January 7, 2022 — City Council Retreat

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] Here on screen and you too low, and I see juny here too. Okay, great. Do we have nuria. Welcome journey. I see Chris Chris Murray on our way and we should just give her a quick minute. Good afternoon, everyone is. on her way. Okay cool. Okay, well, I do want to make sure that Mary is here, from the very beginning, so let's give her a minute. I got this cute llama picture that I literally hung right back there for when I work in this office there's a llama looking over my shoulder all day because it amuses me and. You all know that i'm a cheap date and easy to entertain and that does entertains me so if entertains you to great i'll sit over here, but if not just oh i'm cracking myself up over here.

[1:12] alright. I was getting a little. we're getting background or someone. Better now okay. Right now, that we've got Mary here, I will say let's go ahead and get started welcome everyone to the 2022 boulder City Council retreat. happy to have you all here and i'm now going to introduce heather Bergman from P facilitation who's going to run our retreat and this is the last you'll hear me running any kind of this meeting tethers taken away from here so things that are. All right, friends boy do we have a lot of fun stuff to talk about tonight. just wanted to make sure that you all saw that we did put some more detail around the agenda and just want to run you through that real quick, this is the version that was posted on the on the website today.

[2:09] So we'll do a real quick round of staff introductions so we know so who you have in the audience and who might be part of our dialogue on some of these. Priority ideas that you all have then we get to hear from all of you, you did your homework and you're getting to know each other and I appreciate you been getting to know each other, even more the last bunch of days. So we'll just invite you in pairs to share out, you know some things that you heard from one another. And then I want to jump right into really the work of the retreat that we have before us, which is to think more look more specifically at your priority ideas. I want to thank you right now for the homework that you have done it was a last minute request I know many of you. hustle details there to get us some some new and more refined ideas to kick around tonight.

[3:00] At the very, very, very minimum, I would love for us to get through our housing and homelessness conversations, those are very clearly. high priorities for many, if not all of you on Council and, certainly, you know, important and impactful for your Community so we'll spend some time on those. And some of you have been noodling on such things, and then, if we get through those super fantastic would love to talk about transit things. And if we get through that even more fantastic would love to talk about occupancy and if we don't get to those other ones they do roll through tomorrow and so i'll look to you for coming up on eight o'clock to let me know if you want to push through and punt more tomorrow. You we may have 10 a 10 pound meeting and a five pound bag and we'll have to figure out where to pick up that extra space in less the homework has just been absolutely stellar and y'all have solve these problems, in which case good anya. So summarize again toward the end where we are see what's left on our to do list for tomorrow morning, and then get you out of here eight ish unless you determine that that's not the best and right plan.

[4:04] For all of you, so I would love to go ahead and jump into it in less any member of Council has any clarifying questions around what it is we going to be doing tonight. hey look at that all right in that case, because we do have a lot of staff here and I do anticipate some conversation with them tonight, I want to make sure we know who is here nuria can I. hand it off to you to run through department directors in some sort of efficient way, unless you just want me to Willy nilly be calling on folk. I would probably do the same thing myself, so why don't we just call on folks directly, so we don't do the game of you call on somebody else. Which is which can be very, very tedious so i'll just do it in the order that I have all of you. Teresa Would you mind introducing yourself.

[5:00] You still meaty. Well, good I got that out of the way for the night. Teresa Taylor tape city attorney. Thank you Ali. Ali Rhodes she/her: Ali roads director of parks and recreation. amy. amy came pronouns are she her and hers and i'm the equity program manager for the city. Thank you. For your hard work yo. My. Be mayor Council Michael Russell. Jennifer. Jennifer Douglas chief Innovation and Technology officer. Maris. evening everyone hears Harold police chief and I have a couple of my executive team here to. Excellent Thank you hi that. hey heather good evening everybody that bouton assistant city manager. And Community vitality director.

[6:02] David foreign in. EDEN Council, they would find in the library and arts you. Chris Jones. Good evening Council everyone Chris Jones Deputy Director of Community vitality, thank you. Joe. Good evening everyone totality ut director of utilities yeah. I Kurt. didn't Council current harbor I support the staff and programs of housing and human services thanks. Nice given. Good evening Steve referee here deputy chief of operations for the bold acoustic. Thanks Kara. Good evening car Skinner interim chief financial officer. If this is why you have to say, the names, because some people don't know hi Kara Thank you hi Linda. hi i'm Linda cook on the presiding judge for the boulder municipal court nice to meet all of you.

[7:04] With Jonathan. hi there good afternoon Jonathan Cohen, he him I am honored to serve as the acting director of the climate shifts department. Thanks Erica. recommended run the director of transportation mobility. David. David gear. With planning and. Development services and I will. Be also asking Charles pharaoh to join us tomorrow. When i'm guessing we'll be diving into a lot of planning items. Instead of hi Joanna. hi i'm Joanna Korean and i'm the director of fleet and facilities and i'll apologize in advance a bit disheveled we lost our home in the lewisville fires so i'm literally in a closet still trying to get our feeder and dress. you're amazing for showing up at all thank you so i'm so sorry for your loss.

[8:02] Danger you're obese girl. I me. hi there I think me amy. Get everybody me crazy, I am the Deputy Director of HR and currently in the position of interim HR director for the city thanks. hi Sarah. Your immunity. hi everybody i'm Sarah Huntley i'm the director of communication and engagement for the state. Great thanks Sarah carrie. carrie whenever deputy police chief. Thank you, Dan Burke. Hello all Dan Burke open space mountain parks thanks. mark. I Council budget manager Oracle nice to see everybody thanks. Lisa.

[9:05] Good evening everyone i'm alicia Johnson city clerk and records manager Thank you ma'am. vicki. Good evening i'm vicki abner i'm homeless policy advisor Thank you. James. Your muti. Well, good evening change to court administrator with a municipal court. Thanks Jim. And Pam. Good evening everyone Pam Davis my pronouns are she her assistant city manager. And yall already know Taylor but gotta give a shout out hit Taylor. Everyone can write. That was like. God everyone Taylor i'm in city council administrator and my pronouns are seniors. Thanks Taylor and, of course, you all know, Ryan, I just want to just introduce yourself I hate to have you hanging out there.

[10:03] For Hello everyone Brian Hampton nugent specialist for city and zoom facilitator for this evening, thank you. Thank you and Brenda. So much for being sneaky and just listening Brenda written our also part of the engagement team and will be zoom facilitating tomorrow. Thanks friend up and then focus want to introduce you to Samuel wallace he's on my team, and he will be documenting your conversation tonight and preparing the. comprehensive summary of all the things sandwiches you want to turn your camera on so people see China face there it is alright Thank you all very much staff really appreciate you joining us tonight hope to lean on your wisdom, a little bit as counsel find useful was to go along. With that I would be inclined to start hearing about what you all learned about one another in your pairs just so everyone knows. Council and nuria together make 10 people we divided them into five pairs of two and had them sit down and sort of interview each other and learn a little bit about history and.

[11:10] priorities and thinking about things that are important for boulder and I am agnostic on who gets to go first so i'm looking for a volunteer any meaning money do I have a mo who wants to go Bob gates wants to go and Bobby, let us know who your partner was. My partner was the lovely Nicole spirit. Once you learn about Nicole. You know my takeaway from my discussion with Nicole was, we have a lot of things in common and a few things that are different and so i'll start with the in common. We both have two kids we both lived for a while and southern California and we both have science backgrounds, Nicole, of course, is a professional neuroscientist and I studied chemistry in college. were both pretty well educated and cool, of course, has Dr Nicole sphere, has a PhD and I have a juris doctorate degree in law.

[12:01] One thing that we both learned is we both have quite short attention spans. which probably explains a lot tomorrow comes colleagues. One thing that Nicole i'm going to write i'm going to say exactly what Nicole, said to me, because it really resonated with me like i'm that person, she said quote I am the person in my family who knows where everything is, and I am the person in my family who knows where everything is. And finally, the similarities thing. I would observe that, for both of us the best way to accomplish a difficult task is to tell us that it can't be done. Because we are both gentlemen by those types of statements so there's some differences. Nicole will describe me in a second I hope kindly. But. One of the things that call Nicole, is that I am not is i'm calm she's patient and she's empathetic and I, like all of those skills, but i'm happy learning from Nicole and.

[13:05] One of the things that Nicole, is that i'm not is Nicole, I think, is shy and she's not attention seeking and i'm whatever the opposite of that is. You know, as far as outcomes, I think this is another area of of similarity you asked us to come up with some outcomes that we want to achieve over on Council and, I think, without being eloquent in my words. You both want to help people who need the greatest amount of help, and that includes in there, the topics we're going to talk about tonight and tomorrow housing. homelessness on racial inequity economic disparity. gender and sexual orientation discrimination, people with disabilities and I could go on and on, but I mean I think what we both are trying to do is. identify people in our Community, who are hurting who are disadvantaged, who are discriminated against, who have challenges and problems and use the power that we have been invested with to help those people.

[14:11] And so i'm going to quote so press Nicole Nicole has a life mission and like you know organizations spend like like hours and hours and hire people like you. heather to come up with our mission statement and she has a personal mission statement i'm just going to quote it because I was so impressed by it and it's something that I aspire to, and here's nicole's life mission. To courageously and compassionately empower excellence in people organizations and communities, and that was really, really powerful to me, so I am I really enjoyed my time with Nicole, and I didn't know her as well, because I feel like I do now and I I feel. Really blessed to have her, as my colleague. Is for that Bob Nicole, would you like to introduce our friend Bobby as I mean he practically introduced himself, but.

[15:02] He left off. Yes, no, I can have some little details, thank you, Bob for the lovely introduction and so some of the things that stood out for me. Is that I did not realize that Bob is the oldest of seven children, so he has six siblings and they are all very close and remain really close. Which is is quite impressive, I have a hard time just finding time to hang out with my my brother even even on the phone. I thought it was really interesting that bob's dad was a bookkeeper his mom was a bank Teller but his dad was a bookkeeper but. Bob does not actually like to read books that might she prefers talking to people and kind of getting information from people so. I thought that was really interesting and also Bob lived abroad in London for three years, when his kids were young so those were three interesting facts that I did not know about Bob before. Some of the things that you know Bob kind of can can do well and we talked a little bit about uniqueness and you know Bob was a little hesitant to.

[16:06] claim his unique ability is right, but, but we all have unique abilities and I think it's important that we recognize what our strengths are and so some of the things that Bob uniquely brings to counsel is a. an ability to manage finances and to be able to you know, look at budgets process budgets, think about them. And how we can use them, and he how his career was in mergers and acquisitions and so he talked about how. he's done a lot of work and bringing things together, as well as sometimes you know pulling things apart, so you can put them back together in a different way. And the thing that Bob said in terms of priorities that really stood out for me that I wrote down Bob I don't know if you notice me doing that, but I really like the way that you said that. Bob said, for every family that wants to live in boulder, we need to do whatever we can to allow that to happen.

[17:00] And I just really resonated with me because it's something that that I also feel very strongly about, and so, you know as we're looking into 2022 I think. One of the big areas for Bob of interest is is really thinking about housing and how we can prioritize housing, the people who are here in our Community. who may not currently be able to live here and occupancy, in particular, you know as a way that Bob noted, we could do that relatively easily we don't need to build new if we're just allowing more people to live in the rooms that already exist, so. Thank you, Bob I enjoyed our conversation it's really, really informative it's really nice to get to know you a little better. Okay cool that was terrific thanks. Nicole all right, who would like to volunteer to introduce your colleague next. Thank you Rachel. My pleasure heather and I have the honor of introducing that Benjamin So hopefully he does not mind us being up next.

[18:05] And and and. I want to make sure that we have maximum time for retreat discussion so i'm going to go pretty quickly here on my introduction, for my part. And I already knew matt pretty well so just a joy to get to know him a little bit better through this as well as working together in the pre retreat stuff so three interesting background facts about matt Benjamin For those of you who do not know it. My words not his on his job background, he is a rocket scientist so we're very lucky on this Council to have a literal rocket scientist at our disposal number two probably related Lee. He is most of his friends. phone a friend for trivia night, so he he described himself as full of useless information until it's useful as an example of that when we had an early frost last year. He put out tips to everyone for how to save your tomatoes and it worked in my case and and the third is he was an extra in an episode of star trek next generation.

[19:11] I have one that he was plucked out of a a line in arrive for a ride at universal studios he was sort of the right size person that they were seeking for an animatronic suit that they needed somebody to get inside of and wiggle the arms, so he was a cling on dog. that's all I just. met Benjamin to unique skills or experiences that relate to the work of Council in terms of experience he has led a number of campaigns before being on Council for city. For municipal campaigns and so he really knows the politics and sort of how things get done and a skill he's very good at sniffing out bs. And then I will let him describe, we have a sort of a joint Council accomplishment or outcome that we hope to achieve for the boulder community in the year 2022 or do you click on dog.

[20:09] Oh no not now i'm not sure i'm gonna be able to live that one down. But hey, you know as always got to throw out a nice little tidbit there um. Well, thank you Rachel and you know, certainly, you know, the fact that, even though we got to know each other. Work even we've done here we've got to work in a different capacity than we had before, so it definitely expanded our friendship and certainly our knowing each other, a little more in depth. You know she was spot on, and I think it was just appropriate that we got paired because we both like to just simply get down to business. So it's fitting that Rachel and I were paired because we both want to keep this brief and move on, so we can actually get down to the business at hand. I will note that Rachel has probably the most recognizable Council yard sign in recent history. Because her last name like we all need a friend and it had that beautiful rainbow and it just it is seared into just about anybody's memory that has driven up long any major chord or.

[21:02] In the last four years, so credit to that marketing and branding because it just resonates and we all can live up to that yard sign for political success. Three interesting facts about Rachel i'm at the beginning of her legal career she worked for a federal judge in Florida and worked on both the. alien Gonzales case and separately, the Bush V Gore case, so a lot of experience. early on in her legal career, which is really awesome to think of those sort of instrumental cases that we all pretty much know I mean how many cases do we know, over the last 20 plus years, and those are two of them. So that's pretty awesome um The other thing is her nickname is glue and that comes from. wearing her college with actually let Rachel read what they wrote about her and what they wrote when they read her materials and her resume and letters was.

[22:05] That they thought of her as someone who would just keep people together as being the sort of resonating for us to to keep a tight knit of groups of people together and so her nickname became. glue which I think is rather appropriate and boy did she do that with your work in this Community and Council so it's quite pervasive for her and, lastly, doing summer work when she was younger Rachel accepted a year's worth of ice cream for payment doing advertisement work. So that's awesome. that's just genius. But yeah. it's beautiful yeah well that year heather. um so two unique skills and experience, I think, for one, she is a night owl she's not shy to admit that. And can handle, and that makes her able to handle the punishing environment of running late Council meetings. it's equally why we can thank her for CAC moving to 9am instead of 8am is if you're a night owl you're conversely than not the morning person, so thank you Rachel for your help with that.

[23:05] And then, lastly, you know she as she sort of mentioned to me, she also has a very deep knowledge of politics and lobbying as she's been instrumental. With working for flood protection along South boulder creek and also with gun violence prevention, which are two hugely important things that focus on having empathy for others and the plate. For those that don't have the ability to have their voices lifted and making sure that health and safety are critical importance and, lastly, you know what is that shared accomplishment well it is reaching. Vision Zero for both homelessness and transportation. That is what our core is that's what resonates so that is probably why we get along working and as friends so that's Rachel friend our Council member pleasure to get to know you better. Thanks matt. Thanks Rachel i'm learning so much about you. folks it's just delightful I can't even stand it all right who's next Aaron.

[24:02] Great well, I had the delightful responsibility to pair up with our fantastic city manager Maria para in her mind and we had a really enjoyable conversation. Where I learned all kinds of interesting things about her and her unique history and background so i'm going to share some of them here with you so. Interestingly, nuria spent five years in Kentucky when she was a kid so her father was a physician in the army, and so they spent five years at Fort Campbell Kentucky and. i'm going to go from there to talk about one of her really unique qualities and identities, so when when she was living in the states at that time. They were the only. Latino family in the area in her mother didn't particularly speak English they didn't have enormous resources if the times, like her, ensure mom sewing.

[25:03] Some of her own clothes, and so it nearly at that time was on the bridge between her family and the rest of the world in a lot of ways, especially for her mother as because very good speak English and so that that experience as a child is really guide some of her. approaches to city government, you know she thinks about when we have a system or process here at the city, or in other cities that she's work. How would that work for for someone like her mother when she was a kid somebody who doesn't necessarily speak the language and doesn't know all the processes and she keeps that in mind as a certain inspiration and something to check against, as she develops her. The programs and processes in the city government and I thought that was really, really powerful from from her background and it's something that that will benefit from a lot of having that that approach and perspective.

