August 24, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] sure that that person is promoted and we'll get their name changed so that the community knows who they are thank you welcome everyone you should have control over your mute and panelist buttons juni i am just getting your status changed if zoom will let me [Music]

[3:32] okay we are ready great and we are recording there all right very good welcome everyone to the tuesday august 24 2021 special meeting of the boulder city council alicia would you please call the roll new button yes sir and good evening

[4:00] everyone councilmember bronken president friend here joseph president nego here sweat lick present wallet present weaver here yates here and young present mayor we have a quorum thank you very much alicia um we have one item to add to the agenda tonight that is item 2b which is consideration of a motion to authorize nuria the city manager to execute documents on behalf of the city to accept financial assistance for the boulder airport through the federal airport coronavirus response grant program if i could get a motion to amend the agenda please so moved okay great uh

[5:00] anyone opposed to adding the agenda i know uh aaron i see your hand yeah i'm not opposed but will we get a brief explanation of the item later on in the meeting uh we weren't planning on it so i'd ask nuria to explain it now sure i'll ask erica to come on board but it was a last-minute item from the fed government but erica can explain in more detail thank you very much um so the item before you tonight is for a thirteen thousand dollar grant from the faa um through the um covid um program and you know you have all that there in front of you from a series of unfortunate events so the first of which that we had some changes in the airport manager position and then um with whenever the faa sent it on to nuria having a long name myself i understand when people don't get it to you the right way so it's

[6:00] they didn't get the request to us in enough time for us to put on an earlier agenda and so that's why there's the expedited needs so it's 13 or 13 000 that can be spent toward um various operational um improvements or debt service and you know a couple of other things but not capital to support um code response for the airport and so we would very much appreciate council supporting that request thanks and erica there's a deadline to that right there's a deadline for that and the deadline is this thursday um and since we're at tuesday um we're trying to seize this opportunity i just wanted to let the public know why we're doing this kind of last minute thanks so much appreciate the update thank you aaron um and with that i think we are on to the consent agenda um we have two items on the consent agenda uh setting the order of the ballot

[7:01] measures for the 2021 election and the item that we just spoke about so i would entertain motion on the consent agenda so moved again great we have a motion in a second does anyone want to speak to that or does anyone have any objections to passing the content agenda great seeing no objections the consent agenda passes unanimously and with that um we're at the end of the meeting and i will adjourn the meeting and then i will turn the study session over to rachel thanks sam that feels like a record speed record for a meeting so that was delightful i'll try and match it with the study session here um uh and i am chairing part two of tonight's meeting which is the tuesday august 24 2021 study session of the boulder city council

[8:01] which we are officially calling to order now alicia can you confirm do we need a new roll call or confirming quorum no ma'am we do not require a roll call awesome thank you tonight we will be discussing two items first will be arpa funds and second will be an update on an opioid settlement but first we have two announcements do we have slides ready for those yes we do awesome so announcement one number one uh for covid 19 vaccinations we encourage you all to get them for more local information on getting your vaccine and to sign up for notifications you can go to the website that is listed on the screen in such fine print that i'm not sure i can read it let's see boulder www.bouldercounty.org slash families slash disease slash covet hyphen hyphen 19 vaccines slash again please get your coveted vaccinations um second announcement we

[9:00] are still recruiting for our 2021 mid-year boards and commissions we are looking for volunteers to serve on the following boards thank you for the new slide and commissions with current vacancies first beverage licensing authority second boulder junction access district parking commission third boulder junction access district travel demand management commissions third downtown boulder man at our fourth downtown boulder management commission and last housing advisory board volunteers appointed to serve on a border commission help city council examine issues and in turn work with elected officials and staff to shape the future of boulder applications are now open and will stay open for about another week closing september 3rd 2021 for more information about the city of boulder's boards and commissions and to complete an application please visit boulder colorado.gov government slash boards

[10:01] dash and dash commissions all right and with that we are going to move on to our discussion items uh we'll turn the meeting over to our city manager nuria rivera vandermaid to kick off the staff presentations for arpa thanks maria thank you rachel and it is that very last name that i think tripped up the faa when they sent me an email and got it wrong uh so today we're going to be discussing arpa funding use and i'll say that we've got tremendous staff who often step in when we have complex cross-departmental projects and the use of such funding and what we're going to do it either now or in the future is something that we wanted to engage a variety of staff members on so you'll be hearing from mark wolfe from community vitality who graciously accepted this assignment to sort of lead that team as we move forward and cara skinner in finance who's been assisting as we look at that as well a variety of

[11:01] folks from the department have been really involved but with that i will shift it on over to mark and cara great i'm going to share my presentation here car and get you going uh just one second okay well thank you comfortable uh cara skinner assistant director of finance and while he gets this in presentation mode um i will just get kicking us off um this is i guess i thought for the next slide but um can you go to the next slide mark thanks um this is our agenda for this evening i'm going to do a quick high-level

[12:00] review of how services have been impacted by public health orders and our budget reductions and then i'll provide a revenue update and an overview of service restorations and the special adjustment to base and then as nuria noted mark will lead the discussion on the arpa funding next slide so the set context for service restorations and the special atv and particularly our arpa discussion we wanted to do a high level review of how services have been impacted since march of 2020 and as you know we eliminated many positions and held many others vacant and as a result that did impact our service levels across the organization we also deferred capital projects and to protect public health we did provide a lot less or fewer in-person services we also at the same time did enhance our online services um and in some instances we did provide home delivery services and and below are

[13:02] some examples we also just wanted to highlight that as a result of budget reductions we did reduce maintenance across the organization um facilities parks and then of course also our open space in mountain parks which are not mentioned there so that's just sort of big picture of the impacts and then next slide so moving on to revenue update this is a table that you all see in the monthly revenue report that comes out and the june report was released yesterday this is the top table that you see at the beginning of that report which is based upon current economic activity this chart actually has a couple editions however you'll notice the first numbers column we did add 2019 figures for all the sales and use tax categories and then the very last column we calculated what the compound annual

[14:02] growth rate would be from from 2019 to 2021 and we thought that was important we heard that from a number of council members and um we've been sort of speaking to the difference between 2019 and 2021 in the report but we thought it was important to actually share the numbers here and the reason it is important as you all can see is 2020 was um very anomalous you know revenue did sort of sharply decline particularly after um march through april may june july and then it started uh bouncing back a bit toward this latter half of the year but it really was anomalous and so we want to start actually comparing or seeing how our revenue looks when compared to 2019. so if you look at that first row the sales tax clearly if you look at the year-to-date dollar change that is comparing 2021 to

[15:01] 2020 and the number is large 8.8 million more than 2020 which is a large year-to-date percent change of 19 however the compound annual growth rate is only two and a half percent when calculated from 2019. so much flatter growth if that is sort of our starting point if you look at the use taxes those are also showing very strong growth particularly when compared to 2020. they also are showing strong growth when compared to 2019. overall revenue is up um almost 20 when compared to 20 again not surprising since it was um it had had that sharp decline in 2020 but 3.5 um compound annual growth when compared to 2019. and next slide so this really just is a visual

[16:00] of the first and second lines combined on that previous slide which is sales tax revenue alone so this does not include used tax revenue but it does include that recreational marijuana additional 3.5 percent and it includes audit revenue so this again is just sort of a visual so you can see how we were um moving up from 2018 to 2019 and then we had that sharp drop in 2020 and then in 2021 we have come back um to a level above the 2019. um we did add um this yellow line and i'll explain what that is the 55.9 million or the the um the figure that is attributed to the blue line in 2021 includes revenue that we received in 2021 really because um council approved to the marketplace facilitator ordinance

[17:01] last fall which required marketplace facilitators to begin collecting and remitting sales tax revenue to us marketplace facilitators the best explanation is um it am if you buy on amazon if you buy from an amazon company they were already remitting but when they were when you were making purchases from amazon from one of their marketplaces so it was not an amazon owned company they were not collecting and remitting until last fall and so that was a significant change so the yellow line shows what our revenue would have been had we not had that marketplace facilitator ordinance in place so um sort of that's more apples to apples comparing 2021 to 2019 and if you look at those two data points it shows 2021 a little bit flatter which sort of sort of is indicative of

[18:02] you know economic activity as we knew it before but again just sort of a good visual of what has happened next slide this slide is just sort of to convey that use tax is very volatile um this is total use tax and each line represents a year um and then it's the different months so what this is trying to show and it's pretty wonky but um is that it really bounces around month to month and so you can have very strong month one month and then it can fall off the next month we've had three very strong use tax months so far this year um but you know we don't know what is going to happen in the last six months of the year a for example is construction use tax has had four very strong months already um one as high as 1.9 million dollars

[19:02] but june was only 500 000 so it can it can vary significantly next slide this table is now moving um from sales and use tax to the general fund revenue um so this is is talking about our general fund revenue forecast for 2021. um we again added 2019 actual revenue in that first column and we'll also just note that um the previous slides were sales and use tax across all funds and there are other funds that our sales and use tax supported besides the general fund so this is now the shift to the general fund so if you look at this forecast our 2021 revised revenue projection is 157.4 million

[20:00] which is 10.1 million more than what we had in the approved budget so that is good news and you'll see from the first line that a lot of that relates to retail sales tax and then the second line it also relates to use tax we did add property tax line here even though there is no change from uh the revised revenue projection from the approved revenue budget but we just wanted to highlight that you know the housing market has been in the news a lot and the increase in property values and we just wanted to reiterate that that does not impact this budget year the reassessment for 2021 will impact revenue in 2022. and then all other revenue is also forecast to increase over budget some of the um [Music] revenue sources that are in are trending

[21:01] higher our accommodations tax and some parking revenue so total is up about 10.1 million or 6.9 percent and then we just also wanted to capture that we have already appropriated some additional revenue earlier in the year the advance to the eviction prevention and rental assistance services program and then in atb-1 we did appropriate 3.5 million from new revenue for a variety of needs the next slide so as revenue has been improving we just wanted to share what the city's staff's approach to service restorations has been and departments have been very thoughtful and have had a lot to consider when proposing service restorations and this slide lists many of those considerations the last bullet really captures the

[22:01] overall approach we took to how to fund ongoing restorations and that we looked to fund those ongoing restorations with ongoing city revenue and not arpa funding however there are some instances where we are recommending arka funding to provide gap funding and mark will cover that in his part of the presentation next slide so this slide just highlights in the special adjustment to base that you will consider next month it does include some funding to start restoring services and importantly to restore positions and hiring staff so that we have the capacity to restore those services and here are some examples library services support for arts programs and cultural grants recreation services forestry park maintenance and then

[23:02] staffing to support the reopening of the pennsylvania the third municipal building as well as age weld programs next slide this slide is uh really just intended to give a very high level preview of further service restorations that you'll see when we release the budget next week and present that budget to you later in september a main focus of the 2022 budget is restoring services and again that is the staff to support those services restoring some specific program funding and we also wanted to highlight uh restoring maintenance activities again across the city particularly open space and mountain parks transportation parks and the urban forest so you'll see much more of this as we release the 2022 budget and we

[24:00] have our meeting late in september but just wanted for context to provide this little preview that you will see quite a bit of service restoration in the 2022 budget next slide so the special atb uh does the requests are detailed in your memo in total the general fund requests are across seven departments and it totals just over 1.1 million the requests for restricted funds are across six different funds and totals nearly three hundred thousand there is one restricted fund request that's not listed on here because it wasn't really considered a restoring services and that was the late edition of the airport fund request for eight hundred thousand dollars uh to to replace the fuel farm at the airport

[25:01] next slide next this was also described in your memo staff is recommending that we make a one-time restorative payment to current employees who took the 2020 extended holiday furlough days and that restorative payment could be equivalent to up to six days if they in fact took the six furlough days the total cost of this payment would be 1.5 million dollars and that would be attributed to the co to the funds where the employee is budgeted or funded and of that the general fund would have a cost of seven hundred thousand dollars and the other funds together the cost would be eight hundred thousand it is across 22 funds and the payments would range um quite widely for those other funds depending on how many employees are impacted

