planning's deep bench thank you all right thank you and I think I um am running the slides but I don't believe I'm sharing my screen please correct me if that's not the case not yet okay you should have permission to share

[143:01] your screen now Marcy thanks Brenda all right there we go can you all see my slides seems nod's head okay great all right um good evening Council U Marcy Gering um historic preservation planner and tonight I'm here with a landmark designation um this one came in through the annexation Pro um process and celebrates one of um Boulder longtime local businesses news's Nursery so to start I'll go through the Quasi judicial public hearing process it starts with um my staff presentation followed by the applicants presentation

[144:00] though I don't believe anyone from um the ownership group September school was planning to attend tonight the public hearing is then open for public comment and then the owner or applicant would have a chance to respond to anything that was said the public hearing is then closed in City Council discusses and a motion requires an affirmative vote of at least five council members to pass so the criteria for your review is found in 9115 of the boulder Revis code and that's to determine whether the designation conforms with the purposes and standards of section 9111 and 9112 in preserving sites and places um that are significant to Boulder's history and also preserving significant examp examples of architectural styles of the past all in balance with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan the options in front of you tonight are to approve the designation by ordinance modify and approve or

[145:00] disapprove the designation this application started back in um 2015 as part of the annexation and site review process um in 2017 we saw the changes to the building approved through a landmark alteration certificate and then in April of 2021 the landmarks board voted unanimously to recommend designation the property at 96 arapo Avenue is located um at the West End of arapo at the mouth of Boulder County and it is um right next door to 90 arapo which is the Silver Saddle Motel which um was landmarked earlier this year um and was paired in the annexation with this property so what's interesting about this um particular designation is that there are two examples of distinct architectural and Architectural Styles and periods of construction so the first building on

[146:01] the site is a midcentury modern residence that was built um around 1957 has a very shallow uh gable roof and then um large Banks of Windows the second building is Stone and woodf frame Barn that is believed to have been built in the 1920s and then in the 1950s this front edition was constructed to serve as the newsum nursery office building um the building is integrated into its site as it's built into the landscape uh with stone retaining walls coming out on the East sides as I mentioned the um changes to the building were approved to modify its use from a residence into the school which September School moved here um in the last couple years from their previous location at 1902 Walmart and the extent of the changes were pretty minor to the house moving some windows

[147:01] um and converting some uh doors and then on the barn uh those build those changes haven't been made yet but it will convert the building into a classroom space so here's a photo of Wayne nuum he start started his landscape business when he came to Boulder as a college student um riding his bicycle around um he purchased this property in 1949 and um built the two the house and a couple other buildings on the site and his first um main job was uh or largest commission was to do the Landscaping at uh what is now nist which uh included planting over 4,000 plants and and shrubs so going um more into Nim's history he owned the property for over 50 years he bought the property as a nearly empty lot and constructed um the buildings on the site pretty early in

[148:00] 1952 he was elected the president of the Colorado nurser men's association he had a weekly gardening advice program called guide to gardening um in 1960 which aired on KB radio every Saturday and in 1988 he won the honorary Hall of Fame award award by the colado nurser men Association in terms of its architectural significance the property is uh significant for the recognized period or style of the mid-century modern house and the agricultural barn and then for its environmental significance the buildings are compatible with its site and they are visual landmarks visible from Canyon and the Boulder Creek path so the recommend recommended name in Landmark boundary for this Landmark is Nim's nursery and the proposed boundary is that which the applicants proposed during the annexation which encompasses a portion of the property it follows um the ditch easement for

[149:02] Anderson ditch on the North side and then encompasses a buffer around the um Barn to the South and this is a the name and Boundary that staff and the landmarks board both recommend and so with that staff and the landmarks board recommend that the property at or portion of the property at 96 arapo Avenue be designated as a local landmark and I am happy to answer any questions you may have thank you so much Marcy um any Council questions great seeing none I assume that we would move to the applicant presentation is there an applicant presentation or a statement from the applicant I do not believe um they were planning on attending tonight and I don't have a statement to read on their behalf awesome with that I believe is it

[150:02] public comment next on this yes good um we have one person signed up for public comment that is Lynn seagull so Lynn when you're ready you have three minutes yep I approved this and it's great I came in on it at landmarks board in the middle or the end but I can see right away it's it's an easy go um which I wish that the city council would see with all of our issues which are not so complex they just mean slow down in your growth and please give people three minutes you got 10 minutes today on open comment you're supposed to have 45 that is uncashable approve this new Garden it's great bye thanks Len and with that we will bring public comment to a close and

[151:02] technically I believe we go to the owner response to public comment but I don't know that there will be much there and Mary you are muted there you go yeah thanks um I would like to move that we adopt ordinance 8466 designating two buildings and a portion of the property at 96 arabo Avenue to be known as newams Nursery as an individual Landmark under the city of Boulder historic preservation Ordinance do we have a second second very good we have a motion in a second Mary would you like to speak to your motion yeah um as Lynn um mentioned this is a Nob brainer um it's also um going to be part of the September school which

[152:01] came out of what I believe is another landmark building if not it should be but um so the September skill is going to go there and also the rest of the property was annexed um with because it was an annexation it has over 40% of affordable housing in this area of town um so this as a whole this whole project is um pretty wonderful so thanks marxy for your work on this and thank you um to um the folks who are um landmarking it thanks Mary Aon any thoughts it's just a lovely piece of Boulder's history I'm glad we can land market tonight excellent okay any other comments from Council okay seeing none we have a motion in a second and Alicia I believe this is roll call correct yes sir we

[153:02] will start with council member friend hi Joseph hi mebby has I'm sorry I should ad mentioned this earlier mirbi had to leave the meeting because of a personal issue that arose tonight so she is gone as of now thank you Alicia all right thank you sir council member snik yes wallik hi Weaver hi Yates yes and young yes and Brocket hi ordinance 8466 surpassed unanimously 8 to Zero 8 to zero all right thank you very much all right our next public hearing is item 5B it is the second reading and

[154:00] motion to adopt ordinance 8458 amending chapter 3-19 electric electronic smoking device tax chapter 4-32 tobacco retailers chapter 6-4 regulation of smoking and 6-45 sale of tobacco products and section 4-20 75 tobacco retailer license fee of the BRC 1981 this is to clarify licensing of tobacco and electronic smoking device retailers tax on electronic smoking devices by all businesses and setting forth related details and mayor council will invite Joel Wagner and find finance and Kathy hack and the city attorney's office to come uh speak some words and share a

[155:06] presentation seeing if they are available I know they were here good evening Council Joel Wagner tax and special projects manager I believe Kathy's going to start as soon as we have a presentation up all right we can see your presentation they may be having yeah C

[156:00] Kathy I can see your lips moving but we cannot hear what you're saying you don't appear to be muted on my screen but we can't hear you H yeah I don't have you muted Kathy it looks like you're off mute so maybe your audio is um connected to your headset if you normally use a headset if you click the up Arrow next to your mute button you will see some audio settings um that might help you zero in on the one that'll let us hear you does that work yeah there you got it there you are right woohoo I was getting a different list at first I apologize for the delay I am Cathy hadock with the city attorney's office and I will be talking about the um legal parts of this ordinance and putting the ordinance together to correct some things that um

[157:02] have been adopted in the past and both Joel Wagner and Cara Skinner are here from Finance to talk about the financing part Joel will be primarily doing the presentation is become an expert on electronic smoking devices um ordinance is not intended to change anything but to clarify what had previously been adopted by Council so if we could go to the second Slide the um the or the excuse me um the issue with the electronic smoking devices was first addressed in 2019 to address council's concerns about youth smoking and vaping this was done in 2019 primarily done by Tom Carr with um Christen Heiser in the housing or Human Services Department um they drafted the original ordinance and the ballot question that was voted on by the voters in

[158:00] 2019 now we have the finance department and me looking at the ordinance with the businesses trying to figure out how to implement it and that's um where some of the confusion was discovered as I go through describing these the primary very uh objection or or criticism or whatever of this ordinance is the issue of whether the original uh electronic smoking device tax and the prohibition was intended to apply to all electronic smoking devices or just those that contain tobacco so as I go through describing the past ordinances I will point out where in the past the item was specific speically for tobacco and where it was not n limited to either tobacco marijuana or anything else that could be put in electronic smoking device so in ordinance 8340 that started this in

[159:00] 2019 the definition of an ESD is on the screen and the underlying language is seems to have become the issue so the first line any product containing or delivering nicotine intended for human assumption that can be used by an individual to simulate smoking in the delivery of nicotine or any other substance so the argument has become does or any other substance mean only any other tobacco substance or any other substance our understanding has been that it was intended to be any other substance one of the major reasons for this is that the original ordinance 8340 had about 20 reasons listed for why C was adopting it many of them applied to tobacco smoking flavored tobacco products um and other types of things including the history of marketing of of tobacco products that a were aimed

[160:03] at youth um however when they talked about flavored tobacco products it specifically said tobac flavored tobacco products were the only ones that were prohibited there are flavored marijuana products those were not prohibited but when it came to talking about vaping in those uh reasons there was no distinction between marijuana or tobacco and the study referenced was to the healthy kids study that was about marijuana vaping by youth middle and high schoolers in Boulder Valley Schools so next slide later in 2019 the council considered whether to put a tax measure on the ballot originally they asked staff to put two tax measures to to give Council option for two different tax

[161:00] measures one for attacks on tax cigarettes and other tobacco products and the other attacks on electronic smoking devices Council eventually decided to go with the uh tax on electronic smoking devices and as the hearing between second and final reading of that ordinance I put on this Slide the language change that was done so you can see that the words tobacco products sold not including cigarettes with struck and the language electronic smoking devices including any refilled cartridge or component of such a product was what was added to the language for what was to be txed next slide please again I talked a little bit about the intent and this is a summary of some of the um the reasons that were given in the ordinance and I'm not going to read all these but the purpose of the slide

[162:02] is to show that um while some were specific to Tobacco not all of them were and vaping was specifically one of the uh vaping of marijuana was specifically one of the major concerns that last bullet is probably the most concerning one that the bould County Healthy Kids survey which is about marijuana shows an average 33% use among high schoolers in Boulder at Colorado average is 26.2 and the national average is 13.2 so Boulders well above U other places next slide please the a lot of confusion came with adoption of the ordinance eliminating the I'm sorry implementing the tax after it was approved by the voters this was ordinance 8376 and as Tom Carr described it not a um model of clarity and some of the confusion I think is related to the fact

[163:04] that the ordinance decides defines tobacco products as including everything that's covered by the ordinance including electronic smoking devices that are not limited to Tobacco um the tobacco the the people that are required to collect the tax are tobacco retailers but as we'll see there's a lot of people that sell electronic smoking devices that do not also sell tobacco so the purpose of this ordinance is to make sure that the language goes the language used in the ordinance goes with English uh the problem here is that the lay person's understand understanding of a tobacco retailer would have something to do with tobacco and the retailer but that's not the way the code defined it and we're trying to correct that next slide please the whoops um Mary young asked

[164:01] for the language that was on the ballot in 2019 so that is here I understand you probably can't read it and these ballot questions are um confusing anyhow I highlight did the language that shows what the tax was supposed to be on but we can leave that up if you want to look at it or come back to that slide I have a quick question Kathy sure yeah thank you for this slide I really appreciate it I'm wondering um if you have um R sent a subsequent um email that had the title included this one does not this is the ballot question but doesn't include the the title that went on the ballot I'm wondering if you if you have that as well you know I do not have that on a slide I think that's something that we

