October 19, 2021 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[3:29] do all right alicia and brenda at six o'clock and all council members here is channel 8 ready emily is channel 8 ready yes channel 8 is good to go great and we are recording excellent all right welcome everyone to the october 19th 2021 regular meeting of the

[4:01] boulder city council we have one announcement tonight which is our normal kobit 19 vaccination announcement to get information about getting your vaccine and sign up for notifications you can go to www.bouldercounty.org families slash disease slash cobia dash 19. slash vaccines and get information about getting vaccinated and with that alicia would you please call the roll yes sir and good evening everyone councilmember brockett present friend hey alicia i'm here joseph it's absent council member nagel here swetlick

[5:00] president wallach president weaver here yates here and yeah present mayor we have our quorum thank you and our first time of business is to amend the agenda we have two items to add under matters items 8a and 8b um a discussion on disbanding the cu sound process subcommittee and a discussion on adding gun violence prevention work to the work plan um could i get a motion to amend the agenda so move second are there any objections to adding those two items great seeing none we will do that and with that we had a unfortunate event early this morning that i would like to see if noria could tell us more about maria thank you mayor and i'm actually going

[6:00] to let our fire chief chief calderazo give us more of an update but we had a unfortunate fire today and i just want to thank the staff who reacted so quickly to support those residents that were caught in the fire and so with that chief i'll just let you take it away with an update thanks nuria good evening council mike calderon fire chief um i just wanted to give you a brief update on the fire i'm sure everyone has heard by now about 3 30 this morning we had an apartment fire in the whittier square apartment complex it was uh upon arrival for our first do units the roofs of there's it's actually a six building complex if you're familiar with it and uh it kind of goes from east to west um and or west to east whichever

[7:02] orientation you prefer and they're impaired buildings and so when the units first arrived about five minutes after dispatch the roofs of the westernmost buildings the first four were already um on fire and there was fire coming through the roof of those buildings the units that got there actually were pretty darn hard um and did a very good job of what we call a defensive operation trying to prevent the fire from taking down the fifth and the sixth buildings on the east side of that complex there were about 40 plus families um that were clearly um in bed at home at this time of the morning um and i have to say if it wasn't for our firefighters and our police officers that arrived on the scene it was it could have been much much worse in terms of casualties there actually weren't any that we that we were able to have

[8:02] among our responders or among the public the residents who got out many of them were actually awakened by the police officers if not by others in the complex so a lot of kudos to to the officers who went knocking on doors to get folks out of there and then later those families were actually taken over to police headquarters um and then helped there um there are we counted 83 units in the complex and um it's a little tough to access from different sides of it so firefighters had a little bit of a challenge um there it is a sprinkler building but the fire had gotten above the sprinklers and actually burned through the roof line and then there's a there's actually a breezeway between the the buildings on the paired buildings and the fire actually traveled internally along that breezeway to catch basically all the structures on fire as of about an hour and a half ago

[9:02] i was able to confirm that of all the owners slash occupants of the structures we've only been unable to account for uh four owners um and we're not even sure that they were there at the time of the fire or if they had uh occupants in there we're just trying to confirm whether or not those folks were in there and why that matters not only is that a big deal but um we were not able to adequately search the first two buildings on the west side or yeah on the west side of the complex because of the the all of the buildings suffered some mean a little bit of collapse here and there but but the first four buildings had some pretty good sizable collapses and um with the fire damage um the water damage um we were worried about putting folks inside those structures if we didn't have to until we can figure out how to kind of make sure that they're safe structurally to go in so um getting it down to four narrows down a

[10:01] lot we hope that it actually gets down to zero and we will have um really dodged um any serious uh injury or casualties from from this incident so as far as i know even though we had a few people um actually have to jump from second floor balconies no serious injuries uh were reported which is which is really really remarkable and a good thing um not good for the families our heart goes out to all of them that lost uh their their homes or their belongings um this evening and hopefully we're getting them taken care of but um that's that's it in a nutshell um there's more certainly in the press release in terms of the number of firefighters i'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has regarding the incident but i also wanted to thank not just the police department for all their help we even used their uav team their drone team to search areas where we weren't comfortable putting a firefighter inside the structure really helpful

[11:00] um but but also um we had help from open space and mountain parks rangers initially with traffic control we had our our fleet partners out there making sure our trucks were continuing to run during the incident so a lot of help from a lot of different departments um to to help us accomplish our job which we couldn't have done without them so a lot of and in fact even our partner departments around us so louisville lafayette um mountain view fire boulder rural fire all sent units into the city to cover the city because we put all of our units in on this fire so they are our count my counterpart fire chiefs um we've all made a mutual aid agreements to help each other and they were able to help uh cover the city while we did that so it's it was really a a team effort and a lot of different ways um to to fight this fire and and thankfully at this point we're not aware of any serious um injuries there were some pets we have

[12:01] not been able to account for i know that's been a question as well um and so we're you know when we have an opportunity to uh get back into the structure we'll certainly be looking for for those um the last thing i did want to say in terms of the investigation and the caught and the origin and cause of the fire we have uh atf has graciously started assisting our own investigations team and they began investigations today but because we were still putting out hot spots as late as late this afternoon they will continue the investigation tomorrow they will do an in-depth um look at um areas of suspicion where they think the fire may have started and hopefully we'll have an answer on uh cause and origin uh sometime tomorrow if not the day after but the the heavy lift in terms of the investigation we expect will happen tomorrow and that's all i have in brief i'm

[13:00] certainly happy to answer any questions if if there are any great thank you very much for that chief and thanks to you and your whole department and to the police and the entire boulder police department for all the work that you guys did to get people out safely um nothing more important than the jobs that you all do in the city so thanks so much for your quick response i do see we have a couple of hands here and i will turn to those now i've got aaron and mark aaron well first let me echo sam's thanks chief colorado appreciate so much the work that your department did and the police department and this really heroic effort to make sure that no one was uh killed or seriously injured so the whole community thanks you for for that great effort thank you sir that's my one one question um would be for you or darya who could speak to if um i know there are members of the community that are eager to assist folks who are who have been displaced and lost their belongings and such what are good ways for people to volunteer or donate to to help folks out who've suffered

[14:01] through this tragedy that's it oh go ahead mike take it sorry i'm i so that is a great question we got asked that a lot today and i and we have actually um some opportunities for folks to contribute or donate and i think we have a slide even that we can tee up to share with folks um there's a few different opportunities um there is um you'll see in the middle bullet here there are three fundamental ways to donate of course the red cross was instrumental um in helping the folks that uh went to the police department headquarters from the uh incident um and they're a big part in how we respond to many fires um and helping residents out so that's one way that's a more general way to donate there's the 1-800 help now and there's also the opportunity to text the red cross but it's really the red cross that does a lot of of work

[15:00] for and with residents as well as um for responders on scene so they're one of the biggest ways uh to help um folks impacted by the fire and and even folks who who responded to it while they were there so helping them helps everyone involved if i could just add to that before we move to the next question i just want to note that they're not accepting clothing donations because of covid but they have been our main liaison and to the chief's point they were so instrumental in helping the folks in the immediate after the aftermath of those that had to evacuate so if you are inclined and we are so appreciative of our community that is helping their neighbors that is a great way to use uh that intention and uh allow the red cross to help disperse that thank you so much for that thank you both aaron looks like that's all for you great and then i've got mark and mary mark

[16:00] yeah i want a second uh what aaron said chief thank you so much for the performance of your department and all the men uh it would have been so much worse if you had not been there uh just two questions one is actually for nuria the first question for you chief do we have any sense of how badly uh the buildings have been damaged any sense of whether they can be reconstructed or will have to be torn down and built into that's a good question um so i was there on the scene i'm a terrible engineer i'll be honest with you up front um but i will say the the first four buildings were heavily damaged but um [Music] the way that building is constructed i mean there's some you know there there are some fundamentals in there they're probably okay um most of the damage was in the upper stories of the building but there's a lot of water damage and my guess is um there's a if the bones are still good yes but my guess is

[17:00] um at the the very top of that building for sure definitely going to need um heavy heavy rehab but i don't know about the rest of it or whether structurally it's truly unsound and not they're not able to to work with what's left thank you and my second question is for nuria what what are the scope of the types of assistance that we can provide for place residency well i appreciate that again we're letting the red cross really take the lead on it and they are right now having those conversations with anyone who's displaced they have the ability immediately to offer sort of basic needs uh toiletries blanket they're also uh focusing on those that perhaps need some additional financial assistance as that moves forward and we will continue to be in contact with them as they learn more we will certainly be talking to them and see what else we need to do thank you appreciate it

[18:00] thank you mark mary and i too would like to echo um the gratitude that my colleagues have expressed so thank you um my question is what kind of um sheltering will the displaced individuals and families be receiving so um there's it actually runs the gamut i don't have info on those who don't have their own accommodations but i know quite a few um in fact even while we were on the scene today we had a number who left to different locations and clearly had another place to go but came back to see what was going on so um there were i can't give you numbers i don't know for sure but i know quite a few had alternatives um but for those who don't i don't have a good answer maybe um nuria does yeah i'll only add we were just in communication with the red cross just a few hours ago

[19:01] and they had not mentioned that anyone needed further accommodations most people found um sort of housing with friends or family members but they also indicated that if anybody needed shelter that they would be assisting in that regard so again we'll keep you updated as that moves forward but they've done a terrific job and really appreciative of their work and partnership to help those that were impacted thank you both that's all i have adam yeah i want to thank you as well chief and the entire department my question was we don't have very many large structural fires so when we do i think it's a good opportunity to see if the resources and everything that is required to handle especially if there were multiple incidences in a short amount of time or something along those lines do you feel confident that we were capable and had everything we needed for this and anything else that may have come up

[20:00] at the same time that's a fantastic question i i think we did um and i think um what's what's really neat about these incidents if anything if there's a silver lining in them is how well um we're able to partner with some of the other outside agencies to help cover us as we do for them so it's a it's a give and take um if another community has an issue we go and help them as much as they come in and cover for us i was able to actually put every unit i have on this incident and and to successfully uh use every piece of equipment that we needed for the fire and allow my partners to come in and and take over different parts of the city while we were handling this incident and i think that that is what you'd want in regional cooperative agreements and um mutual aid agreements so i that is

[21:01] what i consider some of the the better cases of cooperation in public safety services as a model throughout the country that most tried to achieve and and it was on it was on evidence it was evident today on that scene thank you chief thanks adam mary yep i just wanted to add as i'm getting some additional notes from staff and in the vein of thank yous for all those that are helping we had um the executive director jen crowl of barha reached out to us as well to see if they could help with housing and they were connected directly to the red cross so just wanted to thank them for their work and then cu who's always been a partner with the city they're providing housing and food for any cu students who lost their apartments and so while we don't have the numbers on where everyone has gone i just wanted to take a quick moment and give a shout out to everyone who's been assisting great well thank you for that nuria and chief i just or nuria um maybe to both

[22:01] of you have a couple questions um one is about when we will have a full search done um how long do you think it will be before we've you know in the overhaul and salvage operation been able to kind of check in on each of the apartments and make sure that um pets and or folks that we may not have otherwise found when will we have a physical inspection of the entire property completed so i'm going to uh guess here the first thing is to make sure as you know to finish the investigation and so we're going to let them do that but at the same time so that's probably going to take another day or two we're going to try to uh assess the structure itself so that we can see if we can get into it in wherever we think we might have uh maybe pets or i don't think if we're down to four that's that's key for folks unaccounted for in terms of owners um if we can get a hold of those

[23:00] folks and see where their units are in the structure we can actually focus the search there rather than um try to do a unit by unit search especially if we don't need to so it'll probably take a few more days before we can get back in there i would hope by the end of the week we can have an assessment to get in there and do whatever we need to do to confirm um that we have no victims or their you know the pets are all accounted for kind of thing so that's that's our plan um going forward and hopefully we can we can get with those who have unaccounted for pets so they can be they can tell us um where the search needs to be done all right perfect that's great and then the last um thought i had was as we go through the recovery process and the salvage and overhaul i don't know if it's appropriate but it certainly seems like we have the boulder strong resource center that we

[24:00] established after the shooting and i don't know is there any possible collaboration as far as um directing victims there who might need some kind of support i believe so we i know what we are we're working uh sorry i know we're reaching out as we move forward and part of what we're trying to do is make sure that we have an assessment on what folks needs are and we have certainly also sent a note to staff who we also don't want to forget are courageous enough to go in circumstances and face potential tragedies every day and we want to make sure that's a resource to them as well but we will be looking at that sam i think that's a great suggestion and i think by tomorrow we'll have a better assessment on who needs what and who hasn't been able to connect to folks as we move forward all right that is excellent again thank you to all involved all of our staff the police the fire um fighters as well as everybody who supported this work and

[25:01] good to hear that the mutual aid agreements worked as they're intended to do so again thanks to everyone and keep us posted please on developments as we go forward with that i think we're ready to move to open comments and as part of that i'm going to try and remember to turn to brenda and brenda if you could walk us through the rules of public comment that'd be great thank you sam let me get the correct screen pulled up here sorry that it was ready to go all right and i'm going to share my screen can everyone see that i can see it great so just as a reminder to all those who are participating both in open comment and in our public hearings tonight that the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for

[26:01] productive meaningful and inclusive civic conversations this vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members staff and council members and supports democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives there is more information about this vision and the work that was done to create it on um the productive atmospheres page of our website the easiest way is to google those is to search those words from our home page a few examples oh that's not what i wanted to do a few examples of what we're talking about when when we talk about guidelines to support the vision are 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

[27:01] impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited and participants are required to register to speak using the name they are commonly known by and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online currently only audio testimony is permitted online if you need your name changed and you don't know how to do so please reach out to me in the q a box and i'm happy to change it for you and with that sam we are ready to begin great thank you very much brenda and we have five speakers signed up for open comment tonight each speaker will have two minutes and speakers are requested not to address any of the four items that we have at the public hearing tonight this is open comment and not public hearing on any of the specific items that we have to hear later on um with that our first three speakers are brian maron lynn siegel and kim

[28:01] mccarthy brian when you are ready you will have two minutes hi good evening um i believe i'm signed up for the public hearing i got the email confirming time for public hearing it's on the budget yes that'll be later um i believe that's the third or fourth item we have tonight let me look i didn't i didn't get a confirmation email for any kind of public comment i'd like to speak in public hearing and i did get a confirmation for that okay very good so that'll be item 5c is the budget brian and we'll make sure that you are slotted in for that um next then we have lynn siegel kim mccarthy and patrick murphy well i got uh an announcement that i was approved for open comment but i didn't get a listing of the open comment people and i got two listings of the public

[29:00] hearing people a revised version so i'm kind of confused too um so where is the timer sam i don't see it it's up now there we go okay yeah as recently as 1992 hogan pancost was a beautiful wetland with entirely water for development in 94 the owner of hogan pan cost dumped 43 truckloads of unpermitted fill dirt on this land to cover up the water in 2002 the land was sold at the current owners they hired a consultant who recommended that the remainder of the wetlands be filled be ready to to ready the site for development in february of 2008 the owners took the consultant's advice and filled in the wetlands without a permit our city council wrote to the commissioners begging them to require restitution and restoration both the commissioners and the developers ignored city council's police and the city was left helpless nothing you can do about it the property lies in the

