September 28, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music] [Music] [Music] do

[1:02] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music]

[2:00] do [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music]

[5:44] do [Music]

[6:13] do [Music] well then i won't jump in not knowing what you're talking about we were we were talking about juni being better off not talking to any of us no comment i meet you miss mary i'm coming [Music] all right so i see i think we have all the council members here is that correct

[7:05] i'm not seeing rachel i see her on the participant list there she is yep super so [Music] let's see alicia i think we are ready whenever you are ready all right sir i am ready emily would you please confirm channel 8. there yes channel 8 is good to go all right wonderful i'll begin recording all right i see the recording so welcome everyone to the september 28 2021 special meeting of the boulder city council we have one announcement tonight

[8:00] that announcement is the usual announcement that covid 19 vaccination information can be found at dot www.bouldercounty.org slash families slash disease slash coca-19 slash vaccines and with that announcement we are done with announcements so alicia when you are ready could you please call the roll of course sir and good evening everyone councilmember bronken present friend here joseph isn't neglect here swetnick present wallach present weaver here yates here and yeah present

[9:01] mayor we have our home excellent thank you alicia and can you take us to the next item yes sir of course our next item on tonight's agenda is the consent agenda and that includes items a through f very good thank you alicia and um on our consent agenda tonight we only have one item that we intend to pause and focus on a bit and so with that i would return uh turn to bob and rachel as our city attorney recruitment committee to see if you want to speak to us about finalists i think we do i'll start bob if that's okay so bob and i as the city attorney subcommittee recruitment subcommittee are recommending three finalists for the city attorney position tonight and we think that all council members received a confidential memo with the names of the three finalists as well as packets where you would have seen the candidates

[10:01] application materials and wherein they would have been referred to as candidates c d and e and before we publicly disclosed the names of the candidates that we were going to recommend and before we all vote on promoting them as finalists we wanted to invite colleagues to let us know if any concerns exist and for the sakes of the candidates we don't want to announce any of their names if they're not going to be selected as finalists so we are going to invite colleagues now to express any concerns about candidates c d and e thank you rachel so i'll turn now to council council any input or feedback for the committee i am seeing none so back to you rachel i think silence in this case means dissent all right i'm going to turn it over to bob then thanks well thanks colleagues um and so as you saw in the memo the candidates c d and he i'll say their names now and there'll be

[11:00] more information about each of these can if council approves these finalists will be more information about each of these um candidates shared with the public and with the community tomorrow from the communications departments the candidates that we are recommending rachel and i are recommending as finalists are sandra yanus adam stevens and teresa tate and with that i'll go ahead and sam if it's okay i'll i'll move the consent agenda items a through f with those three names um uh inserted for item f as our recommended uh uh finalists for city attorney thank you bob zer second for the consent agenda motion second all right we have a motion and a second and i would invite any discussion before we move to a roll call but any questions comments or feedback on the consent agenda

[12:03] great i see none so alicia could you please walk us through a roll call vote yes sir thank you councilmember yates yes young yes rocket hi friend yes joseph yes magel swetnick all right i and weaver aye mayor the consent agenda items a through f with the names inserted has been approved good thank you very much and congratulations to all of our finalists especially to you sondra thank you for applying and to all three for applying

[13:00] and we look forward to getting to know you better in our interview process and hope the public takes advantage of getting to know each of the finalists who have applied um and with that i guess back to you alicia to the next item all right sir my next item on tonight's agenda is item number three our call of check in item 3a is the call up consideration for the concept plan review and comment for the redevelopment of a 2.33 acre parcel that includes the addresses noted below located primarily at 2504 spruce street with 63 residential units and an extensive exercise and an exercise room for residents the proposal is for a two-phase project phase one is planned with 16 town homes and two apartments phase two would include up to 45 apartments of varying sizes and bedroom counts this is reviewed under case number lur202

[14:05] thank you alicia and i guess to you nuria if we have charles farrow unless jacob lindsay wants to make a brief introduction but if not i'll ask cheryl to come present thanks so much emily if you want to bring up the presentation that would be great great okay um good evening mayor members of council i'm charles farrell with planning and development services um elaine mclaughlin our case manager for this application couldn't be with us this evening so i'll be presenting on her behalf i've tried my best to get up to speed on the details of the proposal quickly but tonight i'll be presenting some very brief information related to land use and zoning the proposal itself and then some general notes on the key issues that were raised by both staff and the planning board during their discussion of the application but before i move on just a quick

[15:01] reminder that concept plan is an exploratory process that's designed to solicit feedback from the community staff planning board and the city council and was really meant to identify key issues early in the process that may inform a future site review submittal so no formal action uh results from the concept plan review only feedback and in input to the applicant at this point in the process so i might also note that we have ollie get far from the applicant team here on the call this evening in the event that there are questions for him as well as other myriad staff uh from housing city attorney's office um and historic preservation so um next slide please so for planning context i think it's always instructive to start at the broad level from the comprehensive plan or in this case the site is part of the boulder valley regional center which is considered one of the city's three main regional activity centers regional activity centers are defined in the complex places where the potential for the

[16:00] highest intensity redevelopment with a wide range of uses exists next slide please so the boulder valley regional center is further defined as an area with a pedestrian focus at a human scale with a goal of making the area memorable for people-oriented spaces you can see the site is really just located up in the northwest corner there of the boulder valley regional center next slide so there's actually three of different boulder valley comp plan land use map designations on the site which is a bit unique the comprehensive plan designates most of the site as mixed-use residential which is identified as primarily residential with neighborhood scale retail and personal service uses then there's some smaller portions of the site which include mixed-use business and general business designations with both which both support a mix of housing and commercial uses next slide please

[17:02] so the site is zoned bc2 which is defined as business areas containing retail centers serving a number of neighborhoods which retail type stores will predominate although residential uses are permitted um under the district next slide please just a few really quick notes about the context of the site um there's residential uses along spruce street retail to the east with a grocery store deli and other commercial uses there's four-story retail office building to the south along with a dispensary mike's camera across folsom is green leaf park and the iron flats mixed use might also note that the boulder and white rock ditch parallels the site to the west and there's a new residential building being built across the street from the site at folsom and spruce next slide please and then the site itself consists of

[18:00] several warehouse and retail buildings with auto and scooter repair uh future i'm sorry a furniture store a thrift store um and it's indicated in your packet there's a building at the northeast corner of the site known as the mecca building which was recently surveyed and determined to be eligible for a local landmark designation which i'll discuss in more detail in a moment next slide please the proposal itself consists of 63 attached residential units and two phases that include 16 townhomes and 47 apartments the applicant has indicated their intent to include eight on-site permanently affordable units the proposal also includes some amenity uses for residents a 12 foot north south multi-use path as well as an east-west sidewalk connection into the site along with roof decks and some other ancillary open spaces on the site next slide please then because we're in concept plan the applicant also provided some architectural precedent images that

[19:01] illustrate contemporary building forms with the use of pattern brick and wood along with some massing diagrams that help illustrate building modulations and really how the buildings would lay out onto the site but ultimately the applicant would need to demonstrate consistency with the adopted design guidelines for the boulder valley regional center and would need to consult what the design advisory board as part of a future site review application so that said the planning board heard the concept plan application on september 2nd and were asked to consider three issues the first was whether the proposal was consistent with the comp plan land use designations and the bc2 zoning the board generally found that the proposal was consistent with the com plan and the intent of the zoning for the area next slide please but the next key issue um was was really related to the east-west alley connection required by the boulder valley regional center transportation connections plan

[20:01] halfway between spruce and pearl street between folsom and 26 and this connection wasn't represented in the applicant's initial concept plan for the site which you can see illustrated um you know bifurcating the block here some challenges in providing vehicular access were identified um those included bringing a portion of the white rock bridging a portion of the white rock ditch as well as the fact that the access from folsom street would likely be limited to a right and right out configuration but the board did acknowledge the applicant's intent to substantially reduce curb cuts throughout the site but did emphasize the importance of access and circulation in and through the site for all modes um the board also discussed whether a bike and ped only connection as a substitute may be more suitable but ultimately i think the connection may benefit from a review by the transportation advisory board and certainly additional analysis through the site review process next

[21:02] slide please so as part of the discussion with the planning board the applicant indicated that the connection and preservation of the building at the northeast corner of the site that we identified as a potential local landmark would reduce the overall unit count by 17 units including six of the permanently affordable units the board had a discussion about shifting some of the building massing shown on the plan away from the existing landmark eligible building at the northeast corner of the site it was also acknowledged that given the location and the fact that appendix j is now sunset the applicant could request a height modification through the site review process to strategically place fourth story building elements internal to the site and toward the existing four-story building that fronts onto pearl street the board also indicated that a height modification could also be considered to help introduce a better variety of roof forms throughout the site not just solely to offset

[22:01] units lost connections and preservation next slide please and so finally the board concurred with staff's recommendation regarding the existing building located um at spruce and 26th street like i said known as the mecca building i mean that the applicant should consider integrating it into the site as indicated in the memo a recent architectural inventory was completed on the building which was provided an attachment b of your memo this evening and concluded that the building is eligible like i said for local landmark designation due to some noteworthy architectural characteristics in this location which kind of relates back to boulder's uh commercial retail and transportation history um and then before we conclude this evening um i'd like to quickly acknowledge the testimony from the public at the planning board where we had five speakers address the board mainly in support of the application as well as you know numerous emails that have been sent to council in advance of

[23:00] this discussion regarding the proposal those have all been made part of the record and have been submitted to the applicant for their future consideration um and you know while the board expressed broad support uh on the concept i think there are still a number of key issues identified that the applicant would need to study further should the application advance into the site review process so um with that said i'm happy to respond to questions like i said we have ollie ginfar from the applicant team available here as well as a number of other staff so thanks very much great thank you charles and with that let's start with questions please i see aaron charles thanks for that appreciate it very informative my question is a timing one so if we voted to call this out tonight is this something that we could schedule in november at a meeting um with the new council and i asked just because obviously this this particular council would not be reviewing an eventual site

[24:01] review but if they did in a typical time frame it would be the next council that did it so just wondering if it's possible for the next council to review the concept plan i might rely on the city attorney's office a bit here but my memory serves me i think we have 60 days to actually hold the hearing so i think we would just if if we were getting into mid-november i think we may be cutting that close i think the code also says that if we run a foul of the 60 days if the applicant reviews uh agrees to a subsequent hearing date that that's also acceptable as well but i would defer to hella and sandra on that that's exactly correct charles um i think he stated it very well it would really just be something if we wanted to go beyond the 60 days um the parties just have to mutually agree so super anything else erin okay we've got rachel mark and mary rachel thanks sam thanks charles um you

[25:01] mentioned it might be good to have tabway in was that formally requested or is this the time that it gets formally requested um i think either now or if the application were called up for a review by council that would be helpful direction for staff to take it to tab to talk about that connection so um thanks for that sam this may be a process question for you then would we want to separately take a straw poll and if if council were amenable to inviting tab toyin yeah i think what we should do first would be to see if there's interest in calling it up and if there is interest in calling it up i i think that would be a time to give advice about what companies that call up all right thanks um my next question is about the the landmarks building how many square feet is that you know that's a great question i don't have that off the top of my head but i could look that up real quick all right um

[26:00] i guess what i was wondering in part is like it looks like a you know an interesting building and i can understand why people might be inclined to landmark it without weighing in because i believe that would be quasi-judicial and i don't want to overstep there but um do two buildings ever get this may be silly and and maybe um my indiana talking but do we ever move buildings like if it's a great building worth landmarking but it's in a spot that we want to put housing can that be done like i was looking at it and that's a great looking possible adu or you know sure yeah we've actually moved the uh the depot from um in the parking lot where the whole foods near uh 30th and um i'm drawing a blink right now 30 is in pearl 30th and pearl i'm sorry i was growing up like across the street from the transit village that was a building that we actually moved about a decade ago we've moved several homes off of grand view hill near the university to other locations

[27:00] [Music] on university hill james i just saw you pop on the camera did you have any other examples i wouldn't say that it's easy i think it also requires a tremendous amount of commitment i think from the developer but james thanks charles james hewitt historic preservation you know we actually have moved a number of buildings in boulder it's not generally the first approach from a historic preservation point of view but certainly it has been done you know i think there's sometimes a concern about taking the building out of its context you know this building's obviously been where it was constructed since 1972 so um and one of the one of the uh criterion for evaluation is environmental significance and it was found to be significant for its location on that pretty highly visible corner sure

[28:00] um you know 1972 doesn't sound that long ago i think a couple of us on council might submit um sorry that's a gen x joke um okay well maybe the applicant can tell us how they um how they feel about that possibility i'm just curious um and then also i think for charles just wondering you know there's been some community requests that we get that we look for ways to get more affordable housing more units on site to do that would we need to call it up and can we require that if we wanted to well i think it would be helpful to have the direction uh from council i think both from the applicant and for staff through the context of a call-up discussion so i think that we could vet the uh the issues but certainly council could direct staff to either uh you know look into whatever available tools there are to help either increase you know density on the site or help achieve whatever outcome

[29:00] you know council would like to see um and then in terms of like sort of what what are what we are empowered to do here if if it was council's will to have say more affordable units or more more units altogether is that something that we can mandate or require is that just sort of advice that we're giving because i'm i guess i'm a little reluctant to call it up if we don't have any teeth to our suggestions well i think right now through the concept plan discussion the direction is non-binding so i think it really is just input and direction at this point again i would defer to our colleagues in the attorney's office as to whether or not you can actually mandate the requirement for affordable housing on the property i believe that you can but once again i would defer to um hello and sandra rachel is that a question then to hella or sandra i think it is okay so so the question is what are the

[30:01] limits of what can be required uh in concept plan is that the question i'm not sure if uh hella is on or not i know she um had a scheduling issue she might not be here but um i'm happy to try and jump in so um my understanding is that the only exception that would allow for a certain percentage of units on the property to be permanently affordable units would be if it involved a grant of height modification and so um there i believe that that's the circumstance um and charles you can correct me for the if there are other tools available but that that's the restriction that i'm aware of right i think that would be the most um you know prominent requirement i think that would relate to the requirement of additional permanently affordable housing okay thanks right

[31:02] very good then we have mark and mary mark charles thank you for the presentation um under inclusionary zoning we would normally expect 25 affordable units correct correct and we're getting what six or eight on the current plan um so my question is where's the rest kurt thank you charles uh good evening council kurt vernon howard director of housing and human services um so um uh as it's proposed um typically the the the balance of that would be cash in lieu and um so we would look at it um it's a bit of a unique project uh because it has both uh ownership units as well as rental units and the inclusionary housing requirements are a little bit different for those different types so that would

[32:00] help us calculate uh what that remaining cash in lieu would be it's at concept plan it's difficult to get into the details of that because we don't know size of units and um type and and that sort of thing the other thing that i'll mention is that we are required to give the um the developer options so one of the challenges particularly at this point in the project of of directing with a particular expectation is that you might not get that because we do have to allow the the developer to to make choices however your input is very helpful when we meet with the developer as the project goes through the entitlement process to work with them towards an outcome um

[33:00] that we heard from from council and i see hella has come up as well and she might have things to add on to that as well if not i have one other question mark mark i think hell is ready hello i think we have two questions queued up for you the first one was mark's question um and then we'll come back to rachel's do you want to start with marx yeah and could you repeat that question for me i i think i heard the previous question because i was listening in as i was driving then as i switched from phone to computer i missed mark's question my question was um uh under inclusionary zoning the the rule of thumb i thought was the 25 affordable units um and i see six or eight i've lost the narrative on that but my question is where are the rest

[34:03] yeah as kurt mentioned it's still really early on in the process but under the inclusionary housing standards for rental housing there is there's actually no requirement for anything to be provided on site and usually those requirements are comply with through um an in lieu payment into the city affordable housing fund there's other ways to comply as well but um there are limitations through the colorado rent control statute that caused the statute to be written the way it is and i think part of the project as proposed right now would also include for sale units and our inclusionary housing standards they state that a portion of the units has to be provided on site but then we do have additional city manager

[35:00] regulations that actually allow different compliance methods as well for that so it's it's up to the developer to decide how to meet those requirements within the standards of the inclusionary housing code and then just rachel to make sure that we got your question addressed i believe rachel's question hello was if we call this up as a concept plan um what level of requirement are is council able to make or is it just guidance and and how does that work going into site plan review yeah with with regard to providing inclusionary housing on site again um it's up to the developer to decide how to meet that and the developer can decide that up until the building permit is issued it's not part of the site review criteria it's part of the general zoning requirements so it's not something that the city has required as part of the site review application if this moves forward in a

