November 9, 2021 — City Council Special Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music]

[1:24] anyone can sit here mark come on put you on camera come on [Music]

[2:28] okay everyone are we all ready i'm as i know it is it's like we're ready sir

[3:04] welcome i'm going to take my mask off for this welcome everyone to the tuesday november 9th special meeting of the boulder city council we will start tonight with um one announcement that we have it is the one that we typically have covid vaccinations are available and you can find out more about how to get your vaccination or family members vaccination at www dot boulder county dot org slash families slash disease slash covid dash 19 slash vaccines and with that alicia could you please call the roll yes sir and good evening everyone councilmember bronkett president friend here joseph present

[4:01] nagel here sweatly present wallach present weaver here yates happy to be here and young present mayor we have our quarrel thank you very much the first item tonight is a motion to amend the agenda we will add item 1a which is a declaration in honor of high school students and then we will change the order of the declarations for outgoing council members we will add item 1f covid health briefing in response and add item 1g which is confidentiality issues around desks and then we will remove item 5a which was the communication engagement update on council emails so could i please have a motion to amend the agenda second awesome we have a motion and a second

[5:01] and we'll do something new uh all in favor raise your hand all right and i see all hands so uh we have amended the agenda nine to zero and then the next item is we need to go to uh ryan i believe to speak to us about translation services tonight thank you for joining us this evening let me go ahead and pull up some slides that will talk through interpretation ryan i'm not sure if you're muted or if it's your mask the when i speak into the mic can you hear me up there better yeah all right so again welcome thank you for being here we do have interpretation available

[6:00] this evening so please see in your zoom menu in icon looks like a globe that says interpretation you'll be able to select english or spanish and please make sure to do select one language so you can hear anything that's said in either channel and please make sure to click mute when that's speaking to limit background noise and as we have interpretation a friendly reminder to make sure that you are speaking slowly taking a breath between senses and clearly enunciating each word and we'll try to stay in one of the language channels and make sure that we have some space between speakers thank you and i'll turn it back to you mayor

[7:01] okay thank you for that ryan and with that i will make one more announcement um this meeting is being held in council chambers for the first time in a very long time and it is a vaccine-verified event which is why we're allowed to sit closer than six feet apart from each other and we are allowed to take our masks off should we choose to do so i will probably leave my mask off for the whole meeting so that i can direct it but council members it's your choice staff it's your choice whether you want to leave your mask on or take it off as you speak um and with that i believe that we are ready to move to our first declaration is that right very good and with that um we have a declaration in honor of diana pinto avena and gia salazar and that declaration will be read tonight by uh mayor pro tem junior joseph jenny thank you sam and thank you for the opportunity to read this declaration i

[8:02] am deeply honored to read it a declaration in honor of diana pinto avena and gia or november 9th 2021. on thursday october 14th two brave boulder high school students diana pinto avina india salazar selflessly and courageously helped a gas grove neighbor in need these two young women both 9th graders witnessed 73 years old boulder resident there banko slipped and fall backwards off the front steps of her home during a rainstorm they ran to dev's side and quickly called 9-1-1 they stayed with her

[9:00] and protected her from the rain with their jacket until additional help arrived sadly deb succumbed to her injuries but thanks to the kindness of diana and jia her neighbor wasn't alone in her final days in her final minutes the gas grove neighbor neighborhood association has formally recognized diana in gia by honoring them as individuals exemplifying the best of our community when faced with an extremely difficult situation they took it upon themselves to act and they did so with maturity and compassion well beyond their years we the members of the boulder city council recognize and appreciate the significant contribution made by diana pinto avina and gia salazar

[10:00] thank you for your kindness that is a model for the entire community thank you juni and with that i believe that we have some guests here tonight to accept the declaration and to speak to us um the first one i have on my list is diana pinto avena and diana's father so diana if you are here if you can unmute and turn your camera on that would be great hello we can hear you hi there we can see you now hello great we just read the declaration if you have any [Music] we have someone interpreting for you would you rather speak in english or

[11:00] spanish either one is fine spanish very good so feel free to go ahead okay why not would you like to say something about what happened to the lady well you know what you did and yeah you can it's it's for your actions for the lady and what you're able to do thank you thank you for recognizing the help that my daughter provided mr lady oh we are we're happy to do so and we really appreciate what your daughter did in that moment of stress if that is any other from you because we

[12:00] have another person we'll go to next um well honestly like i'm very um generous of helping other people in need even at their last moment or um if they're struggling with something mentally or physically i'm always there for them mentally and physically to make sure that they're okay because as a bloated community we stand together very good and with that we will move to michelle bishop from the gospel neighborhood association sam we actually have mary butler from goss grove i apologize we also have gia salazar here let's start with mary butler and then we'll go to gia salazar hi i'm mary butler um i am representing the gos grove neighborhood association and i also

[13:00] happen to be a teacher at boulder high where diana and gia are students i didn't know them before this happened but once the neighborhood association found out we definitely were just we wanted to recognize them and then of course i couldn't help but be a proud panther boulder high we had a short ceremony for them yesterday at boulder high school and the school district is going to recognize diana and gia in january as part of the superintendent's circle um and we as the neighborhood association believe that they are just outstanding examples of good neighbors good citizens people who are looking out for other people and deb danko lived in our neighborhood for a very long time

[14:02] and from what i understand she connected with the students because as you know goss grove is is adjacent to boulder high school that she and her husband terry were really friendly with boulder high students and um talk to them when you know they park you on the street and are kind of in our neighborhood and people really respected deb and um the fact that these young women were there for her in this um time of need um it's just really appropriate and and wonderful so um we obviously thank and honor these two young women and um just we're so happy that the city of boulder has joined us in doing this so so thank you thank you for being here mary much appreciated and with that we will go to gia salazar gia if you are on you can unmute and turn on your camera

[15:02] hi hi we can see you so do you have anything that you'd like to say uh we are certainly um happy to honor the work that you did uh when you uh helped the person who had fallen do you want to tell us something about it um yeah so when i first um started walking i was walking on my way back to school um because uh we have lunch and lunch ended so i was walking and then all of a sudden i just um i saw some feet and i thought someone fell so as we got closer um i was sure that it worked that it was feet so then i told my friend diana to call the police

[16:00] and at first i wasn't sure what to do i really didn't know what to do nothing came to mind except for call for help so then um that's what we did and i don't know i just at that moment i was a little scared because i didn't know she was gonna be okay or not so [Music] um so and then um other people came by and they also helped us and and then that's when the ambulance came for her very good well thank you so much for what you and diana did it was very heroic and we want to honor you for pushing through the fear that you felt so thank you very much for that yeah all right thank you with that i think we are finished with that declaration and we will move on

[17:07] thank you sir our next the next item is item 1b which will be our copied health briefing and response thank you i know that we have uh almost now oh there's camille and lexi we have our boulder county uh public health partners who have helped us make this a vaccine facility and so we're able to be here with our mask off when we're speaking and encouraging folks to keep their mask on when we are not um and so i'll turn it over to camille uh actually camille lexi in the whole gang thank you so much good evening um mayor city manager rivera madrid um and all of the council we're always honored to join you and um to share um the the data that

[18:03] we have relative to this pandemic with you and to answer questions um as they come up i i have assembled an expert team tonight with me is our our new chief medical officer dr michelle haas i didn't know i mean the last time that we met i i think i recall that dr chris urbina was was on the screen and and he has retired um but we are very lucky to have dr michelle haas with us i also have um one of our attorneys kate haywood here and then our deputy director dr lexi nolan you know we're coming right off of a board of health meeting last night they received this update and so will you and what we are going to focus on um city manager mayor and council members is um really um a situational awareness

[19:00] and trends so that you can um be abreast of what's uh occurring in our county and in your community we're going to give you some policy developments that have occurred since the last time that we met and and really our boulder county public health response from the epidemiology perspective from vaccinations and vaccine equity i really didn't introduce myself either although you did city manager i'm camille rodriguez for the public i am the executive director of boulder county public health with that said one last thing i want the boulder city council to know how much we appreciate your city manager's collaboration with us and all of her staff's collaboration with my staff i think it's fantastic partnership and i just wanted to acknowledge that so with that said i'm going to turn this over to

[20:01] dr lexi nolan and she will begin the situational awareness update on cobit 19. apologies just a second there we go good evening mayor weaver boulder city council members and city staff thanks for having us this evening we do have some important upstate updates to share with you unfortunately most of it is not going in the right direction the direction that we would hope just to remind us all of our three goals to prevent severe illness and death

[21:01] what we are seeing right now is transmission is increasing but it's lower in boulder county than in surrounding counties we are seeing an unusual number of deaths over the past six weeks in boulder county but our best death rate is still significantly lower than colorado in the u.s in relation to really trying to pay attention to not overwhelm the health system as a whole in colorado we are not doing a great job but boulder county is among the counties contributing the fewest patients to hospitals and our vaccination rate amongst those 75 and older is over 99 percent which is a very strong protective factor for hospitalizations our gap really in vaccinations is among youth who have the lowest risk of hospitalizations

[22:00] third in terms of safely returning to normal activities we are seeing that our school quarantines are significantly down this year and our child case rates are lower than in most counties so this is contributing to our successful ability to keep children in school this year and our voluntary vaccination verification program offers safer options for patrons and supports businesses that serve more risk-averse groups one of the reasons that we wanted to offer this program was really to pay attention that as we moved back to normal activities there would be a group of folks in our community in boulder county who would not feel comfortable going back to normal activities if they weren't around other vaccinated people and we didn't want businesses to have to suffer because of that and this is really an opportunity for

[23:01] businesses to cater to their own patrons desires to be back in normal activities but to do it in a safe way and what's exciting about it is we're starting to see some interesting experiments in terms of businesses setting aside specific times for vaccinated folks to visit and to come and be part of the normal activities that they want to and to do it with a certain amount of joy in their step our key messages tonight are that colorado is in a surge and metro area cases are still rising but as i mentioned boulder county is varying better than most others in colorado about 1 in 48 coloradans are infectious right now hospitals and other providers are under significant strain due to the combination of covid and non-covid cases including increased trauma and delayed

[24:00] urgent care from last year which are now which is now often needing to has to be taken care of and we are also seeing some significant staffing shortages and these ripple effects of our health care providers um also affect our ability to roll out vaccine and flu clinics and other things like that because the staff are overwhelmed and exhausted and taxed um so just to recognize that you know as we've said before our our health system is a system and when one part of it's affected it does uh tend to affect lots of other parts so hospitalizations which we'll talk about a little later aren't separate from our ability to have a broader community response to containment our current projections suggest that from the state suggests that cases will peak in early december and hospitalizations in mid-december we do have some additional concerns

[25:00] related to the flu which is beginning to pick up upcoming holidays and resumed international travel and at the same time we have some optimism our shots for kids five to 11 years old began rolling out over the past week and booster vaccinations have been in progress for a couple of months and we are expecting vaccinations to continue to increase over the next couple of months as various employer requirements are implemented from local state and federal levels finally boulder county public health orders are expected to continue as they are currently written until at least january due to the surge that we're seeing right now so i will show you some generally familiar kinds of data and show you where we are in relation to epidemiological surveillance

[26:01] this slide shows where color colorado is in relation to other states in the united states you'll see that we are up here among some of the highest case rates in the country right now boulder county's own case rate would put us about here in the list and this is where we were about a month ago so our our decline in the rankings well looks like an increase in the rankings but in a bad way um is due both to the surge that we're experiencing but also due to a lot of other states particularly southern states are seeing significant decreases in cases right now so we've gotten a lot of questions about why are we having this surge right now why is colorado going through this when we're not seeing it in other parts of the country when our vaccination rate is relatively high when we have you know better protections and more mitigation

[27:01] layers in place than a lot of other places and this is being studied quite a bit by cdphe as well as some really smart folks at the school of public health and at different institutions and it's not clear yet why we're seeing this surge um there is a sense that it's probably due to a combination of factors um some of which are listed here um what's not satisfying in that answer is that a lot of these factors don't necessarily set us apart from the states um where we're seeing lower case rates so there's also it's you know part of it could be there's potentially less testing going on in other states colorado is notorious for actually having really high testing rates among the population that could be part of it but we will continue to report back on what we're understanding is the driver of this surge as we learn

[28:02] more this gives you some very specific information on where we are in terms of cases this is our seven day cumulative case rate it's at 269 cases per hundred thousand you can see it's quite a steep increase from the last couple of weeks this graph gives you a sense that boulder county is not alone in this struggle in colorado and in fact is surrounded by other states who are going through the same kinds of challenges you'll notice that there are a few counties in around us that have those green declining indicators it's worth noting that those declines are very small declines just a few percent and some of the increases are quite steep increases

[29:01] this is a breakout by age rates we are particularly concerned obviously about this 0 to 11 group which is seeing a very significant spike over the last few weeks um the good news is that half of those kids are now vaccine eligible and we hope that they will be moving towards a vaccination as quickly as possible that will help all of us because we know that when kids get sick they often inadvertently spread in the household and that it could be also supporting some of our other case rates driving some of our other case rates in other age groups geographically we are seeing that boulder county um [Music] has some differences some disproportionate distributions um

[30:02] the city of boulder which represents about 32 percent of the population only has about 24 percent of the cases whereas longmont which is about 30 percent of the county population has about 40 percent of the cases and we think that this is likely due to a lot of permeability of the county border in the proximity to weld county which has significantly higher rates and no mass mandate we've noticed that a number of the cities across the county that are close to count the county borders particularly for counties that have higher rates and fewer mitigation strategies in place are seeing disproportionately high numbers of cases in terms of vaccine i mean excuse me case equity we are seeing

[31:01] a fairly proportional distribution um whites who make up 77 of the population have about 76 of the cases a little bit of elevation in the latinx population which is 14 of the population but about 19 of the cases and our seven-day positivity has increased markedly over the last couple of weeks um particularly lately we are seeing more people getting tested which is good news we want to see that right now um and we're seeing about 2500 tests a day compared to 2 000 tests a day last week unfortunately we are seeing some uh additional deaths lately we have had 36 deaths since may of 2021 but we are still seeing significantly

[32:00] lower deaths death rates compared to colorado as a whole or to the u.s as a whole so let's take a quick look at our health system um because this is a critical pain point right now for us you'll remember that our epidemiological team moves into surge response when we exceed about 50 cases a day we're now at about 126 cases a day um what that means is that we prioritize who we spend the most time with and who we make personal outreach to based on vulnerability and potential for spread in the community i will give a shout out to our team recently boulder county's surge response plan was highlighted by the state as a model practice and shared with other