[30:00] county outside of your jurisdiction these same owners have now decided that they are ready to have their land annexed into our city council members they snubbed in 2008 morsel and applebaum are absent tonight this was written in 2008 so this is nothing new with cu south 54 of all u.s wetlands have been drained or failed for development purposes how sad that the town once admired as environmental trendsetters is now poised to reward purposeful wetland destruct destruction a vote in favor of annexation will condone crimes against the earth a vote in favor of annexation will establish a precedent cementing the fact that intentionally destroying wetlands is an acceptable procedure for getting your land annexed into boulder colorado and they said also tonight you can choose to hear your community and hear your appointed planning board apparently the planning board um was on the right side of that or you can choose to ignore us um this is someone that wrote that

[31:02] in 2008 so deja vu all over again we'll see you south no on cu south shame on you thank you lynn next we have kim mccarthy patrick murphy and chris wolfman kim you're up with two minutes hi all um this is actually really difficult for me to admit publicly but this is a community concern i live in a boulder housing partners community specifically bridge walk and when i first signed my lease that's when the problem started my husband needed a handicap placard and he refused ignored or declined to put up the placard or the sign and a dedicated parking space this continued on until we had a rodent infestation

[32:01] and i was not getting any type of resolution or response from boulder housing partners who i'll refer to as bhp so much so that i had to call denver fox news consumer reports to have them come out and they finally did at which point bhp management agreed to come out and mitigate the rodent infestation through that process i was physically assaulted twice by their employees after going through a lot of this complaining they forced me through a grievance process that is unproductive and bullies me they have sent out demands that requires me to get an attorney to respond to them telling them that this is an illegal and unresponsible demand i had to go through mediation i just now have public health come out through mediation they

[33:00] they they violated the terms by sending me a demand and publicly posting what was said on my door i just recently had public health come out and only investigate my property my unit and now my family has to get tested for the hatma virus and that is exactly not what you want in boulder or colorado now we all have to get tests within two days bhp needs to be accountable thank you kim next we have patrick murphy and we'll close with chris wolfman patrick 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 mini effort died i've presented a fast and efficient carbon reduction plan to city council

[34:01] members that would meet with me mark wallach refused to meet with me and is running to stay on council his claims to listen to the public are evidently just lip service so i'll present that plan in increments so mark can hear them here's solar to be equitable based on usage with the assumption that large electric usage is from higher income and low usage from lower income homes provide a sliding scale of incentives with larger incentives for smaller installations slide two please and smaller uh and larger incentives for small installations this is a one-time payment with decades of value for example a two thousand dollar incentive which i received from excel in 2011 nets uh eight dollars and 33 cents a month over the 20 years since solar costs have dropped a lot since 2011 a smaller incentive might

[35:01] achieve the same result boulder currently collects about seven million dollars a year in carbon taxes so what if 2.2 million were repurposed for real carbon reduction 200 000 for administration and the remaining 2 million for solar incentives would result in 1 000 homes with solar since only about 1 in 7 homes is actually suitable for solar that means every solar capable home in boulder could have solar in six years or less slide three there would still be about five million dollars in carbon taxes left over just look at all the solar capable business roofs in one small part of boulder slide four the planet burns floods and dies while boulder fiddles thank you patrick next we have chris wolfman chris i don't see chris in the meeting sam so um perhaps chris if you're here under a different name maybe you can raise your

[36:01] hand using the raised hand function at the bottom of your screen [Music] and i i'm not seeing hands being raised i don't see it either brenda um thank you and with that we will bring uh open comment to a close and bring it back to council i'll turn to you nuria and sandra to start with noria do you have any uh comments on what we heard tonight i do not thank you sam and as always thank folks for commenting great thank you and sandra i do not either thank you sam thank you council members erin i see your hand up yeah just in regards to the testimony from ms mccarthy about some challenges she's having working with boulder housing partners i believe she's written us a couple emails i wonder if they're uh if the city maybe our mediation service you know could contact her and maybe see if there's any way that we

[37:00] could help you know resolve the sounds like some kind of dispute um or issues that they're having between each other i'm happy to talk to staff and see what's been done or not done and perhaps we can do uh more in terms of contacting mediation on that thanks aaron thanks so much thank you aaron any other council responses great seeing none with that i think we are ready to move on alicia all right sir our next item on tonight's agenda is the consent agenda which includes items a through in thanks very much and council um are there any questions comments feedback or emotion on the content agenda

[38:01] rachel i will make a motion in a minute but i do have a question um on item 3h which is about special districts um in the general improvement district um and eco passes in one neighborhood forest glen i think it is and i just haven't seen anything like that so i was wondering kind of how that works and why that works and um i just wanted some information on it because it was intriguing i think i may have asked that question in a previous year as well so um staff any response to the forest land transit pass sure i'm happy to take a little bit and provide uh some more information as we get into the budget presentation but it's a funding mechanism for a particular area to fund their ecopass through an additional

[39:00] levy on the property tax and so we show it as a separate district and that's how you approve the budget and can i ask just a quick question there is it because it is property tax that we call it out differently than other neighborhood ecopasses i believe it's because we set it up as a general improvement district so it needs to be separated out from from the fund and i see our assistant director of finance cara skinner as well so happy to defer if i've missed anything on that as well that's correct it is because they have a separate mill levy that um and they are a district so there are certain requirements for approving that in a specific way okay um thanks well you know it's it's really hard to get an eco pass for neighborhoods i was just curious like why that path was chosen and maybe that's a different there's a different day for this conversation but um you know if that

[40:01] works well is that something that we want to replicate is it something that that needs to be revoted on occasionally if neighbors don't end up liking the levy i'm just kind of curious on the whole dynamics and if that's something that we should be uh here looks like aaron may have some information no question different anyways i'm just i don't know if tonight's the right night to ask this because it's sort of in the weeds but um it's intriguing if it's something that we should be doing in more places i don't know maybe sam that's a question that's been asked and answered a few years ago i i only asked it for the same reason that you did it came up to the top you know it's highlighted as a specific item and i think it's that it's a general improvement district it's a great question as to whether it's a good way to do it or not i don't i don't know aaron is this a colloquy or something separate no not a colloquy okay anything else on that rachel you know i'm happy to make a uh motion to um pass the consent agenda if it's helpful so moved

[41:00] great second okay we have motion and a second i'll turn to aaron aaron well i just want to speak briefly to uh 3n which is about changing some parking regulations and in parts and open space and i just want to call out that that seemed like a really great process that was followed you know that a proposal is put out by staff to change to tweak the parking hours uh slightly to account for some issues that have arisen you know it was um shown to the community it was worked through the open space board they came up with a consensus decision it's a very reasonable change and now it's on our consent agenda so i just want to call that out as a great way of letting a board do the like work on a proposal with the community and so kudos to everyone involved and we can continue to look for other opportunities to let boards do that kind of work on on smaller proposals like that all right we have a motion and a second for the consent agenda rachel or mary do you want to speak to it or shall we just move on to about

[42:02] all right sounds like we're ready to move on alicia i have this as a roll call vote is that correct that is correct sir please take us through thank you councilmember young yes brockett yes friend yes nagel hi swetly yes wallach hi weaver hi and yes yes sir the consent agenda passed with a vote eight to zero excellent and if you would take us to the next item please all righty our next item on tonight agenda is our public hearings item number five item five a is the consideration of a

[43:00] motion to approve the selection of the city attorney excellent and with that i will turn to our um recruitment subcommittee bob and rachel rachel do you want to speak first or you want me to go uh please go ahead i'm still downloading something okay that's i'm happy too um well rachel and i were tasked several months ago with um with a process to present to counsel our recommendations on um our new city attorney um council members have had the opportunity this is the second time we've gone through this process you might recall that we got down to finalists last time and then council collectively decided to go back out and see what other applicants there might be we did a second round of applications we received some really good applications the second time it was a win-win process we went i think from 12 applications to seven to five um those were interviewed

[44:00] a council then selected three um finalists out of that group and they were they were again interviewed and the recommendation that rachel and i are making is for the appointment as our next city attorney of a woman named teresa taylor tate up until recently she has been the deputy city attorney for the city of longmont um and that's our recommendation i'll have a couple other comments in a few minutes but i wanted to pause there with our recommendation see if uh rachel has some uh comments to add to that no i think you covered it well um we did have three outstanding finalists and um it was a hard decision and and we appreciate as the subcommittee everyone um from staff and our colleagues working so hard to do this process twice it's been um long and believering so thanks for sticking with us and i do have a formal motion language when when the time's

[45:00] right excellent thanks very much so i would like to start with council questions or comments then we have a public hearing on this and then we'll return to council for final discussion and any vote so any council questions or comments before we go to public hearing aaron well i said we do comments after the public hearing maybe per per usual yeah yeah that's just fine if we don't have anything ahead of time no questions or comments i would move right into the public hearing all right with that let me pull up my public hearing list all right so let's open the public hearing we have one member of the public signed up for this it is lynn siegel when he because we only have one there will be three minutes per speaker

[46:00] lindsey go you are up with three minutes this is the public hearing on what on the appointment of the new city attorney oh okay i didn't realize there were three there was budget and another one too um i don't really have anything to say about the public attorney except that i'd like to see a much more robust inclusion of the public in this choice because boy you know we fight it once we have that person in there and they get a living h to deal with and so it would be a lot nicer if we had a way of really knowing a lot more about who's coming in instead of giving the last two or three people who have applied and and haven't been really part of the process very much don't have a deep background on any of them and and

[47:00] don't have a way to really look through and see if those three were the right ones to be chosen from a list of 60. um it's it's really not a very open process and i just can't really support anybody that you choose but you can bet that i'll be complaining about them once they're in and it'd be nice if that were not the all right case you lynn and with that we will bring the public hearing to a close and bring it back to council um bob i see you got your hand up yeah i'll just um make a comment on my own recommendation um as rachel said this was a very difficult decision we had three extremely well qualified candidates one of our candidates was internal um and that made the decision in some regards even more difficult because we will always want to encourage our employees our city employees to apply for opportunities to expand and grow and we did not take this decision lightly and we want to continue to

[48:00] encourage all employees in the city to apply for positions that give them the opportunity to grow and expand and so um the fact that we're not recommending the internal candidate should not be taken by anyone as a reflection on our discouragement of um of of of candidates within the city to apply and we hope that that that continues as a matter of fact i think one of the lessons learned at least for me in this process is i think we need to do a better job of letting internal candidates know about opportunities and affirmatively encouraging them to apply for positions you're good um mary i'd like to agree with bob with respect to um this is not reflection on anything that had to do with the quality of candidates that we received i also think that one of the things that we need to do is

[49:00] address whatever barriers that there might be for um internal candidates in applying and maybe even um set up some sort of program that encourages and and develops um employees which we have most excellent staff to aspire to the top roles within the city so for example we addressed one of the barriers between the first set of candidates and the second set of candidates and that was the residency requirement and and that seemed to make quite a big difference and it makes me wonder what other barriers we have in the system i also think that um our process tends to really be biased towards going out and looking outside of the city organization and how can that be made more welcoming

[50:02] toward internal candidates again because i think we have excellent excellent staff that should not be um discouraged from aspiring to those top roles and so um i very much agree with bob and for me it was a very very difficult decision and yeah i i will be supporting the nominated candidate but i just want to be clear that it was a very difficult decision for me could you marry aaron yeah i'll agree with that as well it's very difficult uh challenging decision you know i'll be supporting the the recommendation that the sub committee appreciate all the work bob and rachel that you did with the two rounds but just want to say sandra you've done a phenomenal job as interim city attorney and i want to

[51:00] really thank you so much for the work that you've been doing and just say that i really look forward to continuing to work together i think you and ms taylor tape will make a great team in the city attorney's office and very much value all the work that you've done and look forward to all the work that we'll continue to do together so thanks thanks again for for all of your efforts thank you aaron anyone else wish to weigh in i i'll jump in then um i want to say that i will be supporting uh the recommendation um that's being brought forward tonight i will also say like my fellow colleagues that it was a very difficult um decision to arrive at there were lots of discussions and trade-offs and it is a reflection of the high quality of the candidates that we had that it was such a difficult decision um i i want to thank also um bob and rachel for all the work that you've had to do i know that this was a heavy lift

[52:02] and also thank sandra very much for stepping up into the interim city attorney role you've been excellent and really appreciate all the work that you've done and like aaron i look forward to well i won't personally be here to do work uh going into the future but i look forward to you being able to continue to support council in the city with your great work um with that nuri i know that you had asked to say a few words as well so i'd like to turn to nuria uh in any wisdom you might have on this issue i appreciate that sam and i i don't know that i have a lot of wisdom but i will say that i have a tremendous amount of gratitude and appreciation to sandra i will say i'm excited to work with teresa i'm sure that she will serve our enterprise well if this moves forward and is approved but i cannot speak highly enough of sanders work in the short time that i have known her it has been five months really that i have seen sandra leap into that void

[53:02] that tom carr left as he moved on and can only say that she has been a tremendous leader thoughtful about her advice and i've seen her be so incredibly inclusive with her team and allowing those team members to grow and be empowered and work on a variety and multitude of projects that have been really complex and difficult throughout the city and so i just i know her to be a truly servant leader i think she has been a critical part of our entire city leadership team and i know and hope that we will continue to benefit from sandra's insight and leadership well into the future and i i believe i speak wholeheartedly not just for myself sandra but for your entire leadership team in just a huge gratitude uh for all you've done thank you very much nuria all right with that one last invitation for council comments all right seeing none do we have a motion

[54:02] rachel yep the committee recommends council consideration of this matter in action in the form of this motion motion to accept the recommendation of the council recruitment committee to appoint teresa taylor tate as city attorney and to authorize mayor sam weaver and city manager nuria rivera vandermeide to execute an employment contract with miss taylor tate including the terms set forth in the agenda memo so moved second all right we have a motion and a second and i'm not sure the protocol here but alicia if you wouldn't mind taking us through roll call but please yes sir of course council member brockett hi friend yes sweatlet

[55:00] yes wallach weaver all right yates yes and yeah yes sir this election for the position of city attorney being theresa taylor tate has been approved eight to zero very good thank you very much and um sandra thank you again for serving as interim city attorney and for all the work you've done for the city so far and mayor weaver i i hope it's okay i would just like to say a few words please do thank you so much i i just want to take this opportunity to congratulate and welcome teresa tate to the city's organization and to the city attorney's office i look forward to getting to know you better and working collaboratively together i would also like to thank city council for providing me with the opportunity to lead this great city's legal work during

[56:00] the interim period it has been an honor to serve the community in this way i would also like to thank the city departments and leadership for supporting me and the city attorney's office during this transition to my colleagues at the city attorney's office i am deeply grateful and proud of your dedication professionalism and commitment by going above and beyond in supporting the city's legal work each and every day and particularly during the last six months of transition thank you thank you sandra and that was wonderful and i want to echo your sentiment that we look forward to bringing teresa into the fall of the city of boulder so with that any further comments my counsel all right seeing none alicia could you take us to the next item yes sir our next item on tonight's agenda is item 5b which is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt

