October 5, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:38] [Music]

[3:06] okay jenna i'm working on getting you over zuma's arguing with me [Music] i'm not sure what that is let me try something else here and zoom things oh there you go there we go all right perfect

[4:00] so channel 8 is ready brenda i am good to go okay emily thumbs up from channel 8. yep got a thumbs up all right we are ready sam all right super welcome everyone to the tuesday october 5th 2021 regular meeting of the boulder city council we will start tonight with one announcement about covid 19 vaccinations as usual you can find information on getting your vaccine uh at http colon slash slash www.aldercounty.org slash families slash disease slash cobit covet-19 slash vaccines and with that we are done with the announcements and alicia could you please call the roll yes sir and good evening everyone councilmember brockett president friend

[5:00] here joseph weaver here yates president and yeah present mayor we have our quorum alicia juni is here i am um trying to promote her status now okay great thank you brendan okay very good and then um we have one item to amend the agenda with tonight uh that is to add item 8b which is the discussion on council meetings for the remainder of this council's term

[6:01] considering in-person or virtual or hybrid attendance so if i could get a motion to him in the agenda second second i'll second mary's motion all right so we have a motion and a second um juni do you want to speak to this no i don't want to speak to the motion but i've been here i've been waiting in the waiting room for the past five minutes so i just wanted to let everyone know that i'm here very good thank you for that and brenda had mentioned when she let you in so glad we're all here um we have a motion and a second does anyone object to adding item 8b great seeing no objections that's unanimous and then brenda i will turn to you i think for explanation of interpretation for item 1a tonight thank you sam and juni my apologies that

[7:02] i left you waiting while i was juggling other buttons um and i'm so glad that you're here with us um i'm going to share my screen quickly we are support that's the rules that's the wrong one apologies try that again busy night tonight all right we are supporting tonight's meeting with interpretation into spanish you'll see on the screen how to activate interpretation this interpretation will go through the covet update and end once that agenda item is over we ask that everyone find the globe icon on your screen at the bottom that says interpretation

[8:00] and choose the language you would like to experience the meeting in as a reminder to those who will be speaking during that agenda item it is appreciated if you do not interrupt each other um that helps our interpreter and i'm gonna do a better job modeling this now if you speak slowly and breathe between sentences to help our interpreter stay caught up to what you're saying so everyone would choose your language now we'll be all set thank you great thank you brenda and with that alicia would you like to take us to the first item yes sir our first item one a under call to order and roll call is the covet public health briefing and response thanks very much mary yep i will say that as i've come to this community i have truly appreciated um

[9:00] our partnership with boulder county public health and always look forward to lexi giving a brief update so lexi the floor is yours thank you so much maria um i believe my slides have been sent um i will just while we're setting up the slides i will just let you all know that we are starting to have some good news in this space that i'll tell you about this evening but um one of our key messages this evening is that we're not out of the woods in it yet we still have some work to do and a little more tracking and some stabilization um we are going to see kids vaccinations soon um and we're not planning on on moving to change public health orders in the immediate future but i am looking forward to being able to provide some additional context and information so folks have a little bit more of a sense of what we're watching and what we can look

[10:01] forward to if we continue to move in the right directions so um just as a reminder we have three goals that kind of center our thinking our strategies our partnerships and our work in public health the first is to prevent severe illness and death um the second is to not overwhelm our health system because this is this health system serves all of us all the time not just folks suffering from covid and the third goal is really around safely returning to normal activities particularly our business community our schools keeping kids in schools and also really supporting our community to begin to gather again in fellowship with each other and be able to really provide those kinds of

[11:00] supports to each other that being able to be in person and see your friends and have fun together really allows so uh with that said let's go to the next slide um i'll provide you with an update on cases as per the usual next slide so um this graph really shows you kind of where we've come from the beginning of the pandemic and as you can see there is a red bar that signifies high transmission according to the cdc tracker which is the way that we kind of assess how urgent the situation is it replaced the colorado dial a number of months ago the orange line signifies substantial transmission the yellow line signifies moderate transmission and under the yellow line is what we call low

[12:00] transmission and whenever we're above that substantial transmission rate of the orange line the cdc recommends masking so we that is part of our public health order is the standard that we are following is tracking that above the orange line space and as you can see we were way above it back in uh last winter but this surge seems to have peaked a couple of weeks ago at around 200 cases per hundred thousand we're currently at about 127 cases per hundred thousand um it's continued to kind of steadily come down in the way that those numbers always kind of bounce around a little bit but you can see a pattern here what we are really looking for is to see if the cold weather as it sets in um is going to change that trajectory or

[13:00] if we can look forward to continuing declines in that space if so then we will be on track to really be under substantial transmission um probably within another month and a half and uh according to our public health order if we were able to sustain under substantial transmission for three weeks then we would um [Music] folks wouldn't be required to mask indoors anymore so that just gives you a little bit of a sense of the trajectory that we're on but i have to present this good news with some caution that we often do see not a a completely smooth decline on the way down that there may be some bumps and we will be tracking that pretty closely next slide please so this is a slide that we've begun presenting pretty regularly lately

[14:02] and what's important about it is for us to understand the context not just of boulder county but of what's happening around us um in boulder county our rate you'll see on this one our rate is 137 per hundred thousand in the previous slide it was 127 per hundred thousand and i want to clarify that in public health sometimes we have to take data from different sources to get the information that we need to present a particular idea the previous slide was based on our bcph data drawn on october 4th so yesterday this data is from the cdc drawn on the second so it's a little bit different but not substantial enough of a difference to to be important um what is important about this slide is to recognize that um relatively speaking boulder county is doing very well even though all of us

[15:01] are in high transmission in our general area what's concerning about this graph is that some counties that we are really quite close to have very high rates weld county is the rates are twice as high as they are in boulder county and grand county to our west is at 546 per hundred 000 so that's quite substantially higher so the reason this is important of course is because we have you know lots of our populations live close to county lines um longmont is along the county line with weld and so we are i'll be able to show you kind of some of the impact that we think is a result of that proximity next slide before we get to that i just wanted to um present the age trends among the case

[16:00] trends among different age groups we feel like this is important to share with the community right now particularly because we do have a school masking order in place ages 2 through grade 12 are currently required to mask regardless of vaccination status and when we look at case trends among different age groups one thing that you'll notice is if you track that dotted blue line that's our zero to 11 year old population which is our kiddos that can't get vaccinated yet because they're not eligible and that's our highest case rate per hundred thousand right now in boulder county and what's important to note is that um that pattern of the 0 to 11 group being the highest cases among ages within a county is typical across colorado right now

[17:01] and the rates that we're seeing are actually a lot lower in boulder county compared to other counties so our kids are taking it pretty hard right now they're taking the most cases we're really glad we have a mask order in place it's doing a lot of good protecting them and we can see that when we look at other counties and look at the case rates among that group of kids who are ineligible to be vaccinated at this point next slide so this was the slide that um we do have some concerns about what we're seeing is a very disproportionate number of cases in longbone right now um so longmont and boulder each have about a third of the county population but what you can see is that longmont is really much higher in case races rates sorry and we believe that that rate is

[18:00] likely related to um some of the rates that we're seeing in weld county so remember we're at about 137 per hundred thousand wealth county is about 299 per 100 000. so we think that that is um partially a um a function of just being so close to weld county and anecdotally we are seeing less we are hearing reports of less masking and longmont than we are in boulder for instance um so we are taking a look at what can we do to support that community to have a little bit more protection next slide right so we'll talk for a minute about the health system and epidemiological capacity which of course a big team is public health is part of our health system um next slide so these are some updates on

[19:02] our hospital systems and this is regional information because our hospitals really work in a regional approach they're not specific to cities or even counties they serve um they serve populations that need them and so that often includes folks from across different counties the north central region is our region it includes uh wealth county and uh it is we are currently seeing the rate of staffed icy new beds that are available at nine percent only nine percent of our icu beds are um staffed and available right now that's down from 13 last week um 11 of our medical and surgical beds are staffed and available this week down from 15 last week about 23 percent of our hospitals are

[20:02] reporting significant staff shortages so not just shortages but significant staff shortages um our hospitals are continuing to take patients from other states although we understand that those numbers are relatively low possibly even in the single digits and that our hospitals are mainly responding to patients from counties with very high pace rates right now and that has been the biggest strain on them as well as a lot of other challenges that are you know normal hospital service processes um including a spike in rsv which is a viral a virus that is affects kids a lot there's a lot of rsv right now in the community so they are having some other demands on their systems and they some hospitals have stopped doing

[21:00] non-emergency surgery for a little while to make sure that they could take care of patients that are in their with the most urgent needs and our hospitals are still in a combined hospital transfer center plan activated at level one which means that they are also continuing to move patients around to share resources in whatever way they can to best serve all of the patients in the community so ncr just to be clear it includes um i apologize this does not it does not include weld county it includes adams arapaho boulder broomfield clear creek denver douglas albert gilpin and jefferson counties uh next slide and so this is a repeat of the data that you saw a few minutes ago but this new line is where our epidemiology staff stopped being able to give the full case investigation and contact tracing

[22:02] support to every case that comes through the door that we would normally like to provide in our high level of service and we move to a triaged approach where we are making sure that um positive cases with the most potential to spread disease to create an outbreak or to not have the kind of support that they need to isolate and quarantine are really being given priority and that we are making sure to respond to everybody um who is positive um at least with some outreach but maybe not the depth that we would normally like to provide and so the good news is we are almost back to a normal non-surge response in our epidemiology team so we're looking forward to that next slide so we've had 11 deaths since june of 2021 um

[23:00] these are largely older folks and unvaccinated and that is the same pattern that we are seeing across the state and across the country we want to make sure to emphasize to everybody that there are very few deaths occurring among folks who have been fully deaf fully vaccinated and it is the best protection that someone can have not just against death but against outrageous hospital costs and family impacts and job impacts and all kinds of things that can really interfere with your ability to achieve that third goal of safely returning to normal activities so um really please encourage people to continue to get vaccinated i'll show you some statistics in a minute but one

[24:01] thing that we're seeing that we're concerned about is that the rate of vaccinations in boulder county has substantially dropped off and we're not vaccinating at the rate that we have previously and we really need folks who have not gotten vaccinated yet to go ahead and get vaccinated now now is the time we anticipate that in the next few weeks five to 11 year olds are going to be eligible for vaccination folks are going to rush into that space as they will do so now is the time to set up your appointment and go and get that taken care of before the rush starts again thanks next slide right so now i'll just i'll go ahead and give you where we are with vaccinations one more please right so um you'll notice that we've really started trying to communicate to folks what

[25:00] the rate among our total population not just our eligible population but our total population across the county that's been fully vaccinated right because what we're really trying to help communicate in terms of vaccination rates is community risk and to accurately reflect community risk we need to take the whole population into account not just the eligible folks and we need to know who actually is really protected um and not just those who have started down the path so that number is at 69 and it's kind of been hovering there for a couple of weeks which is what concerns us we're really encouraging people to continue to please talk to your friends and your family encourage them to talk to their doctors about getting vaccinated come and uh you know talk to the public health department call the helpline and find out where you

[26:02] can get information to answer your questions because we want to answer people's questions with accurate information and make sure that they are making a fully informed decision with all the support that they can get that's really based in reality and that gives them a sense of confidence about the decision that they're making so we will continue at boulder county public health to um to offer vaccination clinics for folks who need a little extra support getting there to offer town halls on what the what the facts are about the vaccines and about um you know we hear we hear some really concerning stories sometimes of folks saying that well the vaccine causes myocarditis in kids um and it's really important to supplement that kind of information

[27:02] with the fact that myocarditis is more commonly found among people who contract covid than as a side effect of the vaccine and when it's a side effect of the vaccine it's almost always mild and benign and when it's a side effect of contracting covid it can be really severe and serious and those are the kinds of pieces of misinformation that really concern us that make us fearful that there are still too many folks who don't know the real facts about what the vaccine risks are and what the risks of contracting covered are so we really encourage people to please take this opportunity to to go out there and be part of the solution and look around and see how many folks around you have gotten vaccinated um and are and are thriving and help us to keep our community thriving

[28:01] so last slide as always just a reminder of where some of our resources that you might want to seek out where you can find them on the websites and i'm happy to take any questions thank you so much lexi and before i go to questions i would like to add one quick detail um the city of boulder is also trying to support um the delivery of vaccines and helping people get vaccinated so just a reminder that anyone can be vaccinated by an appointment through the city or by walking up to the boulder main library every sunday from noon to five o'clock so if you have any questions about that you can always email just the simple email counsel at bouldercolorwriter.gov with a question we'll make sure that staff gets gets your question answered for you and with that um two council members bob and jimmy bob uh thanks sam lexi thanks as always for that great presentation that was

[29:00] very informative for not only us but for the rest of the community who's watching i have two kind of unrelated questions lexi one is um there's there seems to be a persistent gap on the slide one of the last slides you showed was about a five percent gap sometimes it's bigger in some communities between people who have gotten one copied shot and people have gotten fully vaccinated i know this answer probably you know demands an anecdotal answer but i'm just kind of curious as a doctor what what what do you see what's the reason why people are just not getting that second shot so it's a great question and the answer is actually they are getting the second shot but what you're seeing in that number is the lag time between the first and second shot so what we watch in that slide is to make sure that that percent of folks who have gotten one shot but not two shots isn't continuing to go up if it were continuing to go up it would suggest that people aren't getting the second shot but if it stays the same and we're

[30:00] continuing to vaccinate then people are getting their second shots it's just that four week flag time sometimes people take six weeks not a problem um but that's a great question so you see what you're saying is the gap is not widening though it's it's stayed the same or gotten smaller it is good good news unrelated question lexi um what um later this evening after i think signed off we're going to have a council discussion about possibly getting back in in real life to council chambers and so the pros and cons of that do you have any advice from us you know we're debating about whether to do that and should we wear a mask and and you know it should require people to be vaccinated and you know what does staff do what does the community do do you have any kind of advice for us when we get into that discussion about two or three hours about what we should be considering as we we debate that yeah absolutely and um we'd be happy to to join um your conversa not tonight maybe but um to have a conversation about what would be most supportive for

[31:00] you and what would kind of meet your needs we at boulder county public health we launched a program that was affiliated with the universal indoor mask mandate um public health order we launched a program a couple of weeks ago called the vaccine verification program which allows agencies businesses or events to apply to be able to go maskless if they require vaccinations and that's a team that can really support um the city in thinking through kind of what kind of an approach would best meet your needs for being able to meet back in real life irl right um that's what all of us would love to do and i think that those conversations are going to be coming up more and more and that's terrific that's part of our you know let's let's safely get back to normal and we'd love to have that conversation with you thanks so much lexi that was helpful thank you bob uh i have juni and mark

