September 21, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] the only announcement for tonight and so with that alicia could you please call the roll yes sir good evening everyone councilmember brockett president friend here joseph it's absent nagel here sweat luke here wallach present weaver here yates president and yeah president mayor brianna quorum thank you very much um the first thing we need to do tonight is to amend the agenda we are tonight going to remove item 4b which is a call-up consideration for 2504 spruce street we have moved that item to the september 28th meeting when we all have a full council compliment so could

[1:00] i please have a motion to him in the agenda great we have a motion in a second does anyone object to amending the agenda great seeing no objections we'll remove item 4b and with that we will move on to open comments and before we go there ryan i believe that you are going to go over the public participation guidelines sure thing let me pull those up

[2:05] all right those are coming up here have a little tropical opening let's make sure it's open all the way first okay here we go thank you for your patience all right it looks like it's coming up on my end is that coming up on your end i do not yet see anything but that you have started screen sharing there we go i see slides all right

[3:01] well thank you everyone for joining us this evening we are glad that you're here and are eager to hear your voice and we want to make sure that we're finding a balance between meaningful and transparent engagement and online security so ryan i'm sorry to interrupt but your slide is cut off you can't see the words on it so maybe if you just go back to the nons there you go you can just leave it like that and go through it sure thing um want to make sure that everyone is aware that this meeting is called to conduct the business of the city folder uh only and any activities that disrupt that business are not allowed the time for question for speaking asking questions is limited and we'll make sure to move through our participants and hope and comment when we get there and open comment participants will share with their full name and we'll hear from our open comment participants audio only

[4:02] and you know the the person presiding at this meeting in this case mayor weaver will work to enforce these rules as needed and just to note that the chat functionality has been disabled please send any technical or process questions in the q a feature and that's all and i'll turn it back to you super thank you very much ryan and with that we are ready to go to open comment as always with open comment each speaker will have two minutes tonight we have seven speakers signed up and our first three are patrick murphy lin siegel and ashlynn manning patrick you have two minutes my name is patrick murphy i've lived in boulder for 52 years the muni mercifully died on november 2020 boulder had a chance to demonstrate what fast and responsive means with

[5:00] respect to climate change and engaging boulder citizens in what some of you have correctly defined as an existential threat climate change boulder is failing both the speed and quality tests for example the excel energy partnership advisory panel took six months to establish and is made up of 18 boulder citizens it has been an additional three months and no public meeting has occurred in short boulder is not quick and responsive but rather slow and sluggish as the embarrassment of the lost 10 years and 30 million dollars of the muni failure and the 80 percent water rate increase due to a poorly maintained and run water utility demonstrate in addition in a totally illogical faction fashion boulder collects about 7 million dollars a year in carbon taxes i repeat carbon taxes the other three million are producing very little in comparison to what they could be give us back that four million dollars of carbon taxes and pay for police and

[6:02] fire with a separate tax the carbon action leadership are leftovers from the muni effort and have lost the ability to act versus proselytized endlessly we need action not actors with vapor goals all things are complex and nothing is simple but the simplest ways to accelerate engaging boulder citizens and carbon reduction are solar incentives wind incentives a renewable energy certificate broker and energy use reduction engage us all by giving out free leds to all citizens starting with the low and middle income groups thank you patrick next we have lynn siegel ashland manning and riley mancuso lynn some emergency this annexation i hope they sue you the 42-inch interceptor our sewer line

[7:02] that seven years ago redline robotics said it was in danger of collapse the 42-inch interceptor is an emergency the other 15 drainages in boulder that aren't attended to are an emergency it's an emergency that another hundred year event is prepared for not accounting that there was a thousand year reign simultaneous to the hundred year event of 2013. it's like biden today deporting the haitians and denying the argument that it's a matter of public health in a pandemic talk about climate change refugees two of them for haiti and now the creation of more development in boulder to subject more inhabitants to be subjected to climate change events so they can be transformed to refugees asylum is stopped before you create the need for asylum in boulder now there was a very great letter written

[8:00] today the current agreement will not achieve long-term flood protection for fraser meadows it may fail to even achieve adequate flood protection at all this is due to a provision of the agreement that blocks the future authority of the city of boulder over the property once signed the city will have no power to block or alter any aspect of cu's future development plans the current agreement is written as written will be the final moment of the city's power to enact critical solutions on the cu south side for centuries successful flood mitigation depends on exactly what is built on the cu south side throughout its development and redevelopment in the future this depends upon ongoing city authority over building decisions on cu south informed by future information about site plan climate impacts and other situations continued equal partnership and solving solution solving issues in decades to come will be absolutely critical climate change will move the goal close from 100

[9:01] to 500 year flood standards thank you thank you lynn your time is up next we have ashlynn manning riley mancuso and kevin tang and riley mancuso if you are here we don't see you in the meeting so if you could go into the q a and let us know you're here that'd be great um with that we will go to ashland manning ashley you should be able to mute yourself and mute yourself can you hear me now yeah yes great thank you okay i own a condo in the gold run community on boulder creek near scott carpenter park and year round we have an issue with waste artifacts of substance abuse and other discarded items in and around the creek this is much worse in the summer time when there are individuals camping on the banks of the creek as i'm sure you know many of them leaving strewn clothing and

[10:00] kitchen scraps among other unsanitary items in and around the water in recent weeks i found dinner plates and something that looked like a toilet seat from across the bank the water of the creek is of spiritual significance to me and experiencing it as a healing is a healing ritual for me on august 22nd this summer in a place where i often enjoy bathing in the water i found a rusty grate under the water threatening to cut my bare feet and soiling my experience of being with the water um i then took that with me among many other things um and could not find a place to discard it as there were no waste receptacles anywhere nearby um so i wonder if the issue of waste in the water might be slightly ameliorated by having permanent trash receptacles more readily available i'm often collecting trash with me and carrying it back to the gold run private trash bins because between 30th street

[11:02] and 28th street and beyond that there are no obvious waste bins to be found on the creek trail i myself have led small group trash cleanup efforts twice and i've always carted away um you know big bags of trash and realize i'm running out of time so i noticed that there was a let's tidy up boulder challenge posted on the website which i would not have known about on my own and while that's a well-intentioned effort it is underwhelming as a solution to our waste problem i think that the lack of recycling and trash bins in obvious site is making it difficult for any citizens and certainly those who are creating this waste to be incentivized to help clean it up thank you thank you ashlynn um i know that your time is up but if you'd like to email us your the rest of your comments you can email us at council boulder colorado.gov

[12:01] and with that the next three speakers are riley mancuso kevin tang and kathy joyner ryan has rightly mancuso shown up okay in that case we will go on to kevin tang good evening and thank you for the opportunity to address this council um earlier this calendar year the council approved a number of initiatives ostensibly aimed at ameliorating issues stemming from homelessness housing insecurity and consequences from the camping ban uh my intent here is not to focus on whether or not these initiatives should have been adopted they already have been adopted at an approximate price tag of 2.7 million dollars over 18 months rather my goal is to ask for continuing transparency into and oversight of those programs speaking as a recent denver transplant i feel it's very vital that those initiatives which i understand include among other things expanded internal cleanup resources a contracted ambassador program and

[13:01] urban ranger program among others do not all ultimately devolve into variations of the same themes of enhanced policing and criminalization of mere existence on the oversight front to the extent outside service providers are used i think the public has an interest in knowing for example what kind of sensitivity training employees receive if any what are the contractual criteria for a cleanup to be deemed complete if there is to be increased uniform presence will the performance of these individuals be assessed not just based on public safety criteria but also on environmental ones among others and then last but not least to the extent this overlaps with the boulder creek management plan you know what does the strategic planning process for that policy look like in light of these programs and what benchmarks are being considered i think more fundamentally um and here i'm echoing settlements that a number of you have already uh voiced given that this is not an insignificant

[14:01] deployment of resources i feel that the public should have access to rail data in order to follow along and track in assessing outcomes and determining whether or not these programs ultimately do anything to address the issues which led to their adoption and i'll stop there thank you very much again for your time thank you kevin next we have kathy joyner and jim mcmillan will be our last speaker kathy url thank you mayor good evening council members i'm here to make a last request that council approved the cu south annexation agreement after years of work by staff boards and council and a robust and productive community engagement process this agreement will above all else allow flood protection to move forward expeditiously if you approve this agreement tonight you will be fulfilling one of the local government's most fundamental responsibilities the protection of the health and safety of its citizens if approved this flood protection

[15:01] undertaking will ensure life safety of 2 300 residents who are currently at significant risk as this project will be years in the making even if all goes as planned we don't have another year to lose given the increased frequency of climate extreme events assurances to regulatory agencies that the city has management authority over lands for which it is requesting permits will ensure that required permitting is not delayed for an unknown period of time on a final note i feel a need to recognize the passion and commitment of all who have worked on this project regardless of positions irrespective of your decision tonight you know that you will not be able to please everyone still your efforts are important and appreciated once more to council staff and boards thank you for your perseverance and dedication to help ensure the safety of so many and an additional thanks to the countless members of the public who have been involved with community engagement efforts over the past years it has

[16:01] helped make this draft agreement a far better document please take action tonight to ensure that flood protection moves forward without delay thank you thank you kathy and our last speaker tonight is jim mcmillan jim yeah you can hear me you can uh well good evening council members my name is jim mcmillan i'm a 31-year resident of boulder i appreciate your service to our community but i'm extremely disappointed that you're seriously considering passing the highly flawed ill-considered annexation agreement uh associated with the cu south land parcel this is the most monumental annexation considered in many decades and it's being pushed forward with false arguments that it will bring immediate benefits to boulder namely flood mitigation to the west valley especially frazier and and housing to cu boulder to reduce in commuting the claim of proposed hundred-year flood mitigation being adequate and protecting frayser is

[17:00] highly misleading there are many drainages that contribute to flooding of the west valley and as the fema study showed only 30 percent of the flooding in 2013 came from south boulder creek with the ballots coming from other sources such as bear creek the claim that housing stock will be incre be increased is perhaps true but only in the distant future a cu doesn't have detailed site plan or even a timeline for establishing any housing good decision making is rarely made when one has a proverbial gun to their head and this trumped-up sense of false urgency is most unhelpful and a disservice to our community we need real flood mitigation and real housing solutions many residents of boulder like me moved here and willingly pay higher taxes because of boulder's green values which will be thrown under the bus by this annexation which is highly risky to the critical endangered uh habitat uh the state natural protected area near the site and i just emphasize once wetlands are gone they're gone permanently and once

[18:02] critical habitat is destroyed it can't be brought back again consider your legacy council do you really want to be known as the council that destroyed boulders about green credentials is it's anti-democratic to get in front of this um of the citizens initiative that's uh initiative 302 on the november ballot please wait until after that to consider this this annexation agreement thank you thank you jim and it looks like riley mancuso has made it into the meeting so riley you are up and you have two minutes when you're ready good evening council it's me riley mancuso and i am calling in to urge you to call up the 2504 spruce street project for council review um the uh push the current push from the planning board to include just 14 large and expensive units and only two permanently affordable

[19:01] units when other proposals uh support many more apartments on the site in the 900 to 600 square foot range um we really need to make sure that this spot which is in a very central location in boulder close to major transportation hubs and major commercial centers is used to provide effective affordable housing for our community if there is any place in boulder where denser housing makes sense it is near 28th street it is near pearl street it is near the major thoroughfares um where people can get by without cars and get to the um retail and dining and child care and medical and administrative and all sorts of offices where lower income workers

[20:00] need to get to work um and so this is just a really excellent opportunity for you all to walk the walk on how much you talk about investing in affordable housing um really boulder has this this decades-long deficit of anti-growth down zoning that has created years of deficits of housing construction have created a debt um and now boulder just really needs to aggressively pursue new housing construction and when it and the compromise with that for the people who say that new construction is bad is that whatever new construction there is should be housing the maximum number of people and the maximum number of low-income workers who are not thank you thank you riley your your time is up and i will also let

[21:00] you know that um the call up for 2504 spruce has been moved to september 28th so we got your input uh you'd like us to call it up and that action will be taken or not at the meeting on september 28th if you would like to attend that and with that um i'll bring open comment to a close and turn it back to you alicia oh i'm sorry i apologize i have failed to do my duty which is uh turn to staff and council and see if there's any response to what we've heard so i'll start with you nuria in your response to open comment uh just uh thanks again we take every comment that comes our way and particularly those today that were about um waste efforts and and homelessness know that we will be discussing those with staff and we'll be certainly taking those into consideration but thank you thank you nuria sandra any comments from

[22:01] city attorney i don't see any with that i'll turn to council and i see rachel and bob have their hands up rachel thanks sam um i wanted to speak i think to the same community member that that nuria was thanking um ashlynn i believe her name was who is uh undertaking cleanup efforts along boulder creek so i wanted to say first thank you for doing that and um second i don't know what the protocol would be but it is something that i raised in the past why why we don't have more receptacles there so it sounds like nuria you're gonna maybe investigate that and see if it would help happy to do so okay i can't i can't direct that so i don't know if that needs another five but that sounds good thanks thanks rachel bob yeah i wanted to um respond or address um mr tang's comment about the um the programs that we approved this summer and some of which i know that are still being put in