[33:01] public health agencies so we're very proud of the work that they've done to figure out how we make the most of our resources in very difficult circumstances in terms of hospitalizations we are seeing um less than at the state level we're seeing there are less than a thousand beds open across the state and less than 80 icu beds as of today we are expecting to see about 15 000 more coveted hospitalizations and about 2 000 more deaths in colorado by the end of february and in that north central region which includes adams arapaho boulder broomfield clear creek denver douglas alert gilpin and jefferson counties um our icu bed availability is at seven percent our med surg bed availability is at seven percent and we have about thirty seven percent of our hospitals reporting significant staffing shortages

[34:01] the state uh has now moved the north central earth has moved to a combined hospital transfer center plan activated at level three which means that hospitals are proactively sharing patients to deliver the resources where to deliver to ensure that patients are situated where they can receive the care that they need and best spread in rational resources across the state we have seen 19 pediatric confirmed cases of covid that are currently in our four children's hospitals we have 92 patients hospitalized for covid19 in boulder county hospitals [Music] most of those are not from boulder county and this is just another graphic showing some of the resource

[35:01] declines the purple graph is medical and surgical beds and the blue graph is icu beds and you can see how critically close to the bottom we are getting there in boulder county we only have six icu beds available as of yesterday um and this is just a graph that shows that as the hospitals and hospitalizations increase in boulder county they are similar to colorado increasing rates of hospitalizations so this is creating a an appropriate response from the state and there have been a number of recent actions the hospi the colorado hospital association has become much more proactive about asking the public to please be careful and take precautions and use layered mitigation strategies they are using social media radio and television ads

[36:01] to really reach out to the public and ask everyone to do their part to help keep health workers intact we are also seeing state policy and executive order changes that kate will talk more about in a few minutes we're seeing mechanisms to expedite discharges from the hospital and transfers and the state is investing a significant amount of resources right now to roll out monoclonal antibody treatments which are projected to be able to reduce hospitalizations 13 to 23 percent and we are also hoping that the two upcoming applications for emergency use authorization for two different pills that early data shows cut severe illness and hospitalizations will be approved so let's turn for a minute to a little more hopeful spot and look at some vaccination rates um these are our updated vaccination rates

[37:00] and it's very exciting to see this five to 11 added to the list we already have five percent of the population with at least a partial course of uh vaccinations and we'll be working hard um to move that number up as quickly as people are ready for it we have very good numbers in all of the other age groups except we are continuing to do work on this 18 to 30 year old population which has lower vaccination rates than other groups and we are looking at how we can continue to reach out to those folks and make sure that they understand what the opportunity is what the risks are and make sure that they have accurate information to make an informed decision um [Music] so uh this is you know just your usual

[38:00] um update we are now at 69.7 percent uh of the uh boulder county residents have had a full course of the covid vaccine you will note that because we have now made ages 5 to 11 eligible for the vaccine it's going to bring down our percentage of the eligible population in these two areas that's not a bad thing that's just getting a little bit further down the line in recognizing that we have a bigger population that now has the opportunity to get that vaccination um and just a quick report on boosters we are now seeing that about in our 60 to 69 year old population in our 70-plus population which are the two most vulnerable groups that have seen um declining efficacy of the vaccination over time and they are the most vulnerable to severe illness and death

[39:02] we have seen that in that 60 to 69 percent uh age 60 to 69 uh year old group that about 85 86 were fully vaccinated and of that 86 36.6 have now gotten a booster and among 70 and older about 98 were vaccinated and about 55 percent have gotten a booster so that's terrific news it means that people are seeking the boosters out and they are being able to move in that space to get them we need to continue to do that work to make sure that they're safe as we move into the next few weeks in terms of vaccination support just to let you know what we are doing at boulder county public health and i do want to give a real shout out to the city of boulder and our partners at the city of boulder who are working hard to make sure that you're also playing a great role in offering

[40:00] vaccinations to folks and we really appreciate your partnership in that space among the five to 11 year old vaccinations our goal is to um not as just the agency but as a county is to vaccinate about 14 000 of the 23 000 kids in that age range so about 60 by the end of january that we think that's actually a realistic time frame for getting that work done we do have 67 enrolled providers that are working with us in this space they are listed on the bcph website we as an agency are offering clinics at the longmont hub on fridays and saturdays for november december and january we are working with our community ambassadors to make sure that priority populations are able to access those equity clinics we're also giving parents boosters if they show up and want one because you know there we want there to be kind of a no wrong door

[41:00] of getting shots in arms and in the long term the plan is to integrate those clinics into bcph's um children's clinics and and other equity clinics um bvsd is also offering some equity clinics at three elementary schools and at teens inc in netherland and we are working with sbvsd to explore a clinic at timberline we continue to offer equity clinics for 12 and older at longmont hub on thursdays and we are engaged in two vaccination education campaigns one is focused on vaccine hesitant parents under 12 and the other is focused on youth and young adults and one thing that's interesting that we're finding is that the prevalence of mental health challenges in that age group is one of the barriers to those kids those young folks getting vaccinated and so we're looking at how we can create strategies that address both of those issues um together

[42:04] i am happy to turn it over to kate haywood awesome thank you all for for having me here i am going to briefly discuss some local state and federal legal and policy context issues there's been a lot of movement in this area over the last month as a reminder boulder county public public health school mass order has been in effect since august 9th this is in effect until rescinded on september 2nd public health issued a universal mass order and as a reminder that will no longer require masks on its own terms once we move into moderate or low transmission for a 21 day period on cdc's tracker on october 29th public health issued a public health advisory because based on

[43:00] the data lexi shared we are in surge conditions specifically with respect to hospital capacity locally and around the state that public health advisory made two recommendations which both follow cdc recommendations one is a recommendation to move indoor gatherings outdoors and the second is a recommendation that if you are in a crowd of people from different households even outdoors that you should wear a mask this is not intended to be new or novel again this is following cdc recommendations but rather meant to be an advisory so the public is aware of what's going on next slide please public health's business team is continuing to work with businesses both with respect to education and enforcement of orders as well as responding to the vaccine verification program to date we have had 288

[44:02] businesses applied to the vaccine verification program of which 241 businesses have been approved and the remaining businesses are in various stages of that process on public health's website there is a publicly available list of all facilities with descriptions of what they are and they sort of range across various uh industries our neighbors and local municipal our neighbors and local municipalities have also been taking action denver has a vaccine requirement via a public health order for workers in certain sectors local governments here in boulder county city of boulder longmont boulder county and others have all made vaccines mandatory for their employees and we continue to have school mask requirements around the state these have

[45:01] been put in place both by local public agencies as well as many school districts are stepping up to do this work okay with respect to what is happening at the state level about two weeks ago the governor outlined his plan for addressing the surge and the number of cases appearing in our hospitals our the governor's goal is to maintain hospital capacity levels so that those who need care can get it looking at the items that the governor outlines there's approximately five to six of them almost all of them have been put completely in place fema medical search teams have been requested from fema the governor implemented cdphe order 2021-0

[46:00] which delays cosmetic surgeries the governor has not yet delayed elective surgeries but has indicated that that could be coming there is also now a legal framework in place for hospitals to request to go to crisis standards of care and that was issued via executive order 2021-136 what this does is it puts in place when hospitals cannot manage the number of patients they have and they need to triage at a higher level to determine for example who will receive a ventilator and who won't while this is you know definitely a scary situation it provides that legal framework when it's needed the governor also put into place a patient admission and transfer order which serves to balance our hospital capacity around the state

[47:01] without this order there can be barriers to transferring patients due to for example insurance requirements and so what this does is it eliminates those barriers so we can ensure that we're using all of our resources on a statewide level this order also allows hospitals to deny admission to certain people and to send them to other facilities if necessary due to the capacity of their facilities the state has also issued a han a health alert network message to health care providers saying how monoclonal antibodies should be distributed and the state is ramping up efforts on that as lexi mentioned the state has also followed boulder county public health's lead and has issued a public health advisory

[48:00] regarding limitle limited hospital capacity in the state in addition to these actions already taken we can expect to see more from the state along these lines as i previously mentioned there is potential for elective surgeries to be delayed although the governor has not issued the specific order yet there's been a lot of movement on the federal level as well osha issued the rule for the president's directive that employers with a hundred or more employees be backs be required to vaccinate by january 4th and unvaccinated employees must mask and test once per week this affects 84 million workers there was an immediate legal challenge to this requirement that's why there is

[49:01] an asterisk there next to employees the fifth circuit has temporarily stayed this order to determine whether osha is in fact the right entity to issue this order a jurisdictional issue we are closely following that it's expected that there will be legal challenges to any of these actions and we'll see how those play out i will say that many large companies have already implemented vaccine mandates in anticipation of this osha rule separate from the osha rule is that the federal workforce including the military now has a vaccination requirement and they must be vaccinated by november 22nd there is no test out option for this requirement and it only permits the legally required exemptions which are religious and medical exemptions under title vii

[50:03] there is also a requirement for vaccination among federal contractors federal contractors include companies such as airlines who work with the federal government and this end up ends up covering another large group of people although i don't have that precise number in addition there's going to be 17 million workers covered by the medicare and medicaid requirement for health care facilities these people must be vaccinated by january 4th and again there is no test out option next slide please more information about what's going on in the courts jefferson county public health issued a mask mandate for schools which was challenged on religious grounds

[51:02] the district court in jefferson county upheld jeffco's masked mandate against those religious challenges and the masked mandate for schools as issued by jefferson county still stands it's also possible you've heard about the douglas county school district mask mandate in short the douglas county public health department issued a public health order allowing for a personal exemption to the school district's mask mandate the federal district court in denver granted a preliminary injunction ordering that douglas county should not permit a personal exemption to mass mandates in schools as those personal exemptions can violate the rights of students with disabilities

[52:01] one side effect of this order is it has alerted a lot of other school districts to the importance of not only having a math requirement but also enforcing requirements in a manner that's going to most protect our vulnerable populations we've also seen a number of challenges to various vaccine mandates by employers universities and governments again this is not unexpected but they've pretty much played out the same across the board religious challenges on constitutional grounds have been largely unsuccessful you do not you see the religious exemption in the employment context because of title vii which is a federal statute it requires certain employers to have a religious exemption for vaccine

[53:00] requirements but the courts have largely said that there is no constitutional right to a religious exemption for a vaccine mandate we've also seen the u.s supreme court upholding vaccine mandates in various contexts the employer context with respect to the new york city teacher vaccine mandate case the university context and also the public health order context and that is there was a case out of maine where the state issued a health care worker mandate the one caveat to this is the fifth circuit as i mentioned looking at that osha jurisdictional issue and you know the issue being whether osha can issue this rule or whether it would need to come from another body such as congress again we are also seeing many employers

[54:02] requiring vaccines on their own we're not seeing the type of exodus of employees due to vaccine mandates that was originally feared it appears that the requirements are largely working some states have already declared that getting fired for failure to vaccinate does not entitle a person to unemployment benefits and we are also starting to see that some industries such as teaching and health care it may actually become very difficult for an individual to get a new job in these industries without being vaccinated due to the complex network of vaccine requirements thank you so this concludes our visual presentation we do want to turn the microphone over to dr haas for a few

[55:00] minutes and we're so glad to have you with us dr haas welcome well uh thanks for inviting me i i thought i'd say a little bit more about myself and some of the the i think the glimmers of hope so i'm an infectious diseases physician um i've worked in uh tb and hiv care for past 12 years um and so i just recently joined boulder county public health in october um to take over for dr urbina um i i am hopeful um and i think we've had a great start to the rollout of vaccinating kids aged 5 to 11. the vaccines are highly effective for this age group in terms of preventing infections so 90 effective really minimal side effects and um you know at least my own sort of limited personal experience at least with um having my own elementary school-aged kids is that they've tolerated it really well um and so they're friends because they're all talking about it

[56:00] um so i do think that they're um that that this is an exciting development i think it remains to be seen how much this will impact um community transmission um it certainly will impact uh you know keeping kids in school and keeping kids safe and i am hopeful that we may see some reduced transmission in families as well but i think um that remains to be seen um and i don't know if there's a i'm also happy to take questions or you know i don't know if that's the right space for this um and hear any concerns thank you great i'll jump in and say thank you to you camille lexi michelle and kate for being here um we as always appreciate getting the update and it sounds like this is pretty fresh information for us so uh and as you say a bit discouraging um but we will focus on the upside of people getting more vaccines so with that i'll turn to council and see if there's any questions i have bob this is probably a question thank you

[57:00] very much for the presentation this is probably a question for either dr haas or dr nolan um if i go to the boulder community health website and look about booster shots it seems to me it indicates that for those who are under 65 and who don't have certain health conditions boosters are not yet available am i reading that right and if so when will boosters be available for healthy people under the age of 65. i can take that area however you want yeah so it's a really great question and observation so um you may also notice if you go to cd ph's website that they're you know and the state has said that we're that because colorado is a high transmission environment that we're all at high risk and so anyone uh aged 18 years of age and older who lives in colorado um you know who's six months out from their first series um is now eligible for a booster shot

[58:01] which is it is like you know do you know it's a little bit different than what cdc is recommending um i did hear that cd phd did actually have a conversation you know did communicate that with cdc um and um the you know cdc isn't having any is it isn't concerned about colorado taking that that stance so um so what that would mean for all you know all of us who are you know don't have those underlying medical conditions if you're six months out is that you're eligible for a booster if you live in colorado okay that's great that's good news um it's a little different than what's which bch is showing their website so maybe that needs to be updated so um if for those who are watching who are under 65 who don't have a health condition how do they get a booster shot what's the best way i know sam read off a booster link at the very beginning of the meeting is is that as simple as that is just going going to your pharmacy or going to your doctor and getting a booster regardless of your age if you're six months out yes in theory i mean i think in practice

[59:00] sometimes it's a little hard to navigate but yes you can you can go to a pharmacy um and you can go you know go see you know talk to your provider and um and get a booster that way so and you know i will name that i mean that this stuff is really rapidly changing it's sort of you know sort of the area that we live in um and i i um so we you know we'll get the website updated as soon as possible just to mention also that when you sign up to make an appointment that um you do a self self-attestation process you say what your rationale is and um you're taking at your word for why you feel you need a booster um and people are just encouraged that if they feel like they're ready for a booster if they feel like that would provide extra protection for them and their families to to go ahead and take that step great thank you guys for the answer uh juni i see that your hand is up do you have a question thank you sam i have uh

[60:01] three questions i wanted to ask based on the presentation and thank you about for asking that question actually and i just want to ask that question first before we move on for someone who's healthy someone who's young what is the purpose of getting the booster shot i can do i can take that one um so um what we're seeing both in the u.s um and then also there there was some early data coming from israel is that it looks like immunity or protection against kobe 19 starts to go down or wane right around five or six months um and so you know it's hard to actually to be honest factor in the impact of delta um and and weather and waning immunity but but that effect is is fairly is um has been pretty consistent and also it's not only seen with pfizer but it's also seen with moderna as well