[165:00] may be able to get up but I think what you're talking about is this ordinance went through three readings in 2019 and the short title on the ordinance for all three readings was um oh shoot I don't have it here either but it was a tax on vaping devices I believe after the ordinance was adopted and when the council was considering the order to include the ballot questions on the ballot Council one of the council members suggested putting the word tobacco in the short title um and that was done there were no changes to the ordinance to limit it to tobacco and the ballot language is not limited tobacco but that is one of our uh list of things that did create some confusion in this where the unofficial words used were limiting where the official written words used which is actually the

[166:01] ballot language itself were not limiting to only tobacco products so Mary does that answer your question yes it does Kathy thank you okay next slide these this is um a list of the types of retailers that we found that uh sell tobacco I'm sorry that sell um electronic smoking devices as you can see defining them as as tobacco retailers is really misleading because most of these types of um retailers would not consider themselves tobacco retailers so that's one of the reasons we want to change it from tobacco retailers to tobacco and electronic smoking device retailers next slide please then I want to run through the arguments for um that that we have been given and for why this shouldn't be

[167:00] applied to tobacco and it really comes to tax policy issues one of the arguments is that to um apply the tax the tax should be applied only to those that also sell tobacco but that creates a competitive advantage for some people and a disadvantage for others when electronic smoking devices are sold by several different types of retailers not just tobacco retailers the another argument is to exempt the tax if you put something in the device other than tobacco for instance put marijuana in it or put something else in it then it shouldn't be taxed that changes the tax from a tax on the device to a tax on the intended use use of the device which is also not a common taxing principle in in writing what is to be taxed we're trying to be as clear as possible so it's not up to interpretation of Staff or anyone else and it's not a surprise to the retailers

[168:00] that it's really clear what the device is that's being taxed and that you can't make that different by putting some substance in it the another argument that I'm sorry next slide please another argument that has been given is a suggestion that we should um determine what's taxable based on how products are marketed and Joel will explain that more later but we have found that devices that were originally marketed as for use with tobacco are now marketed as used for marijuana and um devices that are commonly used for marijuana um in include disclaimers that they should only be used for herb herbs that are not illegal under federal law which marijuana is so the marketing does not give us enough certainty or objectivity to know what it is we're

[169:00] taxing so Joel is prepared to show you the different types of advices thank you Kathy good evening Jo uh Council Joel Wagner tax and special projects manager and if we can move to the next slide please oh I'm sorry there some can you just Advance through the animations there I thought I took those all out my apologies so here counil saw a version of this slide at first reading but I want to note that since that time we've had several conversations both internally and externally about the marijuana sold uh in disposables or sold for use in in electronic smoking devices so we've revised this table to try to make it a little more clear uh but on this slide we have several examples of commonly sold electronic smoking devices these run the gamut from disposable nicotine CBD and marijuana pens rechargeable devices that are compatible with disposable pods and more durable desktop units that are larger more flexible uh can be used with a variety of different ejuices concentrates in

[170:01] plant Manner and be used with multiple different uh temperature settings and and the like so Prices range from $4 to5 for a nicotine pod that is $4 to $5 I should make sure I'm clear uh to hundreds of dollarss for some of these larger desktop devices and as written the code views all of these devices as taxable at the city's standard 3.86% sales tax plus the additional 40% ESD tax tonight's proposed changes don't change anything about taxation but they clarify who needs to collect the tax namely all retailers uh but again another point of clarification the council asked about during first reading the retail price of the marijuana that goes goes into a device has always been exempt from the 40% ESD tax and is subject to the 3 3 and a half% additional marijuana tax if it's sold at a recreational dispensary and as we've previously discussed with Council many dispensaries

[171:00] sell disposable Vape sticks and disposable pods if Council adopts this ordinance staff will work to develop administrative procedures and possibly a city manager rule to help clarify that if the value of the devic is demmin relative to the sales price of the marijuana uh the intent would be of this would be to provide clear guidance so that retailers know how to tax these disposable devices we anticipate working with retailers on this guidance in Ru making to ensure clear and consistent guidance that limits administrative burden both for retailers and for staff so next slide please and I'll go through these pretty quickly uh this is just some examples of the different devices on the market market so this first slide we see examples of disposable esds that are intended only to be used until the product inside it is consumed and then the device itself uh which typically consists of cheap plastic and a small battery is disposed of on this slide we

[172:00] see devices that are pre-loaded with nicotine CBD oils and marijuana and on the next slide we kind of see the next level up if we can move to the next slide please oh great perfect uh these are examples of disposable pods that are intended to be attached to a rechargeable battery system some are Universal like the ones on the left they can be threaded onto any battery system that that has a certain thread pattern and some are propriety proprietary like the ones on the right so these can these pods can only be used oh I'm sorry could you back up I I moved you through too quickly so uh the two on the right are proprietary pods that can only be used with a uh rechargeable device that is sold separately uh you'll notice that the two on the right look very similar and here you see a Pax ARA marijuana vape and a jewel nicotine Vape on the far right the jewel Vape which was the subject of much press at the time of ordinance 8340 was actually developed

[173:02] and spun off by Pax Labs the company that sells the one in kind of the middle uh middle right of the screen uh which started out making loose leaf tobacco vaporizers and then innovated into the nicotine space with Jewel so moving to the next slide thank you uh and then the last category are refillable devices and these are generally the most durable and flexible units they're typically larger more expensive upwards of up to $600 in some cases and provide users with the most flexibility they have multiple temperature settings for more control and they can be filled with many different materials and concentrates so in the nicotine World these would be called called mods uh and in the marijuana world they're typically just referred to as vaporizers and thank you next slide and as K Kathy mentioned and as Council requested uh at uh earlier this

[174:01] week um we have received several comments that there's a significant difference in the marijuana devices compared to nicotine devices uh and staff has been looking into these claims we we typically you know I've spent a lot of time trying to learn about these devices Kathy's been very generous in saying that I'm expert on this I will I will say right up front I am nowhere near expert but I've been learning a lot U unfortunately instead of finding you a user yeah I can't uh can't profess any familiarity with these devices um but um unfortunately instead of finding Clarity what we found is more confusion so here are just a few examples of the products sold by some of our smoke shops and dispensaries uh as marijuana devices but descriptions of the products in their own words so this first slide we see a volcano hybrid this is a popular desktop V vaporizer uh these retail for four to five or $600 uh but per the manufacturer's own user guide and I'm sorry it's a little difficult to see on the slide here uh

[175:01] they say it can only be used to vaporize eucalyptus hops chamomile lavender lemon bomb sage and Thyme and that any other use is inappropriate and potentially dangerous on the next slide we see another vaporizer from a company called puffco um this is another popular uh vaporizer that gets reviewed in in marijuana um magazines and Industry uh websites uh and here the manufacturer specifically states that this device isn't intended for any use that is illegal under federal law which would preclude marijuana in our current um federal laws and then finally uh the last slide uh what you see here uh is is a Pax 2 vaporizer so I mentioned the Pax aaod this was kind of the precursor of this if you go to pax's website today they say this is a device for cannabis only uh but back in 2015 in a interview with

[176:02] Inc magazine the co-founder of pack Labs um says that Pax is currently a tobacco product and they've never marketed their products to marijuana users uh incidentally this marketing changed about 2016 uh right after the FDA announced that they would be regulating electronic smoking devices of tobacco um so what we're seeing here is um you know I'm not bringing this up to say that that this is wrong but what we're when we're looking at observable facts um they don't correspond with with what we're hearing and that makes a very difficult Foundation to build sound tax policy when a manufacturer is publicly saying that a device can be used for one thing um but a retailer is saying that it could be used for something else so with that I'll pass it back to Kathy for the staff recommendation and our recommendation is passing the ordinance for the purpose of

[177:01] clarifying who is responsible for um collecting the tax from the taxpayer and remitting it to the city and for those that are required to get a li that are selling electronic smoking devices so that um we know who is responsible for paying the tax uh it is our belief that this is that what is being taxed um to include all electronic smoking devices is consistent with the original intent and so this is to make the code clear not to change anything that should be done now we have been very LAX on enforcement until um Council makes this decision In fairness to businesses who are trying to follow a code that at this point we don't believe is as clear as it should be okay and is that the end Kathy

[178:02] because we have a couple hands up yes it is okay super and with that I see Bob and Aaron yeah thanks Joel thanks Kathy Kathy you just said there the end that um the intention of this new ordinance is to clarify and um get to the intent of council and the voters um I want to follow up on question Mary was asking about um the title for the ballot measure I'm actually looking at the real live ballot from 2019 the ballot that people um received in the mail and voted on and sent back and this is city of Boulder ballot issue 2G from November November 2019 and the title I know this is not a legal title but this is the title that um the real life human beings read when they voted on this says tax on Tobacco vaping products tax on Tobacco vaping products so I'm a little bit

[179:00] curious Kathy how we would say that um taxing all electronic uh smoking devices including those that don't deliver tobacco or nicotine is consistent with what voters saw when they voted in November 2019 and and the the only way I can say it is is a typical answer to a question that people don't like but you've got to read the whole thing to know what it's about because five words can't summarize all the words that are there and the def and what the entire ballot content refers to is the definition that was in the code code that is the definition I showed in the first or SEC it's I believe it's in the second slide that electronic smoking devices is intended to cover all um devices that simulate smoking that use tobacco or any other

[180:00] substance I'm going to get to that in a second but let's just stay with the ballot measure from 2019 it then goes on below where it says tax on Tobacco vaping products it talks about what this tax on Tobacco vaping products will be used for and the two principal things after the payment of administrative costs are for um nicotine product resell retail licensing so that's nicotine product retail licensing and then health promotion and education with respect to nicotine products so not only does the ballot measure refer to tax and vaping products it then says that will be the proceeds will be used for nicotine retailer licensing and nicotine uh education um so square with me how that um that language as you said we need to drill into the language how that squares with a desire now to expand this Beyond nicotine um well first I don't think it's a desire to expand Beyond nicotine

[181:00] our understanding was it was intended to be Beyond nicotine and because of the vaping exam examples that were used but I cannot argue with you and say that this language was perfectly clear or the way I would have wanted it written um you are pointing out um the types of things that we're trying to fix and the problems that we have with um the present code Provisions as well Jas call up the code provision 6 -4.5 D1 the one that you showed on the slide can you put that up yes that was um slide number two if I'm understanding if if I'm referring to the same thing you are is this a definition you wanted yeah so I know I know that you emphasized the second half of the sentence but I want to read the first half of the sentence you didn't emphasize any product containing or delivering nicotine intended for human consumption

[182:00] then it goes on to talk about that that substance that um delivers nicotine can be nicotine or any other substance in other words I think there are nicotine substitutes um and that's what I believe the other substance is obviously if we intended this to be marijuana or cannabis we would have said that um but the the first part of of and this is the language from the statue right any product containing or delivering nicotine intended for human conception um and so I I you know maybe there's an internal conflict here I I I learned in law school a long long time ago that ambiguities are interpreted against the drafter isn't that right in other words if the drafter in a superior position represented by Council draft something that is less than clear and there's a dispute between that party that wrote the language and the other party that is the I use the word victim of the language the the drafter loses that fight isn't that correct yeah I believe that that is the law that applies to

[183:01] contracts with respect to interpreting laws like this generally the another rule is and you're right we've got all these different rules and that's what we're trying to Wade through um that you don't read out words that there so and again I don't I'm not trying to argue with you if Council wants to make a different decision than staff understood was the original intent obviously that's something you can do you can always limit what the voters approved you just can't expand what the voters approved so if you want to limit it that is council's prerogative um the other part of the presentation particularly the part that Joel did was to point out that it's very difficult when we're talking about electronic smoking devices and I would say maybe impossible to put something in one category or another with respect to being used just for nicotine or for marijuana so another desire for clarity is something that we

