July 13, 2021 — City Council Special Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:37] hi everyone [Music]

[1:30] do [Music] dean immediately how about that aaron and john's second [Music] as soon as we have a core

[2:04] [Music] mz [Music] okay why don't you go ahead and do that it's six o'clock and i think we have everyone here [Music] all right welcome everyone to the july 13th um special meeting of the boulder city council um i have a couple of announcements to begin with tonight first of all covet 19

[3:00] vaccinations as usual if you'd like information on how to get a vaccine and to sign up it's www.bouldercounty.org families disease cova 19 and vaccines as it says on the slide and then second the city has launched a reimagining policing effort and is looking for community feedback a questionnaire is available at be heard boulder dot org slash reimagine dash policing and that's open until july 31st it's a great way for individuals to provide on their own time and in a safe and anonymous way feedback on the future of policing in boulder if you would prefer to provide your feedback verbally or to participate in a conversation with city staff or other community members please sign up for an upcoming online forum you can access the sign up sheets and available dates on the same be heard

[4:00] boulder web page and with that alicia could you call the roll yes sir and good evening everyone and welcome back councilmember brockett listen friend here joseph nagel here sweat nick present wallach present mayor weaver here council member yates rosa and young present mayor we have a quorum excellent thank you and i believe are we ready to move on to the consent agenda yes we are sir that would be item a through c very good and our first item is the council rules of procedure and i believe that we were going to um

[5:01] get a little quick background from our legal department on that and then have a quick discussion that sounds great um taylor if you could bring up that slideshow i just have a couple of slides to show you here we go okay good evening council um i'll just launch right into this and hopefully won't take very long i'm just going to provide a really high level summary of some changes so at the council retreat council members discussed discussed ways to approve council meetings and out of that discussion and several others consensus was reached on several recommendations these recommendations resulted in amendments to the documents that you have before you tonight there are three documents the council rules council working agreements and emergency rules for quasi-judicial hearings next slide please

[6:03] so um the first one we'll tackle is cancel rules and um again there are several changes made i just provided a couple of examples here so under section 48 revisiting topics this has to do with what if when a council member wishes to re reconsider a prior council decision the member shall request the council agenda committee scheduled to discuss to discuss under matters and it requires an out of five council members to support reconsideration of prior council action and then it gets set for a substantive consideration at a later meeting but future discussion is capped at 15 minutes again this may only be considered if there's a material change to law in fact or fact and then the next change you'll see

[7:01] is that we defined what material change means prior council decisions shall be reconsidered only after material change in law or fact and material change is defined as a change that if having occurred before the prior council meeting would have made it unlikely that a majority would have supported the prior decision and then the last example here is regarding items under matters and um all decisions uh will be made either after a public hearing or on consent agenda and that's in section four a6 there are also changes related to time frame for requests of information from staff and also updates to the rules of decorum next slide please the next document that we amended was the council working agreements there were three different changes there one related to building consensus

[8:02] and a commitment to focus on areas of consensus and problem solve around areas of disagreement the next item was respecting work plan basically how to handle departures from the work plan so with rare exceptions new items would only be added to the work plan if necessary for the public health and safety and then the last item had to do with timing for staff questions and uh there's now a deadline for staff questions it's the sunday night prior to a tuesday meeting um and then staff have the ability to defer if it's overly burdensome due to the complexity or length next slide please the last document had to do with quasi-judicial remote hearing rules and on on april 21st 2020 you may recall council approved emergency rules to allow for virtual quasi-judicial hearings as

[9:01] council worked with these rules it appeared that certain adjustments would be helpful to conform better to council's preferences so some of the changes were that we removed written requests was no longer necessary for the city manager we provided some consistency on the availability of remote hearings clarified that a person can participate by signing up electronically documented documentary evidence is to be provided to council email address if more than 15 people participate time may be reduced to two minutes each and lastly city clerk rather than the secretary of boards and commissions is responsible for ensuring that all equipment is functional and you may also recall that ordinance 8391 was passed on march 17 2020 and it provided for the ability for

[10:00] boards and commissions and council to participate in meetings remotely and related to any disaster emergency and next slide and that's all i've got super thank you sandra um aaron has a question and then rachel uh i didn't have a question thank you for that sandra i just had one uh small proposed wording change to one of them okay sam should i proceed yeah please uh so uh the material change language um i think that this the the change generally is good but i i had a concern about the exact wording i think it says that um a material change in law or effect means a change that if having occurred before the prior council decision would have made it unlikely that a majority of council would have supported the prior decision and that seems like something that's unknowable about how a past council might have might behave so i i wanted to suggest a slightly different wording well somewhat

[11:00] different word anyway uh to say and i'm open to changes to this but this is what i would propose is a material change in law or fact means a change significant enough that it may cause one or more council members to change their votes okay so why don't we feel questions or comments about aaron's proposal first um mark i saw your hand go up and then rachel i'll call on you next if you have anything about aaron's proposal mark all right well if rachel does i think her hand actually receded mine yep rachel do you do you have any questions or comments about aaron's suggestion i do um thanks for that mark i um had some concerns about that language too and then one other aspect of it so um yeah i think we need to to tweak it and i think aaron's proposal is fine but it's it would be unknowable if it's uh unlikely you know how could i know that

[12:00] if i was proposing it that that a majority of council would have voted differently for prior so i think that that language is tricky and then the other um piece of it is limiting it to 15 minutes for follow-up just seems uh a little bit tricky like you might take 10 minutes to explain why you're lobbying for for the changes and so i and i'm not trying to relitigate i don't know if we said 15 minutes at the retreat and that's why it's in there but um that just seems a little uh strict good thank you um mark and then mary yeah i i hate to be unoriginal but i i think aaron's language is better and i think rachel's suggestion is a little bit better um and i would support both of those um and and can you just refresh my recollection in terms of what now constitutes a material change what's up what's up sure the way it reads right now it says a material change in law or fact means a change

[13:01] that if having occurred before the prior council decision would have made it unlikely that a majority of council would have supported the prior decision um yeah having heard that i'm more strongly in support of of aaron's suggested change i call it queen just ask is that the current proposed language or the current like in our agreement right now language that you do this is this is all new yeah so it's proposed because i don't think we have i don't know if that's what you're asking mark but i don't think we have anything are you saying uh sandra that we don't have any material change restraints at the moment it's a new it's it is a new definition it wasn't in there before and it there wasn't any discussion about material change before okay and then i think um uh aaron's suggestion ought to be controlling i i like his language better

[14:02] good and might i suggest that people want to weigh in on a suggested time limit if any as we go forward mary and then bob mary thank you for the suggestion erin um so the question that arose for me is significant to whom so my suggestion would be to define that by by defining redefining material change to as determined by a super majority of council because significant is a subjective um term so we need to define it um just because it would be a significant change to me may not be a significant change to rachel so that's my proposal

[15:02] okay um so does that impact aaron's suggestion or is that in addition to aaron's suggestion um i'm fine with aaron's suggestion um but i i don't know what significant means so i'm proposing to define significant by um defining material change to be something as determined by a super majority of council so if a super majority of council agrees that a material change has occurred through a vote then that's significant may i ask why uh super majority and not just a majority because we would be relitigating if okay all right um bob uh three things aaron could you read your language again

[16:00] uh so a material change in law or effect means a change significant enough that it may cause one or more council members to change their vote so i'm i'm playing with aaron's language i think it's self-defining the way aaron has read it so i'm i'm fine with with exactly what aaron said with that amendment i agree with rachel 15 minutes sounds um prescriptive and kind of finite i would i guess i would just sub substitute the word brief um cac can decide what brief means i don't think we need to put a time limit on it but just i think the intention was to not not be a lengthy discussion and then finally i caught a typo um it's uh sanders in section four of the procedures i think it's item number ten the new language um the word reschedule which is underlined is is underspelled thank you age seven that's all i have thanks bob um

[17:00] rachel and then i'll come back with the question to mary rachel um thanks thanks for that suggestion aaron so one is a question and this might be for bob my engagement subcommittee co-member but when when um [Music] we already changed some rules on uh actionable items under matters my question is did we leave any wiggle room for emergencies because this language does not yeah i thought thanks rachel i'll jump in here i thought we did leave room a little bit of room for emergencies i thought the language the actual language gave a little bit of flexibility sandra can you just kind of pull that right up that's right yeah i thought it did give a little bit it has an escape hatch for maybe under matters it says all decisions shall be made either after a public hearing or in consent matters items are for informational purposes only no actionable items shall be raised

[18:01] under matters is that what you're referring to yeah and so it's i guess if it's upon a public hearing as long as we can do that under matters but for and i don't have the language right in front of me i'm sorry um i can try and get it back up but um i didn't i didn't read a ton of wiggle room so i just wanted to see if we needed a little more clear escape patch for future council's understanding well there isn't any mention of emergencies right now um it's really only you know that decisions can be made either either after a public hearing or on the consent agenda and it's pretty tight saw you nodding sam maybe you think that's a sufficient escape hedge well well i was going to ask um in the summary um senator you have need to identify in advance is that like a hard line that we have to identify something in advance to even bring it up under matters because that i would want to soften and then

[19:01] move on to rachel's point which is if we have a public hearing under matters we can act um under matters right um yeah that's the way that i would read it that it would be you'd have a public hearing under matters or on the consent you know just happen on the consent agenda the way we've talked about this in the past was if we talk about something under matters and want to take a vote if we have plenty of time we're going to put that on consent for the next meeting with the consent agenda um i think the escape hatch is that we can um have a public hearing under matters you know it's not elegant and it would only be you know if we didn't have time in order to punt it to a future meeting under consent so i just wanted to see it sounded to me and i read it that we could do it if we had a public hearing under matters so could consider something quickly but the need to identify in advance how

[20:02] strict is that requirement yeah i i don't see any mention of that in there right now so i could make it clearer by saying all decisions shall be made either after a public hearing under matters or on the consent agenda and then add something in there about notice but there isn't anything in there right now okay so i i was just reading the summary on that as long as there's nothing that restricts us from doing a hearing under matters i think we have an escape patch but i think the preference should be it's identified in advance and it says that in the summary and we put it on consent unless it's an exceptional circumstance and then i have bob and rachel bob i think there's a leftover hand oh okay rachel uh yeah i'm pulling i was getting ready

[21:00] to go look at the language so my last question was there's um some i don't know what number it was under but there we talk about rules of decorum and um tether a lot of that to disruption like if if there's something that's causing disruption um and i didn't see a definition of disruption so i don't know if that's pulled in from elsewhere but if um you know if like the mayor may interrupt somebody if they are disrupting the meeting or something like that i think as as the mayor it might be helpful to for sam to know like what is that definition and it may be that it's in state statute or something up in our code but it's not so this is all this all came from case law from you know first amendment law and so it's it's not clearly defined what that is it's it's it's i think the way that i've seen it described in in these cases is that it actually prevents the the meeting from continuing so it's an actual disruption it's not just this perceived disruption it's

[22:00] actual disruption so i just might i might recommend that we clarify what that means so that members of the public can know what would cause a disruption and you know somebody in 10 years who's in sam's seat knows what that means too i think the i'll just weigh in here sandra i think the way you said it that it prevents the meeting from continuing is perfect because especially in chambers that's probably pretty clear if somebody's yelling and you know standing from the dice waving their arms it's going to be a disruption so maybe if we could just define disruption as any actions that prevent the meeting from continuing okay i can make that change so i think these are all clear except i want to come back to material change um and bob you weighed in in favor of what aaron said and aaron um yours did not have a vote standard and i believe what mary was

[23:00] doing was proposing that five council members have to agree that um it was a material change that could have affected the vote is that correct well if i could clarify the i think the material change definition is what it takes to suggest that we discuss it in the first place okay right so you're not even supposed to bring it to council's attention unless it's a material change and then and it is subjective but i don't think there's any way around that but that that if you if it does seem like a change significant enough to cause a vote then you could propose it and then council would decide by a vote whether or not it did actually constitute material change and deserve the rehearing okay mary do you have any thoughts about that yes um aaron if would you please read through your proposed language again just to make sure that i i didn't really write it down the first time yeah can you do it slowly too so i could try and capture it too flipped away um

[24:00] a material change in law sorry a material change in law or fact means a change significant enough that it may cause one or more council members to change their vote and and i guess aaron if if i'm interpreting it correctly a single council member could say i believe this is a material change because it would have caused me to change my vote that's one or more right so and then that pretty much means that there will be a discussion if that council member wants it so should we have a vote at that time when somebody's proposing to bring it up so should council weigh in like five of us think that is material enough to have a discussion you certainly could do it that way i mean it's going to require at least a little bit of discussion to have that vote in the first place right for sure so it seems like um i mean you could have a threshold vote

[25:00] for was it material and then if it was material another vote to decide whether to actually bring it back for another decision so i i think it's cac maybe the way to handle one of these suggestions at cec is schedule it under matters you know for 15 minutes or 10 minutes discuss it and decide if we want to put it on so make it a scheduling decision for all of council because i'm not sure cac should schedule something until we've heard from all council so i'm okay with that um change the way it is as long as we know how we're going to handle it so i think at least for this council that's clear enough rachel yeah i'm i'm sorry to um beat this point but i'm back under number six matters from city manager and um i mean the language is that if i'm looking at the right thing it says all decisions shall be made after a public hearing or on the consent agenda which sounds good but then the next two sentences are matters items are for

[26:00] informational purposes only no actionable items shall be raised under matters and i think that that that sentence is what gives me concern that no actionable items shall be raised under matters because i think we thought there'd be emergency situations where they could be raised and it wouldn't only be informational you know a small small uh percentage of times so just want to make sure that we were clearing that you know not just tweaking the other sentence but making sure that we were all on the same page on those two senses too thank you mary and then bob and then i'll go um yeah i agree with rachel because we i mean kind of what some of one of the reasons that we're even having some of these conversations is because we were voting under matters so um so i i agree with with um rachel's point and um i mean sometimes we do

[27:01] it was the how do we vote under matters that came into question so um so i agree with rachel on that one and then um going back to the previous conversation i think i understand now aaron's proposal i'm fine with that language as proposed by aaron and as long as there's a conversation prior to having the material asserting that there is a material change in fact by a initial vote and then um and then going ahead and having the discussion so i guess you have to cross the threshold of agreeing that it is a material change yeah i think that's right um and so mary and rachel just to make sure that we're all clear you're suggesting striking the sentences about bringing up items

[28:01] under matters that say i guess i at least wanted us to soften it which was my initial concern and why i was wanting to check in on what the engagement committee had decided on but i don't think matters are always only for informational purposes i thought we wanted to say in an emergency it could happen otherwise we need to be pushing things to consent and scheduling for hearings at a future date so something that i don't know if they have to be stricken but sometimes that will happen i think and so building in the wiggle room i don't have proposed language i'm sorry no and i i think um i agree and um i think that sam's suggestion um to strike the last two sentences i can re i can read that back for you if you'd like it the last two sentences read matters matters items are for informational purposes only

[29:00] no actionable items shall be raised under matters i don't think it should be that strict no routine matters she'll be raised sorry no routine items she'll be raised under matters or something like that because i think what what we're trying to preserve is the flexibility to do something that's needs to be done quickly for some reason so i i but i do agree that generally speaking we don't want to raise items under matters we want them scheduled by cac and we want to have a hearing okay so how are we going to vote on it matter matters items are primarily for informational purposes only um and then the second sentence um i don't know i i don't did i propose something sure that second sentence um said no actionable items shall be raised under matters uh unless an item is uh

[30:00] well unless an item is um time sensitive did you say that i like that what was the last uh word unsensitive in the last time it's time sensitive oh time sense all right so mary are you complete with your comments okay bob and then aaron bob i think most of my suggestions have been subsumed in these other comments i would actually just take out that last sentence because i think oftentimes on matters will be raised items will be raised under matters that will ultimately be actionable so i'm not sure what that last sentence does i think that this is the place where we raise things that may subsequently be actionable um so i would just take it out entirely i don't think that i think that the first sentence about decisions to be made after public hearing or consent agenda is is the important part um the matters are primarily for informational purposes only as gratuitous i don't think we need that but if you want to say primarily that's fine i would take out no actual items because i think

[31:01] actually most matters are going to be actual items ultimately okay very good um i know i'm one second uh rachel i was just gonna propose like going back to the first sentence and i'm sorry that we are really quibbling over words here but um you know made after a public hear hearing or um ideally move to the next consent agenda or on a future consent agenda or some language like that so that we are clear that our goal is not to have the hearing that night but you know that you would as bob said you would bring up an actionable item but the goal would be to schedule it for a future date so maybe in the first sentence you could say it would you know ideally on a future publication so what i'm sorry can i if i may just um suggest um in the sentence i just read a sentence where it said all oh yeah the first part of that underlined section which says all

[32:00] decisions shall be made either after a public hearing or on the consent agenda i think that covers what you're trying to accomplish rachel am i am i misreading that sentence no i i'm sorry i'm eating too um i just meant also like that the ideal would not be a public hearing at that time it would be at a later date so that's all i was trying to get is ideally it would be on the consent agenda for a future meeting rather than that night at 10 pm or 11 p.m after a public hearing i think um i ideally again is a subjective thing because if it is some sort of a time sensitive matter ideally it would make sense to have the public hearing that night so so i think it's covered with that sentence without the term ideally because ideally again depending on what's going on um is a hearing then or later

[33:00] fair enough i'll stop talking about that that whole section thank you okay so cedric can you summarize what changes that have been made yes why don't i try and share my screen so that you all can see what i have okay excellent thank you uh it says host disabled participant screen sharing can i get permission to do that please yes sandra i just made you a co-host so you should have full control okay great thank you okay can you see that oh that's not the wrong one isn't it we can see a screen it says you're viewing sandra jonas's screen okay so does it look like the rules uh yes yes that was so you just yes we've

[34:00] got matters from city manager up right now okay great so this is the one that we were just talking about and um i had inserted some language in here and i can certainly take it out it's in red right now it says all decisions shall be made either after a public hearing under matters identified in advance or on the consent agenda matters items are primarily for informational purposes only no actionable items shall be raised under matters unless an item is time sensitive i have a comments on that i don't think the words identified in advance are helpful here um i i think if we want to say um all decisions shall be made either after a public hearing under matters or preferably on the consent agenda because that's what rachel i think was trying to get at is that we would preferably do it on a consent agenda but

[35:02] if we needed to we could do it under matters after a public hearing okay aaron um well i feel like maybe this isn't being firm enough about avoiding public hearings under matters um because it's saying it's either public hearing under matters or or perfectly on the consent unit before it was should be made after um i think a public hearing where he was implying a regularly scheduled public hearing not not under matters but it says under matters well but i i thought the idea was the decision should be made after a regularly scheduled public hearing or on the consent agenda at least primarily except for in emergencies when you can do something that matters isn't that what the last sentence says no actionable items shall be raised under matters unless an item is time

[36:00] sensitive maybe you'd like it no actionable items shall be decided under matters unless an item is time sensitive well i'm just saying that the the new language about all decisions shall be made either after public hearing wonder matters doesn't take into account that we primarily want to do it under regularly scheduled public hearings do you have suggested language well i i would not do the under matters language i i i think i thought we were fine before that with the time sensitive language added at the end but the the point of say i mean this is about matters from the city manager presumably we want this language under the city attorney and mayors as well mayor and members of council all decisions shall be made either after a public hearing under matters or preferably on

[37:01] the consent agenda matters items are primarily for informational purposes which probably strike only in that sentence no actionable items shall be raised under matters unless an item is time sensitive so are you afraid that this implies that we want to have um decisions under matters yes i feel like the wording is vague enough that that that sort of saying it's okay to do a public hearing under matters even with the time sense of language at the end again well i okay i don't agree with that but that's fine um bob yeah i i'm i guess i'm kind of with aaron i think this can these three sentences can be collapsed into one and make it proscriptive rather than permissive i think it should say all three sentences should say following no decisions shall be made under matters unless time sensitive

[38:01] that's all i would say um okay but but shouldn't we also require a public hearing so shouldn't you comment in some way on the public hearing aspect of that well i think it's we can add that if you want to i think it's been our tradition and maybe we can say it out loud or maybe it's already in the rule somewhere that we don't make decisions typically unless there's a public hearing um we can add that if you'd like to but i think the informational purposes is gratuitous i don't think it helps i think um actionable items will be raised under matter so i would take that out entirely i just think we should say it's what we're trying to do is we're we're trying to not i think the all decisions shall be made under matters under under public hearings or firmly consent agenda it is actually not true because maybe it might be preferably under public hearing um so i i think we need to flip it over and say what we don't want we don't want decisions made under matters unless time sensitive

[39:01] and if you want to say and in such case only following a public hearing you could say that if you wanted to i think that gets to rachel's point and i think it gets to aaron's point and takes out a bunch of stuff that i don't think we need aaron do you have something else no that sounds earlier and that sounds good to me box approach do you need bob to restate that yes please if he can i can't hear you bob you're muted sorry no decisions shall be made under matters unless time sensitive comma