[61:00] and so so because of we're seeing this is why you know cdc went ahead and took that recommendation there there does seem to be you know i mean and the data that that we have you know looks back all the way down to ages 16 of years of age and older in terms of seeing this waning immunity that the best state i've seen so far both coming out of israel and then also from the us thank you um my next question is you talked about on slide eight you talked about um the numbers per 100 000 and i saw two for 243.72 and then on slide 23 you talked about the um the 18 to 19 group which is only a 41 vaccination rate and i wanted to know for boulder county similar to the map that you have on slide a do you have like a heat map to know which part of the community that is

[62:00] leading to this search right so um we the slide that we presented on the geographic um distribution um points uh what was obvious in the slide was that longmont has a disproportionate number of cases and then there was kind of this other municipalities and an incorporated folder when you begin to break that out and you track it by more specific municipalities erie lyons nederland it is the counties that are closer to our borders of other counties where we you know where we have a lot more permeability of the county line and people going back and forth people commuting for work and school and play going in and out of boulder county and mostly into counties that have much higher case rates than we do and it just creates a bleed

[63:00] effect wow no that's interesting to hear um i wouldn't have imagined that the surrounding counties were impacting us um that tremendously especially in that uh itself the university right here and it's um and we have a university here in boulder with a lot of young people um between 18 and 19. but our our university students are over 95 vaccinated wow thank you that that's great to hear that's very encouraging um i think my last question for you is earlier you talked about gathering i was just slightly i just need some clarification around gathering you said even if people are gathering outside and they're fully vaccinated they should still wear a mask did i get that correctly if people are gathering closely together if they're in crowds if they're going to concerts if they're

[64:00] um you know in close proximity to a lot of other people yeah it's a good idea to wear a mask right now even if you're outdoors but particularly if you're in larger crowds thank you so much for that explanation thank you thank you sam thank you ginny and rachel thanks can you hear me it's been a while since i used this yeah okay um yeah thank you for the presentation i have just a couple questions um you said that businesses can get certified and then they don't need people to present vaccines how does that work with businesses like restaurants or you know retail are those businesses able to get some hours certified or is that is there any eligibility for kind of safe shopping at this point vaccines absolutely the program i'm sorry kate why don't you take that one yeah i was just going to say that the vaccine verification program is intended

[65:00] to be very flexible we want to encourage businesses to apply and we want to find a way to make the program work for all businesses i will say that the majority of businesses that have applied have primarily been offices that do not generally face the public so it's easier for those businesses to apply with respect to retail and restaurants um we are encouraging those businesses to look at having design they could have designated hours you can have designated classes in a fitness center for example where only areas or certain times are vaccine verified whereas the rest of the time masks would be required we have not seen a large uptake in the program amongst restaurants we are hoping that will increase now that

[66:00] five to 11 are vaccine eligible and we're also you know working closely with the chamber to try and promote um the program amongst industries that are not heavily represented right now so in theory like a restaurant could say tuesday nights are going to be only vaccine eligible and how and do we give them an easy way to present your your vaccine status is there are we rolling that out as a county on an app or something yeah we would love we would love it if restaurants would consider having vaccine verified nights and with respect to showing proof um that also is intended to be very flexible so i would say the most common forms of proof are you know people have their physical cards their cdc cards they can show a picture of their cdc cards and then the my colorado app has been a really useful tool for showing proof it's just an app and you can pull

[67:01] it up on your phone you can also pull your driver's license up on that if you need it um so really or you can even you know present healthcare records from your provider but across all of those boards we're hoping you know that captures everyone that wants to participate awesome i would love to see those kind of nights too so if there's something that we can do to help please let us or at least me know um okay next question i i think i heard you say that uh the state goal was to keep hospitals under capacity and it sounds like we're close to that not happening that we we are down to a low number of beds so um is there any chance that the state's going to do some more aggressive statewide um i don't know actions like i think this time last year i could only get together with like two other people in a backyard right we're six feet apart you know we were all sort of hanging outside with our close friends and small groups um

[68:00] and we had mass mandates so is the state looking at any of that and are we as a county going to look at any more of the physical separation ideas like we had implemented around this time last year i don't know who that's too yeah do you want to take that one and i guess a follow-up is there anything we can do as a council if we wanted to you know advocate in that we it feels like boulder county is doing what we can do but it is still seeping in from nearby counties who don't have the mandates i can um give this a try thank you for those very spot-on questions we are um in constant conversation with colleagues from our surrounding counties and and often with cdphe our state health partners and we all row in the same direction

[69:00] to have our um leadership at cdphe encouraged the governor to take extra actions that would protect and promote the health of all of the citizens of colorado we've been very supported by the boulder county board of health in the recommendations that allowed us to implement the two public health orders that ms haywood explained to you we utilized the public health advisory most recently right before halloween [Music] because we knew we know that this community enjoys gathering for fall celebrations and knew that we needed to remind the community to continue to row in the right direction of the layered mitigation strategies that we have in place

[70:02] we obviously as a local public health department cannot predict what the governor will do [Music] it was encouraging that the slides that ms haywood showed you of the executive orders relative to trying to mitigate the issues relative to hospital and icu bed capacity we would have always hoped that we didn't have to put in place the public health orders that we did we don't mind taking the leap to protect our most vulnerable which is why we started with the school public health order and then followed with the universal indoor public order but always we would have hoped that that the governor would have seen that this was an oriented to changing the behaviors to implementing

[71:02] layered mitigation strategies to prevent community spread and to prevent the hospitals feeling what they're feeling now i know the governor pays attention to boulder and i know that we have some continued opportunities to present why we feel like our strategies have worked and those are going to happen in the future i can't give you advice as to whether or not you should advocate for more orders or for more layered mitigation but what i will say is that was our intention in the first place that if everyone rode in the direction of wearing their masks and even taking our advice outside of the order of wearing face coverings when they gather in large crowds outdoors that we would prevent our our community from having to go back into

[72:00] something more extreme like a lockdown or limitations gathering size so at this point we continue to always want to serve and support our community and to work with cd phd to continue to advocate so that originally even we could be rowing in the same direction with orders but that isn't what what played out and i think that you all saw that in the data that dr nolan presented and how we explain to uh council member joseph that that we have a situation where those those areas of our county that are closest to places without orders are experiencing the highest case loads so to that end um really i'm i'm going to close out this this answer with our gratitude to you and to your city manager and staff for helping us

[73:01] achieve the implementation of of especially the universal masking order and for supporting us especially with the vaccine verification program because without that kind of support i think we would be having an entirely different discussion about case numbers and hospitalizations in boulder county and so thank you for your discernment there to know that part of this is at the highest levels of leadership but we're willing to lead and and have done so and we appreciate your support in that and i i appreciate your leadership as well in instituting the county mass mandate that we have um two more hopefully shorter questions one did i hear you say correctly or did i correctly hear that the hospitalizations that we have in boulder county are mostly non-boulder county residents yes okay and what like is there a what

[74:01] percentage is that i would have to get back to you on that i'm not even sure i can get that information but um i can see okay if it's available the follow-up email would be great um and then uh last question i think that 16 and 17 year olds were eligible for shots before 12 to 15 or 11 to 15 year olds and i don't believe that they are eligible for boosters yet just wondered um if you know why that is i think there are a lot in that age group that are frontline workers and working in healthcare facilities and um have the waning immunity so confused is there a health risk for them to get boosted or do we see that happening soon i'm sorry can you state your question 16 and 17 year olds are not eligible for boosters yet but they are outside the six-month window do we know why they're not eligible or because it's 18 plus right i'm just wondering is do we expect that that might change soon given that that they are

[75:00] equally at risk as a 19 year old dr haas yeah i can take that one um you know it's possible that that will change um i was actually just looking this up yesterday so um in the the lancet they just published the experience with israel so israel has actually offered boosters down to age 12 and in their most recent publication they looked at 16 and older um and then when they looked at like outcomes they actually lumped in 16 year olds with the 39 year olds and so it's just really difficult to sort of tease out you know risk benefit in the younger age groups based on the data that's presented so far um but at least that tells me that israel does have data on impact of booster dosing in the younger age groups and so hopefully we can learn from their experience and i think one of the key questions is just ensuring safety um with the boosters in in that younger age group and i think

[76:01] the data are there and that it is safe um it's just that that hasn't been presented yet and so that's one of the reasons why um i think but you know that the recommendation so far has down to 18 and older um i also saw a headline that pfizer was going to ask the fda for eua approval to to give boosters to all eligible uh folks that can be vaccinated i don't know where that's going to stand i mean so it sounds like i think all of that tells us that there there is some there is data that can be looked at um that it's going to be you know that that pfizer that the fda may be looking at this soon and so hopefully we'll have more information on extending to those lower age groups um by the end of the year but um so it's an excellent question and the bottom line is is that way you know i think there's data but it's just not it's not in certain it's not readily available such that we can make decisions on extending boosters down to that age group but i also think just

[77:01] like with all things covet things are evolving this may be something that will change all right thank you it's all my questions not a question but just a shout out to the 30 to 39 year old group for being second highest in vaccination rate way to go for the uh no good millennials for helping lead the way wow at least there is an upside i have one question um which is it looks to me from the chart that you showed earlier like we've had a little more than 20 deaths in boulder county in the last month or so do you know what fraction of those were unvaccinated um i don't off hand um we are we're hoping that we can find some bandwidth in the next couple of weeks to do a little bit of a dive on what's going on why we're seeing such an increase in deaths and to see if that

[78:00] gives us any strategic direction for how we can intervene a little bit sooner in some of those spaces and that will be part of the assessment and the analysis is to take a look at that distribution great it it just seems like if we can emphasize that point over and over the protectiveness of the vaccines that's just helpful for everyone to hear um any yeah mark has a question well first thank you for that um complete and very sobering report i actually i only have one question um as we are getting down to the uh the sort of the bottom of the barrel with respect to our icu beds is there any possibility of creating more icu beds do you know the answer to that question michelle i'm sorry you're a mute michelle sorry

[79:02] it always has to happen to me at least once a day um i don't know the answer to that um all i can say is that in general um and i'm really just speaking from my own home institution at denver health like we we have talked about ways to you know redeploy hospitals for example that have icu experience um and and sort of shift you know sort of shift um how staff um you know are utilized in that capacity i really can't speak for you know how local hospitals might be handling that so i think we'll probably have to get back to you and really probably talk to some of the local hospitals to see what their plans are thank you i'd appreciate that i know that the state is also working on bringing more ventilators into colorado from states that don't need them as much as we do right now and we are importing a very significant workforce um both uh through fema and also through

[80:02] other arrangements of providers in states that don't need them as much as we do that i think is going to make a significant difference in the staffing issue that we're facing right now and will support the rollout of the monoclonal antibody treatment which is expected to be a significant contributor to preventing the need for more icu beds so that we can prevent that level of severe illness a little bit more aggressively thank you all right great counsel any more questions all right seeing none i will thank you again for being here hopefully next time it will be all good news and we really appreciate the work you're doing and the partnership we have with you thanks so much thank you mayor thank you for all of your time tonight much appreciated thank you very much and with that we

[81:00] will move on shortly but uh juni joseph i believe has a few words she wants to say i think you have to leave and so i'll kick it over to you ginny thank you sam and i know this is the well this is the last council meeting with uh the old council and there will be a new council i just wanted to take this moment to just share my appreciation and thank all of you um i'm one of those people that i do not goodbyes but hopefully this is not goodbye but see you next time i met you for two years ago when it when i became a council member and over the last two years we've endured a lot together as a council and council members we have dealt with a once in a lifetime pandemic we've also dealt with a tragic shooting in our community but we also had good experiences we have worked on the budget

[82:02] homelessness and policing and we've also worked on racial equity and various other issues the work is not done or over but i understand that life takes all of us in different directions at time and now before leaving the account i hope you will reach out about the issues that are important to you i look forward to seeing you around boulder whether on open space or on the pearl street mall god bless and godspeed thank you sam thank you so much ginny much appreciated and have a good rest of your evening i had one thing thank you and also a very happy birthday to judy joseph as well happy birthday okay with that alicia i think we're ready to move to declarations is that right mike it's like my mute button yes sir that is correct next on our on tonight's agenda we have the declaration

[83:01] in honor of adam swetlick's service on the boulder city council and that'll be presented by council member friend are we do we go up okay do you have mike thank you can everyone hear me oh good we're going to look at each other um here for his last day and i didn't realize we'd be visible from the waist up so apologies for the it's been a long zoom okay zoom habits um okay i'm reading a declaration honoring adam swetlick's service on the boulder city council dated november 9th 2021. in 2019 adam swetlick was elected to a

[84:00] two-year term on the boulder city council originally from green bay wisconsin adam moved to boulder in 2006 to attend the leeds school of business at the university of colorado cu at boulder graduating in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in marketing since graduating from cu adam has worked in eclectic jobs ranging from head coach of the university of colorado club rowing team to door person for the walrus saloon to currently a marketing specialist for a local honey company called bjorn's colorado honey adam has been a strong advocate for reducing wealth inequality and for increasing affordable housing living wages transportation options and funding in 2017 he was appointed to the city's housing advisory board serving as chair as board chair before being elected to council while on council adam has served on internal city groups such as the audit committee council retreat committee guiding coalition for racial equity and

[85:02] the sister city subcommittee with me he has also represented the city on regional groups and partner organizations including the resource conservation advisory board the boulder county consortium of cities and as an alternate to state highway 119 coalition state highway 7 coalition and the boulder convention and visitors bureau board moreover and i would say uh most importantly adam has steadfastly served our community with unparalleled integrity and heart and i'm gonna try not to cry now on issues ranging from homelessness and affordable housing to municipalization and climate crisis resiliency adam has been fearless in giving insight from his generational perspective and making space for other underrepresented community voices to be heard we the city council of the city of boulder colorado recognize honor and appreciate adam sweatless sweat licks service on council and his many

[86:00] contributions to the community and i will just say on a personal vote note i am deeply saddened that he didn't run again and will not be here for my next two years thank you adam i think does he get to give a speech yeah we should yeah you mind holding this thank you thank you rachel for reading that um one of the things that i've cherished most is we all oh we all came in uh we all came in from very different backgrounds and with very different viewpoints and over the time that we've been here together we've really been able to just coalesce as a group together and tackle the tough issues and you know during all that time even though we didn't get to be together physically i i just think so highly of all of you city staff

[87:00] city council the community members in the city it's just been such a hard two years but we've come out the other end and as you heard we're not quite there yet so please be diligent as as much as you can but it's been such a cool experience and i wouldn't trade it for anything um probably my biggest accomplishment is making sure meetings start on time and i i expect that to continue for those of you who are going to be here because if it doesn't after a year i'm going to come yell at you about that so please you know keep that up city staff nuria please do your job and keep them on task i have no doubt that you will there's so much i could say but honestly going forward i just really hope that all the members of our community

[88:01] um really try to lead with kindness uh i think through the pandemic we've seen a lack of that and um it means so much especially to the sitting members of council when you get a kind email when you get a kind word from someone it means everything in the world because that's very rarely what we get so it honestly sustains us through and i know the ones who are continuing over the next two years they're going to need that help based on what they've been through so just thank you all and i'll leave you with you know a few words my grandma taught me she was four foot ten but she was towering above me in terms of love and kindness and she always said you know you don't you don't always have to agree with everyone but you have to try to be nice to them so i just wish that for our community and um keep trying to do that please tip

[89:00] your servers they need it more than ever uh and yeah thank you thank you all for the awesome ride before i pass this on while we watch adam go back to his seat i just wanted to make the make sure the community could all see that he's got his rainbow light there i don't know if anybody noticed and should i pass this alicia could you take us to the next one please yes sir of course next we have the declaration in honor of mariby nagel's service on the boulder city council and that'll be read by council member wallach thank you this is a declaration honoring mirabei nagle's service on the boulder city council and dated november 9 2021.