[26:00] so in some this is sort of the last slide about dollars the general fund special appropriation would be about 1.84 million that was 1.14 in service restorations and 700 000 in this one-time restorative payment and then the restricted funds would be 1.9 million both the service restorations the one-time restorative payment and then the airport fund request so next slide so that is the end of the special atv and revenue update section and so if you have questions i'm available thank you cara please raise your hand if you have questions i see bob yates thanks car that was real helpful i know that was a bit of a preview for the adjustment to base and uh the budget which we're going to see next week and talk about next month um just as part of that preview could you remind us all um

[27:02] i know that before coven we were kind of moving our reserves our general fund reserves up about a point a year i think jane had a goal of trying to get them up to about 20 percent um i think we were on the cusp of getting to 20 we were like at 19 and a half percent and then coveted i think we had to dip into our reserves a little bit can you remind us where we are on reserves general fund reserves now and then and can you preview for us where we'll be heading with the 2022 budget sure so we did in 2020 have to draw from fund balance and that draw was nearly 10 million dollars so our expenditures did exceed our revenue by 10 million dollars in 2020. but we did have some fund balance in excess of reserves in in 20 before that so we we mostly drew down that that fund balance in excess of reserves and so the emergency reserves um balance was able to be maintained

[28:02] at close to the 19.5 percent level and that is also the intention for 2022. thank you carl all right i thought i saw mark wallach's hand up yep there it is mark you're next there it is uh just a couple of short questions um the year-to-date statistics is is that through may june or july that's through june activity so june transactions in the city okay and i guess my second question is the year-to-date numbers look very good um as we project out for the year do we see any impact on economic activity from the delta variant so you will notice that the um slide that showed the end-of-year revenue forecasts that we we are being more cautious in our end-of-year revenue forecasts then the year-to-date through june numbers would show and i think that

[29:00] that does give us some sort of room for this potential adverse impact from the delta variant okay um lastly just uh well not lastly but an odder question um did i correctly see on the use tax slide um that revenues were higher in 2020 than 2021 is that that's it that is correct and that is um i think as we discussed back at the in april the financial update one of the reasons why we did not have to draw down um fund balance and reserves as much as we thought we would is because those youth taxes came in quite strong unexpectedly in 2020 and we budget very conservatively for use tax because they're so volatile and so um we budget a base amount and whenever that use tax comes in above that base then that's sort of one-time

[30:00] revenue that could be used for other things but so in essence the use tax revenue coming in so strong last year sort of replenished our reserves sort of real time um in the sense that we did not have to draw as much as we thought because of that strength my last question and this may just be a product of faulty memory in in reading the materials for this week am i correct that the fuel farm was originally included in in arpa as a potential use of arpa funds or is that wrong i do not believe so okay um i'll have to look at it again thank you thanks mark aaron you're up next uh cara does a great presentation with a lot of good news in it so it's really wonderful to see our finances coming back and i'm looking forward to you know making all those employee payments and their

[31:01] salaries as as well as restoring a lot of service cuts for city services there's one i wanted to ask about in particular you know we've been hearing a fair amount from uh the community about delays and permitting for the planning development services and i believe i saw an intention to hire some additional folks back into that department as part of the the adjustment to base that's coming up i just want to hear will that get us more or less back to our previous baseline and and allow us to really substantially reduce those those delays in the permanent department i would love to have someone ah there's jacob i figure we might see jacob with that question well thank you aaron and um the answer is that it will not fully restore the staffing levels or the service levels to the pre-pandemic numbers but it will get us about 75 of the way there we put in a slate of requests for 13 individual

[32:01] staff members and it will significantly help us to restore our service levels it does not get us back to pre-pandemic levels but it's pretty significant and i will also add that in making this request we examined every single position that we requested in light of restoring our service levels to the pre-pandemic state that was the specific purpose behind every request that we made so we think that we're going to get the most bang for the buck that we possibly can uh from uh from the individual uh positions that we've asked for appreciate that jacob and so it's great to hear that we'll be making significant progress on that and hopefully if our uh revenue numbers hold up in the way that they're trending we can get all the way back to that pre-pandemic service level before too much longer thanks thanks aaron adam you're up yeah i'm just gonna follow up to aaron's question real quick i recall before the pandemic we were

[33:01] trying to get planning and development services to be more streamlined and efficient and do more work with less people i seem to remember that being a big push um so are we just talking strictly service level are we actually trying to eventually get back to the same amount of people even though one of the goals was to have fewer people overall jacob before you answer can i just say that uh preface the answer to that is for the exercise that we did with budget this year was precisely that adam to to ask folks really to think about what did you do and what are those efficiencies that happened because of covet a lot of things went digital so that when we come back we're not just really trying to get to that number of free pandemic but really to the efficiencies that we want and i want to just say all department heads were thoughtful and really thinking about that exercise as we move forward so some adjustments were made in that direction but it was really about let's take what we learned and how we have adjusted

[34:00] services already and with that jacob i'll let you continue i just wanted to say that because it was a thoughtful thing that all department heads had to go through thank you that's exactly correct and i would just um in addition to that would add um if you recall there was an outside consultant retained tipton who issued a report and among the report among the items that were highlighted in that in that report were the complexity of our regulatory landscape and the the challenge that applicants have when applying to pnds for predictability for clarity among our regulations in addition to challenges that the staff had among psychological safety internally and externally and also understanding their own roles so that report the tifton report since it when it was issued has been turned into a whole series of uh projects that we have been working on internally that have rolled out the solutions to many of the challenges that were articulated in that report and to be very clear about it

[35:00] doing more with fewer staff was never a an aspect of that report nor was it um part of what we were working toward internally doing more with fewer staff was was never a recommendation so uh the fewer staff that were handed to us during the coveted budget cuts did impact our services significantly and that's why we've asked for more staff so we want to do is create predictability and clarity but uh doing more with fewer staff was never a recommendation although it's an adjustment that we've had to make as a result of some of our budget cuts my apologies for that mistake yeah i i just seem to remember there was a lot of efficiency inefficiencies that were uh earmarked in that report and i didn't know if that was going to lead to fewer staff or just better uh processes so it sounds much more like the better processes is the answer to that got it thank you jacob thanks adam mary you're up oh wait cheryl would you like to offer some input in response to adam before we

[36:00] turn over to mary no i'm sorry that was user error on my part all right noted mary thanks rachel um so how did the um one-time restart of payment address any inequities that may have been experienced by city employees hi mary this is jen sprinkle hr director i'd love to jump in on that question uh so when we were looking at the restoration of of pay there were a couple factors one were what is the average salary of our various groups of employees and our lowest wage earners tend to be hourly in the bmea union as well as some non-union hourly employees and that's what we were looking to address first and foremost is employees that took a pay cut in 2020 as

[37:00] a result of those extended holiday furlough dates and so those were factors that went into our decision decision-making process to ensure that we were addressing the folks who had those types of impacts thank you jen thanks mary i don't see any more hands up right now so i want to make sure steph the two questions we are answering right now are does council have questions about the revenue forecast and any questions about the approach to service restorations that right maybe cara with that question and if so i'll put out a final request for questions once twice okay any comments then before we move on uh thank you for restoring the questions um before we move on to kind of part two of this part one of

[38:01] tonight's study session um any other comments for the revenue forecast or service restorations i'm not seeing any hands okay um so i think it will turn it back to cara or nuria or mark i think we're turning it to mark thanks all right thanks rachel uh good evening um members of council i'm excited to finally talk to you about arpa thanks for giving us some time to bring back some more specifics to give you a sense of proposal on process to address some of our biggest community challenges again my name is mark wolf senior manager of economic vitality and business services in community vitality and i'm serving as the coordinator for the city's approach to figure out how we're going to spend these arpa dollars tonight i'll be addressing four key items an overview of

[39:01] arpa as a bill the funding restrictions associated with our local recovery funds proposed approach to prioritizing our funding needs recommended immediate uses of our funding and a proposed process to plan for longer term transformative initiatives to start the 2021 american rescue plan act or arpa as we're calling it is a 1.9 trillion dollar package that provides direct support to individuals and families businesses and a variety of other activities to support the recovery from coven as you can see here there are significant resources provided through the bill including direct stimulus checks child tax credits expanded unemployment assistance and restaurant relief just to name a few i've included a detailed summary of all resources with

[40:00] within arpa in appendix a i believe that begins on page 16 of your packet in the memo with links to relevant programs if they exist but tonight we're a little bit more focused on the state and local fiscal recovery funds i'll just refer to those as our local recovery funds instead of trying with that acronym a few uh notes here uh local governments were received over 130 billion dollars in direct allocation states also received direct assistance uh within that 130 billion for local fiscal recovery funds includes counties as well so to touch a little bit on our coordination and collaboration efforts the city of boulder we received we're planning to receive 20.15 million dollars in direct allocation this was based on criteria including a total population we will receive the funds in two tranches one has occurred so we have

[41:02] half of the funds already and we will receive the remaining 50 uh 12 months uh from now so around july august 2022 is what we're expecting the funds must be committed to be spent by the end of 2024 so i think under contract and expended by the end of 2026. the u.s department of treasury has issued interim final guidance as to the eligible uses of local funds while it's not final yet we do anticipate that the eligible categories will not change significantly the important thing to remember for eligibility is the tie back to the recovery from covin so individuals businesses that were negatively impacted by the pandemic the allowable uses of funds are

[42:00] organized in five specific categories the first eligible category is in support of public health expenditures this includes covid related prevention activities and also includes the support of behavioral and mental health services for those most impacted by the pandemic the second eligible category is perhaps the broadest addressing the negative economic impacts in includes eligible activities such as direct support of individuals the workforce and small businesses this category also includes the restoration of public sector capacity to pre-pandemic service levels which we'll touch on in a few slides and last the category allows for broader investment to serve the hardest hit communities and families under this category treasury defines the hardest hit communities and families as those within a specific hud-designated geographic area and or those disproportionately impacted

[43:01] by the pandemic the next few categories include eligibility of governments to replace lost revenue allows the use of funds to provide premium pay for essential frontline workers and investments in water sewer and broadband infrastructure i will point out that the categories generally do not provide exclusive examples so we think there is some flexibility there as long as we have that tie back to to covid related impact uh we will continue to monitor the guidance as it as it changes and if it impacts any of our guidance from this evening we certainly will pass that information along and there are a few specific ineligible uses i'll go into a whole bunch of detail here we couldn't make deposits to retirement fund accounts we cannot make payments on debt service and we cannot restore financial reserves to pre-pandemic levels we must apply it towards services in in the community or

[44:01] restoring our capacity as a public sector okay shift in gears a little bit uh when we last spoke with you all in in june we discussed some very general uh funding categories and guiding principles to provide some structure to the work since then we have formed a cross-departmental staff team to flesh out desired funding outcomes and a mechanism to prioritize funding needs and requests the first question for this evening for council related to arpa is addressed through this section starting with our funding outcomes appendix c in your memo provides more information and specific definitions on the desired funding outcomes or the proposed desired funding outcomes to quickly summarize uh city organizational and financial recovery refers to the ability of the organization to provide services to the community especially those most impacted

[45:02] by the pandemic community recovery refers to the targeted outreach and support of residents and community serving organizations with goals of improving access to services and overall support of those disproportionately impacted inclusive economic recovery focuses on rebuilding a local economy towards a more inclusive and welcoming community with goals of investing in key issues such as workforce challenges and affordability and lastly transformative long-term investment reflects our opportunity to collaborate with regional partners and plan for strategic and innovative initiatives with the goal of making maximum impact in some of our most difficult challenges next i'll talk about our prior prioritization criteria as you are aware we have received many requests or suggestions already as to the use of local recovery funds

[46:00] we know uh that will exceed the requests that come in over the coming months will exceed what we have available so to help with decision making it was important to develop a way to prioritize our staff team took care to develop language to reflect our community and organizational values and again i'll point you to appendix c and i think it's on the last page of the memo where we expand the specific language i'll summarize but i i think it's important to capture the the whole essence of each of these uh items in our criteria in relative priority order requests for arpa funding either have been evaluated if it's immediate request or will be evaluated based on whether it advances our racial equity goals through the use the application of our racial equity instrument and advances goals within our sustainability and resilience framework that it also addresses a gap created or exacerbated by the pandemic and it is