[184:02] really need um when we're trying to impose taxes is to make sure that um you know that we that every body knows and believes the same thing about what it is we're taxing it's not something that is determined at the staff level yeah we'll talk about Solutions a little bit later um but just to kind of close it out and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues um when you say what was the intention of council I was on that Council in November 2019 and four of us were and I was one of those four people and it was my intention that it' be limited to Tobacco that's why we use the word tobacco that's why we use the word nicotine so I I can't speak for my colleague and I can't speak to what 35,000 people uh understood when they read a ballot measure that says tax on Tobacco vaping products but I can tell you as both a council member who put this on the ballot and as a council member who voted in favor of ballot measure 2G I thought we were voting for tax on Tobacco vaping products as the B

[185:00] measure said Thank you Bob Aaron well Bob got through uh most of my questions so thank you Bob uh and I'll just throw throw in one additional one you know one one of the things that we've been hearing about um from Cannabis retailers is that uh the devices for Vaping cannabis and the devices for Vaping nicotine are not always one and the same that it is frequently the case that a a device intended for cannabis vaping uh cannot be used for nicotine vaping um and I think you use the the packs and the Jewel products is up there and I think that may be I'm also not an expert in this field but I think that may be an example that the packs that's delivers cannabis can't be used for other cartridges that contain nicotine is what I've heard so do we have a do you all have a a good understanding of that like

[186:00] about that possibility of devices that that deliver cannabis and you know would not be practically able to deliver nicotine um I'll just start with that we probably each have um potential answers to that and again talking from not being and not having used any of these so I can't say that I mean if you're putting a product in loose um you know they're both plant materials both uh tobacco and marijuana so if you're putting in loose product it probably doesn't matter if it's that or any of the other herbs that were listed in the slide that Joel showed or or anything else if you're putting in um something that's made by somebody else so for instance you need a manufactured thing to insert to the ESD to make it work then you can only put in something that matches and if people marketing are only making marijuana things that match the

[187:02] device that you're trying to insert the Pod into then you're only using it for marijuana if the manufacturer only does it for tobacco then you're only using tobacco but as soon as another manufacturer comes along that makes a device makes a insert to that device of the opposite thing I'm not sure that there's anything different about the derivatives of tobacco or marijuana that would prevent it from being used Joel you may have know more than I do yeah well I think I would all I would add is that uh it is a it is a very complicated and and um diverse market and so yes there are certainly certain devices that the Pod can only be used with a compatible and that was developed for for marijuana oils uh added complications though are are uh just two weeks ago we we adopted

[188:00] an ordinance that allows marijuana businesses to sell uh CBD now so CBD oil and marijuana oil are are you substant substantially very similar substances uh the tax specifically excludes marijuana as defined in our code um so now we're going to add another level of complexity into this uh where we have devices one device that could be used with both marijuana and CBD um in in the same type of thing but uh the slides we presented were intended to show that you know this is this is a complicated space and and when it is um when manufacturers are saying one thing but um retailers are saying another thing um that's that's a difficult um found Foundation like I said to build a tax policy on understood yeah well thanks for that I iess I'll share with Bob I was also on Council when this was put on the ballot and I was also my uh understanding and

[189:02] intent that to that it was a measure to curb the youth uh tobacco um epidemic we've been seeing it was was not focused on Canabis device or was intentionally included canvas devices so I I'll look during the um discussion phase about ways you know that maybe we can make sure that this is not attacks on you know non nicotine devices so appreciate those answers thank you Aon I've got juny and then I'm gonna weigh in and then Mark and Rachel juny yeah thank you um I would have to say from just reading this ordinance 8 458 I think it's over Brad and I don't agree with it any substance any other substance I mean I think the word any other substance can lead to abuse and also I think my question

[190:01] concerns uh I don't know if you mentioned that or if you provided that information before but I haven't heard it are there any comparable law in the state of Colorado that mirrors this or this or particular section um you mean with respect to referring this to any other substance or the whole 8340 yes starting from any to product do we have any comparable uh ordinance or law in the state of Colorado that is comparable to that one you know I was not involved in this original um um when this was originally drafted there was a lot of research done and I think that this was once again where Boulder was on The Cutting Edge um but I would have to to answer more definitively I'd have to do some research I don't know off the top of my head yeah um go ahead sorry sorry um I

[191:04] want to look it up and I'll and I'll get back to you I believe that the state of Colorado's definition of electronic smoking devices is very different or I I'm sorry very similar to ours um but I'll uh before the end of of this meeting I'll see if I can find it for you and send it thank you so much and I think part of my question as well involv uh the imposed civil penalties it's up to $5,000 per occurrence I mean I'm just thinking um someone either traveling to Boulder just moved to Boulder and being stopped and having inter an interaction with a police police officer and you know they find something like that on the person without anything inside based on this ordinance this person could could get a penalty up to $5,000 I think this penalty is it's over Brad and also too punitive just too

[192:01] punitive because in the state of Colorado these things are not illegal from my understanding so thank you thank you should should I the ordinance does not the penalty is for selling the devices against the ordinance not for having them so somebody stopped with an electronic smoking device whether they got it in violation of this ordinance or in another city or someplace else regardless there is no violation of this ordinance just by having one great and and just to follow up I I'll call on myself here um Kathy this is a tax measure correct and so the penalties come from not collecting and remitting the tax as required is that correct correct okay great and in my

[193:01] half hour of Internet research one of the things I found interesting was Pax which is one of the leading um suppliers of these devices parent company of Jewel um which is all about nicotine and as Joel had mentioned part of the history is that pxs originally developed as a way to vape tobacco and moved on to um marijuana and and marijuana derivatives cannabis um one of the things I found interesting was Pax itself that makes the smoking device doesn't actually sell the cartridges um filled with marijuana or cannabis extract is that correct Joel it seems to me like they have the retailers fill up the cartridges so that the retailers can sell the smoking device and the retailers can sell the cartridges filled with whatever they mixed per tax's Direction but is it true

[194:02] that those cartridges are filled by um suppliers other than pxs uh yeah that's our understanding um I don't think that it would be retailers who are filling it but but um Mar want infused product uh producers and and manufacturers right in the states where it's legal for instance so one of the things I I found interesting as I did my half hour of research was that there are plenty of places where you can find instructions on how to use um nicotine products as well as nicotine oils in vaporizers that are sold for marijuana I can quote a few of the things I found but it seems like um because of the temperatures that the marijuana vaping operate at and the very similar temperatures that nicotine vaping operate at that there would be no fundamental reason why you couldn't use nicotine oil and say a Pax device or

[195:04] conversely leaf marijuana in a vaporizer intended for tobacco leaf is that correct with what you've been resear searching that's consistent with what I found and I will say again you know I I do not doubt that there are some vaporizers that um are in 100% intended for marijuana um and work better with marijuana oils especially when you get into the certain types of concentrates that is really specific to marijuana like Butters and and honey and chatter and other um words and and types that I'm I'm learning a lot about but um exactly like you said I think we have a lot of examples where uh manufacturers have told us that a device can be used for tobacco or marijuana or hops or or lemongrass or or a multiple multitude of other things very good thanks that's all my questions and then we'll go to give me just one sec so I get the order right

[196:01] Mark and then Rachel mark thank you Sam um I guess I'd lead off by saying I am amazed the methodologies for consuming uh Mar have certainly changed a bit since I was in school um it seems like a great deal of ingenuities going towards the creation of these products with respect to what we're looking at tonight it seems to me that the plain language of the tax measure seems to limit it to tobacco products and even looking at um 8340 um we're having some Reliance here upon the phrase or any other substance but I think that phrase is also qualified by the following phrase even if marketed as nicotine free to indicate that this is all still within the tobacco space that we're trying to regulate and you know I'm and so I'm a

[197:00] little bit troubled by all of this I'm I'm certainly not supportive of of I'm certainly wasn't supportive of vaping it with tobacco I don't have a a more tender spot in my heart for Vaping with marijuana but I I think if we're going to regulate it it has to be with the knowing consent of the people who's who we going to with respect to a vote and I I I tend to doubt that the community saw this as anything other than a tobacco uh regulation statute and and vote and tax um and there's a certain degree of uh unfairness it seems to me trying to stretch the language to cover that which I really don't know that it was intended to cover if we want to go back to the community and say will you authorize a tax on esds relating to marijuana I I that would make good sense to me but what we're doing now is

[198:02] stretching um a blanket past its capacity to cover everybody on the bed and I I just them uh I'm just kind of troubled by what we're doing so um I'm I share some B's concerns Rachel um point of clarification we're kind of just on questions still right and maybe yes after we hear from the public okay so a couple questions one is on scope my understanding is you know we're not looking at 8340 and and the language that's contained therein and and Rel litigating any of that right that was voted on by the public we're just looking at um sort of who who or what devices is implicated by getting taxed on what was decided in voted on in 2019 is that accurate yes um the ordinance shows the

[199:03] redlining that we're doing um that were proposing to language that was in 8340 as well as language that was in 837 6 okay I just got a little bit confused tonight so that's helpful and then my second question is um U as someone who was involved in advocacy around the um vaping ban um and listening to some of the uh statements I think by Bob and Aaron on kind of where they were at with with what they thought they were putting putting out to the community I I just want to know under Taber um what what legally can we capture at this point if there's Confusion by you know the public and seems like a fair number of people on Council on whether or not marijuana or the you know the the esds we would be looking to add in and and

[200:00] sweep in under this regulation um what would Taber say to that I guess I'm I'm I'm a little bit worried hope that makes sense but that if we if we try and tax something that wasn't clear that we clearly on the ballot what's the ramification uh the ramif well there's there's several things um tab is mostly focused on making sure that voters get to vote on taxes at all and taxes going up so the issue about whether um we're going something is being taxed beyond what the voters did approve because there's no argument that the vote you know that this did pass um there's there's not many Taber separate arguments than there are from any election question at least that I can think of off the top of my head and I may think about it I want to give you a different answer tomorrow but um I think we're really looking at you know trying to decipher the um what was meant

[201:02] the the same type of evaluation that we're going through tonight and particularly council's going through since the council's the first interpreter of their own laws um so I'm I'm not worried about losing the litigation um I I I I appreciate that that uh certainty and confidence I guess it it feels a little bit like if we had put a measure on saying we will tax shirts and then we say we're going to tax all clothes like tab doesn't care about that distinction um Taber probably would because it was saying ATT tax I think if there there was no argument no it wasn't a matter because I I'm not sure that's a matter of interpretation um you definitely if you say we're going to tax property um and then you start taxing food that's a major T Taber problem so when you get

[202:00] your boxes closer and closer and closer is when it becomes more of a legal interpretation issue rather than a Taber issue I guess is what I'm struggling with fashioning a separate Taber argument okay all right that's all my questions thanks all right Council any other questions otherwise we will go to the public hearing here great and seeing no other questions we're ready for the public hearing this will be a bit um will require a bit of rearrangement our first three speakers are Bonnie do Liz Zukowski and Nico Pinto however Nico had a personal emergency see so I was I'm going to substitute in Andrea medigel for Nico and then next we'll have Jason doll who's pooling time with some other people who will check with so let's start with Bonnie and then Liz and then Andrea Bonnie and everyone will get