[23:00] place so it may be a little bit early to have a report but i'm wondering nuria do you think that you and your team will be in a position to issue a report either at a study session or in writing uh sometime this fall on some of the changes we need made around police staffing ranger ambassadors clean up crews those types of things i i don't recall that thank you um bob i don't recall the timing but we are certainly actually actively meeting we are talking about um and have incorporated other people including our innovation and technology folks to see how we measure our progress and how we measure our activities and so we i will go back and talk about when we can provide a substantive update to what that looks like i know we were going to do one or i believe we were going to do one before the end of the year but i can certainly get back to council and please know that we are actively talking about all these measures and how to move our work forward thank you all right thank you council and sandra i see that you're back on did the city attorney's office have any response to

[24:01] anything you heard at open comment no i did not thank you sam thank you all right and with that alicia i will turn it back to you all right sir thank you our next item on this agenda is our consent agenda item three a and that will include i'm sorry items three a through d all right super um council uh looks like this is a show of hands so do we have any questions feedback or emotion on the consent agenda i move the consent agenda second all right we have motion in a second for the consent agenda because this is a show of hands i'll ask does anyone object to passing the consent agenda great seeing no objection that passes unanimously and back to you all alicia sir next we have our item

[25:02] number four which is our call up check in for a is the call of consideration item related to the community and environmental assessment process for the east arapaho multi-use path and transit stop enhancement project all right uh very good um aaron i see you have your hand up yeah no i have no desire to call this up i just want to speak to it briefly i'm really happy to see this coming forward it's going to fill in some critical gaps in a multi-use path system on east arapaho which has been much needed for many years and we did get a fair amount of federal funding for this project through the grant from the denver regional council of governments um so really great to see us leveraging our transportation dollars and getting this project done so thanks to everyone on staff uh for moving this forward um i'll just comment that i agree with everything aaron said and we should thank aaron as our representative to dr

[26:02] cog for getting some of that funding for us so thank you aaron counsel any desire to call this up all right very good um and with that alicia back to you to tee up the next item please all right sir next we have item number five on public hearings five a is the continued public hearing and consideration of the following items related to a petition to annex a 308.15 acre parcel generally known as cu south at 4886 and 5278 table mesa drive 718 marshall road zero highway 36 two parcels and 4745 west moorhead an initial zoning designation of public related to lur 2019-0010

[27:00] [Music] first item is a consideration of a motion to adopt resolution 1295 setting forth findings of fact and conclusions regarding the annexation of approximately 308.15 acres of land generally known as cu south and located at 48.86 and 5278 table mesa drive zero highway 36 two parcels 718 marshall road and 4745 west moorhead and if resolution 1295 is adopted by council finding that the area may be annexed continued second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8483 annexing the city of boulder approximately 308 acres of land generally known as cu south located at 4886 and 5278 table mesa drive zero highway 36 two parcels 718 marshall road and 4745 west

[28:03] moorhead with an initial zoning classification of public as described in chapter 9-5 modular zone system of the brc 1981 amending the zoning district map forming a part of said charter to include the property in the above mentioned zoning district and setting for related details or the continued second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt by emergency measure ordinance 8483 annexing to the city of boulder approximately 308.15 acres of land generally known as cu south located at 48.86 and 5278 table mesa drive zero highway 36 two parcels 718 marshall road and 4745 west moorhead with an initial zoning classification of public as described in chapter 9-5 modular zone systems of the brc 1981

[29:03] amending the zoning district map forming a part of said chapter to include the property in the above mentioned zoning district and setting forth related details thank you alicia and before we move on i will turn now to bob uh thanks sam and for reasons uh previously stated i'm going to recuse myself from the matters that alicia just announced i'm going to depart the meeting and i wish you all a good evening thank you bob okay very good and i have a couple more items here give me a moment um so just a reminder we have heard councilmember yates recuse himself just a reminder that council member joseph has also recused herself um our city attorney sandra yanez explained uh last week the the reason for those recusals so these are continued refusals um because the hearing has been continued and then finally i would turn to council

[30:02] member nagel and ask um council member because you were absent last week have you had a chance to review the recording of the september 14th meeting yes thank you sam i'm all caught up okay very good um and with that um i i will um remind everyone that this is a continued second reading hearing we have taken the public testimony on this item and we are turning now to counsel for deliberations discussion and any motion um or motions on these items and i think the first thing that we probably need to do as a council is make sure that we agree on how we want to structure our discussion going forward so with that i will see if um sandra do you have a slide i do if somebody could bring up the i

[31:02] see the slide deck on the screen it just needs to move to the next slide perfect okay so um yesterday i put out on hotline just a concept for how we could um structure these discussions i only received one bit of feedback that was from mary which she posted then on hotline so we've all seen that and i would just turn now to counsel and um say uh the the structure i'm going to propose for discussions i guess i'll start by saying we would normally have handled this at cac but at cec this week two of the members are the recused members tonight so i thought i should just bring this directly to the those of us who will be hearing this item um i would recommend that we start by hearing from staff on a couple of things um first of all what we need to do tonight and second what changes there might have been to

[32:01] the annexation agreement since uh last week and then after we've heard from staff i would move to council for questions the questions that i the way i would structure those is questions on last week's public hearing what we heard at the public hearing and then any clarifying questions on the changes to the annexation agreement that have occurred since last week and then finally any questions council might have before we go into discussions of of staff or the applicant i believe that we have the university here as the applicant um and they are ready to answer questions um after questions i would suggest then that we turn to um our discussion and i propose six different items that we could have as topic areas so that we can organize our discussion after that then um motion if any on the resolution motions if any

[33:00] on the annexation ordinances in front of us and then finally check with the city attorney that this has all been completed and done properly and then final closing comments from cu and council so that is my proposal um that i would turn to council for any comments questions feedback and at the very least i'll need some thumbs up if you agree that this is a way for us to move forward i'm seeing three four five six thumbs up okay so great well thank you that was super easy and it looks like this will be our agenda for this item tonight and with that i will turn to staff great thank you sam good evening everyone i would like to take this opportunity to recognize the hard work and collaborative efforts of the legal team

[34:00] this project has touched everyone at the cao in one way or another and i want to acknowledge your contributions in particular i want to share my gratitude to aaron poe kathy haddock luis toro hella panawig rio ward desiree aguirres julia chase and a huge thanks to our outside advisors jeff wilson jerry dahl and david gear and with that i think we can move into the more procedural aspects of tonight's hearing next slide please there are two resolutions that are part of this annexation the first resolution 1289 was approved on consent at first reading on august 10 of 2021 the purpose of resolution 1289 was to make preliminary findings required by the annexation statute and to set the date of the public hearing

[35:01] the second resolution resolution 1295 is part of the second reading of the annexation ordinance the purpose of this resolution is to make final findings of fact determined from matters presented at the public hearing those findings by resolution are required by the annexation statute prior to approval of the ordinance the resolution and ordinance are two separate actions traditionally the city has included the findings of fact the second resolution essentially in the annexation ordinance the annexation statute requires a separate resolution and while it should be adequate to include it in the ordinance i recommended strict compliance with the statute out of an abundance of caution the findings are found in the resolution 1295 in your packet next slide please

[36:01] basis for emergency finding so the council rules of procedure 7f and charter 17 address the basis for an emergency finding essentially they are findings of urgency and need and matters affecting life health or safety this slide is a representation of the council rules of procedure the next slide is going to be uh charter section 17. next slide please and as you can see um the charter section 17 calls for a requirement of a showing of preservation of the public peace health or property and it also requires a two-thirds vote of any members that are present in order to pass by emergency the findings for emergency are found in ordinance the

[37:02] emergency ordinance 84 83 paragraph eight next slide please there was a question asked or uh perhaps a statement made at the last hearing regarding special privilege and uh an allegation or contention that um emergency orders couldn't be passed for a franchise or a special privilege and that the annexation is a special privilege franchises and special grants refer to special grants of use of city property or exclusive contracts for government services that allow the beneficiaries to have access to government property in a way that's not provided to others common examples of franchises are for electric gas transportation or cable services while special privilege contracts

[38:03] for example are like the exclusive provider of a trash removal in a specific area an ex an annexation ordinance and agreement are not a special privilege because any person or entity that is eligible to be annexed into the city can file an annexation petition and request annexation next slide please so this is just a suggested some suggested motion language for council if they do decide to adopt the ordinance because we have some changes to the agreement that have been made subsequent to the the september 14th meeting we've added in the highlighted areas some additional language to address that so that's something that if needed we

[39:00] can come back to later on and i just want to say with respect to this um this uh slide um that staff's recommendation is that the annexation be approved on an emergency basis there are compelling life safety issues during last week's presentation staff showed photos of flood waters rushing down a city street just north of us 36 and the public testimony last week included numerous accounts of 2013 flood and near misses experienced by members of our community and that's some of the testimony and and information that you heard last week in the presentation and as well as from community members and for those reasons um staff is recommending that council move forward on an emergency basis at this point in time i'm going to hand

[40:01] it off to deputy city attorney aaron paul who will review the most recent changes to the annexation agreement thank you very much sandra could i please have slide number eight good evening mayor weaver and members of council i'm erin poe deputy city attorney the negotiation teams have made four edits to the agreement since the council meeting last week based on council member feedback these changes have been agreed to by cu and provided via hotline the first change has been to paragraph 14a language has been added regarding the iga for a baseline study of light and noise impacts on the state natural area in addition to establishing a baseline the study will also define adverse material impacts to the state natural area and provide guidance on how to minimize any impact the iga will include the requirement

[41:00] that if there are material adverse impacts to the state natural area the parties will collaboratively attempt to address the impacts at the university's expense the second change was the paragraph 14c and the only change to that section was that the four former first sentence was amended and relocated to paragraph 14 a there were no other changes the third change was to paragraph 20. in the introductory section about the development zones permitted and prohibited uses intent language was added to clarify that the university will develop the area consistent with 15-minute neighborhoods as envisioned by the boulder valley comprehensive plan intent language was also added regarding the university's goal to maximize energy efficiency and achieve a hundred percent emissions reduction by 2050. the last change was to paragraph 24d

[42:00] about access the change clarified that roadway access to cu's property will be rule-based not role-based to prohibit use of roads as a bypass between highway 93 and foothills parkway i have slides showing the track changes of those sections if council's interested or i'm happy to answer any questions very good thank you for that aaron and i believe sandra we're ready to turn it over to council is that right yes that's correct thank you okay super and um per what we just decided um it is now time for council questions and so i i think the uh initial council questions that we want to focus on are any questions that we have based on what we heard at last week's public hearing so i'll turn first mary young mary did you have any

[43:01] questions that you wanted to ask about last week yes i do i asked four of them on hotline and i was wondering if we could just um go over those for the benefit of those folks who may be watching and do not have the hotline and the questions were i will read them my first question was what are the plans for implementing warning systems and evacuation plans and how do they relate to flood mitigation second question was um under what circumstances could future amendments slash changes to the annexation agreement occur and what would the process look like and my third question was how do environmental impact statements and other required analyses of endangered and threatened species fit

[44:00] into proposed flood mitigation and is the city violating any rules so those were the three questions that i asked on the hotline i have others but if we could start by addressing those um i'd appreciate it thank you super thank you mary and i will turn to staff for the answer to those three joe are you the first one i think i'm the first one phil is probably the the second and uh me or the uh open space staff are the third but before i start i just want to introduce myself i'm joe tattiucci i'm the director of of utilities our department is responsible for the flood mitigation project that coincides with this annexation agreement the property that's potentially being annexed is needed for our flood project so um the the first question about the plans for warning system and evacuation plans and how they relate to to flood mitigation

[45:01] we do have warning systems and emergency plans in place in the city of boulder we the the national weather service the mile high flood district and our boulder city and county office of emergency management um all coordinate on those things and ours you city utilities staff have a supporting role in those situations and we frequently provide technical support when there's a a situation like a flood or a fire and many of us end up spending time at the emergency operations center when one of those events occur and we've had quite a bit of staff transition since the 2013 flood in in our utilities and stormwater and flood utility uh for me and brandon coleman our project manager we we really came into the scene in 2019

[46:00] and uh as we were going through the process in the last couple of years we heard from community members uh some specific concerns about what occurred with us 36 overtopping in the middle of the night and i i hadn't heard that detail previously and so there seemed to be some real valid concerns there and so we assigned a staff lead to coordinate and project manage efforts around that we met with representatives from oem and the mile high flood district to explore opportunities for future enhancements we held community meetings with the people who were most impacted by the 2013 flood and the over topping of us 36 and have established plans to install a camera by the end of the year and i appreciate the discounts this question being asked on the hotline because i think one of the narratives that we heard

[47:00] in public uh comment last week was that we really ought to be focusing our efforts on early warning systems and evacuation plans and things like that that there is a concentrated effort already in place in those areas as i as i described earlier here and this has been a studied by a few generations of staff on this project and there is one consistent message that i've heard and that is that the warning systems and evacuation plans and things like that are not a substitute for the flood mitigation so that happy to happy to say more about that we have a website that that people can go to and get information for flood preparedness and and get plugged into how you can sign up for cell phone alerts and and things like that and we do try to

