January 4, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music]

[2:08] [Music] [Music]

[3:01] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

[4:01] just waiting for juny and we got one more minute till 6 [Music] [Music] o' [Music] good evening [Music] everyone that all right well we have all our

[5:01] council members here and our critical staff members and it's 6 o'clock so can we go ahead and get started very good all right good evening everyone and welcome to the Tuesday January 4th uh city council meeting of the city of Boulder Colorado we're going to start off with uh three announcements here uh the first one is about covid-19 vaccinations uh if you still need a vaccine or booster um please go to www.bouldercounty.org slamily disease-9 vaccines for information about how you can get yours and next is about health care assistance so Boulder County Housing and Human Services are working to encourage Boulder County residents to sign up for health insurance during open enrollment which ends January 15th coverage is Affordable and their big discounts this

[6:00] year preventative care is free and there are many plans to choose from and financial assistance may be available for more information and free confidential assistance visit bouldercounty healthc coverage. that's bouldercounty healthc coverage. org and uh our third announcement is a happy one which we can all use in these difficult times which is that our council member colleague Tara Wier just celebrated the arrival of her second granddaughter this morning at 5 am so a huge congratulations to Tara and to your family all right and with that we'll move on into the call to order Alicia if you could do that for us please yes sir and good evening everyone go ahead and take the rad call council member Benjamin here mayor Brockett present council member farts

[7:01] present mayor protim friend here council member Joseph here spear here wallik present Wier here and Yates present congratulations terara yes congratulations and mayor we have our Quorum wonderful thank you Alicia all right so first um we need to amend the agenda uh because of the catastrophic fires uh that went through our nearby communities last week we have a few uh changes to make to the agenda so uh we need to add item 1A which is an update on the Marshall fire and the transition to recovery uh add item 3F which is a consideration of a motion to ratify the city of Boulder Declaration of local disaster emergency dated January 2nd 2022 and also add up item 8A winter emergency shelter ing options and then

[8:01] uh we are removing item 6A which was a staff presentation of 2020 and 2021 accomplishments and other items we're going to do that a week from tonight at our next study session so if I could get a motion to so amend agenda please so moot second great thanks any objections seeing none uh the agenda has been amended and um let's see so I think we're going to go right now into our item 1A which is the update on the Marshall fire fire transition to recovery and I see we have Mike chard from the boulder office of emergency management thanks so much for being here Mike and NRI will you start this one I am thank you mayor um and so first of all I just want to thank you for the opportunity to provide this update and before we begin I want to just say that our hearts are going out to our neighbors in Superior in Lewisville know that we stand with you and that we will continue to be with you during this long road to recovery I continue to be moved

[9:00] and inspired by the outpouring of resilience strength compassion and Care demonstrated by our Boulder Community and I'm really proud to be a part of it now um and excited to hear and to share with you what we have done to date to support our community members with us today is Mike Char director of The Office of disaster management for the city of Boulder and Boulder County we have with us two many of our critical staff who responded to this crisis in what I can only characterize as as extraordinary compassion and Grace um I know that everyone knows here that on December 30th we had a red flag wind day and reports of Three Fires in the area two of those fires including the Middle Fork fire were contained relatively quickly but as we all know the Marshal fire was not and since that day we've responded to that Marshall fire which proved to be the most devastating in Colorado History due to those strong winds the dry conditions and a large number of homes in the burn area so you'll hear a little bit more uh later

[10:00] about uh 1,800 acres of City open space that was impacted by the fire um and numerous homes that were devastated by the strong winds with by that day um but as we're not uh you'll also hear a little bit about um the extraordinary efforts that staff has done to support this but as we know the incident did not necessarily did not happen here in the city of Boulder itself um but we have been supporting the efforts uh there and so I'll turn it to Mike to sort of give an overview of what's been happening um before we turn back to what the city has been doing Mike thanks Daria uh thank you Council mayor and uh residents that are listening to the call uh this is day six of our response and uh the uh present uh conditions are obviously moving more towards recovery I'll try to give you what I can uh about what has occurred prior to this point uh as you know on H December 3D 30th we were

[11:00] fighting a fire up in middlefork which was drawing a lot of attention and resources towards a fast moving fire also and then the Marshall fire broke 24 in the morning 04 the Marshall fire started with pretty substantial uh winds behind it uh we were seeing gusts that were going up in category two hurricane level uh you know winds uh and with fire driven behind that you can imagine what sort of environment the community and responders were facing as this thing started to grow fire started on obviously at the at the base of the Foothills move very rapidly to the east involving the town of Superior in Lewisville there was over 800 firefighters at the height of the fire right now we're seeing about 191 Personnel 27 fire engines and 35 National Guards folks uh it has uh you know taken 6200 Acres um with uh that growth so the size of that for those around long up that's the size of the

[12:00] Four Mile fire back in 2010 on September 6th but you take that footprint and you put it into an urban environment and you can understand the devastation then that starts to uh uh unfold before us uh 975 homes I'm sorry if I don't have that accurate I should but the numbers have changing our disaster assistant teams have been out uh in the field really refining that uh about 120 130 homes were damaged um we'll have more numbers the next 24 hours that will be accurate uh and we'll also estimate total loss uh we had evacuation of 35,000 people so that is a very significant evacuation uh and that resulted in a tremendous support network that had to come behind it um I can tell the city of Boulder SWAT team was called out and responded quickly to those evacuations one of the one piece of evacuation is obviously the alert and warning that goes out that are made by those decisions are made by the incident commanders and the fire firefighters and law enforcement police officers uh

[13:01] through the 911 Center in the county but also the door-to-door uh rescued many folks and those you'll I think at some point there'll be uh more stories around that if you haven't already heard them that were very heroic by our First Responders are fire police and deputies that were uh firefighters police and deputies that were going door Todo and removing people from hazards way and then also the heroic efforts of many citizens and residents of our community that's the the last part of this is people discovering and and seeing the problems and then going to their neighbors and helping them get out those are always critical pieces of an evacuation unfortunately we have two people missing um and we are in the process of uh locating those folks I don't have more to say about that as uh as the investigation is ongoing but that's being handled by the sheriff's department um and we'll see more uh probably information coming out in the next couple of days uh as far as the the evacuation um when that started out our

[14:02] our office was called in EOC was stood up we try to get going as quickly as we can our job is to support the evacuation Mission with messaging on our website so as people get evacuation notices or they're looking for information they can go and either on social media platforms or at the website start finding more detailed information about what the hazards may be and then where roadblocks are and and shelters so we were able to get get a shelter operation open pretty quickly uh City Boulder as always Rises to the occasion so we were able to open South Boulder Rec Center very quickly for evacuees eventually went to North Boulder wck also the w Lafayette YMCA Lafayette Community Center and the Rocky Mountain Church in NAA were opened up as shelters and eventually that led to the YMCA being the last shelter open we have a couple of people still in that shelter and we've been able to transition other folks into uh back into their homes because of the lifting of of uh you know

[15:00] closures to neighborhoods or uh provide them housing assistance um The Other Stories here uh you know obviously getting people out of Harm's Way when you think about the the the the actual wind and fire conditions we have to we have a lot more to investigate to understand but the you know with two two potential uh you know missing people um really you know the the fact that it's not more I don't want to celebrate that with the loss of any life it's it's tragic it's hard to kind of put that in balance for me but uh we could have seen things worse uh from this event with the size and scope of it so uh tremendous work from uh responders and the community members to to pull us through this uh so we're in the the next phase as this starts to go out of the emergency response which by that night uh the fire um had died down the winds 30 uh nine o'clock if you're outside it probably still felt windy but uh I can tell you from what we were experiencing during the day it felt like light winds but but they were still substantial um but uh the fire this the

[16:02] rapid and aggressive fire growth was over by um you know that later periods of the night um the uh the next of course the the snow uh helps with the fire control but makes damage assessment and and other complicating factors uh and once the uh the life safety mission is is sort of uh you know handled and the fire containment which it is 100% contained we don't um you know now things turn into the heavy lift of you know helping people try to get back to their homes uh we brought in our Incident Management team that the city of Boulder supports and many of our fire fighters are on that team and Mike Smith uh on our fire department was The Incident Commander he started out and I helped him transition our team down to the Marshall fire so we you know fighting two fires at once under these conditions you can see the challenges but we were be able to be flexible and agile and and move those capabilities around as needed but Mike's done just a tremendous job along with his team to help put management to a very complex

[17:01] and escalating incident along with many other firefighters in our fire department that are part of that team uh the IMT was transitioned over to a federal team that um later the next day and that Federal management team is a type one team to give you the typing that's the most powerful team that's in the federal Arsenal to come in and provide assistance to managing this very a significant disaster uh the goal that we put on that team was to reduce hazards eliminate them to facilitate as quickly as possible the restoration of our utilities uh in these communities because that facilitates then getting people back home and when you're removed from your house the people want to know is my house up is it survived is it damaged do I have a home to go to um you know this is part of the mission of trying to reduce the human suffering and the impacts that comes along with knowing this um the other side of this that is there is the tremendous amount of loss we've had H pets um and animals affected by this um death notifications

[18:02] with animals people lost pets has been going on and the tragedy of that but many animals were saved uh there tremendous support from our Humane Societies the fairgrounds from across the Front Range to be able to handle not just the the human evacuation but also the evacuation of of animals and family pets is also another story that goes along with this disaster um we were uh also able to get the shelters open and get uh support to house folks that are waiting to get back Excel Energy Comcast the um Wireless carriers all did a a fantastic job getting uh service back into the area presently 100% of all electricals restored back into the d The Disaster Area um there's 10,000 out of 13,000 gas customers there's been 700 Crews from across the country brought in to restore the utility so quite an armada of utility resources to try to facilitate getting a timely and quick

[19:00] return to homes for people that have been kept out the roadblocks have been lifted as I've been told before the meeting was in all areas but Lewisville so there is still some uh Road or uh site containment around 76 South 76 Street Superior uh and Lewisville is handling their closures and you have to be monitoring those through Lewisville website for those that may be interested as those closures May change in the next 12 24 hours um I don't want to uh get too far into that but uh what goes on with the DAC but the Disaster Assistance Center sorry for the acronym use there but um the uh the utilities are back uh the the type one team is looking to transition out towards the end of the week and we're looking to move very much into the heavy recovery phase uh there's still some operational priorities going on around you know getting some spot fires put down the fire departments are still responding to calls as the snow melts off even with all the snow the collapsed buildings are reigniting so there still be some of those things

[20:00] happening within the fire perimeter that will be addressed by uh Mountain View fire department and also uh Lewisville uh any Mutual Aid fire resources I'm sure Chief cazo will be able to offer assistance but um the thing that can be said about the response in closing is that many of our our departments our first responder departments helped out tremendously uh either through covering and you know as other departments were surging into the Disaster Response or actively engaged in the response to the fire so without those efforts and without the support of the the municipalities across the county This Disaster would not uh be handled to the level that it has been because we are able to get and help rebuild the communities and get the essential Services back online for the residents in in Boulder County to be able to start getting back to rebuilding their lives and get some normaly back into their life which is a big goal for us here at disaster management because of that we received a disaster declaration from FEMA very quickly we have a major presidential disaster declaration one of the quickest

[21:00] I've ever seen um and it does have category A and B so what that means debris assistance and emergency response reimbursement also some individual assistance uh so we've got uh FEMA State Partners from uh Department of Homeland Security emergency management and FEMA onsite uh and they are setting up their support structures out at our Disaster assistments Assistance Center which is located off of South Public Road 1755 I believe South Public Road and Lafayette and that was stood up pretty quickly and is now providing services to many affected by the community I know we had some residents here of Our Own in Boulder that experienced a fire a wind event this wasn't just being classified a fire event but also significant wind event we had uh obviously some homes impacted um we saw some tremendous work from the Red Cross and assisting those members but also from volunteer agencies like team Rubicon coming in and being able to help with uh providing some emergency stabilization of those homes uh so just a lot of outpouring of

[22:00] support money uh supplies equipment um just from all over the the country the Front Range and from many communities here in Boulder County and I won't uh go too much further in AIA I know there's other notes there related to things that you have been directly involved in related to um you know uh supporting Louisville not yet with some of their infrastructure I just want to end with two notes um emercy uh the uh Disaster Assistance I'm sorry disaster assessment teams went out 60 plus teams from building inspectors and Engineers from across the Front Range uh in two days they're completing the damage assessment which is unheard of over 3,000 uh structures have been assessed uh which helps facilitate then also identifying what really are the impacts to know what the Strategic intent and plan needs to be for restoration of critical infrastructure Municipal uh buildings also getting an idea size and scope of the housing issues we're going to face by the number of residential versus commercial properties or businesses

[23:01] affected by the fire damage uh so uh thanks again to Boulder for um all of the support from Public Works to uh our inspectors who are part of that effort and um I think that's all I have to report on this time I'm trying to keep my thoughts together here off the top of my head but hopefully that briefing um gave you a little bit more insight as to kind of where we've been um and then naria can talk about the work going on and our Resource Management closing is doing a a tremendous support with water support that seems to be a big issue right now with keeping water going until um the water Distribution Systems are restored and I'll turn it over to naria for that because that's been a huge um program by our public works department to support uh Lewisville and Superior in in that restoration so unless you have any questions that's the end of report thanks so much Mike for that and I I'll just say you know I've unfortunately been involved in a lot of emergencies from tornadoes to hurricanes to frankly just most recently the almost

[24:01] collapse of the electrical Grid in Austin and your leadership and how quickly and and agile you gathered um folks together in your role has really been extraordinary to watch so I just thank you for your leadership and I I'll say as we I'll try not to repeat some of the things that Mike has shared about how the city has been supporting because I will tell you that our city staff jumped in really really quickly to support obviously first first and foremost they're helping to support the city uh the EOC and whatever Mike sort of needs uh and directs folks too Mike mentioned how much we had been doing in the Sheltering area and um moving and lifting up as you all know the extraordinary lift to lift a shelter up on short notice and I just want to call out that we certainly could not have done that without the quick coordination of parks and wrecks and utility staff who really supported some of those during our Emergency Operations The covid-19 Recovery Center was also Al opened as an evacuation point for those

[25:00] who had tested positive for covid um as we know we're in the midst of that crisis as well and so needed to find the appropriate spaces for that uh already Mike has mentioned the Disaster Assistance Center that is a great resource for all I know OEM has that on the website um and our staff is certainly helping to lift that up and continue to support that as that moves forward we've also beg some of our own damage assess M so we talked a little bit earlier about the hurricane for wins that day and that resulted in damage to 25 homes in the city of Boulder we have issued our own local disaster emergency declaration and are hoping to address some of that damage with the help of that presidential declaration with FEMA and so forth so we'll continue to work with the EOC as we move that on uh the city of Boulder building staff has been out and deployed as Mike mentioned and certainly um Public Works and p& s have been assisting OEM uh in assessing what

[26:00] damage they have to their public infrastructure in those affected areas there are many trees lost at the flat irons Golf Course about 30 of them and a large Cottonwood that fell on a bridge over Boulder Creek just east of the main library that bridge is now closed pending that tree removal and structural assessment so we'll know more about that in the future and then as I mentioned before we've had some damage to our open space and so osmp staff have been conducting preliminary assessment of trails and Trail heads fencing Agriculture and water infrastructure and signage that may have been affected by the fire so far we continue to think that it was uh the impacts are less than what we initially had feared um but we will continue to do that we haven't done any cost estimates yet until we uh finalize that damage assessment and we will again be continuing to coordinate with Boulder County Parks and open space on those damage assessments uh I believe Mike mentioned a lot and I know that you all have heard

[27:00] and imagin that Public Safety was critical in this certainly um BPD uh assisted in the evacuation of over a thousand people and took over some of the responsibilities for some of our regional Partners who were busy really dealing with the immediate effects of the fire uh we had traffic control services we deployed about 35 resources to assist the county including what Mike mentioned about the SWAT team and bomb squad um to support what was happening elsewhere in our sister cities our fire department sent the battalion chief several engines and several brush trucks immediately and the Wildland team to help with the immediate fires osmp was also deployed to assist in the immediate fire response um we covered calls and dispatch for a variety of um calls through those days in fact our 911 dispatch Center answered about 1170 00 a.m. to 8:00 P.M and at the highest point answered 197

[28:01] calls in a single hour just over three a minute so extraordinary work done by our 911 dispatch team police and fire continue to support emergency response needs and uh detectives are responding and helping with agencies when other serious crimes occurs to enable uh those other Public Safety agencies to be able to focus and continue to focus on the immediate response in housing we have lifted the income limits enabling emergency housing for fire displaced individuals and households permanently affordable City rental housing uh units can now provide emergency hounding to displaced individuals and household regardless of the income for up to 12 months and I know again for all of these we have staff at the end of this to answer specific questions for you um and I know that we have mentioned and folks have asked us what happens for those kind-hearted and wonderful folks who are taking in folks that have been displaced by the fire and concerned about occupants issues we had already said before when we were talking to occupancy

[29:01] that we're not actively enforcing o occupancy limits and so individuals providing temporary shelter for evacuee should not be concerned at this time and we actually thank you for your ability to take folks in as we move forward Mike mentioned how much we were doing in the area of water water uh seems to be an issue at the moment as we're trying to get everyone up to speed and I can't thank staff from utilities enough they're helping with water treatment testing and flushing the water distribution uh systems to clear the boil water orders as soon as we can um and transportation and maintenance staff has helped deliver bottled water to Louisville and distribution of those who that need that access and as long as we're on the topic of Transportation I know and just heard today from Matt in Superior the city manager in Superior how how appreciative he was of City snow Crews that assisted Superior by helping out because not only did we have the fires but but we had quite a bit of snow that very next day um so appreciate our

[30:01] transportation team really assisting in that Forest Service Tre continues to respond regarding Fallen trees on or near homes and on public lands uh as our osmp crews so uh I hope the community continues to let us know if they are seeing any of those uh Fallen trees or some hard debris as we continue to move forward with that Transportation had also coordinated transportation services with via and RTD to and from the evacuation zones and shelters and continues to coordinate transportation services to and from the uh Disaster Assistance Center as well there are things that happen sometimes behind the scenes that are of tremendous help and I'll just call out our city IT staff who quickly um supported Lewisville and Superior as their systems went down they're just now I heard from the city manager and Superior getting internet um and we are here and will continue to help as they get their systems up and running with whatever they may need in that regard HHS staff have been collaborating

[31:00] with government agency and private funding Partners to address urgent and longer term needs for community members experience economic health and other disparities and our community Vitality department has been helping to navigate businesses to Red Cross and the Community Foundation our pios I can't even begin to say how invaluable they have been um in supporting sort of getting messaging out messaging as always in any disaster is critical as we move forward and they have been supporting the emergency Operation Center throughout the very beginning um and they will continue to serve in that regard either in person or remotely uh as we continue to have that need our records information staff are playing a critical role in helping the office of emergency management as well by creating evacuation and road closures maps maps to Health First Responders and updating trail maps to reflect closures uh osmp is also doing a lot in that regard and reaching out to um open space Partners in Superior and Lewisville to

[32:00] see what they need and where they can help coordinate but in particular are um helping to provide messaging to where those trails and those other areas remain closed to the public Boulder parks and recreation is honoring lewisville's Recreation Center passes at its three recreation centers and the Lewisville Recreation Center can uh until the Lewisville Recreation Center can resume normal operations I will also say that we too as a city organization have been impacted directly by that we have we have uh 70 employees who live in Lewisville and Superior we have uh of those we have offered all of those 70 employees who were evacuated when the fires began paid leave and as we checked in individually with all our staff impacted by the fires we can confirm now that we have to date five of our city colleagues who are amongst those who lost their homes in the Marshall fire while we hope that that is the extent of the damage we know that there are some that have yet to reach their homes to access that Dam to

[33:01] assess that damage and others who may not have lost their homes in their entirety but who had significant damage to the fire nonetheless or have close family members who have lost their homes and so we are working to determine how best to support our colleagues who have had such losses and we will be providing um them and you more information on how to support with uh donations directly to them as we move forward uh there are the biggest question we get as we move forward right the kind-hearted and the charitable nature of everyone in community has been what can we do to help and there are a multitude of ways that we can do it and there are a lot of websites as everyone knows um to do that the best way right now I will say is to donate money or to be a volunteer via the officials channels outlined in um the boulder office of emergency management website uh monetary donations are going to Colorado gives.org org volunteer opportunities for to support recovery

[34:00] efforts um one can look at Colorado respond.org to donate materials food water and services uh people can register at Boulder count. woo wf.com forms donations and we will have I know this is a lot of information but a you can find it all on the OEM website and we are trying ourselves to put all of these resources in a single spot to make it easier for folks to do that and to look for what they can use for help I'll say to sister Carmen is taking limited donations and volunteers at this time they most need cash and they're asking to uh donate online at sister car.org and gift cards in A1 increments to Walmart Target and Costco or local area restaurants are really appreciated as well I I will say that as we're looking at these um and I'll just mention that

[35:00] there are sometimes and unfortunately in these situations some folks that are trying to capitalize on these tragic events um if we stick to these official channels and folks are really directed to these official forms and trusted forms of donations uh it will be um most successful in helping and supporting those that are impacted by the fire if you hear of anything about a scam in your area and we have unfortunately heard of a few we would say please contact the Boulder County District Attorney's Office who are addressing those as we move forward there are also a variety of resources for the distress this obviously any natural disaster like a w a wildfire can have a significant impact on folks emotional well-being we're hoping and we're certainly advising all of our staff and and say that to community as well to take steps to ensure that everyone's taking care of their emotional needs during this time and we know that we have Colorado crisis services and Mental Health Partners who are available to provide assistance I