[26:00] And something else was that she wanted to be a college Professor when she was younger and studying things and that's actually something that we have in common, for a long time, I thought I was going to become a college Professor was cool so. we'll have that on our career path, when we were younger she is in a was in a colleague collegiate background and interested in how law influences society and. Political science and set up my own teaching those things but life took another course fortunately for the city boulder. um and then then another unique goal of hers is she has a checkbox next to the name of all of the regional breweries, and so she's on. What i'm sure is a very enjoyable campaign to try each and every one of our regional breweries, and I think it was not a coincidence that she told me this while we were each enjoying a craft beverage from a local brewery so. So that was fun another thing that you know unique about her background was about how she has worked in some medium and larger sized cities, and so is really her experiences in those cities have run the gamut she's seen many, many of the problems or challenges that can confront.

[27:20] any city in our contemporary society and so that background and working with those larger organizations in liberal cities like Austin and. minneapolis has given her vision of adaptability was the quote I wrote down and how there are no cookie cutter approaches to issues and we really need to. figure out what the unique solution is for your community with each challenge, so I appreciated that that mix of both having seen many things, but not feeling like the the answers to the problems and questions are predetermined can just be copied and pasted into our. Our environment.

[28:01] And then the we talked about what's the one goal that you would like to get accomplished in Council here in the next year's. This is in addition to visiting every regional brewery but more on the on the policy side, and it was quick to say that was on. Working on solving the problem of unsheltered homelessness and you know about how we can work with folks in that situation and how we can keep will keep people safe, while helping people in crisis. I wrote it down another focus on those very. Good how we can work. human to human and compassion to compassion. Along with as part of a conversation with with our Community organizations, so it was very clever and that's what I got it was it was a great pleasure, you getting are you getting to know you a little better, a lot better. Excellent Thank you Aaron and nuria. Well, I conversing and appreciate those kind words, but I felt bad for Aaron because it feels like my life in the interview process is kind of an open book and so.

[29:08] A lot of people have gotten to know a little bit about my life, but what I love talking to Aaron about was and you heard some of that those similarities, I thought it was interesting that. As we were talking about some of our backgrounds that are we have some synergies and some paths that crossed. He mentioned that I spent some time in Kentucky and his and I actually majored in political science and his father's actually a professor of political science at the University of the South. In Tennessee and so not only did that sort of resonate with me, but it seems like politics runs very naturally in aaron's family. And then, while he started out as a physics major at swarthmore he actually fell in love with music early on and changed his. degree and majored in that, instead, and he is a particular love for choral singing which I didn't know about and was part of the ars Nova singers.

[30:07] vocal ensemble that I had to go look up specialize in an acapella music and in fact i've got a little note to myself Aaron to go see if I can go find you on YouTube as I look at that. But while I was in college I also was in a acapella group for them and shoes, and so I found it so interesting that we had that in common. And then perhaps some bigger news for Aaron as I found out is that, after 22 years at his company, he is leaving at the end of. January to sort of take a break and focus on the demands of this new job, which is exciting, because we know how much. Time is demanding of all of you, but also just to the Mayor, in particular, and, as he has a daughter, who is going to fly the coop in two years of sophomore in high school really wanted to spend more time with his family, which.

[31:00] I certainly resonate as well, we talked a little bit about those unique skills and experience and i'll say, as I talked about the first one, it will be no surprise to you all and to community. Which is really that he leads with in my words sort of empathy and curiosity. Aaron really strives to understand where people are coming from and relate sort of meeting people where they are and not trying to get to oppositional. And yet still keep his position and share his position to hold on to his own integrity. While looking for deeper understanding and learning about others perspective, and I certainly have seen that in my time here in boulder. And then the other thing that I really found interesting as well, is that you know as as he's living in the holiday neighborhood he was also there as it was being developed. And sort of working on some of the things there and watching and contributing to the growth. And the development over time he I actually looked it up a little bit as we were talking Aaron but you know starting a Community garden, helping to create the neighborhood ECO pass Program.

[32:08] Helping to develop that summer movie series it really has given him a keen eye on a what livable family focus Community neighbors could neighborhoods can look like in the city. And really will allow that focus to spill over into what the rest of our builder neighborhoods could look like, so I found that super fascinating. And then the one outcome or priority area I think Aaron really wants to lift up is the emt first responders Program. To really support community in ways that perhaps don't involve law enforcement and really excited to see that priority move forward so it was super delightful and I will certainly put a check on that particular local brewery establishment, so thank you Erin. Thanks Maria Thank you. All right, who's next mark.

[33:03] I was paired with lauren we had an what I thought was an extremely pleasant conversation I learned a bit. lauren's family is from the Northwest. And I found out that lauren has been a climber, but not merely a climber, what I consider to be the highest and best form of climber, she was a dirtbag climber, for a while. Which means traveling from area to area climbing and then moving on. That is something that almost every climber, who is tied down to a job or other circumstances envies limitlessly. The course of our conversation lauren was expressed her deep commitment to a number of areas, one was obviously affordable housing. and, interestingly, she also has a great interest in a reduction or streamlining of the approval processes that can make attainment of middle income and affordable housing more difficult and.

[34:13] We get hit with that all the time, everybody who is in that industry always wants a streamlined. approval process but lauren can tell you which things she actually wants done that would make that process smoother and easier, you know, usually you just get the. You know the general complaint that it takes too long to get your approvals she can tell you exactly what your approvals ought to be changed in order to make the process. simpler and better and, of course, she also has a deep commitment to the improvement of the manner and the substance of the way in which we address our homeless population. I found her to be very thoughtful very substantive measured and calm.

[35:04] he's committed to improving the lives of the people of boulder and very much focused on the lives of those less fortunate, so I learned a good bit, I was very happy to have that conversation, and thank you lauren was it was a pleasure. spike. Or, in what did you learn about your buddy. And so I got to talk with mark, which was great we had a great time i'm. One of the things that I. Am jealous of that I learned right away, is mark has a really good memory, because he was able to do all of this, without taking any notes. I think. While we might not be the first two people that you would think have an incredible amount in common. We We really do you know between climbing our experience in the building industry coming sort of from bigger cities and even the reasons that we live in boulder we all we both them, you know have so much in common on those fronts.

[36:20] I think yeah what mark talked about you know missing New York, a little bit she hasn't gotten on a plane during coven. to visit his family and sort of do the performing arts things that he loves and, similarly, I also you know I haven't gone back to visit my family and longer than I would like. and One of the stories, he told me when we were talking, I really liked because. it's a little unexpected so mark was talking about climbing and utah and. You know climbing with with his partner, and you know somebody that they had just met, and this is.

[37:01] You know, when there was a little bit more oversight about you know what your gear is and what route you're doing, and so they go. On this climb and there's sort of these rules that they know about you have to wear a helmet you have to check your gear all this kind of stuff and they go and they do this climb and mark decided that he wasn't going to wear his helmet that day but. Because he's a rebel. And there was this other guy in the team who hadn't done the like intro class, you know so they go they time they come back and one of the Rangers like you know they coming back and the Rangers like. You know I need to talk to you and picks out the other guy from the group who hadn't gone through the intro to call out for not following the rules because they'd been watching through binoculars seeing somebody not wearing their helmet on this climb. anyway. So don't don't let his call mostly ordered. facade will you.

[38:02] there's a troublemaker there um but let's see yeah so and then in terms of what he wants to accomplish. You know, we both mark talked a lot about sort of middle income, housing and I think you know, seeing the airport redeveloped as a really obvious or looking at the feasibility of that is a big. thing from our that he would really like to see us do, and I think his skills, both you know I appreciate that he brings his skills as a developer to counsel not only sort of the building industry side of it but. Especially the the understanding of the legal framework and the ability to like look at budgets and a lot of detail and really wrap your mind around those I think is. one of many reasons i'm excited to be on Council with mark. Wonderful thanks lauren use mark.

[39:01] All right, alright that must leave our final pair of Germany and Tara Jenny want to go first looks like take it away girl. Okay, thanks I would have to say heather you save the best for last I had a really great time then to know, terror and you hear me I know there's a little bit of a slow down that I see on my side. But I had a really great time we talked with Tara every time we went out, it was a blast and we have more fun than homework done. So the three things about Tara out have to say which. is very, very interesting she's a new yorker she has a big personality and I think that's one of the reason. I really like her, that really attracts me about her she's a very, very honest person she is is you know the person who sees who she is so I really appreciate that about her.

[40:01] She played racquetball and that wasn't her favorite class in college and she learned paddleboard when she was in grade school. So she explained that there was this you know, a concrete Park, where she lived and so that's how she learned it, but one of the most interesting thing about Tara is that. She won the racquetball championship in college, so you do have a you know, a collegiate champion on or city council small so. She learned to play the sax at the age of nine and she's still pleased today. She was in jazz in high school and went to college to berklee college of music for support summer program so between her and. In our mayor brackets, we can have a full musical anytime.

[41:04] So, and the third thing about her, which is very interesting as well and, and I think that's something I would say. I find very interesting about her my mom is a Christian and she's been to Israel as well and she's a she she just love Israel and Tara has been to Israel, she started the Israeli sister city. called boulder Ramat hagner veg CD sister city with her friend Peter orenstein and her husband Robert and daughter lexi and also bought became the Council gaze on and Bob and bob's wife katie he went with. Terrorists daughter went to Rama actually so they've been there together so there's that connection, as well with our Council member youth so really actually Tara was meant to be on Council.

[42:05] So the two unique skills of experience. Again I think Tara she wears her heart, on her sleeve, not because she says it because that's what she is and i've experienced that we hit it off, right from the from the get go. So she likes to talk with people that strength right that's so that's a big strength coming from her and another thing about her, which is, to me it speaks to who she is as a person. She is not afraid to say that she's sorry she's not a free to apologize again that's what makes her who she is and i'm. i've really had a great time getting to know Tara and I think we'll get to know more of each other, I really i'm very attracted to Tara I like her, a lot so. So it was really a great experience to pair the two of us together. A one Council accomplishment or outcome that she would like to see more middle income, housing and I think that's something that i'm passionate about as well, so I just think Tara you.

[43:08] You have a supporter, a fan right here, sitting here and i'm just delighted and glad to get to know you as a person. that's lovely Judy Thank you Tara. Well jeannie didn't we meet in December, that is a really long time ago, so i'm impressed how much you remember it i'm back and say I remembers much, but what I will say is. I have the time my life and we went to dinner, we went to dinner twice we laughed so hard that I will read you this personal text. That I wrote to her on December 21 I said I had so much fun last night and then she said me too, and I said we left our heads off that memory will keep me smiling for days, and if you know me, you know that I like to have a good time on is what my priorities it wasn't listed. In my five priorities, but it is. One and i'm going to tell you a secret about unique she is so much fun.

[44:02] And when you watch City Council you can always tell with somebody like in regards to fun, especially i'm going to say because it's serious. But she is hilarious So there you have it juny I expect people to start calling you wanting to go out to dinner with you because those were some of the most fun times i've had in 2021. So here's some interesting facts about her first of all. She speaks quite a few languages, and I will say fluently and being that I barely speaking fluently I was quite impressed with her. She speaks i'm going to read these off French Haitian Creole English and Spanish and emergencies, so that was her first the first most interesting thing. Secondly, she have lived she's lived on three continents and if we have extra time I would do a game and ask people, what do you continents you think she's lived on. But i'm going to need them for you, for lack of time, and that would be Africa Europe and North America, those are her three continents here's some more interesting facts about her, she has five brothers and, lastly, she is related to George Washington.

[45:16] But facts it's true. So what unique skills to she bring well she can read a room really well, I find that a very important skill, is, I find that I. Equal you Judy we both have that skill and she presses it processes info really quickly and, like, I said that great sense of humor and super fun attitude that she has is very important as well. I would say that what I love there's so many things I love about uni but i'm one of them, which I didn't even think about just now is you know what unique fields and she's so compassionate and she has so much. she loves life and she so interested in so many things and being with her you become a better person that's what i'm going to say about journey.

[46:09] Her most important thing I would say, as far as values would be helping those experiencing homelessness and she's gonna i'm sure talk about that in this discussion. she's mentioned mental health programming and bolstering our navigation system, she talked about overflow emergency sheltering and also a day program and day sheltering but she also has other interests, she cares a lot about. People getting a minimum a livable wage she cares about elections being fair and she also is very interested in urban studies so i'm going to say that. Believe me, when you go to dinner with jeannie and she tells you everything that's on our mind and heart, you will become a better person, that is a promise that's what I have to say that Jenny. Was terrific Tara Thank you very much and Council and marissa Thank you all for doing this for indulging me.

[47:04] I know that you've had some time to get to know each other, a little bit better, but I do hope everyone learn something new, not only about their buddy but about. Your other colleagues on Council particularly some of you who've been around this boat a couple of times, maybe you still learn something new about someone that you've served with for quite some time. So with that joyful joke i'm just i'm just pleased as punch over here I just think you're all inspiring and wonderful. With that joyful introduction to our conversation we now must carry the momentum of fun and excitement into our policy conversations and for those who. don't know all the all the history Council received from me a homework assignment after. Our conversation on level of lift and the preliminary thoughts from staff on scoping on Tuesday and I asked. For some of the higher priority more common topics I asked folks to work in pairs.

[48:05] To not just further refine their own idea, but to really look at the range of ideas from their colleagues on Council to look at the feedback on the scope and the level of effort in that preliminary conversation with staff on Tuesday and. Work really hard and come back to us tonight for their assigned topic with. one or more proposals for this for their topic that are specifically very clear very concise actions or asks of staff or of counsel, with a clear endpoint you know, we need to vote on a thing we need to finish a study, whatever that might be. I asked them also to to consider how how long how big a lift they think it is in terms of time is it a couple of months is it like a year long thing again Councils best guests.

[49:00] And then. What they have ideas they have around staffing a very common thing and just I think a point of frustration for everyone involved was hearing on Tuesday that staff capacity is limited. And so what I asked them to think about for their idea is Is this something that you'd like to really suggest as a. super urgent priority for 2022 with the staff that we have at this time is this something that of course it's important but maybe could perhaps. Rest a little bit until there's greater staff capacity later in 2022 or 2023 and then, if they had any suggestions around we think this is something that could really benefit from the support of a consultant. In route to minimize the impact on staff, they were encouraged to think about that, and so we have some of these topics with as far as sign pairs for tonight and some will carry over into tomorrow. And the other thing that I told Council in their pairs is the purpose of the pairs isn't to say, this is the only thing we're talking about on the topic.

[50:01] But, to start with that effort and integration and then of course the rest of you on Council if you weren't part of the pair can revisit your own idea or provide additional suggestions for Council to kick around. So our first topic on the agenda for tonight is housing. And I assigned Aaron and Tara to get together and look at the range of ideas that we have heard on housing from Council and again that feedback from staff. On Tuesday night and come back with some refined proposals and so Aaron and Tara would like to hand it off to you let us know what you what you can. hear you good what Terry is or if I should go ahead and get started, and then i'll bounce over to you right well so. Whether that was, I will say the hardest homework that i've gotten in a long time, I know that was. Challenging to do list we had a lot of creative ideas from our Council colleagues around housing and there were some common themes we did our best to try to group them into a couple areas so we'll talk about.

[51:12] A few targeted things that includes some input from different people and then we're going to let other Council members talk a little bit as well about the their priorities there. They didn't suit well into being put into different buckets will say. And, and I will just say on the on the staff side you would like, I had a good conversation with with Kirk for an hour this morning, or maybe certainly this afternoon, it all blends together this. But I don't I don't think we're going to say Okay, this is how much staff work involves or you know this. I don't think that's up to us to determine but i'll talk about a couple ways that we think that changes might be targeted in such a way that they would maybe not require an enormously heavy lift so that's that'll be the hope anyway.

[52:00] Some common themes that we heard were around. a need for more middle income oriented housing as that's a desperate need in our Community there's a couple people have already referenced that something else was about around having. Opportunities for some additional housing units that maybe are less expensive you don't have the same amount of carrying costs and things like that to be more attainable to people with different income levels. And then also you know ways that you know, there might be opportunities for some gentle infill in some of the residential and justin residential neighborhoods in the city so. On the. middle income housing side of lauren had some great ideas about how the inclusion airy housing program could be tweaked or shifted to. Maybe get some some more of our goals we currently the inclusion or housing fees are based on the number of units and projects which can encourage people to build fewer larger units so looking at changing to be based on the square footage.

[53:10] Of the of the housing units, instead of the number of units could incentivize some smaller, more affordable units, also to look at. evaluating how including your housing could be more focused in some circumstances on middle income housing possibly raising the threshold income threshold for some some of that includes warehousing and perhaps allowing some higher percentage increases in appreciation to make it. more interesting and more valuable for people in that program and also on the exclusionary has inside mark had made the point that there have been some circumstances where. developers have committed to something related to affordable housing exclusionary housing, but then that that has not quite bed is not followed through the way that we had expected so that that is possibly something that could be looked at as part of the same effort.

[54:06] So, and I did I did speak to Kurt earlier about this, and they are very, very staff strapped in this area, so this does not sound like it's something that could be tackled right away, but you didn't say that it was something they could tackle as capacity came online. So that's idea number one. We did we stop for a minute or what. Okay, so what I heard a whole lot of things, the specific if you can you just give me that the short and sweet, of the very specific clear, concrete asks that you're looking for. revisions to the inclusion airy housing program for oriented towards middle income and. convert more attainable and more middle income music yes. Thank you. It the one I know most of your stuff or inside I do if you want to chime in and see if we got any that wrong or add any color to it.