[203:00] three minutes tonight um because we're under 15 people thank you and Sam um if we could just start with Bonnie I did not get clarification on your last name um but I'm I'd like to allow you to unmute and just let us know your last name please my last name is doll DL D no DL d d AHL great thank you we've got it and you are good to go for three minutes Bonnie okay thanks okay I have owned the the fitter on the hill for the last 46 out of 48 years we're very opposed to this new amendment that Boulder City attorney has proposed posing to add cannabis devices to the same list as tobacco devices we've been carrying cannabis vaporizers for several years now used to carry Jewel and other disposable electronic smoking devices till this ordinance was passed by the voters in 2019 we too found that it got way out of

[204:00] hand with high school and college kids getting addicted to tobacco and nicotine when they never expected to be involved in smoking tobacco so we made the conscious decision to stop carrying these products as we know now Jewel became a cultural phenomena for that age group as the cool thing to do I was approached in January by the city tax department to obtain a Retailer's tobacco license we had been completely out of the tobacco market for several months prior since the law went into effect and could not warrant obtaining that license when we no longer sold any tobacco products it then came to my attention a couple months later that the city attorney wanted to add cannabis vaporizers as an amendment to this law to clarify the wording of devices that could be used for tobacco I explain that cannabis vaporizers have been around long before tobacco vaporizers that they use the same name of vaporizer but they're not interchangeable tobacco will

[205:00] clog up most of these cannabis devices immediately I have two main arguments here first the voters in 2019 were focused on the actual substance of Ni and tobacco devices such as Jewel became a cultural part of this intake but the delivery system should not be the focus in fact a group of us from smoke shops and tobacco retailers sat on two meetings that helped the city craft this bill and marijuana was never even considered to be in this coordinance we're very conscientious being an alternative smoke shop and only will carry quality cannabis vaporizers with backed up warranties therefore our customers come to us because they trust us in this industry we definitely get medical patients whose preference is to vaporize and not deal with the harshness of smoking marijuana cannabis in this state is very well regulated and highly approved by our population to add the extra 40% tax to these items will turn a

[206:00] popular $100 vaporizer into $140 volcano which was shown which has been a very long-term popular device that sells for $600 like you noted would need to sell for $840 of course we carry several less expensive vaporizers any store or dispensary in the city of Boulder would need to get out of selling these cannabis vaporizers for good since the consumer will go immediately online or to the neighboring cities of gville Lafayette Longmont and Broomfield since that is a real money cost so the city would lose out both on the 40% tax no stor and Boulder could any longer be competitive as well as the normal sales tax revenue from this relatively large Market thank you Bonnie I'm sorry your time is up appreciate your input um next we have Liz Zukowski and then Andrea Manuel

[207:01] Liz good evening Council am I can you hear me yep okay great uh my name is Liz Zukowski I'm a public affairs manager for native Roots cannabis company we have two um we've been a member of the Boulder Community since 2010 when we opened our medical dispensary the dandelion and have since opened a recreational dispensary as well we're active members of the community dedicating Hands-On volunteer hours as well as financial support to nonprofits that support local issues I'm also speaking on behalf of terapin Care Station Boulder based cannabis retailer um as mayor Weaver said niik Pento was signed up to speak tonight but was pulled away because of because of an emergency um we I really appreciate the comments and the discussion um around this that we've heard so far um as some of the council members noted during the ballot measure campaign it was very clear that the intent was to Target

[208:00] nicotine esds in response to the high rate of nicotine vaping by Boulder youth um all public facing information to voters was about nicotine vaping and even the plain language of the ordinance reference nicotine products um and the subsequent Boulder code and the city's website also reference um just nicotine products the voters understood that the tax was meant to apply to nicotine vaping devices we didn't talk about um applying the tax to cannabis vaping devices and therefore we see this as an expansion of the ESD tax um that is being that you're being asked to to consider this evening uh we believe that on Boulder can honor the spirit of the 2019 voter approved initiative by exempting esds that are not for tobacco or nicotine use because cannabis products sold in licensed retail marijuana stores are not for nicotine products further it's against the law

[209:00] for cannabis retailers to sell nicotine or nicotine devices in our Stores um we support the amendment that was introduced by vs strategies to exempt devices not able be used for tobacco or nicotine and believe that this solution threads the needle simplifies the tax code while not applying a new tax on a different product that was not approved by voters we encourage you to support this amendment as well thank you thank you next we have Andrea meno Jason dah and Colt Stander who is pooling time with two others so Andrea thank you Council can you hear me we can all right right thank you Andrea Manel representing the boulder chamber 2440 Pearl Street and also city of Boulder marijuana advisory panel member from 2016 to 2019 I'd like to express our agreement with the points you've heard from our cannabis businesses today the ballot

[210:00] title of the city of Boulders 2019 ballot issue 2G tax on Tobacco vaping products the ballot language the associated campaigns the series of op ads letters to the editor that shaped the public discussion made it very clear this was solely to be a tax on Tobacco and nicotine related devices voters were not asked nor did voters approve nor does the ballot language indicate that an additional tax should apply to cannabis vaping products also important to note and what we understand from our cannabis retailers is that cannabis and nicotine devices are completely different devices applying the tax to a device sold for an entirely different purpose would be applying the tax to an incorrect product we've had several attorneys call the Chamber to provide their unsolicited perspectives that expanding this to include cannabis can be characterized as a rather egregious

[211:00] Taber violation a device sold with a pod or cartridge containing cannabis clearly intended for cannabis use should not be taxed we have seen suggested language about how to clarify that and our perspective is keep the language very simple very clear and to not accompany this decision with unnecessary or undue regulatory burden for the Cannabis industry after all as Illustrated throughout our cannabis code in Boulder it is clear cannabis dispensaries in Boulder cannot sell any non-cannabis products council members you know this is one of the most if not the highest regulated industry in our community and has faced intense scrutiny yet complies with every Rule and has set an unprecedented National Standard of how to successfully operate in harmony with the community's values and Public Safety standards thanks to the work staff

[212:00] industry and council members have done to seek a solution on this issue thank you thanks Andrea next we have um Jason d Colt Stander and Evan rabbitz Jason hey councilor are you guys able to hear me we can okay perfect um yeah so my name is Jason do I am the manager of the fitter on the hill like um my mother said we have been around for 48 years um a few things I would like to get it one is everybody that when I was talking about this everybody it to apply to Tobacco um but on top of that we've had a flavor band for almost a year and a half and it has yet to be enforced I keep seeing Menthol pods and disposable ecigarettes and all of that stuff in front of my store um we are the only

[213:00] store I had somebody that dropped off flyers to because the city has a program to collect used pods and all of that and I told her I actually don't sell any nicotine products and she goes wow you're the only store I've come across that doesn't sell any nicotine products um so it's kind of hard to believe that you would be doing a 40% tax on esds when you can barely even enforce what's already on the books um like I said Menthol was supposed to be banned it's not I talk to customers all the time and they are not paying the 40% tax on nicotine so I don't know how it's administered or not and then a second Point too is it's I find it hard to differentiate the or yeah to find the difference between a vaporizer and a bong or something like that because like they're both basically going to give you the end result so where does it end because you know if all of a sudden you're going to Target methods of getting high then you're going to get every single thing taken um but then and then the third and this is probably the most critical point is that a lot of

[214:00] where the young kids are getting it are from people that can go to dispensaries so if there's not going to be untact some things on the dispensary it's not going to change any rates because all they have to do is find a homeless man or somebody like that who is obviously above the age of 21 they can shoulder tap him and give him money and he can go in there and this really isn't a solution to any one of those problems um but I really thank Council for giving me the time to speak and I leave you the floor thank you Jason next we have Colt Stander and Evan rabbits Colt you are pooling with two people um Jordan Wellington and Jonathan singer so we need I'll just turn to Branda Brenda are the pooling people here and if they are col you're good to go for five minutes they are um if we can just do we need to have Jason and Jordan confirm that they are pooling no if you verified that they're here that's just fine with me and then

[215:01] col you're good to go with five minutes great thank you they are here and Cole you should be able to unmute thank you good evening my name is col Stander I'm vice president product at P at PX Labs I'm here to express our support for the compromised Amendment drafted by vs strategies and I would like to take this opportunity to demonstrate to the city that our cannabis vaporizer devices cannot be used to consume tobacco or nicotine for clarification Pax is not the parent company of Jewel since 2018 we have been separate different independent companies with completely different ownership additionally an article from six years ago does not define our our company today Pax Labs is a leader in cannabis technology we develop design and manufacture cannabis only vaporiz vaporization devices both for loose leaf cannabis flow and for closed loop pen and pod systems intended for designed

[216:00] exclusively for cannabis oil concentrates our products are not for use with tobacco or nicotine products we understand that there's an there's an erroneous claim that our product can be used with tobacco while there may be other devices on the market that are capable with both tobacco and cannabis PX devices are not our two product lines which you have seen tonight in a lot of the images that youve you've seen um protect against use with nicotine or tobacco in different manners first our era product line which is the the Pod and and Battery system that you've seen is intended for exclusively with C with cannabis oils um the era pods and and the devices or the vaporizers only work with each other and vice versa without the special pods the device is just a battery it doesn't have a mouthpiece or any other way to use it similarly the pods just contain cannabis oil and without the device it can't be used without it those pods can only be filled by our authorized brand Partners using

[217:00] proprietary equipment that we've designed to use exclusively with cannabis oils our packaging instructions how-to videos marketing materials are explicit that this device is cannabis vaporizer and that the pods are not to be refilled further those filled era pods are only available for purchase by consumers at cannabis dispensaries um then those consumers cannot purchase empty pods they cannot refill those empty they cannot refill pods that they've used um and that's largely due to our proprietary pod design which we've which we filed many different patents for if someone was to attempt to refill one of those pods with a nicotine oil um or with anything the pods are damaged and they are not usable um cannabis oil is a much less viscous oil than nicotine oil for that reason if nicotine oil is added to the Pod the the oil will immediately leak out of that pod all over the system damaging the

[218:01] battery and the system won't work no and with that no Vapor will be produced and so to say that these systems are separate is is is like an underst our other system our other product line is our dry cannabis vaporizer these devices function as an oven to heat dry cannabis material within a certain temperature range to really to achieve an aerosolized Vapor our pxs three which you also saw tonight has a temperature range that is simply too high for tobacco the optimal range for for vaporizing tobacco and nicotine is 125 to 150 C the temperature range that's well outside the abilities of our Pax devices which range from 182 to 215 if you put tobacco into a Pax product it will taste terrible because you're heating the material too high so with that there are claims that that that this product can be used for tobacco and it's simply not true those products uh per manufacturing sorry our products per manufacturing cannot be used for purposes other than cannabis

[219:01] therefore we think that we believe the 40% should not apply to them therefore we're asking the council to adopt the amendment drafted by vs strategies that would clarify that can only devices are not subject to Tobacco taxes this is a small amendment that will go a long way in keeping these two markets distinct for operational and Taxation purposes thank you for your time I'm happy to answer any questions or provide information that you may need now or uh also offline that's great thank you cult I do have questions um one of one of my questions is uh you claim that the temperature range that um nicotine vaporized device operate at is different than what your Pax 3 operates at can you tell me what say a jewel um vaporizer intended for nicotine what temperature range it operates at I'm actually unable to tell you what what temperature range of jewels at because they're a different company and they keep their technology proprietary and secret that's great well I can tell you

[220:02] I can tell you I can tell you that according to a scientific paper that I read um Jewel temperatures can be set the oil temperature going to be set to 230 to 400 Cel which interestingly overlaps pretty well with several different devices which vaporize flour marijuana so could you tell me what temperature range your Pax 3 operates over so our PX 3 operates at 182 to 215 Celsius and I'm sorry did you say it was 218 to 400 Celsius on the on the jewel product something in that range yeah but there it seemed like in my research for both packs and others we've got um another Vape the star X Vape is 100 C to 240 C so it it seems like for flower and similar with the volcano that you saw that there's a significant amount of overlap for for the flow do you have any comments on that yeah I'll say that even those two temperature ranges that you