[40:02] and then only after public hearing that's it let me take everything else out do you want to as long as we're trying to capture this for future councils bob do you want to say anything about um items raised under matters being typically or preferentially decided at a future consent agenda well i don't know that that's necessarily true i think somebody raises something under matters and council says yeah we should talk about that in a future meeting that future meeting could be a public hearing it could be a consent agenda i don't i don't know i don't i don't know if it's preferentially consent versus a public hearing it's okay i get it okay but to your point sam if i make colloquy we could also say you know the the ideal solution they're not sorry unideal but some language that's the the way to make that happen is to schedule what was just brought up under matters by cac at a future either consent or

[41:00] public hearing my guess is that's implied i mean because we could also schedule something under matters right that we do um sometimes do which is say how do you want to schedule this for a public hearing and i don't think we need a public hearing to figure out how we're going to schedule something for a public hearing so i i agree with bob why don't we just leave it as bob's suggestion no decision shall be made under matters and less time sensitive and then only after a public hearing that leaves us latitude all right and then so just so i'm i'm clear um the then only after a public hearing is the hearing would be scheduled in the future right it wouldn't be happening at the same time it could could happen at the same time or be scheduled okay because i don't know if that's clear but i'm i'm not sure that's implied

[42:00] it could be then only after a public hear hearing either at the meeting or at a future meeting or i don't know but if you don't think that's a concern then that's fine and then the other thing i just want to mention is at the very top here i just want to point out that it does say no final decision may be made under this item or item seven matters from city attorney or matters from mayor and members of council so just to point that out i think you take that out now i think i think the whole the whole rule is the new language in red at the bottom okay go ahead sandra well i was just going to say the the way the rule reads right now is that it does apply to under matters from city attorney and matters for mayor and members of council do you not want it to apply to those areas as well once you change the heading say matters from city manager matters from

[43:00] from actually it matters i i think you take take out the words the very top no final decision may be made under this item or under seven i think the title is matter from city manager matters from city attorney matters of mayor and member of council that's your heading and then it's a one sentence rule that says no citizen shall be made okay but that changes number eight then because we have its own separate heading for city attorney under seven and mayor and members of council under eight but those are different things so right those are different things um why don't you just copy this language uh under matters from city attorney and under matters from mayor members of council because i think this part of it this no decision shall be made under matters actually belongs in all three places and we have more detail under mayors and member of council

[44:09] okay i'm just going to go ahead and do it now so that you all can see and then make sure that it's what you want it to be does that look right um i might put under eight i might put it at the end rather than the beginning but that would be my only further suggestion and so yeah going back to this i wanted to make sure i got this right too because um there was a a lot of back and forth in terms of the um the way material change is defined um

[45:00] means let's see here i i think that's what we landed on yeah mark wait wait that sorry go ahead mark um the only thing that's that's troubling me is is what's the definition of time sensitive and i think of it more in terms of what you know something that that cannot be accommodated through our standard procedures um almost anything can be defined as time-sensitive something we want well i i believe that something here would require five council members or majority of council members present to agree that it needs to be voted on that night right so you you have a check and balance and that it's going to be discussed and if somebody wants to have the vote that night i think a majority of members president would need to support that

[46:01] all right um i just put in some language i don't know if you're interested in it or not under after unless time sensitive as determined by a majority of members present okay um aaron i see your hand again is that leftover no it was um i think we're missing a word a material change in law or fact i think we want to eliminate means and say material change in law or fact is one that is significant enough yeah i think thank you okay so with these changes our council members prepared to move on to the other consent items or to take a vote

[47:01] there's also the change for rules of decorum which i'll make sure and add rachel's suggestion that defines what disruption means okay is any action preventing the meeting from continuing all right very good i figured there would be some discussion on this one i just underestimated it um alicia i believe that we are finished with that item um and we have the two other items under consent so i think we're ready for a motion aaron i'll uh move the consent agenda with item to a uh as amended

[48:02] okay we've got a motion and a second and alicia i believe this is a roll call correct yes sir it is council member friend hi nagle hi sweat lick yes wallach i weaver yes yates yes young yes and brockett all right mayor the consent agenda is approved as amended awesome thank you very much our next item will be item three a our call of check in it will be the vacation of a 1078 square foot portion of a sanitary sewer

[49:01] easement and a 1.925 square foot portion of a utility easement at 53.95 pearl parkway adr 2021-000-71 good thank you does anyone have any interest in calling this up great xenon i think we can move on to the next item very good next we have our public hearing item 4a is a consideration of a concept plan review 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 which includes a ground floor retail along 28th street and the proposed street a ground floor amenity space an upper story workforce and currently affordable apartments there

[50:00] are two options proposed the first option includes a 177 workforce apartments within five buildings and with square feet of amenity space a shared deck and a clubhouse and 58 permanently affordable apartments the section option matches the first but includes additional residential units with approximately 195 workforce apartments 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 lur 2021-0011 excellent thank you mayor and at this point i'll invite elaine mclaughlin to come up very good thank you um and good evening everyone um so for this evening i'm gonna start

[51:01] by sharing my screen and hopefully it's gonna boot up okay um it might take a second here there's quite a bit to cover this evening surprisingly on this particular uh concept plan so hopefully we'll get um through it relatively quickly can you see my screen at this point and the presentation i can yes excellent very good um and you're seeing the presentation and not the uh rest of the notes or anything is that correct because it's a new setup here it says yeah it's just the presentation right now um it doesn't look like it's in presentation mode it has the powerpoint header across the top still very good um i am gonna give this another go

[52:00] um technical difficulties at the moment let's see okay it's coming up oh we can see the substance elaine if you just want to proceed with this it's probably okay yep very good um i will go ahead and do that um so i i'll just uh flip through some of these slides i'm gonna go ahead and also um i think it'd be helpful first off just to review uh concept plan review and why we're here this evening it's really intended to give applicants some feedback on a concept plan and city staff and planning board have already done this at this point there's no formal action for approval or denial on the

[53:00] application and generally we like to take a look at the built context and we'll go into transportation and planning context and we're going to summarize the project for key issues that we'll ask council some feedback on so for the planning context it's instructive to take a look at the broad comprehensive plan uh level and in this case um the sites within a defined center where infill redevelopment at higher intensity is anticipated and that's compared to established residential neighborhoods then in terms of transportation context the site is connected to multi-use paths and on-street bike routes that connect throughout the city and there's planned connections near the site that you can see from multi-use paths that are shown in that green dash and then it's also important to note the

[54:00] sites well served by buses there's a dozen or more bus stops within a two block area of this site 28th street is considered a transit corridor uh the 205 208 the bolt and the bound you can see circumnavigates around the site so well served by buses the north 28th street transportation network plan was adopted for this area and it shows that there's some planned connections through the site and there were a couple of alternatives that were also adopted as part of that connections plan uh the comp plan land use designation is community business and that's where uses are noted as predominantly commercial but where feasible multiple uses including housing will be encouraged there's also policies that would encourage housing and infill as well and we'll talk a little bit about that during issue one the sites zone bc one which is um business community one and the density

[55:00] is based on uh 1200 square feet of open space for dwelling unit attached residential is permitted by right except on the ground floor in this case where it requires a use review and then the nbc one restaurants and retail uses are allowed by right but office can only make up fifty percent of the total area and then it's important to note that both bc1 and bc2 zoning are considered to be consistent under the business community land use and we'll talk more about this as well in key issue one it relates to some options on how to proceed with the concept plan the site surroundings are varied and this sort of spreads it all out in the surroundings of the site it includes multi-family to the south east and north and there's also freestanding office buildings and restaurants that surrounded the site naropa university buildings to the east along 30th

[56:00] the bulk of the diagonal plaza shopping centers east of the site that was originally developed in 1960 uh during the 1960s across 28 streets the safeway and willow springs shopping centers and then south of the site there's an inline retail building along with a medical building and an auto dealership so then when we zoom into the 9.2 acre site itself it's roughly an l shape and it primarily consists of large somewhat deteriorated surface parking lots along with a retail building that currently houses a walgreens on the north side and then there's a vacant sports authority on the south the south portion of the site itself is occupied by boulder housing partners it's diagonal court town homes that are there's 30 permanently affordable apartments along with a community center and a playground and then this slide illustrates um how the site's a separate ownership from the rest of the retail uh buildings

[57:01] that comprise diagonal plaza shopping center um as you can see there's multiple property owners and this has been acknowledged as one of the primary challenges for why the center's not been able to redevelop over time for the project the applicant is proposing to infill the parking lots with a mixed-use residential that also connects to the existing bhp property on the south you can also see that there's two east-west streets and a north-south connector around which there's seven buildings proposed and they're comprised of ground floor retail and amenity spaces along the streets and residential above along with structured and tuck under parking and then you can see there's a central community garden and park and it's designed to have buildings built up in a relatively urban configuration up to the street the applicant presented a couple different options in their packet and both um include ground floor retail and amenity

[58:01] spaces but for that option too um they're utilizing a part of the fourth floor on the north end of building five and that would generate 18 additional residential units and then there's also six additional residential units on um rather on-site affordable units in buildings six and seven in this option two um option one results in about 235 residential units 58 of which would be on site permanently affordable in option two uh plans to utilize the fourth story and would result in 259 residential units of which 64 would be on-site permanently affordable so for key issue one the number of dwelling units proposed currently um as shown it exceeds the zoning um yet given that the site's considered a catalyst site that we'll talk a little bit about um council's asked to to help understand

[59:00] what options might exist to allow the number of residential units to move ahead under the bc1 zoning and the plan configuration today the applicant could do about 56 units total so a fraction of what they're proposing so to get to the minimum 235 bc one zoning would require six and a half acres of open space or two thirds of the site as you can see on the right there and because we cap things at 55 feet there has to be some other mechanism to increase density to get to this level of number of dwelling units on the site and so that in that regard as we've noted the comp plan not only recognizes diagonal plaza as a center where redevelopment is anticipated policy 5.10 specifically notes that diagonal plaza is essentially an opportunity site where the city would support revitalization strategies that

[60:00] are um unique to that site so to that end and in 2011 some of you may have been around for this the council utilized the assistance of an urban land institute technical advisory panel or a uli tap and that was intended to provide recommendations on how best to redevelop and revitalize the site and given the fragmented ownership and the tap looked at a range of options and put forth a preferred incremental approach from mixed use redevelopment to allow it to develop sort of over time so to speak and in cooperation with boulder housing partners so that was their recommendation 10 years ago and that's not unlike what the concept plan approaches that we're looking at this evening so then are there comprehensive plan policies that would support having residential in this location and of course

[61:01] we point to policy 110 jobs housing balance that indicates the city will seek opportunities to improve the balance of jobs and housing and that this will be accomplished by encouraging new housing and mixed use neighborhoods in areas close to where people work and encouraging transit-oriented developments in appropriate locations and as shown in the slide it's essentially a heat map that illustrates the intensity of jobs within a half mile radius and up to two miles and so you can see there's it captures quite a number of jobs and then similarly policy 711 indicates the city will explore policies and programs to increase housing for boulder workers and their families by fostering mixed use and multi-family development in proximity to transit employment or services and by considering the conversion of commercial land to allow for future residential so these policies really highlight the city's desire to create opportunities

[62:01] for mixed use and multi-family through conversion of commercial and industrial land or residential as is the case here then policy 2.16 for mixed use and higher density development help to target what locations may be appropriate as it indicates the city's desire to encourage well-designed mixed use and higher density that incorporates a substantial amount of affordable housing including commercial centers in proximity to multimodal and transit quarters and so in this case there's not only jobs and proximity to the site but as we've talked about there's transit and nearby there's bike lockers and car share facilities as well as pedestrian facilities so policy 2.16 also notes the city's openness to creating new zoning districts revisions to fars or open space and parking requirements to achieve this mixed use so in an effort to achieve a

[63:01] maximum number of residential units on this catalyst site um including building out all 25 of the permanently affordable units on the site the applicant suggested rezoning to a higher intensity and among the suggestions was mu4 so staff noted that it would be a logical um rezoning as it's contextually pretty similar to what 30 pearl and boulder junction context used to be it had broad underutilized parking lots and essentially vacant buildings that's near transit near multi-use paths and retail staff also notes though with regard to mu4 that it would require a comp plan land use change and so that process could be done concurrently there is a process for that at any time with a rezoning along with site and use review and it's important to note that at

[64:00] planning board the board some of the members of the board and members of the public felt a process shouldn't be onerous to try and achieve building residential in boulder another suggestion from the applicant was to look at rezoning to higher density bc2 and in that regard both bc1 and bc2 are the zoning districts that essentially implement the business or community business land use uh bc2 would allow up to three times the number of units as bc one because it allows 400 square feet of open space per dwelling unit if it's a mixed-use development the challenge with simply rezoning to bc2 is that uh the rezoning criteria expects a comprehensive planning process the present and future land use allocations that's the stated desire in the uh rezoning criteria and the criterion that mostly is applied in the city is number six the applicant

[65:00] demonstrates that rezoning is necessary to come into compliance with the bbcp map so because bc2 is already in compliance with the comp plan map this criteria can't can't apply in this case so there's really not a clear path to get them to a bc2 zoning so given that during the planning board uh discussion um [Music] it was discussed maybe looking at a potential code change that would add rezoning criteria to allow for a rezoning in a circumstance like this where there's higher intensity zoning that's already in compliance with the land use but staff notes that such a code change would require an in-depth analysis of all circumstances or unintended consequences and that that could actually be a fairly uh onerous and challenging project that would essentially just

[66:01] be intended to address this site there is another option that was discussed briefly at planning board as a means to achieve higher density mixed use on the site and that was through a special ordinance it would be a strategy unique to the site for this type of catalytic project at um diagonal plaza and it would be consistent with that policy 510 that we talked about and then in addition provision of on-site affordable housing in partnership with the city's affordable housing provider could be viewed as fulfilling some of these core values so then for key issue 2 regarding site planning and architecture staff noted in the memo that the proposed configuration of the streets is in keeping with both the main street approach that the uli tap recommended and also the modified grid essentially um that's shown in the north 28th street net network plan and then with regard to architecture the building forward approach to the

[67:00] concepts also in keeping with the tap recommendation for a main street and that is that it had buildings shown up to the um built up to the street with new low speed north south streets and a relatively urban configuration as they're shown in some of these images and that would infill those broad existing parking lots with ground floor retail space and then upper stories of residential so staff notes that infilling the parking lots are in keeping with other bbcp policies and are critical not only to achieve the density but also be able to build a sense of place so in that regard stack staff had recommended refining some of the proposed configurations on the south side to better relate to the existing uh bhp diagonal court town homes and as currently shown there's a strong visual terminus if you look at coming from 28th street as you enter the site

[68:00] which is a significant improvement to today obviously but the closer you get to the site in the park there's also surface parking and that moves into the um [Music] essentially the bhp diagonal court townhomes property and so if you render that as a diagram it helps to to illustrate that um that wonderful community park amenity would essentially be ringed by parking roadways and so staff would recommend the applicant consider looking at a means to weave these sites together and i know the applicant has expressed interest in maybe rejiggering that plan a little bit to make it more a better knit together and place buildings to frame the open space it would allow units to have additional tuck under parking or maybe having carports with solar something like that and then uh just regarding the early architectural concepts renderings presented by the applicant illustrate

[69:00] attractive and contemporary forms staff had suggested maybe instead of relatively boxy forms and structures that um the applicant emphasized some of the precedent images that were presented that show pitched roofs just to provide some variation of the built environment there's a other residential nearby that have pitched rooms but a contemporary interpretation would be appropriate and then uh given that the sites within the appendix j of the land use code where uh the applicant can request modifications to the height standard again hopefully there's some impetus to provide a pitched roof so then that concludes staff's presentation there's a few issues to guide the discussion uh most importantly is their support through the comp plan poll goals and policies for mixed use and higher density residential through a land use change or resonator these other mechanisms and then does council have any other feedback for the applicant on

[70:00] the site plan and architecture so with that i'm happy to answer any questions elaine i will just start by saying that was an extremely efficient presentation you walked us through a bunch of issues very thoroughly and quickly so thank you for that um aaron yeah i'll echo that thanks elaine was a great presentation that was uh illustrated the key she's very well just one question for you the potential for that special ordinance to vary the open space requirements do you see any hurdles in doing that is that really just a policy choice for council or would there be any problems that staff would see with taking that approach well we've we've not really dug into that a whole lot however special ordinances have been used from time to time and it's generally intended to fill fulfill a policy bvcp policy or policies and in this case it would probably be

[71:00] oriented towards that policy 510 or 1.10 and there's various examples that we can go over of special ordinances but um it would be site-specific and that would be probably the more attractive approach or mechanism in this case given that those other approaches are fairly involved processes with land use chain as well as rezoning that's great that's helpful yeah i know we have the council has in the past done special ordinances for particular circumstances so i guess as long as we were able to justify it by showing how it ties to comp plan policies then that's something that we could proceed with if council wanted to great thank you thank you aaron mary and then i'll go mary thanks sam just a question that came to mind as um the previous discussion regarding the the special ordinance

[72:02] um so the issue with adding that seventh point with respect to being able to um switch the zoning because it's already the same land use um or to go to mu4 with a land use map change um would it be possible at all or or how could you use an ordinance in a kind of a bridge manner to get you to the comp plan update where a land use map change could be made and by that mary are you referring to um a land use map change to something like a mixed use land use that would right right to go to a a mixed use because right now the the ordinance that would make sense would be to um change the zoning specifically for this

[73:01] site yep um so i was just wondering if there's a way to create an ordinance um that would bridge it to the con plan update and do a land use map change yeah that's something that we hadn't entertained but uh you know i think that's something worth exploring and talking about a little bit further i don't know if um city attorney's office or if hella penalwig's available to to talk about the mechanism to get us there yeah if you're talking about actually re-zoning the property and changing the zoning designation and everything that comes with it then i would recommend that you follow the process that's set out in the code with the land use map change that precedes that and we do have that process in existence you wouldn't need a special ordinance for that

[74:00] okay thank you hello that's all i had thank you great and i just have follow-ups on what what mary had asked about so helen just to be clear on on your answer to mary um you were saying if we walked through the rezoning tmu4 and then do the um land use map change that that's going to be about as much work as doing a special ordinance is that correct yeah i'd say so um you would you would run the land use map change parallel to the rezoning change that's what's anticipated in the process so that could be done at the same time as a development review application that comes in and the same is true for a special ordinance i would imagine that we would run that parallel with the development review process as well so you would see what the project is that's being proposed and then tie the ordinance to that particular project excellent and if we did if we did the first option which is land use change

[75:01] and mu4 rezoning that could all come forward with the site plan review is that correct correct okay all right and then just to ask a question about spot zoning and the concern about spot zoning would doing the land use change and the rezoning be a little less vulnerable to a charge of spot zoning than a special ordinance yes it might be with the special ordinance we would i think just wave specific standards but in general keep the zoning in place so i wouldn't consider it a re-zoning and if we have a rational basis for that tying it to the comp plan i wouldn't be very concerned about it okay very good and then the only other question i had for staff was about the connections plan so you went pretty quickly through that elaine could you just give a little color to are we comfortable with the way

[76:00] the connections are shaping up on the site and do you think that you expect to have a really good connections plan at site plan review yeah in fact uh for the primary connections i think there were a couple of them that were shown coming from 28th street into this site applicants has shown that along with a north um or yeah north-south uh connection um so it's it's essentially just taking that grid pattern and sort of modifying it or twisting it a little bit and it appears as though from the north 28th street connections plan that there was um support for changing it up a little bit so they offered a couple alternatives so uh in other words staff felt like they had fulfilled that and actually addressed it pretty well okay very good thank you mark

[77:00] yeah thank you elaine that was that was really very clear and concise i appreciate it um did i did i correctly see an early slide that dealt with the um the unit mix and average size of units or did i imagine that i think that it had some of that information on one of the slides yeah um is it possible to pull that up i think i could yeah or can you simply tell me what what is contemplated in terms of the unit mix and size of units yeah and my understanding is it's um everything from efficiency living units one two and i believe three bedroom units although the efficiency living units um didn't exactly match how we would define efficiency living units so they would have to go back and i think the goal was to go ahead and make them efficiency living units okay um

[78:00] has there been any conversation with the applicant about creating any ownership units or different sort of mix of units as opposed to simple rentals uh i believe that conversation happened at planning board and and that would be great for the applicant to address in this context as well and this is about 25 percent of the diagonal plasma site is it not maybe roughly yeah no okay um as we look at this project and hopefully move towards approval of it what are the plans for planning for the bulk of the site um is you know obviously we're not going to hold this up for any area planning does it make sense to have some sort of area planning or some form of planning so that we understand what we're what our objectives are with respect to the other three quarters of the site well so that uli tap did provide some