[55:07] i'm Tara did you get it all right just real quick yep okay Rachel has a question or comment go ahead. i'm just wanted to know is, is, would you be targeting like precise code changes with this or an ordinance change or what is that ask alone like How would this happen. I believe that this would require be pointed towards an ordinance that would revise some of the parameters, including there hasn't been. A fresh, new ordinance or that's a revision to existing as far as you know, Aaron. Will it's a revision to existing code, so it would be a new ordinance that revised existing building. city code. All right, anybody else have a clarifying question for Aaron and tear on this item Bob. It was really just a question and I don't know if this is directed to Aaron and. Tara or maybe to Laurens when I brought this forward as well.

[56:03] We had an inclusion housing program that was run for many, many years and then Aaron will remember that about four years ago, or so Aaron we changed it right. And we we beefed it up and sounds like the puzzles to beef it up further which is great. I think we do run into we I think we always try to be a little bit careful and balanced about how far we push that because I think there's laws out there. State laws that we bump up against run rent control that do limit our discretion and authority, am I, remembering that correctly and I guess i'd like to direct that to lauren who knows a lot about this, or maybe even to curt friend hover. Lawrence lauren's you won't take her on that before we asked her. Sure i'm so in the last year, there have been some changes to some of the rent control things the State level, so I think looking at how. We can take advantage of those changes as an important part of this update.

[57:05] And I know that Kurt also had some ideas of some issues that he sees with the inclusion airy housing program and the way it's working, and so I think just trying to incorporate a couple of these various things in an update would make a lot of sense. Or did you want to add anything around that. Sure, good evening again Council. So. Bob was correct, it was it was updated about four years ago, and I think some of the things that we had hoped to obtain through that update. Some things worked really well some haven't we're actually getting sort of more units than we were prior to that update four years ago and. But the you know the middle income, housing, I think I ah, as part of it, I think there's other things going on as well and there's even things in our in our codes that could probably be adjusted as well, which would.

[58:13] include influence sort of the number of units per acre as an example and just discourage larger units in a multi units development. So I think I ah, is a is a part of it. In Bob I think made a good point of. I think he may be. Pushing but. Or, as we push developers, to do more, sometimes that doesn't work, and I think that that's what occurred in our ah update as it relates to. middle income for sale, housing and the from from a financial standpoint, it just doesn't it doesn't work nearly as well for a developer, to create those types of units, and so we may even need to consider making it more attractive.

[59:11] To create middle income units and there will be trade offs involved in that and. As I hear about this, I think these are all pretty good ideas to explore, it seems similar in scope to the the update that we did for it ah, four years ago and, if I recall that was that was about a one year process that we went through to create that updates. Thanks Kurt. anybody else have a clarifying questions for this first housing related proposal from Aaron and Tara. Alright Erin it sounded like you had at least one more. yeah I got two more for for me and then i'll hand it over to Tara so because looks like we did a lot of great ideas here.

[60:01] So so i'll follow up on kurt's point about other. code changes to incentivize more smaller and more smaller and less expensive units, so we do currently have in our codes and number of our zones. limit the number of units by the open space required per dwelling unit and or by the number of dwelling units allowed per acre. And when I say open space we're not talking about capital O capital S, you know wild lands we're talking about the patios and things like that and outdoor. Space and so, and so what we end up with is a significant limitation on the number of units that encourages say you know 3000 square foot townhouses rather than 1500 square foot 10 houses right and so we're looking for. units that can hit a more attainable price point you know where you don't need as much living space there's a potential, the proposal here would be to shift those regulations from regulating on.

[61:08] open space pregnant drilling it per acre instead just do it based on floor area ratio or something similar. Where it's just you dictate how much building, you can have rather than how many units, you can have and we've seen that, like we varied that for diagonal Plaza last year. Specifically, and changing changing that variable the open space per unit allowed them to bring forward a proposal that had great partnership with boulder housing partners. A great deal of extra affordability, as well as kind of smaller mixed housing types of are all so the desired thing for for this one would be to. pass an ordinance that would change those regulations in those zones. From from the one type of regulation to to the other which, hopefully, could be a pretty targeted thing. I know there are a few zones that would be affected, but I think we have other zones in the city that already do it where it's regulated by floor aeration or something similar, so I think.

[62:07] We already have a model in other zones that works well, so the hope is that we could do a fairly targeted work, effort here to shift from one wave of allowing things to another that would let us get more smaller, less expensive units okay excellent. Council clarifying questions on the second proposal related to housing. it's pretty clear. Okay. All right, do you want to hear from staff Aaron are you think you got to cover because you already talked to her. um well that might be more of a David good question great question great David you want to pop in with an opinion on that. not about whether it's a good idea or not, but anything we need to know in terms of scoping or clarity of the question. I think it's clear I think it's possible and I guess the main thing would be about resources and timing, which has already been stated.

[63:07] Okay, I got I got one more to this would be about removing barriers on accessory dwelling units and some on co OPS as well. So in here the idea would be to be very targeted as we've worked on accessory dwelling units a lot over the years, we did a pretty significant overhaul three and a half years ago, or so. And that was fairly successful we got a fair number of additional at us in the city after that was done, but I think new. New amounts of those of petered out to some extent, after the initial. set of construction, and I will go on a long speech got it I think at us have a lot of benefits in terms of a gentle way of allowing additional people to live in mostly existing construction so um I think they they have pretty broad support, so the idea would be to have. To targeted changes on that, and one of them would be to remove the saturation limit that exists right now.

[64:07] Right now there's a maximum number of at us that can be constructed in like I think it's a 500 foot radius but some number of feet. And that's very hard for staff to administer because they have to do is kind of complicated research and calculations whenever anyone requests that because it's not only just about at us, but any other kind of non conforming like. duplexes where they're not currently loud, or what have you so by making that change we could unlock a significant amount of potential for additional at us, but we would also take a burden off of staff. And we know how badly we need that right now, given the staff constraints and the over overwork that they're experiencing right now so there's that one, and then the other one. would be to say Okay, there are two types of a to use one of them is an internal of the House at you, and one of them is an extra to the House at you. And you know, like so a basement would be an apartment would be an internal one an apartment above the garage would be an extra one well let's say as a separate drives like if you had a.

[65:08] garage next year house for the department, but that's an external ad the proposal there would be to say Okay, you could have one of each if you met all the various. Other document, the requirements for an internal one or an extra one need to do one of each met those requirements, and I think that would also be a fairly targeted code change. wouldn't require an enormous amount of figuring out how that would work that would be pretty straightforward change. But would allow for some additional machine has a potential on on some of our residential lots in town and then i'll just say on co OPS, the that wouldn't be about breaking that. concept wide open and one back to basics on it, but it said that we've heard from. folks who have formed co OPS that some of the licensing requirements are pretty onerous and hard to deal with, so you have to reapply every two years, they have to pay a.

[66:02] Very large fee the the licensing process is fairly extensive outside or the REE REE application, and so the the request, there would be to. Say hey you know what we just do a couple of simple changes and we make it every four years, can we reduce the fee, can we reduce the amount of documentation that's required. To do those and so just to reduce the burden on people who are generally don't have a huge amount of money or huge amount of time and against targeted changes the dental well going back to basics and help we can be done in a fairly short period of time. So that was three things that you presented as one does that mean you were envisioning that as like a bundled code change effort. Potentially I mean, I think I think the Ad use those two changes could absolutely be one ordinance because they're both just changes. To how a day's work. And then I don't know if the The co op thing I don't even know if we need an ordinance change for that they may that may just be rules rather than ordinances so they.

[67:00] might just be something where we gave direction, I know I need to hear from staff what that would entail, but my separate but I think it could be quite small. Question comment. yeah, I just wanted to propose an additional one for the EU. portion I know you know ownership opportunities are one of the things that we're looking to try and create and right now there's. Eight of US aren't allowed to be condo ised so they can't be separately owned. And I think that repealing that. Is a also a fairly minor modification that would allow for. Some of our goals to be met. i'm 100% sure I have never four types of the word condo eyes, so thank you for that opportunity I appreciated that. staff is this David gear question any thoughts about about these items.

[68:00] yeah a few things. I think that. In terms of most of the changes, those are pretty simple, I think that the Co op housing is probably also pretty simple, of course, that's in terms of the drafting, that would be required to make those changes on condos at us, I mean that's a pretty major policy shift. it's, not to say it can't happen, but one of the primary. I guess theoretical underpinnings of at us is that they are accessory to the main household. And that the property is managed as one property as opposed to and then, of course, when you kind of get in this probably more detail than is warranted tonight, but there's also a lot of rules about how the properties are occupied. So it brings those issues into the conversation as well. A bigger left than the other two, as you understand them.

[69:03] Okay excellent yeah. You can just say it and i'll just say that. I know we're going to get to occupancy at some point, but as part of that conversation i'd like to talk about whether we whether we can evaluate or apply occupancy differently to us as well, so i'd like to just point out that'd be a good thing to talk about like subscriptions well okay. So we might solve that challenge challenging opponent of this one in different way, all right anybody else Council any clarifying questions or thoughts on that cluster of ideas they're. Not. call it a cluster I mean. How to go group i'm sorry a group. Oh yeah yeah you know me better than that come on man all right and Aaron, you said that Tara Tara you also have some other items on housing tip visit with us about. Anybody come to some other people too, but i'm excited be good.

[70:01] Okay. that's nice of you. You know I first developed my passion, I don't have a huge amount of passions, but I developed a passion for middle income housing going to actually went door to door. For my campaign, and that was what like six months ago, so to say i'm an expert in housing no that's not true so heather please don't ask me too many questions i'm going to throw them out to the expert. All right. Well, I will tell you that, first of all I want to thank you Aaron for spending so much time explaining i'm still in the learning mode and also learn I really appreciate you guys. Firstly, I want to talk about his team that phase two we got a fair amount of emails about that from the Community as well, since. It is we already did a fair amount of work on that at the initial planning phases are done, I feel like, and so it is Aaron that it will be a great opportunity to think about. T that pace phase two and that it would be zoned for a variety of different types of housing, but especially middle income oriented housing types.

[71:01] It would be a way we have other ideas you know let's say area three or the equal to sub Community plan, but since this already has passed the initial planning phases, this might be faster and the others years out so that's number one that's, all I can tell you. That. would love to hear just a little bit more about given where you are already on TV what's the specific outcome or endpoint you're looking for on this one what's the what's the next big step there. what's the ask coach chain study complete breaking ground what our thoughts their. counsel Aaron anyone. Well, we, it would be kicking off the the phase two of the planning process, so the. Which David knows all about that I started just pop up but we'd be taking that next step in terms of implementing phase two of the T that plan okay. yeah there's a there's an in the plan itself there's a number of steps that are supposed to happen as we move into.

[72:07] Phase two one of the main ones being that we complete phase one. And I think that phase one is pretty much close to being built out so it's probably time to start thinking about opening up phase two. And then the second part of the second big part of pete the tea bag project is there's some studies that need to be done just to ensure that we have the appropriate. capacity with our utilities and transportation systems to accommodate growth in that area i'm guessing you know my guess is is that there is. But but, but the plan does call for that and then there's finally a financial component, because I think that there are some of the public improvements that are anticipated in.

[73:01] Phase two that will require funding beyond what is typically funded by a developer, of course, that beats that's funding that's probably going to be coming from the city. So we will need a funding plan for those public improvements. And then I guess finally to. Terrorists point about middle income, housing, this is not part of the plan, but it's part of perhaps what we think about is that project gets scope is there's a land use planning in that. In that document, it was drafted in 2007. And one of the questions might be. That. that we need to you know, look at the line and use map and that you know, and that would be another task that would be associated with scoping out that project.

[74:00] Okay, so that seemed like a lot of steps so again um maybe Aaron and Tara based on what what David just provided was there a specific. piece of that that you that you're envisioning here um. Is it just start some of those studies, is it figure out the financial plan just did you have a vision it's Okay, if you didn't, but if you did love to hear. My vision is, we have to do so many different things to make a dent in middle income housing so whatever we can start, little by little it's not to get overwhelmed with with it, but just start doing it so as David said we finished off phase one and we start working on phase two. We. have a big speech about the Labor issued about to two times from here. I would just add to that that I think will ask would be to kick off those studies that are necessary to begin the process and then.

[75:03] To come back to counsel with that potential Okay, what are, what are the next steps, as we do those studies, you know, should we revisit revisit the land use map. Much as probably, as you know, and but to just get the process started to do the studies and then come talk to counsel about what the steps are that are going to be involved okay. super helpful, thank you, Nicole question or comment. Yes, I have a question. But I wanted to make sure, is this the are we done with sort of the housing part first, because I have a question for David if if we are done sort of presenting the ideas. you'll get a few more. yeah okay i'm gonna wait. hold that thought all right note lauren question or comment on these. Well i've just heard, and this is related to Steve APP to sort of the financial analysis and things like that. You know I know that the developers that own property in there are really interested in seeing this move forward and have expressed interest in also being willing to put forward some upfront costs, and so I was just wondering if there is.

[76:15] Any way for the city to take advantage of any of that interest. In making in helping this process move forward. So. I think that typically that would be part of the financial plan, and while we did not. When we did phase one we had some we had similar issues that we address during that process. But you know we we basically came up with an internal financing plan, where we were able to do it over to you know able to upfront some of the costs of the improvements and then pay for them over time.

[77:00] If there were other people that would participate in it that would certainly be a possibility. Okay. That question or comment. yeah maybe I think just to maybe clarify and maybe a little more context to it, maybe lauren was saying is. You know from from what some of us have probably gathered those finance resources would be mostly geared towards trying to maybe offer consultants, perhaps to. liberate or or or accompany the limited staff time to kind of get some of those balls rolling so I don't know if that I. don't know if that's that specificity changes, maybe the response, a little bit, but I think that was kind of the direction. That I had heard that they were looking to try to help in some of that jumpstarting is acknowledging staff short resources and Ken consultants twitch they might offer some financial assistance to kick start this and get the ball rolling, a little quicker. Well, I would, I find that in the field of planning that. consultants require an incredible amount of supervision to kind of help me Community objectives.

[78:09] And I think it's frankly much more efficient to have things project managed by a staff member and then, as we develop. discrete. Work items that are able you're able to kind of lop off nicely, I think that that's those are the areas where consultants come in handy so, for example with phase one one area where we were very consultant heavy and implementing TV APP was. Having consultants help us draft the form based code and then you know that's just an example of like a discrete something that you could lop off and. And so, some opportunity to have it may be farther down the line, after staff sort of gets the ball rolling David. Yes, I got it and you know, like I said, I think that as we get as the department.

[79:06] gets resources back online again, I think that we're going to be stepped up, to be able to do this. Okay awesome, mark you like, I have a question or comment. No, I did, but I think David s answered it adequately Thank you. Fantastic thanks Council anything else on TV APP and associated thoughts. David appreciate your opinion that you think y'all can tackle this it's exciting to hear it, yes. awesome care what else you got. I got to mark next one middle income down payment assistance program things to Sam Weaver and Bob gates for bringing this forward, I think, was 2019 and then the voters passed it so that's already a lot that was done, and so, most of the work I think about 80% was already done. So this is why I feel like it is a good idea to continue forward with this.

[80:03] And for anybody need an explanation i'm going to give the Florida bar yay is very wonderful project to explain it further. alright. Thanks sure um so as I mentioned, this was developed in. It was a partnership between us and Weaver and and me and other members of Council and current harbor and his team and a bunch of bankers actually. In and through a series of meetings over months we put together a program. We presented it to the voters, because we wanted to make sure the voters bought in on it as well, and so in November 9 2018 we presented to the voters and. 69% of voters give a thumbs up on that, and so we were already in rare end up running this program and early 2020 and then something really bad happened. And so it got put on the shelf and it has been on the shelf ever since then, and so I think the ask is. to launch the program the program is services not completed, probably at maybe a little bit 90% complete there's still some work to be done. So I don't want to say that we just have to push a button and we're off and running I don't want to get too much into the program, but I just can be real high level view as Aaron pointed out with at us and some of the other projects for housing, there are ways to increase housing.

[81:11] Opportunities without actually building new things. And this is one of them, so the idea is that there are there are Community Members as a cohort in our Community, who are solidly in the middle income. Who are just saving up for that 20% down payment, so they can get that house, maybe the first house or maybe they just moved to boulder but. The goalpost keep moving because they're saving the money, but the House is appreciating faster than they can save and so the idea is that the city would come in. We wouldn't issue, the first mortgages, they would simply get get their first mortgage with the Bank, but we would help them with our down payment, we would loan them, maybe 10 or 15% towards a down payment and we'd be alarmed by the city, be a second mortgage. loan would carry an interest rate, but will not be paid by that owner until that they sold the House three 510 20 years down the road. The interest would simply a crew and then at the end, the the owner would pay it, they would realize the the equity appreciation there.