[48:00] uh put things in our utility bill inserts and and so on and so forth so phil maybe you want to address the second question which is a totally different subject absolutely um bill chrysler planner with planning and development services thank you for your time this evening the second question regarding uh amendments to the annexation agreement um paragraph 59 in the agreement does anticipate that the parties could amend the agreement um to do so is this process similar to what we're going through now the recommendation by the planning board and ultimately approval by city council um so that that paragraph though is just kind of clarifying this and that the parties can choose to amend the agreement though it does require a motion by council thank you phil and then the third question has to do with um permitting and i'm certainly not the city's expert on permitting brandon coleman

[49:00] knows it inside and out as does our as do our open space staff but i think the threshold question that was there on hotline was does the proposed flood mitigation violate any any permitting rules and and how are things like environmental impact statements and those sorts of things impacted and so to the threshold question our project is being designed and planned with the intention of being fully compliant with all permitting requirements as we go forward and the as i mentioned in the hotline post with help from our open space staff nepa would not be triggered because there's not a federal agency that's construction constructing or funding the project and the core of engineers would be the lead federal agency that would be

[50:01] looking at this and and reviewing it with respect to compliance with the endangered species act so i will leave my comments to that if you have if you have more questions or if our open space staff have more to add and i see john is on screen so good evening council uh john potter resource and stewardship manager at open space and mountain parks department and joe i think that you you got most of that the only thing that i would add is uh to the question of what types of assessments might be necessary for the project to proceed and that would be uh possibly a biological assessment that the u.s fish and wildlife service would call for to look at the two threatened species in the area the uh you ladies dresses orchid and the prebles meadow jumping mouse and they would be then determining whether a biological

[51:01] opinion would be necessary and whether the project as the utilities department proposes it would jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species or have impact to critical habitat but as joe mentioned the project is currently being planned and designed to be in compliance with those permitting agency requirements thank you john and joe um and so that addresses the the questions that i posted on hotline i have some additional questions and um while joe is on the line um i was i just wanted to ask um a question that um well i it just keeps coming up um with re respect to um what the constraints are that make the 500-year design infeasible however

[52:01] this afternoon i received an email from a a community member that shared with me a response from you joe regarding a coro request and the response was basically we don't have any document that says that the 500-year design is infeasible and if you could just elaborate on that i'd appreciate it sure and i appreciate the question the the topic of why we're doing 100 year design or 500 year design i agree mary keeps keeps coming up and in terms of the technical feasibility um the criteria we need to meet with our project is we want to prevent us 36 from over topping and flooding the west valley as it did in 2013

[53:00] and then we have this storage facility and we have outlet pipes that go under us 36 and convey water under underneath and to the vely channel on on the north side of us us-36 so we need to control flow through that proposed outlet work so that we don't increase flooding in that area where it dumps into the vely channel so there's a limit on how big the outlet works can be before we violate criteria there and cause a problem and then we need to match the existing conditions on the us-36 bridge and kind of a fundamental of flood plain regulations is that with our projects and our designs we can't make things better in one place that we're trying to protect at the expense of another area and make things worse and so with the 500-year flood and specific to the us-36 bridge when we

[54:01] did that modeling and when we optimized the project there the best we could do was getting water underneath the us-36 bridge but it was a foot deeper than the baseline conditions with the 500-year flood and so for us and on the technical side and i have graphics and things that kind of show the results of that modeling and what happened and so only the 100-year design can meet those technical criteria and i in preparing for these meetings and and brandon our project manager who is our technical lead on this has been out um on parental leave for good reasons and so it's given me the opportunity to talk to some of the the people involved that normally a department director would not be so deep in the details part of this

[55:00] coincides with my background and in the last couple of weeks i've i've met with representatives from the mile high flood district and our project lead there i've talked to my counterpart at cdot and they're their technical lead and reviewed everything i've met a few times with our design consultants and and just looked at the technical reports myself and re-reviewed them and i think the the conversations i've had with the department of transportation and that brandon has had all along and the key criterion that our team is trying to meet is matching one of them is matching those existing conditions on the us-36 bridge and as they further refine their design and they bring in more refined topographic information and things like that they're actually finding it's harder to meet that condition even for the 100 year flood than they originally

[56:01] did and so when i talked to our design consultants this past friday that the statement that they made to me is that we feel even more strongly now that the 500-year flood is not feasible and we're not able to match those existing conditions and balance all the technical things that we're trying to do to not make things better in one area and worse in another and so that's that's kind of the trajectory that we're on and i know that there are some statements in the in the report that we put out in early 2020 that probably caused some confusion because it indicated that we may be able we might have been able to mitigate those effects and part of that was that that report was documenting work that had been started in 2018 and was just trying to capture a couple years worth of work and

[57:01] it it just has not proved out to be true that there are ways to mitigate those impacts for the 500 year flood there are other issues and other considerations that it's not just that alone but as i came into the project with brandon and i've looked at all of the factors my own independent opinion having done this work and spent my whole career in water resources area and dams and projects like this and permitting and agency approvals and looking at all the constraints as a package i just do not see a way to bring the 500-year project to something that is feasible and actually gets constructed and i could not in good conscience recommend that the city invest additional funds in pursuing that that is my professional opinion mary would would it be okay if i colloquy on this um please do

[58:00] so joe um i appreciate that description from a technical standpoint it jumps with everything that you and i have talked about over the last year or so about this project another question um there are other drainages in um the boulder area that we need to watch out for flood hazards on and i was curious have we ever done a 500-year flood level mitigation project on any of our other drainages we have not and there's actually a figure in in the presentation that phil and i had last week in the back up slides that shows all of the different drainages and the level of conveyance that's available in them currently and we have we have some drainages like gregory creek for example we're designing and we're buying property and getting it out of the floodplain there's an imminent project there that the best we can do is is 10-year

[59:01] flood protection and so um the south boulder creek is really the only one where it's feasible for that to even be in the conversation 500 year quite frankly and in my i mentioned that making the rounds with some of the agencies and when i talked to our project representative from the mile high flood district he reminded me that kind of the whole regulatory framework in the united states and fema and flood plain regulations and municipal organizations and how how flood plains are designed and to be protected is around the 100-year flood and so it would especially for an old city like boulder it would be incredibly difficult to untangle ourselves from from that level of flood protection he also reminded me that in the hydrology that gets used for these

[60:00] studies the the historic rainfall and runoff that factors into the calculations that there's a lot of conservatism built in and and so i think his words were kind of the the accounting for climate change is somewhat baked into the designs that that we already do and the factors that we use and so there's i could probably talk for another half hour but i'll leave it at that no that's super helpful so it says that we have not done anything more than a hundred year in our other drainages and then the last question that i've got is um you know the rjh report from 2000 indicated that it would be some tens of millions of dollars more to do the 500 year flood project and if if we were to be able to do it which is sounds like not possible but if we were and if we spent those extra

[61:00] tens of millions of dollars to get to the 500-year flood protection level in this drainage would that materially impact the city's ability to mitigate flood risk and other drainages well if if you consider that there's probably a limit to i mean we can always increase rates as much as we want to to to fund additional projects but practically and realistically there's a limit to the pressure that we can put on our utility customers at any one time to fund these so in my opinion it would delay work in other areas if we pursued that great and and from the well i'll just leave it there and i'll turn to mark mark i see your hands up yeah you know i've been immersed in this for so long with such detail i may be entirely misremembering things but was it also not a factor that the landowner was resistant to a 500 year uh flood scheme or is that

[62:01] i just making that up i i think phil might be able to to fill in the details on the history of that i do believe at one point there there was uh a discussion with cu before brandon and i came into the project i i will say that you know some of the public testimony there's a perception that we chose the city utilities staff have steered this project towards the 100-year flood based on cu's preferences and i want to address that that is not the case we could have made the 500 or the 100 work with respect to the university's development plans it would have been much more costly and much more complicated but but we could have done that and phil i don't know if you can um yes there was a joke there was a letter and i don't know the exact date sent by the university to council indicating um uh their

[63:00] um that the university was not uh the design of which a 500-year flood design was not acceptable due to the impacts to the development zone and so when joe talked about cost that was relating to phil and and and providing the development area that we had previously agreed to in the comprehensive plan thank you for confirming that i still retain some shreds of memory i will but i'm realizing that we're still all colloquing on one of mary's questions so i took my hand down and i'm going to offer the floor back to mary okay super mary bacteria thank you um yeah so i i i guess i have a follow a colloquy to my own question um so sam brought up the rjh report and um i spent some time yesterday reviewing that report and one of the things that i read in there was about how

[64:02] the army corps of engineers will not approve a project alternative when there is an alternative available that would have less of an impact so i guess my question is is um it seems that within that report there were several criteria that were addressed and it wasn't just about um the ability to make the 500-year design come to fruition and to what extent did staff consider in the recommendation there's another matrix in there i believe it's table 7.1 that talks about it basically lays out all the options and it's the the one that i remember

[65:00] seeing um in the memo when we when we gave direction to go with the 100 and so to what extent is there at what point do you step back and say okay there's more than just whether or not we can do the 100 year 500 year there's other factors and um and which which were the biggest factors and to what extent do they um influence um the recommendation so i mentioned the the technical feasibility and the balancing act that we're trying to do with our outlet works and storage that's certainly a big one and all of the subsequent work that the team is doing on 100-year modeling and refining the design is is really one of the primary things is focused on matching the a lot farther into the sensitive habitat that we're concerned about and it makes the it makes the geometry

[66:00] of the multi-use path and trying to reconfigure that to to deal with our flood wall um there's not really a practical option for that so i'll let john add to the environmental considerations but those were all the things that we were looking at and and considering as we were uh talking about feasibility and making recommendations to council as well as the cost that sam mentioned yes and the cost thank you john uh yeah uh i would just add uh for council that i believe at the time uh the open space board of trustees uh recommended that the 100 year would likely have less impact in the 500 year on critical habitat for the preble's meadow jumping mouse and that was a concern from the open space standpoint to favor the year project over the 500 year

[67:03] thank you john i think that um is all on that question but i think some of these points kind of lead into my next question which is another item that um keeps coming up um there has been some claims out there that no master plan was followed and and questions about why um south boulder creek was prioritized over other drainages and and why didn't we um go on cost benefit when there are other drainages that saw more cost based on the damage experienced in 2013. so if you could address that i'd appreciate it sure uh and we actually uh coincidenta to this project we're

[68:00] also doing an update on our storm stormwater and flood master plan and we just had the water resources advisory board meeting last night and did an update to the board on that effort and that that question came up and there was a master plan done for this in in 2015 kind of the short answer is we did a master plan as we would do for any of our drainages and and we're following the recommendations and the and the further steps that you would take after a master plan so if there's a if there's a perception that that wasn't done or we hadn't completed that step for this drainage um that's not the case and then the the question of benefit cost ratio and if it's okay with you i might just proactively address another uh thing related to a memo we produced in 2014 and damages and there some people have looked at that and said

[69:00] wait a minute only 30 of the or something like that of the damage on that occurred in the south boulder creek drainage was from the main major drainage way and i i can see how people are looking at the memo and drawing that conclusion but that's incorrect and phil i don't know if you can pull up slide 66 really quickly while i'm talking here but in that memo there's a table that shows all of the drainages and it attributes uh damages based on surveys that community members filled out and splits them up between different things and if you look at the table it does it does appear that south boulder creek would be a lower priority but there's a and i don't know if you can you can see it but there is a uh a footnote that there were some outliers individual large damage

[70:01] items that were excluded from this and there was one on the south boulder creek that's the first list below the table there's a 10 million dollar outlier that was excluded from these damages numbers and if you add and that actually is the fraser meadows uh area that's what that 10 10 million dollars represents and that was one of the hardest hit parts of the community after the 2013 flood if you add that back in that that would make south boulder creek the second highest of the city's 16 drainages in the city and we actually have an faq on that on our website because it has a better point of confusion and there's a lot more about benefit cost ratio and and things that we're considering as we do our master plan that historically everything was focused on benefit cost ratio that doesn't that doesn't really uh bring equity and racial equity into

[71:01] the equation and that approach would kind of uh if you think about damages and the most the highest property value areas that would point our flood projects to the most affluent areas of the city so there are lots of considerations around that that i have also covered in an faq and i i don't i don't know if i i captured the response that you were looking for mary but that that's kind of what i had in mind in that topic thank you um no i think i think that answers the question thank you very much joe um i think i if rachel doesn't want to ask a question of joe i can move on to my next series of questions which would probably be for sandra and i see rachel's hand up so rachel do you want to ask joe a question before

[72:01] joe gets off yeah if we're going to just keep joe in the hot seat and we'll ask a couple of questions here um thanks mary for the invite so um just responding or trying to get clarification around some things we heard in public hearing last week um first did cu do something with the property um maybe by shoring up the berm that that caused the 2013 flood or somehow is there something about cu's history with sea south that that made that flood happen or puts us in worse position for flooding that has been a narrative that's been out there in the community that the cu is building a levy around the property has made the flooding worse brandon is leading the design team and our consultants in the modeling and we actually have modeled the various floods uh both ways with the with the cu berm