[32:01] ginny here and for this update um the only thing i did not hear in the update and i wanted to hear a little bit more about and it goes back to the mass mandate update meaning that what is the time frame and well i don't know how to phrase the question but i wanted to know more about what is the next step when will people be able to go indoors without a mask what does that look like right yeah so i think that's you know that's what we all want and what we're trying to get back to so when we passed that public health order we very intentionally designed it to to stay in place to be kind of the reference for people you know of reference um to understand when do we need to mask when do we not need to mask and so what we built into the public health order

[33:01] was that any time we're above substantial transmission in the cdc tractor and we have that information on our website every day that that's when you need to be masking when you're going indoors and that's what the expectation is um the way out of being of having to mask indoors is to go to places that are part of the vaccination vaccine verification program so you can show your [Music] your iphone app that has your vaccination card or you can show your physical card and be allowed to enter without a mass um so those are two opportunities now i think what you're really asking is um when do we when do we project that we'll be out of substantial transmission and um you know we can we can make educated guesses but the reality is that you know um delta caught a lot of us on our heels

[34:01] um and there are things that come up that make us a little bit nervous about getting too far ahead of ourselves i think what i said in the presentation is that you know if things continue to go well if people continue to mask if people continue to stay home when they're symptomatic if people continue to not send their children to school when they are having symptoms or are sick um and that rate continues to go down at kind of the same rate it's going down now and we add the three weeks on because it has to stay under substantial transmission for three weeks we're starting to look maybe if we're lucky at mid-december but it's hard to predict it'll be easier as we get closer thank you so much and i just wanted to make the comment i welcome any uh feedback you offer us a recommendation for bob's uh

[35:00] request thank you jenny mark just two quick questions uh lexi and thank you for the presentation um the first does cold weather have a particular impact on covid does it make it better worse what is the data showing us um thank you for the question um the the biggest influence of cold weather is that people tend to go indoors more and they will tend to be more crowded up against each other more the holidays bring parties um more festivities for some respiratory uh viruses the dryness can increase spread um but that's not true of all respiratory viruses i do wish i had dr robina on with us who could so efficiently answer your question what we are hearing

[36:00] is that there's an expectation right now that there could be another wave um because of winter descending just like we saw last year and we haven't seen it yet we haven't seen the signs of it yet but um if we look at past patterns that it's um it's entirely possible that we could see a wave that is related to cold weather um that we just aren't seeing quite yet thank you um and my only other question is the um children 0-11 they seem to have a high incidence of contracting cove is the rate of hospitalization commensurate with that no we don't see as many hospitalizations among children as we do among adults unvaccinated and they do weather better but unfortunately what we are seeing right now

[37:00] is that not quite as good enforcement in the spirit of the school masking public health order as we would love to see enthusiastically by parents teachers everybody involved we're seeing some cases where parents are sending kids to school sick and it can cause an outbreak we're seeing masking not being enforced as strictly as we would hope it would be we're seeing some schools that are more lenient with uh exemptions for mass mandates um than we would suggest um and those are the places where we're seeing kids with more cases um it's this is not rocket science i i would love to say that you know i'm i'm brilliant and um you know i have all the answers but the fact is a lot of us have the answers this is this is pretty simple science

[38:02] and if you follow the science and you follow the public health order and the schools that are doing that are seeing much lower case rates and fewer outbreaks thank you lexi i appreciate that thank you mark rachel thanks for the presentation lexi um i know that the state has free at-home testing available like that you can mail or email and they will mail you like a number of tests per month is that something that we are um educating the community on or encouraging people to do i know for a while it was like certain occupations but it seems maybe more open now it is i mean that's it's such a great topic too i appreciate the question yet we are we are promoting it and there's information about how to sign up for it on our website i will tell you that the state has had a real backlog and hasn't been able to get the tests out as they're being ordered

[39:01] um so there's a little bit of a weight these are the binex now tests which you can do at home they're really easy they give you a quick result every household should have them in their house stockpiled for you know the next couple years but but the reality is they can be a little bit hard to get your hands on right now the challenge from a public health agency perspective is that the information the results of the test doesn't go into our database for the most part people don't report that to the public health department if they test positive or negative um and so it is creating some interesting challenges with being confident about what the case rates we're actually experiencing in the community are versus what we're seeing in the data um but absolutely should should folks get a hold of one of those tests yeah absolutely if you're starting to have symptoms you want to check your kid real quick before you send them off to school it's a great thing to have on hand

[40:00] um provides peace of mind they're not 100 accurate but they're better than not testing at all thanks and they're free if i didn't mention that and they're free sign on thanks all right thank you rachel and i don't see any more questions so i'll thank you again lexi so much for being here and uh i expect we'll see you next month as well thank you all so much for um great partnership the city of boulder has been so wonderful to work with and we just continue to enjoy the relationship appreciate it all right thanks very much have a good night and with that we will move on to the rest of our um early meeting uh items we have a declaration honoring mary ann mahoney which will be presented by council member yates bob thanks ham if we were um in real life but we would be in the in chambers and uh i would be standing there with a microphone and mary ann would be standing right next to me with her big old smile so we're gonna have to do this

[41:01] by zoom it won't be quite as good but let me read this declaration after decades of esteemed service on october 15 2021 marianne mahoney will be retiring from her position as the chief executive officer of the boulder convention and visitors bureau cvb reflecting on a 40-year career dedicated to hospitality in boulder's tourism industry marianne has built a strong legacy of leadership mentorship development expertise organizational strategy community engagement and positive stakeholder relations marianne joined the cvb in august of 2001 was brought into the city's economic vitality discussions under then city manager frank bruno the downtown boulder marketing committee and the boulder hotel and motel association at that time in the early 2000s the city and the cvb had studied the potential conference center and hotel

[42:01] a new facility designed to attract high-profile events to the city which is now under pre-development stages at the university of colorado campus during her time marianne transfer transformed the cvb into one of the city's most effective economic vitality contributors and improved boulders place making through product development under marianne's leadership community members have benefited more than one million dollars in funding has been awarded to more than 70 local arts and cultural organizations the hiker shuttle park to park moves thousands of people each year belmont bike park and the boulder county farm trail came to fruition the up your game package which positions boulder as a hub for athletic performance training and finally the davidson mesa pull-off on us-36 is a welcoming gateway for cyclists and motorists marianne served on the boards of the colorado association of destination

[43:01] marketing organizations the noble arts district the editorial board of bizwest the downtown boulder business improvement district tourism association of colorado and was a member of the chautauqua access management stakeholder committee in 2019 maryam was awarded the outstanding individual contribution to colorado tourism award at the colorado governor's tourism conference and she was awarded the boulder chambers celebration of leadership president's award of distinction over the years marion has brought her professional insight into collaborations with city county state and university partners and has been a valued leader in colorado's tourism industry while she is due to retire in a couple of weeks marianne's work in boulder has left an indelible mark on the city's economic profile and collective growth so we the city council of the city of boulder recognize honor and appreciate the distinguished

[44:00] efforts of marianne mahoney and her many many contributions which played a crucial part in telling the solar story of the city of boulder and with that i want to turn it over to marianne well thank you all thanks bob mayor weaver and council members this is such a great honor trying to get through this i have this irish heritage so um uh it's very humbling to hear the accolades that have been shared since my announcement of my retirement um the list of associations and organizations that i've been privileged to participate in sometimes inserting myself uh to these conversations just out of curiosity have given me great reflection so many people in boulder are are willing to roll up their sleeves and and to find great creative solutions so that i've gotten to know so many of them

[45:00] there's so many opportunities for solutions that are not always easy and they can be improved upon through the process through listening and great research there's so many people that have been i've been able to meet gain their trust and friendships for creative solutions so many people have spent hundreds of hours and not all of those are an hour at a time to continue to improve the quality of life for our boulder residents on these initiatives some of these initiatives are not finished but there's very capable hands to carry it on uh to have the city council and the city staff honor me with this recognition is so appreciated but i would be remiss if i did not recognize the amazing people uh that i get to work with at the

[46:00] boulder convention and visitors bureau the board of directors that have served with the cbb um and their willingness to try so many pilot so um it's made it a blast and i just want to thank you for everything that you do for boulder and this is such an honor thank you thank you marianne thank you bob for reading that um we are so grateful for the work that you've given us and we wish you a wonderful wonderful retirement i'm sure that we will continue to see you around the community even after you're not leading the cbd and with that there you go exactly perfect and with that um aaron i see you have your hand up well i just couldn't let the opportunity go mary anne it's just been such a pleasure working together over the last six years that i've been on council and so much appreciate the partnership that that

[47:01] you've uh had with us at the convention of visitors bureau and and um i know the organization will stay in good hands but we'll miss working with you very much thank you for everything you've done thank you very much great well thank you aaron and with that thank you again marianne and enjoy your retirement and we will move on to our next agenda item which is a declaration regarding indigenous peoples day which will be presented by council member young mary thanks sam um you know i wanted to start out by sharing something which is um this is a poster that i got at the first indigenous people's day in 2016 and it's signed by all of the folks that participated in the drafting of the resolution so that that that stays with me um but i wanted to share that with you and um and

[48:00] also just recall um the how impactful that first indigenous people's day celebration was having um just tons and tons of people in the chambers and all of these tribe tribal members dressed in full regalia and drumming and dancing and it was and then we ate um native american food afterwards it was just it was awesome so um with that i will read the the resolution indigenous people's day declaration it's a declaration not a resolution excuse me um october 11 2021 with indigenous people's day coming on monday october 11th the boulder city council extends our gratitude to community members who developed the indigenous people's day

[49:01] resolution their collective and collaborative hard work in 2016 set a crucial foundation for the city of boulder to reckon honestly with its past and for how we can honor serve and recognize indigenous community members and american indian tribal nations now and into the future the boulder city council which adopted the indigenous peoples day resolution in 2016 believes it is critical to underscore key acknowledgments in the resolution indigenous people in boulder respect the interdependence of all humanity and living things and celebrate a vast and rich living tradition through ancestral recognition and diversity of knowledge and perspectives including sustainable practices the boulder area encompasses ancestral

[50:01] homelands of indigenous peoples nations indigenous people in boulder have as in all parts of the americas endured centuries of cruelty exploitation and genocide boulder has benefited directly from indian removal policies that violated human rights broke government treaties and forced many people from their homeland for example in 1858 the southern arapaho chief left hand notified a party of nebraska goal seekers that they could not remain on indian land at what is now known as the people's crossing as defined by the treaty the 1851 treaty of fort laramie however those men stayed after gold was discovered at gold run in january of 1859 boulder city town company was founded by

[51:01] settlers on february 10 of 1859 thereby violating the agreement of the 1851 treaty of fort laramie in august of 1864 nearly 100 boulder county residents mobilized into company d of the third colorado cavalry of u.s volunteers at fort chambers this company of 100 men reportedly trained at the fort before participating in the sand creek massacre on november 20th 29th 1864 from which the boulder troops enjoyed a hero's welcome upon their return today boulder is honored to be home of several prominent native organizations including the native american rights fund founded in 1970 which is the largest non-profit law firm dedicated to asserting and defending the rights of

[52:01] indian tribes organizations and individuals nationwide as the resolution states the boulder city council acknowledges that boulder has benefited directly from indian removal policies that violated human rights broken government treaties and forced many people from their homeland we also acknowledge that those now living on these and ancestral lands recognize that harm was done and acknowledged that we have a shared responsibility to forge a path forward to address the past and continuing harm to the indigenous people and the land as we mark this year's indigenous peoples day we recognize our work to acknowledge and address the past with meaningful action for indigenous community members and american indian tribal nations is only just beginning this work is guided by the city's indigenous people's day resolution

[53:02] the city's racial equity plan consultations with american indian tribal nations guidance from local indigenous community members and the broader community since 2016 the indigenous people's day resolution has guided the city in hosting sponsoring and organizing community-wide indigenous peoples day events reestablishing annual consultations with american indian tribal nations who have historical connections to the boulder valley today the city of boulder currently shares agreements with 13 tribal nations collaborating with american indian tribal nations to rename settlers park to people's cross to the people's crossing this new name honors the people's crossing area as a crossroads for indigenous peoples who have traversed and lived in the mountains and plains of the boulder area since time immemorial

[54:01] receiving guidance from the community and american indian tribal nations to develop a city-wide land acknowledgement we intend to use this acknowledgement to help inspire education and reflection and initiate meaningful action moving forward declaring the city of boulder's support for standing rock sioux tribes opposition to the construction of the dakota access pipe pipeline we the city council of the city of boulder colorado declared october 12 2021 as indigenous people's day and urge all community members to begin or continue the process of learning about listening to and learning from these peoples the grave history of our relationship and reflect on the important work to engage in repair support and empowerment of their communities while the city has taken steps to help fulfill the 2016 indigenous people's day

[55:02] resolution we acknowledge that there is much more work to be done to support local indigenous community members and our american indian tribal nation partners we value their guidance and the opportunity to listen and learn from all of them as we reckon with and address our past with hope that it will make our collective communities stronger and more resilient thank you so much for that mary is there anyone here to receive the declaration or is that the end of it i believe that is the end of it super well i will just take a moment to thank you again for reading that and um staff for helping pull that all together and i will also express that it has been one of the pleasures of my time serving on council to be able to be part of some of the tribal consultation work that we've had and the visits from the tribal

[56:02] leadership to boulder so i agree with everything that was in that declaration that this is a work in progress that will continue forward long past this day in this council um and i really appreciate all the work that everyone has done on this uh especially the folks from the tribal nations who have helped us understand their relationship to the land much better any other council comments with this seeing none thank you so much mary and we'll move on one one item that is the end of our interpretation services for tonight so thank you very much to the folks providing translation into spanish and that will end and everything else for the evening will be in english and with that we will move on to our last item at the beginning of the meeting which is the municipal court quarterly update presented by judge linda cook

[57:01] good evening um thank you for having me and you know uh brenda or whoever is setting up the powerpoint presentation that i have i want to let you know that with me tonight is devon kisik kelly she's um the deputy court administrator and she's been very very involved in this um in this initiative with me and so i and i could not be doing it without her and so i really appreciate her involvement and i want to give her credit for the uh the work that she's done next slide so you've seen this slide before in a different version but we were awarded a community court implementation grant by the u.s department of justice office of justice programs bureau of justice assistance it is a 400 000 grant over two years it