[221:00] provided between the Jewel and our PX 3 they don't actually overlap um they they come close but they don't quite overlap there's a reason that we stop our temperature at 2 because anything above that um is is um anything above that is is not optimal for for Canabis like simple simply put if you get above that temperature you end up having a pretty terrible experience so um I can't speak to other products I can't speak to other companies as to why they would if they what their temperature ranges are and what they're capable of doing versus what they are actually delivering for the consumer um but I can speak to our products and that they're um that we have a very narrow range there to to optimize for cannabis only um also the the Pax 3 product is is for or it's for cannabis flour the jewel product is a is a liquid Pro like they're not even in the same category so I'd be I'd be careful to compare to well then that's a great point so if I were to take a Pax

[222:00] three and put Loosely piped tobacco into the Pax 3 would it vaporize that um as as described previously um you vaporize tobacco at 125 to 150 our device does not go low enough to vaporize tobacco in fact it's too hot it's at 182 to 215 so so do do you mean nicotine or tobacco flour so if I were to talk about the plant tobacco it seems like the low range that you're talking about is for nicotine oil is that correct um that is a very good question there Sam sorry uh tobacco loose leaf to tobacco that you would put into a Pax 3 device has a much lower vaporization temperature now the oils that you're referring to in terms of the jewel oils you can't put Jewel oils into a Pax 3 um it would it would it would immediately damage our p 3 device um our devices that that device is not made to put oils

[223:01] into it like free free flowing oils into it the the Pax three is not that that is correct um it can be used can be used for some of the solid materials that um that someone mentioned earlier that someone mentioned earlier like shatters and things of that sort that are actually a solid but it is not meant for a a like very liquid oil such as a a jewel juice also I'm not sure how someone would get a jewel juice out of a pod to use it in a PX 3 as well so P so if I'm not mistaken just help me out here the PX 3 is is Market as dual use and when I read what dual use means it means flour Andor oil is that correct that that is correct um and so I think it's really important for us to also clarify that when we use the term oil um for the Dual use purpose what we're referring to is What's called the dab um it's it's a it's a

[224:01] poly um it's a polyphasic material that has both oils and um and solids in it so it's really like a waxy material and so unfortunately we've used oil in the past as a descriptor for that when really what we're referring to is a polyphasic material um you know consumers don't quite understand polyphasic materials at this point well that is complicated but just to cut to the chase it sounds like loose leaf marijuana or loose leaf tobacco would be combusted in a PX 3 so that you could inhale the smoke from them yeah Ju Just Just to be clear with that um the tobacco the tobacco would not vaporize so F first off vaporization and combusting are two different things right when you light a joint when you light a cigarette that's combusting when you vaporize something you're actually heating it to a point to extract the the liquids but you're not combusting it that's actually why it's a healthier alternative to to say like smoking a

[225:01] product um and so the vaporization points for tobacco and and cannabis are two different points um and so that's that's sort of the distinction between those things well I won't read you all of the posts that I found where people talk about using the Pax 3 to smoke tobacco with but that that's fine we we'll just stop there I I think the point is clear that there's overlap but it's not one is designed specifically um to to do both tobacco and marijuana so that's all for me for questions anyone else had any questions thank you thank you Sam for the question y thank you all and then finally we have Evan rabbitz and then I'll check in with Brenda Brenda did beia Campbell decides she wanted to speak you can let me know after Evan goes

[226:01] Evan you should be able to unmute sorry about the delay good evening former US Surgeon General Joselyn Elders wrote in a 2004 editorial that we quote can avoid the hazards of smoke through simple devices called vaporizers her editorial was in the Providence Rhode Island Journal I sent you the reference by email so you're considering greatly increasing the price of already pricey devices that can prevent respiratory problems for medical and other cannabis users the higher percentage of high school kids using marijuana in Colorado must be due to the well-known effect of marijuana use displacing cannabis I'm sorry displacing alcohol use anyone honest knows this is a great thing ask

[227:01] council member slick about his experience as a bouncer watching the difference in behavior of people on alcohol and on cannabis cannabis kills some 4 thou 40,000 people a year directly and Far More in traffic accidents cannabis Kills Nobody it's easy to find that the only medical use of alcohol is to kill germs while there are dozens of accepted medical uses for cannabis which your current project will inhibit please don't let City attorney Tom Carr get the city sued yet again on his way out the door thank you thank you Evan and I haven't seen anything on diaa Campbell being here already and she had withdrawn earlier so with that we will bring the public hearing to a close and bring it back to

[228:03] council Rachel yeah I I thought of another question um it would appear in listening and to our questions and discussion that we're not maybe uh experts in modern uh cannabis intake or vaporizing use so I just want to know did this and and I guess I'm I am H part of the I mean I understand this was going to be a uh felt like a quick cleanup and I was someone who supported us looking into this quick cleanup and it's no longer feeling like a quick cleanup measure so I want to know did this go to cab or maybe should it go to cab given our you know possible lack of expertise on this subject and I know that's late in the game and I apologize to staff for asking late in the game well it depends on if we think this is a marijuana issue or or not um we

[229:01] hadn't thought of it or presented it as a marijuana issue um it was interpreting you know what council has already adopted um of course we can send it to clab I'm not sure what the question is is if you're asking for what clb's interpretation of the intent or whether you want to ask clab do you think these devices should be taxed well I I think it's are these from what I'm hearing and I thought uh Sam asked some insightful question like are these devices used um in ways that that we we are uh maybe missing in should be taxed so it just seems like we we are trying to figure out some some questions that that do pertain to actual um intaking of of cannabis so it it doesn't it doesn't feel like it's strictly a legal

[230:01] interpretation question at this point but but somewhat of also a a marijuana use question that that might be proper for clab it's just a thought it it may not be a great thought but I'm putting it out there thank you Aon yeah thanks for that Rachel um I mean I think the answer is right that we're not experts on this topic as as we've we've shown somewhat um tonight but just to get back to like comment that that Bob and I were making at the at the end of the question line of questioning I I think I I appreciate app staff's kind of cleaning up the definitions overall and and so I think most of what's in this ordinance is is working out well um but the I do feel like the intent of the tax uh was to be on Tobacco vaping devices and not on cannabis vaping devices and I I understand how you can interpret the the

[231:00] language maybe a little differently but you know the the ballot title with the it includes the word tobacco it seems like a voter would have probably felt pretty clearly that this was a taex on on Tobacco related devices so I I'm concerned about extending it to things that are exclusively or um or 99 plus percent used for cannabis devices because I don't think that was the intent of the tax so I thought actually that the The Proposal that we were sent um via email a couple of days ago by the vs strategies uh group seemed like a potential way out of this is they just that their proposal was to add just a couple of sentences to the the Ordinance one of them said in the definition section quote electronic smoking device does not include any devices that cannot be used for tobacco or nicotine delivery and that that seemed pretty neat to me because then the it's saying

[232:02] if if you the tax is on Tobacco vaping devices so if the device can't be used for tobacco then um then you shouldn't tax it so that seemed like a a pretty neat way potentially around uh this uh come possible overextension of the the function of the tax just put that out for discussion may I cqu on that c um K before anyone cqu um I I need to rewind this just a bit Erin thank you for saying what you did we'll come back to it um before we go on um we had a mistake where Lind seagull was overlooked on the list of public commenters so before we carry on with our debate I want to make sure we hear from everyone so with that I will turn to Brenda and see Brenda um would you be able to bring Lynn in yeah and my you know it's interesting hey ly ly that's great okay work for open comment either

[233:02] it did not work unbelievable there's so much incompetence in this system you know naal Bennett our new the new prime minister for Israel is bombing Gaza as we speak what does this have to do with this issue I'll tell you it has a whole lot to do with this issue we've got bigger fish to fry like World War III coming up probably and people are arguing over alcohol or tobacco or cannabis no to all of them no to all of them and if you're going to tax them because you're stuck and you have to do something tax it 5,000% and maybe that would begin to pay for the affordable housing that's driving our homelessness up and our meth that we are never going to be able to take care of housing for because you have to completely strip down a meth house this is what is the problem with

[234:02] our society cannabis it doesn't matter if it's oil you can you can research it all you want Sam the whole issue here is this is not good stuff for society except the Cannabis that's used for people's medical you know like little kids serious psychological or I think it's like neurological issues okay that's it these things need to get out of our society now you could say federally we are not you know it's not legal anyway but it shouldn't be legal any where anyhow and you can say oh it's going to be a black market no it's not because people have other things to do bigger fish to fry like Gaza right now today this is a big deal if you're going to tax this stuff Tax the living hell out of it because we need that money for

[235:01] gun barrel for CU South for all of the growth that you're generating in this town that is unpaid for that's what we need this money for but it's kind of corrupt to tax something that is really not good to have in our society we should oppose it in every possible way alcohol and guess what I like to have um what is the name of that like a a Fu drink you know but I would give up that drink for that I have once a year you know for there for alcohol to be illegal and marij and cannabis and THD and hemp can be used as a plant for um cloth and things but not for anything else I mean or for oil that for for some functional things these are detriment detriment to our societal needs alcohol all of

[236:03] them thank you Lynn okay so with that for the second time will bring public hearing to a close eron I'm sorry that I cut you off you had proposed that we um use the the suggestion from the industry if you want to recap that then I'll go to Rachel for a colloquy oh just I thought that that was potential Amendment language uh that could uh resolve this situation so that we're not taxing cannabis devices from our tobacco vaping Tex measure Rachel something me well just that I think that the The Proposal is we wouldn't text devices that cannot be used for tobacco but I think Sam's line a questioning was sort of can they be and we're hearing from industry that they cannot be um but I I think it would be cannot you know is a is an interesting legal term or or word to use

[237:00] there because I think arguably they could be and and I just don't know that that quite solves the issue because you know perhaps now or perhaps in three years they can be and you know is it the majority is it the marketing is it I I just think that's that's a not as clean as I would like it to be I appreciate the spirit of it thank you Rachel I got Bob and then juny Bob well I get your point Rachel but I don't know what what other solution there is I mean we're either gonna um I think everyone agrees that that the voters approved attacks on nicotine delivery products so that's that's um that's what well known and well agreed and so the question is are we going to tax products that um that don't deliver nicotine or not intended to deliver nicotine I I suppose you could probably Jerry rig a lawnmower to make it deliver deliver you know n i mean I just don't know where you would draw the line so I I agree with with with Aon I mean I I realized that there might be some fights between staff and the seller of a product um but I I we heard some really

[238:02] convincing testimony for people who actually make and sell these products and they said that they cannot and are not designed to be used to deliver nicotine I that's very compelling to me um we heard from our staff based on a 2015 website hit sounds like so um I guess I'm going to um assume that the people in Industry know what they're talking about um if there's a fight they can fight it out with our staff but I'm not willing to extend this tax beyond what was presented to the voters by the council including those of us who are sitting down in the council and what plain language of the tax said and as Andreas said it was it was promoted on the city's own website as a tobacco so I mean we can get in on all sorts of legal niceties but I think the common understanding of everybody who looked at this and voted for this was this is a was a tobacco device tax and I think there are some serious Taber