[82:04] there's there is some plenary funding for this, the city has almost a million dollars in a special account. Dedicated for this type of program and then we also got permission from the voters for the for the city to borrow money and then reload it to people as part of the down payment assistance Program. The best part of the program In addition, the fact that we can get some people into middle income housing that otherwise are renting and not quite saving up their down payment. Is that it would be deed restricted each house that is enrolled in this program would be permanently restricted, not only for. The family that may be moved in first but forever forever in perpetuity, and so the program would have a cumulative effect so let's say that we could put 10 houses in his program the first year. And then maybe in the deep restricted and then another 15 houses, the next year, then another 20 houses, the next year. At the end of that three years there's 45 houses in boulder that have been deed permanently restricted with the depreciation CAP. And so, over time, we will have more and more and more middle income housing that stays attainable to the middle income in our Community, so not only are we helping that first family.

[83:03] we're helping all subsequent families who want to purchase those houses, the idea is is that, over time, we will we will create a solidly middle income set of housing, without building a brand new houses all existing housing. That can be put into this program so that's a description of the program and as Tara said what we're looking for, by way of action is to pick up where we left off right and covered hit and and finish up planning the project in and then launching it. Excellent. Thank you matt question or comment. yeah it's a question about the about this program or do we have any built in sort of metrics to measure success for this program. Really, I mean are we are we measuring on wanting to get 10 houses, a year 2000 a year 50. So i'm trying to just wonder that you know 510 years from now, are we looking back and going is this program meeting the needs that we want and do we want it, then you continue to have the. Staff capacity to manage something that might be going for four or five years just by chance, doing no home to add just trying to wonder where do we throttle and set our expectations on success of allocation of resources and and the program going forward for the want.

[84:09] It there's a question in Korea will correct me if i'm incorrect, but I think that we set for ourselves a relatively modest goal. Of about 20 houses per year that and so you know, at the end of five years, we would have hundred houses and, at the end of 10 years we have 200 houses. And we can compare that to how many thousands of houses are our. part in boulder and how many of those could be deed restricted put them in the middle go, this is not going to solve our middle income problem, this is just one tool until box, this is one thing that we can do. Aaron in Tara mentioned several other things we can do, and I think when it comes to middle income, housing, it really is a shotgun approach, we need to do this thing, and this thing, and this thing, and this is the middle income housing. is adopting assistance is just one way to do that, but I think our hope is over the years we've over a few years we can get a few hundred houses into this program permanently deed restriction. Excellent thanks Bob. Nicole go ahead.

[85:02] I just had a couple more questions about the program, but is it appropriate to ask details about program okay all right. Then a couple of questions I had Bobby mentioned that in this case that the program with loan 10 to 15% toward the down payment is that of the sort of 20% needed for the down payment it's giving people 10 to 15% of that or is it giving 10 to 15% of the down down payment for. The home value right yeah no great clarification, so the idea is we still want the the homebuyer to have some skin in the game so let's say that the houses $500,000. In the bank one 400,000 gifts at 8% so there's 100,000 that that family needs come up with being late loan. 80,000 or 70,000 of that hundred thousand down payment the family was still show up with some some skin in the game. We would loan that money and then that money would accrue interest but there'd be no payment by the family during the time that live in House would only become do plus interest most interest at the time that they chose to sell the House.

[86:03] Okay, thank you and then My other question was just around you mentioned an appreciation CAP is this sort of like the permanently affordable housing where it really can't appreciate more than a certain amount. over time. yeah it is um what what and what we would want to try to do an incorrect remind me of some of the numbers that we tossed around and this and that this program is not finalized by any means, but. What we want to do is, we want to strike a balance on the one hand we want that number behind enough so that that family does realize some equity appreciation right. And so they're motivated to quit and do this but low enough so that would that permit deed restriction that house doesn't maybe appreciate as fast as the market so that. Many, many years down the road you have a whole group of houses that are that are below market that are cheaper than what wherever the market takes our middle income housing. Why don't we have middle income, housing, the more bolder, but what the rest of the housing in boulder and I can talk about the numbers, I think we kick run numbers like five and 6% to kind of strike a balance between letting the homeowner build equity, but also. capturing that. appreciation, so that that would be a House that below market i'm I get the numbers actually correct.

[87:06] yeah I think you are correct Bob and I agree with your sort of description of the of the initiative. And I think Nicole brought up our were things that we were still yet going to to iron out as well and. That sort of the challenges that we had or weren't at the first buyer there at the second buyer and modeling that and understanding what that looks like and that's where we needed, you know help with bankers and that sort of thing. And I also agree with with Bob that. A consultant to help us put this together, would be the way to go. And you know finding the right consultant with this type of expertise it's it's it's it's a relatively.

[88:01] New idea it's not something that we're totally copying from other communities and so it's it it's going to take a little bit of effort to figure out those those details. Excellent Thank you. Nicole, can I can I colloquy on your on what you just mentioned, because I think you said you had a few other questions right. Oh no that was it okay. that's Okay, I appreciate it um it's yeah so my my question is so if they're going to be paying do the interest on the down payment assistance. With at the sale of the House, and then they're already kept on an appreciation that means that that's going to bite on what is our take up what is already have. A pretty small appreciation capital is going to chew that up a bit is my understanding and so i'm trying to wonder how again, even if they take advantage of this, they can still. gain some if they're already losing some of that that. end up that equity at the end when they sell the House because some of that's being chewed up by the interest that's going to grow, but they have to pay back on sale and so i'm just trying to wonder.

[89:06] How do we throttle that and make sure that that difference is substantive enough that even if they embark in this program they're still going to realize enough equity on the back end. To make it financially worthwhile to stay in that House for a decent amount of time, so yeah we're clearly in the weeds and I know it's not done, but those are some of the questions that I think jump in to my quick. yeah and i'll just as a turtle, this is an awfully big, let me just use numbers is to make the point. let's say the appreciation have a 6% and let's say the interest rate on the imputed interest rate on the loan that said he makes his 2% number that 2% is only on that down payment portion right. it's like a 6% of the entire equity Okay, so all of the equity is going up by that amount they're only getting only charged 2% at the end of the. Year ownership on that small amount, plus on top of all that they're paying down their first market right there, making principal and interest payments on their first mortgage so they're building equity in two ways one. Just the appreciation, which is personally below below market but but still substantial and then of course the principal balance is going down the first mortgage which is 80% of the value of the House, and so you can model this out and say.

[90:08] they're doing Okay, they may not do as Okay, as someone who just simply buys a house. In the market at the market rate and sells it at the market rate at the end right they're not going to do, as well as that, but they're going to still do pretty well in for a family that can't ever get that down payment that's better than than being a perpetual renner. Mark did you have a question. No Bob responded as as I would have it's actually a pretty good deal. Because of the fact that the interest is only on that portion of the. Second mortgage amount. That is going to be dwarfed by even at a capital, three, four or 5% appreciation on the total price of the House you're going to dwarf that. it'll be a pretty good deal excellent. Aaron and i'll just note that that we worked through many, many of these questions and issues, and so I think it'd be valuable for folks we could get the memo out from when we were working on this, a few years ago, and I think a lot of these questions will get answered.

[91:14] A lot of thought went into it anyway. Although there is still some work left to be done. Excellent all right anything else on that item. Alright, terrorism, like you have one more. Maybe 10 last one, and this is an APP for Council but it's also an ask for our Community everybody who's listening, who will be listening. So you know, one of my favorite subjects to talk about which I know a lot about is the supply chain, but we also have a very severe Labor shortage in this country, something else that I like to discuss to talk about as you many of you have heard of the great resignation. Right, so my ask is this the city of boulder staff capacity is very stressed, right now, and continues to be reduced, with additional resignations.

[92:03] And I just want to mention that it's not like the Labor shortage in this country is turning around at this point, it is still going on. there's still the great resignation and I don't exactly, no one is going to turn around I don't know that anybody does. So my ask and aaron's ask is, we would like City Council to work together with staff to set up what I would call a queue. Without specific dates and when it comes to housing and then we agree and then let's agree as a Council that we can get to each item in the queue as staff capacity allows, because one thing I don't want to do is stress out. David or stress out Kurt or any of our wonderful staff, any more than they are being stressed. We know and and lauren you mentioned when we talked on the phone today that. That may be in a year, things will turn around but we don't exactly know what things will turn around So that is my ask and i'm wondering if Nicole, but i've talked to her lauren has anything further to say about that.

[93:12] color lauren when anything on that one. that's a great lead into my question that I was saving for the end of all these which has a question, for I think David and maybe Kurt a little bit as well in thinking about you know these things that have just been heard clear we don't have capacity to do them all. i'm so sorry to interrupt you sorry after terror, when I was going to actually call on a on a couple other people to chime in on one on one more thing and sorry that I didn't make that clear. and Neither should we ship ship to that like and then we'll be done thousand discussion. yeah we probably should I mean none of us know what you're going to do so, we I guess We trust you. Okay that's a foolish shows. The one other, one that is both matt and Rachel had ideas around duplexes try plexus that were kind of similar but not identical, and so we didn't want to just lump them into one thing.

[94:08] Because they were sufficient had seven sufficient subtleties to them so just wanted to give each of them, you know, a chance to present what they were thinking. And then that'll wrap up thousands. Great thanks Erin well matt and i've been working hard to try and and you know bridge gaps here anyhow so i'll try and lift up just a. duplex triplex lift that you know we could take you know any or all of it under consideration and matt can chime in but. kind of continuing on with the theme of more attainable housing and purchasing options for more folks in our city. We would propose a change to the code to allow for duplexes triplex is more liberally, for example in our one and and go through the the code and remove current constraints that would block implementation.

[95:02] And anything to add to that basic premise there matt. Going thing I would add, is you know start by just making it available on corner and lots. As just a place to start to measure some impacts and then see if it can expand beyond that, but that would be sort of just my only caveat but keep going. Alright, so corner lots i'd be fine with that and then alternatively, or, in addition to or as part of this, I wanted us to look at the city. And maybe nonprofits to be able to purchase single family homes and convert them to deed restricted duplexes try plexus. As part of an attainable housing program, which is a little bit different than affordable or middle it could be more of a sliding scale. Like with bob's you know description of middle income, it would need to be reasonable appreciation, but remain attainable because right now. There are a lot of people who don't qualify for affordable or middle income, but we still want to make space for them in our city that would include you know just.

[96:05] A wide swath of people that had a million dollar buy in are getting left behind in our city, so I would think as part of this, that if the city. purchases homes that are sort of at the end of their lifespan like mine, which is a you know 1950s home, we could convert them to a triplex day and by selling. A range of purchases, we might be able to just about break even but, in any case, we could create three units that are attainable whether now is one sort of ending its lifespan so. Again, I think that with the This is something that would have been better to start 50 years ago when houses were much more affordable, but with the. million dollar average now, I think that this is a situation where, if we don't get started pretty soon as opposed to cut you know code changes that we could make anytime we will, we will not be able to do it in the future so. I would advocate for for both changing the code for duplexes triplex is but also specifically enabling the city to start purchasing them and and converting them into attainable.

[97:10] And that you disagree with that combo speak now or forever hold your peace. No, I don't see an issue with the combine they may I don't I don't intrinsically see that you know I think part of this is we've been focused on sort of our. You know, control of middle income, housing, either through and inclusion housing modification or specifically deed restriction and I think that by just. plopping what would be inherently intrinsically smaller units amortized over a single property in a single family zone that. Already has high expense, they would be inherently less expensive to buy into, and so we might allow some market forces to. get people into neighborhoods at a much cheaper price than they otherwise would be able to get into neighborhoods this is feeding back into schools and enrollment. I look at my neighborhood in particular it's a it's a big issue, this would be a welcome change for enrollment needs to elementary schools and South boulder.

[98:01] So, so I think there's a lot of ways to sort of come at it from viewed of angles, where we can kind of let people make those decisions for those properties and not feel like the city has to deed restrict or or or dictate the terms on a particular dwelling. So Rachel The first item is is clearly a code change to remove the constraints to try plexus and duplexes i'm wondering if you if you if you have a sense of what is the specific action that's needed by Councillor staff to. What you said was allows the city to purchase single family homes what what what is the gate that needs to be opened or move through to allow. I think it's a program that would need to be created. Okay, great. Thank you lauren thoughts on that. I was just thinking that maybe like To me it seems like both could kind of be a similar thing where it's a condition. In the code like if you meet a particular criteria, you get an you could have the opportunity to add an additional dwelling unit so matt said corner units, I could also see it being.

[99:09] You know, on a bus line because I think there's some you know some residential where the whole street would. make sense, but making it so that these things are the so that we're not just changing the zoning but targeting the changes for transportation basically the kinds of things we're trying to create either. more affordable or sort of slight increases in density and transportation rich areas. Can I just add to that maybe maybe then it could also be a condition that the city can purchase anywhere. So didn't have to be on a transit corridor or a corner lot. Does that present and then combine both of those into one concept which is code change to remove restrictions for all those things and enable the city or are those separate still separate items i'm just trying to get.

[100:04] The get the city, would you know that's a separate consideration, but I think tony's. Point of sort of you know, making changes, where it's allowed one change could be just that the city can do that as as an allowable thing okay. Mark I guess my first question would be do we have a definition of attainable other than cheaper than a house. My other My other concern. would be that this becomes another Martin acres statute, because I don't think you're going to see much of this on maple hill where the the buy in for the House is going to be 1,000,009 to five something like that it's not going to be very attainable housing for anybody. And lastly, I will ask if we've done any kind of financial analysis of what this will get us and where. As I said, it looks to me like it's going to be primarily a Martin acres grass grows kind of program and it's not going to be very applicable to certain areas of the Community.

[101:08] So I it's not that it's a bedroom I like I like Rachel suggestion very much but i'd like to know what we're getting and we ought to know what we're getting. With some degree of financial analysis and look at it and say yeah that's that's what we want let's go. But I start with what is attainable housing is just less than the House. mm hmm okay. would look to anyone who might know the answer to those questions for mark Bob is your answer handle because you know the answer. No, I have a different question. Okay fantastic maybe i'll come to staff, starting with specifically do we have a clear definition and is there any stock research or analysis that y'all have done on this or a somewhat related or similar topic.

[102:02] yeah I go in I don't know if anybody has anything to follow up with when we did the the HR updates. About four years ago. One of the we we did do some financial analysis, one of the things that we looked at was developments had to have at least five or six units before it made it even started to make sense to create an affordable unit. What Councils talking about here is not necessarily creating a deed restricted unit within that development. And i'm not suggesting that either, but we haven't done. Any kind of financial analysis to look at what the outcome of that. sort of code change would be and my assumption is we we'd have to sort of understand the project better in order to do that okay.

[103:04] well. Good different question, maybe you said this, I just missed it. Regional math so I get that the idea of allowing duplexes triplex is maybe on the corners has mastered justin and then maybe broadly um so that all makes a lot of sense to me. What I didn't quite follow is is the reason the city, would be the buyer of these houses that we'd be torn down or the city. The buyer the lads why, why would the city be financially in the middle, is that because we couldn't entice any developer to do this because it doesn't make economic sense for what's the subsidy that city would provide. So just to be clear, these are kind of two we're combining things but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater on mass proposal, which is just playing. Allowing duplexes triplex is in our one so that is one aspect my pitch Bob is also just the city looking at purchasing, because we can sell it then just at a break even price rather than you know, having the market incentive to.

[104:03] make money and profit off of converting homes, and so, hopefully, they would be an unattainable category that we would obviously have to define, I mean I you know I. I can't define what is the proper cut off for attain ability and I think that that would change, you know if our homes are $2 million. A year in 10 years on average, and we want, for you know city staff and nurses and people who are are. You know, a nurse married to a teacher as well beyond the affordable and even middle income qualifications, right now, so i'm just trying to get out in front of creating a sort of. stock of homes in this town that will remain affordable, the more expensive that we get and I don't think that we have much that that gets it that, right now, so. It is just one idea for one way and I think if we started accumulating some and converting we probably figure out the rest, but again it's. it's partly just allowing us to have duplexes triplex is in more places and then partly creating a program for some more attainable and I think you know, I understand that you need five units to break even.

[105:11] When it's affordable, but you know if one of these units could be sold it, you know at a higher rate to somebody who's in a more attainable category, then you could probably break even a little bit more easily and just try plexus at this point. And with your with your view, be that the city would buy these things, create these duplexes try plexus sell them to the families and the city's support would would physically would break even or we were using a city subsidy where we would sell them at lower than the city's cost. Well, I think we'd have to analyze that but I would hope that we could break even. But I don't you know skirt saying we're gonna have to analyze that I understand that this is kind of been done in some other cities that and I think throughout Europe, like they've been buying up. Some property is for you know for the 50 years that we didn't get in front of here, but I think that.

[106:03] it's just worth us at least allowing for the duplex triplex and then considering a program where the city could could help people to afford to be in boulder who can't right now. Great thanks. Rachel is your hand up for that or something else. And that I think it was after that things. are critical matt. Thank you, other um so yeah and I appreciate Rachel drawing some separation between the two because. Yes, there is a different financial component to the program she is totally suggesting that has the city more interconnected with that process beginning middle end. And I think, to the question about what's attainable. I it's totally subjective, so you know at you in a neighborhood where the average home price might be 2 million if you can get into that neighborhood at at at one. yeah that that's attainable because it's more attainable than it previously was so I think so, so I think setting some bar is a totally subjective number.