[79:02] kind of on how to achieve that and in fact the incremental approach was found to be uh probably the least honest given the fact that there are these multiple property owners and that has been the challenge um for decades is the multiple property owners so having this be essentially catalytic to incrementally do the rest of the site is probably the best step forward although again there were some recommendations in that ula tap report on how to continue to achieve the same type of or desired outcome of a mixed use and residential type of project in that location but i think there was there was some discussion at planning board about area planning and the challenge there of course is that's a fairly robust and long-term process and

[80:01] i think there was a lot of interest in trying to achieve something happen out there sooner than later so i think absolutely it's worth the conversation with staff about how we could continue to look at the rest of diagonal plaza but there is some pretty good guidance in that tap report and uh well two last things one have you seen the um the email circulated from boulder housing network showing a couple of examples of really interesting design concepts um for housing of this type um my interest here is is can we get something other than just the boxy stacked flats that we you see in boulder junction um which have their housing but they are unimaginative and this email presents a couple of examples and i'm sure there are more of

[81:01] you know dense urban housing that actually has some design to it um and so my question is have you seen that and um has there been any conversation with the applicant about doing something other than um box after box after box yeah so i've not seen that but you know concept plan is a great opportunity to bring up these ideas and applicant is up next and i think that's a great question for them as well but uh even having that opportunity to do a height modification and change up the roof line um is a pretty good opportunity for this location since it's in that appendix j area okay um well i'm hoping the applicant will look at that and and try to do something that's a step above um what we have seen in most projects to date um which is four slabs with a roof uh i i think there are opportunities here for better design

[82:01] uh it's large enough to be able to do better design and i'm hoping they will uh take that to heart in their uh in their planning process thank you that's all i've got great and mark if you want to look at the slide deck the unit mix is on slide 16 and then nearby and bob hereby let's see i'm just clarifying for right now i mean i have questions and some of them were along the lines of what mark was just stating but it again it's going to be i guess more for the applicant and more as a general statement of where we're liking we would like to see this going so do you want us to hold those until after the open comment when we start discussing i think design issues should probably come after the applicant makes a presentation but if you have any technical concerns or code concerns or comp plan concerns now would be a good time for that okay i think most of mine are going to be um for lat later so i'll just hold them then okay very good bob i do have a technical or code question for elaine then i'm trying to

[83:00] understand how this um ties into appendix jig i know that we're going to be talking about that later this evening let's say for um sake of discussion that appendix j expires on august 31 how will that how will that affect at all this this proposal well um conceivably at least for the uh maximum density proposal uh that option two which did utilize the fourth floor of that building five for additional units so essentially what it says is you wouldn't be able to achieve that number of units and in turn that number of on-site affordable units so something worth thinking about in terms of expiration of appendix j hella do you have any thoughts on um how that could proceed or not um yeah i think i'm going to have to look back at the last ordinance that was passed but when we last extended

[84:01] appendix i believe we added this site to appendix today so with xj expiring um if it just expires then the hype modifications are available anywhere in this system but they're already if i remember correctly available on this site now based on the last ordinance well that was my understanding exactly the point hello is that because this side was called out um as being included in appendix j i'm trying to understand what happens if appendix j expires on august 31 there's this site no i'm very confused about authenticity we're going to talk about that in about an hour and a half but since we're talking about this one i want to understand what the impact of appendix j's expiration on august 31 would have on this side and elaine it sounds like you're telling us that if appendix j were to expire the option two with the four story would no longer be available is that right

[85:00] well actually um to hella's point you would be able to apply for a height modification if the appendix j expires um correct hello yes yeah okay i i am thoroughly and utterly confused about that so i'm just going to let it go for now and i'll talk about it in an hour or two when it comes up okay thank you bob and i have one more question um you illustrated very well elaine what the challenge is with the open space for dwelling unit right so we we've known for a long time that that uh standard is a real problem and i believe that our use table review project is supposed to address that so just um do you have any idea is that in fact being addressed in the use table project and if we completed that um with this council when do you anticipate the um site plan application to come forward

[86:01] um so in terms of the use table i think helen might be able to address that or carl geiler later this evening but the applicant may know what their timing is on the site review application they've not revealed it to me per se but i know that they're interested in moving forward if they get some pretty solid direction this evening i guess i'll ask it in a more general way because i i think this is a good way to highlight the importance of that project and completing it is if we made the changes that are being contemplated in bc1 and i know that bc2 is different would that alleviate the need for six acres of open space for for this project is the intention of the changes that we're going to make to make sure that we don't run into this zoning challenge for bc one yes and i i don't have the answer to that sam i think that would be best directed to carl

[87:00] um generally speaking um the open space is not necessarily use um oriented and charles correct me if i'm wrong i saw you pop on here you're mute charles sorry sorry about that thanks carl is on the call so um carl would you be able to speak to um the proposed proposed code changes that would run with bc yeah if if we're talking about changes to the open space requirements um that's less related to the use standards or the use table it's more related to the community benefit project overall we we did have an intensity modification for the bc zones proposed in the last ordinance where there could be um either lot area waived or open space reduced for permanent affordable units

[88:01] uh there was nothing um in our work plan that related to just changing the bc zones relative to their open space requirements thank you that's clear i appreciate that okay i have no more questions any other council members with questions if not i guess we're ready for the applicant hi everybody we're getting set up thank you for your time give us one second and we'll share our screen um and i think that uh someone has to allow us to do so right now it says host participant screen sharing disabled yes give me just one second to do that where you are on my screen it's not let me do that for you from the screen so

[89:01] let me find you on the list here thank you brother thank you and this is bill with coburn architecture we have a relatively short presentation um we try to keep it concise uh jarvie and laura from tcr and bhp respectively will give you a little bit of an overview of what they're trying to accomplish with the project we'll talk a bit more about the design planning and architecture and then we'll talk a little bit at the end dana cappell will join us to talk a bit about the um the mechanism to get us to the um to the full uh to the um sorry i'm trying to share the screen and talk at the same time which clearly i shouldn't be doing to the density that we're talking about so let's see if this works we can see it now hello everybody my name is charlie worcester i'm the managing director for trimble presidential uh i'll be brief we have a team of experts that want uh the

[90:01] ability to share a lot of ptrust i'm thrilled to be in front of you all talking about this property i think many of you probably know how challenging this site is how difficult it was to get under contract in addition to some poorly documented easements some underlying you know private covenants that we've been uh wrestling with and uh so we're ecstatic to be at this stage of the process and very grateful uh to the planning board and staff for the feedback we've received uh so far um at charlemagne's eventually eventually our goal here with this property is to revitalize as you've seen in the photos elaine presented an extremely dilapidated retail center to provide community benefit from existing for existing amenities by workforce housing and to also you know provide permanent affordable housing on property and and with that we're we as you've heard previously we're ecstatic to be partnering with bhp on this project not only geographically

[91:01] located uh approximate to their existing property but just the partnership that we've been able to form to help facilitate the project i know laura's a familiar face for you all i'm gonna turn over uh the presentation to laura and then subsequently to our design team uh so that laura can provide a little bit of feedback on her thoughts on the opportunity all right thank you jeremy and good evening city councillors and thrilled to be here tonight i'm borah schengen and i'm with boulder housing partners director of real estate development i'm gonna zoom out for a minute just because i had the opportunity and great honor today to meet with um hud secretary marcia fudge and congressman nagooz they were both at bhp speaking today and i was just really humbled by the work they were doing across the country to ease our affordable housing crisis and was also reminded of the importance of being our sister's keeper and how we're truly doing that work when we collectively solve for housing issues in our community so i

[92:00] need to say i was very inspired and that was tonight as we're talking about this project i'm really happy to share my enthusiasm for this project for the partnership and bringing that brought along with gervy and the tramwell car residential team as we've discussed we on those 30 apparently permanently affordable units to the south this project as contemplated really solves a lot of issues for that island property by transforming a blighted parking lot with you know you'll see some new numbers tonight but you know 60 to 70-ish new affordable family affordable units community park sidewalks that we often take for granted in those neighborhoods but we don't have them here at diagonal court so safe pedestrian access defined vehicular access this will truly become a on-site affordable campus for housing and services and it's a tremendous solution in the making for our entire community and bhp's current and future residents so thank you we're excited and look forward to hearing your

[93:00] comments tonight bill holicky with coburn architecture so as elaine mentioned the site's really ideal for residential it's well served by multimodal and bus routes bike bike paths sidewalks and it does it is surrounded by residential fabric shown here in yellow so the commercial core in gray doesn't have anything we'd be introducing that residential but it's supported by all of the fabric around it so it continues that pattern through that core which is what we've been trying to encourage our community as elaine mentioned one of the big problems here is that it's a super block it's unbroken from 28 to 30th street from iris to glenwood and we really have to start by dividing this up so the transportation master plan gives us some clues to how to do that elaine brought it up this is shown simplified so it's a little bit easier to read the east-west streets from 28th to 30th are critical the north-south streets are shown as a little bit less critical than that tmp and in fact the western one which elaine

[94:00] showed multiple options for they knew it was going to be a challenge when they wrote to tnp because it goes right through the neighbor's building where the dmv mall is if that road goes in they essentially can't develop that property so that's why those alternative tmp plans got into the tm the transportation mastermind document so we work with staff and figure out a different way to approach this which is essentially replacing that western road with a multi-modal path so you can still get from the bhp property to the south up to iris and back it's just cars i mean sorry it's bikes and heads it's not cars but those two east-west streets that connect the fabric of the 28th side to the 30th side are still there so this matches in staff's opinion the intention of the tmp and still gets us the breakdown of the blocks so some other cool things too that we'll get to in a minute um but the other big challenge on this site was mentioned by a council member's question and elaine there are 14 ownership parcels here the cross easements for access and utilities

[95:02] and parking and for storm water are incredible i've never seen anything like it in yellow you're seeing some of the highlights of that and these are the the most important access easements that are cross-legally shared on all these parcels they happen to be very very similar to the tmp now i'm sure the tmp took that into account when they wrote it also they match those current circulation patterns to some extent but it's kind of miraculous that with all this legal entrapment entanglement and the tmp requirements that we end up with a road structure that's very very similar to the tmp um in fact you know works so this is the new street map and that street map then matches um or we can load the buildings in and it matches the intent which gets us to a final plan that breaks down that super block in the way the tmp envisioned so proposed street a as elaine mentioned runs into a community park as it bends

[96:00] with the tmp assumed that it would bend up as it had headed from west to east and it gives you that that focal point that community park proposed street b runs right into that northern shopping center access on the north side of the big box stores um that creates this perception of a street pattern even though some of it is still in access easements and it's still parking lot drives but it does a really cool thing which is it allows for future incremental development so while this all works with the new streets the big box stores on the north side now face will be perceptually a street on b on the south side on street a they could add entrances on the south or they could add some new smaller scale retail on the south and make that new street um a the the south side of the dmv mall which is that cool little restaurant right now which currently opens onto a dirt parking lot will now open onto a community park and a street which is a huge improvement so the south side is much improved on the north side now we have these parking lots between iris and proposed street v which could

[97:02] be redeveloped into anything residential very easily so even if it doesn't change it works great if it does change it can change incrementally in a way that fits with the assumptions of the tmp and best urban practices so that's really exciting you can see it here from an axon view it it this is how this kind of street pattern is created now another thing i want to point out here you're seeing it a little differently than what's in your packet as we went to staff and got their feedback and then planning board and got their feedback we've been continually trying to manipulate this and change it make it better we incorporate those criticisms comments suggestions into it one of the things we heard was that there's a there's a feeling that we should avoid sort of and mark you brought it up in your questions that kind of three or four story wall along 28th street for example right so we flipped the c-shaped building and what that allowed us to do along 28th street is really modulate that architecture as we go down the street so we go from an open street up to a three-story part down to the one-story part for the

[98:01] majority of that building or we have a roof deck now interacting from an urban standpoint with the rtd stop and sidewalk there which is ideal back up to a three-story portion down to the street and down to another little three-story portion buildings three and four have four story portions to them they step up in the back but again those buildings are kept narrow as they face the street for that four-story portion so again you're getting that modulation and mark to answer your question we are very much intending smoked roots so we love to get feedback from um council on all of that the other cool thing that this change does it's really amazing is that you think of diagonal positive thinking it's all it's all asphalt well this site is all it's nearly 100 asphalt with a couple little tree islands or parking islands um but the rest of diagonal plaza is actually better off there's there's trees there's some sidewalks while it certainly could be improved the further east you go the better it is so this site is taking the very worst part on the dirt parking lots the asphalt

[99:01] that's falling apart the the vacant buildings and turning it into the best part and what it does that it elevates the whole thing so now these blue streets that run west to east feel like streets the first time not just where we made them actual streets but also in the eastern portion so even if it takes quite a while for that portion to change what we end up with is a much more functional entire diagonal plaza immediately which is exciting and this is illustrated best for this island of green which are the 30 affordable units that laura was talking about earlier right now there are there's no sidewalk there is no bike path there is no street or driveway that gets you there you have to drive through a dirt parking lot to access that so with the change and we have worked on it quite a bit as elaine mentioned staff was originally concerned that this was surrounded by by roads we have eliminated roads on two sides so now that park it borders parking to the south and it porters the street to the north but on the east and

[100:00] west there's just a multi-use path and direct access to the bhp buildings now that's become a campus right and that internal parking lot has become a street and there's sidewalks and plazas and you can actually for the first time a parent that's in one of those townhomes can take their kid and they can walk on sidewalks across the pedestrian connection over to safeway which is a huge improvement for for those families that live there so we're excited about that as well um there's been some changes mark you had asked about also uh you're like right on topic for the presentation so thank you for asking the questions you had asked about the the unit myths one of the things we heard strongly a planning board was a desire to increase the variety of unit mix we mostly had at that time studios ones and two bedrooms so we've added a number of things the way we were able to do that is we in getting into the site more there's a big grade drop from 28th street to the old sports authority current walgreens site it drops about six feet we have to keep the the commercial level

[101:02] up at this 28th street so you can walk right into the commercial off the sidewalk very important from an urban standpoint but that creates this this really tall parking level because we're trying to keep all the parking internal to the blocks we figured out that by doubling that up and actually making it a parking garage completely enclosed inside these buildings behind the street face we could then bring units right down to the street previously we had very small thin kind of common spaces along there by bringing them down to the street we're able to add unit types and what we got was in the light blue six town homes in the yellow live work units 14 of those so that's for someone maybe as a small business they won't have to also rent a commercial space they can do it right from their home incubator businesses sole proprietors that kind of thing and we've added a bunch of three bedroom units so 10 three bedroom units on the market right side and another nine on the affordable side and when you also consider that there's 30 existing townhomes in this community we have

[102:00] almost 70 units that are now either live work or family housing so that's a big change from what you normally see and we're excited about that um and certainly happy to answer more questions about all of that here's the way that looks on the upper floor so then finally architecture and it's concept plans so we're not very far along the buildings are kind of ghosted out because there's no real design but we're really very interested in the first floor the first 14 feet is super critical there's been a lot of studies on the brain that show that people map in much more detail the things that they their body thinks they can eventually touch and so that's where you get that interaction with the building on that first 14 feet so we've worked very hard to create building typology building buildings that are going to be very uh you know places to sit sidewalks that kind of thing here are some of the images that elaine showed um you can see the pitched roofs um the warm materials that kind of uh maybe a little more um expressive design and that's the goal we'd like to hear some feedback from you

[103:00] on what we should accomplish but again the primary thing here is making the street work tree lawns full eight-foot tree lawns parallel parking uh drive lanes sidewalks places for for seating outside the buildings that kind of thing um from an open space standpoint right now there's nothing as you know it's all asphalt that's the only thing that's being displaced now we have a park um but again it's an urban park so expect it to be a little more designed um and then those green spaces that are not in the park will be a lot more designed so there'll be more urban spaces more artistic and exciting in that manner but again what we're really trying to do is create that that really great street experience so with that i'll turn it over to danica thanks bill what's really exciting about this redevelopment is it's significant enough to provide extensive community benefit for the neighborhood i've lived in the neighborhood for almost 20 years and i know how hard it is to enjoy a diagonal plaza so having the on-site affordable housing as laura

[104:01] mentioned tying that housing into the existing community fabric is huge um creating community spaces for both existing and future community members as bill mentioned we added a lot of diversity of unit types and have really tried to accommodate a lot large type typology of housing to serve more people we're not displacing small businesses this does not include redevelopment of diagonal um kind of the dmv court as we know it those will stay in place and in fact we think it will enhance those businesses by providing more residents and a double-sided experience for those businesses we're revitalizing the retail center hopefully increasing sales and use tax and economics for the area great transportation connections implementing the tmp and creating those community roads and multi-use path which creates some area planning in and of itself a new neighborhood park and reduction of impervious surfaces and improved water quality if anyone's been out there they've seen the detention pond which is an asphalt um

[105:00] retention area that holds water and then drains it around the site and so it will be great to have rain gardens and other storm water water quality here next slide so per an email we sent earlier today we just wanted to reiterate as a project team that our preferred path forward would be a special ordinance we did research into other special ordinances and realized that they have been done to kind of solve these gaps where community goals don't meet existing zoning or site use conditions and so we do ask that you consider a special ordinance to provide an alternate method of open space calculation on the site and that would match other mixed use zones where residential is encouraged so we're asking for a a and special ordinance to allow a minimum of 15 open space on the site that would be a significant increase in open space from what is there now and be consistent with other mixed use zone districts like bms mu1 mu2 mu3 and mu4

[106:00] this is a really straightforward request to just change the open space minimum to which would then allow the density that you saw in front of you which is supported by the community planning board and staff um with the existing zoning we could only do 80 to 95 units so this is an important fix that would be requested and we we'd ask you to look at it sooner rather than later and perhaps even discuss it tonight with us in the past special ordinance has been used to achieve housing solutions and unique situations examples of those include foothills community trinity commons iris hollow habitat violet 30 pearl red oak park tantra lake and several others a special ordinance would create the path forward for this project and prioritize the redevelopment of diagonal plaza which has been a high priority for many years so we look forward to a robust discussion tonight and discussing both the special ordinance and our path forward as well as the project concepts you've seen tonight

[107:00] thanks and just last note um there's lots more to talk about on the path special ordinance versus rezone so if you have questions please don't hesitate to hesitate to ask and we'll give you some thoughts thank you very much for your time thank you thank you all for the presentation questions for the applicant bob yeah so just picking up there uh for i guess bill and uh danica um it sounds like we've got a couple different options to deal with this open space problem um if i understood hello right she sounded kind of agnostic between the rezoning and special ordnance sounds like you guys have a preference for special orders can you drill into that a little bit more about why that's preferred as opposed to rezoning sure um so there's there's been a number of processes uh the re-zones um and we've done them before there there are rules that you have to follow when you go through the reasons and there's a bunch of hoops to jump through um one of the biggest concerns here is timing the seller as you all know um

[108:00] you know has some on this property for a long time and we start to hit challenges in mid-november and i think that jarvie from tcr can get into that in more detail if you're interested so time is of the essence um the project incurs more risk of not happening the longer it waits and the concern for a rezone whether that's um you know adding a a quality that would allow you to rezone the bc2 which has its own challenge or challenges or to rezone md4 is just the unknown we don't know what we would run into from a timing standpoint from a staffing standpoint changing the comp plan is complicated through our criteria for how to do that and um we don't know together staff and africa we don't know what we're going to run into um this special ordinance is a lot cleaner the the open space requirement 15 that we're suggesting is the exact open space requirement for other commercial zones that are encouraging residential animations format so we already know that it works um that 15 we were currently planning on doubling that but

[109:00] by using that metric from another zone that already exists it makes it really easy for for council to just say hey on this zone in order to support the community goals of mixed use we're going to use the open space measure from other misused zones that applies here and then it's clean it's done that that ordinance could even come earlier than the site review so that this council could do it potentially prior to the election and that provides some guidance when staff reviews the site review that we submit so that's a way to look at it in our opinion thanks bill that's all i had you bob uh rachel mary nearby and aaron rachel bob basically asked my question but i guess i'll just follow up on the timing uh explanation and i don't know if this is to the applicant or to staff but but can someone delineate sort of a projected timeline for either the special ordinance or zoning change how long that would take when it would get started

[110:01] um okay so two scenarios and then staff can chime in and danica correct me if you think that i'm off base on this um the first scenario is that everything runs concurrent with the site review which is how it's often been done in the past so we submitted a certain review at the same time that the cellular view gets submitted an application for example either an application for a rezone or special ordinance runs concurrently with that either the rezone or the special ordinance is developed in concurrence with the site review and as site review goes to planning board so would special ordinance um and zoning change and plenty board there would just be recommendations to council and you would take final action so when you saw it you would take final action um the other scenario could only happen with special ordinance where you essentially take this parcel say that in order to support the goals of the complaint that elaine already outlined that this particular parcel has a 15 open space requirement on it that can happen anytime at that point you've essentially created a scenario where the site review