[90:01] in 2017 mayor by nagel was elected to a four-year term on the boulder city council born and raised in boulder nearby now lives in gun barrel a northeast neighborhood of the city she has a deep love for her hometown and feels a deep commitment to making it a better place mirabai attended the university of colorado at boulder where she graduated from the leeds school of business with a bachelor of science in business administration later she also attended the gemological institute of america where she received her graduate gemology degree while also working in a fine jewelry store after moving back to boulder in 2011 mirabai joined her family business as a jeweler an avid animal lover nearby has worked to protect boulder's rich and unique open space resources and all the diverse plant and animal species that call it home in 2011 mariby joined the sugarloaf fire

[91:01] protection district or slfpd and in 2014 she became a certified emergency first responder with slfpd and won firefighter of the year during her time on council mirabai has served on internal city groups such as the boards and commissions committee and the charter and elections committee she's also represented the city on regional groups and partner organizations such as the rocky mountain greenways steering committee commuting solutions and as an alternate for the rocky flat stewardship council before i conclude on a personal note i want to say that i've always respected and admired the passion and commitment that you brought to all of the things that you hold most dear and i thank you and honor you for that accordingly we the city council of the city of boulder colorado recognize honor and appreciate the service on council and the significant contributions made to the

[92:01] city and community by mirror by nagel thank you nearby any words yes thank you mark for reading that really appreciate it if you guys can't hear me just let me know um i'm sorry i couldn't be with you in person tonight i have some sick kitties at home that needed my my care um so i i just want to start off with first of all thanking um my family my parents and my husband for the support through um this ride on council as adam said it's been wild um i want to thank my campaign manager who has spoken to me many times and walked me through some difficult situations and the support she provided me throughout the four years along with many other friends and staff i want to thank the staff members i was able to work with over the four years new ones and ones that have since left especially heidi and lynette they were

[93:00] joyous to to work with and get to see when we were there in person um and so i just really appreciate the service from everyone in our community uh i guess the one thing i will say moving forward that i will request of the next council is to remember that this community i think is made special because we've always taken a notice of the world around us and how dearly special that is to everyone and that's why so many people move here and that's why we have our open space um remembering that when we make votes that we not only affect ourselves but we affect our surroundings and the interconnected web of the world that exists and so by remembering that maybe humans don't always take the forefront and that sometimes we remember that nature and wildlife also

[94:02] need to be present in our goals and to look at generations forward and how things are going to be affected in that manner with the votes that we make is desperately important moving forward in the world that we now live in so i just request that you you try to remember that from from time to time when you are up there with the huge responsibility of voting for town this town for the town that some of us have grown up and and seen change so so drastically um because for me it's sadly not been the best change i've seen a lot of uh sad things in in my years that i've been here and so i really hope that that can turn around and as adam said as well i hope that we can start showing each other the kindness uh this was a difficult four years um probably the most challenging of my life and that's where my family support came in uh and and even my animals being able to come home and cuddle a cat was made my day and so those wonderful words of support from the

[95:00] community members that we do rarely receive really can make a difference and so you might disagree with someone and that's perfectly fine and that's what's so wonderful about being in america is that we have the right to disagree we have the right to vote against something that someone else absolutely advocates for but in the end to remember that there is a level of respect that would be nice to be shown to everyone and that we all have value and trying to remember that sometimes can be difficult but it exists so i wish you all the best of luck moving forward it's been an honor getting to serve with you all and i'm so sorry i could not see you in person tonight [Applause] all right thanks very much and alicia all right sir next we'll have the declaration in honor of mary young's service on the boulder city council and that'll be read by councilmember brockett

[96:13] all right well let me just start by saying this is a great honor to be able to read this um a little further down right it's a great honor to move to the center of the room and present this declaration to mary young i mary and i have worked together for 11 years when i first got on planning board 11 years ago mary had a couple of years of tenure i looked up to her and i learned a lot from her and then she went on to council yes exactly i looked up and she moved on to council and a couple years later i followed on the council and again uh looked up to her and learned a great deal from her and have continued to learn from her up to this day so as they say it's an honor here we go

[97:00] uh declaration honoring mary young service on the boulder city council november 9th 2021 in 2013 mary young was elected to a four-year term on the boulder city council and was re-elected in 2017 to another four-year term throughout her eight years on council mary has used her voice to amplify issues of racial equity affordable housing climate action and strategic planning mary first came to boulder in the 70s when she was studying mechanical engineering at the university of texas el paso and during her studies she was recruited by the international business machines corporation to work in boulder for the summer and quickly fell in love with the community after finishing her masters in mechanical engineering from the university of california mary returned to boulder in 1982 and has called it home ever since her engineering career covered a range of assignments from developing mining instrumentation to designing juvenile products to operations management for a small startup in boulder county and she worked in engineering related businesses until 2008 after retiring from our engineering

[98:00] career in 2008 mary began a second career in public service in 2009 when she was appointed to the planning board for five years and served as chair before her election to council throughout her time on council mary served as mayor pro tem from 2015 to 2016 and has served on internal city groups such as the charter and elections committee council employee evaluation committee financial strategy committee and the guiding coalition for racial equity she's also represented boulder on the colorado chautauqua association a city partner organization during her time in boulder mary has held positions with non-profits including growing gardens of boulder county and vo mobility services she has served on the board of ego car share and for three years participated in committees that award grants for the community foundation of boulder county in 2012 she was chosen for a rose community foundation fellowship to provide to develop a transportation project that focuses on the well-being of latino elders as the city has been seeking more and better ways to engage new and different people mary's strong ties to the local

[99:01] latino community have been an incredible asset in that effort over years of relationship building mary has helped the city identify and address barriers for engagement which has led to increases in resources such as translation services and programs such as the emergency response connectors and community connectors in residence these programs and resources have helped augment city services to better address and support the unique needs of the latino community so we the city council of the city of boulder colorado recognize honor and appreciate mary young's contributions to the city who's dedicating to his dedication to creating a community for people of all backgrounds has been a hallmark of her service thank you and i didn't expect to get emotional but here i am so um you know i just want to say that um what i've always said about serving on

[100:01] council is that it's always challenging and sometimes gratifying and tonight is certainly a gratifying night um not just because it's my last meeting but but because it's been so wonderful to um work with my colleagues um all of you and then all of my past colleagues throughout my eight years on city council and five years on planning board i could have run again but i just felt that starting my service in the aftermath of the 2013 flood and ending it with a worldwide pandemic was probably a good bookend to each other so i shuddered to think what might have happened um but in all seriousness um i want to echo what adam and nearby have said about

[101:01] the community that we live in and um you know the the strong voices and um how we move things forward in this community but i also want to stress that we should think about how we do this collaboratively how our work on council is amplified by the community and it's actually done by our city staff which is so amazing and we should always remember that they're the ones that do the work and so they should be part of the collaboration um so thank you and thank you all it's been just a wonderful honor to work with each and every one of you and i will miss it but i'm going to have a lot of fun thank you [Applause]

[102:06] all right i'm gonna i'm not gonna cry next we have sir the declaration in honor of sam weaver's service on the boulder city council and that will be read by councilmember yates okay and bob we do ask from on behalf of our interpreters that you watch your pace please watch my pace i'll talk really really slowly but this is a very long decoration so we'll we'll uh we'll take our time sam i want to read the declaration first and i'll have a couple of words like other speakers have had so this is a declaration on our mayor sam weaver and his service to our community in 2013 sam weaver was elected to a four-year term

[103:00] on the boulder city council and sam was reelected in 2017 to another four-year term throughout his eight years on council sam has been a strong and engaging city leader and has since been elected to serve as mayor in 2009-2019 as mayor he has guided the city through some of its most challenging times in recent history with a bachelor's degree in science from the california institute of technology and 10 years as a professional researcher in the electoral engineering department at the university of colorado boulder sam's education and experience has centered on environmental technical and business issues shortly before joining council sam began his career with the city in 2012 when he was appointed to the planning board he also participated in the city of boulder xl working group which guided the city's efforts to municipalize their electric grid system sam served on the board of clean energy action a non-profit entity working at the local state and national level on issues relating to clean energy and

[104:02] climate change mitigation outside of council sam is the president ceo and co-founder of cool energy inc a power conversion equipment company located here in boulder sam says on the board of directors of proton power a biomass power and fuels company sam serves as a volunteer served as a volunteer firefighter for 15 years including one term as chief and sam has been active in the boulder county democratic party get out the vote efforts ever since 1994. sam's spirit of entrepreneurship and service is reflected in his active involvement in the colorado technology and business communities he co-founded colorado-based company colorado which he has been named as an inventor on 30 issued patents and sam has held positions on the boards of the colorado solar energy institu solar energy industries association and

[105:00] the colorado clean energy development authority during his time on council sam has served on internal city groups this is only a partial list such as the council employees evaluation committee the intergovernmental affairs committee the cu south process subcommittee sam has also represented the city on regional groups and partner organizations such as the colorado municipal league's policy committee the metro mayor's caucus national league of cities the rocky flat stewardship council and the northwest mayor's commissioners and coalition page two in all of these regional capacities sam has proven himself articulate influential and well-respected leader capable of shaping policy proposals and garnering the support necessary to see them adopted the city's regional state and federal policy efforts have benefited tremendously by sam's tireless efforts i want to say a few personal words um myself as well

[106:00] um sam you probably have had the toughest two-year term as mayor as any mayor has since the the founding of boulder we had a covet crisis which we just talked about we had a terrible terrible shooting king supers we had a riot on the hill we've had some really really tough goes and through it all you've led us you've kept us together you held us together since the founding of this country philosophers are debated whether time makes the person or the person steps up to the times and i think in in your case it's a little bit of both um you've held us together you've you've done what's needed to be done during our times of crisis it's not just our community it's also the nine of us here on council you've mentored us you've built bridges you see rough spots you you patch them over you've brought people together oftentimes you come up with creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems and resulting in nine to nothing boats oftentimes at different places than where we started so i appreciate your creativity and just as a personal note sam um

[107:00] you are uh not only our mayor but you're my friend and while one of those is going to end here in about a week the other one will last a lifetime so on behalf of myself on behalf of a grateful counsel on behalf of grateful city staff and on behalf of the entire community thank you well thank you bob and thank you all and i'm going to pull out a cheat sheet because i don't trust myself to get all this right but i want to start by saying thank you to some people who really deserve thanks starting with my wife maggie she has been with me through the good times and the hard times and there have been some of both and i really appreciate the support from her my fellow council members past and present so there have been some former council members who mentored me when i first got on council and then this council has helped me through a very

[108:00] difficult time that the whole city had and so thank you all i want to especially thank bob and rachel for the work that they did in partnership in discussion with some big counterparties excel energy and the university of colorado so appreciate all the time that you guys both put in on those hard projects and i want to give a special incredible shout out to my friend and colleague mary young mary and i have been on a journey together mary talked me into applying for the planning board in the first place and she has been my partner in discussion about tough issues the whole time i've been on council and it has been super helpful to me so thank you mary directly for that and then staff there's way too many staff members to thank but the staff here at the city of boulder is passionate and dedicated and incredible and um i especially have to thank jane brodigam and chris meschuk and nuria rivera vandermeide because

[109:01] without them i would never have been able to get through the last two years and so chris especially to you for the work that we did together after the king super shooting you were stellar and i really appreciate what you did for the community and for us i'd like to remind us all that the staff is the tip of the spear when there are emergencies in boulder the police and fire department get called out right immediately after them comes the staff in the city manager's office so i want to thank you for all the work that you do i just want to say a few words about what i've learned well i've done this tour of government service and that is that government service is about the people and doing what's best for the people and it is that first and foremost and forever i want to quote jean-paul sartre in his work called no exit and he said hell is other people

[110:03] some days on council it's felt that way but later when he was asked about his famous quote here's what he had to say but that is only that side of the coin the other side which no one seems to mention is also heaven is each other hell is separateness uncommunicability self-centeredness lust for power for riches for fame heaven on the other hand is very simple and very hard caring about your fellow beings one of the most personally fulfilling counsel projects for me has been working with the tribal consultation that we did with uh the original indigenous inhabitants of the boulder valley and their descendants and

[111:00] one of the tasks set jointly between the city and that group of tribal governments was to rename settlers park and the name that the tribal leadership settled on was the people's crossing which is to me an inspired beautiful and symbolic name to be given to this place and i'd like to think that you know we're at the intersection of history and place and it's in this town that has been built up around the people's crossing council we're simply the custodians of this place and we're the custodians in the name of the people who are here now and who will who will come we do not own boulder we're of boulder and i'm thankful to be lucky enough to be a small part of the story of this beautiful place as we all are so thank you all so much for working with me through these last

[112:01] two years maria it is hard to follow that mayor but i just want to say on a person of all our outgoing council numbers it has been such a pleasure to work with you got it it's been such a pleasure to work with all of you and i just wanted to appreciate the trust that you have given me the support you have given me in my six months here um and my continued commitment to hopefully not let down as we move forward more importantly perhaps in me i will say that on behalf of the entire city organization we cannot thank you enough for your leadership for your kindness for those moments where you have often