[107:00] In that sense, and i'm not sure we can technically define that without just being totally subjective and pulling a number, out of a hat so so but but, but the, but the real point is. With regards to to how we do that, you know we already allowed in rl to, and so we already allow it in a low density. residential environment that's just rl too so so this isn't that different really to be honest, when you think about and it's not a huge lift more or less it's not a huge leap from a concept we already do we're just adapting it. In a more restricted sense on lots that typically are already. bigger than their surrounding lots because their corner lots so we're providing that space so, so I think it's a little bit easier and and more straightforward and we can leverage what we've learned from other parts in our Community. To gain that understanding, and so I want to make sure it's not just sort of seen as this sort of one off idea in a silo. Okay. All right, mark. I just want to make clear that.

[108:02] I just want to understand what we're doing and who it's going to benefit We often talk about creating housing for our in commuters is this that or is it going to be, you know. there's no question that $3 million triplex is. are less than a million and a half dollar townhouse, but what is the market we're trying to serve and again i'm I do like rachel's idea, I think, combining that with. Bob and sam's middle income support program could have some very interesting outcomes for us. With regard to its general application I just I just want to know i'm sure the analysis is capable of being done, but as I said, I don't think you're going to see a lot of it in. In ableton Hill and a couple of other areas, and it would be nice if if it was a program of.

[109:06] see what application, if you require one of the triplex units to be. Affordable was subject to Bob and sam's program that would have a great impact on how I view it and you know if the marketplace wants to value the other two units. Higher that that's that's fine I just point out that we're seeing townhouses being created at 1500 square feet that are selling for a million and a half dollars new construction and. That makes me a little bit cautious about whether we're going to get the kinds of benefits that we anticipate from doing this. You know condominiums are now trading at about $1,000 per square foot, are we going to do better with trip lexus or not, and we ought to take a look at it, to see if we're actually going to.

[110:03] make progress and solving the problems that we want to solve. You know city if it owns the unit can do whatever it likes. Private developers who create three units at 1500 square feet if they're charging a million and a half dollars for them. It may be cheaper than the whole House but i'm not sure it's doing anything close to what we desire to achieve and that's really all i'm saying we need to look at it. let's take a couple other comments on this one, and then I think we've got all the ideas on the table go ahead lauren. yeah, so I think, similarly to what mark was talking about um that making sure that what we allow is accomplishing goals that we set forth, I think, is really important um. I don't know I like I like the idea of the city, being the developer, but I don't know that that is necessarily required in my mind, it seems like if we did yeah like allow you know middle income unit to be.

[111:11] Added to what would otherwise be you know it's like you can do a duplex if the secondary unit is. You know, a deed restricted middle income unit that might not be. You know it's probably not going to drive a lot of people to buy land to do that kind of flip, but if you own that property, it might be enough incentive to add that additional unit. And so I think that you know we could sort of gently go into that program by creating some incentives that we might dial up in the future. Okay. Rachel. I think that might be an old hand but I guess, I would also just say that. Just circles back to like we don't have to figure out all the details of any given proposal tonight we just have to figure out do we want to green light this and put it on the work plan and and then we work it out so.

[112:09] That. I think that's right part of why I was giving a little bit more runway on this one is. If, for some of you, the first step to this concept is some additional study and analysis that is a different discrete first ask, then, what do you say we just go and. Change the code and create a program so I heard several different versions of that what I what i've kept on on the sort of the. Working list that i've got going is the code change as one item and the separate thing of creating a new program to allow the city to purchase the things and you all might want to. visit about that later when we see how prioritization shakes out which we'll talk more about later, but David you look like you have questions or comments or other such things. Just one one comment.

[113:00] This will be a very big left. hmm. So I just want to put that out there. I think that, in terms of the ideas that are put out there, that there are probably things that implicate or comprehensive plan, in addition to the regulatory matters which are probably not all that difficult and then you know for kurt's perspective, the programmatic issues as well, so. guys are making the hard decisions. just want to make sure i'm understanding which this you're saying is a big lift, is it the code change to remove the constraints on duplexes and try plexus or is it the creation of the of the city program to buy houses and convert them. All of the above. All of the above okay. yeah. All right, thank you. Thanks yep alright Erin was that all the consultation we want to do before we actually let Nicole, I have her question. we're finally ready for nicole's questions i'm really eager to hear i've been waiting or no. Right she's been so.

[114:00] What is it. You okay it's kind of three questions but they're all really sort of tied together, and so this is a question I think for David and Kurt which is you know thinking about this right, we just heard a lot of things, some of which obviously require more than others. How many could we get done given staffing constraints and everything we have right now. And you know what are what are sort of the scope of things that could be maybe piece together if there's more than one that would be possible, while we're in this rebuilding and recovery phase for staff. So related to that what's going to get us the results fastest right, ultimately, the problem is that we're trying the problem we're trying to solve is that. We don't have enough housing for the folks who are working in our Community and and even some of the folks who are living in our Community already are really struggling. to afford the increase in cost of housing, so what gets us there fastest of these things right, what are there's always low hanging fruit, so you can pick that's going to get you.

[115:02] where you want to go a little faster so i'm wondering about that and then my third question that I am going to keep repeating in every discussion that we have. Is what part of this can counsel do so, I hear that staff is really constrained right we we are here right we're here, not just to dictate work. But to be an active part of the work and to help move things forward for the Community and so. Where can can we legislate solutions in a way that you know, obviously, if we create something new or change something existing it will create some work, but not as much work as it would take if we asked you to do the entire thing. Okay. Bobby have a thought on that, before I. Start checking in with staff on these things. yeah, I just wanted to pile on with Nicole, especially on her last two points I think i'd like to suggest that maybe the first analysis. Of before any of these analyses is are done is exactly what Nicole said, which is which which ones generate.

[116:03] More units faster right because he's also a wonderful programs, we should do we should do everything okay that's great, but you know dumping assistance, maybe that's only 10 units, a year, maybe that's way smaller than. A to us or or or quarter lot try plexus, and so I think i'd like to have staff really go back and say okay there's like. Eight or 10 great ideas there, this is how many units, they would each create per year, or whatever. And I think that would be that would help us with our decision process about what then to put in queue so The second thing I want to agree with Nicole on is. we're here to help I mean this this should be a working bored I mean I know people have day jobs and families and so on, so forth, but but. People on this Council have expertise and experience and knowledge and access resources as well, and so. The things that we're throwing out there it's easy for us to hey do this do this do this throw it back to us ask us to help you if we have areas of expertise.

[117:00] or asked us to bring in people have experts, I know that there's a management test there as well, so i'm not saying it's just as easy as. Until an errand to go off it sounds like aaron's retiring now so yeah. i'm going to go off and do this or or Nicole to do that, or whatever, but please do use us don't be shy we don't don't look at us as like you know, Mr and Mrs Tuesday night I mean we we were here available to seven days a week, so please make us a working bored. mm hmm okay. Go ahead Nicole. I just wanted to follow up on that just just with with one thing Bob related to your first point, which was around sort of the low hanging fruit right things that can get us to results faster. I I often see staff being so careful and so thoughtful in wanting to give us all the information. To help us get to a decision, and I just want to say you know, for me, I recognize that you all are experts in how to do this and i'm not looking for you know, a detailed. Assessment of like this is going to give us this many units, for you know this much time it's really just as the expert, what do you think you know, I just want to hear your opinions, what do you think is going to get us there fastest.

[118:10] In just having sort of that level of information, I feel like would be helpful. I don't need to you know have specific numbers of units or anything like that at all, you know Bob if you feel differently, please feel free to chime in there i'm really just looking for, how can we get to quick solutions for folks in our Community, who are hurting right now. So Nicole, just so I understand it, are you looking for Kurt or David, to give you a response on the fly like right now. I would say if they are comfortable with that that would be wonderful i'd love to hear that if you are not comfortable with that because they know my brain sometimes needs a little more time to process information, I just want to offer offer that to other folks to. matt i'll go to you before I check in with curtain David. yeah just little anecdote from time working on a couple NASA projects was cheap fast good you get to pick two.

[119:09] And so I you know where that applies here is is relevant and so it's which one of those to do we value and which one of those to do we want to have control over okay. Remember that coming up from another Council member some some number of years back, I don't remember which one or what the context was, but I think that's a common refrain Aaron. Nicole those those were excellent questions and great premiums and it was worth waiting for it but, but you know what they're actually was one other thing. Oh, my God. it's but it's an add on it's an add on and I apologize, this was. From talking about the code changes for changing two different ways of calculating the lab number of units that one of the ideas in in lauren's list of other ways to. encourage more housing that's less expensive was to reduce minimum parking requirements.

[120:03] so that you can have more space available for your housing and it costs less because you're not building the expensive parking so I forgot to roll that into that idea, but one credit to learn for that excellent suggestion and. And that that idea that i'm rolling that into is the one about passing your ordinance to change zone requirements regulations from dwelling units to FDR that whole one. that's correct it's like not exactly the same, but but would be. You know. i'm i'm like one of those old late night TV commercials but wait there's more. haha and I thought i'd love to hear curtain david's thoughts. um. So Kurt and David you have been asked a question but also given permission to ponce for a later time if it's more than you want a wing. And so, do you want to roll them dice.

[121:02] I want to roll. Okay hit it. Okay, you get the ginsu knife, if you do that. i'm going to ask you guys, I hope I don't get the knife. So with that said. In terms of like. What I would anticipate in terms of regulatory simplicity. And outcomes in the lower density zones at you reform, and if you wanted to. go towards parking reforms as well. are eminently doable and they can be done in a manner that probably when I say brings the comprehensive plan into call it can probably be done without. Bringing the comprehensive plan into the conversation. The ideas that Aaron was kicking around earlier about.

[122:02] redefining how we calculate density in probably more of our medium and higher density zoning districts. Probably a pretty easy to implement probably a pretty good idea and it's something that we have staff have talked about. You know just in terms of like the changing URBAN, for you know a lot of those types of regulations, I think we're more intended. to result in a suburban outcome, and I think that we're we're moving we're moving away from a suburban outcome, so I think that those two would be. The that would be relatively simple to. implement the stuff on the duplexes and triplex is from the regulatory perspective that's a big project, and I think that if you guys are interested in. You know, pursuing those and there's there's a regulatory component you guys have talked about, I think that that would be mats idea, and then a programmatic one which was rachel's idea.

[123:09] I think it would that would be one where I would ask. That we do some projects scoping before we. really hit the ground running on it. Okay. So Kurt. yeah I would I would definitely agree with with David on on those. The. The recommendations like for the Ad us are things that are in line with with I think what has been thinking about already and. The the middle income downpayment assistance Program. I think that's. If if we do it through a consultant, which we should it's i'm not going to say it's real a relatively light impact on staff, but it is an impact on staff.

[124:09] But it's we would want to lean on the the consultant quite heavily. The. not sure which which other Oh, and then I ah. I think that's a relatively. Significant project I think it's probably a nine to 12 month project, something that could, however, probably begin scoping. and exploring probably later in the year. From, from my perspective, we wouldn't be able to put any time into either one of those two, at least for the first half of the year. curtis checking that on nicole's question of which you think might be most valuable in terms of creating impact for the Community, did you have a thought on that.

[125:03] yeah, so I think the downpayment assistance. I sort of agree with the numbers that bob's put out there, maybe 20 a year, but when we're designing the program We also knew that we just didn't know. And so until we actually get it in place. it's hard to make assumptions about that it's probably i'm going to say it's probably similar impact as far as the number of units for that to at us, however, it's also very different thing that we're accomplishing. than at us. I ah is. will also be impactful. it'd be hard to put a number of units on it, though. But it is, it is really the workhorse of our affordable housing in the city of boulder it's it's one of the oldest in the country it's the most evolved and it's probably one of the most successful.

[126:08] But it's it always has to be our market is changing our housing market is changing, and it has to evolve, along with that so. it's something that we should try to do. It you know it shouldn't be on someone's priority list if we can get to it yeah. My dad when. I just kind of in passing to mention two things. First, you know that we are nearing the end of the folder sub Community planning process, so we are going to be moving into implementation planning. As soon as we're done so that's something that is already on the planning departments work program The second thing is key BAP and at some point. it's that's not on our work plan right now but it's probably something that it's just about time to be on our work plan, and of course we'll look to you for guidance on that.

[127:12] But you know that would probably be something. That you know at the earliest that we would kind of get you know really ramping up on starting to work on that would probably be in the third or fourth quarters, if so, directed by Alex. Thank you, and may I ask one follow up question to both you Kurt and David. Which is you know I know that every every department kind of has its own priorities and you know things it's working on. Can you let us know, so these things that you just described ED reform parking reform, how we define density those those will be relatively easy less that sounds like middle income down payment assistance program includes nary housing. would be relatively significant by card, it sounds like you know it's something that could be started, and you know, maybe the the second half of this year.

[128:09] If you know doing things like that what is that knockout of the stuff that you you're already doing that you wanted to do is the stuff that you know could be added, or is the stuff that will replace things that are already there, and if so, what are. i'm trying to get to a place where you know, is this gonna destroy anything that you all, are working on and your staff are really motivated to do right now. Well, mine can be really fast, because we have so little capacity in the department right now it's a pretty quick description, but right now we have Carl giler who is our code specialist he's working on the stable projects. Presently, the Community benefit site review and there's one other I think he's he's working on one other project that is escaping me at the moment, but you know.

[129:05] So those projects like you know use tables and parking and some of those kind of things. I was talking a little bit with our staff about those like kudos go on the shelf if the Council wants to re prioritize some of that work plan. and, frankly, it might not be a bad idea, given how we are watching the world change in response to the pandemic and it's affecting how, when you land is used how people park all of those things, and it might be not such such a not bad idea to just kind of see how we adapt to the pandemic. So there's that. there's, we have to comprehensive planners right now. One is pretty much tasked full time on finishing up these folders subcommittee plan and then of course her vision is. On.

[130:01] You know the implementation phases, that will. We were intending to start right away, and the other comprehensive plan or there's a number of responsibilities related to the capital improvements program in the budget and. As well as kind of master planning, coordination and so he is pretty much. wrapped up with work right now that you can't not do so that's kind of where we're at, and so, and what our plan is is that we're trying to recruit as quickly as we can, so that we can build back the capacity that we had. You know, prior to the pandemic budget cuts. hurt. yeah so. So i'll say there's nothing that we can really stop doing many things were sort of in the in the middle of it wouldn't make sense to stop them and a number of number of them are just normal.

[131:06] it's just part of our business of what we do every day. And the the incident The other thing that i'll add on to David is that what while staff has reduced work has actually increased the amount of development that's coming through the door right now. Is. Certainly the highest since i've been here, so the works going one way in the staff are going the other and that that's created a lot of challenges. I think, for me, a win for the next six to nine months is to simply be able to keep the doors open on the things that we're doing, and we have about. I would say sort of maybe 18 to 20 staff in in hhs that are sort of operational staff management staff that sort of thing.

[132:02] we've lost about six or seven of those and so we're we're at. You know, at a like a 40% level right now. And we need to, we need to fill those positions and then we're probably going to be asking for a couple additional positions in some areas as well. So. That that's why I think we're asking for a bit of grace on new things for. You know, at least for the first half of the year at a minimum. yeah and I would say did he requests for planning and development services as well we're not done building back just based on what was approved in the 22 budget. Okay. All right, matt has a question or comment and then Aaron. Thanks other, and you know I, I want to absolutely acknowledge.

[133:03] What you said, both Kurt and David and the stresses on both your departments, and I really want to acknowledge that that's difficult and when we get it. You know, and as we talked about you know the question about what are some of the easy things i'm hoping that what's not lost is that scaffolding have. We have also big things that we need to do to reach our goals and how do we not lose sight or lose progress on some of those big and hopefully. Where we settled on here is some easy short to medium a little longer, but not just completely punt on these big things that are going to have big impacts. On housing on affordability on our climate goals on our transportation goals. Because there's so intrinsically all connected and so i'm just hoping that we don't lose sight that we don't just stop the work on those big things that even though might take a while, because of staffing will give us the dividends, that we have been seeking for for so long. I appreciate that man.

[134:01] And and and it's certainly how I have been talking with my staff in terms of like how to approach this year's retreat the priorities of the Council. That you know it's super important we can get it done fast, if you know and then start to work out what those you know goals and objectives are, and you know work the list. Maria you on the same conversation let you jump ahead here for a quick minute. And just quickly because I just want to understand, I want to thank this conversation has been really great and. I know staff has been working hard to sort of put those questions that Nicole has been asking in our mind as well. And what and I just want to make sure to staff to call out because what I think I heard, and I want to clarify with you, David is. As you've been thinking about trade offs it feels like us tables and some of the parking stuff could come off the table to make space for some of these priorities that. Council would like to move forward that's a trade off that you and the team have worked on internally to offer up to create more space right, given our capacity.