[36:01] site review so it can't be required through that since the the ordinance that suspended height modifications in most parts of the town has expired the site would be eligible for a height modification and through that affordable housing could be required unless a different criterion could be met although i don't think a different criterium could be met in this circumstance so under those community benefits standards if a hype modification was requested then under certain circumstances affordable housing would have to be provided on site although caution again whenever rental property is involved we run into the colorado rent-controlled statute and even under those standards there wouldn't be a requirement for the rental portion of the housing to be provided on site super and then the one other piece of context there was um rachel had asked a question about the possibility of moving

[37:00] the potentially landmark building and i think part of the question was around what we could require either in concept plan or site plan as far as moving potentially historic building as opposed to building around it and rachel please jump in if i didn't get that right she says that was right so it's just about are we allowed to condition approval on moving a building that may be historically landmarked um i think potentially i would want to take a closer look at the code for that um inside review the way historic preservation comes in is through one of the complaint criteria and it talks about um preservation of historic resources through discretionary review and and it

[38:02] seems like that may be one way to do it so i think that might be possible but i haven't i haven't thought that through very thor okay and and just one more clarifying question to follow up you mentioned in site plan review you may or may not be able to do that but what about a concept plan concept plan is feedback so we wouldn't be able to make a requirement a concept plan is that right that's correct concept plan is just providing feedback and the feedback is not binding okay thank you all right mark did you have one more question that you wanted yes i did um i was wondering if the if the applicant could speak to um the projected size and price points on the townhouse units hello everybody i'm ali hope you're all well um the size of the units um the 14 town homes that our market rate

[39:00] are 2 600 square feet each and the price point in today's dollars would be somewhere around 2.2 to 2.4 million dollars okay thank you right we have mary emman junie mary thanks sam um so the town homes i'm assuming are the for sale units that's great yes okay and then um the residences are the rental units and those is that correct well i'm sorry there was a table that was listed and i saw the residences and i'm assuming those are rental right so phase one um we would like to do all for sale and then phase two is right now we're struggling trying to make it work as a for sale project but as we're all familiar with

[40:01] the colorado uh construction statutes laws it's very difficult to make that work but we're trying to make that work that's so phase two right now is rental and just to go back to the affordable question uh we would love to have these units within the 45 six of them that we would like to meet half of the requirements for affordable units on-site be currently rented as affordable but unfortunately this project isn't large enough for dhp or an agency like that to be interested in managing those so when we spoke to michelle allen she suggested that we we should do cash and new for those just so we're clear on that okay so if i understood you correctly then um your phase one is totally um for sale units and your phase two would be the rental units that's correct yes okay and then

[41:01] um i noticed um i went on um onto the use table this afternoon and was looking at the loud uses on bc2 and i see that um efficiency living units are allowed and one of the things that has come up from the community is they want more units on site so um so my question is on the rental unit side um what is the limitation on the number of units that you can have there well we're we're we set up this um our plans um to be able to put on as many units as we could on on these two plus acres the way the bc2 zone works you need 1600 square feet of land area per unit and that's where the number 63 comes from the number of units that we provide

[42:00] yeah so the limitation is the open space requirement that's right and so the other thing that we tried to do is to provide not only as many units as we could but to provide as large a variety of units as we could so that we go from large town homes to smaller units but at the same time we feel that i don't know if you would all agree or not but that it would be better to have two and three bedrooms and to have one bedrooms and efficiency units just because there's so many of those being built right now around town that the two and three bedrooms would be more useful to the community and that's where the area of the site would allow us the volume to be able to offer larger units so we're kind of going counter to what a lot of other sites may be wishing or wanting to do we're able to do this okay thank you and then um you mentioned the difficulty in

[43:01] um creating more on-site for sale units due to the the issues with condo units um and and 16 is the maximum that you can have for sale no it's actually 18 units uh there's 14 town homes there's two two-story um apartments i know that's the right word and then amongst the town homes we can provide two uh affordable units as well that would be for sale so that makes 18. okay um and so that and that's the maximum 18. yes 18 plus 45 equals 63 correct so did you consider um with the the first face the for sale phase um did you consider playing around with the number of bedrooms and things like that to try and

[44:00] get more units as well the way um the reason it works for for sale in phase one is that the units are built in a vertical fashion so that they have party walls they don't stack on top of each other so it's not a condo project as a result we can build them and have less exposure to the defects law and that's why we can do that phase one for sale if that makes sense okay okay and then we really wanted to have more units i mean we wanted to maximize the number of units so the apartments on in phase two are stacked and it's a traditional apartment building and hence why it's going towards rental at the moment okay um and then um you mentioned that you're gonna put six um rental units on site um and and i'm i'm really interested and if you are able to do that i think you

[45:02] should bottle it and sell it because we've never been able to to do that in town so um that's that's just a snarky comment um it's really difficult and um the only thing that we could offer uh is to keep the units because we started as a for sale model and therefore we had smaller units that meet ih requirements and so we haven't changed those signs the sizes of those units conceptually meaning that in a perverse way they're more affordable but they're compact units basically but they're not affordable for the definition of the ih requirements okay and that kind of leads into my next question which is have you had any conversations with boulder housing partner partners about taking that second phase and maybe doing your cash in lieu on that site and

[46:00] making it a higher percentage of affordable housing uh i have not no okay um that's all i have thank you sure thanks very genie thank you and nice to meet you on zoom alley and thank you for being here i do think most of my questions have actually been answered with the price point and the square footage but i'm wondering just for clarity purposes if you because i'm trying to think okay if we call this up it's because we will i can't speak for the entire council but i can speak for myself we're looking for more housing unit we want to see more affordable housing and we want something a little bit of a tweak and the concept

[47:00] so the question is i understand everything that you're saying but as the owner of that property would you be open to increasing the number of sales unit and decreasing the size for phase room one i know you're trying to answer that earlier i still didn't feel that it was clear enough for me okay we've packed uh in there in phase one this for sale side of the project we've packed in as many as we can so that we can keep them vertical and reasonable width so you can park under these units [Music] so we could increase the number of affordable units yes by splitting these townhomes into halves if you like i think that will still work but i'm not sure how to increase um the number beyond the building form that we have without getting into

[48:00] trouble with how we might get sideways with the defects law does that make sense thank you i think that helps a lot just to hear you saying that hey i don't know what that would look like but looking into you know decreasing the size even if it's too half but thank you for that answer sure i have a quick question ellie um we went through enormous gyrations in our legislative agenda for a couple three years about construction defects and i as mayor i've heard many conversations about this but that law was changed two years ago and what we have heard from people through the metro mayor's caucus is that change was great we've doubled and tripled the number of condos that are being built in the denver area because of that so i had the impression that the construction defects challenges with condo manufacturing had been solved by

[49:00] doing what the builders had requested at the legislature but it sounds like you still see challenges with that so can you help me understand that it's not really about this project but just why why is construction defects still entering the conversation when i thought we had fixed that um i wish we had i actually had a conversation with george george berg one of our attorneys last week about this because we really want to do the second phase as a for sale and he told us that case law uh comes up constantly and things move around a lot so as i wrote to my memo to you guys this morning one of the things that we are we want to still continue down this path of examining whether we can do this for sale or not but it's going to take some time and he's going to do some research for that i do know that talking to the architects and actually i'm an architect myself and if you guys knew that i'm not

[50:01] but talking to um sears atkins rockmore our architects what they tell me is that their costs for doing a for sale condo project are 20 extra um they we also have to cover their uh cost for professional liability insurance as well the construction of the buildings goes from a wood frame on a podium to a fully concrete structure because they're you know with a with the exposure that one would have for eight years you cannot allow any kind of movement in the building whatsoever and then the package that the architects put together becomes substantially more involved in terms of detailing so that everybody's sure that these buildings are going to last a long time without causing problems for for the inhabitants okay so the short answer sounds like there's still concerns with construction defects for condos even though they've been reduced yes and i actually i'm not even sure if they've been reduced but

[51:00] but i can assure you they have because it's like this we all want that well it was a subject of a lot of work for people to be able to make that change because the trial lawyers were not in favor of it but the developers were so i know that it eventually broke through so it doesn't sound like it's settled in yet if it if it has been meaningful enough but that that's not about this project but thank you for the answer um just so to be clear george was one of the signatories of of the defects law himself so he he's very much knowledgeable about this okay very good thank you rachel just a follow-up question for um i think you just said maybe that you had sent an email this morning i did i thought the applicant and i don't think i got it so i just wanted to flag that i don't if there's something in that that you that you think we've read i'm not sure if i'm the only one who didn't get it that maybe um we

[52:01] didn't receive it oh i sent it to cancel at boulder.govsomething.com but maybe it was just flagging that i don't know if anybody else got it but um i don't have the benefit of whatever might have been in it i didn't see it either there are high points maybe i don't know if there's a timeline here for applicant presentation but maybe maybe tell us the highlights if there's something we needed to know the it was just basically a summary of a lot of things that we've already discussed um just explaining that the two phases of the project partially dependent on longer lease terms on the east side of the site versus the west side um um partially because we really are trying to do as um you know half 63 units on one side for them to be the as large as possible so there they can accommodate families um

[53:01] and that you know the whole argument about the rental versus for sale that we've gone over already thanks and then the one other item was the um the issue about the vehicular connection between 26 and false in which you guys touched on early on when charles was presented thank you ali can i ask you a quick question as well i'm kind of to follow up with rachel's we have the opportunity to call this up and if we call it up we'll have more time to go into each of these points in depth would you prefer that we called it up that concept plan or not um the earlier the better if you would like to have um input influence whatever you'd like to call it the better you know the hard part for any any development team is dealing with the timeline these properties are super expensive and it's very difficult to manage holding on

[54:01] to them because of that and so if there's any thoughts or comments the sooner they come the better thank you ellie it's very helpful bob i just wanted to valley uh bob yates i wanted to follow up on sam's question as as charles indicated i think we're legally required to um if there is a call-up to to have the hearing on that within 60 days which unfortunately the timing for that is not working out real well for us but you can waive that six day requirement i'm looking at the calendar 60 days from now versus is at the end of november we do have a council meeting it's really the first full council meeting of the new council on november 30th that could be a possibility i think that's about 62 or 63 days from now a more likely date would be the first council meeting in december um if council was inclined to call this up would you consent to either late november or mid-december meeting well um bob obviously the earlier the better so if you could squeeze me in in november i'd very much appreciate that

[55:02] yeah the challenges is that this council meets for the last time on november 9th and and uh if you were to receive a call up you prob up on concept you probably want the same council to be looking at your site review so the first time the new council is seated as the 16th of november but that is the day they're actually sworn in yes and then there's thanksgiving so i'm just i'm just suggesting that the two alternatives to logical alternatives might be the november 30th or i believe we have a regular meeting uh on december 14th um and so i'm just asking if if council was inclined to call it up would you consent to one of those dates because i think we would require your consent to go beyond 60 days um i think the it's difficult for me to sort of agree to a much later date again because i'm under the gun with time and how long i have with this property under contract um

[56:00] can i uh reach out to you after i've had some time to think about it and hopefully i'll have the right email sure although i think we have to make our consent our decision on call up here in the next few minutes but uh okay sounds like you sounds like you can't give us unequivocal um agreement which is fine i'm putting you on the spot so i don't i don't blame you that all right well with that i think i'll bring it back to council and say do we want to call it up yes or no and i think the people that should lead this will be people who will be on the next council or even have a shot at it so um with that aaron and then rachel hey uh ellie thanks for uh all those answers and your explanations i appreciate what you're trying to do here so um i am interested in calling it up not because i feel like the project should be turned down but just um because i think it would be helpful to give some input on some of these thorny issues you know surrounding the um you know the the unit size and placement and

[57:02] such like that so i think if you had the the new council or the people who would ultimately be the ones deciding whether to approve or deny the project i think it could be really helpful to get input on on these questions so it is something that i'd be interested in doing i i think we probably could um squeeze it in at the 62-day mark on november 30th so ali i realized you can't answer that right now but it would just be probably a couple of days outside of that window um and that's probably doable so and well i acknowledge we can't force affordable housing requirements in any particular way we can weigh in on unit size placement type etc that's all i got rachel i guess i'm with aaron it seems like there's enough here to probably call it up and i would just say to staff if we do call it up i think it would be a really good

[58:00] opportunity to educate the new council because these call-ups both concept and site review can be confusing for those of us who didn't serve on planning boards so i think it might be a good early opportunity to really baby-step us through the process if and that's not exactly directly relevant to this call-up decision but if it happens i think that will be a helpful helpful situation to pan out and really start us off with some really good understanding of what we're looking at under concept and then how it will be different at site site review thanks thanks rachel jr i support what everything that aaron and rachel brought forward i agree that calling it up will give us an opportunity to look over the site review concept plan and then give us the opportunity to give some direction on the size of the property um even though we won't be able to make a

[59:00] lot of some of the changes that aaron mentioned but i think this is a great opportunity uh for us as a community moving forward to give some directions to uh mr ali thank you junie and then we've got the last two who will be on the next council bob and mark and mark's maybe but we're hopeful bob i hope mark's on the next council too um i look forward to what he has to say allie i think i think we will call this up um i think it's actually to your benefit to hear what we have to say or sooner rather than later and we we could not call it up and be be silent on it and the next time you visit with us it's on site review sometime next year and that may not be the time you want to be hearing from us i think to the extent we have concerns issues dialogue discussion this has been a very helpful dialogue tonight i'd look forward to continuing that in november and i think it's in everyone's interest the community and yours and in ours for us to continue this dialogue in november as aaron said i think the earliest we could probably squeeze this in it's november 30th so if

[60:00] you could give us a couple of days of grace that would be really really great and i i would be in favor calling this up so we can continue this very fruitful discussion thanks bob mark yeah i have nothing new to add other than to say yeah i would be in favor of calling this up as well for all of the reasons that have been stated by my colleagues so you know then november 30th it is very good all right so i think we have a a bit of a formality here uh aaron uh well just since it sounds like it's the little council to call it up one thing i just asked of staff is you know there's talk about the uh rent control laws the state legislature and how they inhibit different options you know there was legislation passed in this last session that changed those rules so we can just make sure that we've analyzed how those updated rules um play out in this circumstance i'd appreciate it i guess so i think we need a vote on whether to

[61:01] call it up right i think we're still in the um i believe we have the will to do it but would someone like to move that we call it up so mood second all right does anyone object on counsel to calling this up see none it's unanimous that this is called up thank you all and i will i will also say i won't be here to hear it but if there is anything about construction defects um hella or sandra it might be interesting to know what has changed and just for the legislative purpose if that's not enough it might be helpful to understand from a developer in a particular circumstance what might still be needed so maybe our legislative subcommittee can understand that going forward any other comments i have some hands up still i've got rachel and mary i was just curious on the tab question i

[62:00] understand that we have called it up so maybe we will get to tab then but sometimes we forget things so i wondered if we wanted to just invite tab now and then that's done i think that's a good point staff do you have any feedback to us on that can you get this to tab is that reasonable to do um in advance of council's discussion or subsequent rachel i was suggesting maybe tonight is the discussion and if we think we want to invite tab maybe we just you know if there's an out of five for that or whatever is needed then then that could move forward so so rachel i think you're intending that tabs see this before the concept review in november is that correct or are you saying either way is fine i'm not sure because i haven't done this before i'm just not sure what i'm asking for timeline wise but i know that we have to proactively invite tab and that we've talked about that a bit that that's helpful and since charles mentioned this is a project where that makes sense um i'm just worried about it slipping through the cracks if we don't since

[63:00] since i wrote it down tonight just figuring maybe we'd act on it super well no i think it's a really good question charles if we're putting you on the spot to answer tonight maybe it would just be helpful if um you could put something out on hotline about how to do that because this is kind of new i think to counsel that you know the stage that we might ask tab to weigh in so if you could give us some thoughts and maybe between now and november 30th we can give some guidance if we got options we'd be happy too all right thank you and then i've got mary and juni mary yeah um thank you for accepting that um extra two days for doing a call up um i won't be here either but i wanted to just throw out an idea for you to consider um as you're trying to figure out your options and that would be to have a conversation with boulder housing partners and see if you might be able to turn

[64:01] that portion of the project into a higher percentage of affordable housing um and or make it 100 you know there there are ways i believe to do that um but um exploring it might be something that you could do thank you thank you for the suggestion thank you mary junior yes thank you i just wanted to add um i was i'm really hopeful the discussion that we have tonight i'm glad that we're having it i will slightly what's the word the word is not saddle and happy but i was hoping uh ali would say yes let's decrease the size and create all affordable housing units there but i understand there's different constraints