[111:00] matches the underlying zoning because the zoning plus the special ordinance creates a zone that our site review would then have to follow and everything would be reviewed against that those are two kinds of different ways in the first scenario that i described the concern about the difference between a special ordinance and the zoning is that something in the zoning would run which would cause the process to run slower and it would otherwise run it was just a straight site review that's that's the worry that there's complication involved in that that a special ordinance doesn't have because by virtue of a special order ordinance by definition council can kind of do whatever you want so there is there are no hoops to jump through in that regard is that fair danica is there more to add there yeah i think so i think we were just looking at the special ordinance as a tool that's been used in the past primarily to achieve housing goals where you could be tied to a future site review approval so if the site review wasn't approved then that ordinance could go away as well so we think it could be legally tied to expectations on a site review but would give that i

[112:02] think certainty that we have a path forward that um jarvie and it would need and investors to be able to know that we could move forward with this project so that that's one of the reasons we've been discussing this and trust me we've we've looked at all the options in depth with elaine and nothing's easy but knowing that we have some support going into this we wanted to propose what we thought would be the most efficient way to move forward and finally in fairness we did discuss this robustly with staff and what we all kind of decided was um we were hoping council will give some direction and feedback on this issue and i think there's a lot of unanswered questions about how either would work and once we get some direction we will work with staff to figure out what those issues are and how to move forward thanks thank you rachel mary and nearby and then i'll go mary thanks sam thanks for the presentation and um so there's a third option i thought i heard um hella describe

[113:01] which was um pursuing land use map change and zoning changes um that i think she was also very fairly agnostic on that could occur um in parallel with the site plan is that correct tella yeah so i think the rezoning would go along with an unused map change in this particular case because of the issues with not being able to meet the resulting criteria with the current zoning because the current zone is already consistent with an end use map so if the land use map was changed to a different zone that you find appropriate for this parcel then along with that we could then rezone to make the zoning consistent with the new land use and as well it could also have various um different land uses

[114:00] if we yes yeah so so then you could have various different kinds of zones that would then accommodate the kind of diversity of housing that that was presented to us and tonight as well as what was desired by the planning board so um so my question then for the applicant is um have you considered that route you have and so that was essentially the second scenario that i was just talking about so to make it clear what would happen is we would submit a site review and a request for um you know a rezone and that rezone request would include a comp plan land use change that went along with it so mary i think that's the scenario you're describing um the issue with that is again complication the concern is there are rules

[115:00] we were having a discussion with staff and elaine just a few days ago there's a there are rules that go along with that land use change um we undertaking a land use map change on the comp plan is is you know a pretty big deal we do it um every five years for a for a major comp plan change into a half a minor and as you know it takes quite a long time to to finish those now that's not just because of the match changes but you know there's a lot of um you know public participation that goes into that there's a lot of considerations under the code and the concern is that in that process it would things would get substantially delayed the other part of this is that under the bc1 zoning we're in right now we can do all of the different unit types that we just talked about now some of them do require use review but that's baked into the process as it is so we don't need a different zone to support unit diversity we can just do it under the current pc one so the the beauty of the special ordinance is that we're under his own

[116:01] zone works works with the site plan the process is all is all simple and the only thing that council needs to do is change the open space requirement from 1200 square feet per unit to 15 that gives everyone a lot of surety moving forward including staff who has to somehow review this thing moving forward okay thank you on that sure please thanks um and hella if if we if we looked at that land use map change as part of this whole thing that's a comp plan change i believe so that that requires both planning board and city council approval is that right that's correct so i guess i'll just put that up there's a point that that that route would require planning boards to send like even if we came to a different conclusion from them theirs would still hold because that land use change requires the approval of both city council and planning board so we've got a great

[117:01] planning board that just would no longer be entirely in our hands thank you aaron um nearby um thanks sam uh so i'm gonna change gears just a little bit and go a little bit more into the weeds here uh i was actually pleasantly surprised with the way that this laid out more than i expected to be so it was a nice surprise um i guess i'll discuss again details in terms of design afterwards when we make our general remarks but for right now i just have some questions in terms of it was actually really nice to see the townhome option of the six town home so sorry if i missed this but are those going to be rentals or for sale yeah um we can the applicant give you or uh jerry can give you more information but everything is rental that you're seeing on this site both the bhp and the market rate everything is rental that's great okay um i mean i'd love to see this for once something to be purchased but you

[118:00] know i get it so i guess then the question is you know we have very few town homes and attached homes and row houses it seems uh we keep going into these boxy apartments is i get that a lot of this is done in terms of packing as many people into this area as we can so that we can get the affordable housing and so that the numbers work out is there going to be any leniency where we could at least even maybe double those row houses to have 12 units rather than six just because again i mean i get that people aren't having families as much and it's a lot of single people in workforce housing but there still are young families that could use the space and this is kind of next to kind of across the street at least from one of the open comments or public hearings i'd heard prior is that you know these are a lot of families living in and around this area and they wanted some of the homes to transfer to that general feel of kind of a family vibe so is there any way of at least trying to double those numbers or is this just monetarily

[119:02] out of the question you know it's not what it's more about is that the massing so those town homes drop down with two stories and in order to drop those town homes down to two stories we're pushing other things up to four stories right so we're creating this three-story two-story four-story kind of thing when you look at the overall site also keep in mind that there are 30 town homes on the south end and while they're not included in our new unit numbers they are included in the community so when you look at the actual number of townhome units on the site it's 36. obviously the majority of them are market and i mean are affordable and those 30 already exist but in terms of the you know the families on the site moving things up and down it's more than just those six but really the issue is um trying to keep the whole site from being four stories everywhere we've dropped a chunk of it down to two stories for those townhomes and then raised other things to to kind of go with that okay great well thanks for answering the question

[120:01] great thank you nearby and so i have a few questions one starts with those town homes um is there a reason that those can't be ownership bill um because i assume that they're not affordable right so they're not going to be financed under light tech or other tax credit financing what's the reason that those are not ownership it was jeremy with tcr we're predominantly uh a for rent developer owner um we we have historically built for sale um condo and and townhome properties but it's no longer kind of in focus for our property that combined with the complexity of multiple buildings hoas split ownership uh it would it would be a very challenging effort great thanks um and then to the point about ordinance versus land use change i certainly get what aaron was saying but would mu4 with an appropriate land use

[121:03] designation change allow you to build option one or option two yes um the the there's only really one sticking point that we identified in mu4 which is um it requires balconies um and generally vulnerable housing partners tries to stay away from those for operational reasons so that's other than that within the normal things you're allowed to ask for inside your view setback variances height you know those kinds of things mu4 would technically work we believe we're good and would there be an advantage to future development if we were to make a land use change rather than a special ordinance because i'm presuming and correct me if i'm wrong that the special ordinance would apply to only these three properties that you're going to redevelop so i'll stop there is that correct the special ordinance you're anticipating

[122:00] would be just for the three properties you're going to redevelop uh two properties but yes yeah and so if we were to consider a land use change over the entire area as part of your site review applications we have your site review application land use change which may be broader than just your application and a rezoning which might be just your properties would that work for you except for leaving aside the concern about delays and so on would that allow you to do the development you want to do i believe so but sam can you please i apologize uh can you repeat the the process as you just described i want to make absolutely certain i heard it right okay so as i understood the option two which you described was to apply for site plan review for your properties and a land use change which could be over the entire diagonal plaza and a rezoning which would be just for your properties all at once the only reason i'm asking

[123:02] to make sure that it would work for you is because there might be a reason we want to do a land use change over the entire site if we're touching it at all i think one thought that comes to mind is there's 14 13 other owners and so it would add significant complexity to do a rezoning with other properties who are i think difficult to get in touch with and work with so i think it it makes sense comprehensively but it would add complexity from a timing standpoint and i think ownership standpoint to try and do a comp plan land use change and rezoning for all 14 properties so i was only suggesting the rezoning for your properties so in other words the land use change would be the whole diagonal plaza potentially i'm just spitballing here so you could do a land use change for the entire diagonal plaza and a rezoning under that land use change for your site review application i think that makes more sense than trying to rezone all the properties yeah

[124:01] yeah the only timing and also i mean as we've seen with comp plan updates uh owners come out of the woodwork as soon as you start messing with their maps and one of the things we've tried very very hard to do here is not draw on anybody else's property i think that's one of the reasons that we have really good support from the property owner so i don't know what happens to that support when we start changing other people's maps and i'm nervous about that people right and how i see you thank you um the other the resulting option the land use map change option that's available anytime can only be done in conjunction with rezoning so you would have to re-zone all of the other properties especially if you wanted to change the menus for the other properties that's super helpful thank you that clears up a lot of things and then i think that's all i have but we have some other hands now so hands i still have i think rachel mary and aaron are old so i'll start with bob

[125:01] bob i think yours is new um yeah my name is new but i i'm not sure uh aaron colloquy but you may not have gotten this question in so i'm going to defer to him okay aaron do you have a any other questions the the points i've made um i've either made or hella made them sound good thanks appreciate it yeah you bet so um my question is for hella i think mary asked this question but maybe i didn't fully understand the answer could we do both in other words could we do a special ordinance now for this property get this out of the way so we can get to site review and then later next year a year after when maybe we touch the comp plan to land use change and rezoning for this property and all other properties is that a possibility hello yes that is possibility as well okay thank you excellent i've got no other hand so no other questions so i believe that we are ready to go to public hearing and before we start i'm going to turn to

[126:01] brenda right now and brenda could you please give us the ground rules here you're on mute sorry thank you sam uh let me just share my screen here how are we doing is it coming up there we go we can see it now bigger for you so we do have some guidelines for public participation and we appreciate your cooperation the city did engage with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive civic conversations this vision specifically supports physical and emotional safety for community members staff and for council as well as supporting democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives

[127:00] the following are examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder revised code and other guidelines that support this vision and these will be upheld during this meeting this evening all remarks and testimony oh do you see it yes oh great thank you all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to the business of this public hearing no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation 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 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 and currently only audio testimony is permitted during virtual meetings so we thank you so much again for your cooperation

[128:00] with these rules and now we will proceed with the hearing sam thank you brenda and our first three speakers for the public so we have more than 15 speakers so there will be two minutes per speaker for the public hearing tonight and the first three speakers we have are making calls adeline fury and alice you should be able to speak now making good evening council my name is macon colt and i live at 1726 mapleton avenue in boulder i served on this council 11 years ago when the city examined what it would take to catalyze development at diagonal plaza with 15 owners of odd-shaped parcels complicated by a variety of easements we elected not to undertake a city-led redevelopment project because of concerns about its cost now a developer has stepped forth with a concept for bringing as many as 259 new

[129:01] housing units at this 9.3 acre site integrating it with and improving an existing bhp neighborhood to the south bhp and coburn partners together had major roles in the development of one of boulder's most successful neighborhoods holiday if you want something to happen on this neglected site you should ask yourselves what can we do on concept review this evening that will invite great design by this team here's how i would answer that question and it is simple tell this team that you will re-zone this site to accommodate 259 units if they come back with a great design that serves the needs of people and will make the city and the people who live in diagonal plaza proud take density off the table send a clear message to the team that you will support the requested density if the design is great 28 units per acre is after all not so

[130:02] dense the requested density is roughly the same density as the award-winning multi-family buildings that form a crescent around the holiday neighborhood park one could easily conclude and this is up to you and your discretion that in a time of climate change that 259 units are not enough on this site challenge the design team but welcome this project thank you very much thank you megan next we have adeline fury alice gunther and ginger zukowski adeline hello uh my name is adeline fury and i live down the street from this proposed development um i own a house at 19th and iris and when i heard about this proposed community i was so excited by the prospect and i want to urge you to support this project as it moves through the planning and zoning stages as much as possible

[131:00] um i bike or drive past this parking lot almost daily and i pick up my meds from that walgreens once or twice a month and as you all know the site in its current state is depressing and run down and almost empty and every time i see that parking lot i feel frustrated at so much unused space in a city in which it's almost impossible to find affordable housing um i lived i own a house now but before this i lived in boulder for almost a decade as a grad student on barely above minimum wage and it was hard um and so we all know that boulder needs more housing and this is an ideal location for this higher density housing um i think tall buildings would be perfect there like with that broken up with the green space and the roof deck i think that's an awesome proposition because of its location it wouldn't obstruct views from houses or walking paths and in fact it would add walking

[132:00] paths and a lot more interest to my commute at least i really like the idea of the community garden and the park space that's particularly exciting to me um and yeah i i think i would be even more excited if the applicant could incorporate slightly more green spaces like they were discussing i think that would be really awesome but overall i think this this project should be supported as much as possible and i really look forward to having some new neighbors in the in the community and to see that potholed parking lot transformed into something livable thanks thank you headland next we have alice gunther ginger zukowski and lynn siegel alice i have you pooling with laura vidal and scott josebeck so um brenda if you could confirm that the pooling partners are there alice will get four minutes they are both here and alice has a presentation that we will be playing with voiceover

[133:00] so taylor when you have that ready we are not hearing it dealer alice is prepared to read notes if necessary all right we can see that we're not hearing it however let's go ahead and unmute alice and maybe they will be willing to read their notes along with the presentation sure if you play it i'll go ahead and read it's nice to be here there guys my name

[134:00] is alice ginther i live in north boulder and my pronouns are they them my day job is managing the journalism department at cu where i have been employed for almost eight years to begin i want to explain that i believe that safe secure and affordable housing is a basic human right however low income housing in many places tends to be cookie cutter units built to stay within low budgets but times are changing with new solutions from around the world tonight i'm going to introduce three creative design possibilities for the diagonal plaza that go well beyond the low income box how three international architectural firms approach the idea of affordable housing design these designs are all green and include solar panels passive building technologies and green spaces two of the examples are affordable or

[135:02] social housing the third is a mixed-use neighborhood designed to reimagine a large city's 80 year old housing project first is vivaz mieri social housing miri spain built in 2010. total area is 192 030 square feet this design contains one two three and four bedroom units with a parking garage in the basement here is a floor plan for the ground floor next is date in le social housing paris france built in 2013 with 22 625 square feet this design also has one two three and four bedroom units finally bunker hill redevelopment boston massachusetts principal architects tamara roy and david lunny in describing this project right

[136:01] our plan does three things to connect to the neighborhood first it reconnects and extends the street grid through the development organizing all the buildings along new tree-lined streets second the plan creates a variety of open spaces that invite the public in and through the new development and third in place of the blank brick walls of the existing buildings the plan features a series of storefronts along bunker hill offering retail opportunities that will be accessible to lower income residents and the wider community of charlestown with this redesign breaking ground now deeply affordable units will be designed exactly the same as the full market units 2699 units 1010 deeply affordable we have an opportunity in boulder to plan and purpose build neighborhoods that include units for our local workforce to live where they work to

[137:02] support small family entrepreneurs along with living spaces for educators and tech professionals imagine a creative mix of both permanent affordable and market rate units designed in an area that also has a mix of restaurants coffee shops computer bars pavilions education and child care hubs these three ideas are just a few of the innovative and creative designs that could be realized for the redevelopment of the diagonal plaza what a moment we have in boulder where we could bring to life inspirational architectural design here in our city and reimagine boulder's future thank you so much for your kind attention please feel free to screenshot this slide for more information on each project thank you thank you alice next we have ginger zukowski lynn siegel

[138:00] and rosie phibian ginger i guess i'm unmuted now you can hear me i suppose yes i'm jinger zukowski i live in orchard grove oh good i'm glad uh and thanks for the opportunity by the way i live in orchard grove here in 120. um those of us who live in boulder who live in mobile home parks are already in affordable housing but also we live under a system that only enriches the often out of state owners who already are wealthy my husband and i have been paint rent on our lot since 1976 and own none of it and never will so it's important for the city to partner with developers of the diagonal plaza to ensure that there's enough a truly affordable housing and much of it for sale for this it would support the surrounding community both for the short-term and the

[139:01] long-term financial benefit for the community i also recommend making sure we get enough truly affordable housing especially if the zoning becomes upsized as was talked about if that's the case the percentage of affordable housing for sale and for rent should increase for the entire development i was heartened to see um preliminary plans for the diagonal that i saw tonight but i don't think we need too much office space rental because if you drive slightly east of the trailer park on velma you'll see um an inundation of four lease four lease for lease signs for rent or office space so keep that in mind as as you choose your development so just keep in mind that many of us need financially affordable purchases as well as rentals and we also need it to be physically

[140:01] accessible in this town some of us do anyway um in this town that we love so much and i'm very willing to help in any way that i can um so let me know if i can be of help in the planning thank you ginger next we have lynn siegel rosie vivian and kurt norback lynn have i got a plan for you can you hear me yeah okay um boy what an inspiration these guys have been what we need here is a bulldozer for the asphalt and to pave this thing over with agriculture that's what boulder needs egg here so we are not hiring it in from other states right across the way of safeway so we can go to the store there or there can be stores there there can be

[141:02] freezing and canning commercial in the area and there could be multi-level farm area as well we've got housing over the way too much housing here you aren't going to recognize the place in five years we've got you know north boulder across from the bus stop bus stop green wash solar with electric resistant stoves unbelievable they didn't want to answer my question when i ask them what they're firing up their solar with do not do a special ordinance no way fast tracking holikey can wait holikey can do alpine balsam and keep the shell and repurpose at that place we've got so much housing

[142:01] around boulder we've got so many subsidies you know let's start the list housing galore is not what we need in this town we need some ag we need some canning and some freezing and some self-functioning things in our community we got plenty of housing we got plenty of high-end and we've got too little affordable and affordable drives more housing thank you lynn thank you lynn your time is up next we have rosie vivian kurt nordbach and evan freireck rosie good evening i'm speaking in support of the project i welcome this project as the start of a new neighborhood center i believe that boulder housing partners are experts in affordable housing and we need to listen and trust the experts we should believe them when they say time and time again that they have the most demand for singles what bhp is finding is consistent with the 2020 census data

[143:02] they should not be redirected to redesign you using outdated studies as a basis the 2014 survey referenced in the minutes should not be used for making planning decisions a lot has happened in the last seven years since that survey medium home prices have more than doubled and it's based on a 90 percent white demographic that we should try to avoid duplicating over and over again in boulder households have and will become continue to become more diverse by 2025 two percent of households with children will represent only about 10 percent of all u.s households according to james beske and david dixon who wrote suburban remix by 2030 75 of all households will be people living alone and couples outnumbering the 25 married parents the slide i emailed shows that in 2020 the ratio is already three to one in climbing single parent households have grown to 50 percent of households with kids and is heading higher these

[144:00] households are far more likely to prefer urban environments in 2030 one in five americans will be over the age of 65 as the boomers all reach retirement age that translates into a need for smaller units as more seniors are choosing to live in 15-minute neighborhoods the future the planning of the future will not resemble the planning of the past america's population as a whole is transforming quickly and will look and be a lot different than it was in the 1950s so we need to plan for what is best for the future for all of boulder and all housing types not just the 10 thanks thank you rosie next we have kurt nordbach evan freyrick and paul cure kurt hi kurt norbeck 777 delwood avenue first of all i want to thank alice winther uh for that really inspiring uh presentation i think those are beautiful examples i will note that i suspect that all of those provide significantly less

[145:02] parking than we require in boulder so that's something to think about going forward that said i'm pleased to hear support for this project and i'd like to encourage you to support whatever will give us as much housing as possible as quickly as possible as you know well this site has been the focus of community interest and hopes for years and it has seen rare agreement by a range of interests as appropriate for a very significant amount of housing given the location at the intersection of two major streets well served by transit and close to a wide range of destinations and amenities unfortunately our processes are getting in the way of achieving our goals i don't pretend to know the best resolution other than to observe that the comp plan describes cd land use as quote to serve the daily convenience shopping and personal service needs of nearby residents unquote which does not seem appropriate for the proposed project and mu seems a more fitting designation but i trust the

[146:00] experts on staff to figure something out the community has placed a lot of expectations on the development the redevelopment of diagonal plaza please allow this parcel to live up to those expectations thank you thank you kurt next we have evan friedrich paul cure and laurel herndon evan hi uh council first i'm evan freiresh i live at 745 arapahoe boulder and i also owned a rental unit at remington post which is very close to this site um i support basically higher density even uh upzoning the property in order to achieve greater affordable housing i've been disappointed so far in what i've heard from council staff about the lack of concern really over affordable housing in relation to this

[147:00] development the developer is only offering what it's required to uh in relation to its request the the developer is asking to have either a special ordinance or a rezoning in order to increase the density but basically is not offering any greater amount of affordable housing than it's legally required to do at this point right the area near this property is some of the best affordable housing in boulder um and the developer is only proposing to do market rate rents they use the pr term workforce housing but that's just a pr term they're not promising anything using what they described at the planning board the average 800 square foot condo in this development would rent for over three thousand dollars a month a a similar apartment in remington post

[148:01] across the way would rent for seventeen hundred dollars a month so you're essentially setting a precedent for this area which will enrich me because it'll make my property more valuable but also diminish the affordability of that area so given that i've heard nothing from the council about the issues regarding affordable housing and relations development i wonder how much you're really willing to leverage the developer in their special request to get an increased amount of affordable housing thank you evan i appreciate your comments next we have paul cure laurel herndon and francois poinsett paul thank you sam uh thank you council members elaine danica laura and the coburn team for their thoughtful and dedicated work i asked council to advocate for a special ordinance to allow for the opportunity to begin initiating this proposed plan of 259 homes