[47:02] not filled through another source of funding it leverages community engagement and in formal and informal channels of communication with community partners to inform the proposal it takes an innovative approach to address our needs and it seeks to leverage other sources of funding through our existing partnerships all right now we'll talk in a bit more specifics about money before we get caught in the details here i want to let uh council know i'll be walking through each of these categories separately just to provide a little bit more information but hopefully this bases you in in our overall approach here uh we have worked on several different front fronts over the past couple of months including a peer city review to benchmark our activities that information is also contained

[48:00] within the memo and appendix b many cities are setting a threshold of spending on immediate needs of anywhere between 10 and 20 of the total allocation uh we'll talk a bit about why that's the case in a moment for boulder we've identified approximately 2.1 million that's that yellow section of immediate needs based on input across the organization leveraging our existing relationships and engagements approximately 868 000 that small little blueish bar on the top there is recommended for the limited one-time service restorations that cara mentioned earlier and we'll also discuss the need for some reserve funds just given the uncertainty ahead most of our discussion this evening is reserved for that big old green chunk on the left there about 15 million dollars for longer term investment needs and we'll talk about a process for that again as a reminder we only have half of our allocation now

[49:01] expect the second half in 2022 for a total of the 20.15 million the first category that's recommended for for funding is gaap funding for service restorations despite the longer period of time and cara spoke to this uh it is a one-time source of funds and so we really looked at those areas that if we did need to restore service it ideally is in one time in nature uh to that end we've made very limited recommendations to us to use arpa funds to restore services the largest need is within the recreation activity fund it is kind of a catch-22 and our friends for parks and rec could certainly expand on this but in order to have revenues come in and return the service needs to be there so you have to have something to pay for and so we're kind of in that period of time where we need to ramp up hire staff in order to provide expanded hours and services to help jump start

[50:01] fund it probably isn't the entire scope of the need i can say it isn't as of the current projections but the six hundred thousand dollars now will certainly help us restore service uh beginning in september of this year to make sure that those services begin to be available uh as we get into the the fall and winter months another recommend recommended service restoration is for the severe weather shelter two hundred thousand dollars would maintain shelter bed space during high demand uh time periods and allow for hotel room availability to replace bed space loss due to social distance requirements additionally this will assist with expanded stays in hotels during critical weather events additional gap funding is recommended in smaller mounds for restorations and neighborhood connections grants and public arts maintenance

[51:00] now i'll turn to talking a bit more broadly about immediate needs in may departments provided recommended recommendations for the use of arpa funds based on known gaps and needs at that time additionally as budget requests were made to our internal executive budget team departments indicated whether advanced funding in 2021 perhaps through arpa was was needed or recommended and uh lastly the arpa staff team utilizing our existing partnerships relationships information that we had on hand we reviewed additional short-term needs all of these were put through that prioritization lens if you will and several funding recommendations were made for the for the short term here for a total of 2.1 million dollars beginning with the top one uh the work to continue to to bridge our digital divide in our community

[52:01] as council's is aware we have made a good progress on the fiber phase one build-out across the city uh as a part of that plan city fiber will be brought adjacent to 22 bhp sites however currently there are 19 bhp sites that do not have a free high-speed internet option for for residents this funding would provide a grant to bhp to make investment in endpoint infrastructure so essentially the the stuff within the buildings that allows that internet the high-speed internet service to exist for sites that are not part of uh city fiber phase one uh there are ongoing costs to bhp associated with connecting to the private fiber those costs are not reflected in this amount but we are actively working with bhp and rit department to identify potential bridge solutions and including looking at the longer term

[53:01] of fiber phase two scoping the next section is in our small business continued small business and local economic recovery assistance one proposal is to expand our microloan program this would be to target those businesses that have not had access to traditional means of capital expand and pilot affordable commercial programming for small businesses looking at ways to reduce overall costs for businesses another couple of proposals are to provide direct support to some of our hardest hit industries including our arts industry and our convention and visitors bureau specifically in promoting safe visitation as we enter in the fall fall and winter months a couple of other items here utility bill assistance we know that individuals are

[54:01] continuing to run into challenges and paying a variety of different utility bills just looking at our city water bills we have seen an uptick in delinquency over the past several months so there is a need we do not have a program established yet but we're working very hard with our partners in utilities and hhs and some of our community partners and regional partners to identify a way to help and so four hundred thousand dollars represents what we think is about the need for those that have code related impact in in paying their utility bills the last couple here are our continuation of certain programs that we funded through the cares act in hhs in food child care health care access and gap funding for emergency rental assistance if that is necessary over the next several months and the last one here is in providing support to accommodate our hybrid work so that we as as a city organization can

[55:03] continue to provide service delivery excellence in a different model and last for immediate needs everything seems to change daily as you all know very well so we're recommending a an additional supplemental authorization in a couple areas one is for emerging needs so again if we're looking at capacity restrictions or uh different types of um you know if our the needle is is moving over the next several months there may be things that come up um that we need to be nimble as an organization if we were to tap into this amount of money uh that would be communicated very well with council in the community as to why that is and what the need is and then just as we did in the cares act we set aside some dollars for public health needs uh if they arise we did access those funds in in the cares act

[56:00] for testing sites and so we're recommending to set aside a million dollars in case we we need to to do that as well in any public health related area so to go back uh to the pie chart that you saw we have the 868 for our gaap funding 2.1 for the immediate needs as i've walked through and the the two reserves for the about three million dollar expenditure that we're um seeking for identified needs that reflects about seventy percent for uh community uh recovery activities uh twenty percent for uh in inclusive economic recovery about 10 percent to support our continued city organization recovering all right now we're going to talk about that big green bar sorry i'm gonna turn on a light so i stopped looking orange in

[57:01] the screen thank you so uh we talked about about 20 25 of our funding now we'll talk about uh the 15.1 uh dollars that we're setting aside for transformative funding opportunities we are seeking feedback on this process and potential areas of focus for that investment so again language is important what are we talking about when we're talking about transformative initiatives what we mean by that is it's a once in a generation opportunity to align resources and and maximize our impact especially in some of our most difficult challenges many of these challenges will require collaborative solutions both from the public other public entities and the private sector and require additional resources well beyond the 15 to 20 million that we have available so we want to take time to leverage those dollars we want to be ready for

[58:01] the infrastructure package at the federal level took another step forward today so that's another potential opportunity and and given the time period that we have for arpa funds which is a different scale in time than we were dealing with under cares we have the opportunity to go back and review some of our unfunded or underfunded master plans that we can coordinate with our partners better and ensure alignment with the community on on the expectations for addressing some of these major challenges uh this slide is one that uh we would like to spend some time with council on uh this evening these are the proposed areas of focus to guide our priorities for those longer term transformative funding opportunities the examples of initiatives in the far right column are not intended to be exhausted by any means but rather meant to spark conversation we're hoping that council will devote some time to providing us feedback on those

[59:01] emphasizing particular initiatives that are listed or pointing out those that may be missing this will help guide our staff time over the coming months and in what to prioritize the three areas of focus public health and safety affordability and service access and community and economic resiliency or sometime in that time frame to discuss specifics and hopefully approve some more specific uh plans that is the end this evening we have a whole bunch of staff here as well to help with some of the specifics we'll do my best to provide answers to maybe the easier ones or more directly related arpa the two questions we have this evening are related to the process and prioritization and i'm happy to pop up any slides as necessary and the second is really about that longer term planning and making sure we're capturing any of those initiatives that are most important to council

[60:00] thank you thanks so much mark um let's start with just what questions we might have so we have two questions to answer whether we support the process um and what are the areas of recovery that should be emphasized in medium and long term but before we share the feedback there to answer those questions does anyone have questions about mark's presentation mark wallach you're up okay um a couple of questions with respect to the digital divide uh i think that's great but aren't there parts of this community that are on the wrong side of that digital divide other than those that are operated by bhp and if so are we making any provision for funding for those areas yes you're absolutely correct uh that there are areas of the city that don't have that access what i can say is that we are in the early stages of scoping for phase two city fiber

[61:03] which hopefully will include some of that planning for those underserved areas some of those bhp sites um the 19 that i mentioned are not a part of fiber phase one as well and don't currently have an option for free high-speed internet so we're making some progress in the short term there and i think that is one of those areas mark that we'd like uh council feedback on to you know if it is one of those top priorities then absolutely would like to bring back some strategies to address that that divide in other areas of the city as well my second question is the gap funding for emergency rental assistance uh are we not receiving the the funds that were to be generated by the uh the newer uh initiative from uh uh last year i mean that was supposed to generate about a million and a half million seven per year are those funds not coming in yeah it's a good question and i'm i'm

[62:01] happy to um defer to any of our colleagues on that i believe it's a timing issue with the rental assistance is that um it's just the lag of when those dollars are available we don't want to be caught in a situation where we we do not have funds available to help folks if they need it and to follow up on that if um if this is gap funding are we intending to um pay back those funds from newer revenues so that the money can be recycled for other purposes i'm kristen heiser deputy director of housing and human services and if i could just take a moment to talk about the rental assistance that we're looking for so you are correct city council is great um this year and um through a special process of awarding us the one million dollars plus um to set up the eviction prevention rental assistance program we have not started to collect those

[63:00] revenues yet um so because the tax has not been implemented um yet um so there might be others on the call that maybe cara can cara can um kind of inform that piece of a little bit but we do have those dollars it's it's a little bit of a philosophical question for us because those are local funds that we would love to preserve um into the future and so our request is if there is a rush for rental assistance come the lifting of the eviction moratorium come on october 3rd is there a possibility we would prefer to preserve our local dollars and use federal dollars kind of our general approach is to use federal funds if those are available to us preserve our local dollars for when federal funds aren't flowing into our community the other aspect to this is there are quite uh there's quite a bit of money coming into the county through the eviction excuse me the emergency rental assistance program we're also trying to get ahead of that because they're in the

[64:00] process of standing up that program and their capacity we are trying to get ahead in case our capacity is not in place when the october 3rd eviction moratorium is lifted so it really is just kind of a a preventative um hope that we wouldn't have to tap into these dollars but just really kind of preparing um in case we need to i mean is there a particular roadblock to implementing the uh the newer system good evening council uh kristen i'll jump in on this one joel wagner tax and special projects manager uh so council may recall earlier in the year when we're providing updates um we discussed that we actually found a um i think elegant solution to the the administrative burden of collecting uh 75 tax on on thousands of rental license holders and that solution was that we will certify those taxes with the boulder county assessor every year and so those taxes will uh show up on property owners tax property tax bills

[65:02] but of course as most folks are aware that's a that process lags in a year so the tax that is being assessed and effective this year won't actually start to be collected by the county until january of next year my last question is um do we have any ballpark estimates of what we might receive uh in infrastructure funds under the biden administration's bill should it become a reality that's a really good question i don't have a dollar amount but what i can tell you is that generally with these federal infrastructure programs the important thing is to be quote shovel ready which means being in a position to to actually invest dollars quickly so the work to scope uh our second phase of fiber is really important uh effort and will be important um in in other areas and transportation and others uh to be ready for that that infrastructure the better

[66:00] ready we are the more dollars we hope to receive through that package and my my question with respect to that is um should the infrastructure tax passes i hope it will and we receive considerable amounts of money under the the biden bill um my understanding is that we have in our budget what is it five six million dollars for capital expenditure projects on a yearly basis would those two programs possibly free up any portion of that for other uses such as art support or the mental health programs that we'd like to initiate you know anything along those lines would we be in a position of maybe diverting part of the capex funds in our general fund to other uses yeah i don't have a firm answer on that other than to say if we had an influx of federal dollars we certainly could look at our approach to capital spending it just depends on whether or not it's a one-time use of

[67:00] funds or or not if it's within the general fund is ongoing certainly those could be diverted elsewhere cara do you want to expand on that sure thank you um and i thought i'd just also note that most of our infrastructure type funding is funded out of the transportation fund and not the general fund and so it just might free up capacity within the transportation fund for other types of transportation related uses okay thank you that's everything thanks mark sam you're up next and sam you are on mute it's a delight to be able to say that it is it is awesome when i'm running the meetings i never hit that button so there you go um the first question is about the equity instrument and how we use that um new instrument in looking at the