[113:00] disagreed with us and challenged us to be better for those moments where we have been in agreement and we have faced difficult moments with our community for your voices and we hope to continue to hear your voices and your support as we move forward and you move on the more exciting and perhaps more relaxing of things as we move forward but i i really just want to express how thankful we are for your leadership and your insight and your commitment yours or jobs that we perhaps do not want and we're so thankful that you have taken the time to serve thank you [Applause] i just suggest in in very typical sam fashion he didn't give us time to applaud his speech and so can we go back and and give him his duo plus [Applause]

[114:16] all right well it is our last meeting so we're taking a little time to enjoy each other and enjoy what we've come through so with that could you please take us the next item hard act to follow sir next we have item 1g which is the discussion of confidentiality issues related to public requests for information regarding the recently deceased unhoused pregnant woman thank you and this is a hard pivot right as we move into a more difficult conversation um as everyone knows we've recently suffered a tragic loss in our unhoused community i want to acknowledge the sadness and frustration for many that are feeling how much

[115:02] about how much we communicate or frankly how much we have not been able to communicate on this issue i'll be turning to our city attorney's office to explain more about the constraints that keep us from currently sharing more of about this tragic loss but at a high level i want to share the following and because it is so sensitive i'm going to end up reading a little bit here on the evening of october 11 2021 police officers responded to a tragic death call the report came in originally about one deceased individual in a tent on undeveloped private property at 5847 arapahoe avenue subsequently the officers discovered there were two bodies inside one was an adult woman and the other appeared to be a newborn infant the mother and baby are currently at the boulder county coroner's office who has a responsibility for determining and reporting out on the cause and manner of death for any fatalities in our community

[116:00] we don't know yet when the coroner's report will be released but do know boulder police continues to work in collaboration with the coroner's office as the case remains open pending the coroner's final report i can also share that boulder officers were familiar with the woman who died and had attempted on more than one occasion to connect her with medical care and treatment we've been asked by the family to not share any further details about the mother and her baby and have additional limitations on how much information we can legally share about what if any services the mother received we know the lack of more detail when we as a community have suffered suffered such an inexplicable loss is frustrating for you and the community and for more information on some of the legal constraints we have i'll turn to sandra yanez our interim city attorney thank you nuria

[117:00] can you hear me hopefully you can hear me thank you nuria gene bankart deputy county attorney with the boulder county attorney's office has graciously offered to participate in tonight's meeting and provide information regarding the legal restraints of disclosing information on individuals and their use of social services she heads the legal unit for the family and child services unit at boulder county department of housing and human services once gene is done i will then address the legal restrictions related to criminal justice records related to the boulder police department and with that i'll hand it off to gene good evening mayor and city manager um and the rest of city council i'm jim banhart as sandra said i'm deputy county attorney for boulder county attorney's office where i focus on human services issues and i'm here today because of the very tricky

[118:02] and oftentimes frustrating issue of confidentiality regarding benefits records and human services records for those in our community colorado laws are very strict about who can get records concerning persons involved with county social services agencies and those who've received benefits and services the restrictions include county child protection records county child support enforcement records county adult protection services and county benefit and subsidy records and these laws are scattered all across our our civil codes our regulations um and our our legal statutes and um they can be they can be extremely frustrating um but there's a really good reason for these strict confidentiality rules

[119:03] though it's unfortunate the reality of society today is that it places great stigma and prejudice on those who receive social services benefits and support that is the reason why there are these strict confidentiality rules and in particular it is to prevent people from not wanting to get social services and not wanting to report others who need social services from obtaining those services if names and details and information regarding persons involved with social services and benefits were available to the public those disclosures they create a disincentive for those in need and for the most vulnerable in our community to receive those services that they need confidentiality laws also encouraged

[120:01] members of the public to report concerns of suspected abuse and neglect of children as well as at-risk adults many reporting parties would hesitate or not make reports of suspected abuse if there were concerns that the names and the details and information regarding persons about whom they are making the report were available to the public and so disclosure of the information um creates essentially a disincentive for for on people to make necessary reports to help those who are vulnerable in our community i there there's numerous laws um i'm not going to go through each individual one you would all be um asleep but i did want to put to your attention one law in particular um is that county departments are required to apply the confidentiality laws equally to groups or individuals such as

[121:00] legislators governmental authorities the courts law enforcement officials in some contexts even county commissioners in some contexts and violating the confidentiality rules in statute is serious it they can result in criminal prosecution for either the person requesting the confidential information or for the agency employee who supplies it um it is a misdemeanor to um improperly release inform confidential information so that makes this all the more frustrating because i know that um this community really um wants to serve members of its public um and and know when um and to know when there needs to be different services in place or different policies in place to help especially the most vulnerable in our community i i will let the council know that boulder does have

[122:01] a local child fatality review team that that review team consists of representatives from public health and county human services local law enforcement agencies the district attorney's office school districts and county coroner's office and the purpose of that team is to identify prevention recommendations regarding child fatalities that team um does create does get access to these records they can get access from records from the coroner and hospitals and human services and law enforcement and they are charged with creating a report um to find out if there were if there is any means by which any child fatalities could be prevented and they also provide information from that report to state child fatality review teams which in turn then provides information to the state legislature and the governor's office

[123:01] but i wanted to let you guys know the background as to why it is oftentimes difficult to disperse or or just let anyone have information that people feel um that they need to have in order to do their jobs it can be frustrating but there is a good reason behind it um so that's the background with regard to confidentiality of people receiving benefits um people involved with human services adult protective services child protective services there's other laws with regard to law enforcement which i believe ms lanes is going to talk about um but that's with regard to services is the information that i've just provided thank you so much gene appreciate your time here tonight thank you very much um do any council members have any questions for gene i see aaron and then mary

[124:00] erin uh thank you so much miss banger really appreciate you being here tonight giving us that information and i'm also uh glad to hear the about the um child services the fatality review board because that was going to be one of my questions is whether people are going to be looking into whether there are ways to prevent a similar tragedy from happening in the future so i'm very glad to hear um that that is underway and i i i don't know if this um question that i have is for you or some other member of our city staff but um when uh the death was first announced of the we later learned to be the the mother there was no mention of a newborn it was that required by state confidentiality laws or or why didn't that happen i guess that's my question so the laws that i'm talking about and i'm referring to um are the laws regarding what services people have received um it's not with regard to what information

[125:01] can be provided from law enforcement or or deaths in general um to the public so with regard to child so your question really refers to something outside of you know what benefits someone has received um and what services someone has received i'll wait for sandra yes thank you i i i'd like to follow up with that and just let you know that i i'm going to be talking about the criminal justice records act and i think that that discussion will address your question great thank you anything else aaron no mary okay sounds good thank you again so much for being here and sandra great thank you gene appreciate it i'm going to talk a little bit about the criminal justice records act as it relates to

[126:00] the police department and criminal justice and as gene mentioned the colorado laws are very strict about who has access to records concerning individual interactions with criminal justice agencies in the case of criminal justice records the colorado criminal justice records act or ccjra governs ccjra applies only to records kept by criminal justice agencies such as the boulder police department all other disclosure of records kept by the city are governed governed by the colorado open records act ccjra allows for more discretion than the colorado open records act as criminal justice records are more sensitive than records of city business ccjra allows criminal justice agencies to withhold records that are not quote unquote official action

[127:01] if releasing would be contrary to public interest the ccjra is more discretionary for several reasons first the records controlled and maintained by criminal justice agencies are more sensitive in nature and contain personal information that could negative negatively impact individuals if released in the case of ongoing investigations releasing the records may impact the integrity of the investigation when a request is made through ccjra the custodian first determines if the record requested is an official record or not if it is an official record the document must be available for public inspection the colorado supreme court has held that a criminal justice record must be open for inspection unless the privacy interest or dangers of adverse consequences

[128:00] outweigh the public interest if it is not an official record the cons the custodian uses a balancing test to determine whether the agency will allow the document to be open for public inspection the factors of the balancing test include number one the privacy interests of individuals who may be impacted by a decision to allow inspection number two the agency's interest in keeping confidential information confidential number three the agency's interest in pursuing ongoing investigations without compromising them number four the public purpose to be served in allowing inspection and five any other pertinent consideration relevant to the circumstances of the request the custodian may differ depending on the type of record requested for example boulder police department records

[129:00] department for police reports and the coroner's office for autopsy reports in the present case the boulder police department investigation is ongoing in into ms aldana's death as the custodian of criminal justice records boulder police department does not release these types of records in open cases under crs 24-72-3055 public release of these criminal justice records would be contrary to public interest the records are criminal justice investigatory files compiled for law enforcement purposes and such disclosure could jeopard jeopardize the integrity of an investigation and or a subsequent prosecution additionally one of the factors the custodian weighs is the privacy interests of the individual who who would be impacted by the release of the information

[130:00] in this case the family of ms aldana has requested the information of her life circumstances or death remain confidential because of the impact that releasing the records will have on the grieving family so for all of those reasons um the information well the police department has received several requests um for information related to this case and in each of those circumstances those requests have been denied um does council have any questions erin thanks for that sandra that's helpful i sent my question from before stands which was not about the release of criminal records um but why uh it was not made public that there was a death of a newborn along with the death of the mother because i'll just say that to my lay understanding of things it seems like when um there are deaths in in public like on

[131:01] the someone falls from in el dorado springs for example that that information is made made public so and so i was deceased and here was their name um so so why wasn't that information released i don't have personal knowledge of why that wasn't not released however i would imagine that the balancing test would favor in not releasing that information if it were to compromise the investigation you said i don't quite understand how releasing that piece of information compromises and investigation well it could or it couldn't i don't know since i the investigation is ongoing okay well maybe we could get some follow-up information on that um because i think um there are a number of folks in the community that um were concerned about why kind of the significant um significance of the end wasn't made known to the public

[132:00] mary thank you there is one one um just matter i i think to follow up on um that might go to your question um councilman is um once information is released it can't be taken back and so i do think that sometimes and i'm just speaking in generalities not with specificity here but entities tend to err on the side of caution because not knowing yet if it's going to be important for an investigation or or not important for an investigation because if information is released prematurely um then they could unwittingly be in violation of a statute um without intending to have been in violation of the statute i'm just again i know that this is unsatisfying i

[133:02] know it is frustrating i'm just putting the reality of what the laws are out there um and what um what our different agencies are dealing with in deciding um about release of information okay thank you very much for that um mary and then rachel mary thank you dean and sandra for those presentations um one of the things that has come up and what entered my mind as well when this occurred was to help in order to help the city become informed about what gaps and services or city the city or the state or whatever jurisdiction what how the information that is released or not released can inform that and how

[134:02] how can legislators i know gene mentioned that it eventually gets to legislators to inform them but how is information filtered i guess to get to the appropriate hands that can determine and identify the gaps in service that are identified through this incident i i might be able to speak to that and it goes back to the local child fatality review team um that has um specific requirements in place as far as what records they are to obtain from from with sources um i think i said earlier it includes law enforcement coroner records hospital records human services records they are specifically allowed to obtain those records and

[135:00] they're charged under statute with evaluating the means by which the fatality may have been preventing and reporting those case review findings as appropriate to public and private agencies that have responsibilities for children and also to make recommendations to agencies including state child fatality review teams who in turn then provide the information to the legislature but the system that is in place with these fatality review teams both the local child fatality review team and then in turn the state child fatality review team is so that these issues are investigated in a systematic um careful way getting all the information that is needed as opposed to just having partial information so for example um if if council here had some information but

[136:00] not all information it it it could go it could um it it could be unhelpful actually um for the council to be recommending um certain services if they don't have the full story that's why the um local child fatality review teams are in place they there are certain requirements that they have to provide information to national data services they have to list any systems issued issues that were identified through the process to the state review team and recommend appropriate improvements to necessary agencies for training and resources and services in the future so that's that is how it is set up through the statute um i'm not saying that that is a perfect system i'm just explaining what the law has in place right now in order to

[137:01] address some of those concerns thank you gene um i just have a quick follow-up and that is in this particular case where the death involved the death of a child as well this case would also involve the death of an adult and you only mentioned the child services or the child fatalities reviews what about the adult fatality portion of this particular case so i can try and address that question because i think it really comes back to the criminal justice records act and and as i mentioned um whenever there's an ongoing investigation there's information that can't be released because the police have to do their

[138:00] investigation and take the time that's appropriate to do that however long that that takes there is also some laws related to the coroner's report and the fact that um they are not allowed to even after the report um or the coroner's uh department finalizes the autopsy report and is then subject to quora there are even then restrictions related to what information they can release for example there might be medical information that can't be you know shared and that sort of thing and other confidentiality issues related to hipaa so um i think that the the information related to the adult would still go back to the criminal justice records act and the laws that apply in that area and so and so how would um

[139:00] you mentioned mostly information that would be kept confidential and what if some of that confidential information actually has or or provides some insight into how you can improve services or where there are big gaps how does that get out in order to be able to serve people better it's a delicate balance i think that there would be some information that would be uh be able to release once the investigation was complete uh and those records would be available um and no longer under the hold of the criminal justice records act um but i think that there's no good answer to your question honestly i think that we have to abide by the confidentiality laws that are in place and um if there are some overlapping

[140:01] restrictions related to social services as gene mentioned then the city also needs to comply with those laws could i call a queen so i think of course what we're driving at here is how we find out what's actionable um and improve the system in the future and so i i would just ask what role do confidential memos play so we have gotten confidential memos that disclose to us more details of different situations than can be um put out publicly but i think what mary's chasing after and what i'm interested in is how do we find out what the gaps are and how do we use the events to track down the gaps and so if you can't disclose publicly what was found is it possible to give policy makers details under confidential and then let the policymakers bring forward policy changes i think really what we're

[141:01] hunting for is how do we find the systemic problems without betraying confidentiality so if i may i'll take a stab at it unless our attorney hits me under the table um but i'll say this that um in terms of that i understand the question in terms of how do we actually gather how do we learn from this and what i can comment and say to you is that we're actually going to continue to talk both with our hhs partners our county public health partners the coroner's office our city attorneys our police departments to figure out where are if any are those gaps and how do we bring those forward and how do we address those and certainly the role of confidential memos is precisely that to bring you information so we will continue to work with our partners to figure out um what if anything we could do to shore up whatever gaps there may be in the future whether it is children or it is adults we want to do all that we can to learn from tragic situations like

[142:02] this and then the other thing i'll say too is that at a very high level i will just note that investigations evolve over time right when we first find out we could go somewhere and there is an active investigation and we do not know whether or not there is active evidence of foul play or not that could change over time but what is said in that moment may be different as an investigation evolves and then that perhaps has turned to the coroner's office for further investigation and as we continue to move forward in the investigation whether that moves from criminal to now pending a coroner's report or if there is a coroner's report in the future and again i'm trying very hard to not speak about this case in particular if there were a report that were to come back that um was unusual and then that opened the case again for criminal investigation