[36:01] know John teer is in the wings and maybe we can promote him to panel us too in case you have questions on how the business Community is helping but the Northwest chamber Alliance has put together a resource page for businesses at Northwest chamber alliance.com Wildfire um and I know that uh John in a second here can probably answer some questions too about how the chamber is stepping in and leaning in to support those um that have their businesses impacted as well for those needing a place to stay as a result of the fire The Disaster Assistance Center in Lafayette is an excellent resource we also have additional hotel rooms that are listed on the bouldercolorado usa.com website and available apartments for displaced family can be found on the Colorado apartment association's website which also includes our great Partners at varha who have a website on their own that also list um AA available units here in the Boulder area and for the

[37:00] latest information you can visit Boulder oem.com for a full list of those resources and we'll continue to do that ourselves to do that as we move forward so I just want to finally say that I realize this this listing and update is a lot to take in we're hoping to gather all of them as I mentioned in one single place um but wanted to lift up the many many ways that staff has has and continues to respond to the immediate crisis and hopefully will allow for some Grace as well because there are times when our regular work has been delayed because they've been involved in emergency work and lastly I'll say that while we have been mostly in response mode as we lean into recovery now I want you to know that we're already thinking about ways to support those impacted by the fire in additional ways so we're already not as I mentioned before enforcing occupancy limits generally and we're going to continue this practice as we know some of our community are already opening their homes so we don't want people to worry about that we're thinking about other possibilities like

[38:00] perhaps allowing short-term rentals to be rented on a longer term basis or seeing if we can provide some kind of priority processing for certain times of per of the permits that would allow um folks to really have additional folks uh people in their um in their homes we're looking to see if rental license exemptions or quick processing for existing owner occupied units that could be used for housing fire victims um could be happening and so while I say that we're thinking about it we don't know yet what's feasible but know that we're looking to different opportunities to see how best we can um streamline and accelerate uh some creative ways to support those in community already we imagine you may have additional thoughts on those creative ways that we can support folks as well so we welcome those as we look towards the next recovery phase and with that I'll say staff is here to answer any specifics and I'll turn it back to you mayor although I will say that if John te's on the line and wants to share how uh the chamber's been helping the business

[39:01] Community um this may be a good moment thanks so much John do you want to go ahead and and uh tell us what you all have been up to and then then I'll say a few words sure I'll I'll be real quick and and first of all thank you to um the city Boulder staff team um great Partners in our efforts and recognizing that first and foremost this has been a Major Impact to residents of our region um and then as a consequence there has also been direct and indep indirect impacts to our businesses so um we as the boulder chamber have reached out and coordinated with our Northwest chamber Alliance Partners as nura mentioned we have pulled together a resource web page um which is One-Stop shopping for our businesses to identify what uh resources and support services are out there for them many of them that uh outlined in in her comments um second we have put out a

[40:01] survey uh countywide to our businesses to ask them what are the uh needs that they have we are already getting back significant responses to that um many people offering or businesses offering support through that survey as well as uh helping us to understand their uh immediate needs and thinking about longterm um I also just reference that the these residents represent the workforce of our community and so we are very attuned to their needs helping them to make sure that they are also available to to uh come back for employment we also recognize that some of them have lost their um their employment so we're assisting them um in getting unemployment insurance um and just if you give me two seconds I want to recognize it's it's not um the boulder chamber acting alone there are a great deal of our local um Business Association and support services that are helping so give me two seconds I just outlined that the boulder Area

[41:01] Rental Housing Association they're helping to identify rental properties uh for those who have been displaced the boulder convention visitors bureau has been in touch with hotels not just in Boulder but outside uh the region that are offering discount rates for uh displac residents and making sure that that that is updated regularly as ever the small business develop Cent is being playing an active role in helping to assist businesses through the process of getting Services um and then we all know uh I think most of us know about the Community Foundation um they have been uh the center for a lot of philanthropy um now up to12 million from 43,000 uh donations from across the country uh and they are now already released five million of that directly to residents for support So a immediately getting dollars out there to uh meet immediate needs um and then just

[42:00] all our business partners including the downtown uh Boulder Business Partnership they have uh just been great resource for us in supporting um some of our needs of the businesses out and residents and finally just give a little uh tip of the hat to um the restaurant Community they have stepped up in a very big way offering free meals for um many of those who are displaced uh it's it's overwhelming the support that they've uh put together and that list is online at the uh Northwest chamber Alliance website um as well as other um resources out there but just impressive what the restaurant Community has done at a time when they've been struggling as well um I thank Nua for mentioning um the uh fraudulent practices most of the um Services being offered by Business Leaders and and uh supports services are appropriate and and uh with good intent but there are some folks who are try

[43:01] would try to take advantage of situation like this so we urge folks to report any uh seeming PR price scouching or fraudulent practice was very important that we capture that um and conclude by saying this has been a collaborative effort of Chambers and business organizations across the county um that's the only way we're going to get through this together and we know it's going to be not just the short-term impact but there will be long-term implications here so we're we're in it for the long term and and look forward to partnering with our our city colleagues in that effort thanks so much for that John and thanks for every Everything the business Community is doing to help support people who are in need right now and um so really appreciate that you coming tonight and Mike really appreciate your efforts and your office's efforts so so much and we just also we we cannot say enough about the extraordinary efforts of City staff in this emergency and This

[44:01] Disaster it's inspiring to see this example of neighbors helping neighbors and how um the nearby disaster became you know all hands on deck moment for for the city of Boulder and had so many of our employees working long hours for many days uh to help folks and you got to think about how after the king Su shooting how many uh people came to our Aid and supported our community um in that time of of our need and our crisis and so I'm glad that we're able to keep up the tradition of mutual aid for our our neighbors and the nearby communities and help them out however we can it's been inspiring so thanks to everyone involved so so much um with that uh council members do you have uh questions uh for City staff or anybody else that's here this evening um about the recovery efforts Nicole and Matt I just have one question quick clarification um for the community um it sounds like the mental

[45:01] health services that are available are not just for people who've been directly impacted by the fire but may be available for um volunteers for others in the community who have taken um refugees in um and you know Al maybe even for folks like journalists I mean I know it's been really hard to kind of go and report all this I just want to clarify that these these resources are aail able Beyond those who were directly impacted by the fire or not I'll say that I've asked in the background for staff to jump in so that you stop hearing my voice but my understanding is that yes uh they are openly available for anyone in our community who needs assistance someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in that I would agree with that naria what I will do also uh council person Spears I will go ahead and check with our messaging and make sure that we have that um you know out there for the public to see and it's clearly stated so I'll follow up on that for you thank you

[46:00] yeah I think there's likely people who think that you know they need to leave those resources for the people directly impacted and so if we have enough available I just really want to encourage our community um particularly those in southeast Boulder who are watching Flames all day um and packing up their cars and you know all of that you know please please reach out to those resources if it'll help you get through thank you SM thank I had two questions but first uh you know I just want to commend Mike and everybody on staff for the tremendous work I mean even though the loss is is profound and and almost unfathomable it still could have been way worse and so I I just want to commend everyone for for the work they did to to minimize to juice what it is even though it's extraordinary um you know well to my first question centers around water and I know utility staff been working hard on that but is there any general expected time frame from which water service will be restored um I know I've been getting questions not just regards to businesses and homes but

[47:01] certainly with regards to schools and a lot of parents who live in Boulder proper have kids that go to schools that have been impacted by water shut off so any sense that they can feel a little bit at ease about um their children and then other resources and homes and businesses with regards to when water service might be restored Mike I'll throw that to you or to Joe great uh Joe I'll let you take the water because you're the water expert but I can fill in the gaps afterwards good evening council members and and Mike thanks for the thanks for that I'm not sure about expert but um definitely a a big effort going on right now with the neighboring communities uh helping the Lewisville and Superior flush the water out of their water systems normally like for Boulder we do that flushing every year through our hydrants and doing it by ourselves it might take uh six weeks or a couple months to do it and to put people at

[48:02] ease we have we have like nine or 10 um City crews out there from various uh municipalities and so hope to get that done in a fraction of the time it's really superiors and lewisville's uh call to say exactly when it will be back online uh the key component of that is they're working with the Colorado Department of Health and environment and and doing testing and once they once they get the the test results that they want um then then they'll be all clear to do that but it won't be anywhere near the the time frame that it will take normally there's there's an army of utility staff out there opening Valves and and flushing water um so probably sometime within uh well I'll just I'll leave it to Lewisville and Superior to say what I can fill in there Joe is uh one of the

[49:01] duties we have is we pull together the agency administrators this will be senior leadership also the uh um city or town administrators into a meeting that meets every day and we share about what's the operational updates also what are the community impacts and try to track those soone kind of stays uh you know kind of glued together uh what we are hearing uh initially was it was going to be early next week we're also hearing now reports that with all the efforts Joe's talking about possibly could maybe be by Friday or Saturday um but and that it's really kind of a fluid and that's not a pun there on the water thing but we're really not sure it kind of goes day to day if they can get a lot of good work done the next couple of days they're involved in phases of testing and as Joe put it then also prepping the system for folks that are worried about schools Rob price from Boulder Valley School District also Johnny Terell from St Valley Valley School DS they're part of that agency administrator BR all of the folks to go to this to this uh table to discuss these things they are planning in their opening I believe it was tomorrow

[50:02] actually um so they are have been planning all along to provide water assistance at their school sites um and they've got the uh the gas and electric uh you know power so they can provide safe environments for the kids uh and the students and and teachers and faculty so they've been indicating Anda if I'm missing something here because things kind of jammed together for me uh but they seem to indicate all systems are go for opening it's the water is the challenge uh but you know obviously the other poble water sources uh allows them to maintain the opening so I'm going to keep hoping and uh that we're going to get that Friday Saturday deadline and we could also even see some Hospital Systems coming back online as a result of that which puts more inventory uh back into our medical system that we have here in Boulder County with the covid uh you know numbers we have it's important to try to get um our our Medical uh clinics hospitals long-term care centers back in their facilities to where they can take care of

[51:02] patients thank you Mike thank you Joe my my next question is is a housing one and kind of I think there's a number of them that some of my colleagues may ask and and ner I appreciate you addressing a bunch of them up front um has to do with with what we know is is a volume of second and and really tertiary homeowners in this town is there any way to reach out to those that have vacant homes and and and even just acknowledge what's going on in some ways but even even just making me ask um because some may not know because they don't live here or unaware of what to do and I'm just wondering if there's inventory available is there anything we can do to jump start a conversation or or just uh make it a little bit easier for maybe some of that to to be opened up even in a short-term manner for for so many families and and just people in need I see Kurt popped up and I don't know uh if he has additional things but I'll say that we'll certainly take that back and see it still requires us to have that inventory and to reach out and

[52:00] right now we're still in response mode but as soon as we we will put that in the mix and take some of these ideas and see what we can do Kurt I don't know if you had something to add on that point I was thinking mostly the rental units we have uh sure uh Kurt fower director of housing Human Services uh thanks for that Matt so uh Christen Heiser uh and I today were in a meeting uh that was put together by FEMA um and we were joined by cdbg Boulder County um so doola chaffa cdps um with this uh uh looking to answer those questions and um so uh that team is now meeting on a very regular basis um and it's it's around coordination of the information um coordination of the supports available to individuals like rental support um I know that uh FEMA has already put out um

[53:01] $63,000 in in rent support um in transportation and um we're also bringing together um I think it's tomorrow um many of the uh uh the landlords in the community and um reaching out to figure out who all those players are um that have um housing resources in trying to centralize um uh you know information about um what's available to the community so um there's a lot of things that that are being worked on however um it's it's also going to take a while to to pull this together and um over the next few days um hopefully that will that will come together um but this is really the start of the recovery process and um um trying to cover both short-term um housing needs as well as long-term housing needs for the impacted

[54:00] uh residents thank you Kurt I appreciate that thank you Kurt Rachel Matt you're done thanks um okay I have a couple questions and want to thank um Nara and Mike and all the staff who've been working I know um in in overdrive for the last couple of days so thank you all for the work that you're doing um okay so my questions are um I'm a little bit confused by the disaster declaration relief funding availability so thought maybe we could clarify that my understanding is that people who have wind damage that straight wind damage will also qualify that maybe city of older residents um and and I think it's that it's for uninsured only so wanted to clarify that and then also for everyone you know wind fire damage if it's if it is only for uninsured does that include like people with huge

[55:00] deductibles can they apply for um coverage there so that that's a great question and uh the first phase or the first call we say is start with your insurance company uh that's the first layer but also we encourage everyone to go to uh FEMA online to get um into the individual assistance program to see what Gap coverage may be offered off and for people that are uninsured of course then uh individual assistants will be able to help them with uh some of those rent assistance and all the programs we're just talking before I got on the call there is a a meeting coming up around these issues of what they call it the suite what are the full Suite of individual Assistance programs available so the Disaster Assistance Center is where a lot of those questions uh can get answered so we encourage our our city residents to to take advantage of that uh you know visit the center if you are an underinsured or G Gap coverage or or you do have no insurance those would be

[56:00] places to go because we have there's 20 different agencies at The Disaster Assistance Center they can help you get in through the portal for individual assistance and and then you'll find out where you stand and know what resources they have available to help you with choices that's the big thing here is people are are traumatized or dealing with a lot of things uh trying to make it One-Stop shop uh you know where you get all the information so you're not struggling to fight through that that just adds to the burden of that so uh if you know of people that are having those questions that is the place to go to that damage Assistance or Disaster Assistance Center and and see what programs and services and information you can uh can you can receive that can help you out that's great to hear thanks and would you say like it can't really hurt you to to apply r i could say is no you're over insured and you don't qualify but you know at least you know what other there may be other programs under that individual assistance that you didn't realize that you could take advantage of perfect thank you you my next question um I guess I haven't heard a lot about

[57:00] whether there were any individuals injured or did we you know I understand there are two individuals missing um but were there significant numbers of injuries in the fire you know I can only imagine there were I don't have any reports of that uh you know in the we haven't had any reports from ER visits or things of that nature there's been no critical injuries that I've been made aware of uh so that's where we stand on it that will come out um some information will be more available I think as we get towards the end of the week but nothing that's right off the top you know saying hospitals are over with you know a lot of casualties and things of that nature so uh we're thankful for that yeah no no I think you said significant no significant injuries that's remarkable it is um yeah and a testament to all the work that that you all did um let's see next question um I think is is for Nia or Kurt probably we're we're talking about waving the 12 months of um sort of proving that you

[58:00] qualify for affordable housing or or meet those requirements which it seems awesome um but do we expect any Ripple effects on people who do qualify for affordable housing and are we taking steps to make sure that sort of both groups will have access to housing over the next year um good question Rachel um so um I'm I'm not sure what you meant by by waving the the 12 months um what it allows is for what the TW 12 months relates to is that individuals can move into the affordable housing for up to 12 months um who don't meet the income uh requirements so it's it's a short-term or 12mth solution for for someone and that's intended not to uh take the affordable housing stock um out of where it's um been focused on um so um I I don't have a number of what the

[59:00] available foral housing stock is right now it's it's typically relatively low um but as I mentioned earlier we'll be we'll really be actively reaching out to other organizations like um Bara and and others um who have a more of a significant stock of housing than what we have okay and maybe we could just get some follow-up information on that because it's seems like if we're waving the the requirement to prove that you qualify for affordable housing that it would only be affordable units that we could be talking about so it seems like if if those are coming outside and and I I I like it that we are making housing easily available readily available for people who are displaced and I also just want to make sure that we are accounting for um and preparing for making sure that people who who qualify for affordable housing don't lose you know that the access that they have sure okay thanks um and then um this one's maybe a

[60:01] little bit odd but we had another recent fire in the city of Boulder at an apartment complex where a lot of people were displaced and we had been getting some recent emails about people having trouble getting to their contents so I just wondered are there any synergies or any um useful aspects of of the resources and help that we have available here for those fire victims as well so I'll maybe ask Mike because I know Mike calderazzo Chief calderazzo has been helping with that I believe that most folks uh or that many of the folks that we heard about initially have been able to get in there may be a few that are still waiting um to be able to do that in one in particular that may not have had Insurance because that was going to be covered right that Mike am I wrong in that assessment and then um other additional resources that you know of that we may offer I I don't know yet the stat I mean I don't know as of now the status of everyone that has been

[61:00] dealing with the fire there so I'll leave it to you sure um evening Council Mike CZ fire chief um I I'm only aware of the one resident I guess that couldn't uh get access and that was a um basically as Nia mentioned it's really between that Resident and the the homeowners association of the building there's not much that we can do in that place um I don't know if there's any resources generally that could help this person um that's quite possible in the community to help them get in there but the the deal was this that the the homeowners association would not allow any residents or unauthorized parties to go into the structure for whatever reasons on the advice of councel and the safety of of anyone going in there so they contracted with a third party to do that and and that's probably going to be similar to where people are accessing their homes in in different areas that have been burned out as well I there's safety issues there but um in this

[62:01] particular case it was use the third party or find a third party for yourself and of course that doesn't come out for free or most people won't be able to do that and get whatever it is that she needed out of that apartment so um I don't know if there's resources to help her get that out of this event or any anywhere else um but I imagine there might and sorry I meant that I guess maybe I was using that as an example but just more broadly like given that we had another recent fire are there resources here for people who are also displaced from that fire that may be helpful and and and you could there are there definitely are okay great well maybe we can just um make sure that those residents know about it then thanks Chief and thanks everyone that's all the questions I have thanks Chief Mark I have a comment and I have one question and the comment is that I'm I am absolutely in awe of the way in which our staff it seems each and every

[63:00] Department of our staff has jumped to the effort to help our neighbors um the extent to which they have done it this the rapidity with which they have done it um and I will tell you frankly um that it makes me very proud to live in a community where we would help help those who are in need not in our own Community but in a community in need that is adjacent to ours and Nua I I think you and your staff should be who are I'm sure very very tired at this point and who have lost a holiday weekend in this effort each one of them should be extremely proud of the manner in which they have responded um and I I cannot imagine a a better response to help neighbors and I I would hope you would communicate that to every

[64:00] Department every department head and everyone within those departments because they have responded magnificently uh my question um is I assume when things come down will we be debriefing this to see what procedures um we can um improve in our own potential responses to an EV like this are there things we can do better uh that we have been doing a little differently um essentially what will we learn and how we put this horrible tragedy to at least some use um in in terms of how Boulder deals with natural phenomena like this I'll say first Mark just thank you for those comments and I can tell you from the texts I'm getting already that staff is listening and so appreciates um what everyone has said and your comments right now and I can only agree that I'm extraordinarily proud to be part of this organization and then I'll turn it over

[65:00] to Mike I know that traditionally there are hot washes or debrief sessions assume this would be like no different because we're always happy to learn but Mike thanks naria uh yeah first off um yes there will be a series of those um something of this size uh is a tremendous uh you know a system of systems to bring together all these resources in the response side and the recovery side we U have already just had a discussion today at least our EOC segment of this is to talk about getting a hot wash which we call a hot wash it's quick it's fast it's it's topical grab things why it's fresh for people get it recorded but then there will be more formal debriefs that will extract information um from a large group of invitees to smaller groups uh to your point we will learn things this is a a culture and a value in our community uh going back to every disaster I've been on since I've been here since 2009 uh that we bring uh responders to the uh

[66:04] we call consequence management responders together to find out where we did well we want to record those successes ensure that uh any changes we make we don't lose that capacity and more importantly we look at where we have improvements to be made and then we go to work on developing an improvement plan and you may even see things coming back before Council uh in some shape or form as Investments that can help us be better prepared uh in our community I think there will be then improvements to our response systems our uh our our recovery systems our mitigation uh efforts uh and preparedness uh moving forward I can guarantee there will be and there will be things we learn from this that are also going to have profound influence on policy and along the Front Range you look at this scenario I was just talking into the National Weather Service Greg Hansen today and was saying we need to look at where we're seeing similar atmospheric type conditions occurring along the

[67:00] Front Range and trying to see what other communities could be vulnerable to this type of event to be uh better able to mitigate prepare respond and recover from so uh it's C longwinded there will be I can assure you of that uh and then lastly the success and you're there a lot of it goes to this group uh being a disaster uh you know in disaster management it's everybody it's from elected officials to department heads to midline supervisors workers and community members volunteer organizations it's just it's a whole Community approach and Mark I am proud also that to live in a in a in a county I've been here for 27 years but also serve the community for that long uh to that we are able to pull it together like this there's other communities that don't have that integrated uh you know Collective culture um and uh we have that here in the city of Boulder and Boulder County and when we have these times and we've had a lot we have had a lot of things to that were challenges but we always defeat them and we always

[68:01] Rise Up from them and it's because of uh folks like you uh and the community members attending this call and I thank everyone for that support couldn't do my job without everybody thank you Mike and you know although we we are not in a position to thank each and every staff member personally I wish we could they all deserve our thanks that's it for me than thanks Mark and thanks so much for that that Mike we we have a lot to be proud of of how we've come together to help folks for sure um Nicole and actually I had see Kurt first and then Nicole uh thank you for that Mar uh Mark really appreciate that I just want to add on and and uh give give a little more insight into what Mike chard was saying um I think about a third of our staff and that's similar to other departments train on a regular basis um around this and um we do mock you know emergency response