[73:01] in place and and with it removed and the results of that modeling have shown it makes no difference so we would not agree with those statements so so if i could jump in briefly rachel's sorry to interrupt um joe you said that cu had put the levy in i think it's probably worth just being clear and crisp on this that i believe that levy was built um to protect the gravel mining operation and then when cu bought the property they shored it up a little bit and had it certified by fema does that sound right yep i believe that's right and um when phil has showed the land use maps on the on kind of the east and northern end of cu's property it's it's almost like there's a backwards r shape and that is if you've been out there that is the and you've seen that embankment that's the levy the flood levy that we're talking about back to you rachel thanks sam thanks joe

[74:01] um i i walk my dogs i think on the levee pretty regularly is that right that's a heightened plane that we walk on um okay the only other question i have for you um is we've gotten some some questions around what's the rush here like if we're not really going to be able to put you know shovels into the ground for another three to five years why are we annexing today and so i just wanted to ask you um if we didn't annex would there be an impact on the flood mitigation process would there be delays it's a fair question and phil if i could ask for help one more time if you could pull up the slide 20 from our uh which was one of yours from last week it kind of that's the one that shows sort of the whole property and the different land use so looking at the you can ignore the table and the

[75:01] acreages but looking at the property map what you're seeing here is the the cu property and uh the development what the development plans that the university has on the property relative to the components of our flood mitigation project and why why it's important for this annexation agreement to get finalized at this point in time um as we move into the the permitting uh approach and our our final design is the the annexation agreement really pins down the interaction between cu's property and our in our flood components uh for example the the inundation area that will occur when we flood and the earth and fill we have to know where the university is going to develop to be able to know where to place that

[76:01] a big part of the negotiations with the university was around what types of recreation facilities could go within the inundated area and it's it's fairly common in land use planning to have certain types of like soccer fields and things like that in areas that you know are gonna get flooded and so working with them to to sort that out and then a big component was and something that the city team worked really hard at was getting an agreement with the university to obtain all 119 acres of oso to become city open space and the water rights that that go with that property that is really critical for us to be able to have a place on site where we can mitigate the environmental impacts of our flood project and so if all of those things about the

[77:01] university's development and how we agreed on them their development area their rec fields the open space if the agreement's left open and all of that's up in the air we don't have the information we need to go to the permitting agencies and and we can kind of be in a perpetual do loop of of having to further refine our designs and so this process really was established and the schedule was established quite some time ago and the team really needs a decision on this to be able to move forward without delays thanks so much joe no more questions from me mary back to you all right um so my next question so um one of the the requirements of the ability to be able

[78:02] to pass um by emergency is that is the findings of fact and um i'm wondering um sandra if you could just um elaborate a little bit on exactly what constitutes a finding of fact sure thank you mary for the question so a finding is really found in the evidence in the record and so that evidence can take the form of testimony documents any sort of things that are presented at the hearing itself and so um those findings are then considered by by council in terms of their ultimate decision and in addition to that those um findings are found in your resolution and in the annex station ordinance as

[79:02] well thank you sandra um my next question is um i'm not sure if it is for you or not um but another two other things that keep coming up is um that that very little consideration was given to the land swap idea and then the other um one that keeps coming up is um that the city didn't even explore condemnation so if we could just you know sure talk a little bit about those two options i can try and address the condemnation question and then maybe somebody else can take over the land swap so this was before my time but my understanding is that there was um some legal research into the issue of condemnation and we even reached out to a condemnation

[80:02] expert attorney to see if it would be possible for the city to move forward on some condemnation with respect to state-owned property the response that we got back it was that it was a basically a case of first impression so um in terms of the um ability for the k for the city to move forward on something like that we would be on really some unknown legal grounds and because of that uncertainty it wasn't pursued and that's that is my understanding as i mentioned before that was before my time but that's pretty much all i can add to that thank you sandra can i call queen that please do um because i i've comments have been sent to me to the extent that um that condemnation might be possible um on the basis of life health and

[81:00] safety considerations and would that impact our analysis at all here or would it i mean would it change the result or i i wasn't privy to that analysis but i'm sure that that was probably an issue that was raised when we reached out to that expert um particularly knowing the circumstances that we're in thank you thank you mary mary i can probably take the land swap question um so the the question that we've heard um that this is referring to is whether or not there's been analysis done um that would allow the city to exchange land it owns in what's called the area 3 planning reserve in north boulder for cu south so essentially relocate see you south to the north part of the city and make the cu north for those tuning in the planning reserve is roughly 500 acres in north boulder it's an interim classification in our comprehensive plan called area three planning reserve and it's interim in

[82:01] that there's a very detailed and thorough process by which the city and the county undergo to determine whether or not that area becomes part of the city and so there's several steps involved with that it's lengthy on purpose because it's a large area there's limited development constraints and it's one of the kind of last remaining areas where we'll grow with greenfield development as a city um so as i mentioned roughly 500 acres in that area the city owns around 240 250 acres that it purchased with parks and rec funding in the 1990s and it was at that time purchased with the understanding that it's kind of on reserve for a regional park and then there's also 30 acres in that area managed by our housing department and so just want to note that we did have a study session with council about a year and a half ago in earl february of 2020 where council discussed this and staff provided a memo we talked about the steps in the process and the

[83:02] necessary delays it would cause in the flood mitigation project and the unknowns with a number of things including the disposal process for parks land that we own there so the disposal process is somewhat similar to what we would how we would dispose of open space um and so um due to the uncertainties and the time timing constraints um there wasn't much interest with council to move forward with that the first step in that process is called a baseline urban services study where we look at our capacity in the area to provide provide urban services and that's scheduled to be worked on heading into the 2025 boulder valley comprehensive plan update and so it's at that point where we would go through the next couple of steps if council so chooses um to look at that area of the planning reserve and so through that process it's most likely 2027 or so when when it it may become eligible transportation

[84:01] and i'm going to turn to adam adam is this a colloquy okay super europe i actually have two um i didn't get to the previous question fast enough before phil started answering i didn't want to interrupt himself um do we have any approximation of when we uh went to outside counsel about condemning condemnation um just you know the year even uh has has anyone here been around long enough to know that hold on a second i'm gonna see if i can find an answer for you okay feel free to come back with the answer when you have it um i'll move on to my second colloquy um as far as land swaps are concerned uh if cu you know hasn't developed any of the land at cu south if this were to pass and the annexation agreement goes

[85:00] forward is there opportunity for a land swap if um the uh north property is annexed and is that still a potential in the future phil i suppose anything is a potential um the university's position and they are present tonight if they have any interest or or need to also comment um was that um in order to entertain those discussions the land and the in the planning reserve would need to be eligible for annexation so in area two and that's when that's all those different steps that we that i kind of mentioned um just overall um that would likely last until 20 20 27 um and so the timing is kind of i i don't know i it possibly could be open but it's not something that um seemed like a viable option in 2021

[86:04] yeah thanks for the answer so maybe we can ask that question directly of cu when we get to that part of the discussion but so in all technicality it is still a possibility in the parties yeah if the parties can agree to an arrangement then it certainly is a possibility i think there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of robust plant community planning that needs to happen um in north boulder too in order to to have that conversation thank you and adam if you would like um i believe the university's here if you'd like to direct the question to the applicant about that um i think it's appropriate to do it now okay i just didn't want to get out of line with i know you're you're fine because you're colloquing and i see cus up here so if we want to get them to unmute um i guess really the

[87:01] question uh see you folks is uh if we ended up annexing the um planning reserve or part of the planning reserve into the city and it were an annex property would it be something that you would consider um engaging in discussions about a potential swap so thank you mayor weaver this is pat o'rourke i'm here with the chancellor abby benson and derek silva just so that everybody knows we are in the chancellor's conference room as part of our fully vaccinated facility so we're not mass but we're in compliance with local public health ordinances uh just so you know and i think the answer to the question is that if the parcel of land was annexed and we were talking about both having fully annexed properties we don't want to be in a position where we would say we are unwilling to talk about that but that we would really need the

[88:01] to be talking about annexed parcels of property in order for this to be a comparable conversation thank you adam do you have any follow up with that no i totally understand that legally right now they're not uh interchangeable so um just want to see if there's even a potential avenue there so thank you can i add something to that yes yes you made it and then we're going to mark i i just wanted to add that um and i think actually phil may have already raised this but just to point out that with parks property there is a dual approval process that requires prab and council approval and then there would still be the issue of paying back the parks money if the property was disposed and then also to follow up on your question adam with respect to how much time has passed since we

[89:01] sought out uh opinion on condemnation that was um within the past two years great thank you sandra and mark is this colloquy in effect yes i am um i don't know whether to direct it actually to you sam or phil um i assume if we wanted to rearrange our work plan in the next council we could create a higher priority for the urban uh services study and and moving forward on that if if that were the rule of council i'll say i believe you absolutely could and i'll turn to phil and sandra to see if there's other considerations we we could do that at any time however the subsequent steps in looking at the planning reserve have to happen at certain times and the next step would be that major update to the comprehensive plan those steps were memorialized in our intergovernmental

[90:00] agreement with boulder county that we adopt with the comprehensive plan and so if we wanted to change the timing of those we would probably need to approach boulder county and to see if they would be open to those ships in the agreement but that that could that approach could be made and those inquiries could be conducted am i am i missing anything i i don't think so mark there had been talk of kicking that off with this council but covid kind of put the kibosh on that with what happened um to the requirements for planning um staff and the loss of of staff so um it had been considered in the subject of kind of speculation that we might come to this in 2021 but it did not happen because of staff constraints look there's a long way from here to there but at least steps can be taken if it's the will of counsel to do so absolutely um i believe we're back to you mary

[91:00] okay well thank you all for um those in-depth responses and i appreciate the colloquies um my next question i i believe would be for sandra and this is on another um topic that um keeps coming up as well and that is um regarding the two council members participating in negotiations and so the question is how is that not violating that committees be open to the public thank you for the question mary so as many of you know charter section 9 requires that all meetings of council or committees be public we've taken the position that in order to have a committee that a group of council members need to have authority delegated to them by the rest of council this is not the case with sam and rachel's role with this project the two council members were invited into the negotiations

[92:02] by the interim city manager to consult with them on matters of negotiation they do not and did not speak for the council or for the city manager but only for themselves this arrangement does not fall into the definition of committee and as such there is there are no issues with the state open meetings law um so i hope that addresses your question yes it does and i guess i have um just a follow-up question regarding um this was a contract negotiation is that correct yes that was happening and so are contract negotiations typically open to the public any contract negotiation not typically no it's considered work product it's it's there are they are generally not public

[93:01] i don't know of any situation where we've had a public contract negotiation but it's possible thank you um that's that's all my questions awesome okay so thank you mary thank you everyone for those questions and colloquies next in our organization is does anyone on council have questions about the four changes to the annexation agreement since last week i see rachel and adam rachel i actually just had a couple more i didn't i didn't get to colloquy on phil um it's kind of it's kind of loose here weren't questions um but any council member can ask any question at any time so um i think i just wanted to ask one question at this point because mary was very thorough thank you mary for those great questions um

[94:00] so there was a question raised last week about why the contract did not include standards that would apply in the situation where the property is purchased by a private developer around green build standards so cu has committed to some um some goals and and maybe not standards but at least some goals around um what its environmental standards would be for the buildings at cu south is there a concern that we don't have something in the contract that would apply to private developers we are not concerned as staff because typical city standards will apply and so in this case if council approves the annexation then for 10 years the city would be the only purchaser eligible to to purchase land or be conveyed land on cu south and so that 10 by the time that 10-year pro exclusive option expires any

[95:00] if the land were sold to a private property owner not only would they have to comply with all city regulations including building codes but also our net zero standards at that time which will be stricter than they are now awesome so just to to make sure i heard that correctly there will be standards that apply to private developers if it if it goes that route would change 31 at the earliest at which point we'll have net zero standards in place yes okay thanks so much okay super and then i've got adam and mark adam yeah i wasn't ready to move on quite yet either sorry sam um no problem so my question is regarding something we heard in the presentation uh last week actually and that's about who is eligible to annex the property into city services and what the timelines are for those different eligibilities so i understand that i don't know the exact number of years i think it's about 10 we have the exclusive ability

[96:02] to annex the property and i just wanted another explanation on that and how that would play out in the future so adam can i just ask a clarifying question before we go on you said we have the exclusive right to annex for 10 years do you mean to purchase from the university sorry i'm talking about uh the opportunity for a city like superior to provide city services to the property um yeah there's i can get the exact date but there is an intergovernmental agreement between boulder and superior and i believe louisville along u.s 36 that agreement includes um kind of areas of influence where the parties have agreed that we're not going to provide urban services to the other city's area of interest and cu south is in the city of boulder's area of interest that agreement i believe expires at the end of uh i think in 2030 and so if not renewed then that

[97:01] protection would not be there and technically speaking a city could possibly provide urban services to cu south however um you know that's that's um that's all we know now oftentimes the county does approach those parties of an agreement like that to extend renegotiate and so on yeah thanks for that phil and do we know what that process that iga process looks like um it's just county run and is it pretty normal for it to you know be re-upped each time or are there changes made pretty regularly what's what are the sort of you don't have to give me exact probabilities but you know what what's the possibility i i suppose it would deter depend on the parties and and what um is happening uh in in several years from now overall along the corridor i will i would say i point to the history of boulder county