[58:03] began just a little over a year ago in our population for this that's targeted from this grant is our unhoused offenders and the highlights of the award are listed there next slide please so this uh just to give you sort of a sense you can see that we were just one of seven sites nationally that was granted um a grant for the 2020 cycle of those either four or five were granted new implementation grants and the remainder were granted continuation grants but nationally there are 28 community courts in the united states that have been stood up through this process so i feel very fortunate to have been selected for this purpose and again really have a lot of gratitude for the help of devon kiss at kelly

[59:02] has been invaluable um i also want to mention that one of the challenges of being awarded a grant in this time frame was the fact that we had to pivot from our original vision for this project due to covid um occurring um between the time that we well early in the time that we applied for the grant and then on the time that the grant was awarded so our what we've done so far is a little bit different from the vision that we set out in that grant next slide so here are our primary goals for the community court we want to use the court cases that we have for this population as an opportunity to encourage engagement with us and um the goal is to address the root causes of homelessness rather than simply having people cycle back and forth between jail and the streets which is was a pretty common trend prior to

[60:01] uh community court being or community court like um approaches being used by our court we started using those approaches even before we received the community court grant with some success but it's helpful to have the additional dollars another goal is to collaborate with a variety of service providers our goal eventually is to have a central location where the court coexists on a somewhat regular basis whether it's every other week or once a month in the same space so that people can go straight from community court to another room maybe where there are homeless service providers that's the model that we've seen in other community courts around the country and finally we really want to give voice to people with lived experience in both the program design as well as in the resolution of their individual cases

[61:01] next slide so these are the types of cases that are being addressed under this community court model and they are among the most common violations we see with the unhoused population in our court and that are eligible for community court treatment i want to make it really clear that we deal with low level quality of life offenses we do not handle more serious violations that may be committed by this population we do not have drug violations in our court other than using marijuana in public we do not have thefts we do not have burglaries so those kinds of more serious and often felony level cases would not be addressed using the community court model next slide um these are the strategies for community court participants um using the court community court model

[62:01] which as i mentioned before has those kinds of goals that we have set out um we are at this point in time and this was because of covid a mobile pop-up court uh we uh are seeing people out in the community in a little bit i'm going to play a video with you for you where you can see that in action but we would love to have a permanent location at least some of the time i don't think we'll ever abandon the mobile um option because it has proved so beneficial but we would benefit from having a permanent location as well we are using this the citation or citations that people receive as an opportunity for engagement and frequently people are earning dismissal of their charges rather than entering guilty pleas and some of the sanctions that we impose um are listed there they are really aimed at helping to resolve a person's

[63:00] unhoused status and or connect them with benefits um birth certificates id social security cards are prerequisites to being um eligible for housing so we um concentrate a lot of time on those types of things next slide so here's some of our key accomplishments the grant effectively began october 1st and by january we began our mobile court sessions twice a month we are conducting them outdoors at deacon's closet at grace commons church deacon's closet is actually an opportunity for people to go and obtain clothing that's been donated and so it's a very popular service um that's attended by people experiencing homelessness and it frequently there is a free breakfast that goes along with that in february of 2021 we first used transitional housing for community court

[64:01] clients we began filming community court videos in may and you'll see the first video at the end of the presentation and we hope to have a series of approximately eight videos we um during this time frame we have put out rfps for the other providers um or we have an agreement with a local hotel for the transitional housing but um we reached in an agreement with bts for substance use treatment and the provider that they selected in their organization to provide that treatment began onboarding in july and we are very fortunate to have somebody who previously worked with this population through bridge house and um so that gave us sort of a leg up in that regard and then we had our first homeless advisory council meeting in august and have had our second one in september next slide these are some things that are pending implementation

[65:01] beginning at the end of this month we will add two more pop-up sessions at um feet forward which is a community outreach sessions at central park um which if you may recall the forward is uh was a non-profit set up by jen livovich somebody with lived experience and who went to fort lyon and who's now um working on a college degree and has been very very active in this uh space so that will give us four mobile sessions a month once per week as well as the tuesday general offense court session that we conduct every week where people are also able to participate we are still pending implementation of court funded mental health services that are going to be funded by the grant we have identified a provider but we have not yet entered into a contract as i mentioned previously we're still looking for a physical site where we can

[66:01] have that connection with service providers and um we would also like to have a large forum for coordinating case management and in other community courts that's typically done in conjunction with community court sessions held in a space where the service providers are on site because they frequently are participating in that large case coordination forum so it all connects together we do have some smaller forums implemented for coordinating case management and so we are addressing some of our needs that way next slide please um so these are the covet impacts as i mentioned we started as a mobile cord instead of in a fixed location service providers are thus less available and if they are available it's mostly virtual which makes it not um ideal um interestingly though some things became much easier to access so for instance if you wanted to apply for replacement social security card you had

[67:01] to go to the social security office in louisville and now it can all be done online so there have been some benefits um for us as a result of covet um it has been difficult to stand up new services and um implement the community court in the exact way that we wanted to but um we are uh all of these grants in the past have been eligible for um extensions if they have been if they're good reason for it and we've been advised by our technical assistance advisor the center for court innovation that those um requests for extension are likely to be viewed very favorably um this time around and in fact um we are ahead of where most other community courts are in their implementation process so we feel pretty good about that next slide please so here's some early data that have been has been

[68:02] reported to our funders it is through the end of three quarters we did just finish our fourth quarter but that data since it just finished last week has not yet been collated but you can see we've um screened uh 90 people total enrolled quite a few of them the people that we did not enroll were people who generally um opted instead to uh plead guilty and have a suspended fine which is what is typically recommended by prosecutors for a first time low level quality of life violation by somebody who's unhoused the number of court cases for people enrolled total as you can see is 268 so that's quite significant where i really want to highlight though is that we've assigned tasks or sanctions 201 of them over the

[69:00] course of three quarters and 175 of them were completed that's 87 completion rate and i just want to let you know that that's stellar for any population whether it's the young adults that we see with minor in possession violations or people that we see in traffic court who have fines or traffic school imposed so um for any population to have that level of completion is phenomenal and for it to be among our house unhoused population was i'll tell you completely unanticipated by me um the number of people not completing any sanctions or tasks out of that 79 people enrolled is five and then um we've had as you can see a very high number of cases dismissed or pending dismissal or who receive some type of a community court sentence the reason that number is not as high as the number of court cases enrolled is because there are still cases out there

[70:01] that are pending resolution um a uh discussion of this type is is the the statistics are nice but it's also helpful to hear people's stories and i just want to tell you the ones the story of one person that we've been working with recently i'm going to call her ashley ashley has been unhoused in boulder for a very very very long time and she went to fort lyon the residential drug treatment program funded by the state um the first time around a number of years ago as is not uncommon ashley found staying sober challenging she has she most recently got out of fort lyon for what i believe was her fourth visit she's certainly the one who's been there the most number of times if anybody we've worked with in boulder county and it's a credit to her reputation down there that they were even willing to take her back that many times

[71:00] she has been in boulder and housed before falling off the wagon and going back to fort lyon but most recently when she came back from fort lyon she immediately began drinking again that's not been her pattern in the past but she immediately began drinking again and between our homeless navigators and the homeless outreach team we were able to intervene with her pretty quickly get her back working with the court whose staff she knew well she had not lost her opportunity for a housing voucher under throughout all this time which was amazing and she was very lucky in that one of the city of boulder funded vouchers which had been assigned to somebody else that person had not followed through on the necessary steps for them to use that voucher so ashley rose to the top of the list as somebody who was appropriate for that housing voucher so she is now housed again

[72:01] she is approaching 30 days sober this time around she has connected with our substance use treatment provider that we've um that we have funded and is engaging with sessions with him every other week although she's free to call him anytime as needed and we are just thrilled to report that kind of success but i i mentioned ashley's case mostly because i want people to understand that this is a process for many people it's not a one and done here's your housing or here's your treatment and you're good people will do well for a while and then they will take a few steps backwards and we're there to help pick them up and get them back on a forward path next slide please um this slide is uh we're going to play the uh the first community court video that we've um that we uh developed and this video is

[73:01] an introductory video that we can use for folks like for council for the general public for the the population that we would like to engage and the photo that you see as a background to this video is the is from our first homeless advisory council meeting so if you could go ahead and click on the link to the video that would be great so one of the beautiful things about community court is that it really does involve the whole community community court is about addressing the problems of the community and in boulder municipal court one of those large issues that remains unsolved both locally and nationally is homelessness we got the idea of a community court when i attended the 2016 community justice summit which was hosted by the center for court innovation and i

[74:00] thought it would be a great vehicle for doing a better job of dealing with the types of low-level cases that we see here at the boulder municipal court my goals is to work with people experiencing homelessness who are charged with violations that reflect their unhoused status we want to understand the root causes of homelessness for each individual and then to use our court navigators in the police department's homeless outreach team to help them access services that will help them address those root causes the traditional goal of a regular court is punishing people no amount of punishment is going to change the circumstances for someone who is living on the streets but addressing the problems that got them there can for the individual offender success means using their citation as a starting point for engaging them with services that can be something really simple like helping them to replace their state id or it can be very complex and have a lot of steps to it like getting ready to be

[75:01] housed for the unhoused community as a whole it means that the criminal justice system and the social services systems are working together in a seamless way if we can address the issues that underlying these quality of life violations then we're going to have a safer community one of the beautiful things about this community course concept is that it really does involve the community when we started this project we reached out to various community members through interviews focus groups surveys and through that we found out that quality of life issues as well as homelessness were important to the community and things they wanted to have addressed so we have opportunities in the community court to involve people in a variety of different ways from volunteering to be mentors bringing a sandwich hygiene products job training that the list is almost endless we would like to have a variety of partners join the community court both as individuals and as groups

[76:02] religious groups civic organizations non-profits just about anyone can be involved in community court as a prosecutor for community court what i'm looking for in terms of outcomes is whether or not we're helping people a lot of the individuals who get charges in our court are people who are experiencing homelessness the root cause of the reason why people are getting camping tickets trespass tickets open container tickets is because they don't have a place that they can call home and so are we actually helping people move towards those long-term solutions that are going to keep them out of the criminal justice system and have them have happier healthier longer lives defendants should participate in community court because they can get assistance they can get help from people who are trained and have knowledge of local resources they can get help with things like moving further along with housing if they need an id do they need a social

[77:01] security card or a birth certificate do they need help getting connected with mental health resources with addiction treatment a lot of different really good things can happen through participation in community court a lot of times courts are not really associated with helping people and that's really what we're focused on is trying to help [Music] so that's the end of my presentation if anybody has any questions i'm happy to answer them thank you judge cook so much for that that was really revealing to see the video and put some faces and some actual situations uh that we could see rather than just numbers so much appreciated and this pioneering work is super helpful for our community so i want to thank you so much for sharing that with

[78:00] us and with that we've got two hands aaron and mary sorry was that me yeah aaron sorry about that um anyway i don't have a question but judge cook that was incredibly inspiring um so appreciative of you uh doing this work of using these low-level offenses as a way of connecting with people who need assistance in getting them to a better position rather than taking a pee with approach so really appreciate your work and the work of the others in your department and this program thanks so much thank you thank you aaron now we have mary and rachel mary thank you sam and thank you judge cook really appreciated that um i wanted to better understand how people know to show up at community court so do their citations say show up at you know feet forward on thursday or do they just show up and they're recognized

[79:00] or how does that work so our original goal if we had had a physical location was to have the officers summons people into community court directly um that didn't pan out at least not yet um so they are given a ticket to come to court on a tuesday and if they come to court on a tuesday morning we will certainly address their cases at that time but many of them failed to appear and in fact um with covet with the the courts being shut down for a little while um they were they become even less likely to appear so we decided we needed to go out and reach people where they're at so um the people that you saw in that video most of whom face people who were court participants had mostly had their backs to you the other people were staff court staff or the prosecutor or whatever they're going out there and kind of drumming up business and they're going around and saying to people at deakin's closet hey would you like to take care of your court cases and um it only took a couple of times for people to know that that would be

[80:00] there and for word to spread and so people do show up there and they often come up to them now and say hey can i take care of court we it's not uncommon for us to find that somebody does not have a case with us but they have a county court case so at some point in the future i may approach the county court about whether or not they want to have a joint initiative because there are people out there with county court cases who would love to resolve their cases but um that's that and you know they also even though they started deakin's closet you saw some footage from central park if if weather permits then on a nice day once they finish at deacon's closet which is at grace commons church they're moving over to central park and then even further west along the creek path to see if they can encounter more people sometimes they've done court from a person's encampment so um we're very flexible in trying to engage people thank you for that that that's really helpful and then um you talked about the

[81:02] the sanctions being um you know applying for services and getting their ids and things like that um given you know what you just described um and the the co-location of of resources for example like um feet forward um is it has it occurred that a person goes to community court and they're given the sanction of um filling out some form and then they can go right to um somebody that can help them do that and then come right back and say done yes so our um our navigators can actually assist with a lot of these um sanctions on site um because for instance applying for a replacement id or replacement social security card as a matter of just going online and working through you know the website so yes frequently they can

[82:03] accomplish their task on that specific date and then um that is recorded in our court records management system by the navigator that's great um thank you i really appreciate how you are um using the court system to help people and not punish so much appreciate it thank you thank you thank you mary and rachel i want to reiterate uh mary's last point i i just want to thank you deeply for kind of working to empower and help people rather than taking super punitive measures and i'm i'm really glad that um i feel like a lot of time on council we're sort of you know fussing with what is the right thing to do and you're actually in there um doing the work and and helping people so thank you for that and i i think must have been about a year ago that i met chris reynolds at deakin's closet just ran into him there he was passing out flyers it said like if you'd

[83:00] like to take care of your you know your ticket we can set up a time so that must have been you know an early uh incarnation of this so that was good to see and i would just encourage um especially returning council members if you haven't seen it in action is pretty cool and powerful and um i don't know judge cook if you could help guide us to where we might be able to come and see this some days but it might be um just good for people to see thanks thank you we are doing it at deacon's closet on the first and third thursdays of the month um and so that's and it generally our staff shows up around eight o'clock or a little after and starts strumming up business so we can be ready to go online they're all there in person i'm the only one who's virtual um but we're uh that's that's the best place to to observe in person thank you great well thank you again judge cook so

[84:01] much for this we look forward to your next one actually i won't be here for it and this will be my last uh quarterly update so thank you for that and the rest of council and the new council members look forward to seeing you in a few months okay thank you so much thanks and with that we are finished with our um call to order items and ready to move to open comment and before we go there brenda i think you would be ready to go over the public participation guidelines for us i am sam thank you let me get my slideshow ready to share and [Music] here we are can everyone see that yes great just a quick reminder of our guidelines as we move into open comment tonight the city has engaged with community