[68:02] areas of focus i'm looking at slide 31 which is looking at that 15 million dollars how did we consider our new equity instrument in making these focus areas yeah it's a really uh good question so i would say that for the for the immediate needs what we did as a part of our budget process which continues to improve every year is explicitly ask departments what is the racial impact or burden in the proposals for the 2022 budget so we were able to get some of that information as we were considering who would be impacted by the service restorations and in the longer term with the the 15 million it's really about our process and how we're going about researching each of these areas and making sure that the um that the proposals are informed by those that will be impacted and that we're considering kind of that broad um

[69:00] the broad impact before we start investing the dollar so that we're not too late and i see amy that popped up and certainly helped guide our approach to this and would love to hear if she has additional thoughts no i think you did a great job i think that the key here is as we're looking at those projects moving forward ensuring we're utilizing the ratio racial equity instrument in the design of those before we like mark said start spending the dollars okay super well it sounds like you were thoughtful about that so i'll follow up with one specific area that i was curious about which is um we've got down at the bottom of community and economic resiliency a couple bullets are supportive hardest hit industries by covet and then the next one is initiative to support lowering operating costs for small businesses and along those lines it seems to me like both of those areas could have an additional equity focus

[70:01] component to them amy and i and yvette and mary met with some folks who wanted to talk about black owned small business support as well as expanding that concept to latino owned small businesses lgbtq owned small businesses and so on so i just wanted to to hear from you guys how you might have thought about um how to incorporate those kind of um the support for those small businesses and the best way to get those dollars and communicate the program opportunities to those types of small businesses so that'll be part of the stakeholder analysis when we utilize the racial equity instrument those are some of the community groups that we'll be reaching out to sorry lefty's got something to say and just to add sam to that question the micro loan program that i mentioned before that that is one good short term intervention uh it it is still loan dollars um but uh our work through the

[71:01] community uh through the colorado enterprise fund so we have an existing program that's fifty thousand dollars that's leveraged uh at a hundred percent so we have a hundred thousand dollars uh typically on an annual basis to to lend out and the the program itself targets those businesses that do not have uh traditional access to capital a lot of times that's women and minority owned businesses though not um solely what we're planning to do with the additional 50 is again to go back to cef and leverage those funds and we're in conversations with them one thing that they've pointed out is they will be able to access the funds through wells fargo that they manage a specific program uh called the black owned business fund which will help provide additional dollars into that we we won't have that be exclusive we want to make sure we're not leaving any business behind that hasn't had access to some of the federal grant programs federal loan programs um that's a good short-term uh help but um to your point

[72:02] on the longer term need we'll absolutely have to work with our stakeholders in in all of our um respective areas uh boulder chamber latino chamber of commerce and uh naacp and others to help inform our approach in in the longer term economic recovery that's excellent i think those um community organizations that you just named are really important to have at the table and the discussion about how to get the word out so all these programs are great but how we make sure that the folks who need the dollars know that they can apply for them and to give them help to apply for them is important two more quick questions those are good answers thank you one thing i notice and i i like is that we have mental and behavior health service expansions all behind that i think our next subject for the study session we'll talk about that as well but given that these are one-time dollars and that the service expansions generally require ongoing support how

[73:01] are you thinking about the one-time dollars used to support mental behavior health services and homeless services expansion how do we think about the one-time dollars versus what will become ongoing operational needs yeah another another good question another tough question i so the good news with arpa is as i mentioned we have a longer period of time which would theoretically if we were looking at some type of service expansion if it was under contract with a third party or in a partnership could extend through 2026. so that buys us some time to figure out the long-term funding i'm not to say money will just fall out of trees but that is part of the the planning that we'd like to do and bring back a more coherent strategy to say instead of just hey apply x amount of our dollars and we'll be done here that we're thoughtful about that sustainable funding approach okay super thank you and then i i think my last question is you know this 15 million

[74:02] um bucket of money uh is i think an opportunity to use on some of our most intractable problems one of those additionally is climate and climate action so i was just curious what kind of thinking might have gone into how to use one-time dollars uh for climate action and i've got some thoughts but i'm curious what kind of conversation has already occurred around that yeah another good question i think so the restriction there that we're mindful of is with um the the infrastructure investments being limited in in water sewer broadband under arpa now though in the water and sewer area there is a specific emphasis on on those that provide for some type of climate action and i do think there's an opportunity to look there the issue and we've had some conversations with our utilities about this is that the scale of some of those projects pale

[75:02] our arpa dollars pale in comparison to some of the scale of those projects that being said i think there's an opportunity in looking at some of our longer term plans and planning efforts to make sure that we're we're really focused on our key uh community goals including climate action uh with with our dollars that that could be one that we could explore further and then i think there's there's other opportunities as we're talking about um serving those disproportionately impacted by covet in areas disproportionately impacted by covid uh that we're thinking about uh the the disproportionate impact of of climate change as well so i think there's a path there it's just a little bit more narrow than some of the other areas super well that's a very thoughtful answer i appreciate that i i would say that um i certainly appreciate that the project dollars would be daunting compared to the amount of funding that's available so yeah i don't think this is appropriate money to put necessarily

[76:00] towards much in the way of climate projects i was thinking more about programs and so like exactly as you described for the mental health service expansion we have three or four years of available funding if we started a program that we then looked to expand i think there could be some interesting stuff there but i'll i'll save the rest of it for comments and thank you for your answers that's all rachel thanks sam um i have juni and mary and then i'll call myself for questions thank you rachel and thank you for this great presentation um although i've seen part of it uh before at subcommittee meeting but uh this is a great presentation thank you i have a question about the well i have several questions my first question i wanted to hear a little bit more about the fiber phase one build out um that you mentioned when it comes to bridging the digital divide and i wanted to know was this a pre-harper project and then somehow

[77:04] nearly a million dollars being allocated for that project yeah good question and i i'm not sure if we have somebody from innovation and technology but i'll i'll start the answer here so yes fiber phase one build out was a previous arpa project that has been underway for quite some time we expect the fiber phase one build out to be completed sometime in 2022 with service provided to bhp sites which is just a portion of the fiber phase 1 project by the beginning of 2023 what part of the 880 some thousand does is ensure that we're able to hit that beginning of 2023 date to provide that free high-speed internet access at the sites that are part of the fiber phase one the additional funds provide dollars to the other bhp sites that don't currently have access a free

[78:01] high-speed internet access um but are not a part of that that phase one so it does a little bit of both there it makes sure that we're able to hit our goals in phase one but it also uh provides or helps provide that service to residents and at other sites as well mark and i i see chris has popped up a little bit i don't know if he has something additional to add on that question sir uh mark to your your earlier point i can add just a little bit more context juni to your question which is um when when we started to move forward on the first phase of building the the fiber backbone um when we got the bids back in for that project they actually came in under what our cost estimate was and so we we had a little bit of extra funding so we came to council then and i'm forgetting the exact exact timing of what year it was um with what were some areas where we could expand that network a little bit further and one of those areas was to those 22

[79:01] bhp sites so the project that's underway now gets the the fiber optic cables basically up to the property um but then as mark was describing then they're still getting the the electronics in the building to then actually provide the internet service uh inside the building and so this additional these additional funds would help go towards continuing to make sure that that uh it's not just fiber laid to the property line but indeed it's actually making that internet access happen okay thank you and also i have a question i'm looking at the slides and i just went somewhere else i have a question about the 400 000 that are being set aside to help community members with utilities and i am just so happy and grateful to see that as well as part of the process and it shows that staff is really thinking about community

[80:01] and how to best serve them and my question is how many households do you consider to support with that funding that's a good question we're still doing uh the analysis on on which households that have delinquency are are perhaps due to coven so that kind of post march 2020 we we still have some work to do in figuring out the program administration itself so there's some arpa related restrictions that make that more difficult than we'd like we can't provide that those dollars directly to utilities that that's not allowed and just waive those those outstanding bills so we need some direct support of individuals at the same time we're trying to not make this burdensome for those that that need the help uh so we're working on it we're optimistic we can find a solution and drill down to those those households and make sure we're extending the 400 000 as far as possible the need is is greater

[81:02] than that and certainly if delinquency continues to tick up um that's one of the areas that we may have to loop back around in the emerging need reserve that we talked about um in case that is true i hope the 400 000 represents about what we think is the need in in water bills if we're talking about broader uh utility bills across the city the need is probably greater and and again once we have some more details on program administration and this the scale of that uh we're happy to provide that information to council junie do you mind if i colloquy on that one please rachel i'm just i'm just wanting to clarify so i i understand that we can't gift water due to our charter correct which is why we can't but we can gift money that pays water bills is that how we get around the charter prohibition is that what we're talking about here yeah you're characterizing that correctly and so just want to verify um with the city attorney's office that that is uh

[82:03] legal i think that's to sandra hi rachel hi can you hear me yeah so thank you for the question and um i think it's a creative solution to a problem that we would like to solve for folks and um um to be honest i haven't been asked this question before so it's the first time i've heard it but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to to have that interpretation of our charter um and so with that i would say i would i would agree with with uh moving forward in that way okay maybe um before it comes back for a vote it might it would be helpful to just have a firm um firmer answer analysis analysis of that that is a you know a legal loophole that's usable here thanks thanks we'll do that there juni thank you thank you i think my my my last question is about

[83:00] the severe weather shelter and i suppose that would go my question is with 200 000 is very little money it's it well it will certainly help but it's very little considering the needs that we have and i'm wondering if this money will somehow be an addition to is is there maybe some type of um how do i put it i know the city is also coordinating with the county in the county it's getting its own money so i'm wondering if this 200 000 will be you know just in addition to other money that we will put together toward um you know the severe weather shelter as opposed to just two hundred thousand dollars i am happy it does make sense i'm happy to defer to kurt for that one

[84:00] uh thank you thank you juni um so the uh the 200 000 represents um the um a similar approach to uh hotels which we had in the previous winter season and um if you recall we've we've actually never had that in our our city budget and last year it was paid for through the cares act and um it is a um well while the numbers may seem small to you it's it's big for our departments and um that type of support so we we haven't had that budgeted um previously and covet really uh helped push for that that type of solution it's also worth noting that hotels have picked up in their usage and finding hotels that work well for this type of service um

[85:01] isn't represented by every hotel um so we've been out there in the community figuring out how this program could best work with with those types of constraints um if the county were to get um additional funding for that we could we could also look at that um and if if you're and this is really an initial conversation um around all these things and this is what we've allocated at this time thank you that's all my questions i'll come back with comments later thanks juni mary you're up thanks rachel um so i i my first question is uh really a clarification in an earlier question i believe that mark asked um the response came back that um infrastructure dollars would go into the transportation fund but it seems to me that

[86:01] that assumes that the infrastructure is only roads and bridges um and that other infrastructure is water and sewer and so wouldn't money go into those funds as well for any needs and infrastructure yeah it might clarify i think the question was related to what would happen if we were receiving federal infrastructure dollars and could we basically then use what we had programmed in city dollars for infrastructure elsewhere i think what car was saying is it depends on the fund that predominantly it is not our capital funds are not in our general fund so it depends on the restricted nature of wherever those dollars are um if it is a general fund dollar that we were planning to use on capital and we were we received uh federal dollars to to supplement or to replace then we could

[87:01] allocate for a general purpose but if it's segregated there it might be more restricted depending on the fund i'm still not entirely clear but i can um i can kind of take that offline with cara perhaps i don't want to take up a lot of time on this well i i guess i would just add clarity that yes if in fact it was infrastructure for utilities that would relate to the utility fund so okay following up on that yeah would fertility fund dollars so okay great so so it really depends on the project um general fund project goes to the general fund if it's a transportation project would go to the transportation fund sewer to sewer et cetera et cetera yeah exactly okay just wanted to clarify that one um and then um kind of following up on some of the questions that sam asked

[88:00] there are there could be um pilot projects that are proposed by organizations and if they are if they are um that that pilot project itself would be a one-time um funding and um would the time frame in which the expenditure needs to happen for the um arpa funds would that be that pilot project be looked at the same way um as the expansions that were mentioned earlier so in other words if the pilot project were successful we'd have some time to figure out how to fund it on an ongoing basis correct that's exactly right just like in any plan we would bring back for some of the longer term initiatives if we were so