[98:00] and they've provided a lot of leadership in this regional intergovernmental collaboration with different intergovernmental agreements around growth and development and other things throughout the county and so they're pretty good at it i would i would say and um overall i would say boulder and boulder county our relationship is strong we've been doing this collaborative planning for a half century and um i know we would certainly be working together closely when that time came too all right thanks phil uh mark um sam provide me with a little structure here this is an appropriate or an inappropriate time to ask questions about the emergency versus non-emergency any anything you'd like to at this point okay um and then this goes back to legal i guess um first how common is the use of emergency standards of passing ordinances i mean is it something we do with any frequency

[99:04] it it is something that we do with some definite frequency i don't know the exact numbers um but i i wouldn't be surprised if it's you know in double digits okay all right in terms of um finding a fact does there have to be any temporal nexus between the conditions we're trying to address and the use of the emergency provision you know we're trying to prevent flood you know threats to health life and safety but those are at a very indeterminate time in the future um so do you need any any relationship between those conditions and the use of the emergency procedure or not the cases are a fine deference to the legislative bodies that find emergency findings

[100:00] they're not going to re-weigh all of the evidence and they will in most cases defer to the legislative body's decision on those questions so it's a relatively low threshold and i guess my last question with respect to that is we know there is there is some practical benefit to passing this by emergency and that it allows us to continue to design and permit uh even during the tendency of a referendum should that occur um is that an impermissible basis for resorting to emergency procedures can that be part of our consideration that it allows us to move forward well if if you use the belt and suspenders approach i suppose that's the case really the threshold question should be whether there's a public health safety issue

[101:01] there could be some procedural considerations taken as well because certainly if the measure is allowed to move forward and to address the emergency based on some procedural elements then those could be taken into consideration as well but really as a threshold matter it's the former and same may i ask one unrelated question absolutely okay i i know there has been a land change with respect to making the agreement subject to uh disposal of the land that we require by osbt as i recall it was cu's position that that's a city agency it's not an external agency and we've got to be responsible for that now knowing the people as i do on osb i'm more than happy to take my chances with their good judgment

[102:01] and professional uh professionalism so i'm happy to go that route but there's a second part of that which is there are provisions that actually permit another referendum uh if an if a disposal takes place and so my question is why don't we at least get a recognition that that's a factor as we move forward because i really do not want to end up in a situation where the disposal itself is subject to a referendum and for whatever reason that passes and now we have no disposal we have no flood mitigation project and we're fully engaged um with a fully vested cu south project um see you have a position on just the second half of it i don't mind so much about osbt because i'm willing to take my chances there but a referendum is a referendum and if they're subject to an existing referendum why not

[103:02] subject to that as well so i'll i can try and answer that question for you mark thank you so we we know the osbt adopted a resolution that outlines the conditions that it would like satisfied if the property is disposed and staff has attempted to address those concerns in the annexation agreement a disposal is required pursuant to brc 8811 and charter section 177 the disposal decision is also subject to a referendum you are correct if the decision to dispose is not approved by osbt and city council or an affirmative def decision is overturned in a referendum vote the project wouldn't be able to be built in its current configuration um the university has not supported

[104:00] adding the failure of disposal in the annexation agreement because it's a decision that's in the control of the city this is not the case with all of the other regulatory agencies that are listed in the agreement if the city were not able to meet its obligations under the annexation agreement the university could request disconnection from the city however if so directed the city could pursue other approaches to pursuing the project including the consideration of litigation options or even amending the city's code and charter so these are issues that would be addressed as they come up and um i hope that answers some of your questions well no it does not because we're subject to a charter approved referendum on our action tonight um and so my question is why are we not subject to a referendum on the disposal again

[105:00] i'm not worried so much about the actions of osbt i think they'll behave in a professional and rational way um you know i'm not worried about litigations and charter amendments i'm simply saying that there's the possibility that a referendum of the voters declines to approve that disposal and then we are in a situation where we have a signed annexation agreement we cannot get the primary benefit that we are seeking which is flood mitigation um and we are kind of left with a bag of air so so mark may i ask is there a question in here because it sounds like some of this is a discussion between council members but what's the question for staff my question is is there a principal difference between two different um charter provisions calling for referenda that we should be subject to one and not subject to the other

[106:01] i i can answer that question mark so you you're right we are subject to both of those referendums if a disposal is required um for ospt or osmp um that disposal would be subject to a referendum you are correct in that regard um what isn't uh what we don't know right now because it's too far into the future is whether that would be approved or not and there's lots of different factors that could be that could occur between now and then that could require or allow for a disposal to happen and i see joe's uh turn on his video i don't know if he had anything else to add or somebody else did um joe yeah i did i didn't have anything to add on topic

[107:01] so i've got a couple of other hands mark but i also think that um to the extent that we get answers from staff i think this is a important subject to discuss with the full council as well so um i see rachel and then mary yep just a follow-up question for sandra while we are on emergency um and i'm sorry if this was answered earlier i have four dogs in my room and there were a couple times when they were barking like just all the time so i may have missed it um but if we pass by emergency does that somehow inhibit or limit direct democracy or uh the right for people to referendum the annexation absolutely not and and i think actually sam's diagram that he put out on hotline is a good representation of that it does include does not include the legal risks or any of the other nuances but i think what it clearly shows is that in each circumstance um the voters would

[108:02] be entitled to uh exercise the road vote the right to vote in either circumstance okay i just wanted to um ask for that clarification because there's been um i think some intimation that the emergency vote would somehow stamp out uh direct democracy so it's staff's opinion that that's not the case correct thank you and mary thanks sam um i this is a question i believe for sandra um and this is another question in the category of things that keep coming up and um so what keeps coming up is um why can't we vote on this um we voted for excel so if you could just um explain what the difference is between why we voted on the excel

[109:02] contract and why this didn't get put up to a vote of the people well we're dealing with an annexation ordinance and so that um takes a legislative process according to our charter um the the idea that it would be required to go to a vote um was attempted i i think several years ago i don't recall now that the actual year when that happened but but it failed and so the voters had an opportunity to put something in the charter that would require a vote for any any annexation uh and that just didn't fall through or that fell through so um it's not something that is required under our charter and in our home rural city

[110:00] and just to follow up but a franchise uh is required to go to a vote is that correct that is correct yes and the the muni question was based around the franchise correct yes okay all right mary back to you um thank you sandra and that um that was a um initiative um ballot item and the year was 2006. and mary if i recall sounds like you've got that up didn't that fail like 60 to 40 or something like that yes correct so the voters had an opportunity to put in our charter a requirement that we would vote on annexations i believe it said larger than five acres and that provision failed so it's not in our charter because people did vote on that is that the way you read that yes that's correct that's that's how i read it

[111:00] okay that's correct and that's all yeah that's all i have that's that was the only other question i had thank you okay and mark i just had one quick note um in your questions about adoption by emergency i had um taylor ryman thank you taylor have a look at this council we have passed 17 measures by emergency some of them are the supplements which we normally do by emergency some of them were coveted related but let me tell you a few that we adopted by emergency that we're not the tents and propane tanks measure that we did this summer was adopted on emergency fees on scooters were adopted by emergency dockless bike share was adopted by emergency and the moratorium on on um uh the scooters was also done by emergency so i guess we have a history of this council having been able to do that without significant concern

[112:01] so and tailored to the rescue yeah okay any other questions council so any of any kind i i specifically wanted to call out any questions on those four small changes to the annexation agreement or anything else this is the time to ask any questions of staff you might have sandra so i just have a clarification to make regarding the iga that we had discussed earlier and um the the expiration date was actually incorrect i believe it was um i'll have to go back and look at my notes i'm not finding it now

[113:01] 2023. so um it wasn't uh it doesn't expire in 2030 it's in 2023 just wanted to make sure that that correct information was out there thanks super and um i i think there are a couple there's a super iga and there's another one with lafayette and i think there's the one with lafayette is like to 2030 and and the super iga was 2023 so okay any other questions mary you have a question i just wanted to say thank you for the proposals that i put out on hotline for changes to the annexation agreement all being included so just thank you for that um to the negotiating team that's all i have all right super

[114:01] okay um with that then if we're done with questions um i had proposed six different topic areas for us to talk about and these were really just kind of free form discuss and any feedback and then if if we don't have any specifics on those we can go to each council member and talk about kind of our perspectives on this so the first one that i had teed up uh was about the structure of the agreement specifically it provides the annexation terms obviously all the flood protection stuff we've heard about first right of offer and refusal the exchange of land and water rights is there anything that council would like to ask about that or discuss i'm not seeing any bites there how about the overall land use and zoning designation this i believe i'll ask a question just to

[115:00] confirm sandra i believe that this will establish public zoning for the whole property even though there are three different land use designations is that correct i believe that's the case um but phil if you can just confirm that okay and phil could you just give a small rationale for each of those land uses why uh we think or why planning thinks the public is appropriate for those absolutely um i have a couple of notes um but so just bear with me the um this as mentioned last week and in the memo staff did find that um the initial zoning of public was consistent with the three land use designations on the property um and so the big question that council must answer is whether or not zoning of the annexed land is consistent with the goals and the land use designations of the comp plan of the boulder valley

[116:00] comprehensive plan and as summarized last week the most clearly articulated goals of the comp plan is through the cu south guiding principles which talk about what happens in different areas of the site that aligns with the three land use designations on the property so there's one land use designation on the property called public that's 129 acres of the property we found that that was consistent with the initial zoning of public because the definition of a public land use specifically anticipates the university um and it's also consistent with how the other cu boulder campuses are zoned in the city um and and the consistent with the land uses found on other campuses um the other um helena's designation as park urban and other um represents 60 acres of the property um and the agreement um in this case does allow flood mitigation flood control and recreational purposes um which are bolts specifically

[117:01] mentioned in the definition of the park urban other area and then the third land use designation on the property is open space other and that's 119 acres of the property there is no complementary zoning district for the open space other land use category but in our analysis we did find that it's consistent with the public zoning district because the agreement will regulate the land that portion of the property in a way that's consistent with the open space other definition all right super um the the few other topic areas i just wanted to make sure council members had a chance to speak to or weigh in on if you have any specific concerns or or thoughts on conditions for development on the property so the annexation agreement has a lot of focus on conditions required for development things like the height plane setbacks

[118:00] phasing of different types of uses and the uses themselves which are permitted any desire questions comment adam yeah during one of our discussions a while ago i asked a question about phasing and the traffic studies um or just you know uh i know that the cu campus is supposed to be built in phases and obviously would only make sense that with each phase a proportional amount of traffic would go into each phase so you're not counting sort of the full amount that is allotted for the entire property for each individual phase um where did we land with that phil it was something that the negotiating team did bring up but we were not able to reach an agreement for incorporating that into the proposed annexation agreement um we were able to reach agreement around phasing the

[119:01] property from north to the south and specific points of measurement prior to development in between phases of development but we were not able to reach agreement on doing kind of proportional trip trip budgets trip caps as development progresses so just for public knowledge the full allotment will be allowable even in just the first phase yes yeah okay thank you and mary just a question about um there there's a limit of um 2 000 square feet maximum size for a dwelling unit is that correct um not not entirely um

[120:00] there was concern in our public process about the university building um there's a two to one ratio of residential to non-residential and so two square feet of residential can be constructed for every one square foot of non-residential there was a concern under envisioning a scenario whereas there would be a low number of very large homes that would then allow for a lot of non-residential development and so what we added into the agreement is just through the public process where we learned this and heard this um was that in that ratio the residential side no matter how big the structure is the unit you can only count 2 000 square feet of it and so if the university built a 3 000 square foot home only 2 000 square feet of that would count towards that ratio of residential to non-residential so it doesn't limit the size of all units but essentially it provides

[121:01] a sort of disincentive yeah that was the goal thank you that's all i have any other discussion about the development requirements all right see none transportation points or issues adam you asked one anyone else have a question comment feedback on transportation mary uh so just one of the one of the things that we've gotten emails about is um why isn't there in the agreement um a requirement to use real-time monitoring we heard that that was in the planning board's recommendation too and so we did add um a term around that the university will consider real-time traffic monitoring but it doesn't require it um i think the

[122:00] um i i would let the university speak to their um approach but overall i think there was some concern with becoming too prescriptive because but still putting the statement in to the agreement so that when we do get to that stage there is an expectation that that's considered and and um so it's not a requirement though right super and for for this um point i i would turn to the university and see if the university would like to talk about their intention as far as real uh traffic monitoring goes because that has been something that's come up multiple times and it's a uh intent in our agreement but it's not a requirement so would you please speak to university um your thoughts on can i

[123:00] can i just call it quite too and invite the university to to address why they didn't want to say yes to the phasing trent trip caps applying to phasing as well adam's question super that's two questions to you um right you start with real-time monitoring and then move on to why don't the trip caps scale with the phasing yeah uh sure so uh derek silva assistant vice chancellor for business strategy here at the university and with regard to the um with regard to phasing i'm going to start with the trip cap one first with regard to phasing the trip cap it it just didn't seem practical to take that on and especially to because it could absolutely result in a limiting of development and for reasons where there would not be sufficient traffic to have an impact right the traffic study identifies uh different points of impact the traffic for the the traffic anticipated for the total amount of development