[65:00] in life and we can't all we can't get everything that we want um but just hearing that there might be this opportunity for half the size of the property and that would probably add a money to our affordable housing program so thank you i think that's we can't have everything that we want but we can you know we can push the ball forward where we get something in between that could really help uh people in the community ensuring that you know people who need affordable housing gets more of it through the project that you're creating um i think i wanted to go back based on the question that i sent through hotline and i don't know if ali you had the opportunity to see those questions as well but certainly some community members have um and it had to do with the landmarking of the oblong building and i mentioned i wanted to find out more about the landmarks and the landmarking and whether the landmarks board were part of that

[66:01] and so far i i did get the answer from uh or colleague charles and i mentioned no that's the recommendation from staff and i think also you know most of the community members online headline get the same uh response as well they did get to see the response but i think part of the question was also about equity and my understanding is that you know when we're thinking of equity and access to housing island marking this particular property something that should take place as opposed to creating more affordable housing so to be in line with i think something that rachel mentioned earlier about having the transportation advisory board involved i thought as well maybe the human rights commission should be involved in this particular project in weigh-in as well because again if we're talking about landmarking a property which i am very much full in marking similar to a lot of community members we want to preserve

[67:01] you know stern building community and trip you know they are here for the next generation but at the same time what does that really mean to providing more affordable housing to community members you know what is the balance that we are trying to maintain so i'm thinking either the equity tool or having the human rights commission as part of that discussion as well so that they could weigh in thank you juni and i see that we have a couple staff hands up i see hella and charles hello would you like to start yes thank you sam um i wanted to address the referral to tab tab can only weigh in if requested by city council and i recommend that if city council wants to refer to tab that that be done by motion and if you wanted that to happen before a council consideration of the concept plan then please know that tab is meeting on october 11th and november 8th

[68:01] um so if that's the desire then i it might be a good idea to vote on that tonight excellent thank you very much for that guidance so with that i will turn to council and look for a motion to refer this to tab removed second great any council members object okay i see none but i see mary's hand mary is that new nope oh okay so we have uh voted to send this to tab and i think hella either one of those dates would work as long as council can hear back from tab prior to the november 30th call-up um i think erica might be better to speak to what availability is there on the tab calendar but yeah i think the hope is to fit it in in one of those two days

[69:01] so there's certainly certainly ability to fit on either one of the tap agendas on either day and it's really determined by planning staff and then the applicant being able to bring forward you know the concept plan for them to review so that it works around that timing okay super uh council i'll just ask does anyone have a preference as to whether it's the first or second meeting or is it a matter of just having it done all right erica i think it's a matter of just getting it done so whichever works best for staff and tab okay we'll get it done awesome and then ally did you have something on this i was just gonna push for the earlier date [Laughter] okay um it won't affect when council sees it but uh you've heard that erica so and juni wait your hand is up

[70:00] yeah i did have my hands up and i it's about the comments about the human rights council whether this is something that should go through the human rights council okay i'll turn the council would you like to make your pitch junior or would you like counsel to discuss it i don't know that i've ever heard about hrc taking up a planning issue but um maybe that's something council wants well not the planning aspect of it but looking at whether what's the word as i mentioned to you earlier i understand the landmark buildings around boulder however for equity purposes is landmarking this particular property is within or values of equity basically aaron

[71:00] and rachel yeah ginny i appreciate you raising the issue it's it's a it's an excellent question and point i i i don't know that this would be something that we would send like the applicant to do a full presentation like another hearing on but maybe instead something where hrc the the the city staff could present this as a kind of uh as the issues involved and kind of get their feedback from an overall policy perspective of the potential tension between landmarking and additional housing units maybe something on that order thank you aaron rachel um yeah i guess i was thinking i had raised a kind of similar question when we were looking at landmarking um like an old uh auto parking they may know what i felt like it was a hotel where it was more of a drive-up car port thing you know around like is it does it make

[72:00] sense to landmark something that that may have a better current value than the historic um value that it that it preserves and so to me i think it's probably a larger question that maybe we want to talk about at the retreat like do we want to look at the at the um considerations that go into landmarking and look at the code maybe or or whatever needs to be looked at rather than a case by case feels a little bit like we we aren't getting to the heart of the issue if we're not um looking holistically at what goes into landmarking so appreciate the point as well um i'm not sure exactly where to go with it mark you know i i i tend to be a very very strong supporter of landmarking but i would ask staff to maybe hone their arguments on this particular piece of property which they you know the report noted that it's

[73:01] doesn't meet national register or state register criteria and it's ineligible for landmarking on a historic basis so we're kind of relying upon what i think is a kind of a slender read here to justify landmarking the property uh its architectural significance as quote an oblong box gas station unquote which was an architectural form i i was hitherto unaware of its significance in the world of landmarking and architecture so it doesn't necessarily have to be a contest between more housing and landmarking i'd like to get an argument as to why just from a landmarking perspective this this piece of property should be so designated because i just didn't see the arguments being very strong and mark i'm gonna interpret that for staff as you'd like to hear that um

[74:01] assuming that you're on the next council at the november 30th concept plan review some inputs as to the landmarking status yes and if not i'll watch on television all right there you go mary yeah i was trying not to weigh in because i'm not going to be here but i can't help myself um so i was just going to say with respect to that proposed landmark i actually think it's a cool building and in looking at the use table um it could be like an art studio kind of um art space and it's got those two potentially wonderful bays that could turn into something that could be really special for the community and when i think about it six units of market rate versus something that the whole community might be able to enjoy to me in terms of looking at it equitably i think that a benefit for the whole community is better than six more

[75:02] market rate units so that's my comment thank you mary um i'll just weigh in briefly on this it does sound to me like this is a big picture question um of equity in landmarking i think it's a very interesting question um and it seems like that would be a great work plan item for the next council to talk about at the retreat as well so with that uh kurt i see you've got a hand up uh thank you um and i appreciate the conversation so um just to be clear it's the human relations commission um that we would put this in front of we we haven't um uh we haven't had this kind of conversation at the hrc um so it is new territory for us um we're happy to do that um simply on your interest uh in doing that i'm not sure when it would be scheduled

[76:01] um so it would be nice for council just to give us direction on if they would prefer that kind of input and then we could see um if we could make that if and when we can make that happen thank you kurt um so juni i guess having heard the conversation do you want to put a motion forward about sending this to hrc or how would you like to proceed yeah sure let's do that well i motion that we bring the [Music] concept review of the oblong building to the hrc for further discussion on the intersection of equity and landmarking okay um is there a second before i move on i'm not seeing a second in that case i'm

[77:01] going to turn to sandra because sandra had raised your hand yeah thank you sam um i i just wanted to just weigh in and just say that there isn't anything currently in our code that would address this and and so i would be much more in favor of a more holistic discussion about it by council in terms of um how that process would work and um that was the only input that i wanted to provide so thank you thank you sandra um rachel and then aaron actually sandra said pretty much what i was going to say just that i think we need to to look at this in the the bigger picture um and and i'm i've been a little bit confused like by the landmarkings quasi judicial so i don't you know i don't want to weigh in on exactly how i would do a landmark application ahead of time and i'm not sure how it would interplay with hrc weighing in on that if it's not

[78:00] in like conceived of in the code so um i hope that we will look at it and as part of our work plan aaron well i actually i was about to second the motion but um sandra's legal point makes makes me hesitate here just about the quasi-judicial aspect of the landmarking um and and so one here from the city attorney that might be problematic but juni i i wonder you know can we could we ask the hrc to start to talk about um you know the interplay of landmarking and equity in a in a larger sense uh if if we're not kind of legally really allowed to send it to them specifically in this one case yeah yes i i accept and i wonder too can they send us feedback before we get um before the next planned discussion that we will have in november

[79:03] do you want me to answer that sure senator if you if you want to take a crack at it sure i i so juni i would have some concerns about this particular um project having comments because of the quasi-initial nature of the landmarks board um so if you wanted just some general comments about the process i don't think that there is any issue about that but if it were specific to a project that might be an issue thanks adam just as a point of compromise it sounds like we're not going to get direction from council to go to hrc but hrc members are always welcome to give their individual opinions on anything we do so for what that's worth you know if we just mention it to them maybe they'll have individual opinions that they want to give on their own volition

[80:00] thank you adam juni i just have a quick question because i think it was mentioned earlier that the concept discussion is quasi-judicial the concept review is it can somebody confirm that so so concept plan is not quasi-judicial but landmarking is quasi-judicial and site plan review hearings are quasi-judicial sandro is that right landmarking and uh safe plan review are causing judicial but concept plans are not is that correct that's correct and and helen she might want to step in as well but i know for sure landmarking is yeah the side plan review is definitely quasi-judicial as well and since we're dealing with a specific application for a property that concept plan is a step in the process towards a site review it's required in advance of

[81:00] it um we should follow the procedures that are set forth in the code and there is no clear procedure that this can be referred to to the hrc and that the hse has kirby over it the code is silent and uh i i just skimmed the provisions of the what the tasks of the hrc is and it it seems a little bit outside of the development review process and and the tasks that are being done there considering that we're making decisions about uh the property honors property rights they're more policy directed yeah so so um i'm gonna propose something here and feel free to kick it around or tell me no or whatever but i would propose that we asked the city manager to take this subject to the hrc through kurt and get the hrc to begin a conversation about it and perhaps that

[82:01] could be something they put in their letter to the next council before the retreat to weigh in on whether they want to take this up or not but it seems to me from what we've heard from the legal folks that you know these site plan review processes and landmarking processes are quasi-judicial on their criteria based which means that to have an impact on on that that process means changing the criteria probably and so maybe we want to get hrc to weigh in on that so nuria would that be something that you and kurt could take to the hrc and just kick off a conversation we absolutely can i i believe that this is such unchartered territory that it may just be wise to talk about the concept of landmarking and equity generally as we move forward and bring that um uh i'll talk to kurt bring that to the hrc and make sure we've thought of additional ways of how to move forward um in the city so we can commit to that okay very good

[83:01] cancel any thoughts on that okay so it looks like that's a start down that pathway um very good and it seems like we have a call up complete and we have a request to tab to weigh in before the next council takes this up as a concept plan review so i think we're done any other points doesn't look like it very good thank you very much uh charles and planning staff hella as well as um the applicant so thanks to all of you and ally you want to make a final comment i was just going to say regarding this um landmark building that initially we were against it as a team but we came around to accepting it and embracing the building itself okay and so anyway just to put it out there that you know as an architect i'm i'm fine with it and um it the

[84:00] the loss of the units was made whole for us by the grant by planning board agreeing to grant us a fourth floor over part of the site so that helped to offset that issue and it meets the housing requirements that we're all trying to meet as well thank you all for your time by the way appreciate it thank you it's very helpful thank you everyone and alicia with that i think we're ready to move on to the next item all right sir next on our agenda is item 4 which is our public hearing under 4a we have the consideration of the following items related to the 2022 budget first item is an introduction first reading in consideration of a motion to order published by title only ordinance 8505 adopting a budget for the city of boulder colorado for the fiscal year commencing on the first day of january

[85:00] 2022 and ending on the last day of december 2022 a setting for the related details item number two introduction first reading and consideration of a motion to order published by title only 8506 as ordinance 8506 establishing the 2021 city of boulder property tax mail levies which are to be collected by the county of boulder state of colorado within the city of boulder in 2022 for payment of expenditures by the city of boulder county and voter state of colorado and setting forth related details item number three introduction first reading and consideration of emotion to order published by title only ordinance 8507 appropriating money to defray expenses and liabilities of the city of boulder colorado for the 2022 fiscal year of the city of boulder commencing on the first day of january 2022 and ending on the

[86:00] last day of december 2022 and setting forth related details and item number four introduction first reading and consideration of a motion to order published by title only ordinance 8508 amending chapter 4-20 and section 3-8-3 of the brc 1981 changing certain fees and studying force-related detains very good thank you alicia and with that i'll turn to you nuria great uh council thanks so much for the opportunity to present our recommended budget for the coming year you know you're all fully aware of the impact the pandemic has had on our community and on us as an organization an impact we're frankly still feeling today unfortunately that impact manifested itself by both requiring us to reduce our services and ftes and requiring the city to provide additional unexpected and unplanned for resources to serve our community when they needed it most

[87:00] the recommended budget we put forward to you today a budget of 462.5 million dollars overall with an operating budget of over 300 300 million is a testament to the city's resilience our revenue expectations have been more favorable than anticipated which has led us to caution to be cautiously optimistic as you'll hear more about shortly the budget also leverages the city's american rescue plan act funding allocation and while we have targeted about 20 percent of those funds to address some immediate needs and service restorations we hope to get your and community's input on how best to leverage the remaining 16 million in the future importantly the development of this budget also leveraged our racial equity action plan by first requiring departments to articulate who would benefit from a service being restored and who would be hurt if a program remained unfunded and then using that information to

[88:00] prioritize those requests to make sure that we were addressing the need of those that have been disproportionate disproportionately impacted during this time of crisis so as you'll hear from staff you'll start to recognize some themes in the recommended budget restoration of services leveraging the tremendous innovation and agility of our staff who quickly shifted service delivery to better respond to community needs during the pandemic we look forward now to bringing back increased capacity that will service our community faster and give much needed relief to our amazing employees who found themselves stretched thin as the city found itself needing to furlough 741 employees during the pandemic to a recommitment to innovation and service excellence even as we had to rethink our services during the pandemic we continue to look for ways to innovate to be data driven and to constantly look for opportunities to improve and enhance our service offerings in many unique and new ways and thirdly and really critical to on my

[89:02] perspective this budget seeks to honor and support our talented staff while also maintaining um and remaining an employer of choice throughout the region and beyond in addition to attracting new employees to the organization we hope too to recognize and retain our existing workforce by restoring well-deserved merit increases for our boulder municipal employees association and our non-union employees the budget too will also recognize and considers employees with the international association of firefighters and the boulder police officers association who are scheduled to receive a general salary increase in 2022 in accordance with their contracts beyond our operational needs the upcoming presentation will also demonstrate how we propose to support our capital and maintenance needs with an overall capital budget of approximately 162 million across all our funds so as our local economy continues to grow we too hope to continue to grow

[90:00] stronger and be able to scale existing programs and introduce new ones in the future but for now we believe this budget brings a forward-looking but measured plan for the coming year as we monitor the existing impacts of the ongoing pandemic on our continued econom economic recovery and growth i'm profoundly grateful to all our staff and in particular our extraordinary cfo and the entire budget team who helped shape and propose our 22 2022 recommended budget and welcome the opportunity to share our proposed approach with you we have all our departments well represented in this meeting should questions come up after the presentation but first i'll turn to our cfo cheryl patelli to kick this off cheryl thanks nuria good evening council we're going to wait a second mark will be driving our presentation tonight mark would you mind putting the presentation up please

[91:01] thank you um next slide so we'll start the presentation with an economic update this evening we have rich wobekine and and robert mcnoun from cu to provide that to you tonight the 2022 budget overview will be presented by me and then i will turn it over to mark wolfe our senior budget manager to talk about the 22 restorations and investments and finally cara skinner our assistant finance director will talk to you about the 22 to 27 capital improvement program next slide so now i will turn it over to rich and robert well thank you very much cheryl and it's a pleasure to be here with you representing the lead school team myself professor mcnoun who you'll hear from in a few minutes and brian

[92:01] lewandowski who is in the air as we speak right now so brian will be part of our presentation tonight uh we very much enjoy working with the staff and we couldn't say it better than you just heard it from the leadership that the staff has worked tirelessly and we're very impressed with all of the efforts and hopefully we've helped uh inform the decisions as they go along uh i i guess if i wanted to summarize what i'm going to say over the next few minutes it's basically we obviously have a more positive economic environment but we're still concerned about uncertainty in the in the broader environment delta variant and other things so we'll address those as we go along next slide please so this is a picture and many of the slides are colorado or boulder specific so you're not going to see a lot of

[93:00] national information here but you can see of course what happened with the drop-off and also the recovery and the important thing to i guess come out of this is we're still 5 million lower in employment than we were before we went into this and this is an interesting piece because we're hearing a lot from local state national uh you know employers that they can't find people and the question here is are people going to come back and actually take these jobs at the end of the day or are we have you know we've had substantial retirements of people 55 and above are they going to stay out of the labor force in 2008 we had a huge drop off we had a lot of people who quote retired and then by 2010 they were coming back into the workforce but this time housing prices have appreciated stock portfolios sends today have dramatically appreciated

[94:00] and people may in fact be able to continue to stay out of the workforce you'll see some of that data as we go through even as it pertains to the residents of boulder next slide please so this is what we talked about originally in our last forecast we use the 2020 observed employment which you see in gray and we did i projected on that 2020 at the end of the year we had the data through the end of the year when we did the march forecast and you can see what we projected for based on having the 2020 data now we have observed what you see in green through 2021 revisions to the end of 2020 and of course the data through the first part of 2021 and what we have seen at the state level and the local level is a more rapid recovery in employment and so our forecast now has this higher