[69:01] situations um on a regular basis uh within minutes of this going off um several staff know what to do where to go um how to support each other um it's it's pretty amazing the infrastructure that's set up around this um and I'll I'll just note that I think it was about three years ago Mike's team did a uh a mock emergency um it was an all day event that we participated in it was almost the same event unfortunately um and uh uh it was interesting to see how this played out very similar to our um mock event but I think it really prepared staff um to understand how to support it and um what to do to um efficiently um support um the structure that Mike's put in place great thanks Kurt Nicole thanks I'll be really quick um just echoing the the things for staff um but I'm hoping that we can come back U maybe

[70:01] with a study session months later um when we have some more information um about you know how things could change what we could do just so that we can learn a little bit more about that um I would find that helpful so just sort of putting a pen um in that for later and then my question um is around how long does the Disaster Assistance Center um stay up and available for people I have heard from others in our community who've lost homes to um fires in the past that the process of dealing with insurance and you know rehousing and all of this can take um over a year and so I'm just wondering if the Assistance Center is available for folks um throughout that period you know is there a point when it lets up and if there is a point that lets up what resources are available for the community at that point Thank you so the Disaster Assistance Center uh currently is scheduled for a two-e Time run and it's going to be S days a week during that time uh exact hours I think we're like 8 to six or seven or something of that nature I'm sorry I

[71:00] don't have that exact but what my experience has been I'll be meeting with uh the recovery manager for the county and then also with the Town Administrator and City administrator and their next step here is to try to set up uh the the recovery structure for uh ongoing uh issues the you know we're calling this what we call the transitioner short-term phase of recovery The Disaster Assistance Center is really to to give that Central One Stop you know for people to go to to get all services and hopefully get buoyant with what they need there's also an armada of insurance companies out there also right now so they can deal with their insurance they can go and get some mental mental health help they can look at the Ia they can see what they got for housing I me they're just right down the list the things that you're talking about is that could be extended if there is still still a huge need they had 507 people there today um so a lot of it is driven by need to the community and then setting up the other structures longer term that's the medium longterm challenges of recovery of trying to

[72:00] replicate what are the things that are still needed from a service standpoint and then creating uh the structure that allows for that continuous support and access and the things that will start it'll change too you know they'll find out P will find about insurance and what individual assistance they have and then the permitting processes that start happening and being able to look at those and and is there a way to streamline that you know lot we found this in many disasters in Boulder County in the city here where you know just making the process of rebuilding your house less you know honorous can be so uh healing uh or it can be very traumatizing too for folks so those are the things that start you know going through and then there's a lot of money that's being generated Community Foundation looking at how that will be dispersed and getting those structures set up how do I evaluate need and the goal there is try not to make it so bureaucratic that you know you sit there you know arguing over over who gets what and then no one gets anything it's to try to make it streamlined and flexible and agal to where immediate need can be funded quickly so there will be all

[73:01] these different things that come up and that's what the recovery challenges are and we'll be meeting about that here in the next 48 hours starting to build that structure out and we'll have a clearer idea of what that looks like too um by you know the middle or beginning of next week thank you for all you're doing I you know recognize a lot of these folks who lost homes are our workers so thank you absolutely right we've got and then I got one last thing first I just want to thank each person everybody on staff everybody involved I'm so touched and overwhelmed by this community and as a new member of council especially to be a part of it it's it's overwhelming in a good way I have one question I think following up on what Nicole said about having a study session before we forget I'm thinking about many people in Lewisville and Superior that were not uh that didn't get text because they just never signed up because nobody's really prepared for this type of thing so now that we are thinking about being prepared I'm

[74:01] particularly interested in in how to get as many as possible in our community especially those that um maybe older people or not even older people just anybody that isn't comfortable going online or doesn't know how to text Etc I think this is the time to really pay attention to U having a big plan in mind for the future because I imagine that something like this will happen in the future so it's just putting that out there as a reminder for us absolutely thanks for that Tara and so just one one uh last thought um N I really appreciated to hearing that we're already working on housing options and how we can be creative in terms of loosening regulations in in the short term and I'll just throw one more into the mix I heard anecdotally about a a family that's interested in renting but um their house doesn't comply with the smart regs energy code requirements um

[75:00] which have a lot of great things in in regular times might be something that we could wave for a year or two to get get another family into housing so just add that to that possibility list I will do that Aaron thank you thank you all right well seeing no one else uh just once again just enormous enormous thank you uh to everyone involved at at the city and the neighboring communities as we've said it's just been incredibly inspiring to see everyone come together to help those who've been affected by the fire and we'll keep at it and then do some lessons learned here in a few months as people ask for okay um I think that's it on that one thanks again everybody and I believe it's time to move to open comment is that right Alicia okay great correct sir um good so if we can just uh get the rules Ryan if you can let people know what those are for public testimony thank

[76:01] you as we begin open comment here thank you for making the time to be here to share your perspective you want to share a few guidelines uh that we have created with community members to co-creative vision for productive meaningful and inclusive Civic conversations this Vision supports physical and emotional safety for commun members staff and Council as well as democracy for people of all ages identities live experience and political perspectives and the next slide please Emily and we want to share a few examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder Revise Code and other guidelines that support this Vision that will be upheld during this meeting all remarks and testimony uh limited to matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epat and other speech or behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to

[77:01] conduct this meeting are prohibited um and currently only audio testimony is permitted online and so with that we can take down these slides please and move to our first Speaker thanks for that Ryan so I've got the first three speakers and uh by the way folks everyone gets uh two minutes to speak uh the first three speakers are Sam Becker Mike hner and ly seel all right you there yes great good evening Council and staff my name is Sam Becker and I'm here to share a story on Christmas Eve my friend was ticketed for violating Boulders camping and tent bands early on the morning before on the 23rd multiple officers surrounded their Camp brandishing weapons their crime

[78:02] violating the city's camping in tent Vans before the officers left one told my friend that they should leave for Longmont or Lewisville really anywhere besides Boulder five years ago my friend lost their house to a natural disaster in a western state much like the thousands of folks who just lost their houses to the Marshall fire they spent three years living at a home homeless shelter each passing month they were told that they would get housing but they never did my friend moved to Boulder in search of a new beginning at first they felt stable but now they're being ticketed or swept daily they tell me that the regime of criminalization that Boulder has constructed is pushing them further and further away from Services into sparsely populated areas like the one where Jessica Alama who was ticketed at eight months pregnant was found dead with her stillborn baby when my friend first arrived in Boulder they they tried to stay at the shelter but they were told they couldn't stay there unless they boarded their dogs at the Humane Society dogs that

[79:00] have provided them with key emotional support and companionship over the last few years fire prevention Specialists speak about the need to harden buildings against Flames everything from removing vegetation to close close to homes to replacing wooden roofs with clay or tile in Boulder it seems that some hearts have already hardened an ominous sign for the Marshall fire Survivor neigh and our neighbors who are already homeless tonight Boulder City Council has an opportunity to begin establishing low barrier services that meet people where they're at in the form of an emergency overflow Shelter tonight Boulder City Council has an opportunity to place a moratorium on issuing tickets to those violating the city's camping intent ban tonight Boulder City Council can choose resilience over the maintenance of a status quo that everyone agrees is broken thank you thank you sir next Mike hmer ly seagull and David enin hello can you hear me yes okay my

[80:03] name is Mike hner uh I haven't been to a city council meeting in a while for those who know me um I'm back and for those that don't I'm a former member of the board of boho the emergency uh shelter for the homeless I was a member of the working group for the coordinated entry and by the way are they using coordinated entry over at the uh the uh Center The Disaster Center or they using some other software um also I traveled with the City to Portland Oregon and Eugene Oregon to look at their uh homeless uh Solutions I've been way because I've uh built an app for the homeless ups.org and I'm back now um the reason why I'm speaking tonight is I represent a group a large group of people that are concerned learned that we're seeing all this help uh given to the Marshall fire victims and rightfully so but uh we

[81:01] don't hear anything about what we're going to do for the homeless that are were homeless prior to this um we're concerned and as being a member of the uh Board of boho uh a group of us have put together a plan to uh put up an emergency shelter every night and a day shelter we think that it's needed and we think that also anything that's being done in the effort to uh help the fire victims nothing less should be done for those that are on the street um we need action now and I need I need for you folks to really think and consider when you're looking at item eight uh about opening up at 2691 30th Street the prior emergency shelter and uh I know housing and Human Services has their hands full we're more than willing to step in and do what's right um I guess that's it thank you

[82:01] thanks Mike got ly seagull David enzine and Rebecca Davies if my audio is at all in any way not crystal clear I want you to interrup interrupt me immediately you're coming tolin thanks um this fire at the risk of stating the obvious I hate I hate stating the risk of the obvious but this fire has demonstrated a huge mistake we made I believe it was November of 20 on the Excel agreement um we're we're obligated to them now and their climate change like these winds that happened is is not to the degree or the level that the city of Boulder will do and we need to get out of this franchise we didn't

[83:01] even need this franchise we get our electricity anyway we got our electricity from Excel for 10 years for two or three dollars a month we wouldn't be paying one billion that we paid for this fire so let's get the heck out and let's leaders real leaders here on climate change in this community that fire could have Bridge 93 into the open space the Flames were 100 feet high those winds were Ro rude my bike got chain got broken I had to be out that day I'm not vaccinated so I don't leave my house at all hardly by the way it's 61 degrees it's balmy in my house now I turned it up from 54 just for this council meeting but my bike got messed up I had to walk it because I had

[84:01] my dentist appointment and um it took me 30 in the morning till 6: to get home and um this kind of unacceptable wins are directly contributed by our connection with Excel Energy we need to get out in 23 25 whenever as soon as we can it's it's um moderation is delusional and we made that big big mistake that year now I wanted to quickly bring up another thing but two minutes and yeah sorry Lynn your time is out there's only six thank you uh now David enzine Rebecca Davies and Patrick Murphy

[85:03] sorry about that good evening council members I first just want to say thank you for your service during difficult times I know it's been a really hard week and I appreciate you continuing to lead on issues important to Boulder I'm on the city planning board but tonight I'm speaking to you as an individual I signed up to speak on item 6A which has been moved so I'll go ahead and just do that since I'm here a week in advance hopefully it's timely I'd like to give you a brief perspective as someone who's been working with the community connectors program I was fortunate enough to get involved in the emergency response connector or ERC initiative as a volunteer for almost two years now after the city mobilized Boulder residents Citywide to help their neighbors address the covid crisis under the leadership of brender rittenau and Ryan henen I've been able to participate in weekly meetings where we all strategize for the best ways to keep our community safe and healthy ERC team members including both volunteers and connectors and residents have been critical in helping get the best

[86:01] information out to neighbors connecting neighbors with resources and addressing special needs one of the things I really enjoy about being on planning board is listening to the viewpoints of people in Boulder on all manner of issues but I've been aware that the voices that we hear from most frequently may not be representative of all the people in Boulder there are many barriers to members of our underrepresented communities for getting their voices heard in our traditional boards commissions and Council meetings being involved with ERC has been inspiring and gratifying I've been able to listen to invaluable perspectives and witness powerful leadership from people across diverse neighborhoods and demographics ERC members have worked tirelessly to address the threat of covid on behalf of their community members as I scan through attachment C in your packet for tonight I was struck by the scope of the topic that the connectors in residents have been tackling I think this model has tremendous potential in amplifying the voices of underserved residents and

[87:00] I hope Council will not only continue to support this program but that you will also look for ways to expand its influence thank you thank you David now we have Rebecca Davies Patrick Murphy and Jake Brady hello I'm Rebecca Davies I I historically have shown up at City Council meetings to discuss occupancy limit reform however tonight I am here to urge the council to ensure everyone has access to emergency shelter in Boulder this winter from trying to learn more about homelessness in Boulder I have discovered there is quite a bit of confusion around what need exists what resources are available and who can realistically access these resources at any given time I'm not sure how anyone who is currently unhoused could possibly know what's available to them with all of the changing rules year toe however it is clear that there is a need that is not being met Boulder reporting lab

[88:00] recently counted eight people denied space in the boulder shelter on one night when paired with Boulder's camping ban that means it's effectively illegal to be homeless in Boulder anyone can become homeless as the Marshall fire has tragically Illustrated we all know housing scarcity is only getting worse and Bolder over time and while some solutions will take time to develop I strongly urge the council to take immediate action to identify space for an emergency overflow shelter which could potentially also serve as a day shelter a navigation Center and until such a shelter is in place Council should enact a moratorium on the camping in tent bands when people are unable to access shelter we should not be ticketing them for living Outdoors uh really where else where else are they supposed to live and lastly um 10 degrees is extremely cold in your considerations for emergency emergency Sheltering please reconsider what constitutes unreasonably cold weather thank you so much for your time and

[89:02] attention thank you next we have Patrick Murphy Jake Brady and hope Michelson my name is Patrick Murphy I've lived in Boulder 52 years this presentation is about using the boulder occupation tax a carbon tax in an equitable way my last presentation proved that it is a carbon tax and that over time Boulder has collected over $88.2 million in carbon taxes and more than half of that was never used for real carbon reduction slide two what could we do with the four million collected each year that is not used for carbon reduction let's start with windsource incentives a friend of mine uses about 200 kilowatt hours a month and pays $3 for 100% wind and he

[90:03] gets the Rex credit not Excel he doesn't have to pay the cap tax which would have been about $1 so the net cost to be 100% Renewables is $24 for the whole year slide three with a 75% incentive the average household in incentive would be $65 a year $1 million would provide $15,400 homes with 100% win for a year to provide this to every household in Boulder would cost 2.7 million the user cost would be $21.60 a year every business could be 100% Renewables with a 50% incentive and it would cost 1.3 million and it would cost the average business about $173 a year so what could we do with that4 million in carbon taxes that are not used for carbon reduction we could

[91:00] have every home and Business in Boulder with 100% Renewables today slide four all these costs could be reduced by 30% since Excel is already about 30% Renewables all cost would reduce to zero over time Slide Five the Planet Burns floods and dies while Boulder fiddles with climate change thank you thank you Patrick next we have Jake Brady hope mikkelson and Anna kurts thank you um good evening Council uh we are facing many crises today climate change is ravaging our communities fires rage in nearby towns and on a given night we have upwards of hundreds of people sleeping on the streets of Boulder dozens have been turned away this winter shelter capacity

[92:00] has been cut in nearly in half over the past year no one should be forced to Trek miles through the cold only to be told after hours of waiting that the shelter is at capacity or that they forgot to fill out a questionnaire what I want to impress upon you is that this is a choice a choice that we have made as a community and that you have made as a political body with the terrible tragedy of the past few days has shown us anything it is that the Swift and effective compassion demonstrated during Times Like These should give us confidence that we are capable of addressing the immediate needs of all of our neighbors who experience homelessness regardless of the circumstances that led to it in fact it was laid bare that there are really no excuses we can do better I ask that you do everything you can to increase Staffing levels create an emergency overflow shelter and enact a moratorium on the camping in tent bands at least at a minimum until there are adequate beds for unhoused our unhoused neighbors thank you for your

[93:00] time thank you Jake next hope Nicholson Anna CTS and Sean scandin hi um my name is Hope Michaelson and first I want to thank you for your dedication and commitment to Ser our community um I live on the hill and I'm concerned about the health and safety of Hill residents and Boulder in general I'm speaking tonight to ask you to support the hill revitalization working group and prioritize your Hill in the 2022 plan um I have been particularly alarmed by the rash um and criminal negligent behavior of some of the students living in our community I'm a professor and I work closely with many undergraduates most of them are respectful and responsible and I truly love spending time with them and helping them transition into adulthood some of them struggle with this transition however and in the process do harm to themselves others public and private property and the Greater Community as we saw last year during the riot over the

[94:01] past few nights there have been many very large fireworks detonated on the hill these are the kind of large professional fireworks that generate displays of flaming material that fly over the house and trees in the neighborhood um seriously I'm a combustion scientist and it scares me um we have seen this type of dangerous and malicious behavior all year we frequently hear fireworks throughout the night multiple nights a week um the fireworks has passed a week we're detonated about midnight we are in the middle of a drought and still reeling from the devastation of the Marshall fire and there continue to be residents in our neighborhood who are sending sparks flying over our heads uh for the health safety and well-being of our community please support the hill rization working group and prioritize the hill in your 2022 work plan thank you so much thank you hope next we have Anna Kurtz Sean scanlin and Jacob Walker good evening my name is Annie

[95:01] kurts and I'm an attorney at the ACLU of Colorado as Council knows the ACLU has repeatedly warned the city of Boulder that bpd's enforcement of the so-called camping ban against unhoused residents who cannot access indoor shelter violates the Constitution the legal principle here is as straightforward as the moral one it is intolerably rule to treat people like criminals for sleeping Outdoors when they have no meaningful alternative winter is here and this is urgent your own data shows that night after night as temperatures have plummeted Boulder has been running out of shelter space you know that people are being turned away onto your streets in the bitter cold and snow in these conditions to make it a crime for them to use a tent or even a sleeping bag is to actively knowingly and unconstitutionally endanger their lives that's why we urge BPD to stop enforcing the camping in tent bands at least through winter we understand from the city attorney's disappointing response that BPD intends to keep enforcing these

[96:00] dangerous and inhumane ordinances until a court orders it to stop I'm here tonight because this Council has the same power and responsibility as a court to direct the Boulder Police Department to follow the Constitution I'm here tonight to call on you to protect your unhoused constituents by directing BPD to refra to refrain from Winter enforcement of RC sections 5610 and 8 through 21 I'll leave you with one parting thought when the shelter turns people away it offers them a wool blanket the bare minimum to protect them from the Colorado cold your laws make using that blanket a crime you can change that I hope you do thank you thank you Anna next we have Sean scanlin Jacob Walker and Ray Bamba uh good evening everyone can you hear me okay yes good um I'm Sean scandin I'm here tonight to talk about balancing the

[97:01] competing interests of commercial developers local communities and protected classes of people and effectively managing drug rehabilitation tourism in Boulder next slide please since Boulder has now joined the ranks of other cities in the US that are located in the Ive surroundings where a successful tourist trade is intersecting with an expansion in drug rehabilitation services to produce financially lucrative opportunities in the drug rehabilitation tourism industry it might also be timely for bter city council to consider following the example of similar cities like delr beach and Bon beach in Florida who five years ago passed socially Progressive ordinances that balance the needs of the populations of visitors that the drug rehab tourism industry serves against the consequent social economic costs imposed on the cities that support these business enterprises next slide please in 2016 the Department of Justice

[98:00] and Department of Housing and Urban Development of the federal government teamed up to publish a joint memorandum providing new guidelines to City governments on how they can successfully navigate The Matrix of federal anti-discrimination laws to innovate new zoning laws that would allow cities to effectively balance the confesion interests of commercial developers local communities and protected classes of people next slide please a year later in 2017 delr Beach commissioned and produced an extensive zoning study that statistically analyzed all their available data for distribution throughout the city of localized spikes and Drug overdoses and demands on emergency services and they found that the Tipping Point for both terrorism the social Fabric and for extreme overage costs on Emergency Services was occurring whenever the number of group homes in a locality exceeded one group home per City Block next uh next slide please by aligning the data from our 2017 zoning study with the new guidelines from the Departments of Justice and of housing delway Beach

[99:00] was able later in 2017 to successfully innovate a progressive zoning ordinance so Sean I apologize but your time is up but we welcome you to send uh your presentation to us at Council of bouldercolorado.gov ah very good I we have already sent that slide so they could hold of that very good thank you so much all right next we have Jacob walk Ray Bamba and Evan rabbits hello uh good evening and thank you for your service to our community I'm here to discuss our houseless community members being able to afford housing proves to be increasingly difficult when rental prices exponentially grow and wages do not based on the affordability model for income spending housing should be limited to 30% of spending thus if a full-time worker makes $17 per hour hour they should only spend $820 per month according to rent.org the average rental price for one bed one bath and Boulder is around 1,500 per month that's 55% of

[100:02] full-time workers income prior to taxes across rental platforms there are currently less than 10 available units with a 900 per month rent if you raise wages excuse me if you raise wages but continue to let property owners and landlords gouge workers with high rental prices than nothing susp substantial will change therefore our most pragmatic and efficient solution is creating more affordable housing combined with a livable wage criminalization while beneficial to the already bloated police budget budget will only further Hindus only further hinder our houseless community members from accessing stable housing conditions targeting them with criminalization Will strip them of any income they have managed to save in pursuit of securing housing not to mention the potential loss of any job they might have had in contrast to criminalization the city of Oakland has begun building tiny houses for their houseless community

[101:00] members and producing fantastic results in the 2019 2020 fiscal year 880 people moved from houselessness to permanent housing conditions the successful Transit transition rate is currently at 53% who have maintained permanent housing after cycling through this six-month program there are alternatives to inhumane criminalization we need to ensure that moratoriums on the camping and tent bands are indefinite deliver Aid not harm thank you very much thank you Jacob next we have Ray Bamba Evan rabitz and Daniel Glazer hello my name is Ray bomba and I live on 13th Street in Boulder thank you for the opportunity to provide comments today I would like to encourage the city to prioritize addressing problems on the University Hill neighborhood this in this year's work plan in addition to the recommendations from the hill revitalization working group I encourage the city to pay attention to three