[124:00] and that's what we've agreed to so we're not we did not want to agree to any phasing of that trip cap it just becomes very very burdensome and uh with regard to the other was the other question it's a real-time traffic monitoring derek so um yeah so with the real-time traffic monitoring we're open to whatever technological advances that would make the most sense to incorporate to be able to monitor that traffic uh what we don't know is how that would work there's also different offsets that are agreed to in the agreement and so any real-time monitoring would not take into account those offsets that we have otherwise agreed to so i think we're open in the future though okay uh mary any further on that or adam i don't have anything further and thank you all for the responses great thank you okay with that our next subject is open

[125:02] space environmental conditions and i'll include disposal in this and so mark i wanted to um to have an exchange with you on this point um i i think uh when i think about process generally on this um whole annexation it seems to me like um if we pass an annexation ordinance then folks have the ability to to gather signatures and cause a referendum and if that referendum is certified then there's a vote you know council will touch it and then likely there would be a vote on whether or not the public in boulder thinks this annexation agreement is acceptable if it gets past that gate then the voters have said the annexation is acceptable as an annexation agreement and if at a future time osbt chooses not to dispose or there's a referendum and the referendum

[126:00] chooses not to dispose land which would cause a problem with the flood project it seems like there's some alternatives there one alternative sandra talked about which is um citizens group or council could send a measure to the voters to change the charter to dispose those four acres specifically and so people in boulder would have a chance to specifically weigh in on that again if they wanted to it also seems like the flood project itself could be potentially changed if needed because that would be a requirement at that point if the people voted to do that but it seems like everything about that subject is in the city's hands so the city voters have a choice on trying to overturn the annexation agreement generally and after that point the annexation agreement is good if in the future for some reason maybe the endangered species become even more

[127:00] endangered or some other factor changes if at that time the voters choose not to dispose because ultimately the voters will make this decision then that is a choice that is made uh in light of perhaps changed information but there is a chance in the next year uh for voters to weigh in on the annexation itself and then in the future there's a chance to weigh in on disposal so to me that seems like appropriate process and it seems like there's plenty of optionality and i wouldn't see that anything else would be needed in the agreement to cover these future conditions which we may not know now um so i just wanted to to say that thought and happy to hear any responses from you but um well i guess my first one is the staff you mentioned the possibility of changing the contours of the flood mitigation project as that is the um the core

[128:00] uh benefit that we're hoping to achieve out of all of this i i guess my question for staff is is that even possible if such a disposal would be were to be contested by referendum and the referendum for the past um is it actually one of our alternatives to change the the nature of the flood mitigation project and work around that rejected disposal i i suppose it is that we can revisit where the flood wall or or components are placed we have kind of gone through a process of elimination over many many years to get to this variant one 100 that is the basis of our design but um i i think i'll leave it on at that and if i if i have further thoughts i'll i'll raise my hand i i guess my question joe then would be

[129:00] assuming that um for some reason uh the voters chose not to overturn the annexation but chose to overturn the disposal wouldn't one of the options be to greatly scale back the flood mitigation project to something that was less than the hundred year um what would you do or what would a future joe do in the case where all of a sudden the voters have uh let the annexation happen and then have not let the disposal of those four or five acres occur what would what would the utilities department do well i think the the variant one option it's a it's a wide flat valley and the high ground on the east side is the us-36 embankment and the high ground on on the west side is over on the west edge of cu's property so anything we would do would have to span that whole

[130:01] portion of it and and so the the height of the flood wall would potentially be less if we were doing a uh a lesser level of design but i think we might have to revisit the master plan process and and maybe start from scratch let me get at this another way um in anticipation that we may well have a referendum in 2022 what would be the timing of the disposal request so that if there is a referendum on that perhaps we can combine them all into um one happy contest in 2022 as opposed to doing them in series that's probably a a question for sandra and and i know that the disposal process

[131:00] does have an element that allows for uh a vote and so i'm not sure how that that all works but maybe dan and sandra know i'll just chime in by it's um the disposal process does not neces um necessarily in fact i'm not aware of one in which it ended up in a vote um by the uh the electorate but there is a uh a process in place that would allow for it if after the affirmative vote by both ospt and council then there is a waiting period and during that waiting period if there's a uh a petition that is signed by at least five percent of the electorate then that would uh then trigger it to go to referendum so a disposal in and of itself doesn't sort of guarantee that there will be a vote of of the electorate on that issue there has to be a threshold uh through a petition period uh that would have to be uh sort of

[132:02] adhered to before it would uh necessitate that a vote so mark the idea of combining it uh with a november ballot at such and such a time uh that is assuming that that there is a vote and uh but there is a threshold first to a petition period that would need to be uh done i'm really asking if it's something we plan to do um well before the 2022 election because as i said i think we are better off um having them both on if there's going to be a referendum on a disposal i think we're better off having it on the same ballot i suspect they will both pass or both fail um but that will give us much more clarity in terms of how we proceed so we have a couple other hands up and i think this is uh do you have a question for dan before i move on to other information i have a colloquy okay go ahead mary

[133:02] um yeah so mark you said something interesting about um putting both of them on the ballot um should there be um a certified referendum that there there would be that one and then why not put these two on the ballot so it occurred to me that um one of the the things that sam mentioned was that um we could put a charter amendment up for a vote that disposed of the four acres so you could it's a possibility that you could just go ahead and put that charter amendment for a vote next year regardless of what's going on um so i guess that's a question for sandra and i'm sorry can you can you repeat that last part it's are you asking about whether or not um

[134:00] the question of a referendum from this disposal question could be added to the other referendum no what sam mentioned was that you could you could just essentially have a charter vote on um the disposal of the four acres necessary for flood mitigation um and that could be um a ballot item that's placed on the ballot by council so is that something that could happen to kind of address the issue that mark has brought up that could be a way to to take a different approach a more proactive approach to the issue yes okay thank you just wanted to check on that that's all i have thanks mary and then i've got rachel yeah i guess it's a slight colloquy just that um i think a lot of this is getting into

[135:00] territory that the next council will have to decide and um i'm just worried that we're drifting although i thought it was a great idea mary like the the notion of of putting it to the voters so um but but i think we could be in for a long night as is so just want to encourage us to stay on track okay so thanks for that rachel and mark i i agree with you that this is an issue that ultimately will have to get dealt with by hook or by crook in one way or another but maybe we don't know enough tonight to go through all of the scenarios and i guess the pertinent question to me is does it affect the annexation agreement or not it does sound like rachel said to me like this is uh items for the next council to consider because the next council will have the benefit of knowing whether a referendum occurred and the next council will have a benefit of input from utilities and open space about when the appropriate time is to go to osb and ask for a disposal okay fair enough

[136:01] okay um that brings us to the la mary i see your hand before i move on oh it's an old hand okay um and then the last item that i had flagged for just kind of free uh specific discussion was passage by emergency measure or non-emergency measure should we choose to pass it we've had a bunch of questions and discussion about that so far is there any other input questions feedback all right i see none so in what we said as far as organizing this goes is that we are ready really to begin council discussion and debate so it's our night and this is the last item so before we start that i'll ask does anybody want a break or should we just power through raise your hand if you

[137:00] want to break i see adam's hand up mark do you want a break all right let's take a five minute break and we'll come back and we'll start with discussions

[141:54] all right we are all back and adam should be pleased because we're one minute early

[142:00] everyone's here super all right and i'll wait until i see sandra and nuria to make sure that we have our staff here there is sandra nuria when you are back if you could turn your camera on that would be great

[143:16] alright all right well i don't see nuri's camera on but um i expect she will join us shortly um last chance for questions otherwise if it's okay with counsel um i'd like us to start discussions on the merits of the annexation agreement and um move towards whatever emotions we're gonna make we're going good with that super

[144:01] if it's okay i'm going to take a prerogative here and i'm going to kick us off on discussions if there's no objections all right see none thank you um so it's obvious that this is a really important issue to our community and many folks are very passionate about it and there's a lot of reasons for that of course the first one is that we have some critical values and boulder around open space and land use as well as some of the history that attends to this property so i'm going to try and frame up some of the history and walk through what i think some of the key issues are and how i come down on those personally so i think it's worth noting that this particular parcel of land was identified in the 1977 boulder valley comprehensive plan as uh area of land to be annexed into boulder was contiguous with it and it was envisioned at that time to be a

[145:01] subdivision but i guess the way i read this is it's been intended to be a housing focused piece of land development for 45 years then at some point the flat iron company came in turned it into a gravel pit mined it put up the levy and then there was a controversy about reclamation or non-reclamation and then in 1996 the university purchased that property and there was controversy about that how much it was paid for um whether the city should have been able to buy it terms of the purchase whether or not cu was going to reclaim it or take down the levy and so on and so forth but all of that history is old the cu purchase is 25 years ago now and we must move on from the history dominating the conversation about this property we have to take it for what it is a piece of land which is owned by the

[146:01] university in which we have interest in for open space and for flood mitigation and as part of kind of turning the corner and moving on in 2009 the city kicked off the south boulder creek flood mitigation study which is 12 years ago so we have been studying talking about and thinking about flood mitigation on this property for 12 years formally and for some time before that of course and then we all know what happened in 2013 and in 2013 we got to see with our eyes what a 100 year flood event in this drainage looks like what the over topping looks like what the life threat is like and so on with that knowledge we went through the 2015 comp plan update and added the guiding principles around this property to the comp plan and it was clear to everyone i think on council and in the community that we had teed up the um foundation

[147:03] for an annexation discussion that's the way it was framed in the comp plan and i think that's the way that we all understood it so to me the 2017 comp plan adoption for the 2015 update was kind of us saying as a community we want to turn the corner on the history and we want to make this land into something that serves the community the first element of thinking about anything about this has got to be the flood issue and we know that it's a critical life safety threat in fact some of the most sudden and violent flash flooding potential in the entire city is on this drainage way and in addition we as a community have declared that we are in a climate emergency which magnifies the risk not only the frequency but the intensity of these kinds of flooding events which we also know that we are the community in colorado with the

[148:02] single highest risk of flooding so we know that we're first in line for big floods we know that the climate emergency is making this worse and we have a recent event that shows us how dangerous this is our responsibility as council obviously our highest priority is protecting life health and property and doing so in a way which is equitable to everyone we've had some discussion tonight about the 100 year versus 500 year i just want to concentrate on the 100 year plan which we have established as our going forward plan and talk about what the benefits are well in that flood that occurred in 2013 had this project been in place all those waters would have been contained there would have been no over topping of 36 us-36 would have remained open for the entire duration of that flood and much of the life threat and property damage that occurred due to over topping would not have so that's

[149:00] one advantage of a hundred year flood project there there will be bigger events and the lifetime of this project in boulder there will be events which are more than 100-year event but a 100-year project will have many positive impacts the first of which is that it will delay the over-topping significantly a 100 year plan in a 500 year flood event will detain about 55 percent of the water that would ultimately have over tops us 36 and so it will keep us 36 open for longer it will allow for more warning for people who are in harm's way in that drainage and it will allow more time to evacuate people if we remember the accounts of people at fraser meadows they were suddenly flooded and they didn't expect it and one of the things that will happen with the additional detention in the hundred year project is that there will be more time to respond

[150:00] and get people out of harm's way the annexation of this property is the most clear and timely pathway to flood protection and the reason why at the top line for me is that it's the most comprehensive and it's the most practical way to balance all of the critical values on the property we need land for flood protection and detention that's the direct 36 acres we need but we also need 119 acres for habitat protection and expansion that will be in open space we have to get that land and water rights for that habitat in order to be able to mitigate any environmental damage due to the flood project itself so as joe has told us it is not just that we need the 36 acres it's that we need the entire package and not just the land we need the water rights in order to be able to restore the habitat that has been inside the levy and dried

[151:01] out into its former wetlands status and we need this as a mitigation bank for the flood project itself so that whatever environmental damage we do we can take care of and the permitting agencies will then be able to give us permits based on having done what we needed to do for the environmental values on the land i will also emphasize that as part of this project we have not allowed development in the floodplain on this property that is critical because we have said that we you know one of the things which causes flood damage is putting buildings in the floodplain so we have kept all development out of even the 500-year floodplain which is not regulatory but that was part of the agreement we made in the guiding principles another way in which this annexation serves flood protection um then i think the other thing to remember

[152:00] about annexation and flood protection is this annexation comprehensive agreement brings all of that to the table and so we have a flood need we have a flood plan and this annexation is the critical next step in keeping us moving forward and realizing our flood plan another thing about this annexation that i think we need to remember is that not only is it a fair exchange of value between the city and the university it's reversible if our half of the deal doesn't occur due to third party permits so the deal we're making is see you we will annex this land and give you our services our water and sewer and flood and in exchange we get the ability to do our flood project and cu has very fairly agreed that if we do not get the permits to allow us to do the flood projects because they're denied for

[153:00] reasons that are outside of our control we can reverse the annexation and go back to the conditions we were in before the agreement that is quite fair it also allows the city a great deal of control of development through the annexation agreement so points have been raised that we do not have approval authority of the development which is going to occur on this property after we annex and that is true however we'll have uh all of the controls which are built into the agreement as well as collaboration i'll call them opportunities but really they're almost required for us to be able to work together as cu develops the property to make sure that things like light and noise don't overly impact open space and that we are managing the traffic situation between the two parties in a way that is good for for both parties um the other thing i'll say about annexation is if we don't then what can