[89:01] i'll give you a good example in the short term i mentioned some work in affordable commercial spaces we are looking at expanded pilots essentially for that so if we for instance figure out a way to participate in shared commercial kitchen space for food trucks and restaurants and that's successful and something we think is appropriate for the city to participate in the longer term uh we we could absolutely consider that and that would be a part of any plan is to say this is this is how we're proposing us arpa dollars this is where we're unclear about the long-term use of dollars and where we would need a little bit more research and work to make sure it's it's able to be funded sustainably great thank you and then um another clarification question on the broadband

[90:00] um when chris um mentioned chris you mentioned that um when the bids came in for broadband phase one they were lower than anticipated and so the money that was the the delta between the end the budgeted and and the lower uh bid that went towards the bhp sites in the phase two portion of it did i understand that correctly that went towards uh as we were building this 65 miles of of backbone it went towards extending essentially some connections out to those bhp sites it also included some other funding for things like connecting some of our uh traffic signals that sort of thing so that's all the fiber phase one okay yeah which is separate from any other future work okay great um

[91:00] that's all i have thank you very much thanks mary adam thanks rachel uh two quick questions first one being as far as the feedback um goes from the community i know you probably have a general list of organizations you go to and uh things along those lines i was wondering are the relevant boards and commissions that may have um you know some sort of stake in what kind of projects happen uh be consulted as well is that a plan for the process yeah it's a good question and we have we have received some specific um feedback already for from certain boards or commissions uh i wouldn't say we have an explicit process to go ask every border commission but there are absolutely going to be touch points based on the project or initiative and we'll rely on our departments as we're planning and bringing back a strategy to say you know

[92:01] this is appropriate for us to get some feedback from our boards and commissions on on this project at this level or at this touch point um it'll depend but certainly that is a part of the outreach thanks for that second question being in this uh funding allocation it's going to bridge over two different councils and so some decision making will happen in one council and some will happen in another what are staff's contingencies should the new council decide that the original plans aren't what they are looking for in the final approval well i certainly wouldn't want to predict the future but i what i can say is that your feedback this evening will be really helpful in helping us to prioritize the areas that we ought to be spending our time in researching and developing a more specific strategy if that is under another council to

[93:01] consider those various different strategies they can tell us whether those continue to be the priorities or we need to do some more work in going down the list but what we're trying to do is reflect existing community goals plans uh engagements that we've already done this council's feedback that hopefully are in close alignment to where we're trying to go together and that'll hopefully help it won't prevent um you know future discussion by any means but hopefully we will stay on the same track gotcha i i guess more specifically is there importance in the timeline or if there's you know a bunch of different goals that end up coming up with a different council can this be extended a little bit past early 2020 too uh yeah i think that'll depend on uh the amount of work once we find getting into these initiatives and developing those the strategies that i mentioned if we

[94:00] need a bit more time to make sure that it's realistic and it reflects uh community expectations then we'll certainly let council know at that time um our goal is to try to move as fast as we can within a reasonable time frame and we anticipate at least making significant process in some of the areas that we've outlined by the end of the year thanks for that mark thanks adam i'm going to call on myself for two questions um first one of the the questions you're asking is are there areas of recovery that are missing or should be emphasized during the long and medium term planning efforts so for like for the longer term considerations you've listed public health and safety affordability of service access and community and economic resiliency i think and then we're supposed to identify any that are missing um but for me i would probably want to hear from as adam suggested boards and

[95:00] commissions and community and community connectors sort of before i i really could say um whether any are missing or whether we've prioritized the right three so i just want to clarify what are you asking for in terms of feedback tonight before we hear from the community yeah it's a fair question those areas of focus are intended to be broad what we were specifically asking was looking at the list of example initiatives to say are there anything within those initiatives that based on your work and knowledge of the community that you would place particular emphasis on or see any glaring items that are that are missing as we uh go through our process i i agree there are certainly things that as we work with the community and other stakeholders that may pop up that are not reflected on this list and we want to make sure we can be nimble in response to those needs but we thought this was a good starting point

[96:00] is to try and identify what some of the things have been talked about for quite some time in this community and try to narrow in on those that we we ought to be focused on in the next several months okay that helps thanks um and then my second question is around there's a million dollars targeted on um emerging needs and it says that any need that arises hang on there's a dog that's going to go for my food here any any need that arises will be communicated to council and the community prior to expenditure so i just want to understand could that 1 million be sort of flexed across all the departments or are used anywhere are there limits to it other than as i recall from earlier in the presentation there are some limits on what arpa funds can be used for like you can't reimburse um our reserves so would that million be just totally flexible or what would the limits be uh yes it would still be subject to the arpa restrictions

[97:01] our intention would be to not access that million dollars ideally there wouldn't be needs that arise over the coming months until we're back in front of council with a longer term strategy but an example could be if we're looking at uh capacity restrictions again in indoor venues and um all of a sudden there's a need to try to patch through the late fall winter months for um arts venues and uh restaurants and so on and so forth so that might be an example where we come back and say council could we spend a little bit of those dollars for that purpose another might be rental assistance if it takes even longer to to have some of the county resources become available and that need is is greater if the eviction moratorium expires so on and so forth there's just things that based on the reality of the public health situation that may come up and we want to be able to at least have the spending authority that we could um you know notify instead of go through a

[98:00] formal expenditure process which as you know could take us you know four or five weeks okay but it it it sounds like though it could be used for in any department um and so i guess i would just this is probably getting into the comment section a little bit but also going along with adam's point about um this is going to cross over two councils um and and it may seem a little bit micromanaging but it is a million dollars um and i could see uh you know some council members really supporting and others bristling at an expenditure so um i guess given that that it is a decent dollar value even if a drop in the bucket in our budget as as curt fernhofer just said like you know a couple hundred thousand dollars is a big deal for some departments so um uh again i'm kind of crossing into comments here so i guess i will be kicking off comments with it uh but i would prefer that we keep that million in a bucket that we

[99:01] vote on and especially because it could be used uh by by a new council during a new council's tenure and with that i will open it for other um discussions on or anyone who wants to weigh in on the two questions which are do we support the process for arpa funding prioritization and are there areas of recovery that are missing or should be emphasized during medium and long-term planning efforts and i see junie's hand thank you rachel i had a question and i think i've answered it myself um i fully support staff's direction here when it comes to the funding my only my only i guess issue although i am the representative representative on council for bhp uh seeing that we're setting aside nearly a million dollars

[100:00] which is great we're serving community needs we're serving people who are residents of bhp but nonetheless i i get a sense or at least based on my own perception that it's a little bit lopsided when we're thinking about equity and the question that is not answered for me tonight is we have a few mobile home sites as well around boulder and i'm wondering as part of the fiber phase one build out are there any of these um you know these um mobile home um housing have access will have similar access as well because we're setting aside one million dollars for one group but other parts of the community could be neglected so i believe that you know these parts of the community should actually be part of this process as well um so if we're gonna set aside a million dollars for bhp we should also set maybe 500 000 or 400 000 for these

[101:02] other parts of of the community it's just to me feel very lopsided although i am fully in support of bhp and the work that they do they do amazing work supporting our community but they're not the only community that has needs so i would like to see something like that um as part of the process um what i you know to me it's still very much gray as well when it comes to how many household we intend to serve with the 400 000 is it enough when it comes to the utility bill assistance i think having that number would have been good but i understand limitations staff time and all that but that's still a little bit gray it's almost like we're setting aside money but we don't know the needs that we're really serving um yeah and that's actually my my uh comments to staff i think it's a great presentation again i've been part of the subcommittee with mark and mary and they do great work and

[102:01] staff really doing amazing work to see it you know to see the presentation on the back end tonight um it's really great but some of these uh challenges i see with the bridging the digital divide and also the utility bills assistance thank you thanks so much juni aaron yes well i do absolutely think that you all are on the right track i think you've done a phenomenal job of analyzing all the different needs and the different stages and keeping amounts in reserve for transformative projects and also for future needs i think fundamentally you're definitely on the right track i do just have a few comments in addition um you know building on what sam and mary were asking about in terms of pilot programs with one-time funding i just would like to encourage you to uh keep that in mind that you know they're it's i think it's perfectly fine to stand up some some new programs some new

[103:00] pilot programs with some of this funding because i think in particular in the area of uh substance abuse and mental health treatment like these are areas of deep under investment in our society and our community and there are whole categories of services that we don't offer in this area and so if we could put together something a pilot program that offers some of those services that then hopefully would work out well and then we could find the grant funding or you know maybe a county tax support or some other source of funding allow that to continue so i'd really encourage you to look at things in that area and and in particular there to coordinate with the county especially i think the county may have some interest in moving in those directions and of course they're getting more money than we are so we might be able to put something together in partnership with them or maybe some other uh local municipalities and jurisdictions as well to get some things off the ground that could really plug a major gap in our

[104:03] social safety net and um yeah and to just look for partnerships in in general you know we've had some great uh proposals and ideas like from the naacp about supporting black businesses uh we got a great um kind of position paper from the east county housing coalition about ways that our funds could support uh affordable housing in town uh i know the the boulder chamber is working closely with local businesses about the kinds of support they need to be successful so i know you all are thinking about that but just really encourage you to continue uh because to the extent that we can work with other organizations and then also leverage other forms of funding that was one of your key tenants i think that's really important we have all these potential sources that might come through with the infrastructure tax the new budget that's coming somewhat close to being passed so those leverage opportunities where we can take

[105:01] one of our dollars and multiply it into three or five or ten um would be fantastic you know i appreciated the pretty much everything you've got in the short term i think is is right on target you know small business support is a is a deep need in the community and you know we got some letters from restaurant tours today about the needs of that industry so i know um hopefully they'll be able to access some of that funding um if necessary and appropriate and also you know we do have these unknowns with delta getting worse um possibly and uh the economic situation could get worse for dining and maybe other industries as we head into the fall and winter so i'm glad to see you have some funding positioned um in case we have those needs come up so i appreciate that on your side um appreciated seeing the amount for some additional severe weather capacity and i hope that's another one that we keep an eye on um again if things get worse uh that might be an area where we need to devote

[106:00] some additional funding to make sure we're successful this winter with our sheltering program maybe whether that's hotel rooms or some some other kind of short-term source so i appreciate you working on that and then one thing in terms of transformation um that i wanted to mention you know one of the things that we've identified as a probable goal for the city is the annexation of the san lazaro mobile home park we talked about in the context of the east boulder subcommittee plan i that may be an area where we could start to use some of this funding to help realize that i don't know exactly what their infrastructure needs are but water may well be one of them which i know is one of the categories we're allowed to use infrastructure structure funding for and those folks may need other other forms of support that could be eligible for this so this might be an opportunity to get that process started with these transformative funds and then one other thing i'll mention in terms of the support for our mobile home

[107:01] park communities is there are water infrastructure gaps in several of our mobile home communities but the ones inside the city limits the ones right outside the city limits again water is one of those things you could use funding for so maybe there's an opportunity for an investment maybe a public private partnership with a mobile home park owner where we could upgrade the infrastructure the water infrastructure and one or more of those parks so that's another idea i just want to get out there to consider as you're looking through this so that's what i got y'all are doing great work and i look forward to seeing how this these funds can really make a long-term lasting difference in our community thanks so much aaron sam you're up next thank you rachel i want to second most of what aaron said i think you are totally on the right track here i think that having a quarter of this money being used to backfill city needs is important and i think the way you teed that up is excellent so i'm

[108:02] i'm pretty happy with where that is looking to the transformative pieces i also think that that's teed up pretty well i want to second a couple things aaron said one of which is the mental health and substance abuse services i think we all recognize that as a gap in our services for the homeless and i i think i would like to see it focus there to the extent that we are crafting that pilot program i think that's that gap uh is one area where i i think that if we can use this money to get started there um and if we can do it in tandem especially with the county where a lot of that responsibility lies and where some of the funding lies i think that would be great um but i also want to second what aaron had to say about mobile home parks and water infrastructure i think that is a great uh way to go i think it needs to be matched by the private dollars to the extent that the um