[95:02] red line that you see projected for the near term and for colorado it gets us back to the same level of employment in uh in 2022 at the end of 2022 so you're you're sort of seeing again this uh more rapid recovery lots of reasons why as you know extra federal stimulus uh very enhanced consumer spending but the point is the the more optimistic forecast is based on the fact that we've had a more optimistic recovery in terms of employment next slide please so in terms of changing fortunes just a few short months ago the boulder msa which is all of boulder county for this particular data we have to do all of boulder county you can see the boulder msa is in the top you know 10 15 of all the msas in the country

[96:01] year over year through august 21. uh three or four months ago we were back in the middle and six months ago we were down uh sort of on the pueblo end of the scale here so we've seen this pretty big jump in employment and it's reflected in both this slide and the next slide a fair amount of that has to do with the reopening of the university and the return specifically the return of government employment we saw a lot of government employment that was lost in the boulder msa and a chunk of that was related to the furloughs that were mentioned at the local level but we also saw the loss of student employees and others when we were doing sort of the distance learning piece so now the boulder msa looks quite strong next slide please so this shows you the indexed employment by msa so these are only parts of the

[97:00] state of colorado that have msas and you can see starting in january 20 how how we're faring or how the whole state is faring and you can see boulder now in the number two slot for msas and you can also see if you just look back a couple of months it's boulders the black line the boulder msa you can see how dramatically that has increased as we've seen the rehiring of government employees and also you know a surge in other parts of the economy as well next slide please so this is the data from um it's the data is called laos l-a-u-s and it's local area unemployment series so this is boulder specific city of boulder specific data about people who live in the city of boulder they don't have to work in the city of boulder but they live in the city of boulder so you can see here for example

[98:00] in the top left if you look at the resident labor force that the resident labor force from where it was in february of 2020 is significantly lower in july of 2021 so not just at the national level have people not come back into the workforce but at the local level particularly the boulder county uh sorry boulder city level we see people not fully returning to the workforce if you look in the right hand graphic and the gray bars you can also see that our resident employment not our employment in boulder county or boulder city but the people who live in boulder we have fewer people working who live in boulder than we had going into this consequently bottom left in terms of the unemployment of people residing in boulder we have a higher unemployment rate than we did going into this although getting substantially

[99:00] better and we have a higher unemployment rate than we had going into this but again getting substantially better so this tells you about residents in terms of how their employment picture looks next slide please so this goes to the broader county again unfortunately the data at the city level is gets dated so uh we can look at the boulder msa the entire county of boulder and this is our change in august of 2021 so very recent data and on the left-hand graphic you have the number of jobs in thousands and in the right-hand graphic you have the percentage change so you can see a big driver has been growth of professional and business services a very important sector for boulder accounting marketing r d some indefinitely higher wage jobs you can

[100:00] see percentage-wise not the largest but in terms of jobs coming in the largest number also the bounce back and leisure and hospitality which includes restaurants no surprise there and and a very uh you know positive look in terms of manufacturing and government in terms of both the job numbers but also again in terms of the year over year growth next slide please so one thing that's going on and i know you follow this and you know daily camera and elsewhere but the cu enrollment is up uh it's not hugely up but it's up and it's certainly uh we think at least a positive thing in terms of having the students here and i always try to emphasize is twofold just from having the experience of being in in the building and talking to the students and knowing what they're doing it's not just the spend

[101:01] or the parents coming and visiting it's the fact that quite a number of them actually work in boulder and restaurants and other things to help supplement their incomes so we have a very tight labor force i don't need to tell the folks uh in this room or on this broadcast the fact that we have restaurants that can't open for full ships and maybe you have experienced less than the same quality or speed of service that we've seen in the past the return of having actual students to help uh supplement again that workforce i think is long run very positive for the boulder city economy next slide please so we look at national personal income and when we look at national personal income there's just a few things to highlight here uh leading into my uh what will be my next and last slide for my piece of the presentation

[102:00] first when you look at the national level we see that employee compensation as of july is higher than it's ever been before this is wages and salaries so we've had a full recovery in terms of the wage picture even though we haven't had the full employment recovery that i showed you earlier when you look at the right hand in gray dividends and interest it's down a little bit but not much so that's kind of stable when you look at proprietor income bottom left hand red bars you can see that we're just about back to where we were so this is individual business owners in proprietary income and then if you look at the bottom right you can see the transfer payments this was the tax rebates all of the unemployment insurance and so on and you can see the big searches that we've had there but now a much calmer environment and it's going to

[103:00] continue to be that way and continue to trend down with the expiration of the national unemployment benefits that occurred for half the states phased them out earlier but the rest of the states including colorado that's really occurred september going forward last slide please for me so this just shows you colorado personal income and you can see the trend and other than having you know kind of a bleak little quarters back there in uh 2020 when we went through this the first and second quarters uh uh i'm sorry the second and third quarters you can see this strong bounce back based on transfers and wages and so on and you can see our projected trend is very very strong going forward for overall colorado personal income which is one of the drivers of the economic model that we

[104:00] use that professor mcmahon's going to talk to you about going forward here but it's one of the drivers for retail sales tax and other tax flows so with that i pass it to my colleague robert mcnall thanks rich yeah we're happy to present the information that we have from our modeling effort and the background that rich has provided and a quick transition from personal income to retail sales which as you can imagine is the key driver for sales tax revenues for boulder now this is the picture at the national level and although normally uh retail sales and national income are going to be tightly related to each other of course through the pandemic there's been quite a disconnect and that has uh posed serious challenges for modeling and forecasting uh next slide please

[105:00] so uh but let's let's uh move quickly towards the state and then the local level and uh so you can see the state sales tax collections they show uh strong seasonal patterns the the little red circle there uh is is the pandemic a complete anomaly that we've had to deal with in our forecasting but i think what might be particularly interesting are some of the figures on the right there where the performance of different msas over the pandemic and into the recovery are shown there and and you can see it's really a striking difference across these different municipalities so over 2020 boulder suffered about a 12 decline in sales tax revenues and we're anticipating and of course we have a lot of data now through 2021 uh a 17 increase so there by the end of the year there should be a full recovery in terms of sales tax revenues

[106:01] but you compare that with some of these other cities and and you can see the boulders now maybe kind of in the middle in terms of the impact of the pandemic uh just look at colorado springs actually experienced an increase in sales tax revenues over 20 uh in 2020 and i think we can understand that the the impact of the closure or the movement to online remote learning at cu as rich referred to is of course going to be a big driver of the difference between those two areas there and now with the students back in town we see much more optimistic projections for 2021 and you'll see further on as well so next slide please and uh so the the seasonality uh is much more striking here

[107:00] uh just focusing on on this uh what's happening in boulder but you can see that there was a sharp drop off in the second quarter of 2020 where that red line dips down uh the lowest point that you see in the graph and then our forecast going forward is captured by the black line so that's our our let's say our mean forecast this is our best estimate of what we can expect over this uh five year period here and you can see that that already from the jump off point there uh in in mid 2021 that we're already at a higher level of sales and use tax collections uh than we were prior to the pandemic so that's that's of course a great um comfort and and the projections going forward then would continue that trend with the seasonality that's that you see there but uh the other two lines that the top line um

[108:03] whatever color that might be and the bottom red line uh those those are higher and lower bounds on the forecast that we derive uh from our statistical model and uh so give you some a picture of the uncertainty that's involved in the forecasting i'll talk more about that too let's go to the next slide though please and here we're looking at annual data that takes away the seasonal variation so you can get a better idea of the overall trend and you can see that that first year of the recovery from 2020 to 2021 looking at the black line is really a sharp above trend rate of growth and also uh continuing into 2022 uh a pretty strong expectation about growth in sales and use taxes and then kind of reverting to a more moderate trend for the remaining several years

[109:01] and uh once again i want to emphasize the the bounds on the forecast there are sort of the the upper and lower bounds uh based on all the various sources of uncertain uncertainty that you can imagine lie behind an economic forecast and i'll i'll point to those at the end here too and the next slide please so um i want to highlight a few particular components of sales tax revenues i i think this gives you a better picture of um how these different components were impacted during the recession and also going forward what we might expect these are these are some very important uh contributors to overall sales tax revenues let's talk about the obvious ones to begin with the restaurants in the upper right corner so you can see

[110:00] that precipitous drop in 2020 and now the recovery in 2021 but what's discouraging uh from my point of view is is that if you look at those bars the height of the bars into 2022 23 24 it's really not until 2024 that our model says that restaurant sales and sales tax revenues are going to recover to uh exceed their pre-pandemic levels i i find that pretty discouraging um and i i suppose we all have our own personal stories about why that might be the case of our favorite restaurants that are here no more and so at any rate that's um so we have to be a little cautious there um the in the lower left the property taxes this uh this of course presents a more optimistic picture going forward

[111:00] you can see that the property taxes move upward in the sort of a stair-step fashion because uh it's only during the reassessment years uh or the years following the reassessment years that we get a prominent boost in property tax collections and in the non-reassessment years the the forecast is fairly flat uh but for example these are very robust um increases in property taxes as you might expect from uh what we know about housing prices in boulder and for example in 2022 that step up from 2021 represents about a 20 increase in property tax collections now the the other two entries are i think kind of interesting and relatively newly important sources of sales tax revenues um let's let's take a look at the lower right first out of state

[112:00] retailers uh so so these would be we'll say first of all um retailers that have a physical presence in boulder such as target or home depot but they also have online sales and because of their physical presence in boulder any online sales will also be taxed and those businesses will remit that sales tax to boulder um and and you can see that uh in in 2020 and 2021 huge step up in the level of online sales coming from these out-of-state retailers so no surprise there now the mfo on the upper left that stands for the marketplace facilitator ordinance that's a nice catchy little phrase and what's happened there is that in november of 2020

[113:01] the city of boulder adopted this marketplace facilitator ordinance ordinance and what this means is that um on uh providers or of an online marketplace such as amazon or ebay for example they provide a marketplace for third-party merchants and in the past uh the sales of those third-party merchants did not generate sales tax revenues that boulder was able to grab hold of well now after november 2020 uh these these third-party merchants are are also having to pay sales taxes and they're remitted through uh the marketplace and the platforms from ebay or or amazon or the others two boulder and so you can see this is this is a new source of revenues uh for boulder it's really significant

[114:01] it's growing uh already in 2021 this amounts to about three percent of total sales tax revenues coming into boulder so it's a it's a nice boost to your budget to your revenue sir and the next slide so uh i'm just want to finish to point to the challenges or the uncertainties that are behind the forecast uh the ones on the left are ones that are the sources of uncertainty that we can kind of measure we have historical record on on these activities the other ones we just don't have much of a track record and that's that means there's much greater uncertainty over those and that's just something we all have to be aware of and we try to capture as best we can through those upper and lower bounds on the forecast that you saw in some of the prior slides and then our final slide

[115:01] so rich and i would be happy to take any questions that you have as i'll echo what rich said before that we really appreciate working with the staff the way they provide us with the data and information about what's going on with tax collections and uh and we appreciate the work of the council in these important financial matters too so we'll take any questions you might have well thank you both for being here very very interesting and helpful presentations and i see bob has a question yeah a great presentation guys that was super super helpful question for dr mcdown um you mentioned one of your slides a couple slides back uh that the restaurant recovery was going to be slower than it seems like other industries is that part of a national trend um and regardless of whether it's national or local uh why do you think that the restaurant recovery will take three or four years whereas the other

[116:01] recovery seems to be happening as we speak yeah uh my answer to that is is that it's because the falloff in 2020 was so dramatic i mean it was i'm i've looked at too many numbers lately to give you exact number but i think it was it was almost a 45 or 48 decline in uh sales tax revenues coming from restaurants and bars and so the the the trough was so deep that it's just going to take a while to come back from that so uh so so the answer in terms of comparing that with other trends like nationally well um no nationally uh the recovery is going to be a little quicker but again not necessarily because there's a more rapid rate of increase but just that the the depths of the restaurant recession or not as severe in other places they were in here in boulder thank you

[117:02] very good thank you mark really just one question is there any way to quantify or project the potential impact of the delta variant or is that something unknown that we're going to have to see what happens as it happens uh well i'd have to admit that the impact of the delta variant is something that's kind of beyond uh my modeling capabilities our model really relies on historical data and since we don't have a track record on the impact of anything such as a delta variant furthermore we don't know exactly how the delta variants going to continue to evolve we don't know how people are going to respond in terms of getting vaccinated i and we have unfortunately some information about that uh and furthermore we we don't know if there could be another variant along the

[118:00] way that could be even more severe so not something that we can really model statistically it brings down fourth quarter gdp by about a half a percent projected growth uh by almost every modeler that's out there just because of the restrictions at some states and so on so we we can build that in in the sense that it's drivers to our forecast but um you know we don't know what professor that was 100 accurate we don't know uh you know we had that on the last slide the next variant um you know i was on a i won't digress too much here but we had a the university i think has a tremendous team that's working on this and they started off their presentation about three weeks ago saying this is with us for a couple of years now probably a decade

[119:00] and i have to tell you that really shook a lot of people up including me who are sort of listening to this so it's something we're going to have to live with and it may dampen economic growth for a longer period of time i mean that's the reality thank you adam thanks sam and thank you for the presentation i realize this is um too late to be asking for breakdowns of data but i was wondering if you had done any analysis of where those income gains were you had a slide about overall income gains um if you were to say break it down into quartiles of you know highest paid workers versus lowest paid workers do you know just sort of offhand where most of those income gains were made yes i mean we we do it takes more work to get to your specific answer but we have a slide that got pulled out

[120:01] of the presentation but in terms of employment so there's two pieces to this question one is the employment recovery and for the high income industries it's fully recovered for the middle income industries it's close and for the low income industries it's still off seven percent or whatever so we know that the workers are disproportionately unemployed we do also however know that low-income workers have gotten reasonably good wage gains in the last year uh another slide that's not in there but colorado's average wage went up point six percent in the last year through july so that was good news and and low-income workers did definitely benefited from that because of the worker shortage uh but overall um i mean i i mean i i'm saying with common knowledge this recession has made income distribution worse in the us not better

[121:01] and and we've got a tough road to hoe going forward here with that particular so so um if i could call agree adam um would you be able to send us a presentation with those slides in it like could you send a deck to us that included all those or if they were backups because i think there's some folks me included you'd like to see especially if you have that breakdown in the region or for the city or the boulder msa so the uh we could certainly send you that slide the the slide i think we have i think it's colorado i'm not sure that it's boulder but i can we can certainly get that to you if you just sent us the extra information that we could pour through it and think about it thank you very much adam anything else yeah i was just gonna say you know that data is helpful because it shows us where we need to be policy-wise on uh trying to reduce the gaps in inequality so

[122:01] um that would be much appreciated yeah i mean it's been described as the k recession because of the differences between high income and low income and without getting off on a tangent i was so opposed to people with higher income brackets getting tax rebates because i said this is crazy those are not the people who need the tax rebates right now but you're getting my a little bit of my bias here good thank you any other questions all right with that i think we'll turn it back to you cheryl you're on mute i'm sorry sorry about that um so we'll move on to the next section which is the 2022 budget overview next slide so nuria gave a really great um summary

[123:00] of the budget so i'm going to go quickly through these next two slides the budget is 462 million which is a 35 percent increase from last year putting investments in broad service restorations and continued community recovery efforts our operating budget is a 10 percent increase from last year while our capital budget is 134 increase and i will note a big part of that increase relates to a 92 million dollar bond issue that is slated for the utilities um department which cara will talk about in her capital section next slide so again we focused on our uh budgeting for commun community resilience definition when we developed the budget and we looked at the classifications of essential important helpful and amenity we also continued our focus on advancing

[124:01] racial equity and when data was available we always try to make data informed decisions to our improve our service to the community next slide and next slide so i'll start with revenues our total citywide revenues is 471 million sales and use tax is the largest category but you'll notice that our other category this year is very large as well and again that relates to the bond proceeds related to the debt issuance that we have planned this year next slide so if we exclude utilities we're down to 293 million and our if you look at sales tax property tax and other taxes they actually account for 77 of total city-wide revenue so a very much a majority of our revenue comes from our taxes that we collect next

[125:01] slide focusing in on the general fund our budget is 166 million which is a six percent increase or nine million over our 2021 year end estimate so i will note um some of these figures compare to year-end estimates rather than our adopted budget just because we did see a much quicker recovery so we thought that would be a better comparison the chart also includes cost allocation which reflects our total charges uh that the general fund makes to our dedicated funds for things such as internal services and and those types of items next slide so looking at the history of the general fund revenue you'll notice that our 2022 revenues are projected to be higher than our pre-pandemic revenue revenue we of course fell sharply in 2020 we