[57:00] ordinance 8504 changing licensing requirements for marijuana key holders circuses carnivals and miniaturies mobile food vehicles insurance merchants tobacco retailers and secondhand dealers and prime brokers by amending title four license and permits section 6-14-8 requirements related to operation of medical marijuana businesses 6-16-8 requirements related to operation of recreation recreational marijuana businesses and 9-6-6 mobile food vehicle sales brc 1981 and setting forth related details excellent thank you alicia maria yep i see michonne cook is ready for action as she moves us forward on this item thank you so if we can have the presentation

[58:02] please thank you very much so good evening council i'm ms sean cook i'm the licensing manager with the city of boulder um so this evening we're before you with some requested changes to the miscellaneous licenses that we process um so we are recommending changes to title four which are general licenses general city licenses and also a change to title six which is the medical marijuana and recreational marijuana code with me this evening is also detective edmund burke and he will provide um additional comment and is able to answer any questions having to do with more detailed changes to the secondhand dealer license type so with that you can take us to the next slide please

[59:04] so um the first change or the first comment that i will make is we have uh reached out to both internal and external um uh customers uh prior to coming to council for these particular changes we have informed our cannabis licensing and advisory board of the recommended change to marijuana key holders so that we take a marijuana a key holder form as opposed to an application and a fee we've also reached out to boulder county health department they're a close partner of ours having to do with mobile food vehicles in particular so we've let them know our intended changes we've held meetings with the sales tax department which handles city business licensing general city business licensing we've talked to boulder fire who is also

[60:01] a close partner with ours having to do with mobile food vehicles and here this evening in addition to having conversations with the boulder police department you'll also hear from detective burke this evening in addition to that we have sent an email to all miscellaneous licenses who currently hold the four license types that we're suggesting changing from one year to two year so all of our current licensee leads we have reached out via email and we held one call-in session on september 23rd and also allowed them to submit email comments if they wish to our main email account and we didn't have anyone call in during our call-in section session and we haven't received any email comments uh which was negative for the change so okay next slide so the part one changes

[61:01] that we are suggesting is we are suggesting changing our current process for city licensing for marijuana key holders from an application which is about 10 pages longer it was 10 pages long with the city fee that we collect and process instead to a one-page disclosure form for marijuana city keyholders we put this in place temporarily to see how it would work we started that on september 1st and that has been very positively received from the business owners we feel that this keeps the requirement to disclose city key holders to the city having to do with marijuana licenses but it eliminates a fee for businesses of 150 dollars per application and it also saves hours of processing time for city licensing staff so

[62:01] next slide so the one comment that i will make in regards to our recommend recommendation to change one-year licenses instead to two-year licenses is we feel that this will reduce the potentiality that we will need to request an additional licensing staff person by reducing the number of renewal applications and also marijuana key holder applications that we receive every year in addition to that it will maintain the information that we receive proper information for city enforcement city license requirements enforcement and it also maintains the application fees at a level that should cover processing costs for our office to do that type of work next slide and with that i will hand

[63:01] hand over the presentation to detective edmund burke having to do with secondhand dealer changes thank you ms cook i'm detective ed burke and i'm with the boulder police department i'm a pawn detective here at pd and among other investigative responsibilities i oversee compliance regarding the businesses in boulder that are identified as secondhand dealers as well as the reviewing and inspecting of the transaction slips that are completed by the employees at these businesses when purchases are made much of what is contained within the proposed changes to the boulder revised code relates to clarifying the expectation of secondhand dealers by the city of boulder the brc relating to secondhand dealers has not been updated since the 80s and in regards to businesses that the brc defines as secondhand dealers they are actually considered as pawn brokers by state law in the colorado revised statutes many of the changes proposed to the

[64:01] revised code ensure that the expectations upon brokers between the state law and brc are consistent and are also clearly defined these definitions and expectations include a 30-day holding period for purchased items with purchased items being kept separate and apart as well as all items valued at more than thirty dollars necessitate documentation to the police department the other recommendation that is being made will ensure that all transaction slips for these purchases will be documented on an electronic format which will reduce staffing time increase the accuracy of recording the information and also allow for photographic record of the transactions these proposed changes will ultimately ensure that the brc is compliant with state law and ultimately will improve the recovery of stolen items by law enforcement i'll now turn it back over to mrs cook unless there's any questions for me thank you

[65:00] all right next slide please so again i alluded to this earlier in our presentation but an overarching recommendation that we're bringing to council today is to change one-year license terms from itinerant merchant licenses which are door-to-door sales licenses for second-hand dealer licenses and pawn broker licenses for mobile food vehicle licenses and also for tobacco retailer licenses we are recommending that the license term be changed from one year to two year what the two-year license will allow us to do is it will allow us to stagger renault so we'll only process half of the renewals on any given year and it also adds in an ability in those license types for summary suspensions in the instance where a business fails some sort of health and safety um yearly inspect and inspection so i'll

[66:02] give you an example so for mobile food vehicle licenses those license types need to be inspected and approved by boulder county health because they're making food and then in addition to that they need to be inspected by boulder fire they need to be passed by boulder fire so if it is a two-year license on the second year after the mobile food vehicle licensee is licensed we will have an ability to summary summarily suspend the license until the particular business passes their fire inspection and also passes their health inspection and once those health and safety inspections are remedied then we can go ahead and lift that city license suspension right and lastly and that's it for our presentation thank you

[67:00] awesome thank you michonne for that i thought the memo on this subject was extremely clear and very well written so thanks very much for that um council members any questions all right if there are no questions uh mary yes um thank you michonne for the presentation um my questions are fairly straightforward um on the marijuana key holders and one of the reasons that um this is changing is because um there are no longer background checks required could you go over what what is behind um there no longer being background checks so that actually is a is a change that we put in place a couple of years ago and this uh to me sort of seems like the

[68:01] next logical um you know um evolution of that so the circumstances is probably with many other types of businesses there's a great deal of turnover and so we uh it's that way with bars and restaurants as well but we reserve our background checking and our vetting and our financial reviews now for owners officers managing members those people that actually can exercise control and oversight of marijuana businesses it is the case for city key holders that they need to be background checked by the state division in any event so they have to have a state card whether it be a support card or a key card or something like that so we do ask for the state number on the key holder form so we know that they've been

[69:01] background checked by the state but it really is just a one-page disclosure form to the city office now so that's what we were learning okay great thank you and um also i was not entirely clear if um the ordinance changes the ones that are the six ordinance changes on um it is page five of the memo and packet page 283 there are six changes and are those six changes making the definitions consistent changing the record keeping etc are those basically taking the state law and aligning the brc with the state law i i probably will defer to detective burke and perhaps kathy haddock but what i would say is it's the reverse we are aligning the

[70:02] boulder revised code with the state law which is applicable to that particular business type what we have found is that there quite honestly is some confusion with businesses you know do i know i have to follow the state law but the city law is different it has different time periods it has different values i mean you know what's um [Music] what's which one shall i follow and we're we're making it consistent between the two applicable laws okay great um just wanted to be clear on that um that's all i have thank you thanks mary all right council any other questions all right with that we will go to the public hearing um we have one person signed up for the public hearing tonight that is lynn siegel so then you will have three

[71:01] minutes and the subject is licensing then you should be able to unmute now uh sam um lens mute button is activated but it doesn't look like she is able to unmute yeah i see her here as a attendee lynn for some reason you're muted there you are sorry i had to go get some warm clothes i'm freezing it's um 50 degrees in my house all right okay um

[72:01] we'll go ahead and start the timer then and you have three you have three minutes so what is this hearing for it's about licensing of various kinds of businesses including pawn brokers and marijuana dispensaries okay and i'd say no pawn brokers and no marijuana industries whatsoever should be licensed in boulder at all but i'm a prohibitionist too unlike bob yates so that's just me um i don't i don't believe in any kind of drugs um what the the struggles that we have going on in the world the starving people we don't need to be pawn broking we don't need to be marijuana dealing we don't need to be dealing drugs and alcohol or any of that we need to make our world a fairer place then we can do that kind of stuff but not before that's it thanks thank you lynn with that i will bring the public hearing to a close bring it back to council any further

[73:00] discussion questions or motion mary um i'll move um to it i move to adopt ordinance 8405 changing licensing requirements for marijuana key holders circuses carnivals and menageries mobile food vehicles itinerant merchants tobacco retailers and secondhand dealers and palm brokers by amending title iv licenses and permits section 6-4-8 requirements related to operation of medical marijuana 6-16-8 requirements related to operation of recreational marijuana businesses and 9-6-6 mobile food vehicle sales brc 1981

[74:03] and setting forth related details thank you yeah okay perfect aaron seconded so we have motion in a second mary would you like to speak to your mission anything that updates our code um that hadn't been updated since the 1980s is a fabulous thing to do so um all for it all right thanks mary aaron well we just know how much of a problem that the carnival and menagerie regulations have been over the last couple decades so this is a long overdue update to those um but in all seriousness i appreciate how this is kind of smooth thing smoothing things over and producing kind of bureaucratic drag on city staff and on some of our businesses locally so thanks for this work i appreciate it great thanks aaron and i'll jump in and say it looks like this will save a serious amount of paperwork time for at least one staff member and so it looks like these are

[75:01] an efficiency improvement as well as everything else that goes along with it i have to say that i do love the categories that are being amended itinerant merchant is not something i was familiar with until the update so that's great this all looks like really good work and i agree with mary that um we should endeavor to make sure that we review our code more frequently if we can find these kind of improvements in it so um with that uh any other comments doesn't look like it so um alicia is this a show of hands or is this a roll call this is a roll call sir excellent could you please take it us through that yes sir of course council member friend yes i sweat lit yes wallach

[76:00] aye weaver hi yates yes young yes and brockett all right sir ordinance 8409 was adopted 8-0 excellent and thank you to everyone who brought this forward and alicia if you could please take us on to the next item our next item is num item 5c it is the consideration of the following items relating to the 2022 budget item number one is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8505 adopting the budget for the city of boulder colorado for the fiscal year commencing on the first day of january 2022 and ending on the last day of december 2022 and setting forth related details item number two is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt

[77:01] ordinance 8506 establishing the 2021 city of boulder property tax mill levees which are to be collected by the county of boulder state of colorado within the city of boulder in 2022 for payment of expenditures by the city of boulder county of boulder state of colorado and setting forth related details item number three the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8507 appropriating money to defray expenses and liabilities of the city of boulder colorado for the 2022 fiscal year of the city of boulder commencing on the first day of january 2022 and ending on the last day of december 2022 and setting forth related details and item number four the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8508 amending chapter 4-20 titled fees and section 3-8-3

[78:00] titled tax imposed on non-residential and residential development brc 1981 changing certain fees and setting for related details thank you alicia and nuria thank you sam and i will invite mark wolf to walk us through a short presentation sort of reminding us all on where we were on the budget at first trading all right good evening council can you see my slides all right can perfect so as nuria said you will just hear from me this evening but we have a number of city staff here to answer any questions that may arise we'll go through this presentation fairly quickly just knowing that we spent quite a lot of time going through a detailed presentation of the recommended 2022 budget but we'll touch on a few points this evening including recapping some of our major themes

[79:01] our cip and address some of the questions that we have heard coming in over the last couple of weeks so as a reminder we are proposing a 462.5 million dollar budget that's split across a 300 million dollar proposed operating budget and a little over 162.4 million dollar capital budget which represents a fairly significant increase over last year mostly due to a large 90 plus million dollar bond issue in utilities there is a lot on this slide what i will point you to is appendix a of your packet information on this item that outlines the changes year over year and going back pre-pandemic to 2019 actuals against our 2022 proposed budget by department uh the reason we're giving you this information is there was some conversation of trying to look at an apples to apples comparison pre to

[80:01] pre-pandemic to where we are now and with that we had to make a number of adjustments to give you that apples to apples comparison uh you will notice some larger figures there that jump out when we're looking at compound annual growth rate over the years obviously a lot happens during that period of time so we tried to take some of those out make those adjustments to to have it make sense any adjustments we made or are caveated within that information there are more detailed notes in the appendix which helps with some of these larger percent amounts to give you an idea of what the changes were from 19 to the recommended budget in 2022 as we discussed last time talking about the budget we are making a number of investments across restoration of services including community engagement it's library hours and services cultural

[81:00] arts grants hop service and many others represents about 9.4 million dollars in investment in restoration we do continue to innovate and strive towards service excellence we have made a number of recommended enhancements in the in the recommended budget including to our equity program advanced life support substance abuse programming and many others a little over eight million we continue to uh try to get back to where we were in terms of investment in our employ our employees and also recognize the sacrifice that they have made during the pandemic that represents a little 3.3 million that is in addition to the staffing increases that we hope will help with capacity issues across the organization and last capital improvements as i mentioned 162 million dollar budget there major investments in water wastewater stormwater projects that also includes

[82:00] alpine balsam flood mitigation soil health projects and multimodal enhancements and this slide is to address some of the questions that we've had coming in related to arts and culture budget what you see here is a multi-year representation of arts and culture budget the blue bar is the total division budget the the orange bar is included in that but that breaks out the cultural grants that go out to organizations every year uh what you see in 2020 does not represent the cuts that we had to take due to the pandemic there were adjustments mid-year there was a significant reduction and then council restored some of that funding that represents the original budget in 2020 and in 2021 the 874 650 is the original budget that shaded area that that you see your slightly less dark area is about 157 000 that was approved in

[83:02] special atb as a part of a restoration so that gets you a little over a million in in grants and 21. the proposed budget in uh 2022 is about flat to where we ended up in 21. i will add that we we certainly recognize that that is a flat budget it does not strive towards where we want to be in funding towards our community cultural plan we have identified arpa as a potential source of funding over the next few years to address the the full funding of that plan we do also recognize that it is one time in nature and so that necessitates a long a conversation about long-term funding and and what staff is we're proposing and working with our arts commission on is teeing up that conversation as a part of the the revision the renewal of the cultural plan uh in in 2023 24 in the in the

[84:02] coming years and we do have matt shansky who can get into more details of the changes of the years and some of the plans uh as we've discussed them uh with arpa and coming up to that renewal of our cultural plan we're happy to take questions at this time or wait until after public comment and i do have a suggested motion language when the time comes thank you thank you mark and thank you for being responsive to the information the council requested that it's excellent and i see that bob has his hand up bob thanks mark can you put it back to slide six the last one right before the questions thank you darwin this is probably a question for matt zazanski the head of our um arts group um matt i see that the overall budget the blue line has about tripled since we adopted the cultural master plan in 2015 from 540 000 to almost 1.6 million in this proposed budget um and mark mentioned

[85:02] that um that there may be some backfill temporary and not permanent backfill for arpa or additional funds for marpa but but um mark also observed that that's obviously uh not recurring um and it doesn't get us to our goal what is our goal what are we hoping to get to i mean when will we say all right we're at um level of funding that we're happy with uh thank you matt jazenski with the office of arts and culture and the community cultural plan has a goal by this phase in the cultural plans final phase to have a budget of over two million dollars and a staff of six to handle all those programs um that's in 2015 dollars however um and so you know taking into account um inflation and especially with public art and the cost of construction that's raised and also some programming that we didn't anticipate in 2015 especially in