[149:02] 64 of which would be permanently affordable filling and urgent for an urgent need for workforce housing the project is in alignment with the comp plan and places our community on the right track to accommodate and enhance an under utilized portion of our town please move forward with this proposal to help alleviate this need and protect the sustainable vision of our city for future generations thank you thank you paul next we have laurel herndon francois poinsett and thomas folkhausen laurel good evening my name is laurel herndon i live at 520 sky trail in boulder i'm also the director of the immigrant legal center we're on north street very close to the old hospital and i'm here tonight to talk with you on behalf of our dacas i i know you're all very familiar with daca so i won't define that but i want to let you know

[150:00] that these are individuals that were born between 1981 and 200 2006. we currently have 143 daca clients who live in the city of boulder it used to be a lot more but at every renewal we see fewer these are kids that grew up in boulder they grew up in boulder meadows they lived in san juan del centro they may have even lived in diagonal park town homes and as they reach adulthood they can't afford to live here so they head to longmont to frederick to dacono but these are boulders cultural brokers they're boulder high graduates they work here and we need them living here so i am excited for this diagonal plaza project for our dacas and for all of our clients who make boulder a unique place and who need more opportunities to live in this great community

[151:00] thank you thank you laura next we have francois poinsett thomas volkhausen and worth baker francois hi there everyone francoise poinsett and i live at 26 36 5th street um i feel like this has been a long time coming and i'm very pleased with so far just this is a very basic proposal but i would urge you to move forward with this including you know granting re-zoning and i really liked what a couple other speakers said macon commented that we should expect a really great design and for me i think the idea of putting more affordable housing even over and above the 64 units i believe that are there is great and i'm wondering about um asking for less parking because parking is a big

[152:00] trade-off both for land use and i feel that we we have to move past this in terms of our parking requirements and really really insist on good transportation connections in this spot it has i mean i know this area very well my mother-in-law lived at brookdale which is essentially across the street and i've used this parking lot many times on my bike to uh race through to get to her um place and she was able to at age hundred to walk across and access fix and many other things it was really lovely spot there was so much potential here i do urge you to move forward now because every time we bog down in time it makes the prices go up i'm concerned that we are just really behind the eight ball as it is and i just think that we need to move forward now don't use the old paradigm as we have been and move forward with really looking at those

[153:00] european models which are so beautiful and again transportation is very integrated into it so i hope that you um go with us and it does turn out to be really a pride of boulder thank you thank you prince foss next we have thomas volkhausen and we close with word baker thomas hi everybody um i'm speaking in support of the project i hope that you can expedite the process of making either a special ordinance or rezoning so the project can move forward in terms of urban design this is a perfect place for a 15-minute neighborhood there's the grocery store across the street just many different amenities are in close walking distance and the city has declared a climate emergency and the people the 200 unit 200 plus units

[154:02] on this site will allow people to reduce their carbon emissions from transportation and also simply by being in multi-family buildings they will have shared walls and ceilings so they will will reduce their carbon emissions relative to single-family homes so i urge the council to take action as expeditiously as possible to make this project happen and to include as many units as possible this in terms of urban design is a perfect place to put as many units as we practically can and that will help to reduce the 60 000 automobile in commuters that boulder receives every day and the denver metro area is now being declared in severe non-attainment for air pollution so reducing the distance and number of automobile trips is very important and i would like to echo previous speakers that we should

[155:01] consider a parking reduction the city of denver has just reduced parking requirements for all affordable housing boulder has not taken this step but boulder should reduce the number of required parking spaces in affordable housing as the article in denver indicated affordable housing residents actually use less parking and requiring extra parking just means more empty asphalt thank you tom and finally we have worth baker worth yeah this is worth i'm a homeowner near dogono plaza at 3630 iris avenue and as a community member and a neighbor i'd encourage council and staff to embrace this opportunity to redevelop a sorely underutilized space as others have said i walk through or bike through or drive past this area regularly and i'm frustrated by its dilapidated state the proposal on the table would be a

[156:01] wonderful improvement to what's currently a lovely neighborhood in boulder and i believe would serve as a catalyst for further improvements to the site boulder has a housing shortage this project is a great opportunity to provide market rate relief as well as permanently affordable housing so i would encourage the city to assist the developer and bhp and moving forward as quickly as possible thank you worth and with that we will bring the public hearing to close and bring it back to council so at this point um it's fair game for comments or any further questions i see mary and aaron mary thanks sam um so the number of commenters at a concept review is not usually this high and so there's a lot of interest in this property as um as we all know from so many years one of the things we talked about

[157:00] earlier was about how in our discourse we start with what we agree on and i think one of the things that we agree on probably the whole community agrees on is that the holiday neighborhood is something to aspire to in so many places that comes up over and over again um how great that um neighborhood is and so um i do think that um this is a great opportunity um as it's a catalyst site and i also think that as a catalyst site um you all the applicants are are shouldering some level of responsibility because what you do will affect what happens down the road so obviously we

[158:00] can't have an area plan and that's something that we have talked about as well for a long long time about getting an area planned but it just never seemed to rise to the level of um the work plan item among so many other work plan items and um and also the complication of the many and various um property owners um so all that is to say that i think that um approaching it in a manner that kind of ghosts out an area plan by making some land use changes that go in parallel with the site review plan would be what i would like to see i understand that it is not as expedient or it has some risks um more than doing a special ordinance but i think

[159:00] that in the big picture um it would really serve um better as a catalyst as a catalytic action so um that is that is the the direction that i would support um it would um provide something in the in the memo that was um described as something that the that the planning board said was if the applicant pursues a land use maps change um and a rezoning that the future zoning should allow for a mix and a range of residential unit types now we had one speaker talk about how in the future we need more single units and that may be so um but more single units also create a disconnection and a lack of um this is this is why so many people are

[160:02] actually lonely and so um that could be changing as well so just as we have changed from um the 1950s and the single-family housing um we may be going to single unit housing and then back over to being more of um of a communal kind of um society so um a diversity of housing would see would be i think more appropriate um with respect to some of the commenters that talked about ownership units i do think that that is really really important and i understand from jrv that that's not what they do but there is president in this community of working with habitat for humanity and perhaps parceling out part of this parcel and and and working with habitat to

[161:01] create something that is affordable and for sale so i would um i would urge you to explore that option um so i um one more thing one more comment that i wanted to make is that um a lot of commenters also said reduce the parking reduce the parking um and that will likely happen that request comes at psycplan so um just wanted to clarify that so um that's all i have for now and um thanks this is a really exciting project and as i said it's a cat catalytic project that comes with some responsibility so thank you very much thank you mary um aaron and then nearby and then i'll jump in here and thanks start with a question for the applicants uh you know there were several commenters who uh talked about

[162:01] reducing the required parking and um i know that you can ask for a parking reduction at the time of site review and so i was wondering if uh the applicant is feeling like they're constrained by the code in terms of too much required parking or do you feel like you can ask for any reduction that you might need to make this site successful yeah aaron thank you that's a good question you know staff has pointed out repeatedly that is incredibly well served by alt modes and you know uh bike bath bus all that kind of stuff so um we feel that whatever uh parking reduction we may need to ask for insert review is is likely going to meet the criteria for that parking reduction so i don't think we're terribly concerned with a potential parking reduction if we need one great that's good to hear well i'll just start my comments by supporting you in that direction to minimize the amount of parking on site to increase the number of units and increase the affordability uh here because it is so well served by transit and

[163:01] biking and and walking so hopefully that can have a minimum parking on the site uh and then just to say that in general i feel like you guys have a fantastic project here uh we've been looking for redevelopment of this site for many many years and um i think this is very exciting so i think we do have a catalytic opportunity in front of us so i'm really glad that you're bringing this forward and i think you have done a really excellent job in putting together an attractive site plan with good permeability good open spaces a good mix of unit types some commercial space along broadway on broadway 28th street um so i think i think you're doing a great job uh the one little bit i would i would throw in was you know staff raised that question about the park um space and it being bordered by parking i appreciate how you all have no there's no longer a road on the west side or on the east side there is still that line of parking on the bhp site to

[164:00] the south and then that kind of you know they'll still be that sort of dilapidated parking across from your new road so um just to consider how to uh tie that open space uh more closely into the bhp site since you all do have a an owner in common maybe there's an opportunity to relocate some of those parking spaces um and knit those two bits together and make it kind of a more attractive and appealing and useful part for for the existing bhp residents and the new residents of the affordable units and the other units so that's just my one specific comment of something that that i'd like for you all to keep in mind as you move forward and then in terms of how we get you to a successful project um i i agree with the the applicant that a special ordinance is the kind of clearest most straightforward path forward here i think we can tailor it very narrowly to you know using an open space requirement that's used by other

[165:00] zones we can tailor it to their particular proposal so that if people are concerned about other owners taking advantage of it we could prevent that so i think it could be a quick easy way of doing it i mean i'm actually i'd be really interested in potentially changing the land use of the whole the whole area to something like mu4 i think that could work out really well as a future step but if we're going to entertain the land use change for their proposal it would need to come in as part of their specific site plan and rezoning requests it would be narrowly would have it could only be done narrowly to their particular parcels so uh you know we wouldn't we wouldn't act as a kind of catalytic land use change for the whole rest of the site so given that um and uh the quicker and more certain path the special ordinance i would definitely hope that we could go in that direction um rather than the lane exchange that's all i got thanks

[166:00] thank you aaron nearby and then i'll go and then adam and bob nearby thanks um so yeah i think the project actually is moving in a really good direction i love how you actually use the space to lay it out and not make it look um overwhelming i guess would be the right word uh especially with so much density on a site so i think it uses the empty spaces of the parking lots in a really useful manner the i say this to every project and no one listens and so the town continues to grow more and more ugly so i really hope that you take in especially if we do end up granting a special ordinance um that you take into account that we could use pitched roofs and use more of a european style instead of these disgusting boxes that we have all over our town driving past the development out here on the diagonal is just painful every single day and driving down 28th

[167:00] and or 30th street and it's in the whole campus now for google it's just this is not the town i grew up and it's a shame that it's turned into this one it could have been so much better looking um so looking at the european architecture design even if you have to use flat roofs making sure that there's some design elements on the on the top that make it more welcoming rather than these cold industrial looking boxes um if we can you know if you're getting your height adjustments so that we can actually put some pitch roofs and yeah it will increase height a little bit but at least it would make it look more welcoming and like a little village again the same way that um holiday has used their their designs so i just really really impress upon you to make this something that is welcoming and warm and you have a huge opportunity here and the land is rather large and you've already done such a great job of laying it out it would be a shame to miss it in terms of the way that the actual buildings

[168:00] themselves end up being designed so that's one thing and then you know i don't know if this is possible and i guess i don't know what the actual foot measurements are from the setbacks on 28th but i think that's one thing that's so difficult on 30th street now is that these buildings are so tall and they're right on the edge of the street they don't have the 25-foot setbacks or at least they sure don't seem to have the 25-foot setbacks if that's at all a possibility where it meets up to the 28th because that's i think what is so nice is when you can have a higher building at least if it's set back from the road it doesn't seem so overwhelming and consuming so those are really my comments again i'd much prefer prefer to see some purchased homes that could be purchased but i understand your business model again if you're asking for special things from the city that would be nice if you could work with us and try and put some of these in into the project so that's all i have and thanks for the hard work thank you nearby so i will go next and then we'll have adam bob mark and rachel i want to start by noting that this is kind of like old

[169:00] home week for planning board members because we've got me mary and aaron on this side of the screen and then we have danica and bill on the other side and so that's five of the seven members of one of our recent planning boards so welcome everyone uh it reminds me of a planning board meeting and then i i wanna also emphasize that we did have the um secretary of housing and urban development in town today marcia fudge and um she emphasized how critical the need is to move now on affordable housing it was obvious that she was shocked when she learned what the single family sale price for a home is in boulder today so i am very happy to see this project and i think it is very well laid out i am very impressed with the transportation connections which was one of my really big concerns with this site and i think

[170:00] um you all have done a great job with that um both putting in the multi-use path instead of the western road as well as all the interconnections and i agree with everything that bill said about how you know even with the parking lots that will remain having those two roads in will will lead to a better feel for the center right away um so i think that's good i think the focus on housing is great i think that much about the layout has improved since um planning board saw it so i want to give kudos to the applicant for having listened to those suggestions um i will come back to ownership i really do think it would be great if there could be an element of of home ownership here whether it's habitat you know whatever it might be i know it's a little outside of the comfort zone of the investors in the project but i really do think it's a need here as well we often hear about

[171:02] building wealth and how important it is to be able to get people into home ownership for the purposes of building wealth and i think that is all true and so i would very much encourage the applicants to think if there's any way to do that um i would also say that i would normally be inclined the same way that mary suggested to try and do a land use map change across the whole parcel which would be a way of essentially doing an area plan in a manner but i do understand the complexity involved and i think what has convinced me to lean towards the special ordinance approach is hella's point that you can only ask for the land use map change where you're going to do the rezoning and so trying to rezone this entire property would be a nightmare with the number of owners so with that i'm going to support moving forward with a special ordinance i hope that we're careful on how we craft that

[172:00] to make sure that we get what we want and watch for unintended consequences but i think again along the lines of what secretary fudge said we need to move quickly and i think a special ordinance will create a little more certainty it is not my preference philosophically but i think in this case it's the right thing to do um i think that's all i've got but i want to thank the applicants for kicking off a catalyst project here at a site that has long needed this kind of attention so thank you very much with that we will go to adam bob mark and rachel adam thank you sam um first i wanted to start out with just a question that i rarely hear an answer to but um one speaker did bring up the idea of what the cost of the non-permanently affordable units might look like and i think that's a pretty critical component of most of these projects simply because if we only occupy 50 of them because they're so expensive

[173:00] what good are half the housing units that are unoccupied so um if there is a willingness by the applicant to answer you know what your average single uh room unit might be or even a range that would be entirely helpful but i understand as i've never gotten a direct answer to that question before um so i think we'll turn to the applicant do you have any even open space for the applicant right here there you go sure i appreciate the question here's what i can tell you you saw a wide range of unit types so it's really difficult to kind of pinpoint an exact rental rate for each of those our units fall in line with about 80 to 100 ami for the city of boulder that that's the that's the probably the best way to generalize that range from studios all the way through three bedrooms and town homes we we have units in the market so we have good visibility of of what is highly sought after and what what is attainable for uh for the demographic

[174:02] and that's uh that's the best answer i've heard so far at least i appreciate the range uh related to ami at least um but again you know it's not just about having units it's about having occupied units to address our housing crisis so um beyond that i really like the direction of the project it's really cool to see the community input being heard and um you know the pitch roofs the multiple different types of housing and the the open and green spaces it really sounds like the community is being listened to which is very very appreciated i will say i am interested in uh some of the single units as well as mary alluded to there are people like me who probably will only ever need a single bedroom maybe two at most um we are lonely but if you're lonely just get on your hoa board or even better on council and you may be

[175:01] sad but you'll be sad for different reasons than loneliness so um other than that i you know this is one of the better projects and one of the most needed projects i've seen in town that i think most people can agree is better for the space than what is currently there um so i appreciate all the effort and uh looking forward to what the next steps are thank you adam and i do want to second the appreciation to the applicant for giving almost a direct answer to adam's question so thank you um bob mark and rachel bob great well first i'll take on the kind of the regulatory part of it um like sam and aaron and and maybe a few others i would support a special ordinance in this case i know that's a little bit unusual although we have done it um a handful of times before um and that's not to to exclude the possibility of doing a map change and rezoning for the entire area but i think we do have a

[176:01] urgency here and i would hate to have this opportunity slip through our grasp given the fact we've waited so long for something like this to come along so i would support a special ordinance and then at the appropriate time of land use change in rezoning of the broader uh region um i don't have any any incremental comments on design that haven't already been mentioned i did like alice's presentation on low income design i happen to know having served as council's liaison to boulder housing partners for three years the boulder housing partners takes very seriously their responsibility to ensure that the design of low-income housing is on par with market rate housing as a matter of fact they've even gone back through and spent millions of dollars uh rehabbing and fixing up um housing that was built in the 60s 70s and 80s that was not par and brought them up to to market rate quality so um i know alex showed some great designs there i know laura and her team jeremy will be um working closely with um with their partners there on

[177:00] on low-income housing that looks um no different than their neighbors across the street and then i'll just make some general comments i think this is just absolutely outstanding um this is exactly what we wanted at diagonal plaza for i don't know how many years um as a matter of fact you know how many properties are specifically mentioned in the comprehensive plan so just like it's called out as something that we gotta fix that shows how long and how concerned this community has been about this for years this was studied as mentioned back in 2011 by um urban land institute and their technical advisory panel um we're doing exactly what they recommended 10 years ago we're not doing it but these folks are doing it this is probably the largest acreage of unused asphalt in the city and it's right at our gateway it's just been an embarrassment for for decades like the second speaker um adeline i live near 19th iris and so like adeline i go by this all the time and our neighbors have suffered through this ice war for decades and we really care about making this a better place a

[178:01] better use of place and and as adelaide and said and welcoming some new neighbors um i think this is probably the best reuse of land that i've seen in my nearly six years on council i think it's the epitome of a 15-minute neighborhood matter of fact it's really a five-minute neighborhood um within a few hundred yards under the safeway there's three coffee shops or several restaurants a fitness center there's a new vet clinic coming in next month there's an ergy center and that's all going to be connected with paths and sidewalks i just think that this is absolutely the type of thing that we want to be building as often as we have the opportunity so i would say um if not this what and if not now when this is this is exactly what we want where we want it when we want it so i'm all in on this one thank you so much for bringing it forward thank you bob next uh mark and then rachel mark yeah just a few comments first i want to thank the applicant this this really is a terrific project i think it will catalyze the area

[179:00] and i very much appreciate the applicant's sensitivity to design issues and willingness to look at design in a more creative way this project is going to set the standard for the remainder of diagonal plaza and i trust it will be a very high standard indeed and as those other parcels become subject to development they will have to look to this project for their inspiration i want to add my voice to sam and mary's with respect to trying to find some at least some modest level of ownership units because that is such an important component of our uh housing need and so i i i hope that you will give some thought to that and i do recognize it's not your standard business model but i urge you to be a little creative on that point um i think the special ordinance is the

[180:01] way to go and i will be supportive of that in order to get this project rolling in an expeditious fashion i do have one question for the applicant um when you say you're designing your units for 80 to 100 ami um what percentage of income at those levels are you calculating for the units all right would you mind repeating that mark i'm just i'm sorry yeah if you if you if you've got 80 to 100 percent uh ami uh it also is important to understand what percentage of that income level you're forecasting in order to afford the units you know i don't have that on at my fingertips we work off of the chaffa guideline for by counties and we kind of cr you know calibrate what what shaft you know assigns i'm sorry it's been handed to me here or you might have yeah it depends on the

[181:00] the unit size but 80 percent for one person but as i understand it if you're spending more than 30 percent of your income on housing at whatever level you're you're you're earning you are in effect rent burden and i'm just asking if if this is um if you're at 100 of ami are you under the 30 percent of um that income income to support your to support the housing you know am i being clear or entirely obscure you're you're being clear we you know when we rent units we don't income qualify to asset ami so i'm reacting to kind of what our published um housing authority metrics for those i believe the housing authority metric combines utility costs rent etc for for somebody who is below the 30 percent of their stated income but i'd be glad to follow up on that yes i would i would appreciate that if

[182:00] you would thank you um and that's all i've got i think it's a great project i look forward to uh to seeing it come to fruition although i will miss the rite aid on the corner um i think it's a small burden to bear in order to get some revitalization of this uh this critical site so thank you thank you mark and rachel i think there's a walgreens like two blocks further up mark so you should be and i think that i think the writing might have also turned into a walgreens but that's it so don't quote me on it um i i think it's a very exciting project and uh the the plans look great so i'm i i'm thrilled that we're where we are with it and um i think we heard pretty overwhelming community support in our uh public hearing tonight so that was heartening because that's such a rarity for us to have like 90

[183:00] positivity um and then i had a question about it sounds like there's uh pretty good support for a special ordinance so i wondered um how that might work and um you know i've spent a lot of time in negotiations the last few weeks so maybe i've just got trade-offs or value exchanged on the brain but is is there um room for if we did a special ordinance is this you know i hope it's okay for me to ask could we get a couple more or some more affordable housing units or some value out of agreeing to do that so i think that part's a question for the applicant um if if that's an appropriate question for a concept plan hearing and then staff i'm i'm wondering what the what the process is uh for for doing a special ordinance all right let's start with uh applicant do you have a response to rachel's question