[102:00] aspects of the neighborhoods near the campus that do not normally receive much attention firstly as Boulder strives to improve Equity Citywide we need to understand that the way City the way students are housed in Boulder neighborhoods isn't is inherently inequitable as the situation exists today the wealthiest students pay a premium for opportunity to live the closest to campus while the least advantaged live the furthest away this disperate access to education is the definition of inequity I encourage the city to explore all the legal means available to it to control the allowable rents that students can be charged so that the system no longer pits student against student in the open market and escalates rental costs for everyone secondly I encourage the city to assess the impact that this ever growing off-campus student population is having on Boulder's climate footprint as students consume a larger proportion of Boulder's housing they are driving more of Boulder's workforce out of Boulder and forcing them to commute back in this

[103:01] is obviously a disadvantage situation um housing students on campus is the obvious solution to this problem and the city needs to use all the levers available to it to encourage CU and the state to do the right thing and build efficient campus oncampus housing as soon as possible possible and lastly we need to assess the financial burden that student housing in our neighborhoods is placing on the city um and in particular that housing on on the hill we believe that a report on these costs will be eye openening for many Boulder residents and this information could help guide City policies so that the responsible parties are shouldering the true burden of these costs and we can allow the city to use it budget in better ways thank you thank you r next we have Evan rabitz Daniel Glazer and Nish Abraham good evening let me summarize about homelessness first Do no harm now

[104:03] regarding the fires the future and what to do recognize that mostly we were born and raised to suck the planet dry one example consensus is that our taxes subsidize gasoline about $6 a gallon to pay for oil Wars and military bases to keep the sucking going consensus says there are also $20 of hidden environmental costs for each gallon of gas we burn I multiplied that $26 a gallon subsidy by the 300 gallons we each burn per year on average times 60 years of driving every American who drives gets a half million doll subsidy just for driving everything we buy is also made with subsidized Fuel and transported with subsidized fuel imagine

[105:03] the subsidy just to Amazon with its fleets of jets and trucks and warehouses in our personal lives driving does the most to drive the economy and drive the sixth Extinction so number one one we suck number two the most significant thing we can do daily to suck less is to drive less the new and hugely popular alternative is electric bikes they use 10 or more times less energy than electric cars and up to a 100 times less energy than regular cars and they use seven or more times less space which is critical and crowded Boulder Boulder has huge biking potential being compact Young and healthy with far better weather than Copenhagen where 62% commute by bike electric bikes flatten our Hills we

[106:00] should do everything to encourage them thank you thank you Evan uh next we have Daniel Glazer Nish Abraham and Pete cutter hi uh Dan Glazer 210 arapo Avenue I first wanted to say thanks to the great fire response by the city and others I would like you to now consider immediate reforms of the boulder affordable housing program I bought an affordable home so I could stay car-free and run my business with local employees and leading environmental technology that has received major R&D grants from the National Science Foundation and Department of energy this is a terrible mistake currently this quote homeowner program invented for quote inclusion for people with less income than average is the fact of making us permanent Financial losers in addition the city administrators are not not living up to the city's own standards for providing us habitable co- compliant housing There's no practical way for us to gain access to market rate housing now the condos next to me cost 20 times

[107:01] more and the Gap is rapidly widening working six day weeks for many years has not gotten the financial return that a homeowner outside the program reaps even without ever working this is terribly regressive code enforcement is also Troublesome although I was told by the city my home was fully inspected it was not habitable when I moved in for many weeks had to used a public restroom in a nearby park which was locked at night I also spent thousands of dollars renovating substandard construction never provided or compensated for a required storage area and other elements that are also still problematic director Kurt fimer provided false minimum code Dimensions to a code that he wrote to justify why it was not allowed to be reimbursed or entitled to a storage area fimer also wrote Rachel friends that what was built was what the city approved but it was not not when I challenged his ruling fimer said a court of his subordinates sided with him without letting them hear any input from me in appeal assistant manager Chris

[108:00] meuk talked with fimer not with me and ruled against me on an issue I didn't even ask him to rule upon went against code and Common Sense multi-year City mediation hasn't worked there are other ongoing issues in summary if this city is sincere about inclusiveness the financial models needs to be reworked so that uh our ownership gets some fair share of record-breaking housing uh prices and administrator should be held accountable and we are underrepresent we are under represented thank you sorry thanks Dan uh next nsh Abraham and Pete cutter hello city council members good evening thank you for your service to our community I'm n Abraham and I live here about 25 years and I first I've heard remarkable comments about how we have responded to the fires things like I'm in awe of how our staff has jumped to help our neighbors it makes me proud to live in a community to help those who

[109:00] are in need I can't imagine a better response I'm inspired we have a lot to be proud of all of those are true and we can do the very same thing for on our unhoused residents because the emergency response that we provided to them that that is what a unhoused person is living with day in and day out so I know we can do it and a group of us have gotten together and have found a building that will work so that is the building that Mike hner recommended or referenced 2691 30th Street that building it works from a number of standpoints it's close to Transportation on 30th streets across from the Ste yards it is not too big but it's big enough it would house about at least a 100 people during the day warming shelter 60 to 80 at night um the idea is to make it a full 24hour Center where people can come and get the kind of

[110:01] support that they need to get out of helplessness you know um mental health Addiction Counseling Veterans Administration RN um Etc you know this is our opportunity to put something in place that has been used for this purpose before doesn't need to be rezoned um the homeless know where it is it's already got the vibe of being a safe and welcoming and loving place and that is what a yes you all could do tonight to give staff that go ahead because once we start to move you know how it is it's like look at the emergency response once we know where action is needed we will take it because we are good people M I apologize your time is out thank thanks so much Nish uh final speaker is Pete

[111:00] cutter okay thank you um I'm not sure if what I'm gonna say follows these slides directly but I'll dig in my name is Pete cutter and I live at 1925 22nd Street in Boulder um and thanks for the opportunity to comment tonight I first want to just express my empathy with neighbors who have been impacted by these recent extreme Wind and Fire events it's just incredibly shocking and I I applaud the uh the efforts that we discussed earlier um on a different note uh during recent efforts to participate in and inform the work of various city of Boulder bodies it has come to the attention of myself and other citizens that there is a fundamental contradiction in the boulder revised Municipal Code that is preventing members of the public from participating in public hearings as envisioned by the code specifically and I quote from the BRC section 135 part H each party to a quas Judicial hearing has the right to present one present their case two submit rebuttal

[112:01] evidence three conduct cross-examination four make objections to evidentiary offers and five have have objections noted to the record with and parties to a hearing here are defined as by the code as any interested person who requests a hearing appears at a hearing or submits written entry of appearance at or before a hearing in other words citizens who register and participate in any such hearing are considered parties however the practices and procedures used for these hearings by both the landmark board and the city council and in the case of the city council these are specified in the code itself limit members of The public's comments to three minutes with no subsequent provision for exercising any of the rights I mentioned earlier except for a very short window to present their initial inputs um I call on the city council to ensure these contradictions are addressed with revisions to the code

[113:01] that protect and facilitate these important rights of Citizen participant parties to hearings only in this way can this and other City bodies be assured that their findings that these hearings are all about I'm sorry but your time is out but I welcome you to send the rest of your presentation to us okay through email thank you very much and with with that uh open comment is over so I believe we are moving to consent agenna oh wait I'm sorry we need to get responses being too quick so uh Nicole has her hand up for starters I just had um one one quick um comment that I wanted to make um in response to uh Mr boma's um comment I just wanted to um remind everybody that a lot of students are also our workers um and if you look at the numbers at see you the percentage of uh students who are having to live outside of um Boulder is actually growing um as well I totally understand that we have more more here

[114:01] in Boulder as well but I just wanted to point out that many of our Workforce are also students um just to to draw that connection there so they're also being pushed out thank you and thank you for your comments and um Dr mikkelson thank you also for just you know recognizing that students are a very um diverse group uh thanks Nicole and Mary or Teresa do you have any well first we got Rachel now um I think I might technically be after nerri and Teresa but since I've I've unmuted um I I wanted to say that um one person commented on Excel in relation to the fire um and I know that Excel gets such a um hot and cold reception I guess in this community and I wanted to say thank you to anybody from Excel who's listening I I think that they did outstanding work in responding to the fire um and and and ongoing it's continuing and then a question for staff maybe Kurt um one of the commenters mentioned a 30th Street

[115:01] Building for possible sort of severe weather shelter and day shelter I just wondered if you happen to know if that is actually an available space uh thank you Rachel and I'll introduce myself again as well uh Kurt fower director of hous and Human Services so the there was two or three uh speakers that mentioned 30th Street um that's a property that um I think many will know was used as a a shelter for a couple of Seasons um that that property is directly adjacent um to a fire a new fire station which is being developed um as part of that development Bluff Street will be going through uh between the two properties um and we're in the process of taking that building down um because the intersection or the the building that's there will be actually be touching the the road uh that is that will be the future Bluff Street um we're working in coordination to develop that

[116:00] site in the future as affordable housing that was the intent of the site um for the last few years um we've started the process of um uh assessing the environmental impacts necessary to take the building down and it currently has tenants in the building as well who are using the property um and um the the current owner of the site um is intent on having those tenants use the site uh until the building is taken down uh in the next few months thanks that's all the questions I had thanks um n Teresa do you have any responses the open comment yep I'll just say and I know we're going to have a a a conversation about Sheltering later on uh in the evening so I won't comment on that other than thanking folks for their comments as usual but I did want to clarify because we've gotten some questions from um the hill

[117:01] revitalization groups and some emails and just want to point out that we do include that as a work priority on our um attachment D in uh the packet that we had scheduled for today that we'll be talking on 11 we note quality of life and nuisance abatement and talk about the not of five work that moving forward so I just want to clarify folks that we do certainly have that uh on our radar right now and hope that the lessons that we're learning there will actually serve us well for the entire community so thank you thanks that mayor I don't have anything at this time I'm happy to address uh concerns during the um hearing for the 1902 Walnut Historic Landmark I feel like that's the appropriate time very good thank you thank you Teresa all right then I think we are ready to move to the consent agenda Alicia all right sir thank you we will

[118:00] now address item number three on tonight's agenda which is the consent agenda items a through F right do we have any uh comments or questions or motion Nicole I just had um one comment uh just uh directed toward U Mr Lawrence and I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry that you went through this and I'm very glad we were able to resolve this issue to your satisfaction thanks for that Nicole Rachel is that a current hand um kind of it's a a crossover I guess um I will Echo um council member Spears comments to Mr Lawrence and and I hope that um the settlement brings him some peace and um I will move to pass the consent agenda second very good we have a motion and a second and I believe this is a roll call vote is that right Alicia that is

[119:01] correct sir and we will start that vote roll call Vote with mayor protim friend m a yes council member Joseph why don't we come back to juny council member spear yes wallik hi Wier yes Yates hi Benjamin yes mayor Brockett yes council member farts yes and council member Joseph I just um just text her let's see if she might be in communicado for a

[120:09] moment well would would we just call that an an eight to zero vote Yes we can sir we can approve the consent agenda with an eight to Z 8 to zero Vote or 8 to one or 8 to zero I'm sorry because council member Joseph did not vote 8 to zebra okay thank you and uh I believe we have one call up check in yes we do and it's a rather lengthy one for the record for me to read so everybody please bear with me we have item 4A which is the callup consideration for the following items that are related to the Redevelopment of a portion of the property located at 1825th Street the main Church campus great Commons Church which is formerly known as First

[121:01] Presbyterian Church along with the Redevelopment of property located at 16003 Walnut Street the annex number one on tonight's agenda under that heading is the site review application for church property that includes a three-story addition to the main Church camp of approximately 43,800 d 000064 item two is the use review application for the use of the fourth story within the Plan Building at 16003 Walnut Street as an event space indoor

[122:02] amusement establishment use case number l221 D1 and item number three is the use review application for proposed efficiency living unit apartments that are greater than 40% of the residential units case number referenced is l221 D15 that was a mouthful all right and we have elain mclin here to give us a little presentation that's right thank you very much mayor and council members good evening everyone I'm gonna um share my screen and if um you would let me know if you you did not see the screen and then I'll um adjust um so for this evening uh brief overview um first of all for the location this is downtown at um roughly

[123:00] Walnut um between 16th and 15th 1825th is the main campus of Grace common church and then across the street at 1603 Walnut it's considered the annex property um and so as an overview we'll briefly go over what planning board reviewed and discussed including uh the process to date an understanding of both the built-in planning context a summary of the proposed project and then we'll recap the findings from the planning board so the planning process has been thorough as you can see in October of 2020 a concept plan was reviewed by planning board and council did not vote to call it up at that time um after the site and use review applications were filed last year uh landmarks board approved a demolition of a later 195 50s Edition the design Advisory Board reviewed plans in a lengthy 7-hour meeting earlier um in that year and that was followed by a good neighbor meeting in March last year

[124:01] uh landmarks DRC afterwards um reviewed um a small um interstitial space between the new um addition of the um main campus and the historic chapel and then an an Lac was issued a landmark alteration certificate was issued um and then last month of course planning board held a public hearing there were 18 members of the public that spoke and all but one indicated support for the applications with some of the speakers Notting some lingering concerns about the event space and potential noise planning board deliberated on the three applications and voted unanimously uh to approve all three and then that brings us to this evening so just a brief overview of some of the context because it's actually a pretty interesting story um it's important to understand that the church has been occupying the main campus site for about 150 years and there were various

[125:01] additions built over time um in the 50s the 70s the 90s the most prominent building element of course is that iconic 1895 Chapel at the corner of 16th in Walnut across the street about 35 years ago the church acquired the property at 163 Walnut as the annex and uh that since that time has hosted Youth and college Ministry programs as well as the Deacon's closet and that provides um clothing and Necessities to members of the homeless community on a weekly basis and the annex also hosted Thanksgiving meals over uh the past um 35 years to well over 300 members of the homeless Community it's also important important to understand the eclectic built context um that owes to the period of time over which downtown's been um developed and redeveloped um and that primarily

[126:00] includes larger buildings and it fits into the context of uh the downtown as we'll go over um for the uh planning context the comprehensive plan has for decades identified the downtown as one of those three centers that we've looked at in recent times uh defined as generally places with potential for infill and Redevelopment that are higher intensity compared to established residential neighborhoods and the comp plan further identifies the importance of this Central area where these flights are um noting that it'll remain a primary activity center of the Boulder Valley also important contextually is the infrastructure that's in place for alternative modes of transportation and that's pretty particularly critical to the proposal tonight um and that includes bus bike and car share with more than two two dozen bus stops within a half mile to quarter mile radius that

[127:01] downtown Boulder regional Bus Stations is just two blocks to the west and uh there's a number of bike and car share facilities and it's of course as we know a highly walkable and bikable context so both the comp plan and um the zoning I identify the site as being in the highest intensity categories with the comp plan noting Regional business uh zoning dt5 the highest intensity downtown district and it um is recognized as an area that has the greatest potential for new development and Redevelopment within the downtown Redevelopment on both sites also is Guided by the downtown Urban Design guidelines for the non-historic area of the downtown that's shown in Orange and that's where the Urban Design objectives are to reinforce the downtown pedestrian character with sensitive design that's AB budding residential neighborhoods and has also shown a portion of the historic church and later additions are within that Chamberlain

[128:00] historic district that's a local historic district and includes areas to the East and again because of this small interstitial space between the new and and the old it uh did necessitate that landmarks alteration certificate so the proposed project is twofold on the main Church campus there's about 49,000 Square ft of an addition that's planned and on the um smaller site of the annex U about 31,000 Square fet um is planned as a mixed use building to replace that existing Annex Building when we focus in a bit on the main campus Edition it's planned to be two to three stories in height up to 48 feet includes a ground floor corner basketball court there's classrooms proposed on the second floor and then uh campus ministry offices on the third story along with the roof deck uh the annex site is planned at 53 feet in height and four Stories the basement

[129:01] level um on um this site's planned to house the Deacon's closet still and there's a ground floor Corner Cafe along with the mercy Ministries dining room for meals for the homeless a kitchen that serves both that cafe and um the dining room room um there's also an internal parking garage on that ground level the second and third stories are where there's 30 permanently affordable residential units planned and 18 of the units are planned as efficiency living units that are defined in the code AS up to 475 square feet the four stories planned is a rent rentable event space along with an amenity deck for residents issues that were discussed by the planning board included consistency of the plans with the site review criteria U the use review criteria was used to evaluate the consistency of the event space as well as greater than 40%

[130:00] of efficiency living units on the site and then the planning board also discussed um the consistency with the downtown Urban Design guidelines so among the site review findings for K ISU one the board found that the proposed projects consistent with the regional business land use of the comp plan and that IT addresses a number of bbcp policies from jobs housing balance to affordable housing as well as those that are related to the role of the central area and the need for a mix of uses in that context planning board also found that the building design criteria was met with the height mass and configuration plan for both buildings compatible in that surrounding context for key issue two the planning board found the proposed event space use is consistent with the use review criteria in that the location of the event space is in an area of downtown as we noted zoned for higher intensity uses and those that are

[131:01] of a regional draw and in addition the applicant uh prepared a detailed uh management plan that U identified U operating characteristics of the event space and it was also noted that the design of the event space was um designed with a building element that buffered the adjacent Residential Building from the space and so the board found that it meets the criteria the board also found an increased number of efficiency living units greater than 40% are not only compatible in the context but also addressed policies related to affordable housing and a mixture of housing types so then finally for key issue four the board found that the buildings are consistent with the downtown Urban design guidelines for the non-historic area given the use of the traditional facade elements and uh pedestrian scale uh transparency at the ground

[132:00] floor um as well as upper story window patterns that ensure compatibility in the downtown context and so therefore the board unanimously approved the site and use review applications and with that I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have thanks for that Elaine and so Council H happy to entertain your questions and just a reminder you know uh this is a site review uh call up so unlike at the concept plans there's not really an opportunity to give comments we can either uh call up the project or not um but but it's it's a little more binary than with Concept plans so uh with that said um any questions or desire to call this out okay well not seeing any uh thank you so much Elaine and we will let this one go and um I'll just make a note the the additional affordable housing is very welcome and happy to see the continued services for folks

[133:00] experiencing homeless on that side as well so best of luck with the rest of the project process great thank you all right so Alicia I think we can move into our public hearing our one and only public hearing for the evening that is true sir thank you tonight's public hearing is item 5A the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8491 designating the building and a portion of the property at 1902 Walnut Street city of Boulder Colorado also known as a September School a landmark under chapter 9-11 historic preservation of the BRC 1981 and setting forth related details thanks Alicia and before we get into the the meet of the presentation I just want to ask if any council members have had any uh exp partake Communications about the project and if you have if you could disclose them please and let us know um

[134:02] whether you feel like it would it was anything to kept you from being fair or impartial on the matter I've got Nicole um I received a uh phone voicemail message um from one of the folks that I believe is opposed to it um I did not wasn't able to listen to the entire thing um and it was a while ago I don't see it influencing my ability to be impartial thanks Lauren then Rachel I also received a phone um message um from someone in opposition to this but I don't think it um will influence my ability to be impartial thanks Rachel yeah a voicemail and a number of emails but again uh like um council member fkrs and spear do not think it will uh influence my decision making capacity thanks

[135:00] Mark I have actually met a couple of the opponents um of this project and uh I do not think uh that will have any impact on my impartiality thanks and I will share that I received a phone call um from uh folks who have concerns about the project a few weeks ago uh we did talk on the phone for a few minutes it was specifically related to process issues rather than substantive issues about the application and I do not feel that it impairs my ability to be impartial uh in the hearing chair like likewise with the others I received emails and it will not influence uh my decision great thanks so much all right and then I'm going to just ask the applicant if they have any objections to any of the council members who've shared these oh wait we got one more before I do that Matt I similarly received Communications

[136:00] but never responded to any of them so I don't feel it impacts uh my position on this thank you uh so again uh if asking the applicant if they have any objections to any of the council members who revealed these expart communications uh participating in hearing I don't and I appreciate uh you letting me know very good thank you for that and before we go into the presentation trca do you want to say anything else about the the process we be following with quo judicial hearing absolutely I'm happy to do that mayor um so when called on to make it I apologize I have a cat who is sitting on all my notes when called upon to um to make a quasi judicial determination this Council sits in the place of the judge and what that means is that the council applies the facts presented during the hearing so limited to those items on the

[137:01] record and in the hearing to a set of criteria for this um for this review specifically uh use is not one of the criteria I would point out and so that's important for you to notice um I would also note that um a party is an interested person to be an interested person under our code um you are recognized as such in the code in the historic preservation code um interested parties are Property Owners so the property owner who um has the home or or the structure that's up for designation um or in the event of a historic district all of the property owners within the district members of the public are provided notice and given an opportunity to speak

[138:00] during public hearing they are not however parties to the action or or parties to the matter and so what that means is that um members of the public do not have a right of rebuttal under our code instead it is only parties and so that would be the applicant in this situation I'm happy to entertain any questions about procedure um now or as we go on so much for that Teresa uh unless there are any particular questions for her why don't we move on to the staff presentation and James I'll invite you to come forward thank you Nia and uh thank you mayor good evening Happy New Year I'm pleased to be with you tonight to bring forward this Landmark designation and um I don't know if it's necessary for me to

[139:01] now go through the Quasi judicial procedure because I think uh Teresa uh talked talked about it um I I guess I'll just say that I'll make a staff presentation and um the owner is with us tonight I I don't think he has a presentation but um he may be available to answer questions if the city council has any and because this is quasi judicial um you know there will be opportunity again as Teresa said for the the um public to comment so um as with uh landmarks that you've seen in the past uh the the city council is in the end um the body that makes the decision to designate a a a property and um your decision this evening is based upon section 9111 and 9112 of the uh Boulder