[85:00] members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive civic conversations this vision is designed to support physical and emotional safety for community members staff and council and to support democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives you can see a link on the screen of where you can learn more about the vision you can also google productive or search productive atmospheres from the city's home page the following are some examples of the rules of decorum found in the boulder revised code and other guidelines that support this vision these will be upheld during this meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or

[86:01] otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited and participants are required to sign up to speak using the name you're commonly known as and we need to display your whole name before we can allow you to speak at the meeting currently only audio testimony is permitted online we won't be allowing video and that is everything for for uh participation guidelines soon great thank you brenda and with that we will begin open comment each speaker will have two minutes as always in open comment our first three speakers are perry shaplaw eric tusey and lynn siegel perry you are up good evening everybody my name is perry shaplow i live at 2-9 north in boulder and i'm speaking in support of restaurants at the proposed sites it is important the council support the city's ability to create spaces for

[87:02] people to eat gather and celebrate in public spaces it's also important to recognize that there's an overriding community interest in allowing more food and beverage services at these regional parks i'm a regular visitor of the res as well as flatirons golf course where i take lessons and i'd love to see amenities like this because they make these gorgeous places even more enjoyable our restaurants were hit hard during the pandemic and allowing restaurants in these public spaces can also create more jobs and provide greater economic impact finally boulder is a place is a fun place to live a very fun place to live and restaurants will only add to that let's support ideas that promote fun community and opportunities for joy and boulder thank you thank you perry next we have eric toosey lynn siegel and patrick murphy eric

[88:03] here you should be able to unmute now okay thank you hi my name is eric tussey i live near the reservoir usage has grown over time it is always close to dark this is when local wildlife and local residents can breathe traffic stops and you can hear nature again i'm here to discuss the rezoning of the reservoir where a restaurant as a right versus an auxiliary use the whole restaurant process has been flawed and i wanted to do some truth telling if can you see slide one slide one is the south shore capital strategy constant plan this is where the data comes from the truth telling is we actually support a restaurant or a cafe that closes at dark and i wanted to discuss that public input slide two please this is a table of input showing potential programming elements

[89:00] that blue arrows note the top 20 picks stakeholder input public input and staff and you'll see that in item number two near the top of the page to establish a year-round resident there was it was not a top 20 pick there was no stakeholder or public or staff input supporting this the next item down just talks about scheduling special events during non-peak times also not supported by anyone farther down there's a section that talks about extending hours of operation for certain evening events not a top 20 pic basically there was slight staff input on that but these are the truthful inputs based on what compared to what parks and recs is telling you there's also no support for a future conference center which is not part of this this is what the public input shows could you show slide 3 please slide 3 simply shows the hours of the reservoir you can see seasonally

[90:01] the hours shorten as the days become shorter it always closes at dark that's for nature it's not a profit center but privatizing the reservoir in this public private partnership takes 3.4 million dollars of public money and it gives that ability to the restaurant owner for profit so they're very happy to book concerts do private parties and special events after hours and disturb wildlife and the nate and the locals that live there the problem thank you very much thank you eric your time is up you can email us the rest of your comments at council boulder colorado.gov next we have lynn siegel patrick murphy and sharon anderson lynn i support what eric's just said and um you know linda cook is just like that's a taxpayer wonder um the sanctions

[91:00] and the tasks 175 people out of 201 those are great statistics she's got the finger on the pulse of boulder and chris reynolds too they're great folks i'm glad to see that um as far as the outdoor dining on the mall i'd really rather not support excel energy pumping their their um those propane tanks or whatever to heat up these enclosures what you need to do what i said last year is heat recovery ventilators in side the restaurants and these take heat and and store it so that it's not lost in tr in the ventilation and you can put in i mean uv filters or whatever filter the virus and people in the restaurants fine and then you can circulate the air per

[92:03] space you know depending on how many people are there and quantify all of that and have it monitored and that would be a lot cheaper in my view than than pumping energy into these you know blowing hot air into the out outdoors in the winter um the other thing i wanted to bring up was 2405 spruce and folsom 25th to 26th and spruce to pearl there's more condos on the other side of mike's camera there's more condos on the other side of um of spruce street between pine and there need to be services that should be left as services for all of that housing that's already been put in there stop already with all this development thank you lynn next we have patrick murphy sharon anderson and we'll close with jackson

[93:00] maynard patrick i'm waiting for the first slide my name is patrick murphy i've lived in boulder 52 years climate change is an existential threat yet not one public meeting of the excel partnership advisory panel has occurred in the 11 months since the muni effort died i've presented a fast and efficient carbon reduction plan to city council members that would meet with me mark wallach refused to meet with me in his running to stay on council his claims to listen to the public are evidently just lip service so i'll present this plan in increments so mark can hear them starting with wind incentives slide two please

[94:01] with an average of 75 percent incentive for the average household usage of 480 kilowatt hours the cost would be 5.40 a month or about 65 a year there are about 42 000 residential users so 2.72 million would cover every household in boulder i need that slide back please business uses about four times as much energy as residential so a 50 incentive for each business would be about fourteen dollars a month or a hundred and seventy three dollars a year boulder has about seven thousand three hundred and fifty businesses and it would cost about one point three million to cover them all with wind source for a year boulder currently collects about seven million dollars a year in carbon taxes four million dollars of those carbon taxes would make all of boulder's electricity carbon free today all these win numbers should be reduced

[95:00] by 30 since excel is already about 30 percent renewables it would also be reduced by all the homes and businesses in boulder that are already solar as excel increased renewables these values would drop to zero by twenty fifty boulders electric usage could be one hundred percent renewables today thank you patrick next we have sharon anderson and closed with jackson maynard sharon hi can you hear me we can good i'm i live at 4867 valhalla drive i am here today to ask you a basic question are you users or stewards have you seen a praying mantis be born have you heard the dying breath of a rabbit being eaten by a coyote have you watched long survival conflicts between prairie dog and fox have you encountered

[96:00] a rattlesnake at your foot have you had hawks land four feet away from you or seen a northern harrier do a food exchange have you danced through toads because there are so many do you know there are seasons for crickets grasshoppers dragonflies and moths i have because i move quietly with nature or do you prefer amplified sound with permeating lights and movement with crowds of people and traffic these activities do not have to be an intrusion if done in the right place the reservoir has become a family recreation center and wildlife preserve in open space it is not the right place for an after dark restaurant and party center which will have to have more lighting traffic and movement during the recovery time for wildlife one study by the national park service says that this activity is driving the wildlife away have you read an independent environmental study at the reservoir is there one

[97:01] the city of boulder is powerful we as friends and neighbors at the reservoir have tried our best to communicate to many deaf ears what our concerns are we have been unjustly vilified by the city with unproven accusations resolutions and newspaper articles and yet we have continued to spend endless hours trying to have real communication with you the original cafe idea to serve people using the reservoir was fine as it would follow historical hours it's now up to the people of the city of boulder city council and planning board to make a choice do not accept ordinance 8510 thank you sharon and finally tonight we have jackson maynard jackson you have two minutes hi my name is jackson maynard i live at 1430 18th street in boulder i'm speaking in favor of allowing more restaurants in regional parks and i encourage the city council to support

[98:01] this effort i go past the reservoir on my bike rides and it's disappointing to see how hard some people in the general vicinity some of which who live half a mile or more away from the reservoir are willing to push this fake news on people coming to enjoy the space this new zoning can allow restaurants like driftwood to serve more people of all backgrounds and economic circumstances to enjoy the reservoir i especially appreciate that supporting restaurants and regional parks will also bring a greater level of scrutiny and regulation by the city which can ensure a true win-win for both people going to the reservoir and for the city i've been following the drama at the reservoir for the last few months and i strongly urge this city council to listen to the voices of the city of boulder residents and not a few angry people who live in the county and are using all these scare tactics to disrupt a good project thank you thank you jackson

[99:00] and with that we will bring open comment to a close and turn first to staff maria do you have any response or questions i do not but thank everyone for sharing thank you nuria sandra anything from you no thank you thank you council any reaction to anything we've heard tonight great seeing none alicia i will turn it to you all right sir thank you next on our agenda tonight we have the consent agenda which includes items a through g super um any questions comments discussion of the consent agenda or emotion mark and then mary mark um would it be my correct understanding that the appropriate time for getting into issues relating to um

[100:00] diagonal plaza would be its second reading typically yes at first reading we usually ask council members to send in any questions on hotline that they might have okay i will hold my piece okay very good mary i i wanted to um bring up the hotline that i sent out this afternoon regarding um the policy it is policy 50 f and um and i proposed a couple of options um does council wish um to discuss the options or um i can i can make a recommendation on on um on an option if you like um i i will proceed as um council police

[101:01] pleases um i think mary this is the appropriate time for this to be brought up um that's my opinion just because this is the last time that we will touch the policy statement for a while so i think now is an appropriate time to have this conversation and with that i'll turn to other council members i've got aaron and then rachel aaron mary i appreciate you engaging with this and putting out some alternatives because um i believe there are some members of the cannabis business community they're a little concerned that with this policy we're trying to put them out of business which i don't think is anyone's intention right says this is about uh limiting uh high potency thc product access by youth you know it's the primary intention here so um i appreciated your language about um you know potential changes or limits that were supported by research right so that uh not arbitrary limits but but ones that were

[102:00] supported by scientific research that being said i thought your your second one was the second version was a little preferable to me that had language about exploring the creation of limits as opposed to just purely supporting limits i think you know exploring it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do but we'd want to see the outcome of that research that the state is working on before we knew whether or not to support them specifically that's all i got thanks aaron um i just wanted to point out that in the the two options one of the things that's different is um potency as supported by consensus outcomes and on the first the first one says potency as supported by outcomes of research and the second one says outcomes of the systematic review of scientific research and that is because that is the language that was used in the description of the

[103:00] bill and so what is going on is actually a review of research and not the way i understand it not research that is actually being conducted so it's basically akin to a literature review is my understanding and carl can correct me if i am wrong super thank you mary and rachel i just say i'm comfortable with the um edits and probably would would defer to carl's preference between the two thank you carl do you have a preference or any feedback at all on this subject um i do like councilmember young's wording that is tied to the legislation the um consensus outcomes of the systemic review of scientific research i think that's an accurate way and helpful way to describe it so i think that second one a second recommendation that was sent on

[104:00] hotline would work just fine thank you carl and aaron i see your hand again that's an old hand but i just wonder mary if you wouldn't mind reading that language that we're referencing that it's i don't think members of the public have necessarily heard it happy to um all right so um this is policy as i said 52 f um and it was uh i'll just kind of refresh um the the people listening who um do not receive the hotline posts this was um a policy that had been removed and then council inserted it back in because of the um bill that was passed in the state legislature during 2021. so that particular bill the act required that the colorado school of public health do a systematic review of the scientific research

[105:00] as it relates to the physical and mental health effects of high potency thc so um so um it got reinserted and that gave some members of the cannabis businesses um pause and so the the first one was um was my first try and then the second one was based on trying to address the concerns of the businesses so the one that council is referring to the preferred version reads as thc levels regulating high potency thc marijuana products eg shatter and wax so as to protect youth by exploring the creation of limits on its and production was stricken and in place of the word production um limits on its potency

[106:01] as supported by consensus outcomes of the systematic review of scientific research messaging and marketing um and by increasing education on the dangers of such products on youth so that is the the part that was changed thank you mary and with that i'm going to zoom us out one more notch and just remind everyone who's watching who may not understand we are in the consent agenda we have dived into item three um d which is our policy statement which is used to guide the folks that lobby for us at the state house and that the federal government on various subjects this subject is about regulation of thc and marijuana and mary has just read her proposed amendment to that policy statement i'll just weigh in here i agree completely with carl that this seems like a great

[107:00] way to clarify our policy statement and tie it to the legislation that was passed last year so i also will support the as amended with the second suggestion you put out mary is there any objection to making that modification that mary okay very good well i think we could have a motion to pass the consent agenda as amended by mary's second suggested language insertion so moved second all right we have a motion and a second and i'm just going to verify alicia i have this as a show of hands tonight is that correct that is correct sir very good so does any uh nearby you have something how do we vote no on something than if it's a show of hands i'm gonna ask for anyone who would like to vote no on the consent agenda

[108:00] but what if it's just one item on it and you can name the item that you don't want to vote yes on okay all right thanks so i'll ask right now nearby so you may as well stay on um does anyone have any objection to passing uh the full consent agenda yeah i do and what what do you want to don't know on the whole agenda or one particular item he'll be voting no on f item f okay super anyone else have any objections or no notations great seeing none um alicia i think the consent agenda is passed unanimously for all items except for three f which passes on a vote of eight to one duly noted sir thank you all right our next item on tonight's agenda is item number six matters from the city

[109:01] manager 6a is the review and endorsement of the city manager's appointment of members to the library district advisory committee and feedback on the committee scope of work and timeline thanks alicia and uh mayor before we go to david farnan and his excellent staff over at the boulder public library i'll just give a shout out even though he is not here to listen but chris meshech has been working hand in hand with david and supportive as part of cmo and while he today finds himself at icma i just wanted to recognize him for the work he's been doing but uh david you're in you and your team have really been thoughtful and i'm excited to um have you share with council um some of the work you've been thinking of okay thank you very much nuria good evening mayor and members of council i'm david farnan library and arts director i'm joined tonight by janet michaels uh senior assistant city

[110:00] attorney and jennifer ferris deputy library director and i i also intend to mention uh deputy city manager chris master if you've been instrumental in this committee um emily are you loading the slideshow there we go so tonight we're here as alicia mentioned for your review and endorsement of the city manager's appointment of members to the library district advisory committee and for us to gather your feedback on the committee's scope of work and the proposed timeline next slide so the staff liaison committee after council voted back in may um created an application and evaluation criteria for putting together this [Music] committee um we advertised three weeks and put up an application in english and spanish received 37 applications 12 members were

[111:01] selected and then recommended for review and acceptance by the city manager next slide please the application evaluation criteria was intended to draw upon a broad spectrum of city and external to the cities the surrounding areas that currently are in the proposed library district map in unincorporated boulder county uh we also wanted to look at a broad representation a mix of interests um on support and or not support of the library district experience evaluating the equity impacts and those impacts of taxation and other skills and experience that might enhance their group's there were some limitations to the group we um set out to limit the committee to know more than two uh live older library foundation members no more than two boulder library current builder library

[112:00] commissioners and no more than two of the boulder library champions board members um we sought representation from a broad spectrum of relationships to property owners renters business owners landlords as well as a broad spectrum of non-white races and ethnicities we hope to have most age ranges represented and most incomes represented next slide please uh so the library district advisory committee has its um put forward to you tonight made up of 12 members i'll read their names alicia seidel annette doula kara schenkel chip deborah reed fowler jane sykes wilson joanna rosenbloom johnny teeter kevin miller michelle denae garcia morrissey miho shida and peter pollock next slide please