[135:09] And then, for you, Kurt what i'm hearing is you've got a lot of stuff that's just ongoing and so. The ability to add on is a little link to staffing up as opposed to those trade off conversations, but really wanted to hone in on, particularly for planning that there is space to have that conversation and say i'll table this for the moment and make space for something new. Sure right. Sure, but, but I want, I want to kind of emphasize that the space is about. got it. yeah so I just wonder if we start moving into or decision making space here. This is what what i've heard from from these ideas that have been brought forward is people have some detailed questions on you know, a couple of them. But I haven't heard anybody say you know what that's the worst idea ever take it off the list immediately.

[136:01] So it seems like there's some interest in in all of them, and you know to terrorists point that she was talking about earlier that either we understand that extremely limited staff capacity. And so maybe it's about setting up that cue that that she was talking about about saying okay let's hear hear our. ideas and things we'd like to pursue let's get them on the list we'll get to them as we can, and hopefully more quickly, over time, as a staff are able to retire and build up capacity again. And then I also heard that an opinion from David and Kurt that there are some reasonably similar impacts that could be achieved in these different programs. And so maybe we we start with a couple of the easier ones, I will say I happen to have proposed a couple of the easier one side I hopefully people don't feel like that self serving me to say that. It might allow us to get a you know, a handful things accomplished well to matt's point.

[137:02] Not not losing the thread of some of these bigger moves right that can be really impactful in our Community and the long term, so don't say well we'll never get to them, you know but but understand that it will take a little bit longer to ramp up and start tackling those issues. mm hmm. So that was the framing I was saying so, what do you think. Well, I want to let nohria jump in here in terms of. What is most helpful, is it to create sort of a running to do list and have sort of as with Tara described as a cue with staff getting to the things as. bandwidth becomes available is it more helpful for you to have Council pick their top couple of two three what what would help you and staff figure out what the work is and where Councils actual priorities are. You know I would say this and and. Because of the current moment that we're in traditionally we pick one of those you know dozen or so priorities, and we can just stick to that.

[138:05] It feels like this year as we're building up to capacity and I don't know if this will bear out, but it could be that some departments build capacity up sooner than others. And then, what would really be helpful, is to know not to have an endless queue right to still stick to those main priorities, but perhaps to start ranking them so that. Certainly we hear from you what's most important, so we know how to fit that in. But it could be that if there's something that is a lower priority and a particular division or particularly part of our staff team. could start to work in that direction, we know what that looks like right, but the reality is that it's going to be a iterative process as we build and what's truly helpful to us are. Those initial priorities, so that we know, this really is critical for you as we go forward and we talked about it, because if the thing that is really critical is the big big lift. And that takes a variety of staff, then we know that's going to take us at least 12 you know 12 months or 15 months or whatever, but if it's a series of.

[139:06] Smaller bite size start a study here do some research here figure out some of the low hanging fruit if there is, if I can say there's ever low hanging fruit on code changes or regulatory changes, and we can jump in and that way. Okay, do you any thoughts on that. I have thoughts on something else on another issue that we didn't bring up as part of the housing. Okay. Rachel. Well, I it seems like junior should pray go first because she that sounds like it should have been brought up earlier, maybe, if something was left out. Yes, the urban baseline studies as part of the or housing priorities we didn't talk to talk about that at all.

[140:02] I think it's a separate thing it's coming up later. That you're talking about planning reserve. Yes, yep that's out that's that got its own special category Judy. Thank you. Thank you. again tomorrow. Yes, yep. I was just going away and, if I understood nerys question or point right, like, I think that the or errands maybe. That we do have to as a Council prioritize and rank because otherwise I think we're we're not doing our job as policymakers, so if we just. You know, say here's a stuff and staff can choose like I think the Community is is expecting that we are are prioritizing what we think is the biggest community needs, so I would not, I think we need to take ownership of that hey. Bob similar different. similar to what both Rachel said and Judy said i'm i'm happy to prioritize and rank and put things in queue and whatever, but I think it's premature to do that now we can certainly give relative. waiting to what we just heard on housing, but we have several things further down the line later today and tomorrow that also affect the departments that we're talking about today, and so I think we need to hear everything.

[141:12] Including the one of the journey raised before we start doing that otherwise we're picking just a subset. Thanks Bob and I got an actual thumbs up not even an e thumbs up from Rachel on that, so I was going to suggest a similar thing particularly. Knowing we're doing jr was headed with with the planning reserve, which is. You have lots of ideas and, as we saw on our color coded idea flipboard right they are there's there's cross implications and lots of sexy ideas and a lot of different departments, so what i've actually been tracking here for you is in a spreadsheet. All the ideas that i've heard and i'm actually going to give it to Chris and Maria to make you know the language actually be smart language and not like random stuff that heather writes down. With the idea that you will then tomorrow be asked to prioritize the things.

[142:00] I haven't I want to see how this conversation shakes out before I give you any more information about what it means to prioritize the things. Because I don't know how many ideas we're going to end up with, and so it might mean. ranking housing things against housing things, or you know homelessness things against homeless things or here's all the things together pick your top 10 I don't know yet. Because I don't know what all what all your homework is. But there is, it would be premature to do it now to bob's point because you haven't heard all the ideas and many of the ideas do have implications for different departments. So make sure yeah, you have the universe of choices before you before you make any is your hand up again, are still about. yep okay cool so so to your point Aaron yes, there will be decision point I think you heard a lot of common themes, I think you have a fair amount of information for when we get to whatever that looks like tomorrow for housing. And what I hope tonight is we'll do the same thing we just did after after a dinner break here. on homelessness and then maybe if we can get to one of those one or two of those other things that would be grand because these are the, these are the big.

[143:07] The big common themes and then some of the ones tomorrow are more discreet items, it seems, and we can tackle them, you know, probably each one of those topics in fewer than a couple hours. So that's that's the vision. What do you think about that Aaron. sounds good. yeah I agree we need to see the whole universe of. Possibilities before that it doesn't. hurt I can't help but notice, you have your hand up was that there. I do, if I could just say one closing comments as well Okay, I do want to thank matt as well, for his comments, I appreciate that. Is. it's a little more color to the conversation as well, what we do everything, what we do every day is departments are actually big things. This year we're going to be doing the planning and designing for the Alpine balsam project which is will be the biggest for housing project, the city has ever done.

[144:08] We just finished the biggest for lousy project, the city has ever done at 30 Pearl. And there's a there's been some great development, you know inner city over the last couple of years we've completed 427 units of affordable housing since code started. wow new units in our city. And I think the way our departments show up every day in the combination of all the all the work is big stuff and just wanted to lay that out there as well, thank you, thanks, Kurt. Great Council we find ourselves at about 630 give or take a couple of to three minutes, there would love to give you an opportunity to stretch your legs grab some dinner, and whatever version of that is for you, as I understand it, staff has provided you gift cards.

[145:00] For whatever you want to spend your dinner on or maybe it's in your kitchen I don't really know something's cooking in my kitchen, I can smell it I literally don't know what it is full of surprises the family. So, given that we have a lot a lot, a lot of work to do, but I also think you'll do a lot, a lot of work better if you're a little bit refreshed I think Aaron, as I understand it would give you five is that right Aaron I just want to be, I just want to be more generous than you. And you seconds. Okay, so great, so how about 10. And it's 10 at 26 So if you would come back at 1036. That would be fantastic 636. that's what I meant 10 minutes at 630 SEC, that would be a really long break and i'm not that Nice fantastic six I can now it's 637 we are officially broken go forth get dinner see in a hot hot 10 minutes dope.

[155:56] hey staff friends. I just opened my email and I didn't realize that God had sent me some slides.

[156:03] That are her homework, so I just folded them to tailor and to Chris I don't know who else would need them if we I can show them, which is fine, but I don't know if you want to show them their do we need them to do it. No, you don't I just assume that you wanted us to share the homework with you. Okay, so we're good. Yes, okay fantastic I had a little panic attack. So everybody, I am here, but I can turn my camera off, while I eat my dinner but i'm President, listening. Okay present and listen. it up. You know all right um so well i'll assume that everyone's here i'm Rachel just yet. Thank you very much, I see everybody else, and they think we're good right. Alright, so. First of all, I just want to give a quick shout out to Tara and Aaron for doing a bang up job gathering some of those thoughts and clarifying and honing them in.

[157:01] That was fantastic and exactly what the dream was so thank you for living the dream. And so, now we come to our conversation about. Again, for those. who are paying attention the same questions that I mentioned earlier, we post. To Nicole and joanie gather what you've heard from your colleagues and from staff and come back. With some refined ideas. So duty and Nicole, how did it go what ideas do you got hit us. All right, I think we did pretty well, we managed to pair everything down into two main ideas so. I just kind of talk through them, and I think, maybe just to to start and preface this the first one that altar all address is a day shelter. And you know in thinking about this, the I was one of the people who proposed. You know, making use of some of the funding that's going to be available later this year to build out some some additional services.

[158:03] And you know, fundamentally, the problem was trying to be solved here was how do we draw people out of. Our parks and other spaces, who are currently unsheltered and using those spaces as kind of a living space. Not having anything else so that's sort of the problem that that this first one is really trying to address also recognizing this as a two year work plan. Not a you know 10 year where we going to be in 10 years but for this for the day shelter the endpoint i'm just going to read this as I wrote it just kind of paint a picture for people of where where we might try to get to. A low barrier day shelter is up and running, that measurably improve as public spaces and the health and well being of those experiencing and shelter homelessness. By drawing people out of encampments creating a welcoming and inclusive space to engage with service providers and providing a single location per service access.

[159:00] The navigation Center builds a sense of healthy Community meets people where they are on their housing journey replaces unproductive habits with productive habits. And those engaging with the day shelter are on a path to housing, so, for example, they are getting maybe diversion services they're getting help with ids they are. Submitting housing or disability medicare medicaid social security applications those kinds of things so that's that's the picture of of what what this is about the specific actions and asks. would be identifying a building for purchase and or renovation and enabling it outfitting up for us as a day services navigation Center for those experiencing unsheltered homelessness. We would need to collaboratively plan programming priorities for the day services navigation Center contracting with vendors and Community providers who can coordinate indoor administer programming to services.

[160:01] Using a group of folks that will talk about in just a moment services would be targeted to create self sufficiency and provide a path to housing. The third thing as third specific action asked here is to identify and secure sustainable funding mechanisms for data Center operations using any are all of. federal funding state funding and potentially fees from service providers, like those who might be using the the Center for reimbursement will work with clients. Where this would sort of hinge on is hiring a facilitator to bring together a group that includes local homelessness services providers. People with lived experience of unsheltered homelessness and boulder and city staff, and they would basically be the ones and kind of leading those in partnership right kind of co creating all these things together, as well as to facilitate Community engagement. So we, the people that we see involved in this and the staff city staff, the facilitator community groups service providers and Council all taking an active role in the engagement process reaching out to Community influencers and stakeholders to try to garner support for this work.

[161:18] And I did make a chart that has a timeline because you know i'm the whole site just thing I do charts, but I have to show it it's basically just kind of mapping out really we see this as kind of being a two year process. to incorporate that part about taking advantage of the state. or funding that's going to be available, I just want to make the distinction, this is not that $20 million that came in this is a new pot of money that's going to be available later this year. that the State legislature we have heard, will be allocating to counties and cities around the state. So there's sort of be a building component of identifying purchasing and renovating the building that really would be spread out over the next.

[162:00] Really, this kind of went all the way from quarter one of this year until quarter three of 2023 the programming component. Would kind of be ongoing starting quarter to potentially have this year and then of course we would need to hire a facilitator and create that working group right away to make this even remotely possible. And the the funding plan kind of generating a plan for funding some of this work, especially some of the physical infrastructure work that would need to happen. would just be need to be time so that it corresponds to the expected availability of state arpa grant opportunities for housing mental health and homelessness services. And the idea would be that service providers would assist in writing applications so they're not everything would be you know dumped on to the city that this would really be a very collaborative process involving a number of folks in the Community.

[163:00] And yeah basically that the program building and. Thinking about how this program I function what really happened in kind of 2022 and then 2023 would be more focused on implementing Community outreach and engagement. Right. Thank you for that let's hear some questions or comments Bob. i'll, thank you for calling God that was that was great and thanks for that well thought out presentation and, of course, this will require a lot of discussion among us that we probably have 1000 questions but i'm just gonna ask one of them right now. And that is, we had a conversation, a few weeks ago about the possibility of doing an overflow shelter which courses night sheltering. It when our shelter or existing older children North boulder can't always shelter folks. So i'm just understand, I want to understand a little bit on the interrelationship between the day shelter that that we're contemplating and the potential for an overflow shelter would this be.

[164:00] Potentially put into service on overflow nights or would that be completely separate and overflow sheltering as a separate discussion independent from a shelter that's I know that. I know I don't get into the weeds a little too much, but that's a kind of big discussion that we already started to have. Right yeah, and so my understanding from talking with Kurt the other day and incorrect, please correct me if i'm misunderstanding something here. There are some additional code requirements for buildings and things for overnight sheltering. You know in in in my sort of ideal world and envisioning us, and I think the way that many of us have talked about it, you know if you have a space that's open during the day and providing services, then. It seems like a logical next step that that space would be available during the night right just thinking about some other ways to. staff that are you know other other vendors and people to kind of get in there and help with that, but gosh it sure would be nice to have you know the other space available and feels a little silly to just let it go to waste overnight when the weather's bad.

[165:03] Thanks to call. I wanted to add to what Nicole. said, there is a difference between a shelter in a like you said Bob an overflow night shelter because it's different programming one is providing nighttime beds, without any type of programming and the other one is the day shelter is not providing. You know beds, but it's providing a different type of service. yep okay that's helpful Rachel question comment. question and I know we haven't heard the second part, yet so kindness is this more on homelessness and coming but um. I think that's true, but in terms of the work group that you're thinking about seating because I think a lot of us do have concerns that are broader than day shelter which i'm very supportive of. But you know, also to bob's point we're looking at over show like overflow I have concerns about you know you can't check into a shelter anywhere after.

[166:02] 7pm there's there's a lot going on in homelessness could this work group be visualized as broader they just coming up with day shelter. Is Part One of my question and then part two, would you visualize, the Council would have it would come back to Council to make sure that whoever we're not on an individual level but sort of as a representative level that we have the right people at the table as a city. Sorry, can you repeat that last one, so I got. yeah well whoever is going to be part of that work group can can we is your vision that that would come back to counsel for approval, not necessarily the. You know, Nicole sphere is going to be on it, but like a representative of Council is going to be on it and then these providers are going to be on it, and you know, like organizational representation people's lived experience representation, so that. And part of why I asked this is because I asked for this at the last retreat that we have a city work group, and I was told. We have that but it turned out, it meant the county one and so i'm very interested in a city based city populated work groups that want to make sure that that would come back to.

[167:05] yeah yeah I mean, I think you know and Judy please you know jump jump in here, as we were talking about it. But yeah I mean that the work group there's already been a Community group working right there are a couple of stories that are just published one just came out in the boulder beat I think today. About a group of service providers who have been thinking about this for us right coming to coming up with some ideas of. What would it look like right if we had some housing focus services that you know we're recognizing that not everybody is quite ready for one reason or another, to go to the shelter. And so you know I envision that kind of being being a group, like that right, that really brings together the service providers, my understanding, this was kind of a first time that. All the service providers in boulder have kind of come together, like this, you know, to really have this conversation and and I think that's just so valuable you know, to have that so you know, in my mind, the way that I think about this and.

[168:02] Is you know this, this is something we're going to be working on for a while, if we're really wanting to put in place some different steps towards solutions right and and. This is sort of a step one of having this you know central location where folks can go to where service providers can. kind of come in meet with our clients that were you know getting a place that is drawing people to the Center because they want to be there right and because there's useful services there that that they're finding and. able to move forward with, but that it doesn't end there right there are other things that go along with it, you know, depending on, for example, I know that. safe parking is something that tab and etc if kind of talked about right it's we've been talking about this for a while. depending on where the building is maybe there's you know parking lot that can be used there for that right for from a safe parking kind of facility to so.

[169:00] I think there's a lot more that could come out of this, but you know, in my mind having a space for people to be during the day, where they can connect to service providers is sort of a ground zero the foundation for this. So I. entered the question so numb and maybe i'll just make a pitch to colleagues. And instead. I think that if we do see to work group, I would like it to come back to counsel, to make sure that that we agree that the rate, you know representation is at the table. And number two I would I would hope that that work group could, if there's a pressing need be looking and weighing in and making recommendations or outside of day shelter. matt what's on your mind. Thanks, and I also just want to start by thinking Nicole and juny because, as someone who had a priority for day sheltering and services, I want to thank you guys for not just. folding that into what you're doing but running with it and providing so much greater thought in context, so thank you for going the extra mile on it.

[170:04] And, and as we talk about a shelter I think it's important for us to remember the cost of not investing in this and and really you know there's a call out to David foreign in. Our libraries are de facto day shelter and that infrastructure and our staff are woefully under equipped. To do the work that's necessary to support our own house, and so I really just want to make sure that the cost of not doing anything isn't nothing, the cost of not doing anything. Is a massive burden on staff and infrastructure that is not prepared for that so, so I think there's a big divide in which we need to cover in order to move services and support for our own House. Not just for them, but away from staff and infrastructure that is already taking an unnecessary burden on that front. Thanks matt. cancel any other questions or comments. So Nicole just wanting to capture this in a relatively short and concise way you had a lot of different ideas that sound like it was a sequence of events, but over all is it is it a fair summary to call this.