[109:00] mobile home parks are owned by private owners i think they need to have some skin in the game for the upgrades but i especially want to agree with aaron on san lazaro um so i think that if we had to pick that would be one we would bring our first housing into the east boulder sub community officially and that would be kind of the leading edge for we hope to see more of there then i guess the only other area i thought much of what you have outlined for how to look at small business assistance is good but on the climate i just wanted to say of course our climate initiatives group is going to be most expert on where the dollars could be used but i focus mostly on electrification at this point because um we know where excel is going we know where our power supply emissions are going where they're headed and they're on the track that we're monitoring but

[110:00] much more complicated our buildings and transportation and electrification is a focus of our efforts and we have a lot of funding coming for vehicle electrification through the state transportation bill that just passed this year but i think that building electrification is a hard nut to crack and so any any um interest that climate initiatives gives you in how to work on programs for that i think this funding could help get those programs off the ground and help us learn what works and what doesn't so that was basically the only thing i wanted to add to what we've touched on before but i think this is great work it's a really good start and i look forward to finally making the appropriations on it thank you thanks sam mark wallach you're up okay i'm going to be exceedingly agreeable tonight um i first i agree with judy at the need to serve all of our economically challenged

[111:01] communities not just bhp related facilities i'm going to agree with rachel uh that there should be a check-in with council before you're spending uh you know an undoes an undifferentiated 1 million dollars i think that's an important thing to do and i'm going to agree with aaron um particularly with respect to uh standing up some new programs to for to fill the social services gap um as well as yeah i think the suggestion about dealing with the mobile home park water infrastructure is very important and i would like to see that happen particularly with respect to those manufacturing home parks that are within our city limits uh the only i thought it was a great presentation i'm i'm generally very very supportive one comment that was made a while ago however gives me a little bit of pause about the concept of

[112:01] running a program out for the next three or four years without having a clear direction of where the funding will come from post 2026. um i am always reluctant to adopt the philosophy that god will provide with respect to the funding of programs and so i would i would want to be very careful about that uh but other than that i i think you guys are on the right track i think you've done good work um and with the comments i've made tonight i think you uh you know your uh priorities and your concepts are good so thank you thank you agreeable mark that's lovely mary you're up next yeah it's nice to see an agreeable mark thanks rachel um so i was particularly impressed by um the appendix c and how thoughtful that was and it really covered a lot of um

[113:01] the the sam made a reference to uh the meeting that we had on friday with the naacp and um and i think what they would like to see in their letter that they had sent to us a lot of what they're asking for could be covered in that through specific asks on pilot projects so so thank you for that i think it was very very thoughtfully put together um i'm going to agree with pretty much everything that's been said i want to talk about broadband phase two um and um and and with reference to the mobile home park water infrastructure there's also that broadband infrastructure and again in that in the situation of mobile home parks there would have to be some agreeableness from the mobile home park

[114:02] owners in order to be able to take it from the connection to the mobile home park onto the individual unit so whatever can be done there similarly to how my colleagues have spoken about the the public-private water infrastructure to work with them in a similar fashion for the broadband infrastructure i think um that would be really helpful i particularly um um was interested in the comments that were made by aaron and mark i believe that about some vasaro mobile home park and how can we start to mobilize some infrastructure needs to be able to eventually annex um that mobile home park because they have some serious water issues um and then um

[115:01] one of the there was a an email that i saw come around today that was from um effa emergency family assistance association which i they were looking into the gap that was created or should i say the the the kids that were left behind um through the pandemic because of lack of access or great access to the internet so there was an educational gap that was created and how to be able to have kids that were left behind because of their inadequate access to broadband how to help them catch up um so i realize that a lot of that falls on the school district but whatever the city can do to provide access to funds that would help with that effort that effa is putting forward

[116:02] so um but i think that it's all covered through your your appendix c all of these projects that we've mentioned could possibly be covered um so but other than that um i i think you all did a great job and like i said especially um impressed with the thoughtfulness of appendix c so um thank you very much thanks mary um adam i think it's up to you to bring us home cool i'm also going to be quite agreeable um mark's set in a good tone uh especially along the lines of uh concepts and piloting some things that we haven't done this feels like one of those opportunities that we have to do so um as mary referenced there was a lot of good ideas out there uh in letters like the naacp

[117:00] um the only place where i'll antagonize mark a little bit because it's one of my favorite things to do as well is if we don't pilot anything the whole concept of a pilot is you got to try something to see if it works if it's working to solve the problem uh you're trying to solve then the funding tends to follow if it doesn't you get to end it and move on so i i would like to be a little bit more bold with some of this funding and really try to address those areas of the people who are on edge and either were pushed off the edge by the pandemic or are very much more on edge now that it occurred um so those are definitely the areas of focus i think are most important and i think staff has reflected that really well in those areas that they presented so thank you for everyone who put in the work it's really appreciated

[118:00] thanks adam sandra i see you have a hand up i do thanks um i just wanted to circle back on the question that came up earlier regarding free water and i was able to obtain some information our office did some research back in march of 2020 somewhat unrelated but regarding low-income rate programs and the possibility of developing a city fund for water and so the research that we did related to that was that yes there would be a way to do that using outside organizations and partnering with them there is a a charter section that talks about how revenues that are derived from the operation of the water and sewer system have to be used exclusively for maintenance operation and that and so forth and so i think that's where that

[119:00] free water comes from so there is a way i believe to comply with the charter and and also use the funds for the purpose that was stated earlier great thank you for looking into that for us you bet okay so i think that wraps up uh discussion so let me ask um mark and kara and nuria maybe do you think that you've gotten all the answers and information you need from this discussion i certainly think we do happy to hear if others agree i appreciate council support and feedback this evening and we've got some work ahead but i think we have some clear direction i'll echo that and just say thank you so much for your feedback i mean eight thank you mark and cara for setting that up and moving that behind the two of them are a lot of staff that have put in a lot of hard work to move this forward but frankly this is precisely the information that we need we had been talking about uh things like san lazaro

[120:02] we have been talking about um how do we sort of create a more robust boards and commission feedback so please know that we are taking note and that we will um be following up as we move forward if there are additional things as you've been thinking about it that you want to share with us please let us know but this is really the depth and the level of feedback we were looking for thank you thanks nuria and thanks cara and mark again um and then nuri i think i'm going to hand it right back to you for an update on the opioid settlement yep and we actually uh have someone from the county who's going to be joining us but maybe kristin wants to tee that on yeah thank you um so good evening kristen heiser deputy director of housing and human services um so in line with the city council's interest 9 showing up um how how we shore up and really build up our mental and behavioral services and infrastructure

[121:01] across the region the city is working very closely with the county and our regional partners to assess the mental behavioral health resources as they exist now the needs the gaps and what opportunities there are and we are joined here tonight by the county who's going to give us a presentation on another opportunity we have to resource um and meeting those needs so brief introduction to invite kelly veidt the strategic implementation manager of boulder county community services she's here to present boulder county's participation in the opioid litigation and related settlements and then following kelly's presentation we would love to answer any questions that council might have and engage in a discussion or dialogue relating to this item so with that i'm going to hand it over to kelly thank you so much kristen and thank you to the council for inviting me here tonight um before i move forward i just want to confirm can folks hear me okay and see

[122:00] my screen all right anyway thanks okay perfect so as kristen mentioned um my name is kelly bite i'm the strategic implementation uh manager for boulder county community services i work specifically within the community justice services division um and i am here as a representative of a smaller cohort of individuals that have come acros come together across the county um to really dive into some initial planning around some forthcoming dollars that we know will be landing both in the county as well as local local jurisdictions local municipalities within the county in the coming years um really today's update is you know about some of the initial framework that we've pulled together within that smaller cohort um and some of the sort of key takeaways for where there needs to be additional focus from key leadership across both

[123:01] the county as well as the the municipalities within the county moving forward so just to start with a little bit of background when we talk about the opioid litigation um or lawsuits essentially we're talking about a number of lawsuits multiple year litigation that um has was brought for forward by a coalition of local colorado governments um including boulder county and really the the litigation was brought against a number of pharmaceutical companies that um you know knowingly misled providers and the public about the dangers of opioids and really the the intention of these lawsuits was to recoup losses for damages done to our local communities and to our our local treatment structures and overwhelming our our treatment our

[124:01] harm reduction our prevention space around sud and opioid use disorder in the process um and so there's a number of settlements that we're going to be talking about here today i'll go through sort of the four main uh large pharmaceutical companies and where those settlements currently sit um but they're uh one is one has already been finalized and the other three uh large ones are very close to finalization um and so you know i want to talk a little bit about the memorandum of understanding that the colorado state attorney general would be putting forward that's really going to outline the stipulations that both the region boulder county um as well as sort of the local municipalities within the region need to participate in in order to trigger a distribution of those funds so just a little bit more about where we're at right now um again we're going to talk about the memorandum of understanding but this is really sort of

[125:00] the the the crux of what needs to be finalized and that work is sitting currently with the attorney general's office um this mou outlines exactly what the attorney general expects to see from our region and from any participating municipalities in terms of a two-year plan in order for the attorney general to approve distributions of funds um to our region so some key components of the mou and you know we had a lot of discussion early on with community stakeholders about you know what how can we ensure that the majority of these dollars are hitting at a local or regional level um you know we nothing against uh the state infrastructure and the state's ability to sort of distribute these dollars but um we know that the impacts of the opioid epidemic have been very localized um and there's no agencies organizations there's no nobody that knows our communities and the

[126:01] disproportionate impact that has happened to some of our communities around sud and opioid use disorder um better than our local governments and so um after you know a few iterations of what the distribution structure could potentially look like the attorney general landed on having 80 of the funds really distributed at the local level so what that means is 20 going to local governments and 60 going to those regions and i'll put up a map in a second but when we talk about regions um the i believe the largest region is six counties uh boulder county is in of itself one complete region of the 19 across colorado um then there's 10 percent that's put in a set-aside account um statewide abatement fund specifically for infrastructure build-out and so when we talk about infrastructure in this particular context we're really talking about you know roi's or releases of information

[127:00] data sharing agreement across multiple systems um you know software that really facilitates community or excuse me connectivity to substance use disorder treatment and these are typically the things that we've identified as getting in the way in terms of connecting folks with substance use disorder treatment um services in their communities so a lot of infrastructure build out um and talk of infrastructure build out uh really led the aeg to create a carve out specifically for projects that have to do with infrastructure um so important thing to note all of the sort of first three pieces you see in that distribution schedule those are all triggered by this participation in the memorandum of understanding and once that memorandum of understanding is signed onto by a region and a locality um the there is a regional structure a regional body that needs to come together and develop a two-year action plan for

[128:02] how we plan to distribute our funds now that two-year action plan we have been told it doesn't need to be uh you know super intensely in the weeds um but some highlight of our intended mechanism and strategy and you know how we identified which programming or interventions we really wanted to support through this um and you know how we were thoughtful in looking at community needs assessments that have already taken place uh so that we can you know not reinvent the wheel but rather just start from a place of already knowing where our community gaps are supplement that with a you know a thoughtful structure for gleaning community input uh and then really sort of outlining how we plan to to spend those funds for the next two years moving forward so that two-year plan and that mou will trigger the majority of those funds the only exception is that statewide abatement fund that will in fact be sort of a a typical

[129:01] grant or rfp process um to a flaw excuse me apply for specific funding um and so we we don't have uh a ton of guidance yet on that rfp process and you know when we'll see a little bit more about grants that are going to be funded through that um but suffice to say that that'll be sort of a more traditional rfp and grant process in terms of use for funds you know we had a lot of discussion early on about you know how how creative can we be in expanding out um you know the focus or the scope of these these dollars and applying these dollars and you know i think we're all well aware that there's you know heavy intersectionality between our increase in addiction um our decrease in availability for substance use disorder treatment and services um and a number of other you know social sort of concerns like housing

[130:00] homelessness um access to other health care so i think that you know our intention was how can we figure out what's been impacted by opioid use disorder and the increase um in substance use disorder as a whole in our region and can we do we have the liberty with these dollars to sort of extend our focus to some of that program programming and intervention and so the guidance that we've gotten so far from the ag um is that the the the funds really do need to be used um very specifically for programming that uh it has to do with treatment prevention harm reduction um co-responder uh is a huge uh strategy that a lot of our our communities are looking into that is uh something that is definitely approved as well as some other uh emphasis on criminal justice and you know broader attempts to divert folks from criminal justice if their main um sort of charges