[113:00] as you can see from the demographic uh information that we're presenting we do manage to hit um most of the age groups there were no applicants under the age of 25. um uh race and ethnicity we wound up getting 58 percent of the uh of the participants in the committee uh identify as white um 42 percent identify as some race or ethnicity other than white next slide please the housing representation um again 75 percent homeowners 25 renters income representation is broadly across the board a quarter of the applicants who were selected indicated they would prefer not to say what their income was but you can see from the from the data provided to you roughly i think 41 percent estimate their income to be at 100 000 or greater

[114:04] next slide please this is again a representation of uh perspectives represented i think it's uh covers the group um covers the representation of the overall community quite well um fifty percent are city homeowners twenty-five percent of county homeowners we do have adequate representation from outside of the city area um [Music] renters a landlord within the city a landlord within the county um high percentage of business owners um on the commit on the on the committee um 83 boulder library patrons which if you aren't aware but i am that's slightly lower than what the average number of people in the vicinity households that do have library cards

[115:01] um two boulder library champions uh one member of the boulder library foundation and one current library commissioner next slide please so the scope of the committee um as you well know from review of the past of the draft iga that was presented to you back in may by city attorney deputy city attorney or senior deputy city attorney david gere is to determine or make a recommendation around library district boundaries the services that the library district would provide and the mill levy that would generate the amount of revenue necessary to provide those services the committee will also be asked to make recommendations for methods of community engagement and how to provide key information to all community members the second major part of the iga is to discuss and make recommendations around the transition plan from a municipal library

[116:01] to a library district and most the big ones here obviously are the disposition of assets and those terms that being the buildings but also the collection and other assets the approach for the district as to whether it would contract back with the city of boulder for services how best to transition to staff following the guidelines and policies that are the city of boulder's hr policies uh what the process will be for the library for the appointment of the library the district board of trustees and the terms of what financing um if any the city of boulder would provide for the district during a transition next slide please so here are our next steps for the next three months the library district advisory committee will be meeting at least twice a month to discuss the specifics of the iga

[117:02] at the same time or simultaneously the city team is forming to discuss what the city's recommendations would be with regard to the items in the iga as well and the finance team will begin to develop options for the reallocation of general fund monies previously appropriated to the library are currently appropriated to the library and what might be done with those in the first quarter of 2022 and with a new council the library district advisory commission will publish their report and present it to city council we will present to city council along the recommendations both for the iga and for ideas around how funds could be reallocated we will seek council consideration of a joint meeting with the board of county commissioners for a public hearing on district formation and execute a community engagement program

[118:01] which meets the recommendations of the library district advisory committee in april we will present the results of those engagement activities hold a public hearing to discuss the purpose powers and financing of the library district ask for council consideration of a resolution and hold potentially a joint city council board of county commissioners meeting um to form a subcommittee to appoint a library district board of trustees and at that time council will also be asked to review consideration of the iga and the items regarding the library district next slide please so the questions we have for you this evening and i and jennifer and janet are happy to engage them as best we can is does city council endorse the committee members appointed by the city manager does city council have any input or revisions to the scope and proposed timeline for the

[119:00] committee's work and thank you very much great thank you so much for that david it's great work and thanks for letting it out so clearly for us and with that i've got two council members up i've got bob and adam bob thanks sam uh thanks david and thanks to uh to chris for working with your team to pull this together i thought it was a good memo good presentation um i have four questions david i'd like to pose to you um and they all relate to scope i'm fine with the the appointees i just want to really focus on scope to make sure that the product that council gets um in a few months will be folsom and we don't have to send the committee back for more work my first question is um in item two on scope in the memo that went to council there was um appropriately a um request that the committee evaluate what the uh property tax or the mill levy would be to support a library district so that part i got but also there was a parenthetical in that item that said that um the committee would also

[120:00] make recommendations on property tax relief for low income fact families can you talk a little bit about how that might work because we don't do that now we have property taxes and we don't don't have a different rate for low-income families or a way for them to apply for relief what what would what's the thinking behind that yeah that's a question that council or various council members have raised um multiple times in the course of the last three years where we've been discussing this topic we have we have been informed by the law firm that city attorney's office engaged cetera and van der waal that a district a library district has no authority within the code to do such a thing and that taxes must be applied uniformly there are some options for tax abatement that the county offers um obviously um it is the prerogative of council whether or not they wanted to set up some form

[121:00] of fund and we're looking at that now i mean we're investigating now and i don't i know janet michaels was going to be here tonight i don't know i think we're just in the beginning phases of analyzing what that might be if city council chose to set up a fund and how they might go about doing that if there was some form of rebate for low-income families that's fine we'll just stand by for that that uh what i recommend i'm just curious if you had a preliminary view on that um okay that's fine second question is um it looks like there's gonna be some robust recommendations on community engagement which is just great one of the questions i have is is whether that might might include a recommendation for a further community poll i know that we did a poll of the community and see the 2018 or 2017 by the time this report comes out from the advisory committee in 2022 that poll will be you know somewhere three or four years old four or five years old and i'm wondering if um if that community engagement might also involve a springtime poll of the community to find out where what their appetite is for uh for a tax increase

[122:03] it could very well yeah i um so the uh the first poll i believe and jennifer can correct me i believe was completed in 2019 um there was another poll with a not as comprehensive but it had a direct question which i think was good i mean the interpretations of the polls were quite different but in fact the results were almost identical so i'm not sure that we would see a dramatic change in that poll um in the polling numbers but you know without um there being an orchestrated um information campaign from one side or the other it seems as if the two polls separated by a pandemic the results were almost identical thanks david uh we'll stand by on that one as well i know that in the recommended the recommended scope there was a discussion about the disposition of the various library properties and that could be obviously a conveyance by

[123:01] the city to the library district it could be a lease or something like that but i could also see a circumstance where there is a um a reversion of the of the assets back to the city so for example let's say the district stopped providing library services or there was some other need for some or all the assets to come back to the city would that reversion or reacquisition of of assets be included in the disposition recommendation you know we've discussed that in the past um internally um that there would there could easily be a i mean multiple types of clauses and i mean uh do you want the specifics about what those discussions have been but i mean i don't need the specifics i just i guess it's more of a recommendation than that that um the disposition include um consideration on re-acquisition under whatever whatever that trigger might be yeah a reverter clause right like some something like a reversion clause that that's something that we have discussed internally obviously the committee hasn't discussed that at this point and i don't know that that would

[124:01] be part of their recommendations but it would be not uncommon for if the buildings were either deeded or leased that if they ceased to function as a library they would revert to city control automatically great yeah i'll be looking for that in the recommendations that'd be great and the final i guess i'll just pose this as a request rather than a question um it's possible that on whatever cutover date there is uh if there's a library district formed and it's approved by the voters that there could be some um unspent dedicated funds dedicated to library services or library infrastructure or let's say north boulder library construction or something like that i assume that the the report would would address what happens to those dedicated but yet unspent uh library funds that is that is correct bob it would and i i believe um the city the attorney a past city attorney has made a um you know a statement on what happens with dedicated funds uh we would likely

[125:00] adhere to that and bring back whatever recommendations there were i you know truth be told i don't think there's much in any of them but um there might there might be and and certainly we would bring back a recommendation which made sure it was uh consistent with um city of boulder legal uh precedent that's great thanks david that's all i have thanks bob adam thanks sam um and thanks for the presentation david i have a couple questions just regarding um the makeup of the board i noticed that it is on the wealthier side and there isn't a whole lot of low wage earner representation whether that be fixed income or just low-income people i was wondering if the board has plans on addressing uh issues that may be facing people who have fixed incomes or low wage earners that's a great question adam and in fact

[126:00] multiple of the applicants who were selected um talked um about the impact of taxation on both low-income residents and small business owners so um i believe it will be you know it is i and i i won't apologize i um you know the we see the same thing year after year in applications to boards and commissions um there the the applicants uh skew uh heavily um towards um homeowners people who are over 55 years of age um and you know various demographics and actually i was quite impressed actually with the variety of applications that came in this pool i think a little over a third of the applicants identified as a race other than white a few quite a quite a few renters which is not common for us to get in applications for boards and commissions this indeed is a committee but i'm but i was i was pleased to see the broad

[127:00] representation that we do have in comparison to what we typically see in terms of application supports and commissions and i can assure you that the the applicants and their responses did discuss the impact that taxation would have on low income families yeah and i'm certainly not uh disparaging the board for the selection i understand what it is to recruit a board in this uh county so it's it's a difficult task to get you know um people who don't have the time or resources um to you know participate in a voluntary board um it's it's a tough thing to do so uh i just want to make sure that the board uh is having them in mind along the way and uh making sure that you know not only from the taxation standpoint but from the libraries are a great resource for people who are low wage earners

[128:00] who are on fixed incomes sometimes it's their only resource to access the internet things along those lines just that those things are kept in mind throughout the conversations i think that's super important that we keep that sort of towards the top of the conversation um that was really the main question you did a good job of answering it so no thank you thank you very much adam that's a great question next we have mary and rachel mary thanks sam um just one question david um thank you for all the work that you and everyone who worked on this did and i usually on committees like this an odd number of people are appointed this particular committee will have 12 members and the odd number of people appointed is so that you don't get deadlocks on issues so um is there a

[129:01] reason why it's 12 and not 11 or 13. well i mean the i appreciate that thank you very much mary i mean the um the application said 6-12 and again being frank we had more significant i would say nearly all of the applications were extraordinarily qualified and would have been acceptable in all likelihood to be on this committee it was very difficult to narrow it down to the number that we did and we wound up going with the max now the draft charter for this committee it's a short-term committee and the draft charter is that we would work towards consensus and in fact what what we are working for is consensus on recommendations that would go to council for a decision so we are not asking this committee to make decisions we are looking for consensus around the items in the iga

[130:01] and my anticipation is if we should arrive at a point where the committee um is deadlocked or gives us ambiguous recommendations for which way they would go we would simply report um that ambiguity to council so that in the end the decisions what decisions we will need to make will fall fault accounts and so i think if there is ambiguity around a certain element of the iga or anything um you know if it were community engagement we might be able to incorporate more in communication if it's around a particular item like the disposition of assets then we would report that ambiguity back to council for council of society okay thank you david thank you thanks mary rachel uh thanks david for being here for the presentation um i just wanted to answer your questions directly i support the

[131:01] committee member recommendations and do not have any other feedback so thanks again thanks rachel aaron i'll give feedback as well i also support the community member recommendations those of whom are that are being appointed that i'm familiar with are all very capable individuals and i'm sure the rest are as well and then i'm really looking forward to seeing this timeline play out over the next year this is a really exciting opportunity for our library and our community so good luck to you and the new committee and i look forward to hearing back from you all on this timetable thanks aaron we have mark and nearby mark david thank you so much um just a couple of quick questions in the uh in the memo the staff memo there was a draft iga i suppose that's i assume that's simply uh illustrative and not to be used in any uh more substantive manner i mean it made reference to an expansion impact fee

[132:01] um and and there were other provisions of that sword um am i correct that it's it's simply an illustration it's purely illustrative um mark this is the identical document that we brought to council back in may when there had been questions though several months prior about the challenges of working through an ita deputy city attorney gear and senior assistant city attorney janet michaels just drafted an iga so they drafted an iga to show you that it was possible to do it and these were the components and that we would share that document similarly with the committee but merely as a guidepost for them to discuss some of the issues fair enough um when you make a recommendation to the city in terms of the disposition of assets may i request that you discuss the risk factors inherent

[133:01] either sell or lease that's an area of great concern to me certainly we will okay thank you and i think that's about it thank you mark nearby uh thanks sam and uh thanks david thanks for all the hard work i just wanted to answer as well that yes i support this election all right thank you mayor bye all right anyone else before i sum up great scene done um david thank you for that i thought your answers to council questions were excellent and i also support the individuals that have volunteered to serve on this committee and been selected thank you to all those members for the work you're about to do i i want to reiterate um how important i think it is that some of the disposition details be brought back as bob and mark had asked about because i think that's a key question here i mean i think the two key questions to me are

[134:02] will voters support the revenue stream needed for the district and then how will we manage the assets which have been accumulated over a long time by the boulder taxpayers so i think you know equity issues around that as well as minimizing risk will be some key components but i won't be here to have to make that decision and i wish you all the best with bringing it forward it is a very big topic of conversation and thank you for all the hard work you've done with that are there any other questions you needed to hear from council about not from me janet or jennifer no i thank you very much okay i appreciate your time thank you david and then alicia back to you all right sir our next item on tonight's agenda is item 6b it's the shared micro mobility update in regards to e-bikes and e-scooters

[135:01] this has certainly been a topic of lively conversation uh as e-scooters have hit the town so i'm going to invite david kemp or dk as he goes by our senior transportation plan thank you thank you very much well good evening mayor and members of city council my name is dave kemp senior transportation planner with the transportation mobility department and joining me tonight is nico probst director of government relations with limey scooters i have a brief presentation for you this evening before we move to discussion to advance the slide here there we go let's begin with some background information regarding the development of our new shared micro mobility program in september 2020 council directed staff to conduct an rfp process to select a vendor to provide shared e-bikes and e-scooters for community members to rent for for

[136:00] short trips throughout boulder council also requested that we pilot e-scooters east of 28th street in order to learn more about how they work staff then engage in a collaborative process to develop the scope of work for the rfp with several community community stakeholders um some of these stakeholders include cu boulder boulder county members of the transportation advisory board the boulder chamber community cycles and boulder housing partners we issued the rfp in march selected the vendors in may and launched the new program on august 18th [Music] at the end of the process we selected two vendors b-cycle llc and lime e-cycle llc is a subsidiary of the parent company trek bicycles they are a private company who manufactures the b cycle system equipment and operates in several cities across the us boulder bike share the nonprofit organization who previously operated the b cycle system is winding down and all

[137:00] their assets have been transferred to b cycle llc additionally staff from the boulder bike share organization were hired by b cycle llc in august to operate the local system lime lime is a transportation company based in san francisco it operates electric scooters electric bikes normal pedal bikes and electric mopeds car sharing systems and various systems around the world before you use a snapshot highlighting system detail since the start of the program on october 1st b cycle is operating in its fleet just under 300 traditional and electric assist bikes community members have generated over 68 000 trips comparatively this is about three times the use since 2019. they are averaging seven trips per bike per day and have zero reported crashes lime is operating 200 e-scooters in the east boulder service area and has