[171:12] initiate a two year process for planning and implementation for a day shelter with service provision and then parents are medically some of those other steps is that fair. yeah see all those other steps are really part of that. trying to get to that end point of having a low barrier day shelter up and running go. Okay i'm seeing no other questions now on that one i'd like to hear your second sexy idea. This the second part of our idea is the homelessness tax, which I believe would complement this D shelter, the problem is. No one really knows where all homelessness programming funds are coming from, of course, the CD knows have some idea of where it's coming from but there's no line item in our budget that explain how the city funds for homelessness is being used my colleagues.

[172:06] made a lot of statements right Nicole made a lot of statements about you know future fundings for or day shelter, but really. When you really think about it it's still very much speculative we really don't have this money in our hand. So currently the funds for homelessness services and programs fluctuates and it's unpredictable various city departments also use their resources towards the homelessness issues. So, having a tax can free up funds to allow departments to take care of their own issues also curly hair a document with. me and Rachel that show that the CD spent about 3.2 million on human services that's just a ballpark and housing and shelter service just housing was about over $2 million of that money goes toward a housing.

[173:00] So, placing a measure on the 20 to 2022 ballot to con additional services for those experiencing homelessness would is the ask. and part of the ask, and I think the question that you asked what are some of the some of the actions that need to be taken. It would be to identify an appropriate amount of funding needed for the services identified by service providers around the Community, such as all the different collaborative. Organizations institutions that provide homelessness services around boulder determine attacks read that would be sufficient to find the cause identified and point one right which is. Based on the amount of services that we need, and also, I believe this financial strategy committee can play a role in identifying the top tax rate for a valid measure based on on levy CAP. For hire one or more consultant, who can assist with.

[174:04] staff, we can assist staff in identifying the course of service provision, identifying the tax make as a mechanism for a ballot measure. and also to help do Community outreach and engagement for ballot measure, so I think most of us on Council have seen the process of how it works, how you know items get on the ballot first. We, the financial strategy Committee, I believe we will have a meeting sometimes next month. That will be part of that process as well, so it would be first quarter, we would identify costs identify the tax mechanism mechanism would be next. And also, draft a ballad proposal that would eventually come before Council and also there would be some outreach that would have to be done, I believe, sometimes in August that's what I remember based on as a member of the financial strategy committee and when the.

[175:04] Community and safety tax came before Council. And the endpoint is again attacks that is passed to support ongoing homelessness services. Thank you jeannie we got questions or comments market. Two questions, the first is, you see this more as a sales tax increase or real property tax increase. yeah. I know that sometimes. you've been on Council that we've had this discussion right, whether it should be a sales tax or property tax i'm not. How do I put it, I think I would leave it to this group to decide whether it should be a sales tax, I have my own idea that Community all Community members should participate. I would be open to a sales tax, but I know they are Council members here would say you know we don't want to sell stacks because. it's not equitable, because we know poor people pay more, but we also have tourists who comes to boulder who would contribute to a sales tax.

[176:06] So for me, I think I would prefer to be a cell stats, but I think there are Community there are people on Council who would prefer to be a property tax. Well, my concern there, and if my recollection is correct, I think we get 14 cents on the dollar, with respect to real property tax and so to get enough money to fund this. might require and increase that makes it less likely that the Community will support it. My second question is because we have to go to the Community to support it, do we have a plan B if for any reason, they don't. In terms of funding and then ongoing funding. yeah again, I think, at this moment, you know my console colleague spear just mentioned all these different ways and avenues again that's still very speculative right if we were to go to the voters and they say no well the voters say no.

[177:07] And that's that's a fear response i'm just concerned if we want to do this, and we have an ongoing obligation to do this, we need to make sure we have a funding mechanism to do that and. I like to think that, as a compassionate community, we would support this. But you never know and that's why i'm asking is there a backup financing mechanism. for handling the expenses. Thanks mark. Question or comment. yeah I just have a scoping sitting inside with whether there's a tax, with a property or sales, whether the amount so and so forth, you know all that aside. just have a question for staff and it's really a scoping question. What work would staff have to do to determine if there was incremental money available.

[178:04] What will you do with it and how would you spend it you don't have to answer that question i'm asking you, the scoping question, which is what word, would you have to do. In order to determine whether more money would be a good thing, because I know the moment he sounds like a good thing, but. I know it's more complicated than that because, then you have to figure out how to spend it and then how long is it for and what commitments you're making kind of to mark's point. So it's probably a question for Kurt as much as anybody, you know what what work would you have to do to figure out if you had an incremental 2,000,003 million 5,000,007 million whatever. Whether that was a good thing or bad thing and and how you would spend it because I think we can't really go to the voters for an ask unless we have a pretty well defined description of what the funding would be for, and I know that require a lot of work on your team sport. Thank you, Bob so we did a we did a little bit of that a couple years ago, but was it was for a potential affordable housing. ballot initiative for the county and.

[179:03] That was a That was a few months worth of work, and we also looked at. What could be done with different increments of money, so what kind of projects or outcomes could be done with different different increments of money, I assume you'd want to take a similar approach to this. And I think you're worried that the the county Commissioners are also considering in the for lousy and mental health initiative, so we obviously wouldn't want to compete with that. And then there's a as far as you know, which which tax approach would work. The the pollsters that we've worked with at the county do incredible polling and really ask those questions, and from that polling you get you know pretty clear direction on what.

[180:00] Voters would support. But if I could just take this opportunity to answer judy's question as well. i've got a bit of information on on from a funding standpoint and. Particularly a lot of funding that's really come into homelessness over the last year or so. And I must say we're bringing in resources from the outside, like we've never done before and and pretty much under the banner of hsbc and under that banner $5.65 million worth of vouchers. have brought been brought in about. Three 3 million. Due to the CSC and state programming. The attention homes are together vouchers of 800,000.

[181:01] A few months ago we hsbc was awarded 100 and 814 HP vouchers, which accounted for 1.7 million we got seven batch file vouchers. For veterans hundred and 40,000. And then the county over the last year or so, has put. About 500,000 into coven responses around the. l there and be there. The coven recovery Center. And then 500,000. For staff and phones P P pee testing and shelters rapid rehousing 250,000 and then the city funding because jr was asking that the other day for 2021 was was 6.3 million.

[182:06] But $740,000 for for shelters hundred thousand for be there 300,000 for hotels 921,000 for our city voucher Program. 48,000 for the bridge house rapid rehousing program 200,000 for family assistance, support and then our keep family's house program which you've heard about last year 260 3000. And the home equity, the health equity fund support 980,000 our new Program. 280,000 and we put $2.7 million in in this year for a specific affordable housing program or development which will be housing 40.

[183:00] Previously homeless individuals at 30th of may appleton as well, so it's. I don't want to underestimate the collaboration that's occurred under hsbc and the incredible amount of resources that have come in over the last year and a half. And I just interrupt just just for one second and this actually just a clarification question that I realized i'm a little bit last time here. juny are you talking about the entire suite of homelessness you know services from like you know somebody who might be. sitting with a friend, because they're you know in between rent or something like that versus like people who are on shelter, so I guess my question here is. Is this specifically talking about unsheltered homelessness right which is a section of the larger homelessness picture. Because Kurt the things that you just described we're talking about the large like the full suite of homelessness right and I just wanted to make sure that all of us are on the same page in terms of what what we're talking about here.

[184:07] yeah I think you I appreciate you Nicole paying attention to that as well, and I think you know I appreciate. kurt's comments you know I just think he was going over the gamut of the type of services that he offers, but of course you're right, we were talking about people who are. experiencing chronic homelessness you know people who are on the streets so and i'm sure there are other programming for people who are living with you know other people that's that's something completely different. And I think you know some of the stuff that kurt's talking about right translates to that a bit has certainly you know the voucher program and some of these things are moving people permanent supportive housing and all that. But thank you, I just wanted to make sure, because that Kurt I know you and I were kind of talking across each other, the other day, because you were talking about big homelessness I was talking about unsheltered homelessness so thank you.

[185:02] Thank you for that clarification and Aaron. Thanks so much for that janine is a really well thought thought out and low put together proposal. And I look forward to exploring it and I would have had a number of additional questions, but you laid out a pathway, where the financial strategy committee. would consider the different possibilities and then make a recommendation, along with Community input, I think that sounds like a great approach, because then we can work through the different possibilities also like. salesforce property and how much of attack should be also the exact uses. That and that's probably more of a later Council decision to be made than the financial strategies one, although they interact with each other, but. So I think there'll be lots of great conversations to be had but really support exploring this moving forward with this and then i'll just say, well, I got the floor that similarly. Thank you, Nicole, for your also very well articulated explanation of that previous the day shelter idea which i'm also fully in support of us moving forward with in exploring as you stated.

[186:08] Tara what's on your mind. me there we go. So mark kind of asked my question really honestly we, I support the day shelter, as you know, and so we get started with it, but are you and Nicole and Judy are you saying that you're. intertwining both and it's both do we have any way of having a day shelter without having a tax because there's let's say there's. there's a chance that you know the ballot measure wouldn't go through, so it would make me nervous to wrap those two together, just because you put all this work into our day shelter and then don't have any way to support it so that's my question. yeah. Ladies.

[187:00] You know I appreciate this. Question right Tara and I think you are, you are right to think about this, but again, as I mentioned it's still very much speculative the way we want to fund this particular. You know program we we went tend to get a building right that's gonna. cost us a lot where's that money coming from once we get the building we're going to need staff we go also going to need programming so at the end of the day, this is going to be just a one time setup fee right there will have to be. Sustainable, but what what essentially I want to say is that grant funding is not a sustainable way to fund this particular program right or any type of homelessness programming because. it's it's hard right because this year, you may have, if you have let's say the curt he's he has staff.

[188:03] To help him, you know get that funding right he staff is with him okay he's fully staff. let's say you can apply for $5 million because it's fully staffed well right now we know that he's understaffed and I think he mentioned, he was understand by 20 people. You can chime in curt but imagine that he's some of these you know i'm grant managers or not available or. To apply for these grants let's say now he's probably going to get two to three millions worth of rent is that enough so to me grant funding is just not a way to that is sustainable and I really believe that. Attacks can would be more stable right, because we know we're getting this money every year to fund this for however long. And I just think that's more sustainable and we would know hey here's how much money we have, as opposed to just speculate about how much money we can get from different sources.

[189:02] I guess, my question was is. Not the only option, the tax there is OK. Now I just I wanted to add on to that just a little bit, so this is one of the things that I think in in putting together the day shelter facility that the service providers and that group that we put together to advise how this would work. can really be helpful, because they are the ones who are you know currently providing services and many of them use grants to do that work now already right so. You know even they don't always have completely consistent funding sources for every program that's going on. But I really think you know that this group will be the one to kind of come up with what is that sustainable funding mechanism, but have that be part of. The planning process two year process right, so that we don't end up with you know this building, they know what he can use any money for it anymore right and and you know some of the things there's there's federal funding options from hud through the.

[190:05] emergency service grant yesterday, I think, is the acronym samhsa the Department of Justice all kinds of different places that we may be able to get some funding for their state funding. And then also you know if service providers are coming in to this day facility and using that as a place to make connections with clients they actually get reimbursed for those you know connections and interactions with clients and so you know, can we kind of. Is there can we charge them a fee, for example, you know because we're providing a space for them to come and make those connections and that's feeding their program funding right so. You know, is there is there a kickback or something so I think that there are lots of different options for how we could get to this, but you know, ideally as. This group is talking through what kind of programming would exist in this Center they would also be thinking about how are we funding this in a sustainable way.

[191:07] feel that if you know voters decided, no, no, we don't we don't want to do that. Then, then, then we still have a mechanism, I mean that the nonprofit community that we have here is really strong and they're really committed to trying to address this issue, I think this is a place where we can really lean on existing service providers to help us figure it out. Thanks Nicole Rachel question or comment. um comment, and when I say I completely appreciate genies creativity here and thinking outside the box, but I have like a sort of a philosophical concern and then an alternative. Funding idea so first I think attacks like this would make more sense at the county level, because the county is in charge of hhs, health and housing and human services and health. So I don't think that the county effectively prioritises what Nicole and junior talking about here, which is.

[192:03] supports for people who are homeless and have it one either figuratively or literally the housing lottery, so people who are unsheltered and remain unsheltered. I think that the county should do its part, better and so when we're talking about funding. Today, shelter, I think that money should come from the county because it's county residents who will be attending the day shelter and the county should not stop it, you know, funding the the boulder Shelton shelter. So that's one thing is is I would push it to the county and we did not put the library funding tax or question to voters last year and we basically said, you know kind of wait your turn will get to you. And now I think we'd be crowding the ballot kind of add them again, and if the library measure passes, we should have a bit of a funding of a. Budget windfall that we could divert some of that funding to homelessness if we wanted to use it that way, again, I think that.

[193:02] The county should should be funding, some of these services, better than it is, and not just looking at the affordable housing component of housing, first because housing first still. recognizes that not everybody has housing at that time, and I believe that we shouldn't be the only ones funding that so. I would say, if there were to be attacks, I would rather see it at the county level. But I think that the county probably has the funds and isn't using them in this way and just to those viewers, who are with us tonight, I will just share that. I spoke with a and a previous county Commissioner a couple two years ago, maybe and. They told me that they got exactly zero emails on homelessness a week that it's just not something that the Community is. talking to them about and it this, this is really and i'm not trying to pass the buck, we need to do more as a city on homelessness, but they need to fund it better, as well, so if you care about this topic, I would say, also speak to your Commissioners because they need to step up to thanks.

[194:03] Thanks Rachel matt. Oh Rachel you crushed it because that's largely what it, where I was going to go, so I won't repeat i'll just say did on the county and and and how we march forward with that, so I appreciate your thoughts, the only thing I would maybe add a little different was. Thinking of any tax in not in a silo that we're also going to be considering you know there's been a lot of discussion of increasing minimum wage there's other things that we're looking to fund and the impact that that has on the cost of goods in our Community. And so I just want us to end and also we're still in a pandemic, there are still people also really hurting, and so the timing of attacks may just may not be the best right now. And so I just those things are all considered even property related, I just want us to know that that the economic conditions may not be right for that and be okay with that, but knowing that there are other opportunities to get the money so. So I just want to say thanks for Rachel for saving me some oxygen.

[195:03] Thanks matt mark. I agree with with both Rachel and matt on their comments i'm happy that i'm a member of the financial strategies committee and i'd be happy to take a look at it in the event that the county does not will not act. But there's one question, we have not asked which we have previously asked them of departments and we're imposing a burden on them, we have to ask our finance department. Whether they have the bandwidth for this, we spent a lot of time as Judy well knows a lot of time looking at the. Infrastructure tax and now we're in a obviously a different environment, we need to understand whether our finance department has the the capacity now to take a look at this and. i'm not quite sure who we should address that to mark Kara so if somebody could speak up and let us know.

[196:00] Where they are positioned in terms of taking on this additional work mm hmm. A meanie meanie ladies first. Thanks mark. Mark mark i'll go first and then mark can chime in, I guess, I would say, I mean the budget team is probably the most strapped in 2022 of the different finance teams. They have a lot of really big projects on their plate, and they are hiring as well, but I did see and. The homework that the suggestion that we could possibly hire consultants and I do think that there's potentially the opportunity to hire consultants to supplement the staff to do this work if that was Councils desire and priority but. We share some concerns that have been expressed by many of the Council members with regards to timing and ballot and such as well. Okay, does that cover it, mark you want to add something else.

[197:01] yeah I think we'll know a lot more after February sense will have meetings with Council that both address a potential CAP tax renewal. conversation about the library as well, so I think in terms of understanding what finances capacity is looking like for 2022 will depend on Council discussion and action within that February window. I would like to ask Rachel do you have any indication of when the county will jump or not jump on a countywide tax. on homelessness do you mean I don't think they're even considering i'm just saying I think that's where it would more properly best I do think that there's a. Broader maybe mental health and services tax being looked at and I don't know if some of that could be used for this purpose to okay. Thank you. All right, Nicole. Sorry, having trouble hitting I knew but um yeah, I just wanted to come back to this issue of the county specifically as it relates to.

[198:03] Well, I think all of this, but really the the day the day shelter, just as a really concrete example. So I think you know somebody from the county would really need to be a part of this collaborative group that's working together to create a solution right since for a lot of our services, the funding and things comes from the county level. But I think this is really a place where the city can lead the way right as the the city that kind of provides the shelter services or most of them for boulder. county I think we can really lead the way here right so by initiating some of this initiating a conversation that includes the county I think we can we can. Hopefully serve as a model for kind of how we can do things I will also say this as somebody who has written grants and understands how you. how you can get grants like showing those collaborations like if we would have. Something that was coming together that had all the service providers that had the city that had you know the county behind it.