[143:02] that is why police keeps their investigations open for that possibility it could perhaps also explain why some details emerge subsequent to what is initially reported mary does that you have follow-up yeah that's very helpful nuria thank you i have a follow-up to the follow-up um so in we talked about how all of these current laws um may or may not inhibit the identification of gaps so how how does one identify the or what process is there to identify any kind of um flaw i guess or or improvement that could be made on those confidential confidentiality laws themselves so

[144:00] so in other words it would go to a different it would go like to state legislators to be able to change those kinds of laws so how are potential changes in those statutes identified i myself don't know the response to that question i know that that is um different states have different laws and what that looks like um and what i would uh say and suggest is that as those are found internally and i don't know if we still have our county partner on the line but internally i suspect that whatever is discovered there then moves up if there is something to shore up whether that is on a local level or whether that is at a state level to change those laws and that would certainly be one of those things that we perhaps would bring to you all and your attention that we would think about how to bring to our lawmakers at the state level and there's not a great response because we

[145:00] are not in part of those confidential conversations but i suspect that as that emerges we shore up those laws and we share with our respective policy makers i don't know sandra if you have more on that but no i don't have anything else to add thank you okay rachel thanks sam um and thanks for asking the questions about the gaps and how we will get answers i really appreciate that um so i i have noticed that everybody's sort of avoiding saying the individual's name who passed away and i assume that that's out of um respect for the family's preferences um but so i will just use her first name and hope that that's okay i did want to just express deep control condolences to the family and friends of jessica and the community who um who may be watching and um grieving as well so just wanted to take a moment as a council and express our condolences

[146:01] and then i do have a couple of questions um first is on the city side this feels a little bit to me um like we're circling around a question of sort of transparency meeting equity considerations um and we had an unhoused vulnerable individual pass away outside with either a newborn or stillborn infant um and and it wasn't uh released and i'm hearing the explanations but i also feel like during my own tenure on council like if there's a stabbing we get that information out pretty quickly and we'll say you know there was a stabbing two individuals were involved or whatever and we don't circle around the the the privacy and criminal justice considerations and uh i understand this is an ongoing investigation but a stabbing would also be or you know anytime there's a crime in the community so i'm struggling with why this particular situation

[147:00] there's such a lack of transparency um and and especially like if if an unhoused individual is a perpetrator in a crime with that that information seems to get out very quickly and you have an unhoused individual who is um deceased along with the newborn and we're really kind of circling the wagons around that information and i'm just struggling to make sense of why this is such a disparate situation so i don't know if anybody can speak to that and before you jump in i'll just say once we get through this kurt has his hand up so i'll call him kurt after this but nuria if you'd like to start i appreciate that because i can't see kurt myself um i'll say that um i i appreciate the struggle right how do we think about um how do we share out information uh i think how we treat again on a general level how we treat calls that come in

[148:00] that are active criminal investigations uh when there is an accident on the street when there is a homicide and we are looking for witnesses and treating it as an act of criminal investigation that detail is most generally put out and put forth in community because we're wanting community to help us search for witnesses and get statements for calls that perhaps come in as a medical call or for calls that come in for unattended deaths the same way that they might come in for an overdose or a suicide whether or not they are outside or whether they are in a person's privacy of a person's home those are not calls that we put out publicly as a matter of record we are not looking for witnesses in that case it is not an active criminal investigation even though it could be an open investigation pending a coroner's report i hope that helps

[149:01] um it does a bit um can we get a curtain and just see what you wanted to sorry about that it's a little confusing uh with this hybrid thing kurt fernhuber uh i see that you're in the meeting and hopefully you can get put up on the screen and you had your hand raised yeah thank you uh sam um i can't seem to to turn my video on for some reason but uh hopefully you can hear me okay we can hear you yeah so um uh i wanted to res to respond and add a little bit more to mary young's question about you know looking at gaps in the in the system and that's one of the real purposes that homeless solutions for boulder county was set up we have um uh while we won't look necessarily always at individual situations where

[150:00] we'll look at trends or things that we're seeing and those are brought to the executive that meets on a monthly basis to really look at areas to improve services and fill those gaps i'll get i'll just give one example what that looks like and you recently had a presentation from judge cook and [Music] one of the challenges that they were having with their navigators and working with uh individuals that had interfaced with the criminal justice system is when they're ready to get individuals housed they sometimes couldn't find them and it took some time to find them they would lose clients um in the process and so she was able to get funding to fill that gap to put individuals who are on that track straight into hotels support them in hotels until they got

[151:01] into a housing solution so there's many gaps that are out there and sort of the purpose of homeless solutions for boulder county is to identify them to change our programs over time and in some places even start new programs the be there program was a program that was started a year ago also there to to fill gaps but it's an ongoing conversation what we hear from service providers and the individuals who are doing that work on the field and if they're on a every day to understand how to change for that and um i'm glad that we have a system in place to to look at those specific services that are completed not just by hhs at the county but also our service providers that work in the community

[152:01] thank you kurt um rachel thanks i had a couple more questions i guess on on the transparency front um so when i first read about this um i went to the website that used to have our our call log and police bladder and it's it's not there anymore and so that just concerned me that um maybe we don't have as much information available to journalists and the public as we used to so i wanted to know when that got taken down or if that's going back up or why i can't see what calls came in so i appreciate that question because i've learned a lot about the blotter uh now that i've been here and been uh asking so uh i if i'm gonna pull up some notes here about it but my understanding is um that prior to 2020 the police department had a blotter it was a word document many people were able to access and input

[153:00] data into that document so there was perhaps some lack of inconsistency depending on who put more information or less information out there as that move forward it was also an extremely manual process and so that took a variety of hours just to compile and put out and did not perhaps include all the calls that came in i guess because there was some discretion involved as that was moving forward in 2020 the police department partnered with our innovation and technology department to sort of make some significant changes to that and what emerged was and a decision from our now police chief to make sure that all calls are reported out and that is that comprehensive call log can be found on the police call data 28 days and that is on our city of bulger open data it is a dashboard it is it does not leave any cases out and folks can certainly take a look at that and look for those cases as that moved on that data then is automated and so it is

[154:01] not subject to that discretion of some folks put more information than not um as that moves forward so actually i believe that it was an effort to increase transparency than not um the blotter then was kind of unnecessary as it was sort of a flawed document by itself and because it was time consuming in the beginning of 2021 when resources became scarce that was eliminated um because we had this other tool so if i go to that other tool would it would it have some narrative in there that there was a call in an individual was deceased or an individual and and a baby or was it just data saying like where a call was called into i believe it is data and it would um show whether it was what type of call in so for example if it was a medical call it would be there and it would occur on that date and certainly anyone interested could take a look at that call dog for any call data that we have and request more

[155:00] information based on that and then it would still go to the city attorneys to see if that was something we could disseminate or not disseminate so my my concern is that if somebody saw that data somehow and was able to extrapolate from it that there were two deaths that night um we wouldn't give any more information because we're not giving much more information it sort of feels like in this situation it was almost an accidental release of information or a press leak perhaps so i'm i guess if it's if it's just data and there's no narrative to it i don't know if if our answer is we're not giving more information it still feels like a loss of transparency so i guess i would request that we look at reinstituting that level of transparency and i think that's all my questions for now anyone else on this any questions for the county it's the attorneys okay let me just check zoom here real quick

[156:00] i'm not saying nearby raise your hand so with that i think we are ready to move on to the next item thank you so much sandra noria and eugene appreciate your time and thanks for being here excellent so any motion conversation about the consent agenda i'll move the consent agenda second all right we have a motion and a second on the consent agenda the only item on the agenda tonight is the third reading of the restaurants and parks item and i believe this is a roll call vote is that correct let me check on discussion any discussion before we go forward okay i see none walk us through the roll call please alicia yes thank you councilmember friend

[157:02] yes nago no sweat lick yes wallach weaver hi yates yes young yes rocket hi sir consent agenda passed seven to one excellent thank you very much and i believe the last item is matters for mayor and members of council so i will take that one um first tonight we have uh mayor and mayor pro tem statements of interest these are not intended to be speeches or anything of the sort they're just indications of interest we've tried to make sure to be careful to include council members elect as well so that

[158:00] they know that tonight the rules are that we anyone who would like to be the next mayor or mayor pro tem needs to put an announcement out on hotline by midnight tonight which says that i think everyone on the current council and all the incoming council members know this we have seen a few hotlines but at this point any council members like to indicate your interest in being the next mayor bob well sam said um we in the old days we used to give long speeches uh and then people realized that was pretty boring and so a few years ago council adopted a rule that says just put it up on hotline which is our for those in the community that's our communications tool that everyone can see and and so um so far i know the deadlines is not until midnight tonight but so far i think uh aaron and i have both done hotline posts indicating a desire to be mayor and erin might want to say something in a minute and then rachel is indicated interested in

[159:00] elected as mayor pro tem for the community this will be the last council election glass council appointment of mayor mayor pro tem i think mayor pro temple's to be a council appointment but starting in 2023 the mayor will be directed um elected directly by the people um so i i won't give a speech but i just want to make an observation i think aaron did in his hotline post which is it's really really difficult to write things about yourself right aaron um you know uh we want to put out your best foot and say well this is this is why i think i'd be a good mayor but then um you get you lose your humility pretty quickly um and so it's an awkward thing to do so i just want to make one comment um i've known aaron for 10 years um he and i have served on various organizations before we each joined council in 2015 and each got elected in 2019 and sometimes when you have a head-to-head competitive election uh involving two people or multiple people um you think well geez i'm better than that

[160:00] other person or i'll do a better job than that other person that is not the case here aaron is a person of integrity of wisdom of honesty courage of compassion and i think this community would be well served by either aaron or i being elected and um and he's told me the same thing and i really appreciate that as well and so i would say to the council members here president who will be voting next week and our new colleagues who will be joining us next week in voting um choose as you wish but you can't go wrong thank you thank you bob and with that aaron yeah thanks so much for that that bob that was very kind um and yes it is awkward uh uh writing positive things about yourself i found that very uncomfortable it took me a long time to get those words out on hotline um but bob your hotline post was excellent uh and your qualifications are numerous and i agree um the community will be well served uh whichever of us is appointed mayor by our colleagues and i look forward to working together

[161:01] closely along with the rest of council regardless of how that goes and i'll just say that uh one thing that i've appreciated about this council is um that through a lot of difficult issues we have worked together uh generally very productively and you have not seen the negativity that you often see at the state and national level in the political scene and um i feel confident that in the next council that um the mayor whether it's bob or myself will show that form of leadership will continue to productively work on the many issues that face our community um without that kind of vitriol that we see at other levels of government so thanks to everyone consideration and as the current mayor for another week or so i will say that i agree having worked closely with both bob and aaron that either of them would make a fine mayor and so i think the city council and the city will be in great hands with either of them uh new newly elected council members if you want to stand for mayor you've got about

[162:00] four hours to put out a hotline otherwise these will be your candidates with that um i would like to turn and see if anyone would like to say a word that they're interested in mayor pro tem thanks sam um and to bob and aaron you'll have big shoes to fill so good luck yeah i was told no speeches i am interested in standing for mayor pro tem so i would just direct the community to my hotline post if you are interested in reading that thanks and thank you all for that um newly elected council members if you wish to stand for mayor pro tem you have three hours and 20 minutes to put out a hotline saying so otherwise it will probably be rachel and that will be wonderful for the city as well okay with that we can move on to the last item this was a suggestion by bob yates that we as the sitting council go over the um council committees both the internal and the external facing council

[163:00] committees the the goal of this is to just make sure that everyone on the uh who's continuing on this council and the newly elected council members coming in have an idea of what these committees do and what the assignments are who's on them who's going off and often this takes a good hour hour and a half at the retreat and one of the ideas here i believe in the next council is to get these assignments done outside of the retreat to leave more room to talk about the work plan so with that i don't know does staff have a slide for this or shall i just walk through no um let me see if i've got my committee list here there was a committee list on novice i don't know if somebody could throw that up on the screen sound 5a same do you mind if i say a quick word if you no go for it well it just no i think this is going to be valuable exercise we do have a whole bunch of them so maybe each person as they describe it can be succinct okay great and that's under novus and would

[164:02] it be possible to get that put up or is that and we can wait just a moment if we'd like until okay very good we're working on it until very recently i had this sitting on my desktop and i was just cleaning some things up because why i have no idea just a ball cleaning urge came over me aaron i nominate you to be on that committee [Laughter]

[165:11] most importantly after reading these new council members can't resign either oh it's way too late for that let me see as we as we work on it and i i just thought that um we were just going to talk about it but we're working to put that up but if i can feel a little bit of the awkward silence and just say uh something i was going to say at the end of the meeting but i just want to shout out to staff that made this meeting happen as a hybrid meeting there are a lot of staff that are not in this room some in this room that are great and some that you can't see because they're behind the cameras are helping on a variety of issues and so we just uh thank you for letting us sort of do this trial run hybrid meeting as we move forward i know we will be back in chambers again next week

[166:01] on november 16th as we talk about it but um just huge thanks to staff that made this happen it really is tremendous yeah thank you staff for that and i i will just say that this is not that easy to coordinate the hybrid is new we've done all zoom we've done all in person and so this is new i also have a question about that nuria well we're we're um here speaking of next week where will the swearing-in be i know that the actual meeting at six o'clock will be here will we do the soaring in and chambers as well yes we will okay so next week for those who are interested in the community at 10 a.m on november 16th we'll meet here in chambers and we will um do the swearing-in ceremony for the newly elected council members and then at the end of the swearing-in ceremony the meeting will be continued until that evening and the new council will be seated that evening at six o'clock here in chambers so the on the 16th at 10 this council will convene swearing the new council members

[167:00] continue the meeting and the new council will have its first meeting as a new council at 6 00 p.m november 16th here i see that we have the list up of the committees and that's great thank you staff sorry to spring that on you should have suggested that beforehand um so let's just start going down through the lists and i will have folks who are here talk about it um nearby would you like to tell us anything about the rocky mountain greenway steering committee i i wish i could see him but there's unfortunately nothing to tell okay i have any meetings um haven't heard much so uh yeah i guess an easy one right in a sense yeah so i'll just say the rocky mountain greenway it's a federally funded program intended to create trail systems that go from uh airports through government-owned facilities to national parks the rocky mountain greenway is