[138:01] generated over 22 000 trips this equates to an average of 2.4 e-scooter trips per day and has zero reported crashes as we move forward with implementing the program there are several strategic items on the table for both operators b cycle will continue working to transition the fleet to fully electric assist and will grow the fleet to nearly 500 e-bikes by 2022 they'll refurbish the existing docking stations and install their newest modular docking station as they begin to expand the service area lime will continue operating the pilot program east boulder service area they are ramping up their education efforts to their customers to improve safe and responsible operations and a neat safety feature that they've included in the program has to require a training mode training ride mode for first time users in the training mode these skaters only go about eight to ten miles per hour to help folks learn how the e-scooter

[139:00] handles before they're able to ride the scooter at their max speed of 15 miles per hour and finally both operators are required to participate in quarterly and annual reviews um as the program gets gets uh get started um and of course we're looking at this daily um as we have just initiated the program before the start of the program the city developed a comprehensive web page to provide information regarding the details of the program and we are regularly employing the city's communication channels including social media to inform and engage community members and a benefit of developing the program with several community partners is that we have the advantage of getting the word out through our partners communicate communication channels as well and so through emails phone calls and inquire both reports we are hearing about we're hearing about a number of concerns specifically regarding the e-scooter pilot program these include parking issues that is

[140:01] e-scooters blocking sidewalks and or multi-use paths unsafe running behaviors frustration with the inability to travel west of 28th street and also a general appreciation for the program to have a new transportation mode available to community members and so in response to the concerns we're hearing and we are implementing a number of action items to optimize operations one of the immediate day-to-day items includes following up on reported issues within two hours of notification this is a stipulation in our agreement with lyme we're actively working on educating users on how to properly operate the devices through both the city's social media channels and through lime directly to their customers through their mobile app finally both b cycle and lime are also working to hire and train more staff to match day-to-day operations in terms of rebalancing e-bikes and e-scooters and responding to customer concerns

[141:01] and so with that that concludes my presentation we thank you for your time and we look forward to consulting questions and feedback excellent thank you dk that was a great presentation um council members questions feedback erin okay thanks for that information um you mentioned the the two hour requirement to clean up any issues and mention that something that you're working on how is that being tracked and monitored to make sure that they're meeting those performance targets right so with every report that comes in it comes into the city directly i track those and then inform lime that they there is a an issue to respond to and so we have an ongoing list of essentially um you know all the different um reports that come in and then lime can also receive those independently and they too keep a list

[142:00] of the ones that they get directly so that was about uh them getting them but then how about the whether they're able to resolve them within that two-hour window yeah what i've found thus far with lime is that they've been able to respond to that actually with under the two-hour window which is a good thing um i haven't had any complaints that folks are um not having the issue resolved um over two hours so um they are meeting that requirement at this time that's great to hear thanks and i'm going to colloquy on that briefly dk um are you having any concerns uh with the b cycle um around being left in the wrong places or so on and do they have a similar requirement as lyme does they do and we're not having the same type of reported issues um as we are with wine and it's primarily because it's a docked

[143:01] versus the dockless system got it and and does that mean effectively that if the users don't dock them correctly that their credit card is continually charged for more time yes in some cases um the the user of the scooter has to park it correctly and take a snapshot of it and then send it back um we do have no ride zones in certain areas where they can't ride or can't park but generally speaking they are able to park the device in most locations okay thanks and i've got rachel adam and mark rachel hey sam hi dk thanks for the presentation and overview um i have a couple kind of safety related questions so wondering how we picked the hours of operation and maybe we already heard about that but um i was thinking that we were going to sort of avoid dark and drinking hours and so 11 p.m seems maybe late for that target so just

[144:00] wondering how we arrived at 11. you know we did we went back and forth with uh with actually cu boulder um and determining that thinking about college age students and potentially using devices you know during that time and they were comfortable with the 11 o'clock time frame and um we had initially pitched 10 so 11 o'clock was a compromise and so far we haven't seen any issues with that time frame at this point and do we have a breakdown of like how much usage is occurring between like dark and 11 or 10 and 11. i can get you that information i don't have that handy tonight but we can essentially you know inform council you know what the hours of operation looks like and then you know the usage during the that time frame okay yeah that would be great okay um i don't think i've seen anyone riding with a helmet so um i do have concerns about um you know

[145:00] i guess heightened safety concerns i thought at some point there was going to be a some targeted outreach or efforts at helmets and that whatever that was conceived as it must not be working um so another question is there like sometimes i see people writing on on sidewalks that don't look like they would be great to write on as opposed to you know multi-use paths is there any way to not have people ride on on like areas that wouldn't be safe like where there are broken sidewalks or things like that because i think that is sometimes what causes accidents um and and did we look at all at if geofencing is the right word geofencing off certain certain areas that are maybe under construction or just not safe yes so to address the first um statement about the helmet use helmets are encouraged we haven't required that

[146:01] as part of a law that information is available on our website we've done a lot of social media outreach um lyme also does that through their through their mobile app and actually you can get a free helmet through lime um if you request one and then in terms of where to ride the devices so technically the e-scooters are not allowed to be ridden on sidewalks um unless there is no adjacent bike facility in this in the travel lane or in the street jason street and so it is possible um the thing about geofencing is that it's a little broader it's not surgical per se but it's it's a little bit broader so if you were to say geofence a particular street and say you can't ride on the sidewalk well then you're likely geo-fencing off that adjacent bike lane too and that's kind of where the technology is with that right now but it is possible for geo-fencing that we can um

[147:01] cordon off larger swaths of land to prevent those e-scooters from being ridden so for example is belmont bike park we really don't want limey scooters you know taking the jumps and and whatnot and so we've you know cordoned off all belmont bike park so they can't be used on the dirt trails out there interesting okay um and then you talked about like eight you know eight to ten miles an hour sort of the the training speed um and i would guess that a crash at eight to ten miles an hour is safer than a crash at 15 miles an hour so one question is how like how far are people going how many miles is an average trip if you know and that would be something you could get to us later if that's more convenient yeah no trips um average uh scooter trips are about a mile a little over a mile at this point and then e-bike trips are a little bit longer okay so for the scooters like if we were to you know take it down from 15 to closer to 10 or 12 or i would think every mile an hour

[148:01] slower might not cost the the rider much time but maybe would would increase safety so how did we get it to 15. actually 15 is a pretty conservative speed limit for the scooters okay so you know any going any slower than that i think you start to lose the um ability to get to your destination more conveniently and so um we don't see a problem right now with 15 miles per hour but we are monitoring the program and if we do experience any issues crashes with you know speed as a result of the crash then we can definitely look at lowering those the speed limit okay and so if i go out and and rent a scooter i'll be limited to 8 to 10 miles an hour for some period of time and then i will feel what it feels like to go 15. yeah so for your first ride you're required to go 8 to 10 miles per hour i'll check it out that's to help you get more familiar with device and then once you get a handle on it then you know you can

[149:00] pretty easily go 15 miles per hour but it's it you know not pushing the 20 mile an hour speed limit is um is a is a good thing and i think we've we've arrived right now at a pretty safe speed and it's also important to note that the speed limit on the multi-use path system is also 15 miles per hour yeah um and is is 15 the the standard like in other cities that i would have used the the scooters i would say so okay yep all right um and then you mentioned the two hour turnaround time pardon the dog scratching next to me um is is that like does are complaints coming in around that for people leaving the scooters mid mid sidewalk is that what we're trying to accomplish within those two hours yeah so you know sometimes the e-scooters will get knocked over and so they'll be laying on their side and blocking the access on the sidewalk and and that's something we want to get to and correct immediately so we're not

[150:01] impeding the traffic flow for pedestrians and anybody in a wheelchair right and then sometimes too there is the egregious behavior of just leaving it right in the middle of the sidewalk or multi-use path and so we're really trying to train people you know when you park the device you know park in a manner that's you're not you know impeding pedestrian traffic and a bit of a learning curve follow-up if somebody's i assume we know who like which account left the scooter in the middle egregiously do you have like can you just do that repeatedly and or are you following up and are there charges if you do that for the tenth time or something we we can rachel and and lyme can follow with that customer but unfortunately sometimes we also see third party abuse to the system people purposefully moving the scooters in different places putting them where you know they shouldn't be um and so we are experiencing some of that as well okay two hours seems like a long time to have

[151:00] a scooter blocking the whole sidewalk is my concern there i understand it's good that it's coming in under the two hours but i guess my feedback would be one hour would be better than two in that situation 30 minutes would be better than both all right thanks that's all my questions thank you rachel next we have adam mark and juni adam thanks sam and yeah thanks for the update dk it's been interesting to watch this out in the world uh going on in real time um i definitely want to you know congratulate the uh the bike introduction that seems to have gone really well um and seems to only continue to go well so that's really cool uh i had similar concerns as rachel she covered most of them i also was just wondering you know is everything subject to the lowest common denominator of human when it comes to leaving things in the worst places possible sounds like that's sort of the case which is unfortunate um

[152:02] and seems to be unavoidable with non-docked situation at least i haven't seen it solved in any other city that has uh non-doc scooters so uh my my main question was i've been seeing a whole lot of scooters in places that i just didn't expect they would end up so like just in front of houses in single family neighborhoods and my question was have you seen through aggregate data where most of the trips are going um and are a lot of them ending up in sort of those one-off weird places like i've been seeing throughout the neighborhoods yeah it does happen it you know people will take those to their destinations and that i guess that's one of the benefits of a dockless system is that you can really get from point a to point b directly to your destination and that they are being used by by folks all throughout the entire east boulder area and uh and so for those scooters that

[153:00] are stagnant or sitting out you know in a residential area lime will come up and and if they're not being used rebalance those devices and bring them back to their initial um deployment zones throughout the east boulder area yeah i wasn't so much worried about where they end up i was just wondering uh is there you know is that a usage that we expected or is that sort of outside of the realm of what we were anticipating does that mean that there's an unmet need to some degree um that you know just existed before or is this sort of a weird fluke that we just didn't anticipate no certainly i think that you know folks are looking for different ways to get around and you know if you can get this device as close as you can to your destination or pick it up as close as you can from your or from your origin then it's it's what we expect in a program to have that device be convenient and to get them where they need to be and if

[154:01] future councils decide you know they don't like the direction do you think there's going to be a a possible way to still incorporate them and maybe a docked situation between the most common destinations that's always a possibility i think where we would move first is to look at implementing corrals in certain areas of the city and then encourage customers to park the device and the e-scooters into those corrals we can create no parking zones anywhere we'd like and then require folks to park in that corral and but that would be sort of a hybrid between the dockless and the dock system and so that would be a next step for us is to move to that hybrid system and then if we can't fix some of the more egregious behavior and we can come to a point where we can generally get folks to park these devices responsibly then that might work if not then it may be that a doc system is most appropriate for boulder

[155:01] and i know you had a quarterly update system is there sort of going to be another check-in for recommendation um do you have a time anticipated for that um for with city council yeah yeah we'll come back whenever you'd like adam um okay however we we will be coming back at the end of the for sure at the end of the um the one year um evaluate pilot evaluation program so um if you'd like to if you like us there before then we're happy to be there too uh you've run out of time with me but uh i'm sure the next council will have their uh i'm sorry adam pleasure working with you it was with you too the uk thank you for the presentation and all the answers thank you adam thanks adam um mark and then junie mark i think we should bring adam back as a special guest for that uh presentation there you go thanks dk just a couple questions um

[156:02] in the memo it said that we've had 13 445 trips and and zero accidents that that seems to be inconsistent with the earlier data we had that raised issues about the safety of e-scooters what has changed you know that's a really good question you know i i still think we're under that threshold so i don't want to speak too soon to say that you know we've solved all the you know answers at this point but i think one of the benefits of waiting to implement this program is that a lot of folks have learned how to use them in different cities and so we're getting i mean students are a you know huge demographic that are using this um this you know the e-scooters to get around and so they've they've been experienced you know by them now and they've been able to use them i think that's one part of it i think the training ride mode um definitely helps a lot and then the technology mark has gotten

[157:01] better the wheels the diameter the wheels have gotten larger the devices come with shocks in the front they're more durable um devices than they were when we were talking about this two years ago when we were really concerned about you know can this thing hold up and is it a safe you know device and and so the technology's gotten better i think people have gotten more accustomed to using them um and frankly we've i mean generally speaking we've got great facilities in boulder we've got an excellent network of multi-use paths of bike lanes and whatnot so i think those are all contributing factors to to what we've experienced so far but again i don't want to jinx the program there's a lot more to find out over the course of this year so but preliminarily that's what i believe okay now speaking of of evolution of data uh way back when we were first looking at this the e-scooters had a half-life of about

[158:02] 28 days of my recollection that's right i remember that yeah and do we have any data as to what it looks like now um you're right so now we're learning that the devices are coming in around a couple years um and so and really in you know the companies are motivated by quality of the product because if they're losing these devices losing these scooters on a monthly basis then they're losing their overall profit and so they've been really driven and the technology has gotten better and so looking at the robustness of the device now compared to when we were talking about this a couple years ago it's gotten better and so i well we're going to see we're going to see how that goes and that's one of the criteria in our evaluation program to really take a look at the sustainability aspect of these of the program of these devices my last comment is is pretty much of a shout out for rachel's suggestion

[159:01] that um you might want to consider imposing some financial consequences on people who improperly leave their e-scooters in the public thoroughfare and if they're they're supposed to take pictures are they not where they left it they are they are i think that would would probably solve the problem of um somebody else coming in and moving it because they'll have taken a picture and would be not responsible for that but i think there's something to be said for um you know imposing a financial consequence if somebody is just leaving the e-scooter on somebody's lawn uh or on a bike path um yeah i think we're gonna try the carrot first and and um you know this is this is the pilot program this is very new to the community we're all learning about this and i think um we really need to intensify the education about how these

[160:00] things are operated um from you know from a user like when they're on right when you're actually operating the device on the street and when you're parking it and help folks understand the context of why it's important to park the device the way you should um and so i we've got more work to do and but i think that learning curve um there is a learning curve to this okay well i look forward to your next report assuming i'm still in a position to take your next report uh thank you thank you mark mark junie juni i'm hearing everyone badly can you hear me well i can hear you okay okay yeah i think my question is actually about um dave thank you for the presentation it's about the pickup process and i wanted to hear a little bit more about that because i do live in south