[126:02] have recovered well in 21 and expected continued recovery in 2022 but i will note um we've included the compound annual growth rate here and if we look at 2019 to 2022 that actually reflects a compound annual growth rate of only 1.6 percent which as we all know at least currently is considerably below inflation the latest statistic from the u.s bureau of labor statistics in august is inflation is 5.3 percent august over august of course our largest percentage percentages in the energy sector next slide so here we're looking at the five major revenue categories in the general fund that account for 75 around 75 of general fund revenue we've included the approved budget

[127:02] the 2021 end-of-year estimate our recommended budget which we're presenting this evening and then the change from our year-end estimate to our recommended budget we've also included in orange that compound annual growth rate for each of the categories and you will see that some revenues have grown modestly over the period and some are still projected to be below our pre-pandemic levels we'll discuss retail sales tax and property tax in the next few slides business use and construction tax we continue to have a baseline that we that we budget for and we're projecting these taxes to be around six percent over our 21 year-end estimates accommodations tax we did consult with the convention and visitors bureau uh this tax is recovering mainly a lot

[128:01] due to our domestic leisure travel but it's still not projected to be above pre-pandemic levels in 2019 you'll notice it was 8.8 million and we're only budgeting 7 million in 2022. parking revenues were significantly down in 22 i'm sorry in 2020 and have taken a slow steady increase and 2022 does represent recovery of those revenues along with some of the increases for on-street parking and graduated fines and neighborhood parking permit increases and then if you look at all other revenue that's projected to go down slightly some of the categories here are grants and franchise fees next slide so looking at the 2022 major revenue sources of retail and property tax some of the assumptions we used

[129:01] we just talked about the forecast we did use cu's may forecast and we continue to use the average the average of the medium and low forecast which is an 8.8 percent over the 2021 end of year and we believe that this is a conservative forecast especially uh taking into account some of the conversation about the delta and other variants of of the virus so as mentioned in the august 24th meeting as well as their presentation increases in our online out of state sales are far outpacing the increases in sales we've seen within the city as of july 2021 sales by out-of-state rate retailers increased 66 compared to uh july of 2020. if we exclude the marketplace facilitators that were discussed um

[130:00] the sales still grew by a respectable 36 percent comparing that to in-city sales tax um in-city is up 11.5 in july 2020 so certainly our our online and out-of-state retailers have really helped us rebound from the pandemic moving to property tax as we all know 2021 was a reassessment year we did receive the preliminary assessed valuation from boulder county and our 2022 recommended budget is approximately 5.4 percent increase in property tax revenue our residential properties increased about 12 commercial remain nearly flat while our industrial property properties declined slightly next slide so moving you've seen this slide a lot but i think it's an important slide to

[131:01] show i i do want to note that this chart along with our 2022 budget assume that the 0.3 community culture and safety tax has not been extended that's the way we do any ballot issue if voters agree to extend this tax we will come back to council for a budget uh budget adjustment in early 2022 so i just wanted to let you know that excluding that tax you'll see that we collect 42 cents out of every dollar collected in retail sales tax in the city the remainder goes to the state rtd and boulder county of the 42 cents half of this is unrestricted in general fund while the other half is restricted in the open space transportation and parks and rec funds next slide so this slide just shows once again our sales tax for the next several years and

[132:01] future changes the orange is the 0.3 community culture and safety tax i've talked about but i really wanted to note at the end of 2024 we have a 0.15 percent general fund tax that will be expiring so certainly something we'll talk about in the future as of for 2022 that .15 equates to about 5.8 million in general fund revenue so very significant to our general fund next slide here's a list of the front range cities we have included denver this year as well their 2021 sales tax rates the blue bar represents the city portion uh the orange is the state then we've got rtd in the county on this and you'll notice the top uh figures represent the

[133:00] total sales tax sales tax rates for these cities boulder is the highest of all of these cities at eight point eight five percent next slide so moving on to property tax similar slide here as we all know the schools collect the majority of property tax revenue we receive 14 cents out of every dollar the general fund between general purposes and public safety receive 11 of that 14 cents and then the library parks and rec and community housing and assistance all receive a small portion just a reminder our total mills for the general or i'm sorry for the city is 11.981 mills and our city of charter allows us to go up to a rate of 13 mils next slide so here's a similar slide for the front range cities again the city portion is in blue and you will notice here

[134:02] on the board that boulder has the fourth lowest total property tax rate of the municipalities shown on this chart next slide so i'm going to move on to expenditures next slide please here is a breakout again of our total budget you'll see the operating budget this this year is about 65 percent while the capital budget is 35 percent i i will note again on that bond uh sale does kind of skew compared to what we normally see we normally have about a three-quarter one-quarter split between operating and capital we then break it uh in both operating in capital into the general fund and then our dedicated funds next slide

[135:00] here is just a graph of our budgets between 2019 and 2022 the gray bar represents our operating budget the green and the yellow bars represent our capital budgets we did break out utilities just uh for that bond issue so you could compare more apples to apples you will see that our operating budget in 2022 is still lower than our pre-pandemic operating budget in 2019 next slide this chart has a lot on it so i do apologize for that it shows our recommended budget 462 million dollars by department and you'll notice here utilities has the largest percentage at 38 percent followed by transportation and police

[136:01] next slide if we exclude utilities transportation and police are our largest portions followed by open space and mountain parks next slide focusing again on the general fund only uh the total budget of 164 million this does represent a 12.1 percent increase or 17.7 million dollars from total expenditures in our 2021 approved budget the majority of this increase is attributed to partial restoration of city services and programs to pre-covet pandemic levels which we will present or mark will present in the coming slides it also includes the transfer out category which reflects about 20 million of general fund transfers to support city-wide services and other funds as long as well as our capital fund

[137:02] and some of the other funds that we support of with general fund money is the recreation activity fund the planning and development services fund and the affordable housing fund next slide this slide displays the increases in operating budgets by departments across all of our funds again later in the presentation mark will talk about some of these increases but you'll notice we have the largest increases in city manager's office library and arts and human resources and you'll also notice that pretty much across the board the increases are over five percent that all of the departments have received next slide and i couldn't do a presentation without talking about reserves and where we are recommending reserves

[138:00] to be in the 2022 budget again reserves are important because they do provide us options to respond when we have unexpected things occur the government finance officers association best practice says that we need a minimum of two months operating reserves and then you just increase from there based on the city specific risks that we have and some of our risks are why we are recommending a goal of 20 percent for our reserve so above the minimum and those are the vulnerability to extreme events and public safety concerns so flood fires those types of things are revenue volatility we've definitely seen in the especially in the general fund sales tax revenue is about 50 of all revenue collected and we've seen the volatility that the pandemic has caused and it was nice to know we had our reserves when we needed them during

[139:01] that time also expenditure volatility volatility or opportunities if if an opportunity comes up to purchase something it allows us that flexibility other funds i talked about the other funds that rely on the general fund for support and then rating agency of course reserves is one of the many factors that rating agencies look at when determining our bond rating so we do still recommend a goal of 20 for general fund reserves yet are including a reserve level of 19.5 in general fund in the budget that we are presenting this evening we recognize there's a lot of needs and we felt that it would be best to keep it at the 19.5 percent level in this recovery year so with that i will take any questions

[140:01] that you might have on our revenues expenses and again mark is going to go into a lot more detail about some of the increases we are recommending thank you so much cheryl um council any questions for cheryl up to this point yeah thanks joe that was real helpful um cheryl you mentioned um uh bonding anticipated in 2022 will skew things compared to prior years how much of that bonding is for our water utilities and how much of that if any is anticipated for under ballot measures 2i and 2j specifically 2j on the sales tax that we would bond against or maybe none of it is so none of um because we don't put that in unless it's actually approved we would come back to council next year and increase the budget for any bond that we might want to do if it's approved by voters so right now

[141:00] it's all utilities great and just a question on that um it looks like historically released in recent years our bonding for for our water utilities has been kind of in the 20 to 30 million dollar range here and then we're going to jump up to about 120 million this year um what's the explanation for that lumpiness um we just have some big projects that kind of come up all the same time or what's the reason why we'd be taking down so much more debt next year than we have historically okay um and i might refer this to joe teddy teddy sorry sorry joe i really messed that one up um we just call him it does have to do with some pretty large dollar amount projects and just to clarify it's 92 million that they're uh recommending we bond this year joe or it looks like chris duville's on on here for to answer good evening uh everyone chris deville i'm the deputy director of operations for utilities and i'm standing in for joe this evening our

[142:00] director so yeah uh bob the the quick answer to this question is this bond is anticipated to to support seven different projects so it's about half about 42 million dollars in the water fund and about 50 million dollars for the wastewater fund and yeah we can i can clarify if desired some of the specific projects but they're spread across our treatment facilities as well as our uh distribution collection system uh infrastructure but uh these needs are are real and our backlog is significant so that's um that that's the quick answer for this large bond thanks chris that was helpful and just final question do you as you look out into the out years maybe two or three years out you anticipate that bonding for water utilities will revert back to a level that we maybe saw prior to 2022 maybe in the 20 to 30 million range per year i i do believe that is our projected schedule over the next um cycle of years um the exception being uh

[143:03] and you might have seen this in your packet in 2024 there is a fairly substantial bond anticipated for uh the stormwater and flood management utility so that is one exception thanks chris thanks bob rachel thanks sam um yeah just one quick question cheryl thank you for the presentation so far um on the reserves we had targeted 20 previously i think it was also a general fund right we were trying to get to twenty percent under uh that was a big goal for jane bradgam i think if i'm remembering correctly so wondering how close we got to that and how far we dipped below and how much we're adding back in this year to get to 19.5 we actually um did not dip below 19.5 last year and a lot of that we had expected to dip below 19.5 but what happened is our construction use and business use taxes came in a lot

[144:00] higher than what we had anticipated so what between that and the fact that we reacted so quickly when the pandemic started and reduced and cut our budget budgets we were able to actually maintain the 19.5 which i think um is really great so we're not really adding anything into reserves in the 2022 recommended budget okay and if we wanted to get to the 20 it would be like 800 000 dollars added to reserves that rate um correct exactly all right thanks thank you um yeah i'm sorry one more this is more than in the realm of suggestion cheryl i saw that we had um year-on-year um increases on a department by department basis of you know 8 10 12 those are presumably against our artificially depressed budgets from from last year um when you present this on

[145:00] second reading if you do a presentation it would be maybe helpful to add a 2019 column because as i think you said um our annualized increase over about a three year period was only about 1.6 so if you could you could compare that to normalized year that'd be real helpful great suggestion we will do that thanks bud all right council any other questions i am seeing none back to you cheryl that was the end of my presentation i'm turning it over to mark wolfe um to talk to you about some of the increases you'll see in this year's budget good evening council uh bear with me while i get uh this going again all right thank you cheryl again i'm mark wolf senior budget manager i'll be walking through some of the highlights of the recommended 2022 budget including proposed restorations of services enhancements in innovation and service excellence and investments in our

[146:00] employees to begin the recommended 22 budget proposes many restorations to our most critical programs and service levels as a part of the budget process we ask departments to consider budget requests and enhancements based on several criteria one explicit tool the organization utilized was the rapid racial equity assessment which seeks to understand the potential impact both negative and positive on different racial and ethnic groups across the community additionally we were targeting communities or areas of the city that may have had disproportionate or are still experiencing the disproportionate impact due to the pandemic and we also took the opportunity to look at services that weren't just built to where we were before but perhaps provided an opportunity uh to to make improvements

[147:00] into the future the total funding in our restoration category this evening is a little over 9.4 million dollars now i'll run through several specific highlights of our proposed service restorations starting with restorations in our communication engagement including our community connectors program proposals in housing and human services include reinstating the youth opportunities program in support of the youth opportunities advisory board also proposed is restoration of the human services fund to pre-pandemic levels to support our individuals and families through our non-profit agencies in library and arts restorations include restoring cultural arts grants to pre-pandemic levels and restoring services and hours across the library system also the budget proposes to restore

[148:00] operations at canyon theater in the maker space and supports temporary support staff to maintain hours and services throughout the system for open space and mountain parks proposals include restoration of core system maintenance activities deferred maintenance projects and continued implementation of master plan strategies parks and recreation includes several restorations including addressing deferred maintenance and cleaning of urban parks and city-wide forest forestry activities community events and access to programming through expand additionally this budget recommends funding to restore recreation programming continuing the work to restore hours and services from coveted related reductions this amount of six about six hundred thousand dollars represents the general fund portion to restore service as we discussed with council last month during our arpa conversation supplemental funding is necessary to

[149:00] support the recreation activity fund since it is revenue dependent additional arpa dollars are a part of that conversation in 22 and the long-term health of that fund is certainly a subject of conversation as parks and rec looks to refresh the master plan in planning and development services we are looking to restore the customer service and intake team to improve uh processing time and overall customer experience and lastly in transportation and mobility we are seeking to restore the base hop service levels in that area i'll now turn to our proposed service enhancements or what we're calling our recommitment to innovation and service excellence we've covered this a bit already but despite our challenging fiscal environment we did make it a point to remain committed to our values in several areas including our our commitment to serving basic human

[150:01] needs addressing issues related to police reform caring for our open spaces parks libraries and recreation centers and utilizing arts and culture to create to cultivate creativity and create community our total funding in this area is a little over 8.1 million dollars some highlights of service enhancements include the creation of an equity liaison position an accident and language access manager to advance our racial equity work and additional support of our police oversight program in finance proposed implementation of an underserved business program to open city procurement opportunities for underserved businesses is included in this budget and in fire rescue funding is proposed to implement the goals within the master plan of improving advanced life support

[151:00] next we are very excited about recommended enhancements in housing and human services including a program to provide grants for permanently affordable housing unit residents that face a special assessment increased support of the substance education and awareness fund from 250 to 500 000 to support abuse prevention for youth and community members experiencing discrimination another proposal is in response to the substantial increase in affordable housing units across the city and the need to ensure compliance within those units and last implementation of um our home home ownership program uh through uh coordinator position and then i'll just touch uh briefly here on the eviction protection and rental assistance services or e-press where the we have reflected initial program

[152:00] costs here in this number um this is for license uh there's some additional support in pnds for license fee administration administrative support the total amount budgeted is larger than this 850 foreign change that is represented here there's an additional 343 000 to repay the general fund that is budgeted total expected revenue from the tax is projected around 1.5 million the remaining the balance will be used to create a fund balance for this fund recommendations in innovation and technology include continued support to improve our database decision making and keeping our digital content fresh and relevant with our new website proposals in parks and rec include enhancing maintenance for the downtown and cemetery and improving competitiveness in our non-standard positions planning and development services proposes to digitize our records for

[153:00] public access police also has a request for additional executive leadership training and transportation and mobility proposes to increase the snow and ice program budget although this is to reflect the historical current levels of service that we're seeing based on snow events our last theme is in investing in employees the most critical aspect to our ability to provide excellent service to the community as our workforce our employees made significant sacrifices beginning in march 2020 as we've discussed and if you follow recent news reports it's extremely important for employers to be competitive in this market so our ability to maintain a status as an employer choice is critical moving forward at the height of the recent crisis 741 city employees were furloughed 148

[154:02] employees were laid off or ended employment the proposed 2022 budget brings back staffing capacity throughout the organization restoring 58.5 standard positions and 18 fixed term position extensions to provide services that were reduced in 20 or 21. in addition to the retroactive payment to employees for the 2020 furlough days within the special adjustment debates the 2022 budget proposes full restoration of merit increases and negotiated salary adjustments for all employees additional costs include a mandatory increase to pair contributions 214 000 represents the employer portion of those costs increases to medical premiums and contributions to a reserve fund as the city moves towards a self-insured medical plan to help decrease long-term costs now i will hand it off over to cara skinner our assistant director of finance and then

[155:01] we'll pause again for questions thanks mark and good evening council so next we will present the six-year cip program and we'll begin with the definition of cip projects and they are major projects for the purchase construction or replacement of the city's physical assets next slide and there are different project types we break them down into capital maintenance and enhancement new projects capital planning studies and land acquisitions next slide so this is a representation of the six-year cip it is a six-year plan although we are only appropriating the dollars for the first year of that plan in 2022 but it is good to see the long-term plan with our capital projects the six-year cip

[156:00] um is 692 million [Music] 431 million of which is related to our utilities and that is uh demonstrated by the light blue bars in this chart so you will see that significant amount in 2022 for utilities and then again in 2024 as was mentioned earlier by utilities there's also the significant project in 2023 by department the facilities and fleet department and that's the renovation of the alpine balsam pavilion next slide this is that same six year plan by department but it's excluding utilities so that you can see a little more granularity of the other departments that have regular capital improvement program and spending in most years particularly transportation and mobility and parks and recreation and open space and mountain parks