[140:01] Revised Code which basically sets out the intent for um landmarking historic uh properties and districts in the city and uh as with landmarks that you've done in the past you have uh the opportunity to as a body approve the application um or to modify and approve the designation by ordinance or uh the opportunity to deny the designation if you think it does not uh meet the criteria for um designating so just by way of a little bit of background this application was submitted in May of 2020 and was submitted as a condition a recommended condition of site review and staff does this routinely and this is based upon section

[141:00] 2.27 of um the boulder Revised Code which sets out that when there is discretionary review if there are identified historic or cultural resources in that Redevelopment area that they should be protected Ed and this is typically meant that um an application should be filed to Landmark the property so over the uh many years that the historic preservation program has been in effect there have been I would say over 50 landmarks that have been um designated through this process so um subsequent to the application being filed the uh uh planning board reviewed the site review approved the site review in November of 2020 and um what typically happens with these applications is because um there are a

[142:02] lot of uh approvals that need to be sought um we hold off on the landmark application until the project has gotten the entitlements and right now this project just by way of background is uh has gone through the tech doc process and as I understand it uh the uh property owner is in the process of submitting building permits now so that's why this application is going forward so on October 6th of last year the landmarks board reviewed the application and unanimously voted to forward this uh with a recommendation to designate and so here we are tonight on on January 4th and uh the opportunity for the public hearing and for you as the city council to discuss the relative merits of this property so on the screen we have on the top right we have a a map

[143:03] showing the location of the property and that is the little shape that it's an odd shaped lot but that is the shape of the lot at 1902 um well Street and to the right of that is the green area is is an identified but not designated historic district and that is the Whittier historic district which never has actually been designated immediately to the left of the property in in purple is the Chamberlain historic district which is a designated local historic district and one of the city's 10 historic district districts and as Elaine was just um talking about the grace Commons project the church there was originally constructed in 1870 and that is part of that property is located in the Chamberlain historic district I

[144:01] don't have it on the screen and then in the bottom uh view we have an aerial showing the location of the building and this just gives you all a little bit of context in terms of what's going on in the neighborhood there are some big buildings there are some smaller residential but it is a fairly mixed neighborhood and um originally was a residential neighborhood and uh I'll talk a little bit more about that later this is just a view of the property again to the immediately to the east is a is a large apartment building and to the right of the property is a pocket park um so it is a a fairly um uh well um highly visible property I would say from Walnut but also from the pocket park immediately to the West this is a photograph from 1949 of the house um and this is really the only

[145:00] historic photo we have of of 1902 which is surprising given that the house is as uh prominent as it is but also that it's as old as it is and you can see here that the front porch is different but in most other respects the house is really pretty intact to um uh now to the way it was in 1949 and I I think that that upper sleeping porch I think it was a sleeping porch was probably constructed sometime later than the house itself which was constructed as far as we can tell in 1874 which puts it among um a dozen or so of the earliest very earliest houses in the city of Boulder and just uh to give you a an idea of the size of Boulder in 1870 the census recorded 343 people living in Boulder so by 1874 I'm sure there were still less than

[146:02] a thousand people it was a very small town but this was a pretty grand house and you can see here from the photographs um that it has been mothballed and since the September school left in 2017 it you know has been um going through the site review process and you know some um I wouldn't say that there's been damage to the house but any building that's left for uh months or even years will suffer some deterioration and that that is true but you can see boards have been put over the windows so before I um get into the evaluation according to our criteria I just want to acknowledge um some rather awkward language that's in the landmarks board memo that is an attachment to your memo and um that is that language

[147:03] specifically is extracted from a historic context report that we had done in 1988 and I think it reflects some very dated language quite frankly and um in retrospect we probably shouldn't have included it in there I think uh the language is is insensitive um to um really explaining a complicated history of white settlement in Boulder so I just wanted to upfront um acknowledge that and and that we will be doing a better job in the future and this is of course a priority for our community and and um for the historic preservation program in particular so on the screen on the left you can see again the photograph from 1949 but on the bottom left is a a map

[148:00] from 1881 which shows the uh city of Boulder there's what was called East Boulder at the time which was a pretty fashionable neighborhood and the house was constructed in 1874 there's a couple of newspaper accounts which record um in pretty good detail um the the hous hasn't went up and I think because it was a pretty pretentious it was a large house it was a house of some note that it was recorded in the newspaper um so in terms of its historic significance um and we try to evaluate all of all of the properties that come before you for historic architectural and environmental significance in terms of historic significance I think it's obviously significant in terms of its state of construction um primarily its association with persons or events in staff's opinion derives from its

[149:02] association with the September School the September school was there for nearly 40 years and really represented a Cutting Edge altern alternative educational um institution in the city of Boulder and in terms of development of the community the house uh does represent early settlement um and early construction um in the Italian in the italianate style and as I mentioned before it is uh as far as we know one of the 12 oldest buildings in the city of Boulder and finally it was surveyed by architectural historians in 198 88 and found at that time to be eligible for landmark designation but also uh individual um designation in the National register of historic places so

[150:01] on the screen are some photographs that just show some of the architectural uh detailing of the building which is really quite remarkable given the time that it was constructed and this is actually this house was built right around the time that the railroad came to Boulder so the brick uh no doubt was fired in Boulder um some of the architectural elements may have come on the train but there's no doubt that there was an attempt to impress people with this house and the the beautiful beautiful brackets that support the wide overhanging Eaves um the segmented arches over the Windows which are handcarved out of local Sandstone um as well as the the windows and the front porch really make this a remarkable and quite frankly a very unusual example of italianate

[151:01] architecture which during the 1860s through the 1880s was the most popular mode of architecture in the United States and it does it does actually have a stone foundation and sandstone lentils which are indigenous to the area and then finally in terms of environmental significance as I mentioned before the prominent location of this building on the pocket park very close to Walnut um makes it a familiar uh visual um uh Landmark on the property um it is not located in the historic district as we saw earlier but it is adjacent to uh one designated and one potential historic district and um so staff does consider and the landmarks board also in their motion uh found that the building was uh historically architecturally and

[152:01] environmentally significant now I just wanted to mention that through the site review process once a landmark alteration or a landmark designation application is filed we treat the building as the it were already landmarked and so it did go through the design review process um The Landmark uh design Review Committee of the landmarks board that meets weekly reviewed the changes to the building which are actually quite minor and if you look at the bottom left the biggest change that's occurring to this building um as part of the Redevelopment of the property was the removal of probably a 1950s Edition Second Story Edition which architecturally really didn't go with the building and actually that element of the building was quite deteriorated so that has been approved um in all other ways the um proposal calls for the

[153:02] rehabilitation of the building to make it uh usable in the 21st century as well as bringing it up to uh current Energy Efficiency codes which is you know quite doable with a building of this type so um finally in terms of the landmark boundary and the name for the pro the uh The Landmark itself you can see on the right the red hatched line delineates the proposed boundary which isn't as large as the the property itself um and in fact it just really kind of cuts out um a buffer around the building and then you can see the adjacent Redevelopment um for a residential um uh facility uh for 52 beds I believe and the new construction that would

[154:00] would be associated with it as far as I understand the uh historic building will be used as in administrative functions um for the Redevelopment of this property and uh lastly in terms of the name itself staff felt that it was most appropriate to give the the building the name associated with the September school which really um demonstrated almost 40-year history of learning in the building and probably the most notable uh aspect even though it's the recent past of history that occurred in that building and significance to the community so the recommendation is that the the building and the landmark uh piece of of that property would be known as the September school property so with that I will um conclude

[155:00] and leave a motion on the screen for your discussion and of course I'm available for any questions if you have any for me thanks very much for that James uh do we have any questions for James I am not seeing any so um oh wait there's one from Mark um is there any schedule um for commencement of uh Rehabilitation work for this property it looks to be in Fairly poor shape and um it would be useful not to uh incur what is called um demolition by neglect yes um well as I mentioned before as I understand it the um Michael bosma who's the owner of the property is in the uh process right now of uh

[156:02] submitting and I think they have been submitted building permits and and as part of that I believe the rehabilitation of the historic house is but I I guess I would defer to to Michael to provide any more information uh about that okay um any other questions do you want me to address that yeah please do great thanks guys um just a quick couple quick quick things uh to address that uh that that question actually you know I'm going to interrupt you I apologize because I just want to be a little more formal about this okay great so I think we're if does council have any more questions for City staff before we move on to the applicant okay not seeing any then I would then invite the applicant to give any presentation that they're interested in including addressing council member W's question great uh Michael bosma 1658

[157:02] Violet Avenue um just a couple quick things uh procedurally yes this has been a long process um from start to finish we all know how long it takes to go through a site review once approved at site review we have completed our Tech docs [Music] and directly after that we submitted building permits we are currently in our second round of revisions on building permits and those have been resubmitted so pending any additional revisions we should be able to P pull a building permit and construction should begin within the first quarter of U the new yearo um and James you did a great job of doing historic background uh we look forward to completely restoring this building and bringing it back to uh all the glory it can be uh we

[158:00] think this property is going to be a very prominent valuable piece to the overall development and I think it'll also be a great asset historic asset to the city of Boulder and I appreciate it and thanks for hearing us tonight I'm here to answer any questions thank you for that any questions for the applicant okay seeing none then we can move on to the public hearing and um we have let's see we've got five people signed up to speak I I have been seeing some um talk in the chat of about someone pooling um so I'll just we'll get to them on the second person I believe is pooling with other folks so we'll we'll get to that with the second person but we'll start with Peter cutter and then Sean scandin and ly

[159:02] seel oh and I should say um that you get three minutes of testimony unless you're pooling with two others in which case you would get five uh thanks very much I um given uh Miss Tate's comments uh a lot of the points that I was going to present here are are really not Germain at this point so I'd like to um seed my time if possible to uh Sean who's also on this list um and just maybe take this opportunity to see if another person who we understood would be seeding time uh can someone is is on the list just to see if he's here um do we have uh Ken um Ken Fowler we do we do have Ken Fowler present in the

[160:01] meeting okay so thank you so I I seed my time I I don't know if it's possible at this point to to pull in that way but I I hope that's possible I I believe and staff correct me if I get this wrong but I believe that you can only pull with two other people and get five minutes and that adding another person pooling does not Grant additional time so Le is that correct that is correct sir okay so Peter you're welcome to speak if you would like or or not speak um but that additional time okay um I'm a a close neighbor of the property and um I um appreciate and fully support the landmarking of of of the property ultimately um there are some signs that that I've seen firsthand now that the the process um of looking into the um the history and the appropriate

[161:02] naming of the pro of the landmark part of the property um has been a little bit rushed um there was you know after the initial recommendation to your uh Council um the naming the proposed name was actually changed and it looked like there was sort of additional research going on after the public hearing um of the landmark board which which seems to me to indicate that you know the that that hearing and especially the ability for the public to respond to um the findings of the landmark board um should be something that happens at with with a full uh insight and Research into um the the questions that that that that that are you know germine to that decision so

[162:00] I you know a lot Mo all the indications to me are that a a a hearing a new hearing should be conducted by The Landmark board that really does reflect the full scope of their research there seem to be some um missing pieces to that um and and with with an opportunity for the public to respond and I I guess the other point I I think others might um elaborate on this but the the comments that we've heard from The Landmark board both in the hearing and the documentation for this uh Landmark recommendation have been limited to you know is is this a worthy historical um feature of the community and have left out some of the other questions that are in the code that the landmark board is um assigned to take up in their decision and that you know involves um housing

[163:02] prices impacts on housing prices and a few other things that I think others will mention but I I you know I I feel like it would be nice to see the full product of that research as the code specifies rather than the more cursory comments and documentation that we've seen to date okay uh thank you for that Peter next we'll hear from Sean scandin who is pooling with Kenneth Fowler and Katherine Rossy as I understand it and therefore is granted five minutes of testimony time thank you folks much appreciate you taking the time to listen to all of us this evening I know you're very busy and tired and I hope that we can still spend some time on this due to insufficient research and consultation with key stakeholders by landmark's board members officers and support staff the recommendation before

[164:00] Council today is incomplete and still awaits completion by that board in a denovo hearing by them on 1902 Walnut Street next Slide the name a the name proposed for the building has not yet been properly vetted and is the property of a boat institution that is not being consulted for this process B the landmarks board has failed to complete the analysis required by BRC subsection 9111 a that would tell them and the council whether the proposed application would enhance property values stabilize neighborhoods and promote tourist trade a failure of landmark's board to properly vet the proposed name for the landmark the name originally recommended by the board at their October 6th hearing was the steward house September School sometime there after the board decided that since a Stewart the original owner was a confederate officer in the American Civil War the phrase Stewart house was eled from the recommendation a problem remains however September School the remaining name of the lammars board has put forward for

[165:00] historical designation of 1902 wet Street legally belongs to the previous owner of the building the September School Educational institution from whom the board neither received or solicited testimony on whether they support or oppose the use of their name next slide by two specific actions the present owner Michael bosma Rubicon development has demonstrated an interest in appropriation of the name September school one after next slide please after 1902 walner Street was purchased from the original September School in 2017 I've lost this in 2017 through a go between that held the property for a few days it was transferred to an entity named September School 1 LLC following William Coburn's submission of request for historical landmark designation September school has been included in a specific name for designation whether however the present owner of that name is agreeable to their brand being attached to the upmarket drug rehab tourism trade is unknown no

[166:00] September School representative offered testimony at the October 6 turn and it appears the board did not consult with the September school about using their name for the official designation next slide please although the board does state in its recommendation for 190 to that alternatively the city council May modify the landmark name since the name needs to be selected and assigned in accordance with the landmark board's guidelines for names of landmark structures and sites and the natural register of historic places guidelines for designation given clear signs that research and consultation regarding an appropriate names been incomplete and not subject to review in a proper public hearing it seems better to leave this process to the expertise of the lambra board and the Lark name staff and to return this matter to them for their attention most importantly though this will provide September School represent resentatives with the opportunity to offer testimony at denovo landmarks Board hearing as to their position on this issue of naming 1902 W Street next slide please B the failure of the landmarks board to complete analysis required by BRC

[167:01] 9111 this part of the code states are asked whether the proposed application will develop and maintain appropriate settings and environments for such buildings sites and areas to enhance property value stabilize neighborhoods promote trade and interest and Foster knowledge of the city's living Heritage the landmarks board recommendation to the council however many states of the landmarks board finds that the proposed designation will maintain an appropriate session they focus on the designation not on the actual application next slide please the landmarks board has therefore overlooked the full scope of the question that the correctly state they're called upon to answer and as a consequence we the public the council and the city Administration have received an incomplete answer to satisfy the requir re Ms of the VC a full answer is needed under the VC subsection 91118 the board is supposed to analyze whether proposed settings and environments for such buildings and so forth will be appropriate to enhance property values and so forth it follows that any

[168:00] proponents application for historical designation of the property includes when in scope the question of what the property development will be devoted to next slide please to be able to predict with any accuracy whether the proposed settings and environments that would accompany this development project will enhance property values stabilize neighborhoods and so forth a social and economic impact analysis should be carried out either by the landmarks board staff by another section of the city Administration and the results provided to the landmarks board and to the city council to support evaluation under BRC subsection 911 mon of the proponent application next slide please thus the important question posed by BRC uh subsection 9111 a remains will the conditions under which this is proposed and property values and so forth only through a properly and lawfully conducted the noo quaza judicial hearing by the landmarks board can the many issues surrounding an appropriate name for this landmark and the results of a proper and full analysis under BC subsection 9111 be

[169:01] resolved by the body empowered to ensure that these issues receive careful consideration and testimonial input by The Landmark board experts and the public okay shaa your time is up but thank you for your testimony next we have ly seagull then Hillary Griffith and Kelly molan Alicia are you ready we can hear you ly L your slides are being pulled up and the timer will not begin until they're up

[170:01] next um can you get my image off the screen because I can't read wait let me see I got it are you ready yes Michael bosma the developer for 1902 Walnut started at the six October landmark's Board hearing stated that he was not responsible for failure to care for the property and that he believed it was the responsibility of September School Educational institution even though the developer acquired the property in 2017 and he now has been the owner of the building for the last half decade one criticized for not taking care of snow removal on the public sidewalks outside his property during multiple winter leading up to and during the November 2019 Good Neighbor meeting on 1902 Walnut Michael declared then that September school was responsible for the snow removal and not heat next please sometime after November night

[171:01] 2019 M Michael bosik con contradicted his previous statement by issuing an apology for not taking care of his investment firm's obligation to care for sidewalks no removal and promised to do better in the future but then during the October 6th 2021 landmarks Board hearing he repeated his earlier claim that it was September school that was responsible for failing to take care of the snow removal the snow removal problem still continues today at 4 pm on Sunday the 2nd of January 22 more than 24 hours after snowfall ceased the previous day the sidewalk still had not been cleared as a photograph taken of the Tom shows next next at that October 6 21 landmarks board heing photographs of the grounds in the building were submitted that display not only a tremendous amount of trash accumulated everywhere but also prolific colonies of the invasive species alanthus altisima also known as tree of

[172:02] heaven or stink tree which grows at 3 feet per year and is classified as a noxious weed by the Department of Agriculture and a known threat to structures which grows adjacent to which it grows adjacent to due to the tendency of fast growing rots and far-reaching routs to damage sewer systems and Foundations next that's an image of the stinct Tre by comparing these recent photos with the 26 photos on page 22 to 34 of the 6 October staff memorandum this year to the landmarks board it was possible for the board members to observe how extensively the property had been allowed to deteriorate in his testimony Mr bosma responded to the board by doubling down on his attempt to deflect responsibility for care of the 1902 walmut building saying the deterioration of the property had occurred at on September school's watch and not under his ownership next this claim however is demonstrably false which can be proven by simply examining

[173:03] of but thank you for your testimony okay um next we have Hillary Griffith and Kelly M am I on you are okay um first I want to thank Council and city manager and the staff for the work that you've been doing this week because I know that the whole Community deeply values that and this has been challenging times um for those of you who don't know me already I am a boulder native I'm a fifth generation Coloradan I own a home very close by to this uh 1902 w Walnut and my entire extended family including my two children mother brother and distant cousins all own homes in the area we all live and work nearby um I've been deeply engaged with the city and have served on boards and commissions over the years I've run large scale community events

[174:01] that have gathered as many as 30,000 Boulder residents in the past and for those of you who know me you may also know that my family has helped preserve and landmark many historic homes throughout the community so there's nothing I love more than protecting a historic place um I know a lot about Boulder its history and what's worked and not worked well in the city and one thing that has not worked well always is when the community has not been given given sufficient time to engage with a proposed landmarking or development project and I feel this is the case with 1902 Walnut um I'm sure the city would prefer to avoid any potential legal issues the developer would rather support than angry neighbors and I'm wondering Wonder ing if the security teams of Governor pus and state senator fenberg who live approximately one block away have been briefed or offered any input um have we considered the impact on downtown tourism in the form of short-term rentals that deal often with overlow from downtown hotels um since I

[175:02] learned of the impending deadline I reached out of this of this hearing I reached out to many neighbors and their response has been I haven't heard about this I've been sick I haven't had time I can't take one more thing to worry about will this development bring new safety issues I don't know how to engage with the city without this let's not make things more stressful for our community right now we need more analysis of this proposed project and landmark site and time to help neighbors understand what is planned and ultimately how such a rehab facility will impact the neighborhood in order to remain a unified and resilient Community during highly stressful times sometimes we need to slow things down so I urge you to put the breaks on this project and allow the community more time to understand what's going on engage with the city engage with the developers and allow for an effective public process during these unprecedented times thank you very much and thanks

[176:00] also Sean for your your detailed history there thank you Hillary uh our last speaker tonight is Kelly Mullen Kelly your mic is open and you'll just need to there we go sorry after two years of running online school I should know how to use zoom um hi my name is Kelly molan I am the current head of school at September School in our location on Arapaho and I started my tenure at September School in 2016 while we were still um in the 1902 building um so I have an interest in this process as a steward of a 50-year-old Community institution and that building is beloved by thousands of alumni uh I'm surprised that I hadn't heard about any of this process prior to neighbors reaching out to me recently um regarding the

[177:00] landmarking of the building um the reason I know the Neighbors in the neighborhood is because the property has been in disrepair and when they went to the city roles to look who they could talk to about it the new owner has a business with our name and so I get lots of phone calls about snow and ice about trees falling on people's cars about trash and people on the property um the current owner has not been a responsible Steward of this property we sold the building in fact in September of 2016 and from then until now um the issues that I just detailed have occurred um alumni have posted pictures of the building on our Facebook page um just bemoaning its disrepair that it's overgrown lamenting the condition of the school building then I heard that the current owner on several occasions has stated that the poor condition of the property was the responsibility of the September school and that's a lie I don't think the current owner has

[178:01] demonstrated the respect and care for the legacy of this building and instead has used our name and our positive Community reputation both to avoid responsibility for the upkeep of the property and to Garner a positive association with the neighborhood um I don't actually have a problem with the proposed use um we are a school of Second Chances and a school outside of the box and a school that has saved the lives of thousands of Youth in the Boulder Community um but I do have a problem with the character and behavior of the owners and I understand why the neighbors are nervous um as the leader of a relationship based High School I do know this in regards to the establishment of a rehab in this location the care of vulnerable people requires a higher level of care and integrity than the owners have demonstrated toward our beloved former School home and I do agree that this process warrants a more thorough um that this warrants a more thorough process than has happened thus far the community