[161:01] boulder and i see the lime scooters they're littered you know the uh sidewalks and even i have a hard time walking past them myself and i can imagine for you know people with mobility issues and you know if someone is in a wheelchair it's very hard for them to get by so i'm wondering what's the pickup process for these lime green scooters that are littering the sidewalks so what's the pickup process what's the um the rebalancing is what we call it and and uh and so if we find that there are a number of divide e-scooters that are located at a particular point and some of them are not being used and lime will routinely pick up those devices and bring them back to their initial deployment zones so the idea is that we don't have all of our scooters concentrated in one location but then we can

[162:00] you know every couple days or so redistribute those things so that they can be used by folks to do more trips and so when there's a problem and it's reported and and that's really one of the elements of the program that's challenging too is to encourage people to report a scooter that's been misparked because that's the the most efficient way for for lyme to then get that report and then go out and then get to it and fix the fix the problem and then rebalance it where it needs to be yeah um i think from what i hear from you tonight um i think seeing all these scooters i was one of the supporters of the um you know bringing scooters to boulder and and honestly i don't find the sight of all these scooters littering

[163:01] the ground and the sidewalks and making it hard for people to walk by appealing i think that's a disservice to people who are you who are mobili who have mobility issues and you mentioned earlier something about um some type of a docking station to ensure that these things are not just on the ground and impeding people's access to the walkway because you know we can't have community members being in conflict with cars because these scooters are on the sidewalk and there's nowhere to walk so i think that's something that we definitely need to work on as a community but there's another question i wanted to ask you about i'm looking at the memo i think what's missing or at least something i didn't see was um the age group who use these scooters and i'm thinking for lime since it's in

[164:00] east boulder and i know where is the cu campus and i'm wondering if it's mostly young college students who are using them as opposed to older people so i didn't really get a sense of the demographic of who's using these scooters i can help with that we well i should say lime in advance of this meeting did conduct a survey to their users now the program is very new and so the response rate was very low however um what i'm finding what we found is that the average age of a line writer i'm reading from the report is age of 30. and 25 of line writers are 34 or older thank you i think another comment i wanted to make on page six you talked about equity serving traditionally under undeserved neighborhoods

[165:01] and i i don't know um what does that really mean what does that entail you know saying that we've developed affordability programs who's using these programs and i think maybe having information on that would be important how do someone of low income access this particular program or how have they accessed the program that's a wonderful question do you mind if i respond please thank you yes so um yeah there is an equity requirement as part of our agreement with both b cycle and lime and and so and what's really interesting is the technology with these scooters and the geo and the uh the gps data that we're able to obtain it really helps us with our planning purposes and we can um and we can cordon off or demarcate through gps areas in the city that we

[166:00] consider underserved neighborhoods traditionally underserved neighborhoods and and so we're able to pull from that data how many rides are originating in that underserved neighborhood zone and so um and we did include this in the memo and i'm really glad you asked the question but from august 18th through october 3rd there were about a little over 1600 trips that originated from these underserved neighborhoods in ways in which we're we're getting out the information the outreach um the number of ways in which we're doing that we're coordinating closely with boulder housing partners and then also with uh boulder county's mobility for all program and that as a matter of fact we've got a presentation next week to talk with them about how we can co-promote the program um to more of those to more to more community members thank you so much that's all i have thank you thank you julie thank you ginny rachel

[167:00] last time the dog was scratching to get out and now there's a cat howling i can't wait to get back to chambers so please bear with uh elmer here um so i guess i just wanted to follow up dk since my questions um and you know in reflecting and then hearing um later comments and questions were probably um all in the the more negative category i just wanted to say that i am a fan of the scooters um i i was an advocate of them i think that they are a great first and last mile um and i really want them to succeed so my questions are in the spirit of like how do we make sure that we are preventing accidents and and you know don't come back for a next update and um and have things you know going south so just wanted to um say that and also there's been some mentions of docked versus dockless um and so i just wanted to get it on the record that i actually really like the dockless and i've appreciated that and especially cities that i have visited i i'm not

[168:01] personally using the scooter so much in boulder because i usually have my bike um but it it's it is very helpful to be able to leave a scooter right where you're going and that's part of the big advantage of it so i think we would would lose a lot of the value if we went to docked so um i understand that there are growing pains and that the you know the sight of them isn't isn't normal right now and you know we're used to seeing cars everywhere but we're not used to seeing these scooters all over town so um just wanted to add that i i remain a fan of us doing this and i appreciate all the work that that you have done to to make this successful so far and uh really appreciate it so thank you thank you rachel thanks rachel okay any other council input feedback i'll just keep mine briefly um thanks dk for the great um report out it is very thorough and gives us a good picture of what's going on for me i think this is a great pilot

[169:00] we're learning what we need to learn i'm super excited about the direction b cycles going and having track backing that is going to be a great thing i think for the city and having 500 e-bikes out and about in our town is going to be wonderful i think that's going to be a really good thing i share junie's concern with the um scooters around on sidewalks i think that is the single biggest downside to them generally speaking i agree with rachel that doctors is nice and convenient for folks but the litter problem has to go away and so i you know you can't have people impeded from being able to make progress walking and forced out into a bike lane or a roadway because there's scooters on the sidewalk so i would say that for this to be successful i won't be on the council that will evaluate the pilot but i would say that that will be a premier concern at the top of the list for people and so thinking about that now might be helpful and um i guess the the only other thing

[170:02] is the safety concern i think that's you know a 15 mile an hour speed limit is a very strong start on addressing safety concerns and i like the the training ride idea as well so i think this is a very successful pilot and i think the b cycle is just going to build on its previous success and hopefully we can work to expand the areas that the scooters can go in if we can get the litter problem under control i could see if we can figure out a good way to get them around campus the main campus and connect to the other campuses that might be a great way to reduce autos so anyway this has been great did you get what you needed from us any other questions for us yes i think we did and thank you mayor and thank you members of council for your time tonight we really appreciate it great thanks a bunch dk and alicia i think we are back to you all right sir yes our next item on tonight's agenda is item number eight

[171:01] matters from the mayor and members of council 8a is the discussion on council resolutions opposing or supporting the 2021 ballot measures well thank you for turning that over to us um this is a step that we often take around about election time when we have referred items on the ballot to speak to bob i wanted to turn to you briefly you brought this up for um discussion that council did you want to tee this up or give any context to it sure i'm happy to i as you said sam this is something we typically do in october and just provide for whatever it's worth um our opinion and guidance to the community on ballot measures i would hope that at a minimum this council would pass resolutions endorsing the five ballot measures that we put on the ballot which is items 2i 2j 2k 2l and 2 m

[172:00] since i think we voted on those unanimously or close to universally i would hope that we would encourage the community to vote yes on those i'm not um necessarily advocating for council to take a position one way or another on the three petitioned ballot measures we can't if people wanted to i suppose but i would hope that we could at least come out out loud and say those five ballot measures that we put on please vote yes on them um i think there was a discussion from the city attorney's office about whether this would be a declaration or resolution and i think there's a distinction between the two and maybe some process around resolution we could talk about that a little bit later but i guess i'd just like to hear from council members at a minimum would they support um endorsing so to speak or encouraging community members about yes on the five ballot measures that we put on great thank you bob and i'll open the floor council members thoughts on this mark well to me i mean it would seem to me to be a bit odd if we don't support the measures we are responsible for and and so for me

[173:00] that's a fairly easy consideration i would be very supportive of doing that and we we did it we ought to be standing behind it okay very good and then i've got aaron and mary erin yes absolutely bob thanks for bringing that forward i think we should support those fives i appreciate it and then i wonder if we could just have a like a straw poll on um positions on 300 and 302 we don't want to spend all night talking over all the pros and cons but maybe we could just test the waters on council's willingness to have a position on those measures thanks aaron mary and then rachel um agree with um bob aaron mark um yeah we should agree to have a resolution or declaration on the five that we put on thanks mary rachel i agree with all that's been uh said before i think that my guess is this

[174:01] council is going to be pretty split on 300 but on 302 i would be um curious to talk about that because i think eight out of nine of us have have um personally supported the no campaign so um i don't know if if they have to be unanimous votes or how that the history or how that usually works out so i'd be curious to learn more well i'll just weigh in i agree that i think we should do the five that we put forward i think that's super clear my recollection of the history and mary and others can add to this was we generally only support things that have a preponderance like a super majority of support but generally we've stayed away from things that are closely split and only gone towards things that um have a really strong support on council so my shorthand is i agree with you about 300 i don't think we will be able to get there on that one necessarily but happy to talk about 302

[175:00] um bob yeah uh sam i if we're gonna take a straw poll on 302 and then ultimately vote next week i do need to ask a question of sandra whether junie and i need to recuse ourselves on that straw poll tonight and that vote next week i know it's not directly related to the annexation but i just want to be real careful there and thank you bob for that question can i can i respond to you before you do that next week or whenever it is this is scheduled sure and so i might suggest that that's fine sorry to put you on the spot i might suggest that for purpose if we are going to take a stroll pull on 302 might i suggest that judy and i just not vote one way or the other on that and then you could let us know that it's not really a vote i would not straw poll at all and then you can let us know before next week's vote if there if there is a majority among preponderances as sam says among the seven that support position on 302 then we can make a decision between now next tuesday whether to vote on that

[176:00] thanks bob i'm nearby so if we vote on 302 and obviously i'll be voting no or i'll be opposing the rest of council so what the endorsement goes out and says council supports this except for one council member i mean i'm not really comfortable having council said it saying out there to the public the council supports us when one member strongly does not well i mean we often have split votes um i think we could adopt whatever we wanted depending on how that came out um for me i i'm most interested in supporting the five that we put on um i'm happy to do will of counsel on the others um and i i guess i would say it's also going to be willow council how we represent that out so um you know if we have a super majority supporting something i think it's fair to say that council supports it but i'm not necessarily going to lobby that we should take a position on the 300 301 and 302 items that's just my thinking

[177:02] um and with that i've got juni and aaron junior um i was going to say i do support the five that we put on and maybe because of mirabai's concern maybe for the season initiated ballots maybe we should ask the account entire council do a struggle if they want to give their opinion or do a straw poll on each one of them because i think me and bob really uh for 302 we don't know whether we should say anything or not on that one um and i think mayor by smearby's concern is actually valid so maybe asking taking a stroll to find out if the entire council is interested in supporting citizen-initiated ballot measures after you've done with the ones that are brought forward by city council itself

[178:00] very good i i think i can i think i can bring that forward in that way juni and then we have aaron and mark aaron yeah thanks for that jenny um i think the points about making sure that it's measures that are strongly supported by super majority councils or reasonable ones so my guess is that well clearly 300 from our many conversations on the topic doesn't have that right on one way or the other um my guess is 301 probably doesn't have that either so i i would sort of retreat this to say uh recommending a position a a no position on the 302 ballot measure and then same however you want to straw pull the hat to determine whether people feel like that's a good idea or not you know i'm open to okay super thank you and then mark um yeah i think i think i would want to restrict it to the five ballot measures that we initiated um you know if a i want to be sensitive to

[179:02] mirabei's position um b if we uh use that super majority to say that we are in support of um or against 302 and then it appears that we are taking a different position with the other two because we don't have a supermajority and i just think it gets messy um i think those those uh initiatives a lot of sinkers swim on their own they were not uh initiated by this council and it's sort of um uh above our pay grade to be making that endorsement or decision um so i would restrict us to the ones that are our responsibility and just let it go let the community vote on the others and you know have done with it thanks for watching and i'll say that in the context of someone um

[180:00] who is not supportive of 302 um but that's not the point point taken mark thank you and then i've got mary and rachel there i agree with mark it's just cleaner that way rachel i i appreciate um mark and mary's point there i would say that three is to me qualitatively different because it's um it's an action that council took to annex and it really would tie our hands on a health and safety issue that i think that the majority the super majority of council actually cares about so i think it's it's a different question than the fur or bedrooms questions and it would be appropriate since we just annexed um and and people's lives would be in harm's way if that passed potentially for us to take a stand on it thanks rachel bob even though i'm not going to participate in any straw poll relating to 302 i

[181:00] would i will say that i agree with uh with mary and mark that it's cleaner for us simply to endorse the ballot measures that we put on the ballot and leave it to the voters to decide on the citizen-initiated petitions super all right great i think i've got a sense of counsel here's my proposal feel free to object um i would take a straw poll um that says do we want to support the five that we put forward and so we'll deal with that as one lot because i haven't heard any distinction between them and then i think i would pose the question to council do you want to take a position on any of the citizen initiated ballot items if that vote is a majority does then we'll go through them one at a time and i would suggest them looking for a super majority in order to take a position one way or another on any of the citizen initiated items so does that make sense one vote on the five we referred one vote on whether we want to take positions on citizen initiated and then we go from there

[182:01] great i am seeing no objections to that and some nodding heads and thumbs so let's begin oops okay sorry my computer's throwing something up here um let's begin with a straw ball on the five um in uh initiative ballot initiatives that we referred um to the ballot does anyone have an objection to a resolution of support for a yes position on all those five items great i think that's super clean so we have unanimous support for council adopting a position of we support a yes vote on the five referred council referred ballot items so that's clean and done and we'll come back to talk about resolution versus declaration in a moment then let's shift gears i'll do this by a show of hands literally put your hand up if you want

[183:00] to who would like counsel to adopt a position on citizen initiated items i see rachel i see aaron and that is all i see so i think um that's pretty clear as well so i think council sandra would like to adopt a position of support on the five that we've referred i know that we can do a declaration pretty easily can you remind us what we need to do to get a resolution adopted can we bring that forward on consent next week yeah thank you sam i appreciate that um so um there was some discussion on whether or not um we could do a declaration versus a resolution and i just wanted to let you know that the um fair campaign practices act specifically or explicitly says that um it allows resolutions and so my recommendation would not would be not

[184:02] to use a declaration but rather a resolution and um and then i just wanted to share that um uh historically we have had those resolutions on consent and um uh the the council rules do talk about resolutions being handled in the same manner as second readings of ordinances but as you know there are exceptions in with respect to second reading ordinances not having public hearings so it would be the will of counsel as to whether or not to be on consent or not i'm going to make a proposal that in this case this is a type of resolution we would not normally have a public hearing for um so my proposal the council is that we bring this forward as a resolution of support for those five items on consent at the next council meeting does anyone object to that plan of action

[185:00] great seeing no objections um sandra could you prepare a resolution for us in support of those and have it on consent for next week's meeting will do thank you awesome thank you all and i think alicia we're back to you for the next item all right so yes our next item and our last item on tonight's agenda is item 8b which is a discussion on council meetings for the remainder of this council's term whether it be in person virtual as you mentioned earlier hybrid very good and um this item has come up several times as we all know we're coming to the end of this council's term and it would be great to get back together in person for a meeting or two certainly the transition meeting between councils will need to be in person in some way likely so um this is kind of an open item for us to discuss as we will um i'm gonna turn to nuria and and