[157:03] and next slide so this um represents the six year by project type and what we really want to share here is that the majority of the capital improvement plan program is in those two categories of capital maintenance and capital enhancement and we that's the blue and the orange and we think of that or those two categories together as the taking care of what we have and it does represent 93 percent of the six-year plan so next slide so now we're going to move on to highlight some specific projects and we're going to begin with utilities as they are such a significant portion of the cip and it is noted on this slide by the asterisks but the first four projects are the largest projects that will be funded by that 92 million dollar

[158:00] bond so three large water utility projects one large wastewater utility project and then they do also have some important uh stormwater and flood management projects planned for 2022 next slide and before we go on to other um project highlights for other departments we did want to just speak to um utility rate changes because to support ongoing operations and the debt service for the large capital projects utilities does have a schedule of planned smooth rate increases and they do that to avoid one-time rate spikes in any one year the table here shows what the planned rate changes are for the next three years in that dark green and the first column is the 2022 rate increases so seven percent for water five percent for waste water and twelve percent for storm water flood

[159:02] the last three columns show what that translates to in terms of the impact to an average uh single-family monthly residential bill and so in total the 2022 rate increases um on average would increase bills by approximately seven dollars and fifty cents and next slide so moving on to some other departments we did want to again highlight for facilities in 2022 we are funding the alpine balsam flood mitigation project for three million dollars and then again just wanting to um look ahead a little bit to 2023 to that 60 million dollar project uh at alpine balsam to renovate the pavilion for the western city campus innovation and technology has a number of projects planned for 2022 and then again looking ahead to 2023

[160:03] these are important dollars for enterprise-wide foundational systems and then again just wanted to note we did add some dollars to the north boulder library project for 2022 1.2 million dollars and next slide so open space in mountain parks continues to um be guided by their master plan and the strategies contained in that master plan and highlighted on this slide are four projects that are aimed toward the strategy of continued maintenance and stewardship taking care of what we have again a common theme throughout the capital improvement program and then again two additional projects to address the strategy of investment in soil health and restoration of agricultural lands and then last for transportation and mobility

[161:01] important projects in 2022 the annual pavement management program is nearly 5 million then also wanted to highlight the multi-modal enhancements to 28th street from valmont to iris that's a nearly five million dollar project and then in 2022 and into 2023 uh the 28th street and colorado intersection as well as the 30th street protected bike lanes project and that's the end of the cip project or program highlights and overview the next steps is the second reading is scheduled for october 19th and then uh next slide is questions but then i just wanted to share that following this question slide we do have a suggested motion language slide for later

[162:00] very good thank you so much kara and um i will turn out a council for questions i expect to have a lot at this point we'll start with bob adam and aaron bob uh thanks sam uh thanks carl uh i have two unrelated questions one first one's probably for kurt fernhauber kurt uh you remember in 2019 the voters approved a ballot measure authorizing um a middle-income down payment assistance program uh and then we kind of put that in hold uh over the last year or so because of the pandemic if the next council was inclined to move forward with the implementation of that program in 2022 are there are there sufficient funds in the budget to get that program launched i know there was about a million dollars maybe slightly less than that in a dedicated housing fund that i think we're going to be the first dollars used for that program uh do you think that will be sufficient or might you need to come back for a supplemental budget request if the next council wants to kick that program off

[163:01] next year uh thank you bob so i think that amount that amount um that you're thinking of is uh it was about 800 and change and um we have used uh some of that um for looking at increasing our current down payment assistance program you know that was capped at 50. um i i think for the most part it's uh i don't know the exact amount but i think it's mostly unspent at this time and um uh you know two or three years will pass by the time we get to this again um if we get to it next year and um so we would likely um need to come back to council with additional resources for that but again we'll have to um sort of get into the details of what that would require

[164:00] okay well that's probably a discussion for the retreat in january but i wanted to at least ask about that thanks chris uh unrelated question and this relates to our backbone fiber build about three years ago we we launched a fiber build backbone fiber build i can't remember the exact amount but it was between 20 and 30 million dollars i suspect we're probably more than three quarters the way done with that and maybe that'll be wrapping up next year but could someone speak to whether that's fully funded to completion i certainly could start bob um and others please jump in um if i don't capture correctly my understanding is that it is fully funded the fiber phase one through completion it's scheduled to be complete in 22 the last estimate i heard was the end of q2 though that could have been pushed back knowing how construction is these days with the service provided at some of those vhp sites that were added as a part of

[165:00] phase one by the beginning of 2023. that's good enough thanks a lot mark appreciate it okay um hang on one moment and just a note here um this council has not had the pleasure of being at these hearings and chambers but normally we have a whole room full of staff looking back at us and taking our questions all here virtually so we have lots of staff here to answer your questions next up we have adam aaron mark and mary adam thanks sam uh my first question is about one of mark's slides it's the slide that had all the departments and their percentage increases for next year's budget mark do you know that slide do you mind pulling that up real quick

[166:02] perfect um i just noticed a few larger percentage increases that weren't covered in the presentation including the city attorneys and city managers office were those uh primarily just staffing um compensation increases or what what were those for the manager's office i can let chris check chime in but i believe that is a result of moving the clerk's office and records into the city manager's office but chris you may have more detail thanks narrator that's correct the the one portion of it is the kind of restructure that happened and moving the city clerk's office from its own department back into the city manager's office central records moving into the city manager's office as well uh and um also kind of housed within that uh also includes uh some additional funding

[167:01] for the equity liaison position that's proposed in this budget is housed in the city manager's office as well as some of the non-personnel expenses were related to that so those are the the primary ones oh the other one is the the restoration of an administrative assistant position uh to support the municipal building yeah yeah also a couple other line items that i saw um i don't know if chief harold or someone from the police department is here but um the policing line item was you know a lot bigger than the um 30 000 that was in the presentation just wondering what a lot of that is um going to be put towards good evening council uh mayor sarah police chief um i have deputy chief weinheimer and our uh budget director gina collusion here to answer that thank you chief can you please print out to where which

[168:01] line item that you're talking to please uh judy i'm talking about the third from the bottom police thank you evening council carrie weinhardt deputy police chief um and gina can probably get more specific but that roughly 3.5 million represents eight and a half positions two and a half of those are restorations uh the other six are additional police officers uh the restorations were an animal protection officer a um property evidence technician in a halftime position um as part of our photo enforcement um subpoena service program thanks deputy chief now i have another unrelated question to all these were there any city departments that are anticipating not spending their entire budget allotment this year

[169:01] and i'm talking you know pretty substantial under spends not a couple dollars here or there so i can sorry as my screen my screen just fell over um i can speak to that at this point um i wouldn't say that we know of any substantial uh depart substantial amounts that departments are spending a lot of times what happens if projects haven't been completed or a lot of their capital we roll it over to the following year and that's what we present to you in may but at this point at this time um knows the is the answer to to our knowledge we do have vacancies though i will i'll caveat that with many departments with the difficulty in hiring especially police have seen a lot of vacancies and

[170:02] unfilled positions so there will be uh probably a substantial amount of savings related to that thank you for that cheryl and it looks like a couple members of staff want to weigh in thanks adam this is allie rhodes director of parks and recreation i was going to note that the recreation activity fund will not spend to budget but it also has not collected revenue to budget we have been updating those projections basically every week for about a year and a half as we monitor attendance in our facilities and programs so so that is not a general fund account but just wanted to it is responsive to the question thank you valerie and carrie yeah i just want to add one more thing to adam's question um about 800 and close to 850 000 of that 3.5 million was a replacement fleet replacement money uh that we held last year so that's back in

[171:00] our budget so that that's one substantial line item that's not personnel related thanks for that uh sam those are my only questions thank you thank you adam next we have aaron mark mary rachel and juni erin thanks everyone for the presentation we appreciate all the detailed information um question about the north boulder library branch had 1.2 million budget in 2022 which is great do we have a sense of uh when that's getting underway and like how many years of spending that's going to take to get that to completion thanks for the question aaron uh david fernand library arts director for the city of boulder um aaron that gets us on budget right so we have a contractor on board um and an architect they we wanted to do we did get a significant increase in the bidding process than what we had anticipated so

[172:00] i don't know how much the long story you want but we took a estimated bid in november and by march um due mostly to the pandemic and supply chain disruption but the cost of raw materials as well the bids came back about 60 over what we had had the estimate done four months prior um we cut four million dollars out of the project and redesigned a number of things but without actually triggering site review we needed some money to cover that gap and that's what that 1.2 million dollars represents that is a hard budget there are some redesign elements that need to go forward but we don't anticipate the full site review being necessary because the the building as you remember it will be there it's a lot of changes in systems and um siding levels of glazing on the glass that kind of thing but we we anticipate um breaking ground within six months and

[173:00] the construction is still scheduled for 12 12 months so opening in 2023 that's great so then in other words this this 1.2 million is an additional appropriation to deal with the budget increases that were necessary that is correct yeah so the 1.2 million um it was i can't tell you exactly how that all spreads out there was some of it which went into um contingency for cost escalation realizing that we have probably six months of redesign to do with the architects and the contractor mostly redesigning systems internal systems to the building but everything really lighting glazing every everything sort of changed in terms of the details of the project finish but the 1.2 million gets us to budget we have uh we have the bid from the contractor and so now it's simply their responsibility to put the project together such that it will meet that budget okay well it's a shame to hear about those huge cost increases but i'm glad

[174:00] to hear we're still being able to get the project done i suspect other departments that have capital projects are seeing it as well i mean we may continue to see some some prices have just been very volatile some kind of went up and we don't anticipate them going back down i don't know if anybody from facilities is here but we track it pretty carefully and you know the primary makeup of the building glass steel those prices have gone up significantly mostly due to [Music] supply chain disruption but but other other costs like wood skyrocketed and then came back down so we'll see okay thanks to that answer david i got a couple more that i should have followed question to that um so based on what we were hearing from david there to what extent have we taken that encounter in the very large pavilion renovation project that's slated to start in the next couple years

[175:04] sorry hi i'm joanna crean director facilities and fleet i was having camera issues so listening to david's answer all of that your right is significant and to your point aaron we are absolutely paying attention to what this means for all of our buildings certainly the pavilion we are just beginning on the embarking on really the design component so we're not obviously as far down the road as we are with north boulder library but we are very much looking at that and and how things are tracking in terms of how cost estimates are coming in and how quickly um prices are are going up and contractor availability and all the other aspects so we are definitely tracking all of that right now we don't have any big change to report on anything that we've done so far in terms of how we're projecting with the pavilion okay thanks for that jenna it'll be

[176:00] interesting to see how that works out and uh last question is um in prior years we had a modest business incentive fund that we could use to help encourage some of our local businesses to to stay in town if they were expanding by rebating some some certain use taxes and such do we have a timeline as our revenue comes back on board for revisiting that program thanks for the question erin yvette bowden director of community vitality and assistant city manager what the budget proposes is the information that we have for slowly building back our small business program as is our may as we continue to delve in with our alliance partners presents some opportunity to do other things we certainly want to leverage that with anything that's planned by the county in the state and we'll look forward to working with mark in bringing forward a proposal in that regard and possibly the first

[177:01] quarter january february um and mark i don't know if you have anything else to add there just that we had a discussion i think it was associated with atb 1 and 2021 of restoring our the the one tool our incentive program that we we do have our flex rebate program given the demand and trying to retain some of our employers in town we continue that that restoration of a total program amount of 150 000 in the 2022 recommended budget i want to just add one final thing aaron that we are closely monitoring with cu the com and with the chamber the competitiveness of our program and that may be something that we provide more information to council in the future great appreciate that it's all ahead thank you thank you aaron mark mary rachel and junie mark okay i'll try to keep it down to a few questions actually my first question is for you nuria um i recall a conversation

[178:02] in which you indicated you were going to challenge the various departments to rethink programs in light of the covet experience to determine where we could um do with less and occasionally do without um did that process occur and and if so what were the results of it i appreciate the question mark and i will say that we hope that that's a constant uh ask of our departments as we move forward right as we looked and on our ask for budget recommendations from our departments we really asked them to be thoughtful about not bringing us items that just restored to the way things used to be but rather really taking into account what's needed and what they learned during the pandemic and so some of the requests really talked about expanding or supporting some other particularly like all those the online transactional um

[179:01] services that we were able to do as a city uh and move forward because we couldn't have people coming into the building and whatnot and some of the enhancements we have planned are to further bolster that others we also realized how much some connectivity is needed in the city and so as we think about restoring library services we really thought oh that's a critical place that we do need to invest in because we saw just how important that would be the city had already started before my time to think about consolidating spaces and that was already in the works but certainly the pandemic has showed us that even more and we are you see some of that as we think about hybrid workplace and telework um environments as we move forward that we're not planning to have expensive exp ex expansive footprints as we used to have as a city so i'll say that it is something that we took into account throughout all the budget requests that

[180:00] came with us by departments and it is something that i think we'll continue to add is it a good efficiency to look for as we move forward and we'll continue to incorporate that as our budget processes uh in our budget process for the future are any specific metrics you use to evaluate whether a program is still carrying its weight i guess or whether it continues to have the value it ought to have yeah i mean i think that's something i'm always and i think departments have heard it from me since i um arrived a few months ago is that i hope that we're thinking about what don't we do in the future because it is no longer certainly providing the value we expect i'll say that as we think about that data is truly important and one of the things that i have learned in my short time here is that we really do need to invest in some data systems that speak to each other and that can really look at impact of our programming and not just um the money that we're using to service it so

[181:00] i encourage other departments if they have specifics in their wheelhouse but i'll say that i find that we're at the very beginning of that journey to really evaluate impact um as we think about that in the future because not all of that data was just available to us okay and then just two short questions um one of the slides indicated we're adding 58.5 ftes and fixed term extensions representing 18 ftes um the layoffs and furloughs were much more substantial than that were they not during the uh 2020 period i mean are we still substantially understaffed are we getting how close we're getting back to normal well i think this is a path towards get back getting back to normal and um i'll ask finance to add to whatever i have missed out but i'll say that you know in the beginning when we started the introduction i said we're really trying to be cautiously optimistic um we're really thinking about what we need to do we haven't had all the financing come in that we

[182:01] expected and we're still moving forward and looking at what that looks like for our future but i do think that the staff that has been brought on we looked try to be equitable across all the organizations and bringing back some of those staff that were critical i know folks for example in planning and development services in library and parks and rec they were hit tremendously as those furlough decisions were made a while back and so really thinking about how do we move that forward i know for many of our staff they wanted to expand and do new services as well but we really felt that this budget needed to mostly restore and bring forward but to your previous question mark there were some things that we learned too that we perhaps didn't have to staff in the same way and as those perhaps perhaps those transactions that became more digitally or more online or other methodologies for deploying services that the pandemic sort of uh showed us that we can move

[183:01] forward those adjustments were made too so we're not completely there yet in complete restoration but i do think that this is a big step forward with the revenue projections that we have and if i've said something completely wrong finance team can correct me my last question is um uh with respect to arts and libraries my rough calculation is about 90 of the funds in that category went to libraries um and not arts and i'm just wondering how we came to that that proportion and i say that without any offense to library advocates we all love our libraries but i'm but i want to at least ask the question how we got to a a 90-10 yeah location i'll i'll start and maybe ask david and mark to weigh in as well i know and and i believe this community myself included is a big proponent of the arts as we looked for how that uh moved forward and

[184:00] there certainly is some money in this budget for the arts i'll also say that we're figuring out how to supplement some of those monies um with arpa dollars as well as we move forward but i'll let uh david and mark weigh in on the asks that came forward and what our plan is for the arts in the future yeah i mean i think the easiest answer mark is in response to the cuts right so arts if you remember in the cuts council elected to keep some of the funding for the grants program and then what you see in this budget is a full restoration of the grants program we still have a few shortcomings in the arts budget but i would say we're probably 95 to 98 to full restoration um the library budget cuts were um more significant so i think i think we're right back at around 70 to 75 percent of the levels with library so there was a larger gap to fill and i think that's

[185:02] what you were referencing and and to nuria's point we have shifted a number of requests um to the rescue act and we're hoping to see some funding for some significant art increases in their budget through that fund and i think they meet the requirements that are outlined in the federal program okay thank you and i want to thank um all of staff for a really excellent presentation um that's terrific work i'm very grateful thank you mark uh mary rachel and junie mary thank you and um yeah i want to extend that um gratitude that mark just extended as well to everyone who worked on the budget i know it's a lot of work um so my first question is just sort of a follow-up on um the 1.2 million dollars for um in the cip for the library and i'm just i'm recalling i seem to recall