[239:00] concerns if we start expanding it to other devices that are not tobacco devices so I I agree with with with the uh the industry language proposal that Aron promoted I think that's a good compromise my alternative would be to not support this at all and just to drop it um but I think we're trying to find a solution that that um makes a path forward and and so I think Erin's um proposal works for me thanks Bob juny and then Mary juny thank you um I agree with Aaron um the language need to be worked on it's a again it's unclear as the language stand right now what of some of the products that are included so um using industry language that was sent to us to make it clearer or just for instance when we're looking at 8340 it says any product containing or

[240:00] delivering nicotine intended for human consumption that can be used by an individual to simulate smoking in the deliver of nicotine or tobacco period instead of having or any other substance even if marketed as nicotine free I think this bring takes us to a whole different territory where it becomes discretionary um you know I don't know how uh these businesses are regulated and what is the law but I can imagine someone just using that any other substance language um so I think again making it clear if it's nicotine and tobacco just make it nicotine and tobacco in Period as opposed to um the extra language that give more leverage and more discretion um I'm still also I asked the question about the $5,000 penalty I still think it was steep I don't know what um you know what

[241:01] was the thought in the past I quickly looked at the uh law around you know just selling tobaccos and it seems like it's only a $200 penalty um I don't know if that mirrors esds but just selling PL tobacco I think um as a business is like $200 or something like that so I think five from 200 to 5,000 it's a real difference and I wonder what was the thought behind that um but I do agree with Aaron I would support that or just making it clear nicotine or tobacco thank you thank you Jannie Mary and then Rachel Mary thanks Sam so um I I found um Sam's line of questioning pretty interesting and um and I think it's an important line of questioning however I also think that the the language of the

[242:03] ballot title um and just the way it was presented to the voters kind of overrides that um whether or not you can use one for the other and the other for the other so um because the voters vote it with a certain intention so um so I'll I'll agree with Aaron and Bob and um as well as um what Bob brought up regarding the Taber question I believe Aaron brought it up too um and if we want to go ahead and do what we're proposing to do tonight perhaps we need another ballot measure to just cover ourselves um but I believe there's a there's a slide that has that alternative that that language that was proposed um by the

[243:01] strategists um could we take a look at it so that we're all on the same page and I believe you're right it was submitted but I don't know um so whoever it can knows how to show things as the slides should be able to show it Carl do you do you have that you can pull it up we sent it to you about 5:15 and while he's doing that if if I mean there's several things that I've heard so I guess looking for clarification that we look at how we could enforce this how we would know as as staff what would meet this new language and Carl I think the Joel was sending is was not part of the original presentation it was something that was added late um so we could provide that

[244:00] information and what would be required to change the code to limit it to just tobacco or nicotine products and or go to clab and ask whether these devices can be limited to to just nicotine and or present a ballot issue that would cover all electronic smoking devices so there wouldn't be any ambiguity there it is that's that's what was sent to us as um a proposal for I guess kind of a um a compromise Amendment um to as Bob said move us forward so um um I I could support this um and I guess I would put that on the table as a Way Forward uh thank you Mary we got Rachel and then Adam Rachel um yeah I I don't mean to to beat a dead horse here but you know the any

[245:01] devices that cannot be used for tobacco or nicotine delivery I I I still think it's it's it sounds like the reality is that they should not be used for for tobacco or nicotine delivery so my I guess do we need to compromise like if we don't want to do what staff is asking do we need to do anything can we just walk away from this do we need to do compromised language if we're not going to sweep these additional devices in and I think if we are going to put language in that that talks about delivery then it should go to clab because I I'm going to stick with I don't think we quite know enough what we are talking about and I I think I'm hearing Kathy saying we'd have to figure out what what is included in there so I just wonder if we're over complicating and is there a need to do this if we're not going to support the initial um idea and and if so should it go to Club thanks Rachel

[246:00] Adam yeah for the sake of moving this along does anyone want to make a uh motion and if not then we can just give staff whatever guidance we want to since if no motion is made we just have to move on um I can I can move that we um amend staff's Proposal with the language that is on the screen before us as proposed by BBB strategies I think it was if I can just call it I think they actually proposed um changing two statutes one that's on screen and there's another one as well in we have a next slide on that 6 d4.2 yeah and I believe we have that slide as well there you go yeah thanks Carl so Mary if you if you if your motion was as to both of those statutes I would second it as to both of those statutes

[247:00] yes okay so we have a motion and a second um I think there's no body else with their hand well I see lots of hands but they all look old to me so Mary Rachel Adam okay they're going away all right so I I'm gonna support the motion but I'm oh juny go ahead yeah I do have a question though um my question is has this been has this proposal being vetted by or legal staff no and that's why I suggested that if you want us to bring it back this way what we would recommend I believe talking off the top of my head so anybody jump in if they think I'm wrong what other changes we would have to make to make all of the sections work and also figure out if this is something we could enforce yeah yeah so I'm not sure

[248:00] if I could support this right now knowing that our staff hasn't looked at it I'm open to having it sent to staff to I guess vet it but not to just vote on it wholesale great so that's a no um the way I hear it but we have a motion in a second with jun's comment do either one of you Mary or Bob want to withdraw your motion or keep it out there Bob well I keep it out there um this is this would just be effectively a first reading uh vote and if staff thinks that there's more work they need to do on that I I just want to progress this because I'm afraid that if we kick it back to clab or we it's going to languish out here and it seems like you we need some resolution on this one way or the other I realize that this is not a final vote but let's um move this forward and if staff wants to bring back on second reading that there's other statutes that need to be adjusted then we can always do a third reading but I

[249:02] just want to I just want to be very clear about what our what I think the majority of council will say on this by way of clarification whether it's voting on this formally or whether it's stating this as a clean intention and having staff bring back what other tweaks they they need but but let's let's put this put this to bed if we can so Bob are you saying are you saying this would be a um basically a a third reading Amendment or an amendment that would bring it back as a third reading yeah I mean it sounds like Kathy wants the time which I understand to look at other statutes to see if they need to be cleaned up as well so I think what I'd suggest is why don't we vote on these two now and if there's other statutes if there's no other statutes then they can bring these back as second reading if there are other statutes they can bring it back at second reading and then we'll do a third reading on consent um okay so if I'm understanding you correctly um we have we had second reading before

[250:00] us tonight we're changing it so this would make it third reading and so yeah I guess I guess I call it first reading on version two okay but so so so bring it back as third reading with it vetted sure and and then um and put it on consent yeah Aon has his hand up maybe he has a thought okay I Aon partly I I was just going to clarify readings a little bit but yeah so I I think Bob the what you're talking about makes sense is that we could pass this amended language on second reading but to jun's point say to staff before bringing it back for third reading please review it and if you feel like other amendments uh should be offered in order to make this consistent uh please let us know that um and so if you need more than two weeks to get to a third reading I mean I'd be fine with that I don't know if other council members would as well but that that way you can uh we can take advantage of any further

[251:02] modifications that might be necessary if you find them at a third reading okay um Ain that that makes that makes um makes it a lot clearer for me thank you okay we have a motion we have a second um I'm gonna speak to this uh actually let me start with Mary you made the motion would you like to speak to your motion no I you know I I was just agreeing with Bob that this is something that has been out there that is causing um a lack of clarity amongst um business so if we can provide some clarity by creating this amendment it'll move us forward and if we need to um and I I agree with juny it does need to be vetted by staff so um if we can move forward um the way Aaron described I think that's the way to go great thanks Bob anything you want to

[252:00] say nothing more to add great so I'm going to support this language and I'm going to point out what Rachel said but I don't think this language changes a single thing we're talking about I don't think it actually clarifies it because you know I appreciate that the industry weighed in um typically when Industries are being regulated they weigh in in a certain way and I appreciate that but I also think that having neutral third parties look at what can be used or cannot be used I mean Bob you're right of course lawn mower could be used to smoke marijuana in some clever way I'm sure however um these devices look and feel very much like nicotine vaping devices there's really no fundamental difference maybe temperatures you know we can debate that I'd rather have clab look into it than us um so I think that well I will support this because it makes it clear that anything that cannot be used like a reasonable person would say a lawn mower can't be used for that but a reasonable person might look at a jewel and think you could smoke pot in

[253:01] it or might look at a px and think that you could smoke tobacco in it so I don't think we've actually clarified it enough but I think that it makes the intent more clear um therefore if somebody wants to do something Beyond it they could be changing this so I'm only supporting it because it adds some more clarity but I don't think the cannot is the proper word to use in either one of these locations um because a reasonable person could easily take a look at um one of these devices and think you could smoke other things in them so anyway I I'll support the change but I agree fully with Rachel that we haven't fully clarified it with these changes um we've clarified intent but not necessarily made it easier for staff sandre yeah I just um wanted to um ask a procedural question so uh it sounds to me like council is leaning towards um

[254:00] replacing the language in the proposed ordinance 8458 and replacing it with the language that's in the two slides that's been presented by um by a third party and so if that is the case I just I want to make sure that that is what we're doing in that would be then something that we would come back in third reading and have the ability or the the time for um our staff to look at the language and provide suggestions on other changes at that time Sandra I believe that's what's in front of us I believe that's the motion to Mary that that that's the motion and and Sandra if um you know to Sam's Point if the canot needs to be should not I I or or some other language um if if that makes makes

[255:00] it clear then um by all means suggest that um and then to Rachel's point maybe before it comes there there's no deadline on this is there I mean it's not in any kind of schedule if we could just send this um to clab to vet it as well then um I think it would be better than just supporting a third-party um Amendment without having that um thoroughly vetted so um if we could do it that way um I guess I'm interested in hear it hearing what how people feel about that thank you Mary um we got Rachel's hand and Mark Rachel uh yeah I could support the moving forward with Mary's uh suggestion that it that we not rely strictly on um the industries and I'm not dismissing industry it's just that

[256:00] that's not how we usually I think proceed just getting you know one one side's kind of take on it and then you know it has hasn't gone through our own board or really any any robust public process so I would if we can send it to clab and make sure that we're Shoring up that language such that it's meaningful and impactful then I would support this so I I I think that would require a an alternative motion though thanks Rachel Mark yeah I I um I would wish to um have staff look at this as illustrative language not anything that's written in stone um I'm I'm reluctant to Simply accept a third-party uh written statute or Amendment um as is and I'd like it to be vetted by staff and if staff has improvements or alternative language they want to suggest I'm I'm open to that as well um as I said I think this is um

[257:02] illustrative of what we might do to clarify things but shouldn't be um regarded as Frozen and Amber very good so I see no other hands we have a motion I think the motion's um General enough to give staff the latitude to do what staff needs um with or without going to clab but I think we should weigh in on whether we want you know that kind of full treatment for staff to take maybe eight or t weeks to come back to us was something that they've had a chance to run through a board so Mary and Bob I'll turn to you um do you feel how would you like staff to interpret your motion relative to when they come back to us and what they do in the interum um I'm sorry um so I guess

[258:00] that's that's maybe two separate steps I mean one is the motion that's on the table and the other one is to have it vetted by our board and and staff um so I'm not sure that the the clab and the vetting by staff is a separate motion so maybe this motion just needs to be changed um to in the spirit of what is presented here um Bob any thoughts no I was going to say the same thing Mary thanks yeah I don't know that we have to make a motion tonight uh um I guess I would just say we should just provide direction we maybe do this by a show hands uh to staff to go and visit with clab to think deeply about what the language might look like um I guess the know the thing I would ask Council to consider is an instruction to staff in the meantime because if it does take six or eight or 10 weeks to get through all that not to be taxing these products um