[86:02] the past few years with the pandemic and the ongoing needs there um it's probably over that two million dollar mark okay thank you man super counsel any other questions mary yeah i also have a question for matt um what is the timing for the renewal of the um arts and culture master plan so the uh current cultural plan expires in 2024 so we're hoping to have a new plan or renew this plan for january 1st 2025 and um what are the kinds of things that um you anticipate might be addressed in that renewal well um i think a lot has changed since 2015 and especially around um the affordability issues and support for

[87:01] artists as small business owners those issues were pointed out but have been a growing concern over the years and the approach to venues is another issue i think is going to change in that next cultural plan the mix of venues affordability for artists and organizations to rent them and what new venues we should bring online okay thank you [Music] mark thanks for the presentation i just have two questions the first is that i seem to have misplaced 64 million dollars we have a 462 million dollar budget but if you go to page 8 of the memo the line items appear to add up to 526 million dollars how do we reconcile this

[88:00] if you could give us a second mark we're going to look up that information right now are you referring to the chart on the 20 on the operating changes by department is that no no i i was looking at i believe it's page eight of the memorandum itself and there was a list of all of the components of the city's budget perhaps it includes could it be inclusive of funds that are not incorporated into the budget itself hey mark this is cara so um you're looking at the actual ordinance and the appropriating amounts by fund i believe is that correct i believe so i don't have it in front of me um so on that chart where um mark showed the maybe you can pull it back up mark but the 462 million dollars it says that it

[89:00] excludes into internal services and transfers and um so that 462 million dollars is sort of a true net number but when we appropriate we have to appropriate across all funds so um [Music] we that 462 million dollar number is sort of avoiding double counting essentially fair enough i i got it um and i noted on i think again it was page six of the staff memo that even after we delete the 12.3 million dollars for 30 perl we actually have a decline in housing and human services uh expenditures from the period 2019 to 2022 which just seems a little odd to me in light of the expanded nature of um you know their responsibilities and the conditions that we're experiencing in

[90:01] the city um can anybody speak to that at all so i i could quickly speak to it but then i would invite people from housing and human services speak to it as well you may recall last year during the budget process we in our second reading or i think it actually might have gone to a third reading last year had a slide sort of right um that addressed housing and human services budget and that is that they um that comparison that you're looking at from 2019 actual to 2022 budget and that 2019 actual captures um budgeted monies that they budget a lot of their money off cycles through the atb processes so what they always budget during the original budget in the fall is is often significantly less than what their eventual budget is come may um and and their actual

[91:03] spending does vary a lot we we incorporated the largest um increase in spending or the largest big spending in 2019 in the description in that table but um they also just because their their projects and such um vary a lot year to year and so then they reappropriate the the remaining dollars but i would invite housing and human services if they want to add anything to that but before we do that is there any other department that has that kind of variability in expenditures where a lot of our capital departments do transportation um but a lot of the transportation dollars are capital and the capital automatically rolls um to the next year so i think housing and human services may be one of the departments that has the most operating budget that they then

[92:00] carry over and re-appropriate through the first atb hey kurt i see that you're there would you like to address mark's question um yeah actually car did an excellent job explaining that um the only thing i'll add is that um so our commercial impact fees and our cash and loot payments typically come mid-year um usually in july is when we get about 80 of those funds at least for cash and blue and um so we don't it's hard to anticipate the income that we'll receive in any particular year um until we get it actually into the year and um you know cash and lieu can range anywhere from 3 million a year to 12 or 13 million a year so it's um we go into the budgeting process in a fairly conservative approach and then make changes to the atb as necessary thank you that's all i've got all right thank you kurt thank you mark

[93:02] any other questions council before we go to the public hearing great i am seeing none so we can turn now to the public hearing uh for this item we have seven members of the public signed up so everyone will get three minutes um the first three speakers that we have tonight are lynn siegel nicole speer and brian marin lynn you are up and you have three minutes to speak about our budget first um the 464 million or approximately that um the utility bonding being high this year because of it we needed to do that activity that year um could be a lot lower if we media supplies so i highly recommend we we municipalize in no in 2025 or as soon as we possibly can

[94:00] and um bring some of that money back into our own community the substance abuse that 8 million that's happening a lot because we can't seem to manage our affordable housing very well in boulder and we've got a lot of people in despair and when they're in despair they go into substance abuse and then when they go into substance abuse um michael bosma makes a a pile of money out of it when he's got two projects going on 311 mapleton which gets him nets him 10 to 50 000 a month per person for 93 people or something like that and those are seniors that that that money could go to their kids their kids aren't getting the money so their kids are probably the ones in despair that michael can take care of at september school which he plans to put a 54 person um facility for drug rehabilitation with

[95:03] all of four count on four people supervising the place um at nine thousand dollars a month so the this the money that we're spending is in the wrong places um we should be not building so much that we're driving the wealth inequality and therefore substance abuse um the other thing water the capital improvements and water is is really stressful when we're growing as much as we are when we're growing alpine balsam on a basis of of transit oriented development which is not happening anymore since the virus and we need to just stop all this building building building because it's it's not boulder might be a desirable place and we're already going to have financial issues with housing here but let's not make it worse so i advise you to fundamentally restructure your budget to

[96:02] make to to cause the demand for the budget to be a lot less and then we can give it to the arts was where it should be going um i don't see the um timer anywhere it's right up on the screen you got 20 seconds left i don't have it on my screen well i'm sorry about that but you have 15 seconds left yeah well you need to improve your um system there because i have no vision of 20 seconds or anything so you know and i really like to know to be able to thank you lynn your time is up appreciate your input um with that we'll move on to nicole speer brian maron and ryan bonik nicole thank you all first i wanted to say thank you to you all and to the city staff for seeing our city and our budget through last year's financial crisis that our budget is recovered as much as it has and we're

[97:01] entering 2022 on such solid financial footing is really incredible so thank you for giving the next council and our entire city a leg up next year budgets are my favorite organizational documents because you can tell so much about what an organization values by looking at how it spends its money organizations and people can say they value all kinds of things but action requires time and money this is why so many people who work on racial and social justice issues refer to budgets as moral documents they show our priorities and values and the way we care for each other and the people in our community as you know i'm currently running for one of the open seats on city council and as you also know from your own city council campaigns this means i've spent a lot of time over the past year talking with people in many different parts of our community trying to understand their concerns and their hopes and dreams for themselves and for our city when i look at our 2022 budget i don't see the priorities and values i've heard reflected and i wonder whether this means budgeting is a process or city

[98:00] needs to improve upon or whether our priorities and values are different from what we say they are over the past year i've heard so many stories from people of color lgbtq folks people living with disabilities and low-income people who've lived here for decades and have heard our city talk again and again about becoming equitable and inclusive without seeing any measurable changes in the way they're treated i've heard from workers and retirees at all income levels who've been pushed out of boulder by increasing housing prices despite our talk about increasing affordable housing and housing our workforce so many people i've heard from are concerned about rising homelessness and encampments but they see us investing more and more money into law enforcement solutions to social services problems and every time i talk with our youngest residents many of whom can't even vote yet they're begging us to address the climate emergency that's threatening all of us but that will affect them most of all when i look at our 2022 budget i don't see social justice housing homelessness

[99:00] and climate represented to the degree people in our community say they want us to focus on these issues i also don't see the vision and core values of the boulder valley comprehensive plan reflected in our budget if someone knew nothing about our city except the numbers in our budget they might mistake us for valuing land and property more than we value inclusion sustainability and resilience i don't think that's true it's too late to make big changes for this next year but for those of you who will be staying on for the next council and for those of us who may be joining you next month i want to challenge us to think about what a budget would look like that accurately reflects our boulder valley comprehensive plan vision again i want to thank you all for getting our budget in order and keeping our city and our economy going over the past 18 months i hope the next council will use the head start you've given us to craft future budgets in a way that reflects the priorities and values we say we have thank you thank you nicole next up we have brian maron ryan bonik and carrie palazzari brian you have three minutes

[100:01] good evening council mayor weaver city manager my name is brian maron and tonight i'm speaking to you on behalf of the boulder association of firefighters to let council and the members of the community know of a budgetary decision will have negative impacts on the services we're able to provide the community the proposed budget for next year includes a 30 000 cut to the fire department budget that's specifically earmarked for the funding of the water rescue team the 30 thousand dollar cut is the entire budget of the water rescue team for over 40 years the city of boulder fire department has had a team of specially trained individuals capable of rescuing victims from moving water like boulder creek in the flood waters of 2013 and also open water like boulder reservoir and countless other lakes and ponds spread throughout boulder on average each year the team is dispatched to around 30 calls for service in the boulder community not all the calls turn into rescues but some of them do we have safe stranded kids and tubers off the rocks of boulder creek and we have pulled victims out of the waters voter reservoir and other areas as it stands right now we will no longer be

[101:01] providing these services as of january 1st 2022 despite having properly trained and equipped personnel our chief has asked the executive budget team three times to restore the funding without success although he has told us that if swift water rescue is a risk for the community we will find money to support it there is no money dedicated to maintaining the training levels and equipment needed to be successful and if we are able to support swift water rescue the funds that have been budgeted for other reasons we will certainly not be able to support subsurface rescue and recovery of victims in the community the news that our department will be lowering our service level to the community boulder at the start of the new year has been devastating to the morale of our members the firefighters the city of boulder pride ourselves on being highly trained and well equipped in order to handle any type of emergency call that we receive history has shown that a small percentage of the nearly 15 000 calls we receive annually will be for a water rescue these rescues whether swift water or subsurface take an additional level of training and preparation that many of our members have worked hard to attain

[102:00] it will be a disservice to the community to have these valuable resources that are ready and willing to help in the case of emergency forced to sit and watch when the next opportunity comes the mission statement of the fire department is we exist to protect lives and property from harm through effective risk reduction emergency response and recovery assistance the water rescue team is an integral part of providing emergency response and recovery in the community if the funding is not restored which is less than seven one thousandths of one percent of the entire budget for the city of boulder next year our members will be forced to sit and watch along with all the other family members and bystanders the next time someone falls through the ice and does not resurface or sit and watch when a boat sinks to the reservoir or when a triathlete has a heart attack and goes underwater despite having the appropriate training equipment and willing personnel we will be the ones to have to tell a parent that we will not go in the water to save their child so on behalf of the boulder association of firefighters we would appreciate if council will reconsider the 30 000 to the water rescue team and allow us to continue to provide the highest level of

[103:01] service to the members of boulder community thank you brian next up we have ryan bonik carrie palizari and kathleen mccormick ryan you have three minutes all right thank you uh hi council and staff thank you for your time i'll try to keep this super short um just want to start by commenting it's kind of weird that the budget for a new council elected in just two weeks is decided prior to them even taking office why does the outgoing council decide how the city's money is spent i think it makes a lot more sense to shift that around somehow so the new council can decide on the budget plenty of companies fiscal years don't follow calendar years i don't know why voters needs to as for the budget itself uh police chief harold came before you all and asked for 2.7 million dollars from coveted funding i prefer that money and at minimum the additional money increases being provided to the police in the 2022 budget instead be relocated to a

[104:02] non-violent program like denver's star program second climate change has already changed our world but there's a lot worse things to come in future years and decades meanwhile we're giving free parking out like candy to single occupancy cars including nights and weekends downtown let's stop subsidizing single occupancy vehicles and start investing more in a climate aware and eco-focused future like boulder claims to value by instead funding things like public transit and bike infrastructure the pandemic has led to skyrocketing sales of e-bikes up 240 percent uh this past year alone let's support those people instead of supporting cars thank you thank you ryan next we have cala sorry carrie palizari kathleen mccormick and deborah malden carrie you have three minutes hi good evening i'm carrie pelissari executive director of studio arts

[105:01] boulder and i also sat on the grant review panel for the boulder arts commission this year before i comment on the arts and culture budget i wanted to just point out and lift up a noticeable shift in tone pre-covered the 2020 budget was proposed with a conservative fiscal approach focusing on essential services and a strictly balanced budget with no new expenses and i just want to pause and commend the current city staff and the city manager's office for this shift in tone that seeks to balance cautious optimism with fiscal stewardship with a focus on human-centered priorities services that have quote the highest impact on those who live work and visit boulder and an investment in city staff that's designed to support important community gathering places and beloved services this language is a marked shift in recognizing the role of local government as being for and about community and

[106:00] investing the city budget accordingly back in the fall of 2019 there was a last-minute budget adjustment to close the gap of inadequate government funding to the city's largest cultural destinations which resulted in a one-time facilities grant for arts and culture institutions then last year in the fall of 2020 council restored a chunk of the arts and culture budget and i spoke to you in february to express our sincere gratitude for that and yet here we are again at the last minute asking for arts and culture to again have more support i'm sensing a trend um in every list of priorities for the budget arts and culture is included in the top but it is such a tiny fraction of the actual money invested by the budget just one third of one percent we are grateful that the 2022 budget restores funding to pre-covered levels but that's not the measure of where we should be as you heard the 2015 cultural plan or what the community has asked for um by a

[107:01] quick inflation calculation while you all were talking um we should be 2.3 million in the 2022 budget or another 800 000 or so i know staffing shortages hurt across city departments but the office of excuse me the office of arts and culture is working their tail off to meet the cultural plan goals with just over half a staff they're 2.25 fte short so when many other departments have 2022 budget funding not only for restoration but also for enhanced services please don't leave arts and culture behind thank you thank you carrie next we have kathleen mccormick and we will close with deborah mauldin kathleen you have three minutes thank you there we go good evening council and staff members and thank you for this opportunity i'm kathleen mccormick and i currently

[108:00] chair the boulder arts commission i'm very grateful for your hard work on the city budget and for planning to restore funding to pre-copa levels for grants for arts and culture organizations boulder's arts and culture sector was disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and recovery is lagging in others is lagging other sectors including the nonprofit sector as a whole and this funding increase brings hope and resources with a budget increase of 8 percent however the arts and culture divisions budget increase is small relative to an overall budget increase of 32 percent the current 1.6 million dollars proposed for arts and culture represents only one third of one percent of the city budget despite the many millions of dollars that arts and culture contribute to the boulder economy directly and indirectly by generating jobs and tax revenues and attracting visitors to the city we have a lot of catch-up work to do to

[109:00] meet our commitments to the city's cultural plan the current budget proposal is 1 million short sorry 1 million below funding recommended by the community cultural plan and the office of arts and culture staff is short over two positions the public art program has no ongoing consistent funding current funding is cobbled together from different sources that vary widely from year to year please consider spending more now and increasing city investments over the next several years to establish a more sustainable and supportive environment for arts and culture we need to prioritize arts and culture for general fund allocations tax funds and arpa funds in 2022 and beyond to make strategic investments in assets including artists and arts organizations that benefit the community some of these investments that need funding right now are one the creative neighborhoods program to enhance social infrastructure neighborhood vitality and city