[131:02] or needs actually uh are more aligned with substance use disorder and treatment connectivity um community leadership staffing again i've already mentioned there's some infrastructure emphasis and then administrative costs can also be supported through these funds so this is a draft of our current uh region regional distribution um this draft was updated there um on the 26th of april so i think uh you know one change to point out we do now have 19 regions broomfield and boulder just recently decided to go um do become separate regions uh my uh understanding is that they were originally lumped together um but for various reasons thought it would be more appropriate to to sort of tackle their distribution channels separately um and their allocation strategies separately so these are our 19 regions and i just

[132:01] put this up to you know kind of illustrate for you all as we talk about some of these dollar amounts um coming forward and you know we have regional shares that you can imagine you know who's all getting how that is basically being split up across the state of colorado so the four major uh litigation um settlements that i wanted to kind of talk about today are the purdue sackler bankruptcy the johnson and johnson settlement the mckinsey settlement which is actually the first one that has truly quote unquote landed um here in colorado state and the mall and crop bankruptcy settlement and so you know some of these numbers i will point out some of the larger ones where we see uh you know billions um those are those are total amounts for all of the states that were involved in the litigation so where we do know more appropriately

[133:00] the uh correct colorado amount um and you know even more so where we know the the more regional amount that we will be allocated um that's indicated here as well so um purdue sackler bankruptcy we are looking at 3.5 to 5 billion over the next nine years for uh the governments that were involved in that particular coalition and settlement um johnson and johnson you're looking at um an 18-year distribution scale of 12 of about 22.8 billion dollars um and with the first nine years seeing five billion of those dollars the mckinsey settlement again this is the one that has uh actively landed here in colorado and so we do know a little bit more about the colorado cut for that settlement um it's a 573 million dollar total uh and there is a little bit over 9 million of that that's coming to the state of colorado 270 000 of which is coming to the region

[134:00] of boulder county and specifically 43 000 that's coming to boulder county as its own entity um so that's the distribution that we're really talking about when we talk about that that memorandum of understanding and that two-year plan that needs to be developed um by a regional committee uh once that memorandum of understanding is complete finally the male and crop bankruptcy settlement is one thing 1.6 billion total um and governments and tribes will be receiving up to 1.3 of the 1.3 billion of those dollars um starting in 2022. so um reason to kind of put this up as well is to just kind of highlight that a lot of these uh settlements they're coming in in sort of waves of funding um and so you know it's it's not as though we're looking at gigantic pots happening all at once um and really what we need to do in terms of developing um an appropriate

[135:00] structure and appropriate allocation strategy is be super mindful that it needs to be something that both responds to our needs now but also has the flex and give to adapt for a 20-year period of distribution so um you know as i said these are we're looking at a minimum of 18 years for distribution for some of these settlements oh and there are a number of smaller cases uh still tied up in litigation um so we don't have a super accurate account of what we could expect in terms of the settlement dollars for those for those suits so a little bit about some near-term action um you know i've kind of already alluded to this and um you know this really came forward with uh from the ag uh as you know a lot of our local community members said okay well as the mou is continuing to be finalized and as some of these uh excuse me litigation details are continuing to come forward what can we do well how can

[136:01] we begin to organize um around you know what we might hope to expect and the strategies we know we are going to need to develop uh in terms of funding allocation so the ag put put forward some guidance that um we do want to have well no we do need to have a regional uh committee that is sort of the fund allocation um strategic committee uh this committee would be in charge of submitting that memorandum of understanding and the two-year action plan to the attorney general for approval um and so you know some of the questions that the eg fielded were really you know who do you who do you suggest in terms of populating the roster of these of these committees and this is the guidance we received which is really you should have one or two members that are appointed by the county government most counties are moving to to to bring forward their commissioners themselves um one individual

[137:00] appointed from some of the larger human service departments like public health and housing and human services um some additional representatives from law enforcement and criminal justice the sheriff's office being a big one to be represented in that space as well as the district attorney's office and bringing forward uh folks from that represent municipal or county court systems within the region and then holding space for one to three representatives that uh will represent rotating cities from around the region um and they can also be council council members or mayors of those respective um localities representatives holding space as well um for uh counties or cities who to sort of come together uh before deciding if there's anybody who's already missing from the table and who they they do need to supplement and sort of bring into that fold as a voting member um and then additional suggestions on non-voting membership

[138:01] um one of the suggestions within this group that you know are our particular code excuse me cohort within the county um recommended actually elevating up to the voting members our folks with lived experience um making sure that we are are being equitable and reflecting within any of the long-term planning and fund allocation the voice of those who have actually been impacted in our communities by the increase in opioid use disorder so some additional near steps these are items that would be tackled by that regional committee uh the first is really that the committee needs to establish a fiscal agent for the region to to receive the funds um and then to sort of own the distribution as as reflected in our distribution strategy and our two-year action plan um we also need to identify any of the

[139:02] cities that wish to allocate some of their funding into the larger pot with the region of boulder um you know there have been talks about some localities getting a pretty small dollar amount and you know i'm totally making up this example but could the town of lafayette do more with say a fifteen thousand dollar allocation if they put that allocation towards a broader strategy that's in effect um at the regional level that includes representation from lafayette um but the strategy is joining the pot with all of the other localities that are represented within boulder as a region um so there's been a lot of talk about what those structures of collaboration could potentially look like and the funding streams that could potentially be developed between local jurisdictions and the region as a whole i will say no concrete decisions have yet been made about how to actualize that that distribution channel between local governments in the in the region

[140:01] of boulder county um and then the this is the the part you've already heard me sort of mention the main goal of this regional body is to create a two-year plan um that really identifies their the approved purposes within boulder county that we want to request funds for um that is the plan that will be forwarded to the attorney general with the signed mou from this regional body and release those dollars oops oh sorry that little bottom part kind of hid under my my closed captioning um and then the last item for this group to to really settle on is an evaluation approach so making sure that there's some sort of tracking modality or mechanism in place so that we're holding ourselves accountable to the two-year plan um that anything we said we were going to fund and the manner in which we said we were going to fund it um that were that we're tracking that and you know evaluating it over the

[141:01] course of the two years so switching gears just a little bit i did want to talk about this this small cohort that i mentioned um that i sit on as well as a few others within the county um we do have representation from all of our human service departments um public health housing and human services community services and community justice services through myself the sheriff's office and we as i mentioned there's a lot of there's a lot of talk around some of the interventions that are housed sort of within the criminal justice space and so having sheriff's office and da's office representation on this committee has been critical um and then sort of our local expert in all the little all the litigation nuances is david hughes from the county attorney's office um who really serves as a liaison between you know what's going on in the litigation space which is a a daily change honestly um and then sort of translating that back to this committee

[142:00] whose global goal is to sort of take that information and translate it down to you know what do our stakeholders need to know what do we need to communicate out to our community and to our county as a whole so you know the the approach or the main sort of action for that smaller cohort thus far has just been to start to parse out the work ahead um looking at this sort of in three particular phases and trying to figure out what's our global goal per each phase and then therefore what's our subsequent activities to actually achieve those goals um and most importantly who really needs to come together and around what body of work in order to achieve that that phased goal so in phase one this is really where we're at right now and you've already heard me talk at length about how our main goal right now is getting that governance structure in place so they can complete the mou and create a

[143:00] two-year action plan um really we're focusing on the dollar amounts that we know for certain right now which is that 270 000 plus the 43 000 that's landing specifically for the county um applying pressure to the ag to really get finished with that mou so that our local regions and governments can come together um and you know do any final sort of tweaking or negotiations and and sort of bringing back questions to the ag that they might have about the ou excuse me the mou and then really diving into that two-year plan development and then some subsequent activities that our group has been involved with is really just cataloging where our current urgent needs are um so again being really intentional about looking at past community needs assessments um public health has done one our county substance use advisory group which is a coalition of stakeholders really dedicated to examining um substance use disorder and its effects across the region

[144:00] um from the space of harm reduction and prevention up to treatment uh they do an annual um or bi-annual uh community needs assessment as well so looking at what we already know about our communities and pulling forward some of these shovel ready programs that we know um you know we can put smaller dollar amounts towards and have them go a long way um because these programs are already stood up they're already able to be easily invested in in terms of phase two of work we're really looking at you know what is the body what does that regional committee do to develop a broader allocation strategy um and how do they get how do they accept regional proposals for uh for funding so really that that phase of work is about building consensus across the county departments across the county as a region and the local municipalities that are participating within the region um looking at some of those needs assessments not just from the county but from some of our local

[145:00] jurisdictions that have put in similar work to to really figure out where the impact of things like opioid use disorder are happening within their respective communities and then to start planning out you know what our goals in terms of these longer infrastructure project projects that we do know the state is putting us this set aside uh fund in place for us to apply for some of those funds and so our goal in that year is really just to implement the two-year action plan that we've set forward in phase one um to monitor it and to make sure that we're we're putting in place um a broader allocation strategy that has a lot more inclusive lanes for community input and stakeholder input as we start to plan out the full 18 to 20-year trajectory of this fund funding and then phase three of the work is really about sustainability planning um so this is you know immediately after we get through that two-year plan we've we've got another you know 16 years that

[146:01] we we have funding coming towards us that we have you know a really long um runway i should say that we uh are able to do some some really concise sustainability planning um so the the sort of phase of work for the committee and that period of time will really be to kind of reflect on what's already been accomplished um and also reflect on the makeup of the group and the charge of the group at that time to say are we still the correct folks that need to come together around this work has anything shifted has anything changed um so sort of a pdsa cycle internally or sort of a quality improvement mechanism aspect to um you know framing out our own sustainability of our work um and then also looking at what's already been evaluated what we've already done in that two-year plan uh what's been working and what uh potentially hasn't been working so well

[147:01] so finally um you know before diving into questions i did just want to point out some initial work that was put forward by the colorado consortium for prescription drug abuse um this is you know back in march of 2020 when the opioid litigation first started to become you know a buzzword or a topic of interest for folks um the consortium decided to pull together a number of stakeholders that really spanned across the space of excuse me treatment and recovery prevention harm reduction um criminal justice and other you know local community based organizations dedicated to in some way tackling addiction and opioid use disorder um and they put them through um you know a multiple day exercise but that started with the question of if you had 100 million dollars hypothetically that you need to figure out an allocation strategy for where would you put those dollars um to effectively rebuild the

[148:02] damage that's sort of occurred through our increase in addiction and opioid use disorder within our communities and this image that you see here is an aggregate of those results um from that group uh there is in the in the full report a further breakdown um of responses and the allocations uh by particular sectors so it's probably no surprise that if you looked at folks that were representing the treatment and recovery space there was a little bit more uh emphasis and desire to allocate funds towards the treatment and recovery space and same for the other respective sectors but suffice to say that by and large the overwhelming majority in the aggregate was that treatment and recovery is is really where we need to focus our energy and our funds um specifically bringing forward um treatment and recovery options in rural communities and

[149:00] underserved communities that are um not in our urban cores where folks are you know able to access more recovery support so additionally in the report and this is a framework that we have followed in our initial discussions um they did do a breakdown of those four categories those four sort of sectors that really are you know the qualifying sectors for some of this funding um and they did put forward a number of example programs um or interventions that would really qualify for these funds now this is not at all to imply that there is programming or interventions outside of these types that wouldn't also qualify for funding um of the litigation dollars but this is really just a sort of provided framework for communities as they start to figure out you know what do we already have that's working in our community what's working in our neighboring communities that we don't have that we'd like to start um and you know how do we build up and

[150:01] support some of the interventions that are are overwhelmed by by this opioid epidemic currently so um i won't go through all of these these are uh also listed in that consortium report uh there's a link to the full report on the last slide and i can also send that out to the group afterwards if folks are interested in taking a bigger look at the work the consortium did to really um you know develop a fairly robust mechanism for community input so questions um i know we have time for questions and before we dive in i will just sort of give the disclaimer that i'm without my team tonight unfortunately and so um you know if there are questions that i can't answer and i'm happy to forward them to uh david hughes our county attorney representative who's a lot more versed in uh the fund allocation strategies and