[259:00] because I what what would not be helpful is if we started hearing from the industry over the next few weeks that staff would was imposing $5,000 fines or was looking for tax money on something that at least a majority of council seems to think should not be taxed um we can get the words right later but um let's suspend any tax on these non- nicotine delivering products in the meantime sounds good Aon and then juny Ain yeah I agree with what Bob and Mary just said and just in terms of sending it to clab I I think you know having your input could be useful like as Rachel mentioned earlier and I think the uh just that just so that we're clear about our intent which is uh to ask them for assistance in the best way to uh exclude uh cannabis vaping devices you know from the tax and and they're uh they are actually e experts in this field so they might be able to provide some uh valuable advice for how to distinguish and and how to craft a

[260:02] language in the ordinance to help do that thank you Ain JY yeah I think what I'm hearing is that we would not pass a motion tonight we'll just give directions for staff to go back work on the language and then work with clab and I fully support that and also I do support Bob's idea about the no tax um until we figure it out it makes sense because the language is a little bit confusing right now and I think taxing based on a language that is not clear um is not the right way to go about um enforcing um and also I think I wanted to know as well from my fellow council members I wonder if maybe uh Sam you can get a

[261:01] sense of how Council feel about the $5,000 as well maybe that's something um staff could look into as well because I still think that's pretty steep and I wonder if it's the same amount of fine in other parts of Colorado as well I think that's a good question juny U we don't need to answer it tonight but I think staff probably hears that loud and clear um and staff when you come back to talk to us whatever the fine level you're proposing at least tell us how you got there and what it compares to um so with that unless I hear objections I'm going to summarize that we're asking staff to go back using the language that the industry proposed as a template to think about we pointed out concerns with it and we'd like clab to weigh in but then come back to us after this language has been worked over a bit more um and the intention of council is that in the meantime these cannabis focused vaping devices not be

[262:02] taxed anything else Council wants to add to that summary okay with that there's no motion um I assume that Mary you're going to withdraw your motion we're going to give direction to staff and move on to the next item motion withdrawn all right very good sorry about the convoluted path we took to get here but I think it's clear what council's will is on this one so thank you all to staff for your work thank you thank you all right Alicia take us to our next item please all right sir our last public hearing is the item 5c second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8462 amending chapter 3-20 the rental license excise tax and chapter 12-2 landlord tenant relations BRC 1981 making changes to implement the

[263:00] provisions related to eviction prevention and rental assistance service serves and setting forth related details thanks and mayor and Council for this I'll invite Karen Armstrong in housing and Human Services and Joel Wagner in finance to present thank you Council good evening um do we have a PowerPoint ready to go perfect all right good evening Council um I'm Karen Armstrong and I'm with Community mediation and resolution uh Center I'm program manager um and I'm joined by Joel Wagner tax and special projects manager with Finance he has a long night tonight so thank you for being here tonight we're presenting an update on the eviction prevention and rental assistance program with a focus on proposed amendments to the ordinance to help inform the

[264:00] conversation we're joined by Jay Allen uh epis coordinator Sandra yanis interim City attorney and Kristen Heiser with housing and Human Services next slide please so I'll provide a brief overview of the work to date and then some of the proposed ordinance changes I'll then transition to Joel who will cover the ordinance changes that are specific to tax implementation next slide please so so since the program's Inception uh in January of this year like any new ordinance or program there have been some lessons learned and these learnings have informed a few proposed amendments to the ordinance to ensure Clarity and efficiencies so tonight staff requests council's consideration to adopt ordinance 8642 amending chapter 320 3-20 rental license excise tax and chapter

[265:02] 12-2 landlord tenant relations related to the eviction preven and rental assistance Services next slide please so I'll just uh give you all an overview of the work to date this was a renter driven initiative and was approved by the voters in uh the November 2020 election the ordinance calls for the program to be fully implemented 12 months after the effective date of the ordinance however program implementation is well underway and partly that's due to the existing Foundation of uh provided by the city's longstanding mediation program and strong Community Partnerships so since January staff has executed a contract with nonprofit bridge to Justice to provide legal support and representation we've developed a process to align our mediation and rental services with the legal services we've established epis phone number and website including an active service request

[266:00] form we've hired a full-time epis coordinator and we've determined DET that the rental license excise tax will be collected on behalf of the city by the Boulder County assessor's office through property tax starting with 2021 assessments and those will be collected um in the spring of next year city council has appropriated 1.03 million from the general fund to cover uh to cover startup program costs until those revenues from the rental license excise tax are received uh rental license excise tax Reven revenues will pay for well will repay the general fund for actual 2021 program costs and finally we've initiated the recruitment of the tenant advisory committee to be seated in the beginning of Q3 2021 next slide please so since the activation of the epis program in early January through May 70 clients have benefited from

[267:01] Community mediation services Legal Services rental assistance or a combination of all or some of these Services as noted here although we have yet to collect outcomes at track whether the tenant successfully avoided eviction just from our observations alone it appears that most if not all of epa's clients have been able to avoid eviction by either successfully addressing the lease violation claim in order to remain in the property or they've worked out terms to move out we'll now move into the proposed ordinance changes next slide please okay so as we've learned more about what works staff is proposing some expansion to when and how legal representation can be made available to a tenant in order to reach better outcomes for both tenants and landlords the proposed expansions and this is just related to legal representation that are listed here

[268:00] encourages early interventions and will ideally better meet the intention of ordinance to ensure that tenants are adequately and fully represented when their housing stability is at stake next slide please so this is about uh the use of the dedicated Revenue staff is proposing an expansion surrounding the use of the dedicated Revenue to include dispute resolution services and other financial assistance Beyond just rent dispute resolution Services can be used in conjunction with legal services or dependently to support resolution at any stage in an eviction process in terms of uh rental assistance rent is not the only reason that a tenant may be subject to eviction so staff is looking to expand the scope to include other housing related expenses Beyond rent to enable a tenant to remain in the property or to assist with transition expenses to new housing thus

[269:00] avoiding an eviction staff is currently developing eligibility crit criteria and funding limits to ensure that any rental or financial assistance policies aligns well with the intent and the scope of the ordinance next slide please staff has proposed a clarifying language regarding a landlord's obligation to notify tenants about epis Services the additional language makes it more explicit that the landlord is required to provide their tenant with a notification of epis resources when delivering a notice to quit demand for compliance or a notice to terminate Section 8 this notification is in addition to an administrative court order which also requires information on available eviction Support Services to be delivered to tenants when they are served as summons for eviction court so just to clarify any tenant being evicted in the city of B well any

[270:00] city of Boulder resident getting evicted should receive information about rental and legal services twice one with the initial demand for compliance notice and again when they receive a summon to appear at court next slide please so the original ordinance created a tenant committee to be comprised of five members who are tenants of the city of Boulder and do not own real property to oversee the program and staff the proposed amendment provides some more clarity regarding the role and the scope of the advisory committee to align with other City boards commissions and committees specifically the amendment clarifies that this committee is an advisory committee um this committee does remain unique that members receive a stipend of $1,000 annually and so this change uh was shared with a variety of stakeholders including the newer Advocates with all supportive of this proposed amendment so I'll now pass off to Joel

[271:02] who will cover the ordinance changes uh in relation to the tax collection and exemptions well good evening again Council and I want to apologize for the quality of my camera I feel like I'm a bad CGI character in a made for TV movie um can't fix it so um please bear with me I'll be brief uh so finance's goal when we're implementing a new tax is to ensure efficient collection of the tax that provides sound stewardship of taxpayer funds while also maximizing funds available for program services so staff evaluated several possible options for the collection of the new long-term rental tax including collection through the city's existing rental licensing software collection through the city's existing Tax and Revenue management software or collection of the tax through the Boulder County assessor's office on annual property tax assessments after evaluating all of the options staff is planning to partner with the Boulder County Assessor for

[272:00] collection of the tax through the property owners annual property tax bill this method has the benefits of having the lowest administrative cost it eliminates the need for taxpayers rental license holders to manage a separate count and eliminates the need to track and pay a separate tax assessment of $75 per unit that would be sent once a year and because property taxes are collected in AAR this also allows landlords a little extra time to acrew the new tax even though the tax itself is technically uh effective in January 2021 and to facilitate this colle ction staff is proposing an amendment to the ordinance that would authorize the city manager to arrange for other entities to collect the tax which would then enable the city to certify the tax with the Boulder County Assessor for collection and property tax bills and provides that added Clarity if there are any questions that yes we do have the authority to do this and it's it's supported in code so next slide

[273:03] please oh sorry um next slide thank you so at the time of the adoption exemption from theal license excise tax was limited only to units owned by housing authorities in the city of Boulder per state statute at the January City council's study session Council requested that staff evaluate additional exemptions so staff in consult in consultation with stakeholders considered several options um the two presented here it well three options one continue with the current exemptions limited only to Housing Authority units per state statute or expand that exemption to units owned by nonprofits uh affordable housing organizations or third exempt all units certified by the city as lowincome rental units which are currently exempt from the city's rental licensing fee this exemption would extend to units

[274:00] owned least operated and managed by a Housing Authority units subject to City approved permanently affordable housing covenants units owned leased or operated by a certified nonprofit and units legally rent restricted through contractual arrangements or restrictive covenants so Joel Joel I'm sorry to interrupt uh Adam's got his hand up I think it's on this slide absolutely was actually on the previous slide uh since you're going to collect through property taxes and through the county assessor have you taken into account the new legislation that was passed that you can defer some of your property taxes uh to be paid at the sale of the home and if so how does that work out if they defer um will they still have to pay that $75 since it's not technically the property tax um just yeah wondering about that uh you know that's a that's a good question it is not something but I'll

[275:01] ask uh city attorney's office if it's something that they have seen or or contemplated yeah that's brand new state legislation so I don't know how that would interact with this but definitely worth looking into we'll certainly look into it thank you Adam you're good to go Joel thank you uh so staff analysis included the financial impact of additional exemptions the administrative impact of processing exemptions rate of exemptions of the city's affordable housing Partners uh so it's estimated in total that the rental license excise tax will generate approximately $1.5 million a year and this is already excluding the statutorily Exempted units and on this slide you see uh the additional Financial impact of extending this exemptions to nonprofits owned units uh which is about

[276:00] 52,000 and uh including that to nonprofits and all lowincome rental units that increases the the reduction in Revenue to about $65,000 staff is recommending option two as this approach supports the fiscal sustainability of the city's affordable housing Partners who share in achieving the city's affordable housing goals and aligns with current code that exempts these units from paying the license fee so next slide please so just a brief summary of the Outreach We performed during this process staff met with a variety of stakeholders to review the progress of the eviction prevention and rental services program and the recommended ordinance amendments ordinance amendments including the organizations listed on this slide um my personal thanks out to the boulder Area Rental Housing Association who helped us get the word out to rental license holders about the the proposed

[277:00] tax and while offering some minor edits to propose or to provide further clar ification which have been Incorporated in the recommended amendments presented to council tonight all of expressed support of the rec for the ordinance amendments and next slide please in addition to the direct Outreach we sent email notices and postcards to over 6,700 individual license holders and and in total we received over 300 responses uh we summarized these responses into some general Cate categories um and those are discussed in your memo but at the high level for the three items that we uh requested feedback on regarding the tax uh the timing of the implementation of the tax The Collection method and the exemptions you can see here that 71% of respondents supported the 2021 effective date with the county collection in AAR beginning in 2022 63% supported collection through

[278:00] annual property taxes and 54 54% supported exemption of the permanently affordable rental units and with that I'll hand it back to Karen to close the sub thank you so uh next slide please um so tonight I'll cover next steps here tonight we look to council for consideration on the proposed ordinance amendments we covered in terms of longer longer term next steps staff will be focusing on the application of the racial Equity tool over the next year to ensure that the program is serving our community in accordance to the city's commitment to racial Equity uh a priority will also be to review the program outcome measures specified in the ordinance now that the program is up and running we hope to identify which data can best measure the program's efficacy in a manner that's feasible and not burdensome to the various agencies involved we feel this could be a meaningful first project for the tenant committee to dig into and where they