[186:02] see nuria do you have anything you'd like to share with us before council kicks off on your thinking on in-person meetings sure thank you sam and i'll say a couple things um one is in terms of technology i believe we're in a good place to go for hybrid meetings we're gonna hold a dry run next week and we should be able to confirm that but we you know we had been ready and trying to gear up for july that got pushed back obviously because of the pandemic and some technical issues we had but those have been resolved well the technical issues have been resolved covet has not right um so you know i i will say this other thing is that we have as of we are being very cautious with covid we have uh not only did we institute a universal mass mandate um recently but we also then have gotten the county's universal mass mandate and that remains in place uh

[187:01] for the foreseeable future so it depends a little bit on timing we are working with lexi to see what does that look like for us um and we wanted to make sure that if we came together with universal masking what that could look like perhaps if we distance if folks could take that off while they were speaking or what that looked like so we will continue to work with the county and as lexi offered to provide some recommendations of our own we will make sure to bring those to council but at the moment if you were to come in we were we still have universal masking in place i'll also say that we certainly and appreciated the vaccination verification program that lexi mentioned we had thought about it we have um as you all know as of yesterday informed staff that we are requiring vaccinations for all staff as of december 1st it is one of the reasons we chose not to necessarily go in this direction because we were going to switch gears and simply require proof of vaccination and

[188:02] or do medical or religious accommodations as needed so that will take uh that will go into effect on december 1st which will be after the transition happens and then the only other thing that i'll add and i want to honor staff who has brought this forward is certainly we can come back as you as you will and we will take precautions as needed and certainly will heed the recommendations by boulder county but we have several staff who um particularly our com staff who would be um supporting those meetings they have small children who are not able to get vaccinated and have some safety concerns of their own so i just would ask that however the will of council is that we're thoughtful about that as we move forward okay super thank you nuria and i will just mention one other thing and and staff can correct me if this isn't exactly right but i introduced a live performance last week at cu

[189:00] and they referenced specifically what the rules were that they were following for the county which was everyone had to be masked indoors also had to show proof of vaccination to get in that was a ticketing policy but um performers could take a mask off when they were performing and i was allowed and encouraged to take a mask off when i was speaking so i think one option if we do have some or all of us in person would be that we're masked most of the time but perhaps when we're speaking we can unmask for clarity and with that i see rachel yeah just um one question nuria so for i imagine that many or a high percentage of the people that we would be looking at bringing into in real life meetings will be vaccinated um and i understand the proof's not due till december 1st but could there be a requirement that people who would have to go um

[190:00] at least to these meetings um would have to either give proof of vaccination or um a recent test like i think a lot of times you know for people who have exemptions or accommodations you can do a test within 48 hours or something like that so again we will look at that as we move forward we we actually are really proud of the high vaccination rate we have across all our staff and as we were coming in were thinking about coming in we knew that uh that um that most if not all the staff that would be in council chambers were vaccinated so we will take appropriate steps as that's necessary including some additional requirements i think our concern is um you know just heating again the the what we're learning from our public health partners is even if you're vaccinated there are breakthrough cases that we're concerned about so certainly we can make arrangements and try to do that unless we find that we have somebody who needs specialized who is using specialized equipment as

[191:01] we're recording and so forth but i think we can certainly take that on the back of the house and make sure we have some some of those safety protocols in place and we would be happy to let you know what the what those were and how does that move forward i guess a follow-up question to that um i asked lexi about the the binax uh instant or i think they're 15-minute tests from the state of colorado and i think that organizations can buy those too like given the low number of people that we're talking about and the fact that some staff members have young children who can't be vaccinated yet could we all just take tests as you know on top of being vaccinated on the nights that we need to meet yep we could certainly absolutely consider that as we move forward i know the city has been thinking about that and offering um folks to make sure we have just shared that with our leadership team we will be communicating that out staff as well i just myself ordered some of those tests from the from the state um so i think

[192:01] that all of those considerations will bring forward and it will depend just on when you want to come in and what the current um safety precautions where we are if we're still in high transmission and hopefully we're down a bit but considering your transition rate i mean your transition date and lexi's comment today about waiting three weeks after lowering from that rate it will not hit i believe we're still going to be in high transmission so we can let you know what those precautions could be if that is the will of council to move forward thanks great and now i've got bob aaron and nearby bob yeah i think i'd like to maybe separate this discussion between whether council comes back and then how nuria manages their staff because it sounds like because we've got this hybrid system nuria can have different people in different places so i don't want to get into micromanaging what staff members are in what room i wanted to talk about the nine of us um

[193:01] and as as sam said um cu seems to have made an arrangement where people who are speaking or performing can take their masks off i think many of us have been in restaurants where you sit down and you take your mask off and so there's obviously uh there there's obviously masks and then exceptions to mass and i would hope that the nine of us could um could consider the possibility of being in chambers at least one one last time and allowing over speaking to take their mask off maybe perhaps the rest of us should be masked we'll we'll defer to lexi on that uh i want to let nuria manage her staff and how who gets tested and who's vaccinated and who's wearing masks and who's in the room and who's son's in the room that's not really for us to say so i'm going to throw out a proposal um which people can agree or disagree with i'd like to propose that this council um convene in person on its last meeting which is november 9th which is a little bit more than a month from now and that the new council is which is sworn in on on the morning of november 16th and then convenes

[194:01] uh later that evening also meet in person and one of their agenda items at night can be do we want to keep meeting in person because it'll be four or five i hope for uh new council members and um they may have a different position than than we do and we don't want to impose our our values on them so i i like to throw a straw man out there that we meet in person on the ninth that we ask the new council to meet in person on the 16th uh nuria can manage her staff and we'll take advice from lexi on how we master don't mask and um uh and and just go from then let the new council decide what they want to do after the 16th thank you bob that was very clear aaron and then nearby aaron yeah i was actually going to put something forward similar to what bob just uh said is that you know i think we want to to give the delta search time to subside right so i think giving it a solid month is a good idea that meeting on the ninth is only scheduled to be like an hour and a half long right so that that mitigates your

[195:01] your risk levels there and then if we had on the 16th um you could start with the new council with an option for people to participate remotely if they're not comfortable with participating in person um in case you know anybody here on the current council or in the new council feels like that doesn't feel safe to them they could uh exercise that option and then we can see where we go from there both on the how the transmission levels are doing how the vaccination levels are doing um and make a decision at that point for going forward and i would like us to explore that idea that the the county was talking about about the um exemption that you can apply for if um if everyone is vaccinated because because that my hope is that that would be our situation um when you do meet in person again is that everyone in the room is vaccinated ideally that would be a requirement at least at the beginning and because we do have the hybrid option right so people can participate remotely if they are not vaccinated for some

[196:00] reason and then we could get that potentially that dispensation from the county so that could be a good thing to have on the table as well thanks thanks aaron mark yeah i i don't want us to um underestimate the discomfort of a five or five and a half hour meeting with masks on you know if you're just to express my own preference i would rather come back in person when we can sit and actually look at each other and talk to each other um i have no problem with an hour and a half meeting on uh on the ninth and you know obviously if uh if i'm going forward on the 16th but um i think it'll be a fairly unpleasant experience to be going to 11 o'clock at night you know and having to wear a mask for all but you know the five or seven minutes that you're actually giving commentary

[197:00] that's my two cents thank you mark jenny i was going to see the same thing as mark um i find it very difficult as well to be in chambers and again we've talked about this before but we're having the same discussion again that will community members be in attendance because if community members are not in attendance then to me being in chambers i just don't see the purpose except for being in that chair um but there's something that was mentioned earlier is a hybrid system because i'm not comfortable with just going in chambers knowing there is a delta variant and there are two cases and we don't know exactly where the numbers are going as of right now so i'd like to know what process do we have for a hybrid

[198:01] system for council members who cannot be in chambers the rest of the other council members and as far as november 9th my impression was on november 9th there will be two meetings one in the morning at 10 a.m and one at 6 00 p.m please correct me if i'm wrong bob that's on the sixth on the 16th of june there will be two meetings one in the morning but on the ninth currently the ninth is scheduled as a study session it is after the election and it would be the meeting at which people would declare their interest in being mayor in the next council i believe there there may even have been historically some of the newly elected council members in the room for the speeches by the folks who might want to be the next mayor um they i think in the past have wanted to hear that so the ninth i'm still keeping my eye on this part of cac as to whether we want

[199:00] to transition that to a real meeting there may be business that we want to tie up or complete so the ninth currently is the study session and that is the night that i think bob was proposing that we do in person or hybrid and as far as your point about hybrid with council members i would turn to nuria because i think that's a really important question um nuria will we have the ability to have say we had a subset seven council members in chambers but two wanted to come in via a hybrid link is that something we can support yes i know that we have been planning for hybrid meetings for council members to the other question about the public we would not advise the public we are not planning for the public to come in yet particularly with being in high transmission but we have been um planning for the body to come in hybridly so that would be something that we could offer okay super so junior i'll come back to

[200:00] you um i think there are answers to all the questions you put out there is there anything else you wanted to follow up with uh no i i welcome the opportunity for the hybrid system again because not all council members are comfortable even though you know some of us are more willing to speak up on that um having that opportunity will be very very helpful super thank you and now i've got mary rachel and adam mary i have a question um november 9th is a little over a month away and so how late or how close to that date um can we make the decision because you know things could change and um i would like to be in person um if nothing else because it would be basically um my final meeting

[201:00] and there's just some sentimental value i guess and uh and so how much time do we have to decide well i'll turn to nuria um after i i give you my thoughts but since it's two weeks between our last october meeting and that november 9th meeting it would seem to me like we have all the way until the last meeting in october because that gives staff two weeks to prepare but nuria does that sound accurate or i i do i will say that for me mostly it's your comfort right and where we're i think we're ready we'll do the dry run in terms of technology and the ability to move forward i believe that we're there it's whether it's how much more information you need from perhaps our public health authority and we meet and talk to the county at least weekly and probably several times a week so we can bring you the latest information we can work with lexi on what those recommendations are and bring them to you or send them to you via a memo or

[202:02] email or something so it really is uh we can we can choose that date if you want but we will have information all along and so we'll be monitoring excellent mary does that all make sense i think my takeaway from that is we can decide at the all the way up until the last meeting in october if we wanted to as a body that works for me thank you okay super and then i've got rachel and adam rachel um so i'm just going to support bob's suggestion that we meet in in person on the 9th and 16th and i think it's probably helpful if we give some strong indication tonight that we'd like to do that understanding that we can rein it back in and in terms of bob's concern about micromanaging i'm i'm not wanting us to micromanage nuria with regard to staff but i think we have to manage ourselves a bit and so that's why i'm suggesting that we could commit to testing and then her staff would not be in harm's way because one of us is coming in there carrying delta so i

[203:01] don't know if if nuria can demand that we get vaccinated or get tested but i think it would be helpful if we all just may be committed to that and then um you know i i think for two meetings for sure i'm i'm okay with the mask i think that there is value in not having the masks on so we can read each other's facial expressions and micro expressions so i agree with erin that will be helpful if we can get that county exemption in in place if possible before the ninth um but even if not uh my dad is a retired surgeon and he continually reminds me when i complain about wearing masks that like he had to stand up 10 hours a day often in stressful situations wearing a mask and so i i should not complain you know when i'm doing it sitting down so we'll try and carry that spirit forward and wear the mask if we need to but i think it would be great to see you all um those that are that are exiting uh one last time in chamber so i'm strongly supportive of that and and welcoming the new members as well thanks

[204:00] ask a clarifying question rachel um you put all the thoughts out around either vaccination or testing but if there's council members who want to do this hybrid i assume that you're only talking about the ones who will be there in person correct that is correct and i you know it was a it just occurred to me that we could be vaccinated and still test like we have these 15-minute tests now that are free and available um that we can either order on our own or i think the city could order you know to have available um and if we all test you know and then in 15 minutes before we go in or whatever then there's some extra level of security that we're not putting anyone else at risk and obviously other other organizations are just you know working in real life a lot so we're probably doing a lot of of heightened consideration here um but i think that that there are also some some situations where people do just test

[205:00] you know weekly so we could do that thanks rachel i have adam nearby and juni adam yeah i support bob's proposal as well thanks adam here bye i'm fine with bob's proposal as long as the hybrid options available during that so whoever wants to go in can and whoever does not can do that great juni well i just have a question for rachel i've never done the um [Music] testing and i'm wondering what does that entail is it the nasal it's a it's a fair question you don't want the brain stab right so it is a nasal test but it's not like the the like that hits your brain version of it um so it's it's one that like uh because we we have some um my husband qualified as a as a physician for it you know a while ago so it's it's just that like you know not

[206:01] into the far recesses but it's a nasal thing that you then uh it's very easy to you know you put like six drops in a in a i don't know is anybody else can anybody else help me with this unlike a little piece of cardboard and then you slide the nasal thing under it and you just close it for 15 minutes it's it's a bit like a home pregnancy test if i if that's not offensive to say easy to read easy to to take i cannot help you as much rachel because it's coming my way but i do know that it is not the deeper swab that so many people find discomforting and so i can show you one juni if it would help would you demonstrate at the next meeting i'm looking at one right over there and i'm thinking if i need to get it out i mean i yeah it's not mine it's my husband so i can't do that ethically so so i i think what i'm hearing is

[207:00] consensus around bob's idea um which is that we plan on being in person on the ninth and on the 16th we ask the next council um to please be in person on the 16th but that that is a strong encouragement to council members but not a requirement because we'll set up hybrids so any council members who choose to can attend via hybrid so i think that's a consensus i've got and the good news is if we say that's a consensus tonight we can change our mind for three weeks before we're really committing ourselves so does anyone disagree with that summary okay very good with uh adam yeah real quick before we move down from that i i did have a request uh for the last study session which is the ninth i believe correct currently um i know juni is on the calendar as leading it but i was wondering if since it's my last

[208:01] possible study session if she wouldn't mind me leading that one especially because there's a chance she may be a major part of that meeting so um i i will take that to cac adam and juni is on cac so she can weigh in on that at cse and i think that would be fine the only fly in the ointment could be if we turn it into a meeting um search case yeah so you're uh you're it then we'll try and keep it away from a meeting so you can have your last hurrah as long as jimmy's okay with that i'm okay with that okay it's my birthday and i can have that day off so you can have it there you go all right adam so that's dewey noted any other business that's the end of our agenda and so any other items from council or staff great seeing none i will gavel the

[209:01] meeting closed at 9 25. thank you all for an efficient meeting and have a great night everybody good night thank you [Music] so

[210:01] [Music] you