[184:02] yeah so there's kind of two things that are being overlapped there um in the affordable housing world when you work with the housing department michelle allen will repeat this for certain things that you are given they are requiring that you get something back so there needs to be a trade there in order to stay in compliance with the way and and really i should probably refer this to hello so hello if i'm saying something that's wrong please tell me but their needs in order to stay in compliance with the telluride decision there needs to be an exchange um with the special ordinance it's just a mode to get us this so what we're doing is we're saying hey we can give the community this thing we need you to give us a vehicle to get there so from our standpoint whether that's mu4 or special ordinance the what was coming back into the project is in our opinion special ordinance makes it more certain more likely that the project will actually happen mu4 in our opinion makes it a little more risky that the project will actually happen but the project is the community benefiting this in this

[185:00] scenario um so i don't know if that made sense uh to your question if it didn't please say so but did i i mean i i thought i i heard you or someone else mentioned earlier that you know that there's it's kind of a good value for the developer to have certainty and to be able to move forward and um for investors so that seems to me like some value for um a special ordinance so that was just wondering what you're if there's any room to look if if we are going that route for a little bit addition to the affordable housing units okay i got it um yeah so you know i think if the special ordinance route moves forward especially if that were to move forward more quickly than the site review that certainty um you know would put us in a position to more aggressively tackle everything that we've heard tonight so i think that we would be able to take a look at what we've heard and see what could be done i mean we are trying to craft as presented to you the best project we possibly can it's not like

[186:01] we're holding things back in trade but uh we can continue to try to push on it as much as possible and again we'll reiterate i think it looks outstanding helen did you want to comment on that i saw you come your camera come on yeah i just would add that in many of the circumstances where the city has um done a special ordinance it was for situations where more permanently affordable housing was provided on site than otherwise required so it would help to make findings why a higher density or lower open space requirement can be justified in this particular case very good rachel are you done with your comments i believe i am all right very good well with that i think we can bring this to a close um i will turn to staff and to the applicant

[187:00] did we answer the questions that you brought to us tonight should we start or should staff start uh elaine why don't you start and then we'll go to the applicant yes thank you uh you know i think you hit on those key issues particularly with regard to the special ordinance answering that question it sounds like some mix of uh opinions about whether mu4 or a special ordinance is something to move forward hearing from the applicant it does sound like it could be a little onerous to do the mu for rezoning with a land use change it's less predictable than simply focusing in on specifics for a special ordinance um so uh maybe you could recap and just um ensure that uh we've got that clearly

[188:00] and good marching orders on next steps that would be great very good thanks for the request um aaron do you want to jump in yeah because uh sam i was going to ask if uh if we might have a straw poll or give direction on the possibility specifically of a special ordinance done in this council's time period uh rather than waiting for it to come forward with the site review request very good i was going to go in that direction so i think that's perfect so council why don't i ask it this way is there anybody who would not want to move ahead with the special ordinance in with this council as aaron suggested is there anyone who'd like to speak against that idea i'm not hearing anyone elaine so i think the marching orders are clear to go forward with a special ordinance for this site to enable the project to to go forward and if you need anything more from us let us

[189:01] know but i think we we would like to see this get in place with this council great feedback thank you okay very good and the applicant did you get what you needed from us tonight we think we did we were just discussing it uh the feedback has been very clear very direct um and so we we really appreciate it we we should acknowledge staff's role and planning board's role in the changes that you saw that you described liking it has been exactly what the concept plan process is supposed to do we brought something that was kind of different than what we have now and it um was a little beat up and a little bit um you know suggestions were added to it and it was improved and um so as several of you mentioned there's a lot of improvement left we have a lot of architectural design to do and we have a lot of things to try to continue to work on but the feedback tonight has been exactly what we needed especially with the path forward with the ordinance and we thank you for that

[190:01] okay very good well with that thanks everyone thanks staff thanks to the applicant and the community for coming out to speak to us i think we are done with this item we're ready to move on but i'd suggest that we take a five minute break if everyone's up for that so let's make it eight minutes we'll return at 9 15 and pick up the rest of the items thank you all

[194:20] [Music]

[195:38] [Music]

[196:16] [Music] all right we are approaching 9 15 in that one minute there's adam right on time

[197:10] all right i think we are here uh not quite 9 15 yet but alicia when i tell you we'll be ready to kick to the next item right here with you sir right here all right we are we are good to go it's 9 15 and we have eight council members all right our next item is the item five which is matters from the city manager 5a is the community benefit phase 2 project discussion on next steps including but not limited to bringing forward any revised ordinances or pursuing non-zoning related fee or tax options pertaining to development projects that request additional height density and or floor area and for this uh council we'll ask carl

[198:00] geiler to come forward and talk a little bit about next steps okay great thank you good evening everyone i'm carl guyler with planning and development services uh tonight we'll be talking about next steps for the community benefit phase 2 project so i'll be doing the presentation tonight but i'm also joined by our staff in community vitality as well as david dosima from kaiser marston associates who is our economist providing assistance to us okay so i'm gonna do a brief uh background on the project not go into the the deep background that we've talked about in the past but just what's happened in the last few weeks as well as what we'll be focusing on tonight as the council is aware on june 3rd planning board did not recommend approval of the ordinance that was brought before council they had a number of concerns which are

[199:01] outlined in the memo but primarily due to the complexity of the ordinance they cited some jobs housing imbalance issues from the affordable commercial option and they also brought forward an idea of an evergreen fund option that should be explored which means that there would be a perpetual fee charged for these projects over time uh so that's all included within the staff memo background uh when the first reading of the ordinances were brought forward to council on june 15th based on these concerns and some concerns that were expressed in the community city council did not miss those ordinances uh they instructed staff to return with options uh for funding affordable commercial with simpler mechanisms basically so that's what we'll be discussing tonight so i'm going to jump right into the options there's four options before the

[200:01] council tonight the first is to simplify the prior ordinance that was brought before the ordinance before the council option two is the exploring the creation of a capital program for affordable commercial space including a capital facility impact fee intended to defray the project projected impacts on of on proposed developments on affordable commercial improvements option three is exploring the creation of an excise tax on bonus floor area and again to be clear bonus floor area is any floor area in a fourth or fifth floor or any floor area that is above a floor area ratio limit within us option four would basically be keeping the ordinance or that the land use code as it is with just the phase one community benefit provision which relates to permanently affordable housing so i'll go into more detail on each of these

[201:00] options so starting with option number one simplify the prior ordinance there's a number of ways we could simplify the ordinance um some of the concerns we heard from the development community were the was the complexity related to the and luffy and having eligibility criteria the penalties uh if we make that eligibility criteria for in lieu a more readily allowable option we could remove those eligibility criteria and in doing that we could also remove some other portions of the code which i'll talk about having an on-site requirement is necessary in order to have an in-lieu fee so this is exactly how the affordable housing program works there's an on-site requirement for apparently affordable and and if it's not fulfilled on site then there's an in luffy and it's it's the discretion of the developer with these projects so that on-site

[202:02] requirement would not be able to be removed one thing we've heard as a suggestion from the community is you know maybe having the two options the 75 of market rate or the 50 of market rate um is confusing maybe um just removing one of those focusing on the 50 of market rate is an option obviously that's more attractive to the arts community from what we've been hearing um this particular option would be the most expeditious to implement uh obviously since we'd be basically cutting language out from the prior ordinance and we'd be able to bring it back so on a fast uh timeline uh potentially before the expiration of the appendix j map but probably there are abouts so i wanted to jump a little bit back into what was composed within ordnance 8469 just as a refresher if this option were to move forward um affordable housing impact fees for

[203:01] non-residential would still apply to all floors we did have a threshold breakdown between the phase one community benefit regs and the phase two commit community benefit regs basically if it's more than 50 residential above the ground floor uh the applicant would use the one requirements meaning they would just uh pay the um in luffy for affordable residential or provide additional units on site uh if they're more than 50 non-residential uh then the phase two requirements would apply so on-site below market rate space or the in-lu fee um i think we'll be talking about the new uh land use intensity modifications that were included in the ordinance whether those should be brought forward uh making clear that any request for additional weight floor area or density uh would still require a public hearing before planning board

[204:00] uh and we had also recommended that um in just like the inclusionary housing program that we start work on administrative rules that would govern some of the um the details of the program if this were to move forward and that's why we had recommended um the effective date of phase two on january 1st uh not necessarily critical um it could be implemented right away so there might be some things that aren't totally fleshed out that we would need to flush out in the next couple months i'm not going to go into a lot of the detail on the qualifying community benefit uses i think the council's uh pretty familiar uh with these we've talked about it a number of times um these would would still be in the ordinance the uses that would qualify i'm going to start talking about some areas where that we could remove from ordinance to simplify so obviously the uh having the two options of of market rate we could remove one of them just focus on the fifty percent of market rate

[205:00] uh we still recommend that there would be um an administrative review process for any use that's in reporting for any below market right space that actually is provided in buildings just to monitor those and make sure they're still compliant but again if we made in luffy's more easy we'd probably be seeing developers mostly going down that road putting money into that affordable commercial fund so if that's the case then the need for penalties the need for having you know discretionary criteria for the off-ramp option um aren't as as important so we could actually remove those since it would just be a quick you know if it doesn't work out for them they can just pay it in luffy and be out of the program so again um this in luffy contribution if it move were to move forward would replace the phase one increased commercial linkage fee that we have in the code today what it says is that

[206:00] the affordable housing fee applies to all floors of the building but on those upper floors in the fourth and fifth story there would be an additional 40 50 43 of um of that commercial linkage fee that would be increased for that area so that 43 would shift to monies going into affordable commercial fund so with a you know a revised ordinance we'd be removing that eligibility criteria and removing that requirement for a staff recommendation to planning board so moving on to option number two this would be to be create a capital facility impact fee um this crea creation of this particular requirement uh would not require a regulatory requirement for on-site below market rate space uh however uh we have to make it clear that impact fees must meet strict legal requirements um to be implemented

[207:02] um so that the crux with option number two is that it would be simple simpler to administer but not necessarily simpler to set up and our concerns are that um the fee has to be for what we determined to be a capital facility needed development and basically trying to offset impacts on that capital facility so we would have to have some analysis as to whether affordable commercial or below market rate spaces as a cap facility and then determine what those fees would be to offset the impact so when we worked with kma on this particular project the study was more on you know on-site below market rate space and in luffy's it wasn't necessarily studying the impacts of new development to determine what the proper fees would be so we would have to go down that road to determine and what that would entail

[208:01] is basically and this is the same as what the city went through when the uh capital facility impact fees were updated several years ago there would have to be an impact fee study done that focuses on affordable commercial uh there would have to be a nexus analysis determining you know whether there are um what the impacts are determining you know what the the monetary need would be to offset those impacts and there will have to be an economic feasibility of that fee so the next part uh is that there has to be a rational basis to implement the fee that's something that's that's relatively uncertain at this point so we we are not recommending option number because there is some risk that the the studies might find that you know this particular fee may not be able to be implemented so uh we're not recommending this um as it's more

[209:01] involved than option number one but if council were to move forward with this we would suggest a scoping session with the next council to talk about the parameters of this re-scoped project moving on to option number three this is imposing an ice tax on bonus floor area so this is a little bit simpler than the fee option um basically you know the monies that are collected from attacks could be based on the bonus floor area in buildings and could be earmarked for an affordable commercial fund there's less restrictions on it we wouldn't need to do impact we wouldn't have to do the impact fee studies there would be no need to demonstrate that there's any um defraying of impacts on capital facilities through this option but what it would require is there would have to be a successful passage of the public vote so there is

[210:00] some risk involved with this particular option as well and then lastly is option number four this would be just to keep the land use code as it is today with the phase one community benefit provisions this again focuses on affordable residential so the current requirement basically you know increases the amount of affordable units that have to be on site for any bonus units increases from 25 to 36 for bonus units or there's an increase in luffy that they would have to pay if those units aren't on site uh if they do have non-residential floor area then it's the increased commercial linkage fee by by 43 that i mentioned before and again all these monies would be going into an affordable residential fund i wanted to touch on appendix j so right now as council knows appendix j is set to expire on august

[211:01] 31st um what that means is that if that map goes away it basically removes the areas basically that were limited to where height modifications could be um requested so with the map going away it means that the entire city would be open for the possibility of applicants submitting applications anywhere in the city this is the way it was prior to 2015 so that or that appendix j just dependency just vaporizes and the whole city becomes eligible it doesn't mean we're gonna see height modifications in all parts of the city we weren't seeing it in all parts of the city prior to 2015. you know if we got an application for a five-story building in a single-family zone it'd be unlikely to get any support it would unli it'd be unlikely to meet the site review criteria but knowing that there are some concerns about opening the city up we have uh

[212:00] proposed that there could be um some language added and a subsequent ordinance that could be done when we do the updated site review criteria that would limit it from certain zones and we we've proposed those zones the our the royal residential the low density residential residential estate mixed residential uh the ag zones and the transitional business zones so i know there's some um discussion that will probably happen on this tonight i know that council member brockett had recommended that perhaps the rmx2 zone up in north boulder may not be an appropriate zone to exclude from the community benefit program so we can certainly hear more about that tonight but just to get a sense of of what that means i mean this is these would be the zones that were proposing if this were to be added that would be excluded from the program so just to offer some perspective right now appendix j limits the community benefit program to less

[213:00] than four percent of the city this if we were to add these zones as zones where we wouldn't see this program it would increase the eligibility to a land area about 43 of the city again all of these requests would still be reviewed by planning board would require a public hearing and would require compliance with the site review criteria so the next part of the presentation kind of leading up to our recommendation is just the advantages and disadvantages of each option i can go through these as quickly as i can and what we can have a discussion option number one is simplifying the prior ordinance as we stated in the memo the advantages are it's it's the most expeditious way to create an affordable commercial fund it would complete the community benefit project we'd be receiving uh in-lieu fees once applications are received

[214:01] and approved and it would be consistent with the original goals and objectives of the project the disadvantages are the complexity that has been a concern would still there some of that would still have to be included in the ordinance since there would be an on-site requirement uh and also that developers may not take advantage of the on-site requirement moving on to option number two uh this would certainly be simpler than the proposed zoning solution for the capital facility impact fee it would complete the community benefit project and like before the other option the city would start seeing fees going into an affordable commercial fund uh the reason we're not recommending this one is it there's the risk that there may not be a rational nexus to support the fee option since that would be based on you know proposed development impacts on capital facilities

[215:00] i would not be an expedient solution as there is the need for these studies in legal analysis uh and it would be entirely consistent with the original goals and objectives of the project option number three relates to the the excise tax the advantages are pretty much the same as option number two we would start receiving you know monies for into a affordable commercial fund the disadvantages as again it wouldn't be as expeditious as option number one it could be more expeditious than option number two um but it is potentially risky as it would it may not receive uh voter approval uh depends on you know how it sets up um and it also would not be entirely consistent with the original goals and objectives of the project lastly just leaving the land use code as it is it would apply the permanently

[216:00] affordable housing community benefits programs city-wide with appendix j going away funding that is received would go into the affordable housing fund so we would see more monies coming in for that use um the disadvantages of this option was it would leave the community benefit project as originally envisioned and complete would not be entirely consistent with the goals and objectives of the project and would not address the city needs for supporting affordable commercial uses through zoning i i know there are some other methods for that so based on this analysis this is our staff recommendation so if city council is looking for an expeditious solution to enacting a fake community benefit before the expiration or around that timeline staff recommends option number one uh if city council is interested in in a new funding mechanism for an affordable housing

[217:00] or i'm sorry that should be affordable commercial fund and is less concerned about the timing uh staff recommends option number three uh so that concludes my presentation happy to answer any questions thank you so much carl that was really excellent full information and concise so thank you we've got bob and then mark bob carl some of these options generate money for what would be an affordable commercial fund how would that be administered in other words money would go into a pot and then who would administer it and what would that money be used for would it be used for rent subsidies in commercial market rate places or would we go out the city go out and build affordable space or how would that money be actually used by the city once we receive it i think it's similar to the inclusionary housing program where it would go into that fund and then the administrative rules would be created about how that money is used it would be administered

[218:02] by our community vitality department so it would be primarily focused on creating new uh below market rate spaces in the city i think i might ask for some assistance from community vitality about whether or not that would apply to existing spaces um good evening counseling that bowman with community vitality i think we look forward to exploring the desires of council and taking hellas um and sandra's opinions into account on what would be appropriate so i know that there have been different ideas from different council members over the years we do operate certain um affordable commercial efforts today but those could certainly be revisited and some of those uses bob were in a

[219:02] prior information packet item that was i think the week before carl's last um presentation on this matter okay and i can add to that in terms of what the fund can be used for the greatest flexibility you would have if if a tax was passed you wouldn't even have to earmark it which gives you the greatest flexibility and how to use those funds if it's earmarked it would have to be used just consistent with however you earmarked it with regard to the in lieu fees under option one there's not a lot of case law in colorado on in luffy so there is some uncertainty about the legality and how they hold up i think the strongest legal support would be to use them exactly for the same purpose that the on-site

[220:00] requirement would be used for so for creation of other below market rate spaces that are permanently below market rate or the management the cost of managing a program like that um i think there are arguments that could be made to use it for things like tenant finishes but the further you'll go away from what the original requirement are i think the more vulnerable that in luffy will become from a legal perspective okay thanks thank you bob um next we've got mark rachel mark i i have a couple well first thank you for the presentation as always very very clear and concise um my question concerns um uh i guess option one to start with

[221:00] when we have a commercial building we receive funds because we have a commercial we have an affordable housing commercial development linkage fee that is supported by a nexus study um what's our legal authority for taking a portion of that housing fee and simply using it for another purpose do we not need another nexus study um and some form of authorizing legislation to do that but we're taking it from one pot putting it in another and the second part is not really supported by a nexus study so what what is our legal basis for doing that you're you're right mark we can't oops can you hear me now you're right mark we can take uh money out of the housing fund and spend it on something else so the fee that we currently have in effect we cannot use that and put that to a different purpose so we would

[222:00] have to create whatever payment you're going to require we have to create its own legal authority for it so then we would have to go through another nexus study i assume to show the reasonableness and relationship of commercial affordable commercial space to the impact of new developments is that right or is that if you want to if you want us to look into creating a capital facility impact fee then you would have to do that impact fee study i i'm not thinking of the impact tree we already have an impact fee dedicated to generating revenue for affordable housing and i'm trying to understand the basis on which let's say we just take 43 of our linkage fee that is applicable to the bonus height or the 43 increase and we want to put that into another part called affordable commercial and i'm asking

[223:00] how do we do that legally um since it is on otherwise unsupported by a nexus study where simply by fiat saying this piece of the pie we're now going to dedicate to the affordable commercial enterprise am i wrong to have a concern here well under under colorado law you cannot use it for a different purpose than for affordable housing purposes so we option two would be creating a new fee well i'm still focusing on option one which is the most expeditious getting at it and it looks to me like option one is saying you can give us affordable commercial space or or you can do an in-line fee um you know affordable housing programs and aren't we taking a piece of money that is otherwise

[224:00] dedicated to affordable housing and saying now we're going to just we're going to put it in a different pot and i i'm not understanding how we get there legally and if i'm way off it would be a yeah i think it would be a separate program and the inclusionary housing requirements are imposed on residential developments and this would be imposed on a commercial development but regenerate i'm sorry i must be not not properly expressing myself we already are are receiving money from the commercial projects to our affordable housing linkage fee yes and let's assume the bonus area is generating a hundred thousand dollars of linkage fee um now we're going to not take that for affordable housing which i assume is all right but we're asking uh developers to pay that money

[225:01] for a different purpose and i i'm not sure i see the the underpinning of legal support that says this is why you're doing this and this is why you're entitled to do this i think i i think i don't know what what you're getting at so the linkage fee will still apply the general linkage fee that applies to all commercial square footage that's built at the at the general rate and then under phase one of the community benefit project we created a community benefit for commercial developments that was an increased fee of that linkage fee for the bonus floor area what we're proposing so it's just that increased part that would that requirement we would delete out of the code and replace with the commercial requirement but it's still a linkage fee is it not and we're simply taking a piece of a linkage fee and dedicating it to another purpose

[226:01] and we went through a lot of effort to justify a linkage fee for housing and i'm asking do we have the legal right to simply say fine we're not going to take that money for housing anymore without a nexus study that shows that it's um and i may be misunderstanding this but i think the the our original commercial linkage fee required the nexus study and had to stay beneath the maximum amount identified by that that the additional fee for the bonus floor area i don't think was tied to that nexus study correct me if i'm wrong but that that was a that was a new community benefit requirement imposed for additional floor area and it could actually have gone above the maximum in the nexus study i believe because we're trading it for something well the nexus study showed we could go as high as 128

[227:00] dollars so i think with respect to housing we have a lot of room to increase or decrease we did but i think i think my the point is that the nexus fee maximum i don't believe applied to the additional linkage fee for the bonus floor area because we're granting it as a as a as a bonus and requiring community benefit for it does that well the when we set that increased amount we made sure that it's still fit within the maximum technically supportable i know that could be charged but what i'm saying is whatever we assessed as either community benefit or on the base building uh is well within the 128 dollars per square foot that the nexus study justified for housing and my issue is not whether we're within those limits it's we're now assessing it for a different purpose without a nexus study