[279:01] could add Great Value in addition staff is grateful to the house Solutions lab a national Center specializing in housing policy research who have expressed a willingness to support epas in this effort so following this process uh this review process we plan to bring a revised proposal regarding data collection back to council for further adjustments overall we've been uh encouraged by the Partnerships and Community impacts of this program to date and we're excited to see this unique eviction prevention program continue to evolve and reach its full potential next slide so this concludes our presentation and we're happy to answer any questions great thank you so much Karen um I have one quick question um on an earlier slide you talked about um when an eviction proceeding begins that um the um tenants need to be informed of

[280:02] the epis program so can you describe how that looks and what that means they hand them a pamphlet that gives them contact information like what is the requirement um to begin eviction proceedings so the first step let's say a tenant hasn't paid rent and a landlord hands them it's a demand for compliance or right to possession and it says basically you need to get in compliance and pay uh what is owed and or will'll begin eviction proceedings and they have a certain period of time um in in it's usually 10 days right now it's 30 days notice and so with that first notice according to our ordinance um and we're just clarifying the language here tonight but uh they would need to provide a disclosure to the tenant that attaches with with that demand notice

[281:02] that says you um have the right to access this epis program and it provides contact information as well thanks would it be possible to strengthen that in some way that's not honorous or burdensome because one you know I know that there's a lot of rental assistance support that's both within the city's budget and you know also federal and state programs that can support rental assistance um so I guess you know one streem is that the landlord at this point would need to help the tenant apply for those programs another might be that they would inform the city or the appropriate folks that this eviction proceeding has started so is there a requirement when they give that notice of possession to the tenant that they inform anyone else that they're doing that like would that be the earliest no

[282:02] there's not there's not and it's really is dependent on the tenant to contact us um because there's been some a lack of clarity I believe uh just in talking with Bara they weren't aware that this was necessarily a requirement just the way it was worded so I tenants haven't been getting that notification so we haven't had tenants reach out at that early stage or or very little I would say but um I did mention in the presentation that the courts require when you're served with a summons for court and that's taken then it's the second step in the eviction process and um information about eper Services is included with the summons and we do see a small percentage of tenants reach out from that but it would be amazing if we could have that level of connection um to be able to reach those tenants I suspect that it would be

[283:03] honorous for landlords they've they've really have been through quite a bit with changing requirements throughout this whole pandemic and have really had to keep up with quite a bit um it seems like it's worth it to consult with with Bara and and others around that um it would certainly make our job a lot easier and we'd be able to reach tenants earlier on I just I don't know how feasible it would be for land I guess I guess that would be my point of of thinking about this is we don't want to make it onerous but if along with handing a notice to a tenant or nailing it to their door or mailing it they also had to inform the city that that was happening so it's just one more piece of paper or one more email it seems like that would be a proactive way to have City staff know that that was going on and be able to reach out and offer support so without requiring the landlord to do any additional paperwork

[284:00] except for contacting you I'd like us to at least think about that because I know that a lot of folks who get a notice like that are going to be frightened they're going to be very concerned about what's coming and I could easily imagine that they wouldn't necessarily look to the attached paperwork and follow through on that whereas if you as a staff found out about that you know and it seems like it's not an overwhelming number 70 and five months or something it seems like you might have the bandwidth to reach out to them so I'm just looking for way ways to strengthen it so that they're not just being handed a piece of paper and there might be some other information and Kristen I see that your camera came on so do you have something you'd like to say you're on mute sorry sorry about that it's late um it's Kristen Heiser deputy director of Housing and Human Services I just wanted to add really appreciate your um suggestion Sam I think that is a really

[285:01] critical piece of this work and reaching our community members um and so they're aware these Services um one of the things that our team is doing is working with the courts to determine when a docket is um prepared and released that that is then received by our team members who are then doing one-on-one Outreach um I would have to defer to Karen about the mechanics of that like is that a week out two weeks out and she can speak to that but that is a big piece of this work that is actually quite staff intensive is that um we have Jay Allen who's the coordinator and Karen herself and other team members who are reaching out trying to make connections with those um individuals and then seeing them through even after the court date so if they're trying to identify new housing options or needing help with a variety of challenges in that situation or just even the the stress of the situation that you're referencing um our team has been very proactive in kind of providing that sort of case management or light case

[286:00] management I guess I would call it um so Karen I don't if you have anything to add to that but um I think they're we're always happy to explore other opportunities to to get to people as early as possible yeah it's certainly worth exploring um as you were talking Kristen it did make me realize that yes um workload could be an issue the dockets are significantly smaller than the number the number of of tenants on any one docket each week is much smaller than the number of demand notices that go out many many many more demand notices go out that volume is much larger and a lot of tenants are able to rectify the situation and avoid the next step so I yeah that would be a consideration as far as staff's ability to truly respond to um following up with each tenant if we were that's a great answer um you know

[287:02] leave the mechanics to you but the idea and that sounds like a really important sorting mechanism like by the time it gets to a docket it's really seriously a threat to the tenant so maybe that is the appropriate time that balances workload with notification time and so that's a great answer sounds like you guys are thinking about it um that's all I have for questions any other questions from Council all right with that we can go to the public hearing and we have two people signed up for that um the two people are Lynn seagull and Julie vanan and so we will start with Lyn each Speaker gets three minutes to address US yeah um can you hear me we can hear you when I use my laptop as a laptop it doesn't seem to work

[288:02] um I'm of the feeling that Boulder housing partners and the and these other nonprofits should not be Exempted from the fee the fee isn't that much and Boulder housing Partners is heavily subsidized by lck and other grants that support um affordable housing in Boulder but they also at the same same time as promoting affordable housing that affordable housing causes I keep on telling you people this but nobody seems to get it affordable housing is not cheap because it causes demand for services like the people that live in the pable housing have to have clirs at the bank and they have to have

[289:02] um all of the know the rec centers and the library and all of the things that they're using in in um that are paid for by the city of Boulder all of that stuff costs a lot so by by this Panacea of affordable housing it's not affordable because you know like at Gun Barrel or at Water view or anywhere it's 20 25% affordable housing and the other Workforce housing which is not Workforce it's Google housing it's high-end housing it's and I don't want to hear that word ed anymore that expression of Workforce housing it's market rate housing and the market rate housing drives the land value up which makes the demand for more affordable housing more and more

[290:01] so I feel that Boulder housing partners and the nonprofits should have to pay as well for the eviction fee eviction is not a solution eviction is the worst thing that can happen in our culture and it's happening more and more because the C House cost of housing and Builder is going so up three houses down for me 1.4 million for a place that's less than half the size of my lot and and is 1300 feet and mine is 1,800 feet I have an constant uphill battle and I've lived here I've owned for 30 years my dad helped me out with $10,000 to buy my first house in 1992 and struggling just to keep up with property taxes is stunning and thank you Lynn your time is up thank you we appreciate your input next we have Julie

[291:02] vanan good evening everyone I'm Julie vanin I'm the executive director at EA um I wanted to really just congratulate staff on all the hard work they've done to get this program up and running in the midst of everything else going on um you know Kristen Heiser um Karen Armstrong Renee gyos and Jay Allen we've met with them multiple times um we have a a great partnership with the city as you know and I just wanted to take the time this evening to to thank staff for their proactiveness um in this uh one of the questions that have come up is how this fits into the bigger picture um rental assistance has been a critical uh covid response right now there's um a number of Fairly large sources EA we've um funded uh three and a half three and a half million dollars in rental assistance in the last 12 months um we usually do a little under a million just to give you an idea of the scale up um

[292:03] the county is coming in with large funding from the federal the newest Federal um funding so we've been working all of us have been working together to really try and triage this to make sure that all these funding sources are consistent and coordinated so I want to you know allay any fears about um how that's working with the bigger rental pools out there um also what we're seeing in terms of just the importance of this coordination that the city is um set up this housing supports group where we meet every two weeks between the mobile home park managers Bara Boulder housing Partners ourselves the mediation and the courts and and really we just try and track what's going on and and want I just wanted to share one thing with the council that we heard from one of the Mumble home park managers when they said you often hear on the news about an AFF fiction tsunami coming but she didn't think that that

[293:00] would happen in Boulder County because of all the support that's coming in to Stave this off and I thought that was a really hopeful signal she said we might see that in other parts of the state but she would doubt it among their um mobile home parks in Boulder because um people are getting helped so just want to kind of inject um some some good news here I do think we're pres preventing a lot of evictions and um we'll be you know EA is committed to working very closely with the city on making sure this program is well coordinating with everything else and is a success and you know we do appreciate the not duplicating you know other mechanisms out there you don't have to set up a complete rental assistance program you know we're here there to help the housing helpline um is doing this so um I think we'll come up with a really good um division of labor on on these issues so once again just thanks to staff thank you Julie and thanks to you and your organization for all the work

[294:01] that you do as well you're an integral part of our joint response here so thanks a bunch and Aon I see your hand we just say say the same thing Julie thanks so much for joining us tonight and for all the work that you and EA do to keep our community members housed and you know it's been an incredibly difficult year and some um but I know I think we have all rested easier knowing that FAA was out on the front lines making sure that U that that people got the rental assistance and and other forms of assistance they need so thank you yep I'm sorry I'm just going to bring the public hearing to close real quick and back to you eron yeah well if you don't mind while I have the floor I'll go ahead and make a motion please so I will move that we adopt ordinance 8462 amending chapter 320 rental license excise tax and chapter 122 L ten relations leave it there

[295:02] second all right would you like to speak to your motion yeah well I I really want to thank um City staff and uh the community members you know EA Bara and other organizations um and the newer organizers as well who all work together so well on making these tweaks you know you you never know everything you're going to need right up front and so as we've learned from the program uh it's great to see these changes um excited to see how the funding mechanism is going to be implemented this seems like a neat solution um so I just the fact that you've put something together that all the stakeholders think is a great idea is really impressive and uh you know this is it's a new program for us and for the state um anywhere else in the state so it's exciting program great to see get off the ground um and also another thank you for how um staff has managed to stand up the program at the beginning of uh you know right after it was passed um

[296:00] even though the funding hadn't been nailed down yet so really appreciate how you've gotten that off the ground so quickly and great to see you move forward thank you eron Adam would you like to say anything yeah just that I appreciate a smooth revision process and this was just that so uh thank you all who were involved for doing that because faster these things move the better yeah and I'll jump in here as well and say thank you I mean it has been pretty amazing what staff has been able to do all the way from standing up the covid recovery center all the way through this kind of uh rental assistance and eviction mediation and support so everyone was needed from our city staff who are Partners in the nonprofit world as well as the folks who carried the the newer ballot initiative and then the involvement that they've shown as they've stayed with it through implementation so it's been great work

[297:00] on everyone's part it's a lot of hard work uh it's seen and much appreciated um so I'll just say that anyone else great sing none Alicia I believe this is roll call is that correct that is correct sir council member Joseph yes stick hi wallik hi Weaver hi Yates yes young yes Brocket hi and friend yes ordinance 8462 pass unanimously sir 8 to zero thank you very much Alicia what a nice note to end on considering the previous two discussions um I would say is there any other debrief anything staff or Council would like to bring

[298:01] up seeing no other items this meeting is 48 thank you all for your time a good night everybody good [Music] night [Music]

[300:19] [Music] yeah