[186:00] that when we were putting the previous ccs tax renewal on the ballot um it was reduced by about that much um for the library the north boulder library it am i recalling that correctly and if so is this 1.2 million dollars part of that mary you are so funny um yeah so when we came when we came to ccs uh we had we had made a six million dollar request council asked if we could reduce that to five and we did um yeah but i don't think that's it we we tried to scale the project to the budget that we had and really the this 1.2 million dollars you know maybe our modeling was better in 2016 or 20 whenever we were coming forward with that than what we have today but uh the 1.2 that you see in the budget today is really to account for the cost increases

[187:00] of primarily raw materials um you know steel and glass were the prices went up at absurd levels okay and later no thank you i appreciate that i just that the number was just too close to my recollection that i just couldn't help but ask um and then um my next question um has to do with um planning and development services um the restoration of those services i recall at the beginning of 2020 i believe it was when the whole department was getting sort of revamped new systems were getting put into place and um and we staff shared with council and i think at that point in time it was adam and myself met with um with staff and um they were saying that it was going to be

[188:01] um pretty difficult for about that year um 2020 which we had no idea how much more difficult it was gonna be but um [Music] this restoration does that um account for all of the changes that were being planned and are those changes completed and um is the restoration kind of um back and renewed kind of to the point that that or the question that mark was asking about did things come back better and are we doing things differently um so yeah where are we at with that particular project and does this restoration reflect that well mary thank you so much for the question that really in some ways predates my arrival um and and certainly we pnds went through the same experience that every other organization in the world did when we had the virtualized services many of which were conducted on paper so we had to figure out how to do uh do that business that had been done

[189:00] for years and years virtually which the staff did the answer to your question is that this largely restores the services that we anticipated at the time however many of those services have been changed as a result of virtualization during the pandemic for example all of our meetings are still conducted virtually and will continue to be conducted virtually so the staff who stand up those meetings do a completely different thing now in addition all of our submittals have gone completely to an online process we no longer take paper submittals the only time construction drawings go to paper is when they're on the hood of a truck and a project is under construction so those things have changed and they are different than what we anticipated before the pandemic what we have done is we've adjusted our services and we have made significant headway to implementing many of those recommended process improvements during the course of 2020 we did in fact put together the process improvements that were recommended and we are bringing forward no new

[190:00] process improvements during the course of this year and instead we are implementing those which have been designed we hope to be staffed on the basis of our request by march of next year fully staffed and onboarded with all of those new team members and we will evaluate at that time how our performance metrics have uh have improved so that's our time to readjust the last thing that i'll say our requests do not completely cover the total number of law staff we've lost more staff than we have requested however we've requested what our fund can pay for and what we believe that the general fund can fairly pay for so if uh our number of submittals increase over the course of 2022 we may look to add the appropriate number of staff in correspondence to the degree to which our fund sees more more funds coming in as a result of submittals so we'll track it closely over the course of the next year and if we get more submittals that pay for staff we'll request it and uh with

[191:01] that said if there's anything else specific um that you'd like to know i also have our budget analyst ken baird here with us who can delve into more detail okay great thank you jacob um and then my final question has to do with the equity liaison um kind of touching on on adam's earlier question and um as i i recalled at one point and i and i can't say specifically when but i was under the impression that um staffing was going to be more than one additional person and so um so is this a reduction in what had been previously shared um and will this be adequate enough to move the racial equity plan forward and if not what does staff anticipate being the plan moving forward i can take that one

[192:01] great great emmy then i'll and then i can add any any contacts if you'd like okay sure thank you so much for that question mary so i'm amy kane and my pronouns are she her and i'm the equity manager for the city um this budget as you mentioned does add an fte to directly support operationalizing the racial equity plan there's also a position in innovation and technology which is intended to support the racial equity efforts specifically as we've discussed so much of what we need done initially is really setting up our systems to be able to disaggregate data based on race and ethnicity and so that we can use the racial equity instruments and help departments and staff do the analysis that they really need to be doing to really inform policy discussions i also wanted to bring up that as we outlined in the racial equity plan part of our city model is to have equity ambassadors embedded into each

[193:00] department to help amplify the work and also to ensure that all of the work doesn't fall into one specific office that has the sole responsibility of leading the organization to more equitable outcomes one of our more progressive departments um i was in conversation with them this week and they're looking to restructure one of his existing positions to support the racial equity work not only for their department but also the organization and so that's some of the change that i'm really hoping that we'll be working towards in other departments so i think we had hoped that we would be able to add more to this office as we were initially kind of forming this work but we're really waiting to see how we can stabilize the resources after covid and then we'll continue to look for what might be missing and hopefully scale up so as similar to how jacob was just referring ensuring that as we move the work

[194:00] forward and it increases we will likely be coming back for additional staffing resources great thank you amy yeah my pleasure thank you that's all i have all right very good thank you mary we've got rachel and jimmy and then i will go rachel um well since amy's still right there i just want to make sure i understood how the equity liaison will work like in relation to you the equity program manager that yeah it was explained i'm sorry i missed it but i'm curious no i didn't explain that so that's like a number two that's really having somebody else who can help support the work and operationalize a lot and lead a lot of the projects that are outlined in the racial equity plan and act as a strategic partner with me in supporting the work across the organization and building out more capacity for staff and other departments awesome i'm sure that will be very welcome for you and you might be the right person for my next question or one of my questions do you um oversee or have involvement

[195:02] with the community connectors i work with staff who lead that program that that program specifically is out of communication and engagement um ryan hansen who i don't well he's on here um i think he's actually running the call uh is one of there you are ryan's actually one of the leaders who works directly with those individuals all right i'll over to ryan then thanks amy um so my question ryan adam and i when we were at the national night out were approached by some community connectors who wanted to make sure that we had adequate funding in this year's budget to make sure that their work continues and expand so i just want to make sure that that the community connectors feel like we have adequately funded because i don't know what that would look like thank you for for the question uh brian hinchen engagement specialist in our communication engagement department um there are a number of communicator programs that are moving forward into

[196:01] 2022 that we're really excited about we're seeing emergency response connectors that need to continue and transitioning to neighborhood response connectors and supported by my great colleague brenda rittenhauer and neighborhood services and that is fully funded and an ongoing program and and then their important work within a number of different master plans we'll continue into 2022 as well uh and you know it is this is something that we're also seeking some external funding uh to expand more innovative programming um but it is something that we're you know do have funding that's committed for 2022 and looking at ways to expand that great work okay because it is so helpful to get that feedback so we have we have funded it adequately from staff and connectors perspective i think is what i'm hearing for for the immediate future yes and i think we're excited to keep growing and

[197:00] meeting the needs of underrepresented community members throughout our community all right thanks ryan um see mark asked my librarian arts question um and so my last question you know we recently did an adjustment to base that um was for i think policing in parks and rec and maybe utilities around um responding to encampments and homelessness issues so we're just trying to understand um when we heard that there are six additional police officers is at the same six or was that already captured the the six that we were hiring there um and and parks and rec money is is what we're seeing with those requests all new money because it was captured in the previous adjustment to base or that's correct rachel uh those six are the same we're also carrying forward the 18-month pilots that were part of that discussion that's about 3.4 million in total for for 2022 and obviously a conversation with council about whether some of those pilots will continue the staffing is a

[198:01] permanent adjustment and is built in to the police base and i see kerry if i've mischaracterized that just so i'm understanding i think what i heard you say is the six that we added in a couple months ago are the same six new hires that we're hearing today and carrie's nodding yes okay thank you all right okay super thank you rachel uh junie and then i'll go jenny thank you i do i have one question about the budget line items similar to the question that um council member sweat league brought forward i saw on the line item can you bring that up for city council i think that was slide 41 if i recall

[199:02] yeah i looked at the memo that was provided the report that was provided and i thought i saw a different amount for city council and i see that there is an increase of twelve percent so i wanted to hear more about this particular funding oh um chris if you wouldn't mind um responding i do think some of this uh funding is for council uh conferences and things of that sort but i will defer to chris uh to give more explanation sure thanks cheryl and yeah the the city council budget uh includes a couple of things the the biggest increase is related to council member travel

[200:00] for conferences and events that budget was cut during covid and so the 2022 budget proposes to restore that to its uh previous funding and then uh the other item that's in there is related to um during election years uh um there's there's funding to help support elections and so we fluctuate that funding depending on whether it's a local election or a kind of an even or odd year election so i know that's another piece that's there and then just looking at my notes to make sure there isn't any other uh piece that i am missing i think that might be it yeah i wanted to follow up with you on that you mentioned some of the funding is for conference travels do you know how much of that funding is for conference is assigned to council members um what the yeah what the budget is for council members is there's kind of two

[201:02] portions of it each council member is allocated fifteen hundred dollars for conferences and events and then shared across all nine council members is a pool of twenty thousand dollars uh and so collectively it's it's that pool of money that is used for council members to attend community events that might have registration fees uh or to attend continuing education or uh educational conferences um like national league of cities that sort of thing yeah no thank you for that because i think yeah that's the sense that i get that the twenty thousand dollars is set aside for national league of cities type conferences or the national league of cities itself and then the fifteen hundred dollars is for other type of conferences yeah it's you can use both of those kind of buckets for uh for events or conferences so the the shared pool

[202:00] across all council members uh is uh can be used for the for conferences or for you know local events that sort of thing okay so basically it's not essentially fifteen hundred dollars for council members it's fifteen hundred dollars plus or twenty thousand dollars that is divided among the nine council members correct you got it okay okay thank you that's all my questions actually for today great thank you jenny um so my questions i want to start with if we could put the slides back up and go to slide 62 that's the capital improvement program and this is the one question i have about the budget which is outside of the arpa funding so on this slide we see under the wastewater utility 44.5 million dollars for sewer improvements so i guess my question would be what are those

[203:01] sewer improvements i can take that if desired chris deville again deputy director of operations for utilities so sam that's a very generic title so your question is well grounded this is our main sewer interceptor project so this is the main sewer that leads basically from from all of town except the gun barrel area and so this is a project to reroute and fortify that that sewer so that's what this one is got it and and that was the interceptor that was threatened and damaged during the 2013 flag is that correct correct got it and as part of the response that we had to that 2013 flood another big project under wastewater was re-lining of the um sewer pipes all the way to homes and so i know that we started in south boulder and we we made a big increase in the

[204:02] budget for lining those pipes is that going on and what's the annual allocation for that sewer lining project yeah i'll give a quick brief answer the effort does continue um i can't uh in the moment recite the the annual spend on that sam but it is continuing on on an aggressive annual program okay yeah my recollection and the only reason i ask is because in our discussion about cu south it came up many times that there were other sources of damage and i believe we went from over 100 year replacement schedule to about a 40-year replacement schedule to address all of those pipes so i was just curious if this was related sounds like this is not related to that this is the interceptor so thanks that answers my question um the next questions i've got are going to shift to the arpa funding that we've got i think nuria you mentioned or maybe it was cheryl at the beginning that there's

[205:01] about 16 million give or take unallocated of the roughly 20 million dollar allocation that the city's got the county's got an allocation about 60 million and there have been conversations that have started at the county level surveys are being put out to to see what the community needs are around that and then of course there's some state funding which has come in into billions and the the kindering the focus in a little bit at the state level there are two task forces that have been seated at the state level um recently one is a housing task force and one is a mental health task force and each one of those task forces has been given a nominal budget of around 500 million dollars and so those task forces have each had their first meeting the counties had its first meeting and then last week there was a kickoff that the governor's office created inviting mayors in boulder as well as county commissioners for a conversation

[206:02] about how to link all of these together and so i just wanted to flag that for everyone particularly staff that these things are going on and we may well know that they're going on but i think it's important that we have representation at least paying attention to what's going on in those task forces and at the county level because the housing and the mental health task forces are right in line with two of our biggest problems that we have to deal with and so one of my questions to staff is has there been participation in that already or what's the plan in linking our city budget planning around housing and mental health response to what the county and the state are doing so i'll throw this question to mark and anyone else on the the arpa team who wants to answer but i'll say uh to start with that we have been in those conversations particularly at the county and our regional level um i know that we are paying attention to what's happening at the state and

[207:00] we'll continue to do so and uh we'll continue to have those conversations because i think you're right sam that leveraging what's happening all around us is going to be really important i'll also say that even leveraging future dollars as we're paying attention to the transportation bill and how that may impact us as well but i know that mark in particular has been involved in some of those county and other cities in our vicinity in our region conversations so mark don't know if you want to add more to that right now sure thanks nuria just to piggyback on that we we are following the county process closely um we we have amplified their work in continuing to gain community input we do expect some of the areas in common with with those transformative initiatives that we discussed with council to be in alignment and as you're mentioning sam we certainly can't approach mental services and housing alone i'm very excited to hear about the governor's office convening how to link all those together

[208:01] we are interested in that discussion we'll make sure we get connected to these state level conversations we think it'll be really important in these areas to make sure that we can leverage our dollars to to make it go as far 16 million sounds like a lot but when we're tackling these challenges it will only go so far absolutely and kurt i see that you're up uh thanks salmon thanks for highlighting that uh for our community um in fact today um uh chief harold and i set up a meeting with the uh with the mental health task force that we're going to be meeting with i think it's next week the sort of the chair of that of that committee so um we um we are trying to stay connected to that particularly in an area like mental health where we don't have um those aren't areas that we've we fund directly as much and have as much influence on so we want to be connected

[209:01] in that way as well super i will say that both the governor and the senate majority leader have uh mentioned that we need to connect into those task forces so i wanted to bring it forward i also want to highlight that you know the way the city worked with the shelter boulder shelter for the homeless back when that was being constructed i believe is that we put in a big chunk of the capital that went into building that facility and since that time we've only put nominal amounts into operations because the facility is a one-time expense which we approached as capital but operations obviously for homeless services aren't first and foremost in our wheelhouse that's more county kind of money so the county has um over the years put in a big chunk of the um homeless shelters operating budget and we put in only a little chuck

[210:01] but we were big on the upfront piece of that and i just wanted to put out a concept for mental health maybe outpatient treatment for people with substance abuse problems is there a way that we can use this arpa funding and link up to the county and the state level to do something um which is capital one-time expenditure which creates a facility which maybe is funded more by the county but we put in more money into one-time funding whether it's from our bucket of one time or however we could arrange that but it seems like to me one of the biggest gaps we have in services for the unsheltered and in mental health support is around substance abuse treatment and what the options are here so it seems like an opportune moment to have that conversation to me i don't know that we need it in the budget or not but i didn't want to let this conversation pass without at least highlighting that because from my perspective the mental health substance abuse is a big gap and if we

[211:01] could do anything that would help kick off better support maybe and leverage that operational funding that we can get elsewhere i wanted to bring that up so um there's that and then the only other piece that i wanted to bring up here which is kind of one-time response is if we could bring the slides up and go to slide 48 that just shows among other things that we are fully bringing back our hop service and so what i think this brings up for me is rtd has been enormously negatively impacted by covet obviously and there have been massive service reductions including essentially shutting down our mobility hub at 30th and pearl and so i don't know if staff's been thinking about this but one of the things that i recall is we put out the hop and

[212:00] because there was no good circulator in boulder the city took responsibility stepped up bought the buses created the routes hired the drivers and built the hop and as we went to extend that kind of circulator service to the skip and the jump and so on rtd stepped in took those made those part of their routes and now those are part of their service cuts and so we have historically been trying to buy up extra service so that we had lower headways and so on and so forth and so with the rtd cuts and with the poor service restoration that we've seen so far i just wanted to float the idea is there one-time uses of our funding and transportation to take ownership of another circulator or two um and i don't know that this is a well-formed question or not but it seems like again there's this one-time funding which is out there we have some the county has some and

[213:00] maybe not so much about the state but many counties are starting to have conversations about what can they do to supplement rtd because rtd's restoration may not be fast enough and so as i look at the restoration of hop service and electrification i just wanted to ask has there been any conversation within transportation about how we're going to respond to the challenges that we're facing in our community because rtd is so badly hampered thank you very much for that question um america bannon brown the director of transportation mobility and absolutely um we we recognize that rtd is in a difficult position and um we're trying to pursue a number of different strategies so first we have been working with rtd and really trying to make a good business case for why um

[214:02] the service should be restored um i think you've indicated you know sort of how that's going we've also been working with the county and um with and with cdot to try and explore other avenues to um compel you know additional funding to restore service um and so that you know things start to come back in our community what we've also been doing is that our transit study that we used for the transportation master plan it it kind of anticipated you know how we might you know go forward and so forth so we're trying to look at ways to be able to fund that but i think most importantly as we go and we're starting to update our transportation master plan we're looking at alternatives because if rte is not going to be that um provider for us our community needs transit to be successful not only for um you know our local community needs but also to get all the workers in from