[110:01] programming to meet equity and climate change goals two more general operating support funding for arts organizations three consistent public art funding to allow for maintenance and longer-range planning for rental assistant funds for work and performance spaces to help address acute affordability challenges and five support for artists program which provides a range of services sponsorships and fellowships perfect for professional and emerging artists arts and culture have helped to heal strengthen and diversify the fabric of our community which has faced immense challenges since 2020. creativity is an engine of bulger's economy and competitive edge please invest in arts and culture now and continue to increase funding from the general fund dedicated tax funds and arpa to enhance and sustain our critical social infrastructure and creative economy i look forward to working with you as you

[111:00] determine how arts and culture funding will be increased thank you again thank you kathleen and finally we have deborah malden deborah you have three minutes thank you i'm speaking on behalf of create boulder to request five hundred thousand dollars of additional funding for the office of arts and culture this represents 0.1 of the proposed 2022 budget and is in addition to anticipated opera funding combined these additional investments are essential for the city to implement the community cultural plan city council enthusiastically adopted the cultural plan in 2015 following robust city-wide input including surveys that showed strikingly high cultural participation among boulder residents eighty percent of respondents reported taking advantage of boulder's theaters and concert venues 74

[112:01] pursue art as a hobby a modest incremental investment now would have an outsized impact on the arts sector which as you know was disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and whose recovery is continuing to lag this should concern council as the city's arts organizations and artists are key allies in advancing the city's diversity equity and inclusivity goals and are vital to the city's economic and social recovery incremental spending on arts and culture would support a range of strategies and staffing needs identified in the cultural plan details of which we shared with you in our email last friday we also shared suggestions for funding this additional 500 000 and achieving stable long-term arts funding for 2022 the city could pay back the reserve fund slightly slower

[113:01] as now is the time to invest in boulder's recovery every dollar invested in the arts strengthens the social fabric of our community and ripples through the economy in the form of jobs and spending at local retailers restaurants and hotels this generates local taxes a positive financial return on the city's investment boulder respectfully request the council approve this proposed 500 000 adjustment to the 2022 budget we thank you for your consideration and your hard work on behalf of the boulder community thank you debra and with that we will bring the public hearing to a close and bring this back to council uh council any final questions discussion or motion on the budget rachel i had one question um we heard that the fire department is cutting a

[114:00] water rod or rescue team i think it was called so i was just wondering if um chief caldorazo might speak to that like will there be someone available to go in for water rescues i guess is my essential question so um the short answer rachel is we will respond to water rescues what's being essentially cut from the budget is the overtime allocation that we use to train our subsurface dive technicians so that is the subsurface response the divers um what we've what we've gone on to do because of this cut is have conversations about what is the highest water rescue related risk and what brian threw in there i think is is important for us all to think about in terms of levels of risk so water rescue is actually

[115:00] a bunch of different types of risk so there's swift water there's the there's the creek that's different kind of requires a different kind of responder then there's subsurface where it would be in a deeper pool of water such as the res or some other big body of water that might require a diver what we've had traditionally is we've had a dive response team and and when we do training that thirty thousand dollars we use is to allocate to their training and when with that cut we're essentially cutting our own ability to respond with divers that doesn't mean that divers won't respond we've also used we have a contract with boulder emergency squad but they have traditionally used our services as well in other words they use our divers and they supplement our divers if we cut this then it's just using bes the volunteer emergency squad and their divers to do dives we would still be going we go to all

[116:00] hazards but we would not be the ones in this case actually getting in the water with dive technicians that's what he was specifically referring to swift water is a completely different animal and that's one we've been trying um to focus uh more squarely on for the long term um having uh conversations around okay if we have funding going forward we ask for funding went forward where should the water rescue program be allocating that money and that's a that's a different conversation um so i just want to in strictly answering your question we would still be going you'd still have responders there but we would not be going into the water as divers we would be looking for bes to perform that function so am i understanding you to say that sort of we have it covered regionally and that maybe like with the swift water are we going to adopt more of that and then other entities will do more of the diving but somebody will still be there

[117:01] to dive yeah that well so the only dive program in the county will be the boulder emergency squads that's who the sheriff uses um and traditionally they have also relied on us to to help them with with regional response but i've talked with a lot of the regional responders we're the only fully staffed 24 7 dive program um that that is career that is that is with responders um bes is a volunteer emergency squad same qualification same everything and through a contract they do that already for the sheriff they would do the same um for us okay thank you thanks rachel mary yeah i just wanted to call aqui on that um how many swift water rescues do we have on an annual basis as compared to subsurface

[118:00] dive type rescues um i don't have the exact numbers um in front of me and i can get those to you i can tell you proportionately there are more swift water related rescues than there are subsurface um and you know i one of the things that you do when you look at risk is okay well how in in terms of equity how many people will be affected by this particular risk in the community and then we basically turn them into different levels no low moderate and high and it's a frequency versus consequence kind of thing where if it happens a lot even though it's just one or two people well that's a big thing for the whole community if it's happening infrequently but it have it could affect a lot of people that's a big risk as well that's something we should be planning on um addressing in some response fashion hence why um we put together what we call a standard of cover and next march or april somewhere in there we hope to come back to you not just on

[119:00] a presentation on our master plan but to tell you how we're doing in terms of meeting those different levels of risk swift water in our estimation is a higher level of risk um but truthfully we have not i believe we can do a lot better as a program and as a team to address that here's the here's the rub though we stood up at dive team years and years ago and we've been funding it and so now it's really just the incremental cost of maintaining the team to be perfectly honest um so obviously if we stand down the team and we try to stand it up again in the future saying okay we've addressed with water let's move on to the other water rescue related risks like subsurface because we think we're at a point where we need to address that it will cost us a lot more to do that so so some of the arguments made by my own team legitimately suggest that hey it's just an incremental cost why don't you just keep running it however if if i were standing up a water rescue program today from scratch and

[120:01] addressing boulder's risk the bigger one is definitely swift water and then to a lesser degree subsurface and even what we would ice rescue and those two kind of go hand in hand often ice rescue can often turn into a subsurface issue for us so um those are the big three when we talk about water rescue um but i would say that if we were to put numbers to it proportionately swift water is the bigger community risk compared to the other two the other two especially subsurface if we want to use events like triathlons and all the other things that happened in boulder that's a very those are event driven they're very very specific um to certain folks um and we have to be careful with how we use um our resources to address those things if they're not being you know paid for um at large or by those users of that service so so that's some of the conversations we've had internally about this but i just want to put it out there

[121:00] so everyone understands that there are different levels of risk even in the water rescue domain if you will thank you thanks mary aaron and the mark karen another follow-up follow up on this so chief i appreciate all the information sounds like there will be um other coverage for these issues but do you feel comfortable with this cut like do you feel like we still are meeting the safety needs of the community or with this uh budget cut um if if i had uh if i had a wonderful allotment of money like i said i would i would probably spend that money more on the swift water piece of things first before i got to the dive piece of the program um in truth we're we're moving to what we would say as a volunteer service for dive the dives program um that means that we'll have to wait for them to get on scene sometimes it'll

[122:00] be fast sometimes maybe not so much um but but swift water is something that we'd want to distribute more generally because of all the creeks and all the opportunities out there we probably have not got that funded as well as we should but we need to have more conversations and bring those forward so i think what i would need to know is yes we want a dive program and then we would fund that but then honestly we would have to come back and say yes but the swift water piece is something we want we're going to make a case for going forward and here's the numbers and here's what we think we need to do so so i think even if we restored funding and said you we really want to keep our dive program um especially since we've been doing it so long i would still want to come back and say the bigger risk though is swift water we probably need to talk about what that looks like and that would be for next year probably okay thank you um mark in the nearby mark

[123:01] um yeah uh this this question is actually uh for kara or or mark um can somebody tell me about the line item uh or or with chief calderazzo um what's the line item for the fire department how much money are we spending on the fire department in this budget just one second pull that up i'll let them answer but it's 22 million plus i'm sure that that was my recollection but i didn't want to be presumptuous about 22 million um on a percentage basis this looks like a very tiny proportion of the fire department budget and so my question kara is within a department what is the discretion of a department head if any to move some funds around to deal with a uh

[124:00] an emerging need so i will i will just correct that the proposed 2022 recommended budget is actually 23.4 million so just put that out there but um i mean this is a fraction of one percent of the budget so my question is to what extent can a department head as chief colorado is um reallocate money within that 23.4 million dollars to cover a need that he deems to be critical if it's not being specifically funded from a pure accounting and budgetary perspective they have flexibility but i might um even let nuria speak to that but there is flexibility to move dollars around and i think what um chief caldroso spoke to is that this is an overtime um

[125:00] cost and and i know that they're challenged with their overtime budget across all the overtime budget needs so i would just sort of share that and offer input from anybody else my question is is based on the fact that this is such a small percentage of the overall budget i'm really asking is there administrative discretion to deal with this internally within the department if that's the desire of the department so i'll chime in and say this that when we're doing budgeting and allocating dollars right we don't have infinite dollars as we move forward and some hard decisions have to be made certainly we don't want departments coming as they do when they present their budget request to us in the summer and say this is what i want it for and then turn around and use it for other things but i think your question mark is slightly different i think your question is within the the pocket of money that you have generally if you happen to have either its

[126:01] vacancy savings or a program didn't go through and you had extra dollars for other things what is your discretion to do internally and i will say that i welcome department heads to think through that some certainly move and think this is a better during the middle of uh the course of the financial year say this is a better uh spend and can we have that and so we certainly have conversations about it but we do have some controls because we don't want monies allocated for x purpose to be spent on why thing right so i think this is one where and certainly we've had long conversations with the chief and i appreciate what a difficult position he is in tonight as he's answering these questions about it because on the one hand we certainly have um we have a balancing of needs as you look at data and this is something that we'll continue to work with the fire department with on a variety of issues but as you look at data on overtime or on just programming in general what is the best highest use of your time and

[127:02] your effort because everything has consequences and i actually really appreciate the fact that the chief is looking at his programs and saying i perhaps have a bigger highest use and or a bigger problem than i need to attend to that that really focuses my attention there thank you thanks mark nearby thanks sam so just out of curiosity because i didn't realize this was happening is there i mean is this too late for us to fix this now i mean i know we're kind of voting on this or moving forward with this but other than what's in the budget is there a way to fix this i mean to me this is kind of ludicrous i mean this is health and safety of our community and so for this to be cut i mean bes is great and i've worked with them before with being in a county fire department but again yes it takes them time to get there and not having that service as a city

[128:01] is especially when it's kind of a smaller fund it's not this huge ask and it sounds like we have some pretty critical cases every year how do we i mean if we decide to change this tonight can we do that i think that's to one of you about what our latitude is here yeah i think it's a simple answer uh marriage if you make a substantive change to the budget we do have to go to third reading so if it were an increase it would change our appropriating numbers and we would have to make those adjustments okay thank you great and i i think i'll just weigh in here with the perspective i consider this to be very much a department heads kind of prioritization decision um you know it's hard for me to second guess

[129:01] what the best use of that thirty thousand dollars is um i would i would lean on the actual department had to make that decision because you could take that thirty thousand and you could put it towards als you could put it towards more swift water rescue or you know whatever i i think this to me is a decision we we've heard it flagged and you know chief i would just ask you if we proceed with things as they are do you feel like you've got sufficient budget to meet your mission next year and i'm a little hesitant to micromanage so i'd like to hear your thoughts on if we let this go forward will you have the budget you need to meet your mission um the simple answer is yes i do believe i will um the the challenge that we have with the 30 000 is it seems like it's not a lot but as kara alluded um we we blow our budget in overtime every year for contractual obligations for leave purposes for long-term injury on and off the job and we're still trying to work with finance in hr to find that sweet spot

[130:01] for the right number of firefighters to keep trucks on the road just for all of our services um versus um just paying overtime which of course is always cheaper but hurts your workforce so um that's why and and thanks cara for for for reminding us that it's it's 23 and a half because i remember now that big part of that is the additional three firefighters so that we can address some of these overtime related issues and so i'm i almost you can almost count on us going over on our overtime budget partly because i struggle at times to get folks in seats because of whatever leave or other contractual obligations so i that's of course the highest and best need for us and we're beginning to really really address that i think in the right way and the constructive way for some of these more specialized operations programs i'm hesitant to give numbers and say

[131:01] this or that because we still need to have robust conversations internally about you know where the risk is where we need to spend dollars and how we make the case to the executive budget team going forward so that it's a it's a reasonable ask and it's not um one that that is a lot of money chasing after very very small risk which i don't want us to be doing um having said all of that this this is a diet program that's been set up for years it does um serve a function in the community has been used in various different ways it i don't believe that if we were standing up a water rescue program from scratch today we would start with a dive rescue program but it does represent a lot of already sunk costs and a lot of training a lot of dedicated folks and so we will in essence if we stand it down have a different model i just want us to understand

[132:00] there's a different model going forward we will be using a volunteer emergency squad but it's not unlike what we do in the backdrop for hikers who are stranded we use rocky mountain rescue to pull people off uh the mountain there the sheriff uses them to do that and they bring them to us down at the bottom of the trail and then we transport them so it's it's a it's a similar model it's just a different one and honestly if if you'd ask me is this a better or worse model well in terms of the single event it is a it's a it's a different mod it's a slower model because we're relying on volunteers we will have a first do unit on the scene very quickly with some capabilities but they will not be making entry in the water the way we do now even the first unit now doesn't make entry in the water they they if they're not a dive team they will they will get to the water they will give us the size up they will get the dive team out then the dive team makes the entry so so that's kind of how how

[133:00] it works today it'll be different under the new model same team response but now we're calling on a volunteer group to come bring their divers out um to affect whatever rescue or recovery we need to do great and i guess leaving those details aside thanks for sharing that this is roughly a tenth of a percent of your budget and it seems to me like you know we as council should be careful about messing around with things that are a tenth of a percent of a department's budget because i think that is only for the experts to do so it seems to me like that if you all as a team you and the executive team made a decision that you wanted to reallocate a tenth of a percent of your budget that wouldn't be something that would typically rise to the level of us to weigh in on so i'll just leave it at that and turn i see bob you've got your hand up as well well two things first i want to agree with sam that um you know we're approving a comprehensive 400 million

[134:02] dollar plus budget um and i don't want to micromanage any department whether it's the fire department or any department this is this is uh this budget is a product of thousands of hours of work by the budget team by the department heads um and um you all negotiate with each other and have come up with this comprehensive budget and we start moving things around here or there is a zero sum so we take dollars away from you know give somebody dollars we have two dollars away from somebody else and so i think far be it from from us to come in um with just a few minutes of review and upset um all of the work that's been done over the last you know six or seven months to pull this budget together i would also say that if if the chief comes back you know in a few months and says hey listen i could really use that thirty thousand dollars i i'm finding that this is not meeting my need we we do four or five adjustments to base during the course of a year and so you know it seems to me that what we should do is we should approve the budget that the city manager and her team have put in front of us and then if department heads you know if it turns

[135:00] out we were too conservative in our estimates and we've got a little that money left over uh in a few months they can come back with an adjustment to base and we can make whatever adjustments that the city manager and her department heads recommend so i this is while we approve our budget once a year we really approve our budget several times a year because we are constantly making adjustments so i i don't want to second-guess nuria and her team great thank you bob and with that i would ask are there any more questions any further discussion or emotion aaron yeah just thanks for that bob and and sam for your comments about micromanaging i think that i thought that was very well said i just wanted to also respond to the folks who testified about arts funding and who sent us a number of emails um over the last week or so i really appreciate your advocacy as a strong proponent of arts and arts funding myself i appreciate how you're always out there advocating for arts and those programs and those fundings i will say i do feel this is a restoration