[228:02] i i would think that would be subject to challenge and you know i'm happy to be wrong but i'm just not i'm not seeing it i jump in here no i think i'm drowning i i think um with the impact fee um they're proposing a new nexus study that would allow it to go towards affordable commercial i don't think that's why it would take so long there's the fee which would require that nexus study and jump in somebody if i'm wrong um and then there's the tax the tax would just be we put on the ballot and if it's approved it flies but the impact fee that would be used for a specific affordable commercial would require a brand new nexus study specifically for that use so i don't

[229:00] think they're proposing taking funds from um the affordable housing linkage fee and then using them for something else we can't do that well that's not how i understood option one that's really what i'm focusing on option one um we're essentially saying um we're gonna diminish the funds for affordable housing which i'm sure we have a right to do um but if you pay in lieu um you're you're paying against for a different purpose and this may be incorrect but i'm i'm just not seeing how we're getting from a to b without a without a nexus study regarding uh the payment of funds for the purpose of affordable commercial again i'm happy to be wrong but i'm just not hearing it yet this is uh david dosima with kaiser marston and i think

[230:02] hella brought up this explanation already but i would offer that your inclusionary housing program programming you have in place where you require affordable units on site and you allow it to be replaced with that if god looks not to provide those units on site right and that's not justified by a next study and what's proposed here really is the same thing except with a commercial project and that's uh you know deteriorating rather than taking more time i'll just move on to a couple of other questions um am i correct in in saying that option one seems to be trending towards a simple payment and lieu process with the option of providing affordable commercial sort of the basis for which developers will probably all just use the in-lieu option

[231:01] i think if we remove the eligibility criteria and some of those other stipulations that we had uh previously included in the ordinance that we would probably see most applicants choosing the and luffy option my last question is with respect to the excise tax are you assuming it would be um that the linkage fee that we're now assessing especially for the bonus area would be reduced and the excise tax would then take its place in relatively equal amount or are you assuming or would this be a tax that is additive to what we're now charging for linkage fee purposes david and uh hella correct me if i'm wrong but i think we already have the information from the economic study to help with what the tax would be i know hella you had mentioned that we would have to figure out what monetary need would be to

[232:00] for the tax so that factors in but it seems like we have a lot of that information already am i correct in saying that i think what mark is getting at is that the proposal would be to no longer have the increased linkage fee for the bonus floor area and replace it with the excise tax payment i'm just asking if that's your intent or are you proposing something that is additive to the linkage fees we already charge i think the intent is that if it's a if it's a predominantly commercial building so more than 50 commercial above the ground floor then based on that floor area that's in a fourth or a fifth story that would be you would pay a tax to that would go into the affordable commercial fund on the other issues i'll follow up offline uh i don't want to hog the uh the podium

[233:00] tonight thank you thank you mark rachel i just had a quick question for carl um thanks for the information and presentation um carl you said something right at the end um you know about basically our goal being um affordable commercial space and you said you know we're trying to support it through zoning and we have other options i just wondered what did you mean by that like what are the non-zoning options that we've looked at or that we could look at well just that i think when we get into the realm of fees and taxes those are are less zoning related okay if the council were to go with option two or option three uh we would probably change the code to just say that if you do commercial you're subject to the applicable tax or fee it kind of gets it out of the zoning whereas option number one it's still within the realm of site review and

[234:00] and and the zoning stipulations okay i was wondering if there was maybe just like a whole nother region that we could be looking at that is different to at the moment that you're building five stories basically are there you know are there other ways to attain our goal that are maybe less complex that may be a long-term question thanks thanks rachel so um i i think the question before us tonight and carl i'm going to try and paraphrase you let me know if i've got this right options one and four one is simplified from the program that we had looked at before so it's much simpler but it still maintains an affordable commercial program so that's option one keeps affordable commercial option four does not option four simply keeps everything for affordable housing is that right carl that's correct yep and two and three options two and three are tax measures so they're different than the linkage

[235:01] fee no nexus study required um their taxes they have the pros and cons that are listed out there but those seem to be the two flavors that we're looking at do we keep within the current framework and add affordable commercial or do we just stick with the housing framework or do we add some taxing authority which would one of which would require going to the voters is that a fair way to summarize it carl well option three is is an excise tax so that's the one that would require going to voters option two doesn't require going to voters it's it's the discretion of council but it does there are state requirements that apply to how the city can apply fees so that would require a nexus analysis so we either do a nexus study a new nexus study or go to the voters for options two and three so they're much longer term projects if we go forward with them so one and four are the two that work within the current

[236:02] framework that could be done um before option before appendix j expires so one and four are within our um control of moving forward quickly two and three would would take much longer to do is that fair carl yeah that's correct um obviously i mean we would try our best to tr to do you know whatever we can before appendix j expires it'll probably we might be able to get a first reading though in before that or or maybe a little bit after but i think we could do that the quickest obviously option four is is a there wouldn't be any changes we would probably just do some cleanup language in the land you scope if option four is chosen but yes option two and three certainly uh much more involved so i think tonight as council if we want to give direction to staff on where to go with this we just need to be clear on what we want

[237:00] um i i had personally been in favor of trying to get affordable commercial but as we dig further into it it looks like there's a lot of complexity around the portable commercial we would have to design and run the program if we go in that direction so as i think of that said there are some current um affordable commercial programs they're small this would be much larger and if we go with option one we're essentially making in a lot easier so the gating question for us is do we want to go for affordable commercial at this time or not so i think that is the key decision we need to make and then we can go down a decision tree afterwards so i i want to bring up a argument that i've heard for why we shouldn't go with affordable commercial right now which is that when we take this money for affordable housing with the linkage fee and with the bonus area that money goes into our affordable housing fund which is then levered right we use that

[238:01] to support projects which get funding from the state and from the federal government and so i think one of the things to consider is what's the most efficient use of the funds that we generate and because of that leverage i think we get more bang for our buck out of housing and commercial at the current time so i just want to put all that out there bob i see your hand yeah i'll just kind of pick up where you left off there sam i mean all four options really are are i'm going to channel juni here since she's not here uh tonight but uh she said this said our last question on this topic we're basically just charging people for height this is a tax for height if you want the fourth and fifth floor you're gonna pay we're not to call it necessarily a tax except for under option three but it's that you write a check in order to build the fourth and fifth floor and um and so the question is what should that money be used for under options one two and three it's an affordable commercial program that doesn't exist so we'd have to stand up a program we'd have to

[239:00] figure out where that money goes as you say sam there's no there's no federal or state matching fund so just be dollar for dollar just be throwing some subsidies at somebody under a program that doesn't exist so if this is the universe if if we must charge people for extra height i have some issues with that but that's a different philosophical discussion but if we must charge for extra height i guess all things being equal i'd rather have that good affordable housing for several reasons number one we already have a program number two as you say it's matched and number three that's our greatest need we haven't really even assessed i mean there's no doubt that there are small tenants who could could use a subsidy to pay their rent there's no doubt of that but we haven't studied that we we know inside and out what the needs are with respect to housing so if our choices are if we've decided they're going to charge people for height and the only question is what is that there's a mechanism question between one two and three but just forget about that for a second our only question is what do we want to apply to um

[240:00] affordable housing or affordable commercial i would say affordable housing it's a no-brainer okay thank you bob mark and then mary mark yeah uh just just very quickly it's the leverage argument that that decides it for me in terms of uh option four um give boulder housing partners a million dollars and they will multiply it many times over um in order to create housing and that one million is going to be worth you know several million uh you know based on on whatever program they're they're utilizing a million dollars for the affordable commercial is going to be a million dollars so in terms of bang for the buck i have to to go with providing more money for housing and then they you know all of these um programs are effectively diminishing the money that would be available for affordable housing and in

[241:01] a city where that's our primary need and requirement i don't know how we're getting at solving our affordability crisis by having less money for affordable housing that just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me so that's um i am going to vote for number four thank you mark mary and then rachel mary so i agree with everything that um bob and mark have said and um to that i would just add a couple comments one is that a revenue stream for commercial would be relatively small and the other thing that it would be would be lumpy and likely lumpier than the revenue stream for cash and lou for affordable housing and then um ultimately

[242:01] all of these small businesses that would receive any affordable commercial subsidy need workers and the workers need housing so ultimately in the final analysis it comes down to people need housing and to [Music] give up the leverage that we gain through the affordable housing the litec and and all of the other subsidies um i think would be a fool's errand when our greatest need is housing so i too would um will support option four did you marry rachel and then aaron rachel um so i i'm pretty um i find sam's argument on leveraging the dollars pretty compelling that that's hard to argue against if we have the same like pool of money that could go to affordable commercial versus affordable housing but we can leverage it into more dollars in one

[243:02] column that that seems kind of like a no-brainer so um i'm leaning towards option four as well but i really would think that we need to find another way um to get it affordable commercial and art space and the other benefits that we're looking at so it's kind of what i was getting at with my question to carl is what are our other options um that maybe aren't related to this moment in time of when something's being constructed maybe that's foolish to think of it outside that box but um i wouldn't i wouldn't give up on on the dream uh and the last thing i would notice that i think our planning department staff is pretty overburdened right now so um that also makes me lean towards option four and just simplify and free up staff to do things that that maybe we can finish with this council that that um they'll have more time for thank you rachel aaron and then i'll go

[244:01] so i mean i i do think that we also have a problem with a lack of affordable commercial space for small businesses for non-profits and for arts organizations so personally i i would still try to continue to work on this with some format of option one with a simplified program i appreciate staff bringing forward some creative ways to simplify it it sounds like that's not where council is going um so again it looks like it looks like option four is the popular option um and and that's fine we can we can work with that obviously affordable housing is a critical critical need in our community and we could use all the funding we can get for it there is one other thing though that i want to bring up about this that's it's related to this this discussion which is um uh arts uh spaces providing uh a community benefit to the city of boulder so uh there have been a number of people who've been working on that concept for

[245:00] years and this was going to be a way that we were going to enshrine in our code and our values that hey art space is one of the things that provides community benefit to our city and so if in certain circumstances if you could offer space for artists and performers um then then that would be a community benefit that we can consider and and one of the places this came up is years ago when there was an armory redevelopment proposal up here in north boulder there were there was art space proposed as part of that but it would have required a special ordinance and the developers told well we wouldn't entertain a special ordinance for art space because it's not a community benefit anywhere in our code so i if we're going to drop this whole program for affordable commercial nonprofit and art space personally i i would very much want to see how we can somewhere get in our stated city goals that that we do feel like um that space

[246:00] for uh arts in particular but also uh things that benefit non-profits and small businesses is something that we want to see and and so that if another proposal for something special comes forward it's something that we could entertain so i'm not expecting this to solve that problem in and of itself tonight um but i it would be important to me that we hear something from staff about how we could make sure that that idea is carried forward if we're dropping the programs thank you aaron and i'll jump in here i i very much was hopeful that this project would do what aaron just described um i think that i'm not as worried about the small businesses that are for-profit um they have a business decision that they need to make in order to decide how they want to operate in boulder um and that's capitalism what i was concerned with are the non-profits in the arts right those are the the um organizations we have in our community they're often our community partners who

[247:01] help us achieve our goals in the community and outside the community the employees are often paid quite a bit less and for those organizations to be able to meet their budgets having a reduced access to commercial space is important to them so i am regretful that we are at the point that we are with this project simply because i totally agree with aaron but when we look at our limited dollars if we can leverage them i think we need to be going that direction especially for housing um i might invite either carl or jacob to speak to this but one of the things i heard in the conversation today was that we have set up the the kind of as jacob the trail of breadcrumbs to be able to have a future council either the next one or one after pick this up and try and wrestle it to the ground so i'm afraid that we

[248:01] have run out of road with this council to do the affordable commercial and i think the elements that were difficult remain difficult and so i i'm going to support option four but i would want to hear from jacob and carl as as aaron asked you know how how we could package this up and potentially pick it up with a new council so mark before i call on you i'm going to turn to jacob and carl to kind of address that thought well good evening mayor weaver and members of council um that's exactly correct this work is substantially complete and it has received obviously very thorough discussion by planning board as well as by all of you and at this point the work is here it's available and we have left as sam said that trail of breadcrumbs should a future council and staff choose to take it up that work is going to be ready for them and if it's going to be evaluated in the light of future considerations future economic conditions all of this substantially complete work

[249:00] is here it can be picked up and resumed just as it was left off and i think to that end we're thankful for the direction that's been given to us by planning boarding council and we're proud of the work that's been done even though it's not time now it could be time in the future and it's ready uh when that time comes very good thank you jacob um mark just a quick comment i i i share aaron's concern for affordable commercial spaces for arts and community based groups i just think this was probably not the right vehicle for it and i think we should continue our investigation and search to find ways to help those organizations um it's just that i don't think this program was the way to go um and we were sort of robbing peter to pay paul and taking money away from affordable housing to provide a source of funding for affordable commercial but i i share that

[250:01] the concern that aaron expressed and i hope we will continue to look for ways of of helping that sector thanks and i see mary your hand is still up is that a leftover okay aaron yeah so uh thanks for that jacob about the ability to pick it back up so i get that and some future council may pick that back up and it'll be right there if the future council wants to uh on the other hand it may not be right or it may be in some number of years so i guess my ask would be you know is there a way that we can incorporate something about the importance of assist you know space for non-profits and artists you know somewhere in in our code or our values without taking you know taking back up the whole concept of a affordable commercial program in lieu of uh you know for additional height and

[251:01] maybe there's something in the site review criteria that could mention that i'm not sure but what would be a lighter touch way of saying this is an important community value for us well um aaron i'll take that question um first of all i don't know that we really considered it in those terms this has been such a deep dive into the topic and such a thorough and exhaustive analysis but i think that um your request is a really good one and it's one that we could consider separately and i would maybe ask for some time from counsel for us to consider how that could be acknowledged in a lighter touch way and we could report back i don't know that we've really considered it in that light because we've done uh such a deep dive into this approach but um it's a it's a great request and i think it's something we could evaluate yeah i i appreciate that so yeah like i said i'm not expecting us to solve that tonight but if you could think about that and come back with any thoughts that you have i would appreciate it and then while i have the floor the the other thing that i would not want to see go away entirely is the um the intensity standard changes

[252:02] that we were looking at as part of this project so carl are we gonna still consider those as part of the site review criteria changes yeah we still have them um in our uh our list of changes so we're working on changes to the site review criteria and are hoping to bring that forward in the next couple months and we can certainly include uh those intensity modifications in that consideration as well great yeah i would i would very much like to still have them considered obviously decide at the time whether to enact them but i would like those not to be dropped and and then the the last comment i'll make is that um i i'm i think it's a reasonable idea to bring back something that says okay we would not entertain height modification requests in certain zones but i'll just reiterate that i would not include the the mixed density residential districts in that or the business transitional so um i just want to get that on the record for

[253:01] for when that comes back thank you and just just to the to the point being that those are places you might want a little bit of extra height and get some additional housing and potentially affordable housing you know and other things you could meet community so thank you aaron mark and then bob and then i'll go yeah i i support aaron's proposal i'll take my lead from him on the rmx zones i think um we should have some language that makes it clear even if it's built in suspenders that in some of the residential zones we're not going to be uh entertaining these height modifications um and i hope we can move forward with that thanks mark bob i just wanted to support aaron's proposal that we not um we not foreclose uh rmx and business transitional thanks and aaron thanks for bringing

[254:00] both of those items up i had them both on my list to bring up as well i also don't want us to lose the intensity standards which would go into our site plan review criteria because we saw tonight some of the unintended consequences of bad ones um and we're having to do a special ordinance for that so um i i would like to see both of those the restrictions on areas where additional height can be asked for and i agree rmx should be a place you can ask for the height let's make sure those intensity changes to site plan review criteria are brought back um with that because i think those are important um and i think as jacob said this work um is available for even the next council to pick up and figure out if there's a nexus study that's desired which will help that council really understand how big the problem is to bob's point we know a lot about housing and we have an idea of the impacts of

[255:01] development on our housing needs this is another way to take a look at that and i'll finally close with the idea that the reason that we are talking about assessing additional fees for additional intensity whether it's height or additional floor area ratio is simply benefit recapture so we are sharing those benefits between the developer who gets the additional intensity and the community who gets the community benefit so housing is clear we haven't been as crisp on um commercial but i think it's been good work and uh i will say that the institute for local self-reliance which thinks about affordability a lot has put out white papers on affordable commercial so it is something that people are wrestling with trying to figure out how to do it how can you get development to aid with that so it's not just boulder who's been thinking about this it's all it's a national

[256:01] consideration specifically for non-profits so with that i think i'm going to summarize for staff and council tell me if i get this wrong but i think we want to move ahead with option four so super simplifying keeping everything that we're collecting for housing including the extra uh intensity and then we want to make sure that those restrictions on height requests intensity requests are not allowed in the low density zones and that we want to make sure that those intensity changes that could go into site plan review continue to move forward and aaron what did i miss just my request to think about arts and nonprofits yep and i i think that is clear as well um that we council is very interested in what aaron has put out there rachel yes it's a quick um clarifying question um i think carl said

[257:00] at the beginning of the presentation that appendix j would vaporize and i wanted to clarify if that's correct it will vaporize in i think a month and a half or so and none of what we're saying would change that outcome it's just belt and suspenders would still be on the horizon but maybe not in place by the time it vaporizes is that true yeah it would go away um i think we're gonna have to clean up some of the code language to be clear when we do the site review criteria update but it is clear because the ordinance itself says that when it expires there's not going to be limitations on where hype modifications can be requested just trying to make sure that was there was no change in the timeline for appendix j um expiring yeah no change okay thanks and and to collague on that um when do you think carl that you will have a first reading for the provision for the zones that can't request additional height

[258:01] well i think we would probably include that with the updated site review criteria so i think now that we're kind of shifting gears with this part of community benefit we're going to focus more on finalizing the criteria and getting doing some public outreach on that so once we get an ordinance put together we'll include those intensity modifications as well as the zones to um where the community benefit program would not apply added to that we could do it earlier if that's what the council wanted i i feel like the only thing time sensitive other council members can weigh in is the areas that the additional height cannot be requested in that might be the only thing that we want to um be sure to have in place before appendix j goes away but i think the others are when you can get it done any other thoughts on that rachel it was your question that brought that out if i if i heard carl correctly um it's not a huge danger

[259:03] because it was already like that pre-2015 and we weren't giving um height exemptions in like residential places so uh i don't know how like if it were september or october and the mature moratorium ended in august it doesn't feel like a real risk that's just me okay any other council comments questions um carl did you get what you needed from us i did thank you okay thank you so much for your hard work thanks to all of the council and staff in the community for thinking hard about this living in a wonderful but expensive place means that we have to address the expensive place part so and not just not just wonderful sam but the best place to live in the entire country according to us news and world report thanks for bringing that up erin okay uh alicia i think we're ready to move on

[260:02] all right so next we have item 5b which is the councilwork plan mid-year check-in thank you alicia and thank you council i know it's been a long night already um but this is a really important part i think of our accountability to you and to community in general to just check in on where we are and some of the work it's interesting to me as i heard the conversation today how much that really nicely came into the current presentation that you're about to hear from taylor ryman who's going to be doing the overview as we move forward you know so many of us come into public service because we really want to we have great ideas we want to do so much for the communities we serve we really want to move some bold audacious things forward but that also means that we can't do it all with the resources and the time and the staff that we have and so we have to make some prioritizations and i have to say that i

[261:00] talk to colleagues in other cities and they are not so fortunate to have council members like yourselves that did some of that hard work in your retreat of really trying to prioritize that work knowing how difficult it really is to narrow those priorities so it falls to us as staff really to make sure that we're doing all that we can to move your priorities forward and hold ourselves accountable and even share when we're not able to make progress or when we have to make some trade-offs so that brings us to today's presentation and i'll turn it over to taylor but let you know that uh behind taylor there are directors and staff leads that are ready to answer any questions you may have about where we are on your council priorities taylor sure thing thanks so much nuria um good evening council taylor ryman assistant to city council um just checking in can folks see my screen and is there any bad feedback i have no bad feedback and i can see

[262:02] your screen great thank you um all right so tonight's presentation uh we'll go out over at a pretty high level um the major priorities as well as the key actions identified at the retreat in january some updates on new discrete tasks and major work plan items next steps and then time at the end for any questions if you have some so just as a reminder at the retreat in january council identified 13 major priorities of those priorities within those priorities we also identified and worked with staff to figure out what key actions that we could reasonably accomplish by the end of 2021 this council to help move forward those those um goals and their efforts so among those 13 about seven of them have been completed three of them we anticipate completing being completed at the end of this year and then there are three more that unfortunately um due to some resource constraints and questions