[215:00] elsewhere in the region and so we're really exploring all different avenues right now there are a lot of unknowns in terms of funding for transit service or funds that would be available for us to use for transit service both from the recently passed um state transportation package and there are still things you know being under discussion at the federal level so we're in this in between place where it's not over until it's over but we're on top of it okay well very good i just wanted to flag that it seems like that should be an element of the conversation with the county as well because the county recognizes the buying that we're in and the bind rtd is in and so even if it were only one or two circulators and we were able to put one-time funding towards buying the buses i know that hiring operators is very difficult but it it seems like also a hurdle is always getting the um the buses to be able to run so i think that's the end of my questions thank you

[216:01] all i want to compliment staff again for such a great presentation the budget is a huge lift and i wish we were in the same room together so i could see all of your smiling faces with that i think if there's no more questions we'll go to the public hearing and then after the public hearing bring it back to council so cancel last chance for questions okay see none let me pull up the public hearing speaker list we have four people signed up for the public hearing tonight so they will each get three minutes and our first three are riley mancuso lynn siegel and jan burton and with that riley you are up and you have three minutes

[217:03] hello can you hear me we can hear you riley um one second i'm having some technical difficulties i'm going to try and return return to the meeting okay it looks like riley stepped out um brian if we have lynn siegel in the meeting can we go to lynn and then we'll come back to riley when he's back in when you'll be able to meet yourself now yeah um i'd be able like to be able to increase your sales tax revenue by decreasing uh the mail levy and my property tax i just bought it today last year incidentally i got 2 800 back on the last two year assessment process without a lawyer or anything

[218:01] um i went through the whole process you know protests boe and baa but with higher and higher property taxes it might look good but you become house heavy and cash poor and i really want to be able to spend but i'm not going to do that i'm saving everything for my kids for climate change and then we have climate change dealt dealt with with cu south that's not a climate change solution that's a climate change disaster and you know you can be efficient at one end and you can be very efficient and cancel all of your objectives by by doing things like see you south like doing things like google and gtis which is a multinational that bought um southern land in the rev and then that was in february and then just last

[219:00] week they turned around and sold 125 000 square feet to google and then i was just going to look at google around the corner at 33rd and walnut that it was all empty there was no google signs i just wanted to see where google was i was talking to a planning board member on the phone in the parking lot and this security guy came up and told me it's private property they've got restrooms and they've got construction workers there and they're doing something called hoteling now which is all this growth happens and then if you you know even though nobody's working at the offices anymore you can rent out the space individually like airbnb except in your office building and as regulations change for the virus you can maximize your benefit of the space and you have a huge building boom presuming that the the virus is going to be over

[220:00] which is kind of a big bet but meantime they're taking this time to build as fast as they can and booms and busts are not good you know we know this we live in the west um this is not good for the economy big jumps up and down so i recommend you decrease the mill leverage and let people like me be able to spend some money in the in this in this bolder environment um so let's see what else did i have on here oh the storm water is a big concern um the water rates uh i i can't afford these and then would see you south no way that the interceptor is a problem it needs a long-term solution and it's going to be a lot more than 44 million thank you lynn your time is up appreciate your comments and with that we will go back and try and bring riley mancuso in

[221:04] greetings council today i would like to talk to you about a subject you might not be surprised about the ridiculous amount you're proposing to spend on police when i was 22 years old i was fortunate to hear angela davis speak in person and it was one of the most impactful experiences in my life it was a moment when one person's voice and arguments were so compelling that they opened my mind to something i hadn't considered before and from that day forth i was an abolitionist um that was in 2017 just before i moved to boulder and so today i would like to read you some of davis's words from a medium piece that she published late last year abolition of slavery the death penalty

[222:00] prisons police has always been a controversial political demand not least because it calls attention to the fact that simply reforming specific institutions without changing their foundational elements may reproduce and perhaps even exacerbate the problems reform seeks to solve abolitionist approaches ask us to enlarge our field of vision so that rather than focusing myopically on the problematic institution and asking what needs to be changed about that institution we raise radical questions about the organization of the larger society to me it seems like you are all doing this myopic focus you are trying to solve prop some problems that don't exist you're ignoring problems like wage theft that are not treated as crime the way that low-level misdemeanors and uh such committed by poor people are and

[223:00] you're just refusing to consider the possibility that maybe it's worth thinking about how could we create what would it take to create a society where there was no no need for police what would it take to create a society like that of almost every other so-called developed nation where the the vast majority none of them have the rate of incarceration as the u.s none of them have the right of policing and all of them have lower crime rates and much lower shooting rates um and i just like i don't i don't know like you know i think that you've all closed your hearts and minds to even the possibility and most of you are older than my parents and maybe you're just that set in your ways but i really urge you to think about whether you have closed your minds off unfairly to the voices of the long tradition of black women abolitionists like angela davis and the other people who are part of the abolitionist

[224:00] movement which does date back to slavery and is a continuous effort to destroy oppression defund the police thank you riley next we have jan burton and andrew mckenna jan you're up and you have three minutes good evening mayor and council thank you for the economic forecast and for your commitment to the budget as my mother told me when i ran for council in 2015 this is the most important part of your job as a council member i'm sorry there are only four residents comment comment commenting tonight but i hope there are many more interested in following it as a resident i would like to give my wholehearted support for our new city manager nuria rivera vandermeide who has the experience and the values to lead the city however she may not have had haven't been here long enough to put her stamp on this budget and i'm concerned

[225:02] it may be driven by staff this is a big budget the budget shows a 32 increase from 2020. actuals a normalized expenditure versus 2020 1. adding 59 fte and 18 current fixed term positions may be impossible due to staffing availability please consider that in your considerations tonight i am commit commenting as a resident who uses open space parks and rec the boulder airport roads and bypass and our libraries and arts i'd like to mention the arts thank you for restoring 157k to the cultural grants however the arts funding shows only eight percent growth from 2020 actuals versus 11 growth in your overall

[226:01] operating budget arts and libraries provide the largest and most important social infrastructure in the city and the greatest support for diversity equity inclusion however the city is focused on physical infrastructure through the sip and the community culture on safety tax could you please consider over the next few weeks the impact of your decision on that tax when you develop the overall budget i.e more money for the arts and perhaps less in other areas like parks and rec for example there is nothing for public art in the cip and that's a pretty big gap from the cultural plan i believe around a quarter of a million dollars tonight i am not talking for create boulder but we are very willing to work with you in the next couple of weeks one general comment the fact that

[227:00] everything is budgeted by department creates inefficiency and waste you should ask your new city manager to develop strategic plans that may implement your goals more cost effectively especially things like racial equity plans in addition your willingness to add housing will be the most effective way to improve diversity equity and inclusion thank you so much for your work on our behalf thank you jan and our final speaker tonight is andrew mckenna andrew you have three minutes all right can you hear me we can well good evening uh council and staff and um i will say the meeting has been educational they don't envy your jobs and i admire your tenacity to to serve uh my name is andrew mckenna and i and my family live in the city of

[228:00] boulder i'm also the managing partner for journeys aviation which is a business at boulder airport journeys provides glider and powered flight training fueling and fbo services to the aviation community at the airport journeys employs over 40 full-time and full and part-time employees at the bull from the boulder community to a large degree i also represent the boulder aviation community at large which includes airport tenants businesses aircraft owners airport users as well as several community-based non-profit organizations who utilize the airport including the experimental aircraft association the civil air patrol and the antique aircraft association of colorado my understanding is that contained in the current 2021 and the 2022 city budgets are several expenditures for deferred maintenance and infrastructure improvements that the airport has have that have been long overdue at the airport and i am uh speaking to express my appreciation to the city

[229:02] manager nuria rivera vandermuid director of transportation erica vandenbrand and the interim airport manager john kinney for their efforts in addressing the many issues and difficulties that have presented themselves in the path of moving forward with long overdue improvements at the boulder airport i'd like to point out that since the last master plan in 2007 virtually nothing in the master plan has been accomplished at the airport and it's great to see some uh some progress in the works boulder airport is a valuable community asset that deserves to be supported and improved similar to other recreational and transportation facilities within the city of boulder to enable it to fulfill its potential as part of the general aviation infrastructure across the united states a training site for future pilots an educational resource for the youth of

[230:01] our community and a driver for the boulder economy not to mention a critical resource during emergency and disaster scenarios i invite each of you to visit the airport personally to see what a great asset the airport is what the needs are and the impact that allocating funds finally to the much needed improvements we'll have thank you for your time and the opportunity to speak on behalf of the boulder airport and the airport community thank you andrew and if you could stay on the line i see bob has his hand up bob is this for andrew it's not for andrew i was going to make a motion when public hearing ends okay super well with that i will bring public hearing to a close return to council bob go ahead i'd like to start off with a motion and see if we can get a second and then we can obviously have any discussion folks would like to have so i'd like to move to introduce and publish by title only the following ordinances ordinance 8505 adopting the 2022 budget ordinance 8506

[231:02] establishing the property tax mill of you for 2021 to be collected in 2022 ordinance 8507 appropriating the 2022 budget and ordinance 8508 changing certain fees all right i think aaron got that second by whisker mary so bob would you like to speak to your motion just briefly i think we we had a long discussion or questions i just want first of all i want to compliment and thank staff from nuria to every single department head to the finance folks for putting together a solid and well thought out budget i know this is a recovery budget i know that we had a tough go of it for a year and a half and we're now trying to recover and actually in certain areas expand um i did want to observe you know jan made a comment that the budget is a 32 increase over last year that that's kind of true um except for a couple things one is last year was a a deficit budget or a negative budget

[232:00] by necessity and secondly of course we had the big we have the big financing the big bond issue um for um for public utilities i think our finance staff correctly observed that if you compare our 2019 budget to our 2022 budget and ignore the downturn of the pandemic the um the annual adjusted increase is only 1.6 which is even below the rate of inflation so we're actually in real dollars our budget is smaller now or will be smaller in 2022 if it's adopted than it was in 2019 so we'll we'll still be in recovery mode for another couple years as the professors at cu observed so i compliment the staff i also want a couple of my colleagues on the financial strategy committee um uh mary and mark and juni because i know that they had a hand in this and work very closely with staff and molding this together quite frankly you guys made it easy for the other six of us so i really appreciate the effort you guys put in i think this is a very solid budget and i fully support it thank you bob and aaron would you like

[233:00] to speak well say a few words and of course uh 2020 was an incredibly challenging year for our community and certainly for the city organization we had to slash a lot of services that were dearly missed by community members we received lots of emails and people unhappy about the loss of their favorite city services or some declines and services that they really appreciated so it's really wonderful to see that we have the financial wherewithal to bring most of those back online and really appreciate uh city staff for their thoughtful approach to restoring those services i don't have any recommended changes i think you along with financial strategies subcommittee have done a fantastic job in figuring out how to bring our community back from the tough times you've experienced in the last year and a half so thanks so much thank you aaron and adam thanks sam yeah uh i would also uh commend staff for a great budget and i know there's a lot of work that goes into each individual department and then

[234:00] coalescing it into a one big thing that we have to approve so um that's been time well spent um i did want to say we've we've gone through this debate a little bit philosophically about when we know um we can't fill positions but we still keep those dollars allocated towards those positions i know a few of us on council will have an issue with that um the only thing i'd say is maybe we could consider in the future if it's almost a certainty we're not going to fill positions that we move that money temporarily towards something else um some problem we're trying to solve something that will in the long term benefit from spending a little bit of money now that we have available to prevent a bigger spend in the future because we know that money isn't going to be spent so i'm just going to say that much hopefully we can work towards that in future budgeting processes because i think it is important to spend

[235:01] every dollar we can on known issues that will save us money in the future and then just a couple of small anecdotes i too find it disappointing that when we're allocating half a billion dollars and locking in what is essentially going to be our work plan for the following year that we get such little public testimony that's something i think we need to work on as a city in terms of outreach and um educating the public on the importance of the budget and what it means for the following year even when we have a brand new council coming in they're they're working on an approved budget that a previous council approved so that's that's a big sort of disconnect i don't think a lot of community members understand um and i think we should do our best to work on like i said educating people so that they're more aware

[236:00] of uh how big a deal this is and then finally a small anecdote since we had the concept review right before this um we could either fund our entire city for a year or we could buy 200 market rate townhomes uh at the current price of about a thousand dollars per square foot i don't know what the best choice is maybe as a long-term investment the 200 townhomes is the better one than funding an entire city government for a year but uh that struck me is very interesting having those two items back to back so that's all i had and thanks again for everyone who put in the work thank you adam and rachel just put on a little plug for i think it would be good if we put put a little bit towards getting to the 20 on reserves you know we we are so close and if we don't get to 20 and budgets keep growing it's just gonna get farther out

[237:01] of reach so it's only eight hundred thousand dollars more to get to the 20 target and we have a pretty big budget this year so i would love to see some money go towards uh getting to the 20 that's all all right well thank you again to staff for this and again thank you to financial strategy committee um and before i try and close out and sum up it looks like mark has something so mark why don't we turn to you yeah i i wasn't aware that there was anybody else who was concerned about the reserves as i was so i want to second rachel's comments on getting back to 20 um i don't know why but i tend to obsess over that and i also want a second adam's comment about trying to better educate the community is to this process uh and to its importance and its impact on all of us um look i mean it's the budget it's not an exciting

[238:00] uh topic for most people but it is probably the most consequential topic we're going to deal with uh this year and it does lock in programs and and policies um for the next 12 months and it would be it would be terrific if we could find a way to draw more people into the process and and be able to educate them as to what we're doing so thanks adam for raising that i think it was a great point thank you mark come here oh nearby i just wanted the third that i i would like to continue to see what jane had started with the 20 by 20 obviously we're off by a few years here but um i i also would like to see us increase our budget to the 20 uh and last i just want to say things this is probably the last time i'll see the budget um as a council member just a thank you to staff for all the hard work uh very comprehensive very detailed um lots of great information and just appreciate all the diligence and

[239:01] hard hard work that you put into this so thank you super okay um thanks to everyone i want to make a few comments first to the reserves i've always been a little bit um concerned about the reserve level 20 however um given that we had reserves below five percent around the turn of the century through the dot com bus this is a much better conversation to be having than that one which is can we get to our 20 and hold it i think we should but i think we should be careful after that um you know it was a big move for us to set a target of 20 for our reserves and it will pay off one day when we have a big negative event that we need to fund like the 2013 flood and it was good that we had reserves that were closer to 15 than to five when we have the 2013 flood so i support getting to 20 but i would caution future councils please don't move the goal posts again because adam

[240:01] has said you know whether it's uh personnel positions of them get filled or whether it's reserves that we carry year to year to year we need to also balance that with making sure that we are adequately funding the needs of our community at any given time so i support getting to 20 but i also would support not moving that any further as a bar and making sure that we're putting that money towards services that people need because we have cut them and our real budget is not increasing very quickly um and and this hit will definitely have slowed us down being able to keep up with our needs here's the other thing that i'll say and my questions were mostly focused here there's a one-time opportunity in front of the next council and it's going to last about two years but most that money is going to get locked in by the next year and it may have to be spent in two three or four years but now's the time and if we miss this opportunity it's going to be gone for good so focus on the

[241:02] the one-time opportunity that we have and coordinating with the county will be critical to that and i think housing mental health and transportation which were all areas the county's been talking about attacks county-wide on if we can put any of this money to work um on those areas you need arpa money we're not sure that we're going to get that county-wide tax and we're for sure that it probably won't cover all three of those subject areas adequately um so those are my only two comments i think the budget is really strong this year i'm glad to see we're moving ahead with those big capital programs the interceptor's been a concern for a long time and i'm glad to see that utilities is moving on that interceptor because if we lost that in another flood event it would shut our city down in a way that i don't think we quite appreciate and it would be a smelly way so we don't want to go there with that uh aaron i see you've got one more

[242:01] comment yeah just uh the on the reserves i appreciate uh folks highlighting the importance of that 20 target i just would say um i wouldn't modify the budget between first and second reading to accomplish that this year personally i'd like to see us restore those services um first and then next year would be a great year to get us up to that target of 2020. great thank you for that aaron i see lots of thumbs up um all right if there are no other questions last chance staff council any more feedback if not then i will bring this item to a close i'll actually we have to vote i'm assuming i know how everyone's going to vote we should probably go through it and uh alicia is just a roll call no it's the introduction so you can do a show of hands if you like or if you want to do a roll call i'll be happy to do one we'll do a show of hands to keep it brief juni do you have a comment or is that your hand

[243:02] just voting okay great does anyone object to passing the budget and all the items that were moved by bob on first reading all right i see no objection so alicia that passes unanimously all right sir thank you and with that we're at the end of the meeting any comments general comments and seeing none with that i will gavel the meeting closed at 9 56. thank you all so much and see you again next week good night everyone good night [Music]

[244:19] you