[136:01] budget that our primary purpose this year is to bring our funding back and our services back as close as to what they were pre-pandemic as possible and so um there have been some tough decisions made and as we've striven to driven strove strove to do that as much as possible or as closely as possible and i do really appreciate that the arts budget was brought back to its pre-pandemic level i think that was a really good call on the part of the budgeters um so i wouldn't look to increase it past that level today in this budget but i do really look forward in the coming years as our revenues continue to return and increase to look for other opportunities for additional arts funding whether it be through the arpa program uh or other you know general funds as those funding streams come back so appreciate it again all of your advocacy thank you aaron all right i i believe emotion would be a good thing right now i mean i've got the floor at the moment go for it so um i will go ahead and um

[137:03] we've got so many of them um i'll go ahead and move um that we adopt ordinances 8505 8506 8507 and 8508 implementing um all kinds of details for next year's budget second on that right we have a motion and the second error would you like to speak to your motion well as i said last time just uh staff finance staff in particular but all the departments all the department heads um everyone involved in an enormous amount of work and went into this is very thoughtfully done very carefully done and we are restoring so many services that we lost during the pandemic not all of them but many of them and i look forward to getting back to 100 to where we were before uh before too long but extremely well done thank you thank you aaron mark i think the description of this budget as a restoration budget is is quite apt

[138:02] i'm very pleased that we've been able to restore as much as we have and i am very impressed with the work done by finance staff and uh staff generally in preparing a document that encompasses 462 million dollars of spending so i think it is uh well considered well thought out and i'm happy to uh second the motion excellent and i will jump in here and say i agree with both aaron and mark about this it is a restoration budget and i think we should all be pleased that we have gotten to where we have with restoring um kind of all the components that we care most about in our budget um i would also say that i agree that we should look forward to using the adjustments um i expect this coming year i won't be part of making those adjustments but it will be an opportunity more than most years i think to track how we're doing and watch

[139:00] closely um where we could plus up things if we have extra or where we'll have to cut as we go forward um i will also point out that you know a big chunk of this budget we hear these large numbers a big chunk of those numbers in our budget are utilities so water wastewater and storm water are a huge component of the funding we have and then there's also a bunch of dedicated funding that goes to things like transportation open space and parks which we as council don't have much discretion over so if you look at the part that we have discussion over more in the ballpark of 140 150 million dollars you will see within that um if we think about the arts as a fraction of that it is a better percentage i think we always strive uh to go for one percent or a little more for the arts and we're approaching that even if we're not quite there yet and i know that

[140:00] we're not at the full level of our cultural plan vision uh hopefully we'll be able to get there and hopefully we'll come in with more budget uh more revenue this year because of a recovering economy and can look at what to do with that extra money but i think that this is a quite a good budget considering the hole that we've come out of in the last year and appreciate staff's hard work getting us here mary thanks sam um i wanted to agree with the whole approach of not wanting to micromanage and how much time staff has actually put into developing this budget i wanted to comment also on the arts and um dedicating more funding to that i would um of course i won't be here to do that but as you move forward i would ask that council the remaining council members consider the fact that

[141:01] when the 2015 culture plant cultural plan was developed we did not have yet in place or were we even talking about um very loudly anyway about a racial equity plan um that has become a big part of what we are trying to weave into every decision that we make throughout the city and the arts included so that if there is a big increase in the arts budget i think that along with that there should be some measure of how it's going to be spent in an equitable manner i don't think that's there yet and i hope that when the new plan is developed that that is part of the conversation how that is going to get woven into how it gets spent and to make sure that those dollars are spent in um like those thirty thousand dollars um in

[142:01] overtime is um the customer's use so um that's what that's all i have to say about that and um i think it's a great budget it is a recovery budget and um i hope that we continue to um increase um the stability of our city in this manner thank you thank you mary all right any other comments all right we have a motion and a second i think we're ready for a vote alicia i believe this is roll call correct and you are on mute still there you go that is correct sir let me get all my stuff together here sure council member nagel hi swetnick yes wallach aye weaver hi

[143:00] yates yes young yes bracket hi friend yes sir ordinances 8505-8508 were approved eight to one and adopted i mean eight to zero my apologies and adopted thank you very much and if you'll take us on to our last item public hearing yes sir that would be item 5d on our agenda tonight that is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8512 grant an authority to the approving authority under title ix land use code brc 1981 to approve a development that exceeds the minimum open space per dwelling unit standards for a property in the business community one district bc one located at 3320 28th street at diagonal

[144:01] plaza authorizing the city manager to execute documents that will secure affordable housing on the property and setting forth related details excellent thank you and muria yep we will let i see elaine there in the wings but we're going to let jacob sort of frame it up for us thank you nuria and good evening mayor weaver and members of council now before you tonight is an ordinance related to the redevelopment of the site known as diagonal plasma and in summary the city's existing ordinance requires more open space per dwelling than proposed in the current concept plan for the site now at the july 13th concept plan review discussion you all supported the idea of an ordinance solution to this problem based on the fact that the project would further city council's revitalization and sustainability goals for the site so what's before you is this ordinance change that allows the discussion of this concept to continue through the site review process and as a result

[145:01] should you approve this ordinance tonight this project would still be subject to significant community conversation through that site review process ultimately planning board and city council will have another opportunity to review the project at that time so with that aside um this ordinance was unanimously recommended for your approval by the planning board and with that i will turn over to elaine mclaughlin senior planner to present this ordinance great thanks appreciate that jacob and good evening mayor and council members i'm just going to boot up the screen here so bear with me while i get that going um so just as a road map of where we're headed this evening i think it's probably instructive to um understand um that it's essentially a staff presentation this evening um and you can ask questions of staff or the applicant team and then we'll have public comment in the staff presentation we are going to recap the process of

[146:00] where this has been and then a little bit about the planning and build context that we talked about in july and a light touch on the summary the concept plan because we spent quite a bit of time discussing that at concept plan review and then the intended need for ordinance 8512 along with policy direction that supports that ordinance and so in terms of the process to date as you may recall this ordinance is an outgrowth of concept plan review and input as jacob mentioned both by planning board and by city council's review of the concept plan and at that time council gave input and as jacob noted provided guidance on an ordinance as the most effective mechanism to support redevelopment with residential um and then earlier this month it's important to note that council approved the first reading of this ordinance um

[147:00] that was on consent on october 5th and then that was followed by planning board on october 7th who voted unanimously to recommend council approve the ordinance and it's also important to note that planning board also recommended that council consider a work plan item for next year for an area plan on the rest of diagonal plaza to keep this momentum going and if the ordinance is approved this evening subsequent site news review application will be considered by planning board and then of course uh city council will have a call-up opportunity so a brief recap of the important planning context that we've discussed at concept plan review uh several months ago you'll recall that under the comprehensive plan the diagonal plaza is recognized as a neighborhood center as you can see there with a mix of uses and range of services and that the comp plan considers centers as places um for

[148:01] having potential for infill and redevelopment specifically so it's also important to note as was discussed that the site surrounded by multi-use paths and bike lanes and routes connected to the greater boulder area and we think that this map is very instructive because it illustrates the 300 miles of bikeways bike lanes routes and multi-use paths throughout the greater boulder area and then the site's pedestrian context is further identified as being in an area with better access to goods and services within walking distance through the transportation master plan a rather tmp's neighborhood access tool in the concept plan discussion we also talked about the site context that includes bus and bike support amenities there's an rtd super stop right outside the door uh bike storage lockers public bike storage lockers as well as bike and

[149:00] car share facilities and we also discussed the zoning context and the fact that the business community one bc one site zoning has a relatively suburban density and it has a high open space per dwelling unit requirement of 1200 square feet and this is despite the fact that it's in this transit-rich context that's evolved over time where the number of units on the site would necessitate almost two-thirds of this site to be open space and so as we talked about in the concept plan it was noted that this would essentially be an inefficient use of this infill catalyst site and then contextually it's important to note the north 28th street transportation network plan that we talked about that illustrates connections to and through the site and and that the plans will address this in the site review process the applicants propose some consistent

[150:00] linkages with this plan and then it's also important to recollect that the site consists of large surface parking lots we're all familiar with uh there's a walgreens on the north end and a vacant sports authority on the south end and then we know the potential to connect redevelopment to the boulder housing partner diagonal court apartments that's to the south and it's important to note that that site is fully developed with 30 apartments and therefore is not part of ordinance 8512 that's under consideration so as was noted the sites owned separately from other multiple property owners for the retail buildings that comprise diagonal plaza shopping center and that was first developed in the 1960s and then finally to recap it was discussed that the inability to redevelop the under utilized and essentially deteriorated diagonal pause has been a challenge for past city councils that have weighed in on it and

[151:02] even in 2011 10 years ago now city council requested a study by the urban land institute a tab a technical advisory panel to come up with some recommendations on an approach and the recommended approach um in this case by tab was an incremental approach to redevelopment to partner with boulder housing partners as is proposed by the applicant team so just a brief overview of the plan that council discussed in july the applicants planning new connections through the site as we noted new community park a variety of residential units totaling approximately 284 units that'll include a range of sizes from essentially efficiency living units about 475 square feet through three bedroom units along with town home style units and

[152:01] permanently affordable units in the plan there's ground floor commercial uses wrapped parking and then upper decks for open space so specific to the ordinance we're discussing this evening 85-12 as noted in your packet the city has considered similar ordinances from time to time to modify specific city standards when there's a circumstance that necessitates an exception or to allow an exception where public benefit would arise and which would address specific policies in the boulder valley comp plan and as was discussed by council there is interest and support for revitalization of the site in this concept plan um the planning board and city council both view this in our discussions we heard the council and planning board note that this is a catalyst opportunity for redeveloping diagonal plaza and that

[153:00] policies indicate that there's a need for housing and the developer is establishing a partnership with boulder housing partners to implement the concept plan and then as we've discussed the existing zoning has limitations for providing residential units on the site with that suburban density standard that exists under the bc1 so regarding the intent of the ordinance it's important to emphasize that it's specifically applicable only to the proposed project and site it's important to note that the ordinance is not a comprehensive rezoning rather it's specific to the proposed redevelopment of this site only such that any site review plans that come before the review boards must conform to the stipulations or the ordinance would expire the ordinance modifies a singular aspect of the code the open space standards of bc1 zoning for the site only and the ordinance would permit a minimum of 15

[154:00] open space for the site only and the applicant will be required to demonstrate project consistency as well with the site review criteria related to open space such that um open space needs of the residents and visitors to the site will be met and then the ordinance is based on the intent that's illustrated in the concept plan so moving forward there's an indication of what to expect on the site in sight and use review and then the ordinance ensures that inclusionary housing requirements will be met through a covenant prior to any residential building permits middle um affordable housing requirement will be based on 25 percent of the entire development of all residential units um approved in the site review regardless of ownership and the affordable units will be provided within the project any cash and low amount would be determined based on all units market and affordable to be constructed on the site

[155:00] and it's important to note that any cash and lieu funds would support construction of affordable units and as a result the developer would support the affordable units in the same manner whether they're provided on site or through land dedication and then the ordinance would fulfill core values of the bbcp specific to the evolving sustainable urban form that is an infill redevelopment in partnership with boulder housing partners and would allow for a greater number of residential units than could be built under bc1 zoning both market rate and affordable and then similarly revitalizing the underutilized sites in keeping with policy 2.03 that further articulates the city's preference for infill and redevelopment of sites rather than expanding the service area of our compact city and then the ordinance would also address policy 1.10 jobs housing balance that states the city will seek

[156:01] opportunities to improve the balance of jobs and housing and that this will be accomplished by encouraging housing and mixed use neighborhoods and areas close to where people work encouraging transit oriented development in appropriate locations and this heat map shows where the existing jobs are within a half mile to up to two mile radius of the site and then similarly the ordinance would address policy 7.11 that states that the city will explore policies and programs to increase housing for boulder workers and their families fostering mixed use and multi-family development in proximity to transit employment or services and by considering the conversion of commercial land use to allow for residential and then further the ordinance would also address policy 2.16 for mixed use and higher density development that also indicates the city's desire to

[157:00] encourage well-designed mixed use and higher density development that incorporates affordable housing and appropriate location locations including commercial centers in proximity to multimodal corridors and transit and so in this case there's not only jobs in proximity to the site but there's also transit bike lockers [Music] a lot of services nearby so policy 2.16 at the bottom there you'll note also notes the city's openness to creating new zoning districts revisions to fars or open space as is the case here or parking requirements to achieve the mixed use and then the ordinance would implement policy 5.01 that specifically calls out diagonal plaza as both a center where redevelopment is anticipated and as council is noted it's a critical

[158:01] opportunity site for redevelopment where the city would support revitalization efforts that are unique to that specific place and so with that um concludes staff's presentation and i'm available to answer any questions along with the applicant team who i understand are on the call thank you elaine that was an excellent presentation um council questions i have one that i'll go ahead and start with um i flagged this to staff this afternoon the first question i've got is the suggested motion language says to approve a development that exceeds the minimum open space for dwelling unit standards i guess my question is it seems to me that using fails to meet the minimum open space for dwelling unit standard would be more appropriate but i was curious to hear if there's a reason that exceeds is a more

[159:00] proper legal word um you know we checked in with city attorney's office and and we concur it could be changed one recommendation might be to instead say does not meet um maybe a little less um intense than fails to meet i think the point is it's intended to create a more urban context and um the minimum open space for dwelling unit standards as we've noted is a relatively suburban type of configuration i think what we're after here is a more urban configuration thanks that's perfect so um it appears in the title and the motion language so you'd be comfortable with does not meet rather than exceeds sounds like okay yep that should work perfect and so we'll try and note that

[160:00] in the motion and then the the second question kind of gets it exactly what you just said elaine um this open space for dwelling unit has been a thorn in our side for a while um how would we address that and get that changed and out of the code i know it's not something we'll do with this council but i just wanted to ask the question how could a future council fix this suburban standard which doesn't seem to apply very often thank you sam i'll take that one so um there's nothing on the books right now to study this uh you're correct this is an intensity measure and is not captured in the use tables work or any of the currently planned work um but i think that we should do this uh staff can simply identify this as a potential work item for the future future council to consider and we can flag it and bring it up for them to look at in the context of our other work all right that's excellent i i will just make the point here to those who are continuing that this has been something that has been uh needed fixed for a long time and so

[161:01] if there's room in the next work plan i think this would be a good one and it might be actually quick but i'll let you guys and staff work that out and then i've got rachel and aaron rachel thanks sam and i support your last point and that's looking at that um as someone who's continuing on so thank you for flagging that um i just wanted to understand there was a one of the last slides talked about all affordable housing would be built on site but then it also mentioned cash and lieu and i was trying to figure out why we were talking about both like if affordable housing will all be on site where would cash and lube come into play yeah you bring up a good point and i think um it's essentially a default in other words if there is any um affordable housing that wouldn't be built on site it would necessitate the cash in lieu based on all of the different units and maybe