[168:02] intended to go from dia rocky mountain arsenal to rocky flats and then up to rocky mountain national park it had some [Music] momentum a couple of years ago i think the momentum may be dying right now so i think the new council might consider whether it's worth any council time for this one at all i was just going to ask that like is it we're not required to have a council member there i see carl castillo as a staff alternate could we just designate staff to attend instead i think you want to ask that question when you make those assignments i don't know the answer to that but i think there are some of these where the staff can be and some they cannot and that thank you for that that might be helpful to know before conversation next week which which are obligatory yes so i apologize we have legal who is looking into that and actually compiling that list with what is discretionary what is mandatory what is uh legally required and what frankly you can choose

[169:00] what not to do and i just want to say also we have carl castillo on the line if there were any questions but for today um my uh understanding was that we would just talk generally about the time commitments it would take and what kind of um what kind of a commitment and what is the vision for those organizations so that when we do have that conversation with the new council um soon that we can then talk about what you want to keep and what do you not want to participate in super and um this is one that sounds very discretionary um and with that adam yeah the uh boulder county consortium of cities it's a once a month meeting generally two hours long it is run by one of the boulder county commissioners currently martel lochiman and they send um the entire meeting is each city in boulder county and broomfield um sends

[170:01] one elected official to sort of just information collect and share out uh information about current issues that uh the cities kind of share so we can learn from each other and help each other out and it's a really good place to work together on collaborative county-wide plus broomfield efforts we were working on a county-wide minimum wage before the pandemic torpedoed it things along those lines it's a really good place to just work on bigger issues than what we have just here in boulder mark do you have anything to add no okay and i will say that this is one of the interlocking set of committees that are involved with transportation and so there may be a fair bit of work coming on this one just because we have some more money coming into the county right now um the colorado municipal league policy committee i can speak on this one it's been one that i've been on i think four years now carl helps guide the council members

[171:00] this one definitely needs council members on it colorado municipal league is the colorado association of city governments it is a very very powerful voice in state politics and so for incoming council members current council members who like regional politics this is a great way to get involved typically it's about four meetings a year there will be a midterm meeting and then there's three that are associated with the legislative session usually one in october one in december to kind of tee up statewide positions of cml for the coming legislative session to begin lobbying and then there's usually a meeting in february or so which talks about the current status of bills so if you're a politically inclined person and you like state politics this is a great um uh position and i think juni is interested in continuing with that sam question on that one is it a limit of two people or could you have all nine council members i think carl's the right

[172:01] one to answer that i do not know yes um so boulder because it's a city of over a hundred thousand is entitled to have two representatives and an alternate so right now you have two elected officials as your representatives and i am serving as the uh staff alternate and um i will just say that this group used to be a fairly conservative group and in the last two to three years it has really changed there was unanimous support from the policy committee for instance to lift the 120 rule on the solar installations so anyway it's a good group and with that aaron you want to talk about dr cog yeah denver regional council of governments uh this is a group that meets in denver twice a month uh it's been remote during the pandemic but it's going back in person before too long so uh there's a business meeting two to

[173:00] three hours long and then a kind of a study session that's more two hours long and uh it's the body that's responsible for the distribution of federal transportation dollars to the region so um kind of a big deal hundreds of millions of dollars at stake over the course of a few years and it's also been tasked with distributing some of the state transportation funding that's been flowing the last few years so there's been some additional monies coming in through there and now we've got more money coming in from the infrastructure bill and from the latest state transportation bill so a lot um a rare case where we have more money than usual so it's a it's a pretty heavy lift there's also a sub-regional forum where boulder county um representatives just meet um as a group which is more like four times a year for a couple of hours so but fascinating uh really interesting get to work with all kinds of elected officials across the region on making um decisions that really make a difference in in our area and aaron does it still meet at 7 30 on wednesday mornings

[174:00] no it does not no it's it's uh well it's it's uh 6 30 p.m and 4 p.m uh are the meetings great and aaron has been our representative there for what three four years now six six years all six years wow um and has has carried the uh standard quite well down there so thank you for all that work aaron um and then metro mayor's caucus that's pretty obvious it's a mayor's group it it has focused on issues of regional interest homelessness and transportation and climate some of the top ones um it got far more active during covet i'll just put out there whoever's mayor next this group is in flux one of the things that i tried to work with some folks to bring in are documents which live beyond a a group of mayors so policy documents that continue on forward anyway whoever's mayor next i would suggest that this is an important

[175:01] one to be going to um national league of cities why don't i turn to bob bob would you like to talk about that sure um we have several council members who are involved in national league of cities and the nice thing about national league of cities is it operates really in a committee format and there's about oh eight or nine uh federal policy committees and and the four or five of us that are involved in that are each serve on a separate policy committee so it gives us opportunity and boulder definitely punches above its weight in the national league of cities um for a city of a hundred thousand we get mayors and council members from across the country i think the conferences are usually about five thousand people and we we parade in we show up parachute in rather with uh with four or five or six people and we've had leadership roles on those committees matter of fact our former mayor matt applebaum was on the board of directors of national league of cities uh something that we should continue to do there is no limit to a number of council members who can attend uh ash league of city conferences or to serve on advocacy federal advocacy committees it's a great way to meet

[176:00] congressmen and senators and to advocate for things that we care about here in colorado and i've been on this for the whole time i've been on council and would just say it is a great opportunity it connects you with folks leading cities all over the country and i would recommend that if you're questioning whether you'd like to do it give it a try um adam yeah the resource conservation advisory board is another boulder county-based board um mainly focusing around topics of conserving resources so recycling uh zero waste um composting all those types of things um there's a member from several cities appointed to the board currently it meets once a month but we're talking about reducing the amount of times per year that elected officials have to attend because it is a very policy and expertise-based board

[177:01] jamie harkins from our city staff often does almost all the talking for me i'm a fly on the wall um because that is not my area of expertise so uh it's a relatively light lift but it is an important one um just so happens that boulder is ahead of the curve with a lot of this stuff so that's also cool to be in the room uh hearing about all the things that we do so um good board yeah it is a good board and let's make sure to put somebody on there who's interested in the recycling and materials subject and then rocky flat stewardship council i've been on this for three years i believe and maybe two i would say that most of the issues on this are not as relevant as maybe they once were um it meets six times a year i believe and sometimes those conflict with cac in fact usually

[178:00] they do it's monday usually at 8 30 in the morning i would suggest to the new council you take a look at what the legal requirements are in this one and maybe if staff could handle it that might be a good thing and then next one northwest mcc when i first became mayor suzanne jones told me sam you must go to these meetings this is another of those interlocking transportation committee groups and so whoever's the next mayor really needs to attend these in person it meets every month and usually it's an hour and a half to two hours and very meaty transportation topics for our region uh commuting solutions uh nearby uh yeah so community solutions is what the name implies uh it's working on different solutions uh of mobility across the front range and it has representatives from i mean rtd uh a lot i mean even um private companies

[179:01] along with a lot of members from uh other surrounding towns so other council members um they'll be even i've been at some of the meetings where our state representatives uh have shown up in even our federal representative representatives have showed up so um it usually met like once a month in all honesty i haven't heard anything since um mostly since covid there's been very few meeting um alerts that i've received i've talked to staff and i haven't received much so i'm not exactly sure what they're doing right now but it was a meeting like once a month so and it was usually maybe like a breakfast meeting at 7 30 for two hours maybe okay very good thanks very much and then the next one is mile high flood district i'm going to have bob talk about that please sure uh mile high flood district has traditionally been represented by the mayor pro tem um yeah the the my high flood district meets um once a month in denver although it's been um remote recently but uh they

[180:01] do tend to meet in person in denver it's a little like doctor cog that aaron mentioned in that um the mile high flood district is a taxing district and it has tens and tens of millions of dollars to distribute up and down the front range for flood control projects and again boulder gets a disproportionate amount of money and that's thanks to the representation we've had on the wildlife flood district sam served on that mary has served on that aaron has served on that i've served on that judy is now serving on that rachel or whoever's the next mayor for tim will have the opportunity to serve on that it's a collection of mostly mayors boulder um has opted to make it mayor pro tem they gather together once a month and help this the staff of the milah flood district plan the expenditure of millions of dollars of flood mitigation to protect our entire front range and i'll say it's fascinating it's fascinating work because the history of flood control projects on the front range has a fascinating 50-year history to it so i'll also note sometimes controversial

[181:00] occasionally yep um and so then we have state highway 119 and seven coalition aaron would you like to walk us through that yeah so uh these are both uh coalitions that are working on multimodal improvements along the state highway 119 state highway 7 corridor uh 119 it's going from boulder to longmont and so it's uh the executive committee is uh city boulder boulder county city of longmont uh rtt director and cdot director um so it's really interesting meets uh quarterly and that quarter is moving pretty swiftly towards construction and making huge progress so that's really interesting and then state highway 7 is a broader coalition it's every single municipality and county between the city of boulder and brighton to the east so a larger group there and that that corridor is a little earlier in the planning process so it's a little bit more of gathering steps rather than implementing but also very interesting thanks that i never had to go to one of those aaron

[182:01] i i will say my attendance record is pretty good i'll just tap myself on the back for that aaron likes transportation with that um we'll turn to internal city committees so those were all external facing committees now we'll turn to internal committees first one's audit committee and i'll turn to mark wallach well the audit committee is basically what it appears to be you are reviewing uh the audit procedures performed by our auditor and ultimately the audit is presented to the council for its approval i wouldn't call it a particularly heavy lift but there are documents to be read and to do it correctly you do have to have some uh degree of of immersion into everyone's favorite topic which is financial audits so it's it's for those who are looking to

[183:00] geek out on numbers i guess uh because there's quite a lot of that but it's a reasonable uh lift if you're interested in that and i'll i'll say that this is one called out in the charter that we have to do and so it's a good one to get on and learn some of the details about the budgeting and the way the finance and the city functions um nearby would you like to talk to us about boards and commissions committee sure um so i've been on that for four years and a pretty light lift it's basically just working with another council member and meeting if there's issues so if something goes wrong with the board or if board members have any issues need to talk to you or it's even reappointing members so let's say you know people jump off boards because they move for other reasons i'm working to kind of go over applicants and whatnot with staff to resubmit and maybe appoint someone [Music]

[184:01] before the next year's applications go in again if it's within the six-month uh time frame so again pretty easy lift you just work with another council number and um you meet it's mainly you meet upon the need so there's no exceptions great thank you nearby um and then charter and elections committee rachel i'll take a stab at it um mary and mirabai might want to jump in because they've done it longer than me um and we're mentors on that so this is this um committee takes up when city council decides that we may have an issue with the charter or with elections and we may want to put something on the ballot we will work with with city staff and city attorney's office to come up with language that city council will then look at and hopefully promote to the ballot for the voters to vote on it's been my experience

[185:00] so it's um it's it the suggestions for charter changes um can come from council members and can come from city staff in the community as well so the the suggestions can come from anywhere for the changes it's also where council members who have suggestions for things to have the community vote on so for example the this year there was the council pay which was one of the things that was brought forward by the charter committee so it's not just charter issues it's ballot issues that council members want to bring forward it meets about three times maybe four times and it begins the first meeting is sometime around first quarter and um

[186:01] meets again um about a month after that and a month after that and then you're pretty much done so it's kind of a easy lift and i would say this is quite an important committee um and we'll only have one continuing council member on it um and i think the coming council will have a fair number of charter items that need to be considered and and work through so um please take a close look at this it's a very important one and then um council retreat committee bob i've had the pleasure of serving in this committee my entire six years on council um it's um it's uh a as it sounds it really plans the annual retreat which is always in january of council uh for a few years it was mary uh before lisa marzell and i and then mary young and i and now it's um adam and and rachel and i uh planning this year's retreat the committee meets typically about four to

[187:00] six times in the fall um kind of right around that we're meeting regularly now to plan the retreat what the agenda looks like working with a facilitator working with city staff to ensure that our retreat and it's not just the retreat it's also the things like what we're talking about tonight our pre-retreat exercises um are um well organized so that we get the work done in november and december and then at the retreat in january so that we can develop a workable two-year work plan great thank you bob and then next we have the council employee evaluation committee um i guess i'll take this one because i've been on it the longest but that is to say not very long i think i've been in charge of two and then covet hit not in charge of working on two this is the we have three employees of the council and this is the committee that does the performance evaluations it is more involved than you might think because there's 360 surveys

[188:00] that are done by all the people who report to and work with the employees and then we have to take that data get it to council members council members do their own evaluations comes back there's professional help for it but i will say it has always taken longer than i expected so it's a it's a relatively heavy lift and it's compressed it will start typically in the first quarter and need to be done typically by fall and i know that we're talking about changing the schedule around a little bit but this needs some folks who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do some work to be on this committee um and and we have bob and rachel have stepped in to this role but i assume you'll talk about that with the new council and then intergovernmental affairs aaron yeah so uh another area where boulder punches above its weight is in legislative advocacy so we have an active presence at the state capitol each year during the legislative session

[189:00] uh led ably and nobly by carl castillo and the legislative policy committee meets regularly during that session to review bills that have come out and decide whether they recommend that the city take a position on those also has a bit of a role at the federal level but that's much less active it's mostly being really hands-on during leading up to and during the legislative session making some decisions on the fly and in other cases for more significant things referring a recommendation to the entire council really really interesting if you like state politics in the state legislature yeah super interesting and i'll say it's a nice fit with the cml policy committee if you're on one you could be on both and enjoy it okay yeah i'll take this one um so the financial strategy committee that was a new committee this year and had

[190:00] a big lift in coming up with the process for developing the recommendation and as well as the recommendation for the renewal of the infrastructure um tax which passed yay and um and so it's a relatively heavy lift uh it meets um once a month at least and maybe more as things heat up and meet for an hour and a half and this year with the renewal of the tax we had um intensive meetings to review all of the potential projects to be recommended so if you are interested in the budget and how the budget develops up um through the beginning of the year to when it's passed in october um and you like numbers and you want to

[191:01] geek out on that sort of stuff then this one's for you um [Music] so i don't know if that the terms will change or if they'll get flipped around but um the committee was three people and it was decided that two would have two-year terms and one would have a one-year term so that'll be something for the next um council to decide so i would i would further that by saying if this is sort of the audit committee squared in terms of um the in-depth uh look that you have to take and focus on numbers and it's is extremely detail-oriented so it's a pretty heavy lift good place to learn more about the city uh but uh you you need to have the time to do it yeah great and then rachel you want to talk about the hill

[192:00] sure um and i would invite mark wallach to maybe join me on this so um when i started out on this uh committee prior to covid we were meeting once a month on wednesdays for an hour i think kind of a four to five pm meeting and then that was largely just discussing sort of things that um that were not working well on the hill and sort of ideas for change and then after the riots happened in march of this year we got an out of five on this council to um try and take some action to improve the situation on the hill and focus on on coming up with some legislative solutions and and getting that neighborhood a bit more help so it sort of evolved into something that's a heavier lift and i'm not sure when they're meeting right now and i'll turn to mark for that because i actually um well i guess after the riot mark was invited to join as a second council