[179:01] the neighborhood the future residents of this facility and the September School alumni deserve a more thorough process thank you thank you for that Kelly okay with that um we will close the public hearing and at this point uh in the process the applicant has the ability to provide bual to remarks made by the public if they desire is the applicant want to offer any rebuttal um yeah I don't have a whole lot to re you know to uh rebuttal against this I do apologize uh if there's confusion with September school we never you know I thought we worked well with you guys on the lease back we extended uh your occupancy of the building when facility on aapo wasn't uh available to you guys uh the building

[180:03] has been sitting vacant and it's an old brick building wood facade we' boarded the windows to protect them unfortunately there's a problem with unhoused uh activity that has taken place on on the property and we've worked closely with uh this bll city police to to try to mitigate that um on a regular basis we do go through we have cleaned up the overgrown trees that occurred over the summer uh I don't think that a building that I don't have the ability to make changes to because it's in the process of this Historic Landmark and alter the building should be reflective of of of how we will be stewards of this building and I said this before we assumed a building at 2949 Broadway so it's completely

[181:03] uninhabitable uh I think now the city is very proud of it and you can see it use it as an example of what a rehabilitated historic building does look like so uh that's all I have to say about about that stuff and we like I said we look forward to this being truly a centerpiece for the city and a Historic Landmark that the city can be proud of for for many many years so thanks thanks any uh followup questions from Council Mark I'd like to hear from the applicant why they can't shovel the snow on their property which is aard others I I understand that and we were cited at one time when I think there was some confusion between the time of the snow uh that and I never said that if

[182:01] September School I've never stated that it's been September school's responsibility or anything in regards to their responsibility for the condition of the building they were occupying the building at the time we were Ed there was confusion on Whose responsibility it was to remove the snow since then it's been almost a non-issue the snow was removed first thing this morning uh or yesterday first thing yesterday morning and um I have pictures to to prove it so um it hasn't been an issue it was an issue at one time okay thank you Nicole and then Rachel um is this just questions for the applicant Erin or are these general questions that we can ask of Staff as well well right now was questions for the applicant I'm gonna take my hand down then thank you Rachel I'm in the same boat I have more staff questions than applicant okay well if we have no more questions for the applicant then we'll

[183:01] uh close that part and so the next bit is to bring it back to the council for discussion and you can certainly begin that discussion with some additional questions for staff so if folks would like to go ahead start with some questions and then we can have discussion that's all good so Nicole and then Rachel thank you my question I think this is likely a question for um Teresa and um my question is when thinking about a landmarking decision are we able to take into account things like um Property Maintenance um planned whatever is planned for additional development um outside of the landmarked area um um and sorry there was one more thing I wrote down um or planned uses is that anything that can go into our decision making with this uh mayor council member spere in fact the criteria do not

[184:00] include the the proposed use um it does not include the state of the site um you know you're primarily here designating there is a there is a site that you're designating but certainly it's primarily the structure um and can you remind me what your third item was um it was plan use um development I think it kind of goes in there right whatever is planned for development on that that's right relates that's right and um so those are none of those are listed in the criteria for you all to consider in Landmark designation okay thank you for that response um and I think my next question goes to James um which which is just to ask is it typical to do a full analysis of how landmarking um a part of a property would increase property values I'm just I I don't apologize I this is my ignorance about the landmarking process and so I'm just wondering

[185:00] um no um we we don't do an analysis because quite frankly we don't really have a a mechanism to do that I I think it's sort of more of an aspirational um thing and certainly the designation of historic buildings generally adds to the economic health of the community I think that's the Assumption upon which the historic preservation ordinance which is nearly 50 years old was was based and um so but no we we we don't do a formal analysis thank you Rachel um my questions are kind of similar um so first just to clarify with Teresa um the the use of the building is not a question in front of us tonight is that accurate we're just looking at landmarking of of that one building yes um mayor council member or mayor PRM

[186:00] friend that's accurate um the use is not before this body okay thanks um and then second uh probably for landmarking staff for James um if we you know a lot of the comments were that people were upset that this building is in disrepair if we do not Landmark will that help the building come into a better state of repair or or what is what happens if we don't Landmark uh well if if the city council chooses not to Landmark the building then the building would be unprotected and potentially it could it could um deteriorate further and um you know it it yeah I don't think it would necessarily be to the benefit of the historic building if it weren't designated because it wouldn't be protected okay thanks those are my questions thanks um okay any I it's time

[187:04] for a discussion then uh would someone like to start by saying something in favor or against or comments about the landmarking there's Mark all right get us started just to start us off um I think this building is eminently landm markable I am very concerned at its current state um I do have some concerns uh whether the current owner is going to be a responsible Steward of the building in light of the the conditions that we've seen recently in some of the past behaviors but looking simply at the building itself and its age and its um position in our culture uh I I think it's a an easy case for landmarking um

[188:00] based on the criteria that that we use um so I I would although I do have some problems with the manner in which the owner has behaved I think the building itself ought to be landmarked thank you thanks Mark Rachel I I will second I believe that it meets the criteria that we're looking at tonight to Landmark other comments also someone could make a motion if they so desired oh I'm sorry I thought it was seconding Mark's motion apparently not I will make a motion then as I'll I'll second your motion just let's if you could just read the motion language just so we've got it exact this is a step ahead thank you okay I am making a motion hereby to adopt ordinance 8491 designating the building and a portion of the property at 1902 Walnut Street city of Boulder Colorado also known as the September School a landmark under

[189:00] chapter 91 historic preservation BRC 1981 and setting forth related details so moved second thanks for that followup comments um yes I I do have one question for staff um if I may if we proceed with this landmarking do you have the necessary tools to ensure that this building is not um does not further deteriorate in the interim between now and the issuance of building permits I can I can try and answer that question technically the building needs to be kept up to the standard um at which it is it is when it's landmarked so if if you were to Landmark it today it would that would be the minimum maintenance

[190:00] requirement as the condition now um but as as has been discussed there there is an application to rehabilitate the building which would greatly improve the condition of the building thank you great I I'll just go ahead and call on myself and that you we've heard the comments from the people in the public testimony about concerns about uh the use the stewardship and the process that's happened up to now but uh you were Bound by evaluating whether the landmarking adheres to the criteria in the landmarking code and uh it this building is one of the 12 oldest in the city uh with such a long history of association with various families including um a 40-year long association with the September school um to me clearly does meet the criteria for landmarking um which is what we're evaluating tonight so I'll be supporting this designation any final comments or should

[191:01] we go to a vote all right Alicia all right so we'll start that vote with council member Joseph yes pres spear yes wallik hi Wier yes Yates yes Benjamin yes mayor Brockett yes council member farts yes and and mayor protim friend yes sir ordinance 8491 is adopted unanimously can I just say one quick thing uh I will invite you all to when this building is fully re rehabilitated I think you'll be very pleased with it

[192:00] and uh we intend to be great stewards of this precious Historic Landmark now thank you for that Mr bosma all right well thanks again to everyone who's participated in that process and with that we will close that item now just check in with folks what do people think about a quick five minute break before we finish the rest of the meeting seeing nods all right let's do five minutes we will come back at uh 9:12 see you shortly

[196:10] hi Teresa it's just us so I'm saying hi I mean the whole world's here but camera give you some company oh I need to get something else to drink I'll be back

[197:11] wa Nicole did you get my email yes I think so yeah okay let me know if you'd like to chat about it yeah I think that that would be great I'll reach out to you about that at some point love to figure it out okay very good and Alicia yes sir question for you uh is it possible to add jun's vote in on the consent agenda at this point or did it have to happen at that time it had to happen at that time according to the record it was only past 8 to zero okay well I just thought I'd ask no worries no worries unless Teresa knows

[198:01] differently no ma'am I agree with you does anyone know how much snow we're expecting tomorrow I don't think it's much two to four so it could be zero it could be 18 inches right it's Colorado it's Colorado yeah I think being a weather forecaster is the greatest job in America yeah just you can be wrong every time without consequence yeah but you can't take Mother Nature out of the picture you never know what she's feeling like either so do a good job yeah Mother Nature she has her moments I'll say though living on the west coast growing up there it's so easy to forecast the weather just because there aren't the variables it's it this is like one of the hardest places in the whole country to forecast weather so I'm not as we might give them some Gruff

[199:01] there a tough spot here in the Front Range and know I always assume a foot when I hit four inch good all right I think we're all back I I count Ed counted nine council members and so I think we're ready to move on to our next item all right sir thank you our next item is item number six on tonight's agenda which was removed and then we will move on to item number seven which is the Matters from the city attorney 7A is the request for a not of five for staff to develop a comprehensive ordinance regulating firearm and Firearm related issues broadly relying on model legislation provided by Regional partners and National Gun restriction Advocates separate and apart from the request for a night of five staff will be bringing forward an ordinance on February 1st 20122 to specifically address the city's current assault

[200:01] weapons ordinance to bring it into compliance with the new state statute staff seeks guidance on the timing of the comprehensive ordinance are you going to address this one yes um just a little bit of introduction and then I'll turn it back over to you uh so in the spring of 2018 in response to the mass shooting at margerie stowman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida the city passed two ordinances that in general banned assault weapons bump stocks and magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds and rais the legal age of purchase from 18 to 21 suits were filed uh against the ordinances in both state and federal court while we were able to obtain a dismissal of the federal Challenge on March 12th 2021 the Boulder County District Court ruled that the city's assault weapon ban and large capacity magazine limit were

[201:01] invalid because they were preempted by state law just 10 days later on March 22nd 2021 a gunman killed 10 people at King super here in Boulder as you all know U partly in response to that tragedy the state legislature repealed the preemption statute and um we will bring forward to you on February 1st of 2022 a new ordinance that's designed to restore the assault weapon ban and the large capacity magazine limit in a way that honors the intent of the new state law tonight though the purpose of our request is to determine whe whether staff should investigate other possible gun safety regulations as a further response to the ongoing assault weapon crisis in this country uh these possible additions include strengthening the city's regulations regarding the open carry of firearms prohibiting the carry

[202:01] of firearms in sensitive areas and a waiting period for the purchase of firearms um in addition it's our understanding that a number of neighboring communities may be looking at similar measures and so we would also be looking to you to talk to us about timing uh and give us an idea of whether you would want to coordinate timing with neighboring communities and with that mayor I'll turn it back over to you great uh thanks for that uh questions or comments on uh giving this not of five Rachel Mark Matt thanks Aon and thank you Teresa for bringing this forward um I am like a thousand yeses to the question of should we do additional gun violence prevention ordinances um yes yes yes yes to um all of the model legislation or or most of it that gords and every town have put together um as as models that cities can look at I'm also a yes to coordination with other cities if they are interested and as far

[203:00] as the timing and I would say this could include the timing of of what you're proposing for early February um March 22nd will be the anniversary of the king super shooting the oneye anniversary it is a Tuesday and we are not scheduled to meet that day but I'm wondering how colleagues and staff would feel about scheduling an extra meeting for that day um for sort of an anniversary Memorial to honor victims and survivors and the community heartbreak and resiliency of the last year um and maybe we could if we do that structure the calendar in such a way that we um adopt all of our gun violence prevention ordinances that we would be looking at um including read-options and tweaks and new ordinances on on that day um I I would say we would not want to hold public hearings that day if we if we do this um but maybe have a continued public hearing um from a couple weeks before so I don't know if people are willing to

[204:00] have um an extra meeting I'm sure that many of us will already be involved in in community um memorials and events that day so putting it out there but General I'm a big yes thanks thanks for that Rachel and I really appreciate that idea about the March 22nd anniversary uh before we continue with other Council comments uh Teresa is that a time frame that you feel is is doable yeah I'm already unmuted yes I do believe that's a time frame that is that is workable for us um particularly if you all are looking for something um um based on the model legislation great [Music] thanks comment just on that one point about the date sure go ahead um I just want to observe that um unfortunately March 22nd is the middle of spring break and we've scheduled that meeting off and

[205:00] some people have scheduled vacations and holidays that day so I might uh counter um propose that um we we pass a leg ation and I'm happy to pass it on the same day as other cities are symbolically and then maybe make March 22nd for those who are in town um a day of remembrance and Memorial rather than a legislative day because some of us won't be here okay I'll mark Matt Bob again and then I'll go um in a little more than two years on Council this is the easiest vote I've ever had um uh with respect to Rachel's comments my only comment is what she said um I'm happy to accommodate um Bob's uh concerns but in terms of the substance of the legislation I would like us to go right up to whatever line exists in terms of controlling weapons

[206:02] and guns and um as far as a KN of five I I assume it'll be closer to a KN of nine um so this is this is not very controversial to me uh let's get this done thank you thanks Mark Matt myself Nicole juny L um yeah so I Rachel with you with you on on all of that and more so to your thousand I'll do a thousand and one um I will point out also we're considering I think also moving Council meetings to Thursdays and so I don't know if we will be in that Cadence come that to come March so I don't know if that also plays uh or throws a kink perhaps in the concept that Rachel put which I absolutely love I just don't know if the logistics of being on break and meetings being on Thursday might prohibit that from a legislative perspective but I just also want to throw that out there um you know in terms of pushing the envelope you know I love what's in here so far but one thing I didn't see and

[207:01] maybe it's implied but the word was was not there was are we you know is looking at at what are we doing with regards to concealed carry um throughout parts of the city um maybe everywhere or certainly in special areas I saw the open carry but I want to make sure concealed is considered as well um and then I also am curious are we going to is to perhaps have a conversation with CU Boulder to have them sort of reexamine their position um with regards to weapons on campus and whether or not the preemption gives the university a little more leverage um with regards to how they might emplo employ a weapons because I know they were also caught up in this and it seems strange if we go really hard on this in the city but then there's this pocket in the middle that's that's very you know allowable of weapons and stuff on campus so I want to make sure there's continuity in that so I don't know if there's there's anything that prevents that or at least having the conversation with the university I'll go now and just absolutely yes 100% um thanks so much

[208:00] for bringing this forward um you gun violence is a plague on our society and we need to do what we can as a community to combat that um so uh I will say the regional cooperation I think is absolutely the way to go I think um I'm very grateful to the legislature for allowing cities to pass their own rules um and so we should take advantage of that but I think we should also collaborate with our neighbors to do something all together think it'll be more effective that way in a more powerful statement in terms of the timing I I think maybe we could defer that to some emails and doodle polls and things like that to see who's what where when and how the schedule might work out I really the appeal of uh passing on the 22nd is it that is very appealing but obviously we want to um that has not been scheduled for meetings we want to make sure that uh people are able to to make something um of course it will probably still be in remote times so um there are those options so but I want to make sure we include everyone so let's let's work together on the schedule to

[209:01] Box's Point okay that's all I got Nicole juny laen thank you and yeah thank you again um staff for bringing this uh to us I I'm just going to Echo um yes to all of this um as well as to um you asked a specific question Teresa about coordinating with other cities um and I would say yes to that as well um and I'm also curious about what those other what our regions timeline is um and you know I I trust that you all know whether it's best to wait a little bit and go in together versus um you know getting it done a little faster than um some others but anyway just that that the timing it feels like there's a bit of a trade-off there um depending on how long it takes everyone else um and um I just also just wanted to remind the community um those of us anybody who's still with us at this point um that the not of five does not mean we're voting on anything or

[210:00] anything like that tonight it's really just us um asking for staff to spend some time putting this together um I think there was some confusion after the last time we talked about an out of five so I just want to make sure everybody's crystal clear that we're not voting on anything um tonight with this thanks for clarifying that Nicole uh Juni Lauren thank you Ain um I just want to say this is a great idea and I fully support some type of um City coordinated effort or County wise um I have spoken with council members within and outside of Boulder County as well who are interested in this countywide uh collaborative on gun control and I think again for not just for us because at the end of the day the shooting that happened if we remember back in March of 20121 it was not someone from the

[211:00] Boulder Community so that should inform us as well in the way that we uh legislate or the way that we create um programming for gun control control that means that we as a community we can't really protect ourselves from outside of our community when if other communities are not um doing the work so we can Empower them as well by working with them so I think doing some type of Outreach and however way I can help I'd be happy to but I think having council members from other surrounding communities involv is will actually help make our community a lot safer so I fully support that and um so yeah strength in cooperation I think would be great I like the idea of the open care not open care laws in certain areas around uh the waiting period I like Matt's idea of speaking with CU I didn't

[212:02] know that in you know in some parts of Cu people can carry a gun um but that's again that's very important that we again this idea of protecting the community requires that we have different stakeholders involved not just us doing something by ourselves because we know that's not very effective at all especially knowing the facts of what happened in March of 2021 so thank you thanks juny L yeah I um agree with a lot of what juny just said for me I think that trying to make this sort of the broadest coll collaboration that we can for me is more important than the exact date that we move forward on this while I would like you know us to move forward with some urgency I think that we also should be looking at trying to um really bring as many as many of the surrounding communities as we can along um and

[213:02] especially because you know part of this is or part of the benefit I see is um having a bunch of communities all do this at once I think that that is powerful thanks and we got a couple followup hands from Rachel Nicole yeah I just wanted to clarify a couple points um so uh a trustee from Superior and I have been doing Outreach to um neighboring communities and and some others along the Front Range since about July um and and gords in um every town have have been working on this since I don't know June so there is a lot of Outreach and interest in joining us and um at some point we're going to have to pick a date but there's there's also value in doing it um on the same day because there's there's sort of power and in uh doing it in unison and and um

[214:01] also signaling to the state that there are are a significant number of communities in the state already that have the same model legislation so that the state can follow suit so um we definitely want to collaborate and that's that's a a big part of the goal of of what has been put forward as model legislation so agree that we want to do that and also just to clarify a question that Matt asked um the the preemption law package did unwind a 2012 or 2013 Colorado Supreme Court State decision that had disallowed CU from from Banning concealed carry permit holders from having guns on campus so they now can do that um and and they're well aware of their rights and and I think that will um they're working on it as Regents but um I I would encourage people to have conversations with them as well thanks Nicole just wanted to follow up um on those comments about CU um and just put out the idea that um there are likely a

[215:00] lot of allies on campus and student staff and faculty groups um who would be very interested in a lot of this as well particularly the students who've grown up in this culture of gun violence um and mass shootings and so I just want to offer um in reaching out and trying to find synergies U with see that um those those constituencies would probably be good groups to contact as well as the administration for that well I I didn't ask for nods but I'm we're definitely over five in terms of support so I think we have some clear Direction on moving forward with this ner did you have any thoughts on timing of meetings uh related to this sure and I I'll say um two things on that one is we're already scheduled to come before you on the 18th to talk a little bit about the timing for the possible Tuesday to Thursday change and so um that perhaps uh we can bring this up again then if not um before but that gives you time if you want to talk about uh what the March

[216:00] timing will look like um for March I'll say at least for staff who um you know that's a spring break time is usually family time but we also want to recognize the importance of this anniversary and many of us will already be working on commemoration um work and be thinking about this so we can certainly um adjust as we move forward if that is the desire uh and so we will await your policy decision on whether or not to have a meeting but understand um the importance and the significance of that date okay great thanks uh so I think we've got gotten our Direction so so I believe we can move on to the next item all right sir thank you um our last item on tonight's agenda is the item under Matters from the mayor and members of council 8A is the winter emergency Sheltering

[217:00] options great so this was a request uh by Rachel originally um and I don't know if we how we want to uh approach this or Rachel requested this Nicole has put some thoughts out on hotline Mary did you want to frame this up or or would you rather have council members start talking about it um I certainly it's up to you I know that Kurt put a hotline out there and certainly happy to talk about it I know initially it was a request earlier before the fires about what else can we do in this time of cold and winter to help our unhoused community um all of a sudden we were hit with another crisis and disaster on our hands as we think about that um and we've had continued conversations so um happy to continue to talk in uh however you'd like to do it but I also just want to give Kurt the opportunity if he wants to um address the topic I know it is something that certainly we have had

[218:00] conversations about before we have certainly talked about um an this notion before and certainly with great news to in today's hotline about um the acquisition of a additional beds uh is comes um as good news for us all so perhaps Kurt maybe uh I'll give you the floor if you want to talk a little bit about um Sheltering and what we've done or how we're moving forward uh in the future um well I'll just say a few things um Council good evening again um and then I I think I'll pass that back over to you because I think this is a an initiative of of council members who wanted to discuss this and I'm here to to listen and answer questions um I mean the hotline today was really reinforcing um the plan that was put in place uh before the season started um what was uh more challenging um as we

[219:01] hit the uh critical weather trigger uh this this coming week is um actually is related to the fire because our hotels did uh uh fill up there were there weren't the vacancies that we've uh seen in the past and um so we have been talking about this even before the fires because covid was also creating real challenges for us um and we've seen the number of positives uh go up significantly and um so what the hotline today basically says that we've um implemented what we um had anticipated to implement uh when the season started um but we've had challenges in doing that um the second thing that I'll that I'll add before I stop is that I believe it was the first meeting of this new Council one of the things that they uh requested of staff was to see if there was additional beds