[162:00] um kurt fernhaber if he's on the call he could probably better articulate that than i'm doing right now um correct good evening again council kirk fernando director of housing human services um so uh rachel it's a bit of a technical question as well um so technically it can be two different sites um so they could uh um they can sort of donate the land of that site the land will be a value of x um and the casterly would be a value of y and they would have to pay the additional amounts um to meet the the total cash flow amounts so simply by dedicating the land which is an option uh one of the four options within our ih ordinance um they would still be required to pay the require the additional cash and loot

[163:02] to get there so that's that's what um bhp would use those resources to um help cover the gap of constructing that development i think i'm hearing you say that even though it would be on the same plot of land right now they would have to sort of donate that land and then cash in lewd to bhp and that's how it would work out on site but under a different owner that yeah well the intent in a broader sense is that that affordable housing is built on the site so that's that's probably the the first component of that sometimes projects come to you um with the uh the promise of certain outcomes of affordable housing and um this approach um creates um a scenario where that actually will happen through this ordinance so that's sort of the starting point

[164:00] and then the second is just the mechanism for how that occurs okay so i don't want to belabor the point but i guess that it just makes me concerned that maybe we're saying we're going to have it on site but we're putting a default in in case that doesn't happen when i think if we all think we're saying it's going to be on site that we would like that to be on site rather than to defer to cash and lieu at a different site as you know i saw some council members going like this when you just said like sometimes there are promises made and they're not followed through on so that i i don't know if there needs to be language in there to shore that up and i i saw uh bill hollocky i think off camera mute so i don't know if he wanted to weigh in but that was my question thanks yeah so hello may i also have more to add in there um this is bill holike with coburn and i can just hopefully i can make this simple notice the language in the ordinance says that we need to be in general conformance with the concept plan that we submitted and the intent is to do so there are technical restrictions for how

[165:00] that that um affordable housing can be built on that piece of property in that location and so as kurt was describing there may be a mechanism that actually creates a landing dedication to bhp so they get that piece of land and then they build the housing on it so no one's contemplating building the housing in a different location just simply trying to deal with the technical aspect of how compliance with our affordable housing requirements work [Music] if that helps at all thanks there is a sentence in the ordinance that does require that at least 25 of units will be permanently affordable so that's to ensure that we actually see affordable housing on site 25 of units okay rachel's that all your questions okay all right i've got aaron and mary erin

[166:00] yeah i guess i just have a couple colloquies the to what rachel is just talking about i think hella's point is that there is that sentence in the ordinance that says that 25 of all new dwelling units on the site will be permanently affordable so i guess the the mechanisms might be tinkered with a little bit but we are guaranteed 25 on-site affordable if they want to take advantage of the reduced open space requirements how's that fair that's correct okay great thanks for clarifying that and then just i also just wanted to uh plus one sam's suggestion about the open space tweaks the requirements for that so um jacob if you could put a bookmark in that i'd love to discuss that with the new council thanks that's all i got awesome mary yeah um my question well i guess i was and it's more of a comment um i was under the impression that that open space requirement was actually going to be part of

[167:01] um the site review um updates that were being made um and i i don't really know where that project is at if it's going to be dropped or what was it part of that and was i under a misunderstanding thank you for that question mary um my understanding is that was never part of that this is an intensity standard and as a result um is is not a part of that study so this would need to be flagged as a separate work item so so mary mary if i could colloquy i i was thinking the exact same thing and realized as i was writing a question about this to staff that that was an intensity standard so wouldn't fit under either site or use review stuff so i i had the same exact impression um until a few hours ago great i wasn't the only one and i wasn't the only one that read through that motion or that language of

[168:02] that exceeds peace because i read it several times and it was not making any sense to me so thank you for bringing that up sam um and then um i guess the other question i have is um as part of this motion could council include a an amendment to the motion that would say that um that would require a um an area plan um to be conducted in parallel or is that better left to um the new council as a consideration for their work plan jacob i guess that's for you first well i i can't speak to the um the powers of counsel i do know that um

[169:01] i would defer first of all i think to the city attorney's office in terms of your ability to bind a future council um so that's one item the other thing that i would say is that there's an issue i think of timing in terms of concurrence because standing up an area plan requires significant resource in terms of staff time number of staff public engagement as well as making sure that we have planned appropriately to conduct that this project however in this case is on a certain track and i think if this passes they would anticipate to go to site review relatively soon so i think that we wouldn't be able to conduct that area planning process at the same time that this project would hope to move forward but uh that is something that again we could flag for consideration uh along with our future work plan uh and the council would look at that i think again in the whole slate of the work that pnds is proposing okay i don't know if our city attorney's office wants to speak to um to that in any more depth

[170:02] i think he did a great job jacob but if there's anything hella wants to add feel free no i i agree with that and i think this special ordinance process was chosen to decouple this project from any longer area planning okay great um so um that answers my question um thank you that's all i have thanks mary mark um my question is are there a set of standards that we use um to determine what projects are eligible for this kind of uh special treatment by ordinance or is it simply you know if do we like the project i'm always a little leery of just simply exercising discretion picking winners and losers in that fashion i'm wondering is there any organizing principle behind which we make a determination in terms of size of the project

[171:01] or other qualities that determine whether we're going to use this technique to make a project viable that's a great question mark typically the only time we've really exercised a legislative option in kind of the development review arena is to support a compelling community benefit uh most often times it's been the provision of uh permanently affordable housing being built on site okay thank you and mark if i could call a glee this gets back to that open space for dwelling unit standard because that creates all kinds of perverse incentives um to make bigger units um if you need less open space if you build bigger units so um i i'd say there's also an element of the community benefit of not using this inappropriate standard on the site so i i just offer that as that no i i just want to i i'm just asking the question as a matter of general

[172:01] principle i'm not resistant to using it in this instance um but i would be a little concerned if we're using it as a series of one-offs um each picked by us because we happen to like this particular project and so you know that's why i'm asking are there a set of standards that we generally use when making that determination i have no problem with doing it here and i believe the staff memo listed a number of other occasions when we have done it um but i'm i'm just curious as to whether it's kind of a haphazard process or whether we're doing it in on the basis of specific criteria and i'll jump in um and just add that those policies that we described in the memo and then this evening in the presentation are specific to a circumstance like this and in particular

[173:00] the policy that cites the desire for the city to revitalize the diagonal plaza and redevelop the diagonal plasma so the perception that this is a great opportunity it's a catalyst site for um revitalizing diagonal plasma i think was among the many considerations that we discussed a concept plan along with the ability to do the affordable housing as part of the project all right thank you thank you mark any other questions from council before we go to the public hearing all right great seeing none we will move to the public hearing we have three members signed up and then one who has been added um the three who are signed up are lynn siegel virginia zukowski and chet czelszawski and i believe i'll turn to alicia i believe alicia we have another

[174:02] person signed up who is going to full time is that correct that is correct sir and his name is let me pull it up here we were doing emails for quite a bit there evan freewich f-r-e-i-r-i-c-h very good and evan will be pooling i believe with virginia and chet correct that is correct and are all three of them in the meeting at the moment brendan i just verify it yes yes all three are present sam okay super so to organize this um we have four people speaking which means that there will be three minutes per speaker our two speakers will be lynn siegel with three minutes and then evan freyrick pooling time with virginia and chet which will give five minutes for eric so

[175:01] we'll start with lynn with three minutes and then move to eric with five minutes so to kick us off lynn this is about the diagonal plaza and you have three minutes you wait just a minute with me because my my computer's about to die off i've got to plug it in or you can go with the next one and then me okay that sounds good we will go then to evan freyrick evan you have five minutes when you're ready good evening council this is evan freiresh i live at 745 arapahoe boulder 80302. uh all of you should have received my email which discusses the options to have an increased amount of affordable housing at diagno plaza i believe the project should have at least 40 percent affordable housing and that would result in a additional 43 affordable units

[176:01] one of the things the council should have noticed is that every concept plan the developer has presented has increased the number of units it went from option 1 to 35 option 2 259 and at this point rough to 289 those are approximate numbers two other local citizens have joined me so that my speaking time could have been increased one of them is ginger zukowski who previously spoke to you she lives in the mobile home park at the corner of 30th and belmont a retired teacher it is her desire that there be more affordable town homes for sale in the development and some preference be given to folks who live in that neighborhood this development hopefully will be a cal catalyst but it should also set a precedent in diagonal plaza especially for

[177:02] residential development development i like many in our community believe that we could gain a substantial amount of affordable housing from this underused site i believe only requiring 25 of the units be affordable should not be applied when a special exception is requested i believe this site deserves a community benefits type analysis and i know the city and has struggled with coming up with a community benefits policy especially dealing with high rises well this is a perfect one to use that kind of analysis the developer here in exchange for in getting increased density is not giving the city any more affordable housing it's just doing what it's legally required to do and what where you're making a special exception

[178:01] there should be an increase in the amount of affordable housing also by doing a special exception the developer is avoiding a great deal of delay that would have been involved in a rezoning i have to wonder whether or not if the substantial delay might impact their opposition opportunity zone tax benefits which is unique to this development if this development goes forward the other plaza properties will also be greatly enhanced because it raises an expectation that they may receive expanded development rights for residential development something they don't have now and only be required to do the legal minimum in boulder owners have carried properties at diagonal plazas for many many years they paid taxes based upon the commercial real estate value

[179:01] now that the city is considering to expand the uses there to include a much denser residential development i believe they've been saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the carrying costs for that investment compared to what they would be paying if they had a similar intensity of residential development in their property in my email i looked at one aspect of the project at 289 units i i tried to demonstrate that basically they would normally un be allowed to have 61 units and it would cost the land cost would be about 156 000 per unit under this plan now they expect to pay somewhere around 33 000 per unit in land costs that's a savings to them of a hundred and twenty three thousand dollars per unit

[180:02] that savings of millions of dollars could go towards providing additional affordable housing even at 40 affordable housing units their land cost is still only going to be around 41 000 per unit in my email i detail how i reach those conclusions primarily from assessors records in terms of what the value is to give you a real world example imagine building an eight unit apartment complex in boulder and only paying three hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars for the land as you can see miss mr friedrich your time is up thank you very much we appreciate the email you sent us and your testimony tonight if you'd like to send us any more um you can send it to council bouldercolorado.gov thanks again for your input and with that we will move to the final

[181:00] speaker um lynn siegel when you have three yeah this shouldn't be in the oz no i recommend further moratorium on the oz oh by the way sam i still don't have my time up on the screen honestly i don't know it's up on my screen lynn you can keep going but you aren't seeing what i'm seeing i'm just seeing my name in a black window seriously um eric eric will confirm that try rachel confirm it lin why don't you keep going and i'll keep the time for you thanks yeah it's just i don't like to be you know like cut off you know it's really irritating um so um boulder has eight percent affordable housing that's what i got from um all kinds of affordable housing um from uh the staff this week eight percent okay

[182:00] that's nothing you know and that shows you where 25 and i mean we used to have 20 we had 20 when michael bosma did 311. and then he went ahead and um did fruit house as as his affordable component 44 units in fact he went above and beyond he offered 106 units he promised that what happened nothing he backed out of it now they are doing cash in lieu this is unacceptable unbelievable and unacceptable um and 25 which we rose it from 20 to 25 is also completely unacceptable but what we need is a comprehensive integrative analysis of what it costs to operate one human being in this town

[183:00] and how many of those we can afford to build structures for because as it is it's it's unplanned this is really poor urban planning it's just build and build and make deals along the way and what happens is like with alpine balsam the same thing um we bought it for 40 million now we've put a hundred million into it to get the pavilion and and tear down everything and there's more to go so we have to make our money back don't we and the way we make it back is we sell it to the you know highest bidder and then it goes out as as unacceptably expensive housing and we get wealth and equity in our town more and more wealth and equity we get more and more homelessness nobody can talk about anything at the council candidate meetings except homelessness except police accept affordable housing and we need to be

[184:01] starting to talk about the arts and culture in our community not constantly about housing um so i say at for diagonal plaza there needs to be a whole lot more affordable housing there and it needs to not be in the same cycle of despair where the wealth and equity is increased and i don't know how thank you thank you lynn thank you lynn your time is up appreciate your input and with that we'll bring this back to council council any other questions comments feedback or motion i am going to oh mark go for it sorry um actually i would like to throw this one back to uh bill holike um how did it transpire that we ended up with the minimum of 25 affordable housing

[185:01] um mr free ridge's analysis seems to imply let's let's move off of 40 which is very high that there might have been some room to go a little bit higher you know 30 percent i'm sure and we have laura scheinbaum from bhp and jarvie worchester from tcr so i'll give you a little bit and then those two as the developers and owners can probably fill in a bit more but i would just remind us all that this property is set fallow for decades and it has not been financially viable up until this point which is why nothing's happened there this ordinance and this density allowance is really the absolute minimum clearly that's needed in order to make this happen and remember also that there are very strict private sector restrictions in the pud in terms of what can be built and what can be approved right now you cannot do any residential whatsoever on the property there's cross easements for

[186:00] access and utilities and everything else so while a back of the napkin analysis might look like there's a lot of extra in any project here there's not so i'll turn it over to laura and jarvie to maybe mention a little bit more about that yeah good evening uh mayor and council is jarvie wilson with tremolo core residential and laura's uh who's our partner on this project elaine mentioned previously we have a partnership agreement to work together for the affordable housing and the market rate housing while i appreciate the the presentation um and and the email from from the gentleman who spoke earlier the reality of the math on that is it's just not it's just not accurate um as bill mentioned there's a lot of variables i have a person have confidentiality requirements that recruit me to get into too much detail but i can tell this council based on what what bill said the dynamics of the site obtaining this site and be able to work

[187:02] with the surrounding owners require this this density to really make the video uh you know function and be something that we can move forward so that's that's how it was contemplated when we did go under contract with the land and it's been kind of our our approach to underwriting and evaluating the feasibility of what we'll get is the i'm sorry excuse me is the representation that you're basically acquiring at about forty thousand dollars a door an accurate one uh like i said i'm not liberty to speak um to the details of my purchase and sale agreement i can tell you that the numbers that we're presenting are wrong well i mean that doesn't give us a lot of room to analyze um because if if true uh i would think that would be a pretty attractive uh price if it's not true um i'd like to know what the order of

[188:00] magnitude of error is can you speak to any of that i i just i don't um i think the reason i'm a little bit caught off guard is i didn't know and it's i'm surprising to get a question on the cost of land as it relates to how the city um processes or doesn't process a requested ordinance i think elaine did a good job of explaining um the reasons this makes sense essentially this takes a property that the city is identified as a catalyst from you know it's existing zoning at sort of roughly 20 to 25 affordable units and and this and this an ordinance would create close to 60 65 affordable housing so it is creating the community benefit um that is cheap that's requested i will tell you the number uh there is an order of magnitude higher than the forty thousand dollars per unit