[154:01] occur well there could potentially be 10 mansions out here or there could be a very large solar farm covering the area and none of that would be in our control or really even influence if we don't do this annexation that would all be decided between the county and the university and i don't think we want that to happen another point that i think is critical here is that all of our open space values are well served by this project and they're required as i said to be part of the flood project mitigation so we get 119 acres this is the best riparian habitat in the footprint of this land and it's it's um open space that we knew for a long time that we wanted we also get the water um that was a significant point in negotiation with the university and it the way it's resolved will allow

[155:00] us to be able to make that land into what it was before gravel mining happen on that property the levy will be removed that levy which was put in place to de-water the gravel mining has always been something i thought should be gone and not only will it be removed we'll reuse the earth and the earth and dam of the flood project which is classic boulder recycling and then again no development in the floodplain is all part of this open space transfer and then an additional piece that's come in near the end that i think is very important is we have restrictions on light and noise impact um in the state natural area and on our open space and that has been something that i think was really critical to being able to bring everyone on board around the natural values in this area development on this property is much needed in the sense that we need housing

[156:02] we have a housing crisis in boulder because there's not enough affordable housing and we often ask the university would you please build more housing for your students and in this case it's intended for students faculty and staff those structures will only be allowed on 40 of this footprint and i think that's important to realize that the university has essentially given up 60 of this land to either be fields or to be completely undeveloped or to be used in our flood project we've made housing predominant use by at least a factor of two there will be five acres of permanently affordable housing which are accessible to the entire community so that's a benefit that goes outside of just the university the two acres which could be used for a public um safety facility will not necessarily displace any existing fire stations or any existing police

[157:02] posts so i think it should be realized that even though there's the possibility that we'll have an additional public safety facility there it does not imply that we will necessarily close or remove any others we control the height of the buildings on this site that is something that wouldn't happen unless there were an annexation agreement and then the buildings themselves are limited in footprint and there's a hard cap on non-residential development here transportation impacts are managed in a way that is unique to this project and this site and it's enforced through the annexation agreement um i think some of the other deal points are worth noting as amazing to me that we've been able to get here but very pleased that if this annexation goes through for 10 years cu can't sell this property to anyone but the city and we've established a price at which that would be sold to the

[158:00] city after those 10 years if the university does choose to sell which i think is an unlikely scenario we have a right of first offer and that right to first offer is meaningful because it gives us plenty of time to respond to notice from the university that they're intending to sell some or all of the land and so we have time to ask our council and then our community if they're willing to go down this pathway and then also it's worth noting that cu if this annexation goes through and they develop will pay the full connection fees for the utility service that will be provided there and so that was another point that it wasn't clear how that was going to land and it's landed in a way that i think is good for both parties um fundamentally we have to act now the peace health and property of at least 2300 people plus any visitors or growth in the south boulder creek

[159:01] watershed depend on us getting our flood protection in place and i don't know how we can possibly do that without this annexation we need to protect not only lives and property but it keeps open the primary evacuation route of us 36 and emergency responders can get into the city for longer than they would without the flood project i believe it's worth noting that highway 93 would be long closed by the time us 36 would over top if there's a 100 year flood project in place and so when 93 closes that means us 36 is the main entrance and exit to town for many of the people we've declared a climate emergency this is a clear example the flood project of adaptation to climate change and so all cities are going to be required to take these kind of steps and it means that we can't wait to do it delay equals

[160:01] higher risk um i believe that if we passed this by emergency not only is it clearly an emergency measure because of the peace health and property protection but it also allows city staff to proceed with expenditures with all due speed and at whatever level is needed to complete the design and the permitting application process and a lot of that is because if we pass by emergency assigned annexation agreement can come relatively quickly afterwards which gives us better standing to make our our applications for permits minimizing delays seems to me to be critical as we proceed with the flood project so this annexation is important to that and passing it by emergency has the best chance of not only doing all the life safety protection but also minimizing

[161:00] delays and i think it's also important to note as we have before that if we pass this on emergency which i'm going to support it doesn't disenfranchise our voters in any way it doesn't change the process they go through doesn't change the timeline and it doesn't change the potential outcomes that are available for any citizen referendum or the currently pending citizen initiative so i'll just close up by saying i think that this is a very good deal i think it is very fair i think it enables critical flood protection to occur in a timely fashion it's a climate response which we must take it's protective of habitat and it addresses pressing housing needs it is not a perfect outcome for all parties but it is quite good and i'm going to support passing resolution 1295 as well as passing ordinance 84 83 as an emergency measure and i thank you for bearing with me and

[162:01] i will now turn to any other council members who'd like to hold forth on your views mark this is terrific this isn't the only time during this council that i'm going to be briefer than you sam and please for me you know everything starts with the question of whether you believe it's important and necessary to provide flood mitigation for the neighborhoods affected by the 2013 flood if you don't it is entirely reasonable to oppose this annexation but if you do and there's no alternative there's no option other than to engage with the landowner to try to reach a compromised mutually beneficial agreement i think we've done that and through many drafts of the annexation agreement we've created a document that provides many benefits to the city limits the scope of what cu can build on

[163:00] its portion of the property and provides us with the possibility of achieving flood mitigation sam went into great detail on the benefits of the agreement of the agreement i don't want to rehash them here but they're very extensive and they advance the interests of this city is it a perfect agreement that would be an absurd expectation it's a negotiated commercial contract between two parties in any such situation the only way one gets everything one wants is if one of the contracting parties is drunk and doesn't have a lawyer but it's an agreement that substantially advances key interests of the city and i think our negotiating team has done an excellent job i do want to address some of the the comments that have been made that um we have negotiated this deal in secret behind closed doors there is not one word of this agreement that has not been presented to the full council for comments and revisions and not one word that has not been made fully public for additional comments and

[164:01] suggestions but in a commercial negotiation the parties need to speak to each other candidly sometimes even more than candidly and that cannot productively be done on a tv screen it is not undemocratic so long as the entire legislative body renders its final judgment and the people have a voice which they will have with ballot measure 302 again with an anticipated referendum to reverse our actions tonight with the potential for yet another referendum on the osbt disposal and at least in my case with a vote for a new council in november as i said in my earlier hotline post this was a relatively close decision for me i do understand the positives and negatives and i very much respect those who've come to a different conclusion but support for this annexation agreement is where i thought the evidence led me and i will vote for it tonight thank you

[165:00] thank you mark next i have mary rachel and aaron mary thanks sam so earlier this evening i mentioned that i went through the rjh report yesterday and i'm going to read a um a phrase a sentence that i found within that report that really kind of hit home to me and why um one of the questions i kept asking myself as i read the final version of the annexation agreement was um you know sam talked about that it's fair the question i ask myself is it just and um as as i was reading through this document yesterday i came across this sentence flood studies prior to 1996 did not identify a flood threat in the west valley from south boulder creek

[166:01] and the west valley was subsequently developed without consideration for a large flood event and what that says to me is that that area was likely should never have been developed and yet it was developed because of a mapping error which has subsequently been corrected but to me the flood mitigation is the just piece of it we inadvertently put people in harm's way and it's not just harm's way but it is they are in a high hazard zone we saw in the testimony last week um and and we've seen it at previous um um hearings where people came and showed us videos of what was going on in the streets um

[167:00] the the photograph that we saw last week people's testimony where they were um clearly traumatized near tears they're in a hazard zone um which is the worst place that you can be during a flood and i live adjacent to a high hazard zone we watched it in 2013 and thankfully we had little negligible damage but i walked those streets in 2013 out in the the worst hit areas and um it was it was devastating the amount of debris was mountains worth um so you know to the to the to the point of passing it by emergency it's clearly to me it's an emergency um people who testified last week were clearly traumatized

[168:00] and passing it by emergency would provide some assurance that we will be moving forward to apply for the permits and to move forward to establish the boundaries for what that flood medication looks like because that's what the sanitation agreement does and it will provide some measure of comfort that things are clearly moving forward so to me that is um the mental health part of it and um and clearly a reason to pass it by emergency so it's it's it's really um clear to me um 2 300 people in harm's way some of whom many of whom probably aren't even aware that they are in harm's way so um so so that's the part that i answered just yesterday in a very clear manner for me is that this annexation agreement as just if only for that reason so

[169:00] um all of the other stuff that sam mentioned to me i was continually struck as we went through the process of negotiating how collaborative it was i know how much the community says that um cu is taking advantage of the city and that they're not playing with us and i disagree they clearly lift up to the second guiding principle the first guiding principle in the sea of guiding principles is flood mitigation is at the core and the second guiding principle is collaboration and i think that all parties have lived up to that expectation so it's been a collaborative process um and one more thing i would just want to add to what the many comments that um that sam made and

[170:00] and what mark has said is that in in the the two council members that participated in the negotiation everything that mark said is true everything was was um run by the full council and the community and the important reason to have had rachel and sam at the table is that staff can only take it so far um there are some negotiations that are political and staff cannot do that and having them at the table enabled us to achieve this collaborative agreement um without their participation it is quite likely that we would not have gotten here so that's another reason that um that i think that that their participation was so important and um and to be um

[171:00] well accused of secret meetings um is you know i think an assault on all of our integrity so um i just have to say that um i think that's that's all i have right now um but anyway um i'll be voting for um supporting both the resolution and the ordinance uh resolution 1295-8783 ordinance on an emergency basis so that's all i have thank you mary rachel thank you for that um mary and for um also noting the mental health aspects of of this emergency um so i agree with basically everything that sam and mark and mary said and sam i thank you for laying out um a lot of the the background and

[172:02] and the issues so concretely for the rest of us to to follow up on um so i will try not to to repeat points or extend the discussion unnecessarily i do want to take a moment and just think sam and mary in particular i think you both have worked on this process for about a decade maybe and so i just i think the community owes you a debt of gratitude and i thank you um i will be voting yes tonight and i'll primarily be doing that for flood mitigation and to protect lives i would just add to to what's been said that in terms of equity and who is protected almost one-third full one-third of the individuals in harm's way who will be protected um from what has been described tonight as violent and deadly flash flooding and that is what is at the heart of this discussion about a third of these individuals live in affordable housing and that includes a high percentage of all the individuals city-wide who have been unhoused and we have helped

[173:00] out of homelessness and end housing they are in the direct path of these floods and they are some of the people that we will be getting out of harm's way those in harm's way also include a high number of older folks in our community i have personally gotten to know a lot of fraser meadows residents through my work on this project and a lot of people who survived the 2013 floods and fought for flood protections and fought hard so that no one else would suffer for what they went through have passed away in the last eight years and i just want to acknowledge that they spent their last years advocating for what we are voting on tonight and i thank them um i will i will uh i'm going to cut it short now and just say that i will also be voting for emergency because i sincerely believe that we need the flood protection and the charter says that we can vote for emergency if something is urgent around preserving public peace health and property

[174:02] and we are already eight years out from the last flood and we know that this is urgent and the next one is coming and so because it is urgent on these fronts i will be voting for emergency and i will be voting yes thanks thank you rachel aaron thanks well i i will also agree with um everything that's been said so i appreciate my colleagues for being so articulate and laying out all the issues uh sam in particular for covering all the all the bases about why we're here and the history that led up to it and why we're approaching this and and it is fundamentally it's to protect the life safety of our residents right as my colleagues have have been speaking uh about movingly and um including those uh those folks uh in affordable housing you know some of them live in garden level apartments uh directly in the floodplain in the high hazard zone so the flash flooding is entering you know people live in one level uh partly underground and the flood waters

[175:01] just go right in through their windows and their doors and we didn't see these pictures last week in the testimony but if you've seen some of the photos of some of those apartments that were damaged so extensively it was one of the the number of areas where we're very fortunate that we didn't lose any lives in 2013 flood but the the necessity of protecting these folks uh from the next uh flooding event is just is just critical and it's why we're doing this project and i think the we asked many many questions of staff to address concerns in the community about why we're doing it this way and not another way in a lot of different areas and i think we have good answers for all of that we've spent um over a decade uh very carefully working through all the alternatives and we have arrived at this through very careful consideration none of it being rushed many years of working collaboratively with the county and cu and uh years of negotiation two years uh at this point

[176:02] um so we we've worked really hard and i feel very good about where we are right now um as mark said it's not perfect no agreement ever is but uh the flood protection that we're getting for our community coupled with the desperately needed housing and um and the open space protections are significant benefits to our our community also the i think the transportation caps that we have in there it's an innovative approach uh cu always has a very high alt mode chair when people go in between their different campuses so there's a lot to like here and the potentially problematic aspects have all been mitigated by clauses in the agreement so i think we're on the the right track here absolutely i do want to really thank um sam and rachel from council for the many many many hours of meetings that you put into to get this agreement to where it is right now is extremely tough thank you so much and also for the staff team uh there are a

[177:00] number of folks from city staff that were in all those meetings as well um and so appreciate all the hard work that you put into that and the collaboration from from cu on their side as well and um just last couple points um one is that we we are not there there's a lot of talk and emails that we're getting to say that we're subverting a democratic process by passing this now but as uh as sam and others have stated the right of referendum still exists and if if citizens want to collect signatures on this and put it to a vote that absolutely is still allowable um so the democratic process is allowed to continue on on unabated and then i will be supporting this uh on an emergency basis you know in our charter section 17 it says that an emergency is must be for the preservation of public peace health or property and the public peace is a real issue from the mental