[193:00] member so there have been two of us doing that work for six months but then i stepped back because uh i was having conflicts with the cu south uh negotiations and bob actually has been subbing in for me so that's that's uh where i believe it stands now did you find cu south to be taking up a lot of your time okay um it's an interesting committee it is very multi-disciplinary in terms of the representatives who are participating in it it's a large group sometimes a little bit unwieldy but it is attempting to bring suggestions to the council that hopefully we will consider next year of of specific actions we might take to deal with some of the problems that we've been experiencing up there so it's interesting if you're inclined to do that i i

[194:02] recommend it as a it's an interesting committee to participate on great thank you and the next committee on this list we disbanded um at the last meeting and um since there is a little bit of of community misunderstanding around this possibly if it could be corrected before it's it struck through it was not um sam and i on that subcommittee for the last right like cu south process subcommittee so if you could if we could uh insert aaron and mark i think as the more recent subcommittee members and then strike it out i think that would be beneficial they took our jobs away and then guiding coalition for racial equity yeah i'll take that one um that was one that was started when um the city joined the um gare which is the government alliance on racial equity of which there's numerous

[195:01] cities um that are members and um it has been um evolving as as our whole um approach to racial equity has been evolving as well um and so um it's an important committee that meets once a month for about an hour and i think that the next council will have quite a say in um and how this uh moves forward because it's like i said it's been evolving and um it includes um members of um director members so um in it is um nuria and um maris harold and um kurt fernaber and um jen sprinkle as well as the council members so

[196:02] and amy can i just add that i resigned from that like i don't know six months ago or so so my name should also be struck there okay great and nuria looked like she wanted to say something oh i just didn't hear you say amy so oh and amy of course yes how could i forget amy kane oh my god i'm so sorry amy um and of course amy kane great thank you and um bob would you like to talk about the police master plan sure um we about about um six or eight months ago we started up the work on a towards a police master plan and that work will last about another oh eight to 12 months it should be wrapped up towards the end of next year this is a process subcommittee so we're not making decisions about what goes in the police master plan but we're trying to guide staff in engagement with the community so we can receive as much

[197:00] community input on the police master plan the committee actually consists of four people two members of the community who counsel appointed and then junie and i and junie in a hotline post indicated that she would be happy to step aside in this one i i think i would actually be happy to step aside in this one too because we're at a real natural breaking point we've kind of finished the first half of this project there's no institutional knowledge that people that join would need to go into the second half of this project it's all about engagement so while all of these committees are open for new council members to raise their hands this would be a particularly good one for new council members to raise their hands because there doesn't require any background just a sense of how to reach out to the community and hear what they have to say about policing superior would you like to kick us off in the next one as well rachel do you want to do community engagement i'd love to um because i love doing this committee with bob yates um so this committee and i think like almost the whole engagement committee's in this room i think right

[198:02] committee members um we get together and talk about ways that we can improve how council and community members hear from each other so it's everything from the email system to whether we want to do more chats with council or you know change up different ways that we are offering to be available to the community and open comment and so the subcommittee hears from staff and hears from the community we also have community specific events where we invite the community to let us know how they think we can do engagement better and a recent example would be bob and i are going to pilot doing office hours together through city staff and like twice a month so those are the sorts of things that the committee looks at and and i don't know that there's really a rhythm it's it's like kind of sometimes we meet monthly sometimes it'll be a little more than a month apart if

[199:00] there's really something urgent that we need to look at it could be a couple times a month and the time is is uh very varied so we'll just do like a doodle poll and see when people are available bob anything to add you have some or the next one okay so um the next ones are local board member appointments and i think this is one that the next council might think about which of these are required which aren't and so on um but with that we'll just go through them and that'll be for the next council boulder museum of contemporary art aaron yeah so this is our beloved local contemporary art museum you are a full voting member of the board and it meets quarterly for two to three hours so you get all in depth with their financials and the next exhibits they're showing and so it's a good one for a lover of art and culture i've served as council's lean liaison to the convention visitors bureau for the entire six years i've been on council

[200:01] the reason why we have a council representative on this one is the convention visitors bureau receives about two million dollars a year in city tax revenues and they use that money to generate interest in boulder by visitors from near and far and one of the things that we have been steering the convention visitors bureau towards in the last couple of years is really focusing more on what i'll call local visitors people who actually already live in and near boulder and how to create events and attractions that would be of interest to them and to give grants to local organizations that put on performing arts and other events that people that live here in boulder while it's called the convention and visitors bureau it's as much about people who live in boulder and making boulder continuing to be an interesting place for people who are both visiting for a few days and people who live here all right thank you bob and mark you want to talk to us about the dairy arts the dairy is a an interesting assignment

[201:01] um i won't say it's a very heavy lift it used to be one meeting a month and they're going down to one meeting per quarter much easier and their meetings are at 8 30 in the morning um the day after we have council so it can be a little painful um but it's it's a wonderful organization um you have the opportunity also to participate in one of their subcommittees i'm on their facilities subcommittee just because i have background in some of those uh issues that they deal with um it's extremely well run um they've weathered covid very well and and so if you have an interest in the arts um it it can be a very interesting um assignment to take on great and would you like to talk about the bid next i'll let uh bob do the because i'm gonna i'll do a bhp

[202:01] sure i'm going back to mention visitors bureau that does me once a month um typically on thursday afternoons uh the business improvement district is um is one that sandra would be helpful to know if we actually have to have two representatives on it because mark and i serve on that together i've been on it for six years with various partners and uh we struggle sometimes to come up with two people worth of content to report to the business improvement district the business improvement district is a legal taxing authority um within the city so it's quasi-governmental and um it up until recently it's met a monthly and mark and i report to the to the representatives on that board what's going on from the city perspective and they do the same thing as to downtown um starting next year that meeting will go to quarterly also um which is a lighter lift but the other thing that would be helpful to know is whether we actually truly have to have two council members on it because i think that's probably one too many don't you agree mark yeah i think so and having been on it i agree it is but i will say that having one council member go to these meetings is important they're my recollection when i was on it

[203:02] was there's a good exchange with the council members for 10 or 15 minutes usually at the beginning of the meeting so having one is important but i think two might be overkill and now we're going to move into a couple more and then sister cities so um older housing partners this one is also a fairly heavy lift you know that they are operating under a various federal programs um for financing uh their housing projects one needs to get a little deep into how they do what they do and the programs that they're operating under they do meet monthly and probably helps to have some technical background in housing i wouldn't say essential just useful and again very detail-oriented somewhat numbers oriented they have a wonderful board and

[204:03] as i said it does require a bit of time super and mary would you like to talk to us about the chautauqua i can although rachel is serving already thank you rachel um so because the the chautauqua association leases land from the city um they have city representation there and they meet about oh roughly about once a month take maybe a couple months off in the summer and then also in the winter but um you're there to basically represent city the city perspective on any of their activities any and all of their activities i'll add this much that right now the board is

[205:00] kind of changing earlier this year there was a vote to change the way in which board members are appointed they will be appointed now versus getting elected so this i think is a good change which will bring the ability of um the board itself to identify where its gaps are in board representation so that they can be more high functioning and um yeah so it's it's it's an interesting board if you like chautauqua um it's great and the meetings are about supposed to be about an hour and a half long but i did not attend any hour and a half long meetings um they were all about three so but i like i said it's in flux and changing

[206:00] great and then what we have left is sister city so i'll start with the sister city subcommittee rachel or adam so yeah this was um not even once a month i think once every other month something like that originally the problem we can't remember is because as soon as covet hit we had only had two meetings before that and then it essentially you know every country had their own bigger issues to deal with so we haven't really met and i'm hoping it will pick back up but um we really need someone who's probably interested in helping drive that into continuation honestly it seemed to me that our big job was like planning at dinner and that we didn't we haven't had it in two years so i i would look to staff support for leading that effort because we i don't know what we were supposed to do i don't know what we're doing on that subcommittee we didn't do it

[207:00] so i served on that committee and um where more council involvement involvement comes in is when there's a new sister city that's being proposed and that's that's when um it sees more action and um so on sister cities uh just a quick heads up for new council members um those are not official city organizations of any kind we charter them and that is all we do with them and we maintain relations and and hear from them when they have requests of us or whatever we try and appoint one council member per sister city but we have 10 sister cities now so it's not clear exactly how that's going to evolve the annual sister city dinner when it happens is great because you get to learn what's going on with all these great organizations but by and large being on the sister

[208:02] city committee doesn't usually entail much work at all maybe one meeting a year maybe two has been my experience and bob one thing i will say about serving as a liaison to one of these sister cities is there's an opportunity to take a really cool trip now the city does not reimburse this is all out of your own pocket i've had the opportunity to visit nablus palestine in ramadhan negev israel and on behalf of the sister cities and you get to meet the mayor and and go on tours of soap factories and all sorts of really really cool things in those towns but it is out of your own pocket um and there is a um i'm the representative to uh deshaumbe uh tajikistan and there is a trip tentatively planned for this coming fall for dushanbe so if anyone wants to go to chambai they might want to raise their hand for that one great thank you so with that um we're done that is our list of committees both internal and external i will say

[209:01] this is the hidden work of council there's more hidden work of counsel but this is a bunch of stuff that you sign up for and some of it's fun some of it's less fun but it is all part of the job description for sure with that we are done with this item and done with the agenda so i think it'd be appropriate time if anyone wants to say a few last things before we gavel the last meeting of this council closed rachel i saw your hand i saw aaron go in first i'll just be flip where are um like little tassels and headboards that we can throw into the air for the end of the council asks there you go i'll i'll say a few words at the the luncheon on thursday but yeah it's been a pleasure i haven't done this before so i'm gonna kind of follow aaron's lead here i thought maybe we would each say you know like i got to say some words about adam and bob about sam did we not go around whatever you want what we like about each other [Laughter]

[210:00] i don't know how it works aaron's going to do i mean i'm happy to spare members of the public if that's the routine there's no routine this is totally make it up on your own okay well i'll just say a couple words then i'll start with mirabai who's been patiently up there on screen all night i'm hereby you know we didn't overlap much so i'm sorry that we didn't get to know each other better and i will say that as someone who's also passionate about issues i care about i very much respect um and and admire your tenacity and advocating for um your values and uh appreciated you doing that steadfastly and and i wish you joy in your newfound freedom thanks so much rachel it's really sweet i appreciate it you're welcome i mean i if this is all new like do we all just want to say nice things about mirabai for a moment and then i don't it doesn't need to be the rachel show

[211:00] yeah i will say that the happiest people i have ever seen are the departing members of city council they smile all the time i've never seen people smile all the time before but it's it's been my honor and and privilege to serve with all of you we haven't always agreed on everything but that doesn't matter um i've been impressed with each one of you i it's simply been a privilege to get to know you to the extent that i have and to work with you and i'm sorry that all of you are leaving but you're going on to better things i guess and keep smiling well like aaron i'll say most of my comments for our luncheon next tuesday but i do want to this is the third council that aaron and i have each served on third two year

[212:00] council and uh all due respect to our prior colleagues i would say it's my favorite council um and and that's caused by a couple things number one uh the the relationship that we've built uh maybe it was a relationship of fire because of covet or maybe it's just because you're all really super nice people uh and i think that sam deserves a lot of credit for bringing us together and keeping us together and my hope for the next council and for our colleagues that are going to join us starting next week is that that council is at least as good as this one because this has been a really really good group of people to serve with so thank you all can can i just say bob you're going to get angry emails now from like andrew shoemaker and sanjo's be like well what the heck about chop cover [Laughter] the answer of course is yes [Laughter] can i double dip because i i i was starting with mirabai but i did have words for each of you and i you know i'm freestyling here um just say a little bit more about adam um

[213:00] i you know part of my campaign slogan or logo was a rainbow and i you know i sort of uh have come to see you as as like the rainbow bearer and the sort of bringer of just good things and um sort of a moral center to this council so you will be deeply missed and i thank you for being that for us um and that means no disrespect to the rest of you thanks rachel you're welcome um and then uh for mary uh it's been a joy to me over the last year that we have gotten a little closer and i have considered you a mentor and a friend and um that that was just like a big bonus for me because i think you know i started out as an activist and and um you sort of have impressions of people from the other side of the diocese and and grateful that that you were so generous with your time and and mentoring of me so thank you for that

[214:01] and sam um i want to echo some sentiments that other people have shared tonight how how well you stepped into the mayor role and especially um from my vantage point after the king supers shooting really just got all of us in the whole community you know off our dot you were the the center of the community and and i don't think anybody could have done better in the aftermath of that than you did so i appreciate all that you did um holding the community together and then you know kind of walked through the fire on cu south negotiations um and and admire your your leadership um and encourage there so thank you for a job really well done all right i want to jump in and just say thank you to everyone on this council this is my fourth council and um they're

[215:00] all different and i think this is the council that far and away had the heaviest left of anyone and it's hard to describe to people who haven't been on council before but all of the things that you think are critically important like land use and and homelessness and police reform all those things are incredibly important but when a pandemic lands all of a sudden this gets elevated to the very top of the list and nobody has a script so nobody on this council knew what to do exactly and we all had to come together and figure it out which meant that we all had to hear from each other because nobody had the right answer the right answers came from the entire community but we had to help distill them with our staff and with the county staff and so on so um you know thank you to you all for the personal sacrifices that i know that you made um to be able to

[216:01] bring the community through this tough couple of years that we've had we had some 5-4 votes not everything that happened on this council was easy and what i think is great is we had five four votes and then we came back together to deal with all the other things that we had to deal with so i think it's been an exceptional council from that standpoint the challenges it had to face and you know staff also had to face all of those challenges and if it weren't for the staff we couldn't have done our jobs at all and so it's just something you know that we can all carry with us forward that we were part of this and that we had to adapt and overcome and and i think this council did that and managed to keep really good interpersonal relationships throughout that and i hope that the next council takes that as bob said and and thinks about you know there will be disagreements i

[217:01] predict there will be a 5-4 vote sometime on the next council and when that 5-4 vote happens go home get some sleep and realize it was a disagreement but it was not a civil war and isn't the cause for ongoing disputation so um i guess i'll just say thank you to everyone i'm proud of the work this council did and i know it took a lot out of everyone so it's much appreciated so i just i just want to say one short thing rachel last week you asked me what i was going to miss the most and i've thought about it since then and i think what i'm gonna miss the most is having um colleagues and having colleagues um especially in this council under the pressure cooker that it was was actually quite a gift

[218:00] and so thank you all that's what i'll miss all right anything else with that our gavel is closed at 9 36. [Applause] [Music]

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