[220:02] that could be made um available um generally and so we have been able to um uh in increase in additional 10 beds uh since then part of that was through conversations with public health and um with the sort of success of the CRC as well as the um amount of testing and vaccines that have been done um they were able to lift the the 140 beds to 145 and then we were able to work with the hotel to add another five beds on a regular basis as well um so that that brings us up to the currently 170 beds um that we have so I'll stop there and um um listen to uh comments that Council may have or questions they may have thank you thanks Kurt so then I guess I might invite um Rachel as the original

[221:00] proposal and then think Nicole who added in additional things on a hotline and then we can go from there sure um thanks Ain and thanks Kurt and Nua so I guess I would say that um when we talked about this in November it seemed to me that there was a fair amount of concern from a lot of council members as to whether we had adequate shelter in place for the upcoming winter and then um over our recess we got served sort of notice or or whatever the right term is from ACLU that um we were turning people away um we didn't have enough beds and and the accusation was that we were um TI in people in an unconstitutional manner for violating the camping band didn't given that we did not have adequate um shelter beds available so I think that my initial question arose from the ACLU letter and and I was surprised that we were that they they cited in that letter evidence that we were turning people away from

[222:01] shelter because when we talked in November um it seemed like staff was confident that we had a good plan for adequate Sheltering and know that um it's hard on any given night to say 100% we will have it but it seemed like we were we were expecting to get close so I don't know if expectations changed um or or what caused that um and it I guess I will also just add before turning it over to Nicole that um it's still my my understanding that during my tenure on councel we have reduced the number of severe weather shelter Formerly Known as severe weather Sheltering beds and capacity for people during the winter months that we were in the 200 range and then we got down to kind of the mid hundreds and now we're back creeping towards 200 but that we have reduced capacity um and and it seems to me that we don't have enough and and so I think that we just wanted to or I wanted to

[223:01] invite further discussion on are we providing adequate um sheltered spaces for people um in in hospit able winter conditions because it seems like the equation changed since we last discussed it and we got um sort of a threat letter from the ACLU so that that those are kind of my um initial thoughts and why I sent my request to schedule time for this thanks Rachel Nicole do you want to go next yeah um I think what I would like to do in the interest of trying to get us through this conversation in a decent um amount of time so we can we we're tired staff is tired right um what I would like to do is just kind of at least propose um that we step away a little bit from this um from how many shelter beds we have available um and whether people are being turned away or

[224:01] not um I think you know we can likely everybody in our community I think can probably agree with the statement that you know we have more people people then than we have beds for living in our public spaces and this is um something that is not satisfying to any any of us regardless of our views on um homelessness so you know we have a law that requires that um when when people you know are Outdoors they can't even have a blanket you know over them which also doesn't feel totally satisfying um particularly in the winter right um we would like ideally for people to have shelter but we really have no place for people to shelter um without getting a ticket or being arrested um so we have we have this problem right where we have people camping in our public spaces they're getting ticketed um sometimes arrested at least you know moved around um for doing that we don't really have an alternative place for for people to go um let alone you know a shelter bed um

[225:01] so for me that that issue of how can we get people out of our public spaces is is kind of the most Central and I think this was why one of the questions that I posed was um you know we most most folks right in the community as well as in our city staff are really taxed right now we have a lot going on but we've also seen in the last week how much the community can step up and help out and help us find Solutions um and support each other when we need that and so this was why I was curious about you know whether we could get um a request for information or something that we could put out there and see you know we heard from a couple people in public comment that they you know have some ideas on things that we could stand up relatively quickly um to get going so I'm just wondering if there is an ability for us to move forward with something like that that we could do relatively quickly because it's winter and we've got two more really cold nights coming

[226:02] tomorrow thanks I I see Bob then I'll call on myself yeah I was just gonna ask Kurt a couple of questions um just kind of Nicole made me think of something um she mentioned doing a request for information Kurt I have two questions Kurt I'll ask them both um I thought that we did some sort of request for information or proposal a couple of years ago I don't remember specifically what it was for or what the responses were so maybe I'm misremembering that but if you could speak to that that would be helpful and then kind of somewhat related to that I know that bridge house operated an overflow shelter on 30 Street for a for a year or two um and then that ended about a year ago maybe year and a half ago could you also speak to why that ended or how that ended um and why Bridge house is not doing that

[227:04] anymore thank you Bob um yeah so um thanks for that conversation um so let me let me talk a bit about um the bridge house work um so that that was open for a couple of Seasons um I think it I think it closed um a year and a half ago May um if I recall so one thing that's important when looking at um at shelter beds is that you're only looking at one component um of a of entire system that works to um help solve homelessness um and so the city went through this process that we're talking about right now um um about 2010 um in that time frame um Bo boho was open at that time in 2011 they had approximately

[228:03] um 60 beds um or they were serving about um around about 60 individuals um per night um at that time there was 348 individuals that were turned away because of capacity issues or lack of capacity from the boulder shelter that was also at capacity um they they then increased to about 80 beds in 2012 there was 944 capacity turnaways that year um then the the the following four years after that um uh boho went from about 140 beds to as um high as 225 beds um during those four years um there was an average of 1934 turnaways uh per per anom um and then um at that time uh in

[229:02] 2016 city council directed staff to work with the community because there was a lot of concern that there was so many capacity turnaways at the same time there were so many beds in fact at that time um there was close to 400 um shelter beds um in the community between the two uh shelters um and there was a a huge number of of turnaways that's when the the homeless strategy was put in place and the essence of the the homeless strategy is that spending money on shelter doesn't end homelessness and so gradually the resources were shifted um from shelter beds to Housing Solutions um and so that's why every month we focus on getting individuals into housing and every every month we house um anywhere from 10 to to 25 individuals or or and then also help

[230:02] individuals exit homelessness um and so um but but at that time um Council was also um uncertain about the number of Shelter beds and so there was a partnership with a bridge house that went on for a couple of Seasons they had a smaller number of beds it was 72 beds and um uh in the 2017 2018 season there was 100 capacity turnaways so it had gone down drastically um it went up in uh 2019 2020 season um to 190 BS um when we closed um when Bridge house closed that site and it was supposed to be developed as affordable housing at that point that was part of the closure um the developer didn't move forward um at the rate that we anticipated um in turning that site into

[231:00] affordable housing but the following year um I think there was uh three turnaways in the entire year um so those resources that were used on shelter beds were put um directly towards getting individuals into housing um this year um I think we've had about 45 um individuals that have been turned away um because of capacity we haven't had any capacity turnaways um in the last um about 10 days I believe um so it's um it's always challenging when people are turned away for capacity reasons one of the things that we we don't control is the number of people experiencing homelessness um in our community and if we look at coordinated entry data um it shows that almost 7,000 individuals have gone through Unique Individuals have gone through coordinated

[232:00] entry since we started the strategy uh about four years ago um we know that about a third of individuals don't go through coordinated entry um and that's obviously a um a guess so that puts it at about 10,000 um Unique Individuals that have experienced homelessness in our community so understanding the the individuals that are in our community at any particular point is very challenging and that also has a direct relationship to um to the amount of shelter and and the capacity that that makes sense um what we have seen is that with the with the strategy over the last three and a half to four years significant um uh progress has been made on the number of turnaways um there it's um um everyone's going to have a different opinion about the number of Shelter beds that are right for our size of community um but there's so many um

[233:01] different factors um that go into this and um um and I think our point with the strategy is to um really focus on um uh solutions that really end homelessness um because we don't actually have control um of um a national um challenge the the the last thing I'll add and and Bob I I hope this will help you answer or help me answer some of the question as well is that um we also need to look at what the right solution is to um address the capacity turnaways um because we know a lot of individuals are new to our community who are experiencing homelessness the solutions often for those individuals are reunification or diversion and additional resources put into that could

[234:00] drastically reduce the the six to eight people who have been turned away on on particular nights um at the shelter um at and um you know lead to Solutions so we need to take I think all those things into consideration as we look at this and um I think there's also a lot of areas within our city where we're not in alignment and um getting further in alignment could also um um help with with all with these various challenges that we're having thanks K can I just ask eron a followup question to to to Kurt and then I'll be done Kurt you one of the things you said there near the end was um um people that are new to homeless people that are new to our community I seem to recall that you um had a statistic um at a presentation not too long ago but I don't want to misquote it so I'll I'll I'll try to remember it then you can

[235:00] correct me I thought you you said something along the lines of that on average um four new unhoused people come to Boulder every day obviously the number would vary from day to day but that over the course of a long period of time the average was about four a day did I do I remember that correctly yes so that's um and it it changes from year to year yeah and um if we look over at that whole four-year period I think it's about three three to four individuals um it also depends on your estimation of how many people go through coordinated entry and how many don't um so probably range is somewhere between three and five individuals and again this is based on self-reported data from from coordinated entry um and then it's also based on an estimate of how many people we think um don't go through coordinated entry we also know that over the last year and a half there's been a lot of um uh advice given

[236:00] by some community members of of um individuals experiencing homelessness not to go through coordinated entry uh so that also impacts those numbers thanks Kurt ni you've got your hand up you w to yeah I just um I just wanted to um kind of add a little I mean so this right this is a scientist in me coming out with some graphs I'm gonna see if this works I put it up here um what I basically Drew was like what it looks like shelter beds here on the y axis we got time for you know about the last 10 years and um it just kind of shows you know we had uh increasing number of Shelter beds till about 2015 2016 when it started to go down right so like any if if shelter beds kind of related to homelessness we would tend to see a similar curve right so what we've actually seen though and I think this is True Kurt in your point point in time counts and everything if you look at homelessness here um time again about

[237:02] the last 10 years homelessness is going up right um so those don't they don't match right so I just I just kind of want to point out that um that that they don't quite go together but if you look at housing costs which is what lots of experts and scientists who study homelessness um show uh is the biggest predictor of increases in homelessness you see that you've got housing costs on the y axis again time last 10 years housing costs have clearly gone up right and Boulder um what I want to show as well is that we've taken an increasing enforcement strategy um and we see this similar you know we've kind of increased the funding this last year we allocated over $2 and a half million dollars to enforcement um and you know it's kind of following this trend that we're seeing with housing costs and homelessness going up right so when when I look at these these things I'm just not I'm not seeing that we are implementing strategies that you know are are working

[238:01] in terms of getting people out of our public parks and I kind of want to pull us back to that part of the conversation about what are we doing um to get people out of these spaces um you know I think um Kurt your your point about uh more resources for you know diversion I mean some of the folks that I've talked to um every Tuesday when I'm down helping out with feet forward um they they they just need gas money they you know they were on their way here they got stuck right they just need a little something to get back that's not everybody right but it's certainly some people and so you know I think that that this is a solution you know like like like you're saying Kurt that can kind of help get get some of the folks out um but I'm still you know stuck thinking about the people who are camping in our public places because for whatever reason um the shelter is not accessible to them and what what can we do to address that because it's not just a problem for those in our community who um are are hurting seeing people outside

[239:02] in this really cold weather it's also um an issue for those in our community who are outus using our pth and things um so I I really I think that for me is that Central issue that we're trying to solve is how are we getting people out of those public spaces um because it doesn't really look like I'm just going to show this one more time it doesn't really look like enforcement is working homelessness is continuing to go up um so that that's that's my question for us what are we doing how can we help well I'll just add Nicole the other thing that you didn't Gra a graph is the number of people that have been housed um through that time period um as it and also as it relates to the number of people that were housed during that previous period and it's gone up um dramatically and that's had a huge impact on the number of people um uh you know relate to capacity our

[240:01] capacity turnaways have gone down drastically um in the last two years yeah I just I mean it's commendable right it really is I think you know of of cities in Colorado I mean no no city has a good handle on this but we're doing a really good job of getting people um into housing uh with vouchers and things like that so um anyway but yes so thank you I didn't quite have five quadrants on my paper but thank you thanks I was going to call him myself here then I got Matt and Taran Nu here um Nicole we're going to have to start calling you Katie Porter here you get the the Whiteboard and drawn real time regressive um i n did you want to frame something or well mostly I just wanted to um to be fair to Kurt as well like the you know right before I arrived um there had been decision to add more um resources not just to PD but for the

[241:00] downtown ambassadors and for the park ranger program as well I just wanted to share I know that this is a conversation we're planning to have um with Council that was an 18-month pilot and I know we're scheduling that um for uh the second quarter I also know it's a new Council right that wasn't involved in those conversations as we were moving that forward but we have been working with it we are looking to be data Centric in what that looks like to have precisely this conversation on is what we're doing working um and coming to the outcomes that we I think all want and can agree that we all want to do as we move forward um so I I just wanted to share because that doesn't all fall on Kurt shoulders um there are a variety of folks that are doing some of that work um and we hope actually during the retreat and conversations about the work plan to continue to bring up some of these really complex policy decisions as we move forward so I just want to let you know that we're we're monitoring it we're trying to track it and

[242:02] um be accountable to the outcomes that we're seeing so that we can have that conversation again with you all thanks for that I'm going call on myself then then Matt and terara so um Nicole I appreciate you bringing that idea forward and Rachel for raising this here um you know I think I think there's some interest with by myself and other members on Council on you know adding some additional you know options uh in our services for folks experiencing homelessness like a a navigation Center uh you know that had daytime time services and you know things like you know showers and places people check their email and store some stuff or what have you like look look into things like that um but that's part of I think that larger work plan discussion right we're we're going to go into that into the retreat see what the options are see if council's interested something more uh permanent will take time to stand up and what I appreciated

[243:00] about Nicole's suggestion was is I know how uh terribly uh burdened housing and human services staff is right now I Kurt I know you already were and then the fire came and you your your team has been working non-stop for the last week which I deeply deeply appreciate um how we've helped our neighbors that way so if but as I um I'm hearing that that there's folks in the community who may be ready to step up and assist with a short-term program for this Sheltering season you know to help get us through the next few months to really minimize those turnaways um and give some overflow options um where where people we can make sure that folks do have a place to get out of the cold and as Nicole mentions if they're um if somebody is staying in a place like that that means they're not um you camping by the creek or in one of our public spaces which which is something I think generally almost no one wants to see so if we could put something out of a kind

[244:01] of a a light touch from City staff in terms of who in what nonprofits or Volunteers in the Community would be interested in standing up something uh shortterm that they can get us through the next few months I think that's really worth pursuing and I'll appreciate again uh Kurt that your email and hotline today sounds like we've got substantial additional um overflow beds available for the next couple days for this critical weather event um and well more than than any need has that has yet happened in this season so it looks like to some of the points folks made in the open comment seems like we're in good shape you know for the the the cold snap and in the next few days and such but but I feel like exploring that idea that Nicole put forward would be really valuable so that's what I got Matt and then tar and then Mark uh thanks Aaron and um I appreciate just bringing this conversation up and and I I do feel that there's a I have a feeling of kind of a false start because

[245:00] we're gonna talk about this in a couple weeks and great detail so I think some of us are chomping it the bit I know I am want to go into it but I know this is now not the place so I'm going try to be a little reserved um save some of this conversation for the retreat when we can think a little bit more holistically um but you know one of the challenges that that I'm and so I have a a question and then something more related to this and is when are we maybe EX in the light of the fire when might we be expecting hotels to sort of regain uh some of that available vacancy that we were previously reliant on are are we seeing that saturation being one week six weeks when do we think the hotel will kind of you know give us the vacancy we need to sort of help establish some of this overflow well um Matt I'll just say that I I certainly don't know the answer to that um what I do know is that we've been able to maintain what we committed to maintain okay thanks Kurt um the other

[246:03] the other question you know is is really sort of framed around I also want to be data focused and driven by evidence but and and Nicole knows this and in her experience you know as a scientist I know this in my in my experience working um in the department of of astrophysics that is only valuable if you've got common and aligned goals around what you all agree are the metrics to measure your outcomes and so I think it's really important that as we've evolved in some of these APO of dealing with homelessness from pre-coordinated entry shelter was it to with coordinated entry with shelters we're evaluating our goals amongst a changing Dynamic of variables and I think we want to come back and maybe re just re annow or reframe what our goals are as those things have evolved and changed because then that might tell us what is the evidence we need Andor what

[247:00] is truly working and not working and what is really a measure of success so I think that's something that that is important here because I think there's a differing sense of our goals are here and therefore we're all then pointing to different solutions as to achieving these different stated goals so I I think that's just core to this as a front-loaded piece um and and then really you know as it pertains to the Sheltering I know that you know as we stated Sheltering does not end homelessness but it is equally studied that you know the longer someone is experiencing homelessness the more like the likelihood of them rapidly exiting homelessness rapidly declines and so I think we're trying to find that equilibrium to to you know Nicole's graphs point that I want to find and I think trying to liberate that in terms of shelter capacity is really important in these months in the light of we know we're going to be having this larger conversation and we have onetime use money that's likely coming in so how do we do so where we're not and I don't want to say waste wasting money but not leveraging that money and making those Investments That Then build and scaffold

[248:01] off those Investments that we're going to discuss about making um here in the short term so what does that mean you know as I sort of narrow down you know are things like the Millennium Hotel options are things like sanction camping in the short Medi short frame okay to say look you can't Co Camp here but you can camp here and we're going to have some services to help you in the short term that then we can build on a long term when we have that conversation so that's what I'm kind of looking for and I know we're trying our best here and I know you're overworked with staff but I think that's the sort of building to this larger conversation at The Retreat that I'm hungry for and and want to see us do because I hate the idea of being turned away and people out on the elements that's just not working for anybody and and I want to figure out how to break that that gridlock um in what the status quo is delivering for our community those that want to work on these things as homeless Advocates and those that are maybe saying we're already doing too much so I want to bridge that Gap Matt we got Tara Mark and

[249:01] Lauren Kurt can you tell me if this is what you said did you say that the more the more beds we had for in the Overflow shelter the more people we turned away was that what you said was there a direct correlation uh that's correct um but but I would also add that um it's very difficult to talk about one aspect by itself of around homelessness um if you only talk about shelter without talking about lots of other things um it's um it wouldn't be fair Fair um so when when uh when the Homeless Solutions for Boulder County was established a strategy was put in place um there was a lot of services that went along with this as well to get people into housing but it was also real a real shift of resources from Simply shelter to really

[250:00] Housing Solutions so um and and the other thing that um experts throughout the country will say is don't don't set up something where you don't have exits so setting up a shelter without having exits um also doesn't make sense um so it's it's difficult for me to have a conversation of I think what was established as 30 or 40 minutes to talk about um a very complex um um set of issues um and just you know pulling out one one aspect of that okay but but our data does show um that as the city of Boulder has tried this in the past um adding more shelters um hasn't had an impact on on capacity it's actually other things um that the city has done which has had an impact on on turn capacity turnaways yeah so um I'm sure we're

[251:01] going to have I'll I'll just keep most of my comments to our Retreat of course but I'm just saying that we shouldn't forget that very important graph or statistic that you just mentioned that that is a big deal because you would think in your mind oh well then we'll just add shelter beds but in fact that isn't the entire picture and so it's important in the business world I'm not a scientist but if something didn't work in the past once or twice then it's probably not going to work in the future unless you think about why I mean you have to really think things through or else you're just doing the same thing you did before that didn't work I'm just throwing that out there it's a really important conversation that we should think about deeply and I care about everybody on this Council everybody is awesome and I have confidence that we are going I agree with um Matt that we're going to do this well and together

[252:02] and think about all sides of it you're muted [Music] Aon sorry about that Mark Lauren Nicole um further to uh Nicole's interest in an RFP uh which I I think is an interesting suggestion have we been approached and I guess this question would be for Kurt Nua Aaron have we been approached by any churches um synagogues other nonprofits who are interested in providing beds uh we um we as HHS or the city have not been uh approached for that I mean I guess at some point we have to we may have to recognize that this is

[253:00] not something that is appealing to most of the nonprofit organizations I would hope that it would be um but if that's not a role they want to play um at some point we may have to recognize that set of facts um if anybody else is aware of that interest I'd be delighted to hear about it can I cqu Erin yeah go ahead okay so um I don't know a year year and a half ago when I proposed um a sanctioned outdoor camping space uh in light of uh CD DC recommendations that we not move people during covid I was working with a number of nonprofit um leaders and uh fa Community Faith leaders and there was definitely interest and they were working on an RFP um it it it just didn't come together in the timeline that the council had kind of set forth so I I personally know of several kind of groups that are interested and and

[254:00] have heard recently that um they that there are at least sort of some complement of of groups and individuals who work either in in that nonprofit space or in the the faith community space who are interested in a a combination of things so either um running a severe weather shelter or um day shelter or uh sanctioned encampment or safe parking so I I think that that I don't know exactly what what groups are interested in what aspects But to answer your question yes I believe there to be Community interest currently well that that should be part of our conversation going forward so i' be interested in learning more thanks and I've heard that too and juny I got a message wanted to col on that question yeah jump in juny thank you Erin I really appreciate I just wanted to make the comment you know based on Mark um statement I'm not sure if we

[255:00] should just wait on other people to come to us because I think we are great at the housing aspect of our programming for we're good at programming for housing but I think when it comes to homelessness Services uh programming it's much more different and I wonder if maybe some organizations right now is a little bit reticent they probably you know can maybe they're not they're not feeling encouraged based on what we hear from Rachel and the previous discussions that we've had if there was a program before and that program was discontinued right I can't imagine why some organizations may not come forward so maybe it might be up to us as a community or as City you know Kurt coming from you to reach out to create these type of programming or you know these rfps so that these organization can apply to as opposed to just waiting for them to apply but I've had