[263:02] around scope we we just might have to reassess the trajectory of those items one of which you just talked about community benefits any i'm going to go over these at a high level but if there's any details that you want to see that can be found in the packet and then also on both the new and the old website the new website just for counseling the public as a reminder was launched yesterday the new website and old website will operate concurrently for the next two weeks and at the end of those two weeks the old website will be archived so can be found in both places for for these details so on the left it's the major priority and its title in the middle is the key council action associated with each priority and then farthest to the right we have the status of each of these priorities so for code 19 pandemic response and recovery this was a new priority added in 2021 and following the lifting of the state and county public health orders council

[264:00] will be on track to repeal the city's disaster declaration shortly thereafter just last week actually the state of colorado consolidated its remaining emergency orders into a single order but the disaster declaration is still in effect boulder county remains in the 90-day level clear phase and is intended to lift that at the around the end or mid august south boulder creek flood mitigation at cu south has two actions associated with it continue working on the preliminary design and permitting for the hundred year flood mitigation project as well as developing an annexation agreement for council action which includes public engagement that work is coming along well and actually the draft annexation agreement was released just yesterday for public input anybody interested in leaving feedback on that draft agreement is encouraged to visit the be heard boulder project page following the engagement window the agreement is on track to be before you

[265:02] for a first reading in august last one on this slide vision zero vision zero um the residential speed limit review was completed in 2020 and the passage of 20 is plenty effectively lowered the default speed limit to 20 miles per hour in boulder police oversight after passing the ordinance to implement a police oversight model in 2019 council's key action for this um this term was to actually implement that auditor monitor model auditor monitor model this was completed actually in february of this year the panel has been meeting since then um to assess their structure and their their approaches or procedures to things and in just a few weeks they're actually going to begin reviewing their first cases so that's really exciting uh around the same time in february we also completed this next one racial adopting a racial equity plan so the racial equity

[266:00] implementation plan and strategies will has begun and will continue long term finally financial strategy study committee it was launched in january of 2020 to provide guidance on financial strategies that committee intends to continue meeting regularly through the remainder of this year these next three priorities come out of planning and development services and they are off track community benefits you just talked about and received a few options and gave some direction for staff to move forward on that east boulder sub community plan and then the use tables and standards project unfortunately due to budget um just constraints and layoffs of 2020 there have that has majorly impacted the planning and development services department um so new conversations between staff and council have also driven needs to reevaluate the scope and so while we don't anticipate being able to complete any of these original adoption actions listed here in that middle category

[267:02] staff are working to reassess the trajectory of these items homelessness and housing the actions associated with these have both been completed uh counselor receives regular updates uh about data and services related to homelessness and their feedback is regularly incorporated to iteratively iteratively enhance those services and through the direction of the manufactured housing strategy the new mobile home ordinance was adopted last september these last two priorities here are related to environmental sustainability particularly climate and energy so the decade-long effort to municipalize the city's electricity system was halted when the community voted in favor of a new settlement agreement and franchis settlement and franchise agreement with excel last november well we have effectively completed the shift in our focus from municipalization

[268:01] to the partnership for the purpose of achieving our communities energy related goals the actual partnership activities related to electrical system planning collaboration on projects and a commitment to help achieve the city's goal of 100 renewable energy by 2030 are just kicking off council heard an update from excel and city staff at a study session last month and study and staff will continue to provide regular updates on this project progress this year celebrates actually a lot of great achievements related to the cmap like drafting and passing 12 climate-related bills in the legislature installing various renewable energy infrastructure projects making progress on long-term emissions reduction and renewable energy generation goals and engaging with partners on research and collaborative approaches to meet the city's targets staff continue to refine those goals in target and anticipate bringing a final version of council for adoption in august

[269:02] so this next set of items um are some things that we could not immediately work into the work plan at the retreat in january so um we're providing an update to you on these items now new discrete tasks in major work plan items they're kind of defined differently and which is what we did at the what council did at the retreat new discrete tasks require a nod of five to be added to the work plan but don't require a trade-off with an existing item on the work plan whereas major work plan items do require a trade-off with something of similar scope size on the work plan as well as a notified of council to be added among you you see the those listed here i won't go over them again for the sake of expediency and again there's more details on each of these in your memo but at a very high level um the guns barrel sub-community

[270:00] plan will be considered for the sub-community planning program during the next city-wide evaluation of planning needs in 2022. as far as occupancy goes staff are working to provide counsel with baseline research that will include explanations of boulder's approach to regulating occupancy and case studies of pure cities regulations staff anticipates this information packet to be available in the july 20th council meeting packet this last one here university hill quality of life improvement project we actually have someone from cu on the line if you have any specific questions about this one through a collaborative collaborative partnership the city will collect and analyze data research best practices and pilot enforcement and education programs to determine and implement a productive path forward last few here 911 mental health responses there are a number of new initiatives related to mental health support that are connected to 911 services as well as general outweigh

[271:00] outreach to the community after 12 to 18 months of implementation these programs and initial assessments will be made of their outcomes at the time staff at that time staff asset will assess if complementary and mental health approaches approaches will be beneficial under the 9-1-1 system sorry it's late cannabis hospitality businesses um so the club the cannabis hospitality uh cannabis licensing advisory board has been working to gather important input information and expertise to make recommendations to council on cannabis hospitality businesses in boulder and they project that they could make a recommendation council by january 2022 at the earliest for neighborhood infill pilot projects due to high workloads this is something that staff cannot add to their work plan unless something of similar scope size can come off so for next steps

[272:01] the council retreat committee typically starts meeting around august to plan for the following year's retreat so we anticipate that just as a reminder of those on the retreat committee that um i have our uh council member yates and councilmember swetlick with council member friend to shadow um the tentative dates for the 2022 retreat are january 21 and 22 but with this being an election year uh we'll just have to check with any newly elected council members and make sure that that works for them and with that we'll take any questions perfect thank you so much taylor that was great we've had really good presentations tonight thank you um so i don't see anything from council yet i do have a quick question uh about the uh and notice that we have patrick o'rourke here um from cu and i know that we have that hill neighborhood quality of life improvement project i was curious if patrick wanted

[273:01] to speak up since he's stayed with us until 10 30. and i guess the other thing i'll point out is we did have the cu south annexation agreement draft released yesterday so i want to thank the university for all the hard work that they put in with our city team to be able to hammer out all the details there's a lot of elements of that agreement so welcome patrick and thanks to you guys for the work you're doing with us hi mayor it's a pleasure to be here uh again greatly appreciate the collaboration that led to the drafting of the cu south annexation agreement i know that there's going to be public comment over the next few weeks but the work that was put in by the city staff and uh you and rachel friend and others to be able to get to the point where we are was really

[274:00] uh remarkable over the last few weeks and we greatly appreciate that we're working hard to be ready for the fall semester and continuing to work on the hill relationships um we're also working on strategies for the first six weeks for the fall in being able to work on alternative programming chief jokers has been working with uh chief maris harold and others to be able to work on different law enforcement strategies and were on a pathway to be able to prepare for the return of the students for the fall semester i know that you've had a a very busy evening i'd be happy to take any questions you want but don't want to delay you much further but we're happy to be here and and be able to answer any of the council's questions great thank you patrick any council members have any questions particularly about the students coming in uh in the fall bob

[275:00] i don't know if this is a question uh patrick thanks for being here i don't have this question for patrick or nuria but i know that you guys are working together on this this kind of pilot program and we don't have to talk about it tonight it's 10 30 but um i think it might be helpful for maybe an outline of the program i know that you've shared it with hill neighbors and and folks in that area are familiar with it but maybe a memo or maybe even 30 minutes of study session sometime in the next uh month or so would be helpful just so the broader community and council can get caught up on that i i appreciate that oh sorry we'd be happy to to be part of that and really that could be a very interesting code enforcement uh effort in order for us to be able to talk about what we're doing to try to proactively work in the community and i certainly echo that i think what you'll find and i just credit um the team too not just from cu but our own chief and we've brought uh jacob and code enforcement and our city attorneys to really think strategically about this

[276:01] really using a data-centered approach to figure out what are some strategies that we have out there so as we bring that forward we'd be happy to sort of discuss that get your ideas share with you what we're learning and we will also use that in conjunction with some of the work that i know maris has already been doing with san juan del centro we've also are partnering with barha and they we're going to be leveraging their expertise to learn about some tenant landlord education programs and bringing them into the fold as well so there's going to be a lot to talk about in the future and we'll be happy to put that on the agenda thank you great thank you both uh rachel yeah thanks for being here patrick it's nice to see you um so i guess i have just a an overall question i don't know if it's for if patrick wants to win or it's for nuria or someone else but in this um packet update it said that for the hill neighborhood issues we would have an 18-month collaborative

[277:00] strategy to determine and implement and um i am on that work group for the hill and um hearing the you know the neighbors concerns 18 months seems or you know just um maybe not as rapid as as people might be hoping for so i just wanted to understand what what aspects might take 18 months are there pieces that will be rolled out quicker um and i also don't know if we as council ever got updated on the scoping results that we were sort of waiting for that piece to know sort of how how this would move and how quickly it would move and then finally i'm just wondering if um you know the use tables were are delayed and now we've sort of shelved community benefits does that give us any wiggle room to move more quickly i was remiss in my thank you to staff to mention brenda who has really been at the forefront of a lot of this work and i see her appearing but invite brenda or

[278:00] maris to talk a little bit month a little bit more about how that 18-month pilot came to be and then we can get to the use tables and and maybe i'll ask jacob to step in on that sure yeah i'm happy to speak to that 18 months um what i did was reach out to several consulting partners in the engagement field and in doing that i really um thought through what we thought a full project um timeline might look like given that we will experiment with things roll out things bring things to you as they're determined within that 18 months so that's really sort of a start to finish um facilitation calendar for our consultant amanda nagle um she has very smartly front loaded that that the first seven months is really going to be hitting the ground running on a lot of the data analysis and and the gathering and the experimenting so that then we

[279:02] can start to bring things to you that need to come before you and can just start doing the things that don't need to come before you um so she's really going to be um taking you know you know rachel in that group it's been a long um long time of many years of talking a lot and the folks who are wrapping around this work are ready for action and amanda will be able to provide that momentum and accountability in the ways that i have not been able to give in my own capacity so we're really excited to have her on board and and roll that forward across 18 months with action happening throughout okay that's super helpful thank you for that clarification um although i wouldn't say that that you haven't been able to take it to action i would say that council did not green light action uh until recently so i just wanted to make sure that it wasn't like a a real slow more listening for 18 months because i think that it's um we're in action mode hopefully thanks

[280:03] thank you rachel okay council anything else on work plan items aaron yeah uh thanks for all that and congratulations everyone to a whole bunch of work gotten done a lot of great work thanks to everybody on staff for all you've helped us implemented so far um just one thing on the uh nine one one mental health uh response i saw that there was a proposed like a 12 to 18 months before evaluating whether that would be a good thing for the city and that time frame just felt very long to me i know we we do have some new initiatives starting up but i don't know that they're so much directly related to um mental health 911 uh response like the cahoots or star program um in denver so i'm not suggesting we try to kick that off today we have a lot a lot to do with the last two months of this council

[281:01] but i just want to put out there that um when when the new council gets seated at our next retreat uh i don't know if there'll be support for the idea but it's something i definitely like to visit again next january uh to see if that's something that we could make happen sooner than starting to evaluate in 18 months so no need to to you know say exactly what's dual and what's not tonight i just wanted to put that out there for uh you know an fyi for six months from now um colloquy um aaron yes just um yeah with respect to the 911 response um how does the cert the critical um [Music] response team the critical incident response critical incident response team the cert team how does that roll into 9-1-1 is that and is that part of that pro that project

[282:00] is it a stepping stone uh good evening council i guess i'll i'll take that and maybe uh kurt can um shed some more light on it so the the uh sir team the uh incident response team responds out on 9-1-1 calls with officers and they tried to take the bulk of the emergency calls relating to mental health concerns and behavioral health issues and we are doing a very detailed workload analysis right now as part of the master plan on exactly how many calls for service we get for behavioral health issues obviously they come in all different forms but our cert team tries to respond to the bulk of those calls with a police officer and if the police are not needed then they send the police to other calls for service and i don't know if curt wants to add anything to that but does that answer your question mary

[283:00] um well the how does that does the the cert process that you just described does that roll into the 9-1-1 piece of it i mean will eventually will that be the response yes in fact uh they have police radios uh we have it is our hope that they actually have specific trained crisis intervention trained police officers that they will respond with um and so we're working toward those goals but right now there's a team that works approximately 14 hours a day and when we receive calls they receive them as well and then they respond out with police officers to those behavioral health concerns across the city of boulder thank you and i would like to colloquy as well just i i don't think we need to dive into the details here but we do have whatever we learned from the edge program as well

[284:00] so i think that's adjacent aaron i don't think it's the same as cahoots or star but i think there may be learnings that we can bring forward from that too so i i'm glad to hear that you'll take this to the next council retreat because i think this is a very big item to to look forward to and then i'll turn to nuria i think you had another item i did thank you so much mayor i i just wanted to make sure that we got to rachel's second question which is about use tables and i know that jacob's ready uh to provide some uh response to that inquiry thank you noria i appreciate that and and just want to make sure that rachel got that question answered um in regards to use tables unfortunately the whole department is still operating very much in a diminished capacity in terms of both our staff as well as consultant dollars carl geiler and other staff in that work group are completely and efficiently committed through the course of this year with their work both completing the site review criteria for community benefits which you heard about earlier in addition to performing the core services of the department such as site review

[285:00] so unfortunately um we are not going to be able to complete that goal even though we have advertised and are working to efficiently rehire the position that was leading that work that onboarding that hiring and onboarding most likely will not occur in time to deliver that word prior to november however if it's the will of council to move that forward we could certainly look at our overall work and look at what work could be postponed or abandoned in order to meet the goal of delivering the use tables with the seated council so we would uh we would look forward to feedback um from council in terms of what your will might be in that regard um thank you for that update jacob i will say for myself i i would not be um wanting to displace anything i just didn't know if anything shifted as a result of um decisions made tonight sounds like no uh unfortunately unfortunately no um and again we've we really have everyone in this work group so efficiently committed to their work but um again we're gonna

[286:00] monitor we'll see how things go um and if we can onboard rapidly and get a new manager project manager in that position we would obviously work as rapidly as we can on the use tables but at the moment it's not something that i can confidently tell you that we can deliver by november thanks um sam i had one more question i think stand up so should i just uh keep the floor so um if it's a right time to talk about i just wanted to um see if we wanted to check in a little bit about cu south after the annexation agreement was published yesterday just on process with colleagues at this point for example you know it's a it's a lengthy agreement but i think it's pretty digestible but i would wonder if i were not up close to it i would probably wonder what is the most efficient and effective way to deliver feedback that might be incorporated into the agreement before first reading so

[287:01] i don't know if you and i are the best people to answer that question but just wanted to raise that um and also if appropriate wanted to flag that it it may be helpful to have a few additional um listening sessions and i think the city's uh based on a meeting i was in earlier today going to be looking at that and so wanted to see if maybe um as in sam and i will be doing a listening session tomorrow um they are i think slated for an hour and a half but to see if other council members would want to sit in on you know in pairs on listening sessions or or if it would be the will of counsel that sam and i would handle all those i think there might be benefit to others participating and hearing from the community instead of you and i doing all of them yeah and i just follow up and say you know the key staff leads for council members to give input to are are going to be phil kleisler and joe cataluci so

[288:00] if you have questions about the draft agreement if you have feedback or comments i would say all council might want to hear your areas of concern but the the subject matter experts for that will be phil kleisler and joe tattayucci there's other members of the team there's legal members as well as jacob for planning so phil and and joe can direct your questions to the right staff if they don't have the answer at their fingertips so i think that's rachel i think to your point that's one way and also i want a second rachel's invitation if council members would like to be the council members present at the listening sessions please let nuria and um and joe and phil know because they're the ones who are helping set those up along with um gene gatta so anyway um to rachel's point please communicate your desires questions and thoughts to um

[289:00] all of council to the extent that you can and questions directed to those key staff members are there any questions to follow up on that from other council members right i don't see any so very good thanks for that rachel um you're welcome and and maybe just a moment of you know that was a big accomplishment so thank you to staff um there's been a a lot of work that's gone into that uh draft annexation agreement so uh just a moment of gratitude for me to the hard-working staff of the city of holden and if patrick's still here uh cu staff as well thank you for that rachel any other items for the work plan i think i will say that given that we added we had 12 items coming out of our retreat we added one covet response so that was a very big one and the fact looks like that we're going to this council is going to deliver three

[290:01] ongoing projects to the next council which is really not too bad so the you know with this council's retreat when we sat down a couple years ago we had a lot of continuing projects we had probably five or six continuing projects that just got pushed forward and most of them are done so i think next council is going to have a little more space on the work plan to be able to prioritize different things so thank you staff for the summary on this item any other points okay very good with that i think we're at the end of our agenda is that right alicia yes there we are okay so i'm going to be a spoiler i've got a few items under matters to bring up none of them are major but i think they all need to be touched on one is that based on what we know now it's very likely that next week's meeting will not be in chambers so i don't want to say anything definitively

[291:00] but as far as planning for what's going to happen next week i think there's a very good chance that we will be in this same format which is unfortunate but we will keep everyone apprised as we learn more staff is working on this very hard also about next week's meeting it is national night out so we'll have a late start a seven o'clock start um for the 20th and to that end uh staff often the council and staff often does not have open comment at meetings that we have a late start for so um next week is a regular council meeting um if i recall correctly and so we would normally have open comment um but will not be doing so sandra uh has informed me that we need to take some action in order to not have open comment and sandra i'd just ask you if you could just explain briefly what we need to do my proposal

[292:01] is that we take a vote um at the beginning of the meeting next week in order to not have open comment but i'd i'd love to hear your thoughts on that sam [Music] yes mary um so i thought national night out was in august not oh did i get that wrong i'm sorry we i apologize on the third not the 20th i apologize but the point still remains is that correct sandra that we need to take some action yes i'm sorry i thought i was muted um yes we do need to take some action and council can waive or suspend those rules to allow for that um but um it could either that action could be either be taken tonight or at the meeting itself and so i i guess a thought would be i i was mistaken that it needs to be next week it's next

[293:01] week's meeting it's august meeting we could put on consent should we choose to a um a vote that we not have open comment at the meeting where we have national night out so i was going to propose that we do that um i see rachel aaron and mary rachel that's fine i was uh yeah that's good i was gonna ask if we needed a motion and if this was an emergency because i don't think it would qualify as a super timely emergency to do it tonight under matters i was hoping we'd do it under consent one way or the other aaron yeah it'd be kind of ironic after our long discussion earlier if we took a vote right now so yeah consent sounds good thanks sam yeah mary um yeah i just wanted to share a thought about um having open comment on the night of national night out um so essentially we will be going out into the community

[294:02] and going to where people are instead of having them come to us so in essence we are doing outreach which could very much in my view be seen as kind of a an open comment where we're going to the community instead of them coming to us so um i would vote for um waving public input that evening okay very good sandra would it be possible that um we could have a uh a motion to do that under consent for um next week sure absolutely okay very good so that takes care of that bit of minutia um and then the last thing that i have here is aaron i didn't know if you wanted to make a mention of the boards and commissions um you had made a request to cac and we had said let's go ahead but i

[295:00] wanted to give you the floor to talk about that thanks sam i appreciate it and uh nearby actually i was going to reach out to you a little later on this week after getting some information for alicia since you and i are the boards and commission subcommittee uh but we did we have received notice that the housing advisory board has had two resignations uh so they're down substantially so uh we probably want to or potentially want to start recruiting for that since we're many months away from the regular recruitment cycle so i had asked alicia um you know their little shortstop in the in the city clerk's department but asked alicia if we could get a report of whether there are any other vacancies that have come up on the boards and commissions and then nearby you and i could make a recommendation to the the council as a whole about how we handle those if that works for you okay and if i may say so sir if it's a correct that report should be in your inbox tomorrow i'm putting the final

[296:00] finishes on it thanks so much for that so then nearby if you and i can find 10 minutes to talk it over we could present a recommendation in next week's meeting yeah aaron let's we can do that tomorrow i'm around so we can figure that out thank you okay excellent that's all my minutia mary i see your hand yeah i just wanted to um to make a comment with respect to um housing advisory board um that board seems to have chronic resignations um so i i guess my thinking is that um or what i want to offer up is that perhaps what we want to do is to think um more deeply about why that's occurring and perhaps remedy whatever that reason is before we go out and start recruiting people i do recall that when we were putting together

[297:00] this board it was done expeditiously um it was not the ideal way to go about doing things and perhaps one of the things that could be looked at would be to go back to that and see what work was not done prior to standing up that board because i know that staff was looking at more time and um and it was done in a manner that kind of i don't know jump the shark or whatever um but um so perhaps that's why this is happening but i do think that it it it's it's a chronic issue and that needs to be um examined as to why and perhaps we need to remedy something

[298:00] thank you mary that's a good thought thank goodness okay with that i think we're actually at the end of all the items i had any other items council or staff for tonight very good thank you all with that the meeting is adjourned everyone have a good night thanks bye everyone [Music]

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