[151:01] the details of the mou but unfortunately he could not be here tonight um but again happy to take all of your questions and i'll do my best to get you the information you need thanks so much kelly that was an awesome presentation and informative um and if you um i will call on aaron in a second and then sam for questions but also if you have specific feedback that you're looking for from us tonight let us know what what that might be uh and then go ahead please in terms of specific feedback i think that we're just sort of um interested in hearing what the city of boulder uh you know how what the timeline would be and who the individuals that need to be engaged in this work are um so that we can move forward that really near-term goal of developing excuse me developing the uh regional body for governance um i think that you know the

[152:01] conversations thus far have really been at the county level just because we are a region um but again you know what that collaboration structure could and should look like when we talk about looping in our local municipalities i think that's something that you know we're just starting to dive into that space and could really use a lot of guidance and and would love to hear your feedback on that's super helpful thank you okay aaron you're up thanks so much for that very detailed and our presentation i appreciate that a couple questions for you the first one so we we have one of the settlements where we know what the numbers are and that those are the numbers that you put in there do we have any kind of order of magnitude sense of how much money might be coming to us as a county uh from the other settlements um i don't not that i know of at this time um i think all of the larger settlements have not been broken down to the county level it's sort of the last step in the process um in terms of that mckinsey settlement

[153:00] we actually didn't even know our our allocation amount at the local and regional level until about a month ago um and that has been the closest one to finalizing for quite some time now so um unfortunately it's it's there's been a lot of misinformation kind of floating around uh and about some of these settlements and some of the dollars that are attached to them um and you know i think the added challenge comes in that a lot of the um initial conversations around these settlements are really confidential um and protected so we're not necessarily getting just in time updates on some of these uh litigations and these suits as they move along so unfortunately i don't have a really concrete number for you on some of those larger settlements but i would be happy to see if somebody else in our in our cohort has some more updated information on that yeah no worries but and i'm just talking about order of magnitude so if somebody has a sense that it's going to be similar kinds of numbers to the 240 or

[154:01] if it more or less it hopefully won't be like those uh class action lawsuits that you're a member of and then you get a check for a dollar 22 at the end right so okay thanks for that and then the other one is so this is obviously about an opioid settlement which is an enormous area of addiction problems in our community but of course we have other forms of substance abuse as well so to what extent do these funds really need to be pointed at opioid addiction versus possibly other forms of substance abuse that people are suffering from yeah so we do have clarity that other substance use disorder um treatment is appropriate for use of the funds um i think the only real parameters around you know where we get into the space of scope creep is when we started to talk about um you know housing services and you know some of the intersectionality between um increase in addiction and the inability to get folks housed

[155:01] and those sort of things are a little bit more on the periphery we all know of course that they touch on addiction very strongly um but we do need to sort of stay within the space of substance use disorder and opioid use disorder in terms of allocation for the funds but substance use disorder more broadly than oud uh is inclusive within that that's good to know and then you were asking like how do we get this started i see kristen heiser here on the screen i'm sure uh she would be the one to tell you how who you should talk to at the city to get this moving thanks so much for being here tonight thanks erin and um i did notice kristen that you you popped up on screen so do you want to chime in before i uh give sam the floor yeah if you didn't if you don't mind i just wanted to add um kind of a project that we're pretty excited about that's happening imminently so we are working really closely with the county um it includes public health community services hhs over there as well as log bond and

[156:02] our reach in our regional mental health and behavioral health partners to do a thorough assessment of kind of the existing services i mentioned at the top of the presentation i just wanted you to know i think it was at her side of saying that this is going to be a broad assessment of what is available currently what are the gaps and that will um the planning as we move forward with this opportunity so just wanted the group to know that that is something that we are actively pursuing um and scoping out now with the county taking the lead on this um and there'll be opportunities for us to help inform that process and i think that that's that's a great point i think you know in terms of what we need to know to move forward those are the types of tools and resources that you know as communities build those out for themselves so start thinking of those now and start bringing thinking about the ways to kind of pull those forward um because i think

[157:00] that gives us leverage and the ability to kind of hit the ground running um you know we do have tools at our disposal like the framework that the consortium put forward to continue doing some broad community analysis uh and to an extent that will be done either way just because this is a unique situation and we need to get that um voice of the community really at the table here uh but we do want to be able to kind of move these things forward quickly and knowing what we already know about our communities is the biggest standing ground or piece of foundation that we can really stand on in doing that so thank you for offering that thanks kristin thanks kelly sam you're up thank you um a quick question i see that the first settlement from mckinsey results in 270 thousand dollars for the region is that over 18 years or is that a one-time cash infusion that one is not over 18

[158:00] years i'd have to double check that the last i heard i believe it was over six years um i will have to get you an exact number on that distribution scale but it was a much shorter one so we are looking at getting the majority of those funds right up front which is one of the reasons why that cohort that county cohort was really charged with bringing forward shovel ready programming that could benefit greatly from you know a quick infuse of dollars for sustainability purposes uh really the criteria that we were looking at for our acute programming or excuse me for our shovel ready programming was that it was serving an acute population with an acute need so some of the things that came up were mat services within the boulder county jail um and those were really in the co-responder expansion of co-responder because we have a few uh regional co-responder programs that already have footing and could just uh sort of benefit from having maybe one or two additional staff great and so that 270 000 will be

[159:02] administered by this larger regional group which is still within the boundaries of boulder county and then the 43 000 that you reference that goes to the county that's your direct allocation as a local government is that correct so will will the city of boulder expect about the same 43 000 to the city out of this or something on that order that one i would have to check on for you i'm not sure how the allocation structures are created at the eg level so i'm not entirely certain how the the 43 000 carve out was um decided upon for the boulder county government but i'm i'm happy to look into that one for you to get a more accurate number for the city yeah i mean i'm just generally looking to understand that if it's population based then it's easy enough to do that extrapolation um i i guess i would then ask you know is the county um portion based on just people in the unincorporated county um if the cities are getting all their own direct

[160:01] allocations but i'll just ask directly is it your understanding that cities as local governments will be getting direct allocations just like the county got a direct allocation that is my understanding yes so i think what in terms of your question around the framework um for how those allocation amounts are decided that's something i'm happy to look into um you know i think in terms of knowing whether or not it's population based or based on some other uh determining mechanism i think that's you know obviously something we want to get to the city council as soon as possible so you have an understanding great well that'd be helpful and kristin may even know already but i guess the reason i'm going through these generations is just thinking about you know that was top line of 500 million dollar settlement and there's you know top line 25 billion dollars in settlements so there's like 40 or 50 times as much money coming in as what we're talking about there but some of that money comes in over 18 years so

[161:01] to to get a handle on this is difficult it seems to me like we're talking ballpark 50 000 to 75 000 a year for the city something like that um you know it's hard to figure out until we know the formulas but just trying to wrap our heads around how much money and i think i guess i've been in a few meetings about this uh invited as a mayor and i've sat through some of the conversation but one of the things that was never clear to me is like how many dollars we're talking about so if it's in the order fifty thousand hundred thousand then the question for the next council as these dollars get bigger and the picture becomes more clear i think is gonna be do we just wanna turn our allocation directly over to the region or do we want to do some of our own um allocation of that money probably in collaboration with the region and the county so um it doesn't surprise me that you can't answer completely right now because i think things are still evolving but i think it's worth the council thinking about you know

[162:00] when the numbers become clear how do we want to interface with quote the region which really is the county but with this other government structure and i see kristin you have your hand up too yeah i just wanted to inform what you're discussing sam i think that's a really great point um there's been so much collaboration and we've had such a great year and a half working with the cbrf funds and the arpa funds and how we are working with our community partners and our regional partners that i think there's a great foundation um as we're moving forward within the structure that kelly just defined that we can inform that as to our participation in it but feel very confident that there's going to be an opportunity whether we um accept the dollars ourselves and can implement it programs that serve our needs or working very closely with our partners to make sure we're doing this regionally and have a having a bigger impact so those conversations are ongoing and continue to be very fruitful

[163:02] and so i just i feel very confident that either way that this city council advises or the future city councils do that this will have a great outcome for our region in this particular area cooper thanks for that and i guess i'll just make the comment this isn't really a question this could be a fairly small amount of dollars you know in the city but more for the county in the region but it certainly seems like it would plug into helping us fill that gap in um services for the unsheltered then house so um however this works out as far as dollar amounts go it everything is appreciated in being able to address this problem so that's all i've got thanks rachel one thing i would just add is that um the opportunity that boulder county has as being a bit of a smaller region in that it's a single um region is that we

[164:01] you know a lot of the interventions that we're talking about are going to span the entire region as a whole so um some of those larger means regions if you can recall that map i put up that are six seven counties um you know i think they're having to be really strategic about uh how do we how do we pool our dollars but also sort of protect some of the local allocations um that are reserved for local interventions and for us it's almost an opposite conversation is how do we pool our dollars most effectively out of consideration for the fact that many of the interventions that we're going to be funding through this are spanning the entire region of boulder county um and so i think it's a unique opportunity just in the way that we uh are shaped as one particular a singular county in a singular region thanks kelly thanks again sam and just to follow up on those points you know if it is something like 50 000 a year that would come into the city um that would be a paltry sum to do

[165:00] any large um outreach or um effective resources i feel like with so hopefully the the next council will have a chance to to win um with more information and it sounds like tonight we're not we don't need to do that yet um because what you if i understood you correctly are looking for is for us to weigh in on the on the governance formation aspect so on that point um i guess i'm wondering it did that come fully baked to us so um you know you listed the the people who can or the positions who can participate and um one thing that that jumped out was the person with you know the representation of whoever has lived experience would be a non-voting member so i just wonder like do we have wiggle room there you know if we as city council members like we can have a rotating uh participation voting seat there can we sub in someone with lived experience say so we do have wiggle room in in terms of the representation and i think that was an important note that

[166:01] came out in our early discussions with the county as well is that we we would love to elevate the voice of someone from uh with lived experience um to be a member of that voting cohort instead of just sort of the the set-aside advisory committee so in terms of the rotation and you know moving folks in and out of some of those seats i'd have to confirm but i believe that we do have a fair amount of liberty this was really a framework that was put forward by the ag for guidance just to make sure that you know uh local governments or regions had an understanding of who to begin reaching out to and start of as and starting to sort of pull together and convene around these discussions but it's my understanding we do have a fair amount of liberty in that great thanks um and and so i will invite other council members to weigh in on that if anyone else wants to make suggestions but mine would be that um people like kristen heiser and people with lived experience are going to be more useful at that table than i would be so that's

[167:00] uh my vote is to make sure that you have those voices there thanks thank you anyone else want to weigh in on that topic or other questions aaron brackett that was just a great point rachel saw a plus one that suggestion about the foxwood flipped experience since thanks aaron mary just um a real quick comment um first of all thank you kelly and um just wanted to agree with sam um on the point that he brought up regarding the amounts of dollars that it may end up being and that it might make the most sense to just hand off the city's portion over to the county and and work in partnership that way that's all i have thank you thanks mary last call for hands up here

[168:01] kelly did you get all the information that you needed from us i did yes and i know this is very much in the preliminary stages and so you know really wanted to present what we were thinking in terms of um framework and bringing together the right folks to start to develop a broader allocation strategy so um this is just the first of many more formed updates and i appreciate your your feedback as it is i also am going to take away a few of these questions about sort of the the allocation strategy or excuse me the allocation amounts and how those are decided um and see if i can get more guidance on that from um from david and get back to you all with it that's great thanks um again this was very um helpful and it's exciting uh work that that hopefully can be a bit transformative mary you have a hand up is that an old hand appreciate an old hand figuratively and literally all right okay i think that that is all for this topic then um noria unless

[169:00] there was anything else from uh staff's point of view on it that is all we've got all right thanks um and is there was there a late ad to another uh item for tonight or is that we good that's maybe to alicia at the end of our agenda i think it is yes we are the late ad was just to the um special meeting all right thank you um so we did not break any records on um having a short meeting tonight i'm sorry about that but thank you all and have a good night we're closed great job rachel thank you thanks rachel thanks everybody [Music]

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