[256:01] conversations before with um with you kurd and Nia I think we definitely need a multi-layered uh multiple stakeholder discussion so that we can find various groups to engage this system because I don't think we the city of Boulder by ourselves can really solve the homelessness issue that we're having and even the programming we I mean we've been at it a while and again based on what we saw from Nicole earlier with you know the graph that she did the disparity with the amount of homelessness that we have and the type of services that we're pro we're providing and based on that little graph I can say maybe we're not as effective at doing that type of programming and we need to lean on these other organizations that can help us so again that requires us to reach out and do a

[257:00] lot more stakeholder uh engagement so that we can find the right group of people who that can help us with um the the the homelessness programming in the city thanks thanks Jennie um let's see I've got Lauren and Nicole and nura unless n do you have an urgent Point um I just wanted to clarify that uh just this Monday I think it was Monday or t oh yeah it must have been yesterday we did get because I want to acknowledge when we do receive something but Bill Sweeney sent us something to take a look at um about um a possible program that doesn't have necessarily exits attached to it so I just wanted to acknowledge that I haven't had a time to fully review that as we move forward but wanted to just share it is the only person to my understanding or to uh to Kurt's point that we have heard of directly about wanting to provide the services because frankly what we're hearing a lot from our nonprofit and our partners is that

[258:01] they themselves don't have capacity to do a lot more programming that um because that is not something that we do ourselves that is something that our nonprofit Community we contract with to do and then the other point I'd make because uh juny mentioned about can we think about something broader and convening a larger stakeholder I just want to acknowledge and again these are larger conversations that we anticipate having with you all at the retreat and in the future but I do think that there is some thought and want to um credit Kurt for um thinking about can there be some convening with perhaps a a facilitator that is not the city to bring that stakeholder conversation together um because I think that's a really opportune moment to think about what are the gaps in our system or how do we need to continue to um double down on what is working and so I think those again are conversations that we anticipate bringing to you um shortly

[259:01] here in the retreat and again in the longer term as well certain area uh Lauren and Nicole thanks Aaron um let's see I guess Kurt I just wanted to start with saying that I appreciate what you've been doing to um help come up with long-term Housing Solutions for people in our community um both with the fire and everything going on but also you know all the work you've done prior to that um I think that you know it it is really excellent that we are that we are having um successful long-term solutions for people that being said I would really like to see um us look at overflow and alternative Sheltering options like Nicole mentioned um and put out an RFP or an RFI trying to figure out you know if we

[260:02] can get more um participation from nonprofits in our community and work with these Partners to come up with other Solutions um we do need to look at it holistically but I mean we're like literally leaving people out in the cold right now and um you know the ACLU I think makes a good point that I think that they have a reasonable argument about the legality of our camping ban um and beyond that I think that criminalizing um camping and you know people trying to um protect themselves from the elements has this long-term issue of making of for for people who um are subject to enforcement that having a criminal record makes housing harder in the future um you know this is not helping us solve these

[261:01] issues this is actually making them more intractable and so um I think that because because of that and also because we are stepping up enforcement I think that the burden for our community to provide um reasonable options is greater because we're um sort of aggressively eliminating the other options that people have to protect themselves um from the elements and so I yeah I just I can't say strongly enough that I think that we need to be doing what we can to help um find some additional Solutions and I think that getting an RFI or an RFP out sooner rather than later can only help us have a more educated response as we go into our Retreat um yeah thanks that one uh Nicole Mona you're muted

[262:00] Nicole if you just showed us a graph you don't even need this out sorry I'm out of paper to to draw on for the night um okay so you know I think some of this discussion is heading into the idea of solving homelessness um which is not going to happen tonight right that that's impossible to happen tonight we're not going to do it um but I think there's still this issue that it's winter we have a couple more nights of really cold temperatures coming there's likely to be more um to me what is urgent right now for this conversation is thinking about how can we save people from frostbite and death by hypothermia right these are these are two things that that feel really big to me um I Heard Kurt say that um you know if he had some ability more F more resources to do some Outreach to find people who would be uh able who we could divert into better situations than sleeping outside um that is one potential way we could uh hopefully help

[263:01] relatively quickly again I'm thinking quick right we're we're already weeks into winter um the other thing again thank you Floren for bringing it back up just doing a request for information so we can figure out if anybody out in the community has the ability to help and again this wouldn't be permanent this is not you know forever this is just to create a space where people can be right now to get shelter from these cold temperatures because when it's eight degrees outside and there's no sun that's terrible it's terrible that you know that that we have people in our Community who are experiencing this um and in I think you know that this idea that we're ticketing and arresting people um even for having a blanket over them um that that's a problem for me and I want to be really clear I do not think that people should be camping um just out wherever right unsupported it's not good for anybody um in our community and what are we going to do about this

[264:02] because people are literally at risk of freezing outside thanks thanks for that Nicole and yeah we just to interject a comment we we cannot have the full discussion about how to end homelessness tonight right like that's that's not within our scope tonight but um I think talking about the possibility this RFI is so uh Tara okay I promise you I won't say a lot I promise I'll wait for the I just want to say that we shouldn't have this discussion tonight because we also would need to then talk about drug addiction and methew and uh safety and crime and a lot of other things and we don't want to do that tonight because we want to find a cohesive answer I think we should keep in mind that it isn't that many people if Kurt said it was 6 to8 then it isn't so overwhelming to find a shortterm I like what Nicole said a short-term solution for this particular problem and

[265:02] it's not a giant problem right now it's a small problem so rather than let's talk about how to solve the homeless issues you know problems of the universe so to speak here in Boulder is keeping it to an RFI to on a small amount six you know like not under 10 people I think we can do it so I leave on that note I know you thought I was going to do a whole another speech but I'm not going to do it I promise is very limited um I got something to say but Nicole go ahead just going to say it's not it's not just six to eight people like I understand that that's kind of been sort of the maximum of people being turned away at the shelter um but you know I think any of us can go out and see that there are more people than that who are currently living outside and so I think it's it's for me it's those those folks that I'm trying to figure out um how can we address the issue for them right um

[266:00] and and it's it's taking care of people during the day as well when it's getting really cold um I appreciate the shelter being open during the day as well um but there's still people outside so just really trying to get at this issue of how are we are there people in our community who can help us solve this problem so that people are not spending their days in eight degree weather in a tent by the creek okay go ahead Matt and then I'm G to try to bring this home yeah but you're muted Matt you're muted thanks S I just wanted to cqu on that uh um we just lost a young woman and her stillborn child that's one so as far as you know for me there's the humanity and the moral obligation that whether it's one or 1,000 that we are lessening the opportunity to have another incident like Jessica and her stillborn child and I that's still so fresh and raw uh for

[267:01] me as a father and I presume many others in our community so I I just I I I I I don't I I struggle with minimizing numbers as a as a as a as a means of of kicking the can or pushing the conversation down th this is urgent because it's a life safety thing and that's what I'm really driven by and I know there's restraints on that but we got to keep reminding ourselves of Jessica and her stillborn that one is too many and and we need to make sure that just like we have Vision zero for for pedestrian and bike interactions we should have a vision zero or an action zero for people dying because of exposure to elements and being stuck outside um in our harsh weather yeah appreciate the point about the moral imperative I I think it it I don't want to speak for Tara but I think the maybe Tera what I was hearing from Tara was the concept of of limited in the sense of that we're not necessarily deciding to stand up a permanent program you know that that it's limited in that

[268:00] sense I think maybe maybe not limited you're welcome but but I would agree with it way would the concept I don't think would need should be limited to the the number of turnaways that we've seen so far but that would have um some additional like flexible capacity to to make sure we got options for getting people out of the cold so um n I'm going to turn to you I'm I'm hearing um well except I got Teresa coming up here um Teresa do you want to offer something before I ask n um I do at at the risk of sounding heartless I I do need to remind counil that under matters for mayor and members of council um you cannot take official action and and so important to just remind you of that procedural piece thank you for that Teresa appreciate it uh we're we're we're not taking a vote or making any uh formal decisions uh for sure um so nor but what what I am

[269:00] hearing um from the discussion is that it sounds like there is majority interest into exploring this idea of a you know rest of this like getting information like an RFI to see what the options might be for providing uh some additional um overflow Sheltering for this season um and and it hopefully in such a way that we could use that information uh to inform our larger discuss as part of the retreat does council feel like whether you personally agree that that's the exact right way to go that that's there's kind of some broad interest and something like that JY I would like to add that if we do go the RFI route that we set a very specific time limit to get that information back to us so that we can move forward because a request for information is not the same as in RFP

[270:03] and it doesn't lead to anything at all it's just basically get information and you can file it away for a thousand years and never get back to it but hopefully if we make that request for information we have a time limit for it so that we can have that discussion so does that mean that RFI that we will put out we will have the response by the time we get to the reach reach which is in January 17th right I think sometimes around there in about a week and a half 21st we have a little more time than that yeah so let me say this oh I'm sorry Erin if you had posed a question to me I was ready to chime in but go ahead if thanks for that juny but um Point well taken ner if you wouldn't mind addressing what I was just saying so a I I want to hear I want to say we we hear you right like we know that there is a question about and I appreciate Nicole how you phrased it which is I get that staff is at capacity

[271:02] right now doing a million things are there others Community because honestly we have said this before this is not just a city of Boulder concern this is all our concern that we should be um worried and working for the safety of all our residents and I obviously count our unsheltered community as part of our community part of our residents in the city so I hear that aspect of it and frankly I think we're curious because what we hear is the flip side of capacity constraints from our nonprofit and our provider community so C certainly would be curious to hear what type of offering I'm sensitive to approaches that have been done similarly in the past um without any changes right because then we are repeating kind of what has happened I'd be interested to hear if there are other Innovative approaches and like I mentioned we had received or I had received um one such um uh sort of uh proposal or outline

[272:03] yesterday and so we'll be looking at that um so let us take a look at what is the easiest way to solicit information and put a timetable on it although I'll have to say that in the midst of fire and winter our nonprofit Community is also constrained so I don't want to put artificial timelines if we're hearing back or we may not get responses back to ask because everybody else is busy as well so let us be responsive to what I'm hearing in a way that doesn't tax staff and Kurt's team that is overburdened but perhaps there is a way to solicit information in a faster manner is what I'm hearing and so we will take that and we will um we'll figure out how to move forward thanks very much for that Maria um I I'll just pop in and say I appreciate the receptiveness to this discussion and uh for for looking into

[273:01] ways to to figure this out so thanks thanks thank you very much of that flexibility Nicole and Rachel I just wanted to you know I'm hearing um everybody is is so taxed capacity right now um I'm just wondering if this is a place where we might consider leaning on any of our boards and commissions um to assist with this I don't know if that's possible this may 30 p.m. Nicole talking um but I'm just I'm wondering you know in a in a crisis right where are the people where the helpers that we can pull on um to try to make some of this move as quickly as it possibly can so you know I I just I I didn't want you to feel like it all has to be on staff if there are others if you know we on Council can help um you know please please reach out happy to be a working board member on this issue I hear that I appreciate it and if we um if we need that we're gonna sit down and sort of figure out where we

[274:01] need to go moving forward and and we'll keep that in mind Rachel um yeah I'm I'm not trying to beat a dead horse again here but circling back to my initial uh premise of this discussion I'm just looking at the forecast and it's the lows are 28 131 35 25 21 27 31 32 and 32 for the next 10 days I think all but one of those days under the severe weather shelter program we had when I got on Council would have qualified for severe weather shelter being open maybe the 35 degree day would not have I think we're still down at 50 to 70 beds or something like that from when I started um I feel like if we are turning people away from shelter for capacity on nights when it's cold out even if we've got you know the 10 extra or 20 extra beds open we should not be giving them tickets so I I don't know if there would be a will

[275:01] for that while we were in this interim um period of looking at uh requests for information but um if it's 10 degrees and somebody's turned away from the shelter I would expect that no one's getting a ticket when we do not have capacity while we are looking into this cool it's a question for um Teresa and I'm just curious um the expense um expecting a lot more I got a phone call today with somebody calling me an effing B um and I'm expecting more after I say this but I'm going to say it anyway um Teresa I realized that we can't vote or make decisions or anything here um is this the case where we can ask for a not of five on anything um I I don't I don't believe that that is the case however um I believe under Robert's rules that you could suspend the council

[276:01] rules uh and take action so I I believe that that is an option under Robert's Rules yeah I think my my biggest concern like Rachel is just the temperatures coming and you know if if we if if we don't have a way of quickly getting people into shelter on cold cold times like this can we at least um pause enforcements on this this is where I'm expecting an angry phone call so um anyway but can can we pause enforcements that's the question that I'm asking on these cold cold nights when people really don't have um another place to go right now while we figure this out sort of as a some interim steps recognizing it's not forever it's I mean if it's 10 degrees out that's that's the kind of thing I'm talking about and anyway that that was just what I wanted to put out there Mark I think I would rather expand the use of the severe weather shelter rather

[277:03] than put a moratorium which is what we're talking about on the enforcement of the camping ban um I think the symbolic aspect of of putting a moratorium on that which has been duly passed by the council is a bad precedent um I although this Council May disagree I think that bill um is widely supported by the community um and if my recollection is correct I think we passed it um I may not be correct so that don't hold me to it I thought it was passed by a six to3 vote um and so I would rather attempt to expand the temperature range at which we open the severe weather shelter to accommodate cold conditions rather than um do what I think we ought not to be doing which is putting a moratorium on on a duly passed

[278:02] ordinance can I call it quer yeah go ahead then Bob well just you know I'm I'm not exactly suggesting a moratorium 33 at night I'm I'm more saying on days where we're overc capacity and it's underneath the you know it's it's really cold out why would we be giving out tickets and I don't you know it's the over capacity and I think that's what the ACLU letter was saying like if if you don't have shelter capacity you're turning people away and it's really cold out what are their options and I see n's hand up so maybe she will say we're not enforcing the can't be banned in those situations like that I don't know that we've heard that so close I was going to say that I don't know that we know that we actually are ticketing people when there are capacity constraints certainly something to look at but I know staff and I believe staff is much more compassionate um in those circumstances and don't suggest that anybody's saying they are not but I think to your point that you know certainly happy to look

[279:00] into those moments that we do have capacity um constraints which I understand from Kurt does not happen very often that we have been very fortunate in expanding our current emergency shelter capacity to not have that be uh something that happens on any kind of regular basis so I just didn't want to put the two together that that those two were happening at the same time necessarily thanks for that clarification it's been my experience that it's hard to get real-time data on when the shelter's at capacity so I don't know if our officers would have that and that's probably a loop that if if it's not a really um fluid conversation you would hope it is I would thank go for Bob then I'll call on myself yeah I just two things one I was going to make the same point that nura just did I I I I wouldn't want us to suspend laws that have been duly passed without information because nura may very well be right um uh and now we're

[280:00] we're now operating in a information vacuum um and I and secondly I want to do um Echo Mark's point I I think administratively um we can certainly ask Kurt and nura and the staff to do what they feel is appropriate with respect to Super weather Sheltering I think um there's a procedural problem and Teresa 30 at night without due notice without a public hearing um changing our laws or suspending our laws there's going to be a lot of people in the community Nicole won't be the only person who getes a phone call uh there's going to be a lot of people in the community who say well hold on a second here you just kind of 30 in the morning without telling us you're going to do that and because that's not what this discussion was framed up to be so I I'd be pretty resistant to um passing any rules or suspending any laws without notice to the community um but if staff has some ideas on how to

[281:00] protect people um along the lines that Mark suggested I think that's something they certainly have the U the authority to do administratively thanks so I'll chman here I and I just I do feel a little uh constrained here in the mayoral role to to raise a procedural Point um on this which is that um this this concept wasn't mentioned in the hotline post that that uh that we scheduled this item for so I I do I do feel a little concerned from a process perspective about um about tax tackling the question tonight um on that basis I kind of hate to be a um Hardline on that side but I feel like it's sort of my role as the mayor um what I would what I would say is um that N I appreciate what what you just said and and my hope would be that that we would be exercising um you know compassion and discretion um that um if a.m. and and it's really cold um

[282:02] you know that that that is not the best time to um be uh you forcing somebody to leave a tent and giving them a ticket and uh so maybe that's something that you can uh look into and get back to us on um you know about that kind of whether we're you know taking out a sort of compassion discretion approach which is very different from just saying um that it's different from saying like a moratorium on on not allowing camping which would allow tents 24/7 you know throughout the city uh so if if if you could maybe get back to us um with more information on that I'm happy too mayor and and I'll also say that I assume that the that I assume when staff and and they do right they they deploy their discretion too to also think about danger so if someone is tenting in a place that could um put them in danger of uh physical harm or if there is a

[283:00] fire in the middle of winter that is um close to a physical structure things like that I would imagine that staff would intercede but I I hear the perspective and know that um I'm happy to get back to you uh because I have every confidence that our staff is um employing a lot of discretion in in ways that are truly meant to help Community yeah well and and if someone in that circumstance were able to be taken to a warm place you know fantastic um uh you you know if there's a a shelter option very good anyway Matt you got your hand up uh thanks Aaron I I'm a little well I I maybe there's some difference here that I don't understand and so I so this is sort of trying to gather information but I'm I'm I'm sensing a l somewhat of a logical inconsistency here which is the discretion used to not enforce occupancy except for Life Safety and I'm

[284:02] not understanding how that same logic doesn't apply to this situation which is another law like occupancy with regards to camping but yet we can't operate with that same Clear discretion of non- enforcement because of health safety I.E non- enforcement of the camping ban because of the health and safety of there's nowhere other place for them to go and they're in a critical Life Safety because of the weather that is currently in place so I I so I'm curious and I appreciate Bob and Mark's position on not wanting to to dive on that because it hasn't been discussed but it wasn't also discussed with regards to occupancy that was discretion I believe that nura took understanding the situation um and then created that discretionary enforcement provision with occupancy so I I if I'm missing something I'd love to know what I'm missing otherwise I I sense there's just there's a disconnect between how we apply those two things uh

[285:00] logically together n do you want to address that yeah I mean what I'll say is it two different situations right I mean when we were having a conversation about occupancy part of that discretion is just staff constraints right I mean we've got uh two people in our uh who enforce our zoning code enforcement there's no way we can get around where we are with staff and constraints to everybody on in the city and um we were already in the midst of continuing to apply covid measures in terms of that discretion to enforce or not enforce and again in that particular situation we limited that to areas that are we we still would move in and talk to folks if there was a public safety component right and in here I think the same it's a little different because we're talking um and again I I know that we're going beyond what was talked about today and I think we're going to have to have a conversation

[286:00] about um how do we move forward in this but there is um there are issues of access and there are issues of um public space usage and there are issues of safety and and I know that staff is also looking on you know if they're too close to a ravine if they're too close to um a place that is not safe for them I think those are the instances that we actually want staff to intervene and say um how can we assist um in enforcing the camping B and I think that the Outreach team that PD has and that other staff members are doing even in times of cold are they're doing a lot of Outreach right now but we're not forcing people to come to a shelter or not come to a shelter right so I think it's a little bit of it's a little different thanks for explanation I got Tera hand and maybe we'll wrap up I just want somebody to explain this

[287:02] to me and then I leave everybody alone I will it's not warm outside it's it's freezing out there right so how is the answer to all this let's have it let's have more tents I mean that can't be the answer right that's why I'm going to agree with Mark who said let's not take away the moratorium because the purpose is to get people out of the cold not to have people be intense in the winter is that our is that what we're shooting for it can't be so I think I'm going to agree with Mark that we should uh try to get more people to uh to open up the severe shelter more and not to say tense are the answer if somebody could explain to me that logic I know it's late so and also I didn't sleep a lot you know I didn't maybe two hours last night so I'll just leave it at that and just say that I'm agree with Mark on this and for

[288:00] those reasons I don't think it's compassionate to have people be outside in the freezing cold so I don't feel that that's personally the answer either Nicole's hand this was just a followup to that um I totally agree it's not compassionate so people intense when it's eight degrees outside or 10 degrees or whatever it is right that it's going to be especially the next couple of days um it's also um feels much less compassionate to me to take away any blanket or any sort of covering that people may have right so like we're on kind of a Continuum here right there's sleeping in a tent in 8 degree weather not good right I think we can all agree with that sleeping in eight degree weather with no blanket or anything even worse right so that that's sort of what what I'm like we we don't have enough shelter right that's clear um we need to have a bigger shelter discussion um and I just I I think it's

[289:02] really important that we acknowledge that there are people who for whatever reason the shelter is not available or accessible to them who are sleeping outside which is causing an issue for many many people in our community not just the people experiencing that so there's we we don't have enough room at the end yeah and so I'm going to attempt to to finish this out here and because I think the which is to Nicole's point that you just made is the intention of putting together this RF to find out how we can um add more indoor warm places for folks to go when it's cold out um which I I think is a compassionate approach and to jun's point it's it's true an RFI theoretically could sit on a shelf but you know we're we we're not taking formal action tonight but I think majority of council has um a very strong interest in this and so uh if we get um good proposals back from nonprofits or

[290:00] community members I think we'll very seriously consider those um in a timely manner but so I think that's our outcome from this discussion I um unless anybody else has some other final thoughts um I appreciate everyone uh bringing a great deal of care for our community um and compassion for those in need um to this this very important discussion all right anything else Alicia I'm looking at you no sir that is the end of our agenda all right uh well one more congratulations to Tara on her new uh grandbaby and uh hope you can get some sleep and enjoy more time with the little one tomorrow all right good night everybody I'm going to GA us meeting Clos at uh

[291:02] 10:45