[178:00] health challenges faced by those in harm's way of the worries they have every time that it rings hard um so we're assisting with that uh people's health and lives are at risk and of course the property of all the buildings in the floodway so i think there's uh at every case for doing passing this by emergency and i'll be supporting this tonight um a yes vote on that basis thanks everyone thank you aaron so with that i'll turn to there adam i see your hand and then nearby i'll be asking if you want to speak after adam adam go for it yeah thanks tim um this has been definitely a struggle to come to a finite conclusion um but you know it's our duty as council to vote yes or no in these decisions even when you don't agree with everything that you know comes along with the proposals so um

[179:01] real quick uh could the members of cu turn your camera on as well i'm gonna be addressing you uh for some of this and i always like seeing who i'm talking to so thank you for that um i just wanted to say that um you know everything that sam laid out there are a lot of benefits to this agreement and i really do appreciate all the hard work that went into that and you know there's a lot of negotiation there were countless hours um dedicated to this moment um and i just want to say that i've learned a lot along the way about you know our city about cu but really about institutions and when two institutions have to go up against each other in a contract negotiation it's it's a very very unique um circumstance um because you know i don't think there's any council that

[180:01] would have agreed to annexing this property if flood mitigation weren't necessary and i don't think cu would ever give up any land if they didn't need the property annexed so we came to the only possible outcome here um through negotiation for both sides to get what they wanted out of this um and you know that's that's extremely tough especially when you're a council member who's here for a couple years against an institution that has plans out well past when all will all be dead in this room so um that was a very unique spot and i think you know that's a tough spot to be in so um i just want you all to know that um while we're making this decision

[181:00] um that being said uh i've i've come up you know on both sides of this argument the things that i would implore see you to do in the future since it's clear that at this point there's gonna be um passage of the annexation that you do look into um a possible land swap uh with the other property uh if that is indeed something you know that that you would be agreeable to in the future i think it's worth future councils to look at and the reason why i think that is because i just fundamentally disagree with building next to a property that is going to be used for flood mitigation because when you cover land with cement buildings anything that is not dirt and allows for you know additional rain water to

[182:00] fill in there you're essentially shoving that water into the flood mitigation so um i just think if the city and cu could come to an agreement where uh future property that's going to be developed was not even near a high hazard flood zone that would be so beneficial for the entire community um that's that's the main point i really wanted to get out there and i appreciate you listening to that cu i'm also going to uh vote yes to annex and much like mark this was a close decision because my idealism for what would be um beneficial to the community has gone you know butted up against the reality of what we need in flood mitigation and uh you know that that the health and safety components just went out in that

[183:01] scenario so um that's where i landed and it certainly was one of the hardest decisions in these two years um so thank you to all the other council members who you know uh put in all the work and listened uh along the way and the thousands and thousands of people who engaged on this you know we we did receive thousands of emails that i think we all read and i i'm sure we'll continue continue to receive hundreds more after this um and know that as a community we did see those we did hear you and it looks like this is just the best case scenario that we can come up with right now and what i think is more and more a post-best case scenario world that we're living in so thanks thank you adam and um nearby would you

[184:01] like to say anything before we move on to potential motions um yeah i guess i i don't have much to say other than um i do appreciate all the time and effort that's gone into this i think it's quite impressive and it is appreciated um i do appreciate all the communities feedback the countless hours that everyone has spent on this from the community to staff to council members that does not go unseen and well probably does go unseen by many but for those of us who do know what this entails we do appreciate it i will not be supporting this tonight for my own reasons and it's um a lot of value based um i understand life is important property is important uh i know that more than most being a volunteer firefighter for 10 years but this does not hit my ideals or my values to the point where i can support this so again i do that does not

[185:03] decrease my appreciation for uh all the time and community engagement and staff and counsel um that have put into this though thank you bye all right well i i have one colloquy which is to adam's point um and and i would also say that um i think it's worth looking at a land swap should should we get the urban services study done and all the conditions um that would make it acceptable to see you to look at so i would encourage the university to keep an open mind about that um as we move forward we do have to go through the process of annexing that property in before that could even be a possibility so i hope that um staff will uh and the next council i guess this is really to the next council i hope the next council will have a look at kicking off the urban surface of study because there's a lot

[186:01] of reasons to do that um and this is one of them so with that i will stop my colloquy and turn to you aaron it's the same i'll make a motion if that's all right please so i think there are two things in front of us so i'm going to start with one motion on the resolution so um i moved that we adopt resolution 1295 setting for findings of fact and conclusions regarding the annexation of approximately 308.15 acres of land generally known as cu south and located at 4886 and 5278 table mesa drive zero highway 36 two parcels 718 marshall road and 40 cent 4745 west moorhead rachel a second all right we have a motion and a second and alicia if it's okay i'm going to ask for a roll call of course then of course sir

[187:00] can you hear me we can hear you yep all right we will start with mayor weaver hi councilmember young yes rocket hi friend yes naval no swetnick yes and wallop hi sir resolution 1295 has been approved with a vote of six to one very good thank you for that aaron would you like to make a second motion i would so i will move that we adopt by emergency measure ordinance 8483 annexing to the city of boulder approximately

[188:01] 308.15 acres of land generally known as cu south located at 4886 and 5278 table mesa drive zero highway 36 two parcels 718 marshall road and 4745 west moorhead with an initial zoning classification of public as described in chapter nine five modular zone system brc 1981 amending the zoning district map forming a part of said chapter to include the property in the above mentioned zoning district and approving the annexation agreement with the inclusion of the amendments sent out on hotline on september 20 2021 captured on record and mutually agreed upon by both boulder city council and the university of colorado and setting forth related details rachel a second and i um just have a question did we need to um give cu any opportunity to clarify or anything before we had this i i do not believe so i plan to turn to them at the end but i'll turn to sandra

[189:01] sandra is there any requirement that we have see you speak here no okay good question though so we have a motion and a second alicia would you take us through a roll call vote please yes sir councilmember young yes rocket hi friend yes no sweat nick yes wallet hi and weaver hi all right sir courtney's 84 83 is hereby adopted by emergency by vote of 61. thank you very much alicia i'm going to turn now to you sandra and

[190:00] see uh could you let us know if we have done everything that we need to do to adopt the annexation of cu south uh yes i believe so i uh there isn't anything else that needs to be done and uh thank you for a really clean process tonight appreciate everyone's efforts great thank you sandra and i will bring this back to us um and i think those of us who'd like to speak should um speak to this i would like to start by turning to the university the applicant in this case and hear any final thoughts from the university now that we have adopted the annexation of cu south yes mary weaver um philly stefano chancellor at the university on behalf of the faculty staff and students here at the university of colorado i want to thank city council for this collaboration on this very

[191:00] important issue and also to discuss that you know we we want to continue this partnership with you throughout this this year and in the future it's a wonderful collaboration between the city and the university and it's a partnership that i do want to continue so thank you all very good thank you uh chancellor distefano thank you to the cu team i'm going to step in here and thank a lot of people so i want to start by thanking um all of council for all the work that you have done over the years especially mary mary has been working on this for longer than any of us has she probably saw more on planning board than i even saw and so thank you mary for the input and work you've done on this thank you to all of council i want to turn to staff and i want to call out phil kleisler in particular for thanks because

[192:00] tomorrow will be phil's last day with the city but i can say that without phil's work his diligence his calm head unruffled demeanor we would never have been able to get through this um phil kept everyone moving in the right direction he always had helpful suggestions when issues came up and he kept all the cats herded when their cats were all trying to run in different directions so um phil thank you for the work you did leading this thank you mayor it was a pleasure and joe teddyuchi um utilities director um without you we would never have been able to work through all the details of the flood project and your predecessors who have done the work all the people who work for you who haven't testified before us i know how much work you have done so thank you also to dan burke and john

[193:02] potter especially in the open space staff who have helped get the appropriate concerns communicated from open space board of trustees to us so that we could negotiate them into the agreement and staff could continue to work on them your contributions were also invaluable and they're much appreciated it it's hard to name all of the folks who should be thanked um because this project has touched many many people including our new city manager our uh interim city attorney aaron poe thank you very much aaron was the city attorney who stepped in after david gear and has helped us do all the last hard work at getting the the legal niceties tidied up because when aaron i believe when you came on we didn't really have much of a working version of a legal agreement it was just a term sheet so

[194:01] thank you very much thank you and to the university um i i think we need to remember francis draper at this moment she put in so much time with our community and from the university side at um teeing this up and shaping it and forming it through the guiding principles and so on and then to derrick and abby thank you very much for all the work that you put in um and pat and i'm chancellor destefano thank you all for your very hard work also elvi the attorney on the cu boulder team um thank you all for the time that you put in and lastly but most importantly i want to thank the community this project more than any other that i've been part of has divided our community the history has contributed to a lot of

[195:00] bad feelings which have persisted the flood scared frightened and traumatized and threatened the lives of many people in 2013 highlighting the critical importance of being able to do this there have been people in our community who have been enjoying the cu south property for walking their dogs recreating and being in nature and i know that change will be coming to this property as a result of that and that can't be easy for people who love that land so thank you to the community your input has shaped this agreement more than you can ever know all of those questions that mary asked at the beginning of this hearing came from the community and they were part of the dialogue that we have needed to go through in order to do a fair shaping of this process and a fair hearing so thanks to all of you who have been part of this um project i think now we need to look forward now we need

[196:02] to look ahead at how we make this the best outcome possible for the entire community and that means preserving the open space that means removing the levee that means restoring the land to the riparian habitat that it can be we need to come together with the university in addition to this project and all the other projects we have we need to shape each other we need to talk about housing we need to talk about growth we need to talk about how to collaborate as the cu south side is developed so to me this is the beginning of an opportunity to bring the disparate parts of our community together with a common vision and a common goal of making this as good as it can possibly be so all of you who work so hard on this deserve kudos those of you who are disappointed by this decision i'm sorry for that but know that we are listening

[197:00] to you regardless of what the decision has been and with that i would like to turn to counsel for any other final comments before we close rachel i agree with everything that you just said and um just want to thank you in particular as well you've been a an exemplary leader through this project and i think that a lot of people even on council probably cannot appreciate the i wouldn't even know how to estimate how much time you had to put into the negotiations and and shepherding this process and it's um it's it's been a hard thing to step into because there's been a lot of criticism so i just want to thank you for leading all of us through this project and this process for the last 10 years and especially for the last year thank you rachel okay council any other council comments staff mary

[198:06] happens at least once a meeting um i want to thank start by thanking the community um and you know and echoing what sam says regarding the folks that michelle could you mute what okay sounded like a train uh the inside of a train um i just want to start by thanking the community and um and as sam said i know that there are many people out there that are disappointed but your input shaped this agreement and as sam said more than you'll know

[199:01] i know that sam and rachel both tried to incorporate as many of the items that were brought up by the community i know i worked with osbt to include the light and noise piece of it that was a really important part and peace to a lot of people who as sam said have enjoyed this land and have a huge attachment to this land um the collaboration as sam said is something that is at the very beginning and i hope that this plants a seed going into the future and as adam said long after most of us on this picture frame style of meeting are gone that it has set a way of being partners so thank you um to the community thank you

[200:02] to um sam and rachel and um and all of staff for all of your hard work um and i hope that we continue on in a partnership that includes the community so i see it as a three-way collaboration with the community the staff with cu actually four-way and council so um that's really all i have to say and um let's move forward um and try to heal from this process um and put those divisions behind us and start putting one foot in front of the other thank you thank you mary as you often say onward adam yeah i just wanted to give one more specific thank you to phil since he was in the mix of everybody but i feel like all of council needs to be very thankful for his contribution and

[201:02] um you know utmost professionalism along the way always super helpful um answering any question we needed and you know did all the site tours with us everything he possibly could to keep us the best informed as um we could be as just lay people who are making these decisions so um can't thank you phil enough for helping us and best of luck uh going forward thank you adam really appreciate it okay last call for comments area yeah thank you mayor and i just wanted to say real quickly and i know this has been a long evening but as someone who just arrived to this community i'll say it's been incredible to learn about the history of this project and the passion with which everyone came to it and so

[202:01] i joined the chorus of thank yous both to all of you at council staff i just have no words for how amazingly diligent they have been both staff now and staff that started this decades ago as they were moving forward and then really truly i just wanted to say thank you to community community whether you were in agreement with this franchise or with this agreement or whether you were not i think they pushed us to make this agreement better and richer and i hope that and i think i i can speak and i don't want to speak for you see you both at cu but i think i can say that we will all continue to listen and on behalf of the city i'll say that our commitment will be to continue to partner with cu to continue to listen to all those voices whether they were critical of this or whether they in favor in this we are all as mary said in this together and we remain committed to continuing to

[203:01] listen to you all to our community and to partnering is this most forward so i just wanted to say a quick word of thanks to everyone in this process very good thank you nuria and i'll say again thank you to everyone thank you to council and um with that i'm going to gavel this meeting closed at 9 25. everyone have a good night thank you everyone so

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