[189:01] yeah that's kind of kind of the extent of where i can discuss as it is clearly a state secret uh um not much more i can ask you thank you i i just weigh in here and see if boulder housing partners would like to say anything about this good evening um mayor weaver and council members i'm laura steinbaum i'm director of real estate development for boulder housing partners yeah you know we are super excited to be part of this this opportunity um in terms of the math you know i i again can't speak to that as darby had suggested but in terms of the value coming to bhp and the community that we will be able to create in a campus of affordable housing that we'd be able to create with the adjacency of the additional units and a park and the pedestrian access and the vehicular access um you know

[190:00] 25 perhaps is is the minimum as required by code but it's it's getting this sort of um perfectly sized and efficient space for bhp to own and manage within an existing community so um again i think that that for us is there's tremendous value in there just for you know us as an organization and the community and at large so thank you laura adam yeah i can't say i'm surprised about not hearing about numbers that's pretty normal in this industry as we've all seen um my question though is i realize this isn't a concept plan review but um one of the things that we've dealt with in the past when we're creating permanently affordable housing on site is the building materials and sort of standards of the house are a little different than what ends up

[191:00] being built for the market rent units do we have any knowledge about what the plan is there um will they be comparable or is there going to be big differences and build materials and end result yeah i can speak to that there are requirements in the housing code and i'm sure that kirk can kirk fern however can can chime in but it is not allowable to reduce the standard of significantly from the market rate to the affordable there are minimum requirements that the affordable housing has to meet in terms of livability standards size storage materials interior and exterior so all of those things are codified and to be blunt that was uh probably a result of some bad actors many years ago trying to do adam what you're kind of contemplating here so it's not allowable the second part of this is if you look at the boulder housing partner sites throughout the city i would encourage you to look at the quality especially the things that

[192:01] they've done lately it's phenomenal if you look at what they created at 30 pearl and the quality of the buildings that bhp puts in the service i would put them against most market rate projects in the city so while the materials may not be exactly the same for example the boulder housing project is close to their existing diagonal court building and the goal is to make that a campus feeling so there's probably less brick less of an urban feel and more of a residential feel there it will have a different architecture and that's purposeful it certainly will not be a lower quality product and uh laura i'm sure you're champing at the bit to address that one because i know bhp is very proud of the quality level that they create uh yeah thank you bill and adam i i hear you on your concern there and i can assure you that it is our goal to always develop to um a standard that is seamless with the rest of the community so it's the same quality with maybe a few small things like a countertop material or something like that but it is

[193:01] high quality excellent construction um and really um integrated and you can't really tell i mean if you were to drive through boulder it's been my great pleasure to take some council members and some of my board members and you know it's i point and people are really amazed of the product that's in the portfolio that we um own and manage so it is um always our intent to make sure that it is as strong a product as absolutely possible so that we won't be cutting corners i can assure you thank you for those answers it's good to know that things like that are codified in some way and i definitely don't see it on the exteriors of any of the units i've just heard about things like windows just the long term uh aspects that aren't noticeable necessarily within the first few years of build but may show up a decade or so later compared to the the um for profit units so um just wanted to

[194:01] throw that out there thank you for the answers you adam bob i just wanted to thank adam for for raising that point and and kind of maybe pile on to what laura said um i had the great pleasure of serving as council's liaison to the boulder housing partners board for three years and so i know firsthand the quality of the products that they build and in fact um what bhp did a few years ago is um they had some um that was not always the case um and there were some properties that were built oh in the 70s and 80s that were not high quality adam and what bhp did is they spent millions of dollars going back through those properties one by one and bringing them up to um commercial standards to to standards that we all enjoy now so not only do they build new things very very well they actually went back and spent a lot of money they didn't have to do this they spent a lot of money on bringing old old things up to today's standards so they are very

[195:01] passionate about this and then one more item on something that was already brought up is mark you were asking about costs there's an important piece to keep in mind all sites are not equal and some sites that are generally ready for development um [Music] have a it's like buying a used car versus buying a new car this site needs to be reclaimed and there's a lot of things that are extremely expensive in reclamation the storm water is currently contained in asphalt detention ponds which doesn't that doesn't come close to meeting our acidic standards it all has to be redone all of the utilities not just the utilities into each site but the area regional utilities that are going to serve the whole this development and the future developments all have to be redone there are no streets there are no sidewalks those are all public improvements that will be put in place it's an urban site so all of the parking will be structured at a cost of and this is architect math right so take this with a big grain of salt i'm not a contractor but 40 50 000

[196:01] or thirty forty thousand dollars something like that for every structured parking space as opposed to an asphalt parking space on grade which is you know literally an eighth of that cost so when you look at all of those things that that those expenses come with buying this used car and whatever the um the cost per door would be you really can't compare site to site without understanding the infrastructure improvements and the typology of construction that are going to go with that so that's just something really critical to keep in mind thank you if i can call it thank you bill that's a that's a very substantive response i appreciate it well thank you all thank you both um any other discussion if not i think i'm going to put a motion on the table i know it's unusual but it's one of my last chances so i'm going to do it i would like to move that we adopt ordinance 85 12 granting authority

[197:00] to the approving authority under title ix land use code brc 1981 to approve a development that does not meet the minimum open space for dwelling unit standards for property in the business community one district located at 3320 28th street at diagonal plaza authorizing the city manager to execute documents that will secure affordable housing on the property and setting forth related details second great we have a motion and a second um i think that this is fantastic that we are doing this this site needs a catalyst very badly um i do acknowledge the issue but before i go on i see your hands up sandra may i you know i'm so sorry to interrupt you i just i didn't hear that very last part where it's underlined and motion to adopt or did you did you say that

[198:00] i tried to say motion to adopt so very which part are you talking about i'm just going to jump in if if i may um hear weaver and this was the recommended language change that i'm sorry i use i read it from the packet so yeah it was nice and i will start over again thank you thank you both no no i appreciate it i read from the packet um so uh i'm going to move to amanda on second reading a title of ordinance 8512 to read ordinance 8512 granting authority to the approving authority under title ix land use code brc 1981 to prove a development that does not meet the minimum open space for dwelling unit standards for property in the bc1 district located at 3320 28th street at

[199:02] diagonal plaza authorizing the city manager to execute documents that will secure affordable housing on the property and setting forth related details and then i would also move that we adopt ordinance 8512 with such a title amendment sucka all right sandra did i get everything in there awesome okay great um this site needs love and i think this is a great way to bring love to the site um it also was unfortunately constrained by the open space for dwelling unit standards which would have given us products that we were not very happy with i want to commend it uh the um the coburn and everyone involved um by putting the affordable units on site as uh everyone understands that is a goal that we have on this council and as a city to have a mixture of affordable on market rate together i think this

[200:01] ordinance will uh enable the change that we want to see on this site that desperately needs to be brought into the um 21st century or the 22nd century so um with that bob i'll go to you uh you said to welcome thanks all right thanks um and with that i believe that we're ready to vote unless i'm missing something alicia roll call is that correct that is correct sir councilmember swetlan yes wallach hi weaver yes yates yes young yes rocket all right friend yes and nagel aye

[201:02] sir ordnance 8512 was hereby adopted as amended excellent and i will just point out and maybe i need to hear from the attorneys on this as well by by putting those different words in the motion language uh for does not meet the intention was that the title of the ordinance also would replace exceeds what does not mean correct yeah okay super very good all right i think we are done with that thank you all to everyone who participated in this i so look forward to seeing this project come in and seeing that asphalt go away and with that alicia can we go to the next item please yes sir of course item next on our agenda is item number eight matters from the mayor and members of council 8a is the council discussion on disbanding the cu south process subcommittee excellent thanks very much i think this is pretty obvious what this is um we

[202:02] have appointed a subcommittee and it's time to to span the subcommittee and i think this needs to be done by vote and so if we discuss it now and we agree i think we'll bring forward whatever language we need on consent at the next meeting so with that i'll just turn to counsel is there any concern or objection to disbanding the to self-process subcommittee aaron it was so much fun i hate to see it again i guess it's time this is probably a question for the legal department do do we do we need to disband this i thought this was by invitation from the city manager maybe i don't have that right so so this is the process subcommittee bob okay okay so this is the one that council did appoint yeah yeah it's a subcommittee that we appointed that held i think we've had three different sets of council members uh in the life of this process subcommittee so yeah i no this is the actual subcommittee not okay

[203:01] that's fine um i support it great and sandra what do we need to do to bring this forward on consent um at the next meeting do you have everything you need to put a consent item together um yes i believe so i i don't think i need anything um just to be clear i don't know if uh it's required to if the council council's required to take action on disbanding but if if it's council's desire to do so we can certainly move forward on that and bring it on consent for the next meeting i'll leave that up to you what the proper thing to do is i know that we um i'm not sure if we voted but i know that we appointed the subcommittee i assume that we voted to do so and so i'm not sure what it would take to dismant the subcommittee um often the subcommittee's lived for a long time in this case it was temporary so i'll let you have a look at that and we'll just make sure to do whatever we need if we need to bring

[204:01] something forward on consent the next meeting that sounds great thanks okay any objection to disbanding the process of committing i'm not seeing any so we've got unanimous support to do that and alicia you want to take us to the next item yes sir next we have item 8b which is the council discussion on adding gun violence prevention ordinances to the work plan to include re-adopting the assault weapon ban excellent thank you and i think this is kind of a look ahead and team staff up um i'll turn to rachel and rachel maybe you can talk about this because it would go into the next council i think yeah thanks sam um so as everybody probably remembers after the mass shooting in march state took a look at the preemption law um state lawmakers and they repealed preemption of like where the state said that cities could not uh pass their own gun laws basically

[205:00] so we now have the opportunity to pass um and implement new gun laws as cities thanks to that legislation and shortly after that law was passed a couple of us got together other city leaders from nearby communities and talked about creating a sort of suite of gun laws that cities might want to pass and so over the summer moms demand action and giffords both national organizations created and drafted some model legislations that cities could look at it's currently being reviewed the model legislation for the likelihood of surviving legal challenges but i think that's just about done so other cities are starting to present to their city councils a request to move forward with this legislation or versions of this legislation and um adam i think invited a couple of us to speak at the consortium of cities a few months ago so it's it's known that this is in the works um

[206:00] up and down kind of the in our county at least and up and down the front range of it so the concept is to collaborate with other front range cities moving forward on sort of passing um a suite of gun laws possibly on the same day but that hasn't quite been worked out uh cities would pass whatever their communities feel is best but there are a number of reasons that it's beneficial to work as a region on this um sort of broadly speaking like federal gun laws would be the best and then state would be next best and region is better than cities so um that's part of the concept and so my my request for tonight is just another five to invite staff to support the regional effort because i think it will probably move forward prior to our retreat which would be the next logical time that i could ask for a nine to five to get this added to the work plan um and i'm not asking for us to decide or work through which laws we might be interested in passing

[207:01] um but due to sort of the timing and a bumpy holiday schedule and bring a new council up to speed wanted to ask for the green light tonight for an out of five great thank you rachel perfect and i'll turn to nuria and maria um just a question do we need a knot of five happy to provide one if you'd like one but um can you tell us what staff plans are for supporting the gun violence prevention work going from this council into the next council i would say this that if we are um and i appreciate the question uh and thanks rachel for bringing it up if really it is to support the work that's going on with the consortium and then seeing where we are and um thinking about um what policies are coming up then i don't think we need an out of five i think where we'd need another five if there are items from that support that say oh now we want to add this or build more then we'd certainly bring about the

[208:00] council to say this is what the impact is but i don't think the way and forgive me if i'm wrong rachel the way you have expressed it in terms of being able to support some of the work that's already happening forward with the consortium uh we can certainly um do that at the moment that would be great i think that what will happen is there will be sort of a quick turnaround effort where we need to um vet the model legislation and make sure that we are supportive and that's probably more city attorney's office i would think than than any other department so i guess i just didn't want to not have an out of five in place and to green light and for staff to be able to work on it if there are quick things that need to get done and we haven't talked through it no i agree oh sorry no go ahead i was just going to say i agree and certainly open to legal if they want to weigh in but in talking to carl too i just believe the major lift of supporting of of doing the model let us j legislation would probably be the consortium and we would certainly be

[209:01] supporting that if we were drafting it all on our own then that's a whole different concept and that would add a lot more to cao but certainly as we move forward we can we can certainly support um how the consortium is moving forward and then adding our review look to it but i will also just let sandra because we have not spoken to cao to see if she had other thoughts thank you so um you know i would also agree that we could support this work that a lot of the work's already been done um and i appreciate all the efforts of all of the consortium and and you rachel and bringing it forward um we were intending to make a change to our existing ordinance anyway so that could be something that could be coupled together with these new uh proposed changes and brought forward all at once

[210:02] or um however you know whatever council as well is we can certainly accommodate that that sounds great and just to clarify that consortium isn't doing work on this it's it's giffords and moms and then a couple of us so um i don't i the consortium is not going to vet these the proposed ordinances for us each city needs to do that for themselves they're just giving us model ordinances which our cities would have to decide which we want to adopt and our attorneys would need to vet and and tailor them to our cities um charters and and desires so i don't want to overstate that you know i think that the consortium uh work is going to be like getting together for the same day and sort of logistical things but it's not the actual ordinances okay um aaron sorry slow because i think bob was ahead

[211:00] of me oh so bob is that an old hand or a new hand i'm sorry old hand that's what i thought okay aaron my mistake okay thanks uh no thanks so much rachel for bringing this forward and uh very glad to hear nuri and sandra that you can move forward on this without us specifically authorizing and i would just say on uh behalf of someone who is going to be here for the next council that if you did do hit a point where you need further council authorization please come to us without delay uh to the new council for that if you need it thank you aaron and i was going to say exactly what aaron just did so i'll just plus one that um it seems like we should be doing all the work we need to to be able to get this pass in line up with other cities in the region and so if there is a question about you know does council really want us to spend all this time on it please come back because i think the answer is probably going to be yes but we're in this transition period between councils so let us know if anything is slowing

[212:00] down the progress until the next council's seated adam yeah in that vein i think it might be important to maybe not necessarily appoint but at least authorize a temporary council member to be coordinating with the consortium since i will not be around to make that happen i think rachel is an obvious choice and she's been doing most of the work um but there will you know there i think there might be a meeting before you all appoint the next consortium uh representative and in would in that case i want to make sure the work is able to continue is there any reason adam i don't know the consortium haven't sat on it is there any reason rachel can't just attend with you and um certainly not i just won't be elected anymore when the next meeting happens so it happens before november 16th uh

[213:00] no it happens after november 16th so after okay it's after i'm i'm gone but before you all appoint new people i believe okay um is there an ask for council action here just want to make sure that it's okay if communication needs to happen that rachel is uh you know given the okay by council to do that okay is there any objection on council to rachel's stepping in to meet with the consortium if there's a gap i don't see anything so um rachel i think you are deputized to go to the next consortium meeting if council the next council hasn't yet appointed a representative to it thanks adam for bringing that up okay um any other discussion at this point at all gun violence prevention all right i think we've got that cleared up i think we got nods from city

[214:01] attorney's office and city manager's office so we're good to go and we'll hear if there's a need for any further authorization for work awesome so that item is done and alicia i believe we're at the end of our agenda is that correct that is correct sir awesome council any other items we should talk about staff anything we need to touch on great seeing no other items i will gavel this meeting closed at 9 31. everyone have a great night and i'll see you next week [Music]

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