[199:03] That to me feels like something that would be hard for the state to say no to in terms of getting some of those physical infrastructure and things in place for that so anyway, just to the point. county definitely as a partner here, but both are really kind of driving some of this work, thanks tickle. In Germany yeah Thank you, I just wanted to maybe respond to some of Rachel and matt's concern and I don't disagree with either one of you about your comments. For instance, I understand the library district thing there's gonna be some funds that are free up but i've already heard discussions of how that money will be spent. Either, for instance, that funding will stop completely and maybe some of that money as well, which is about eight. Eight to $10 million will be used, you know, to help support small businesses right and revitalize small businesses.

[200:03] So I just don't know if we can rely on that money itself right and it goes back to exactly again we have to think about long term long range, not just for the moment, again, I think we would hit the same issue that. We have this building, we have funding for this year, do we have funding for the next three 510 years that's something that we would have to think about. The comment that matt made, I completely understand there is a pandemic right and some of the you mentioned cost of goods and all these but, again, we are considering. What would it look like right, what does this tax will look like what is what will be the impact, how much should it be maybe like you said homelessness is something that is important to us. Right protecting communities and not taxing them too much as something that is important to us, but we have to find a balance, we have to find a balance.

[201:04] And that's again, I would say, maybe we should give staff, the opportunity to give us some of these answers, and I think it goes back to exactly what Nicole said. We need to lead the way and if the county want to join us, we should welcome them open arm bring them in if they want to be part of that process let's say. I don't want to add a percentage let's say we decided to come up with a percentage and the county said, you know what we want to add to this. Let them be part of that process but, nonetheless, we can't sit here and wait for them, and I have to say, even before I got on Council before 2019 i've heard of this idea that you know the county has, and I think Rachel you're right. I don't want to see the have done nothing but, but they have. They have not, you know they have not been the driver, we, the city of boulder have been doing so much, and I know that and I understand that, but hey.

[202:04] it's still people who live here in our Community, and we want to do something better, we want to create a Community where. We care for every segment of our Community, and I understand and I don't want to add any more to this comment because I don't want my words used against me but um, but I just think we have a great opportunity. Thank you Jenny Tara one more thought there. Why am I having trouble finding the mute button. I am. struggling tonight I like. it's always, I want to give a shout out to my husband, who made homemade for ios but that's not why I just because the egg comment from last week I didn't want you know I wanted to make sure you knew. he's been redeemed. Anyway, moving on. i'm gonna have to agree with matt here, because this is what worries me, you know I like to talk about what worries me isn't Judy modeling bringing forth attacks idea for mental health.

[203:08] Is she Council people did you hear that, yes, no. yeah yeah. So. I don't want to see a situation where we have that for on the ballot and then we have this and then everybody says no too much factors, so I actually don't. think that this is i'm going to have to agree that I don't actually think this is the right time, I think we should try for the grants and the county. Right now, in history because i'm thinking about the mental health problem, which is so big and we really need that as well that's what i'm going to say about it, thanks for letting me talk, one more time. I want to hear from Rachel and I can't help it observe that aaron's mute has come on and off like four times, which makes me think he has a thought. And then it might add, and then we might want to wrap this up and perhaps we've heard the range of things on this topic go ahead Rachel.

[204:00] And now i'm hoping we get to transportation yet tonight heather so. I think there's a decent chance and it might be a quick discussion just wanted to say, my understanding is that Judy a mobile a has been pitching a countywide texts in keeping with what Tara mentioned but it hasn't believe found purchase yet. Okay, thank you Aaron. was going to speak on that same thing so either there's been a consortium that God has been taking leadership role and looking at. This, this is the, this is the jail tax that the county has that's an expiring at the end of 2024 about the possibility of extending that and repurpose it for mental health support. That would have to be done by the county Commissioners, my understanding is that they're not planning on doing it this year. they're not sure if they would do it next year or maybe it would go all the way into 2024 and they haven't committed to the. purpose of such attacks, so it might or might not happen, and it might or might not be devoted to mental health, so that's on that and i'll just say you know i'm hearing.

[205:00] That diversity of opinions on the question of this particular tax, but also a lot of interest in collaborating with the county. Regardless of how we move forward that could be certainly something that we take away from this discussion. is to have you know, a couple Council members reach out to county Commissioners and say. hey we have a lot of interest in working on this issue we'd love to have it be a collaboration between the city and the county from both a you know funding and a. Programming perspective, now I get we're already part of hsbc right, so a lot of that collaboration second already. But there's an interest in moving it into another phase with maybe some different purposes and approaches, so that could be a takeaway from this is to have a couple of Council members work on that with county Commissioners. Thanks Sarah hi Nicole you started off i'll give you the last word. Thank you appreciate that I just wanted to say I forgot to add here, I promise a word for each one the role for Council. So the role for Council you know, as I see it, and moving forward some of this work.

[206:03] is really to help bring the Community together and get us all moving in the same direction and get alignment in terms of what it is we're trying to achieve right so. You know, really doing some outreach with the Community, you know, trying to help folks understand the, the purpose of this facility, not as a way to. kind of allow people to live in encampments and perpetuity but really as a way to draw people in to get them out of the parks to give them a space to be. during the day, where they're getting connected to services right maybe not all not very first day. But they're coming in they're building trust and they're really getting to a path out of homelessness and I think this really ties into the city and the county strategy. Around how we are moving people into housing right which is ultimately what ends homelessness so I just wanted to make make that point that I think this is really where you know all of us are going out helping get the Community on board with this model right helping to.

[207:06] kind of champion this Center re really making it a Community effort, because this is something that I truly have not talked to a single person living in our Community or working in our Community. Who doesn't care about this issue of unsheltered homelessness so it really feels like a place where we could bring you know, a whole community together as we're we're trying to build this. Excellent. Thanks Nicole. Alright, so Council we did say that it wouldn't just be are assigned pairs to talk about homelessness want to give anybody else a chance to put something on the board, above and beyond what's been said. But if the gals covered it, we can move on. All right, Judy and Nicole Thank you so much that sounds like a lot of work and a lot of thoughtful consideration really appreciate you doing that and bringing it forward. i'm heather we didn't hear from staff on this oh. Did. I say anything i'm just i'm wondering if we want to kind of hear from staff on like.

[208:05] bacon and things are you know, Maria. I was hoping that, if they had questions they would jump in sometimes they do, but staff. Did you want to share any perspectives, above and beyond what's already been shared. Just a quick, you know I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the initiatives brought forward, it seems to me that. Kurt has weighed in on the possibility of a shelter and what that would take so we can certainly consider that my understanding on the homelessness tax, if that is something that Council wants to take up is that it is doable we may hire. outside consultants to do it will know more on February 8 two with fs with the Council when we have some more conversation about. Our finances and about what that looks like and certainly it will depend on the outcome of conversations, but it will be at least the exploration of that with the other text measures and considerations will be at least a few months.

[209:04] And we will have to engage in our usual pollsters and consultants and so forth, and so we will wait to see what the outcome of Council prioritization is right. Thanks Maria i'd be inclined to move on, but it could I noticed that your camera came on. Your coping move on. i'm cool to move on, I don't have anything beyond what Maria to provide Thank you. Thank you, Sir, all right now, this is going to be a fun game, we technically have 30 more minutes and Rachel alluded to the fact that transit and bikes and bmt things could be done quickly Bob also sent me a message similarly about occupancy and so eeny meeny miny moe. Rachel I raise your hand your volunteer to go first. Well i'm volunteering and also like matt mentioned earlier i'm a night owl I would much rather presented 730 then at 8am i'm being honest here Bob you're a morning person we have this.

[210:06] You know I don't care when I present I was gonna suggest i'm a morning person so i'd be happy to start at 630 tomorrow morning, but that would be voted down pretty robustly so. But I don't care, who goes, if we do transportation now, and I can see tomorrow, I was just offering that I think I can do occupancy and probably 20 minutes, or so I suspect transportation will take an hour or so, but if people find going late i'm okay. Oh challenge Oh, he just threw down the gauntlet girl oh excuse like challenge accepted all right let's get after and see what happens. Bob you can be the first 41 tomorrow morning. Rachel. And we can also cut it off and a half hour and pick it back up in the morning with matt doing all the talking so matt and I were assigned this section, and we have slides So are we ready for the slides to be matt. Taylor is going to activate the slides for us. hey everyone Pam Davis your feelers getting right back in the meeting her computer booted out she will share it momentarily.

[211:06] i'm happy, I mean if you give me share permission I can throw my PowerPoint or right up in the mix, but if it's just if it's just a minute or two, we can wait for Taylor. And just start black, so I think we're good to go. just talking, while we. Besides come up there is because taylor's amazing. She is. All right. matt you want to kick us off with the acronym I know you have a dad joke here. I know it well, I appreciate every day. No, no dad joke here i'm just hijacking our for. our beloved former President Obama by saying yes, we can fight actually investing in a core arterial network and really this involves you know, do you want me to keep going, are you I just me introduce the title, the original. You doing great stay with it. um and so, you know as much as it's quippy it's also aspirational and pragmatic in we really can do this and.

[212:06] You know what we're looking for is really just propose that we shift some of our priorities, a little bit to really enable us to to unleash some some meaningful investments. Not just in the current but for for before down the road with regards to bike pedestrian and bike safety improvements. And, and you know really what it starts with is is this map here, which you know, want to give great credit to our tab Member Alex weinberg for for helping prepare this and it's really based on existing material that the transportation staff and has put together. With regards to you know low stress. Network and a bunch of other assets and it really just lays out a two phase plan of starting with these green dots and eventually migrating to sort of the yellow dots and yellow stuff about how we can make these investments in a coordinated. fashion and so it's really focusing on core arterial networks. And the main thrust of that is because that's where 65% of our crashes occur and so really thinking about how do we make right on some of our vision zero.

[213:06] It really is going after the meat of where those crashes occur while providing great movement and great flexibility for Community to move through our through town in a multimodal fashion. So what does that include that includes you know broadway dedicated bustling you'll see that in the red down below we know that's a main artery and there's definitely some improvements to be had. If you'll see in the legend what they different pieces represent, but a lot of those circles, representing those conflict areas that I think are important. to recognize there it's also talking about baseline protected bike lanes between 30th and foothills there is a repaving effort that is in the queue so it makes sense to build that in as well. And then certainly talking about iris 30th street and protected bike lanes that may also be a conversation with Dr cobb. And leveraging some of our funds and matching funds with with. That large infrastructure money that's out there. And then certainly talking about Colorado avenue and the bus priority of protected bike lanes there, and not forgetting gun barrel, who has it has been somewhat neglected over the years in terms of.

[214:07] Developing that that Nice conductivity and understanding also that there's conversation of building that 119 stretch. as well, so this is really starting to put meat behind the commitment. To reduce bmt to really be true to sort of reducing greenhouse gases, improving air quality and really trying to strike a greater balance between where we put our infrastructure for cars in where we allow people to make a. Safe and informed decision decision to choose an alternative. To driving throughout our Community and so that's really what the proposal is is how do we prioritizing those actions, along with perhaps some study and some ideas on on where we can move some some staffing around, so I think we'll go to the next slide and let Rachel take over. And I don't think I heard you mentioned as matt but right now we have 1.5 miles of protected.

[215:01] bike lanes in the city and this proposal would add another about eight or eight and a half miles of protected bike lanes so that's an increase of like a factor of five if we. Complete I believe all the the green dots and yellow dots that are on this map. So it would be a pretty transformative thing to shift some resources to focusing on this core arterial network, rather than. What we're doing right now, which is more neighborhood where the streets are residential and 20 is plenty because as matt mentioned. 65% of our accidents happen of our serious accidents happen on these articles, but they're only 16% of our roadways so they account for a very outsized portion. of our dangerous accidents so under can, yes, we can, additionally, you know we're going to look at doing those green dots and in the yellow dots we want to study something so that the parts of the map that are. So small here, but that have the yellow dots it's folsom street we're looking at protected bike lanes there and then North 30th and East Pearl street quarters, and then they.

[216:08] doing a study on the downtown might on downtown multi modal place making, and let me explain those a little bit more so for folsom. You were saying it we're talking about protected bike lanes there again but we're saying let's let's do it right, this time, so force himself of pine is already slated to be surfaced and that presents a really good opportunity to improve bicycle safety as we go. And then, if necessary, we could also take a vehicle lane, you know, please just work with us here, and considering it as part of a steady. And repurpose it to provide safe mobility for all users in terms of the north 30th and East Pearl street corridors and the existing quarter study that we did for 30th street stops short of Pearl so. From walnut to diagonal there's a lot of multifamily housing and you know a lot of destinations, as well as the boulder junction transit Center so we went to.

[217:06] To be able to get grant funding for this segment, we need to conduct a quarter steady, in all likelihood, so. we're proposing that as well, and then to the left, you know kind of that boxed in area of yellow is the downtown multimodal and place making steady, we are proposing so. In conjunction with what I think we'll get to tomorrow, which would be the decision to permanently closed West Pearl to vehicle traffic. We could consider pedestrian rising portions of East Pearl and the the civic area East book end both of those could be. pedestrian ised and we can look at the 1313 neighborhood green street between downtown and civic area. rtmp already calls for protected bike lanes 11th 15th walnut and pine but none of them exist today, so we just have to look at all those and they're so connected that studying them independently doesn't really make sense, so we're suggesting just a complete study of that whole section.

[218:07] matt you want to go into a matching funds or, should I continue. Oh. i'll finish this out i'll finish this slide. Okay. So for funding, we can look at Dr colleague opportunities and that allows us to leverage local funds and then we've talked a lot about staff. Capacity issues so we're recommending that we could modify and free up some staff time and a couple ways so number one. We could delay the work on the next transportation master plan we just adopted one in right now, they are on five year cycles, so that is there's some pre work that's expected to start and soak up some staff time starting this year or next year and so we're saying just. pause the next tmp we don't think that we need a new one, we need to accomplish with already on that last one before we dig into more steady.

[219:02] Number two we put a lot of resources, right now, and a lot of staff time into some neighborhood treatments so we've got the neighborhood speed management Program. Green streets and and something called Vision Zero innovation and that last one particularly has like you know staff staff will spend two weeks on a pretty. Low yield treatment for a particular street where where it's already 20 is plenty and it just absorbed an outsized share of staff time and in terms of like bang, for your buck. And then last thing we would recommend that staff really leverage the consultants, as well as our members of tab to innovate here as we've seen from this map which is awesome and Alex manheimer as matt said just invented it for us for free two nights ago and it's it's a it's a remarkably. Detailed and and effective map and and again just to reiterate what matt pointed out, like all of the areas that look like bull's eyes on there, those are spots where we have according to our safer streets reports.

[220:08] A lot of serious vehicle accidents, so, while we're in there, doing this, we can also make the changes that we need to crosswalks and lights and. curbs and things like that, so we could really energize with the the overlay and where the serious accidents happening, where we're talking about bike lane improvements on these core arterial network pans over to you I think matt. Our next slide there Taylor, please. Alright, so continuing with yes, we can um he's really focusing on well how do we do that and, and so what we have is it really kind of a suggested. process and timeline and i'll just connect back with Nicole, I know, with with her work in science timelines and process are really a key I lived in that world myself.

[221:06] We didn't just get to Mars whenever we had actually a timeline to do that. So you know, so what we have you're starting phase one in q1 of 2022. But you know just, I think, maybe it's worth noting, not every part of that first phase will be happening in in in exact cadence with each other right so so these things will be staggered but. But we will be starting work on some of these items in Phase one and we'll start some of that planning, which will take two to three months do some public outreach two to three months. Really, remembering that for public outreach here it's the quality, not the quantity of the outreach that we're that we're aiming for. And then really looking at beginning construction in q1 of 2023 again, not everything all at once, but some of these will begin that construction phase really a year from now. And, and in all of this, as we sort of finish up it's worth again looking at the opportunity costs. And, and you know we you know we there was a study shared with with city staff and Council, I think we might have been last year.

[222:06] This is, you know, really, the cost of not acting and not and not investing now is that you know we basically. will have severe injuries and fatal crashes that have been costing boulder and estimated $7 million between 2013 and 2020. And so, by showing this up, we can actually make some great savings here, so this is where the opportunity cost, I think, is. really important for us to look at of what not investing in this does because we're going to be spending this money, no matter what, so we might as well be spending it in saving lives in the infrastructure that sets us up for success in the future. And, and so I just want to pause and let you know that this is the end of sort of the protected bike lanes and really trained and that specific of multi modal part of the presentation. We do have an extra slide that's going to talk about our colleague lauren's ideas. With regards to to transportation, and so I don't know if it's since, since this is sort of early plan one if we want to pause and talk about this.

[223:03] or also you know lay out some of lauren's ideas and then talk about them all together, I kind of want to turn it back to heather to see where where you have your preference I see here and stand up as well, so. I think that's a questions or comments on this one, and then we'll hear the next one. orange go ahead. Well, thanks, very much to both of you, and to Alex is phenomenal This is very high quality, professional work here. With a really fantastic vision so i'm excited about this, I think provides some some things to really look forward to so just to just a couple of comments here. um so I these generally look like fantastic core doors and directions to be working on and to move into, and I just wondering if there might be a couple of other. Things to add to it, maybe check in with city staff because, like one thing that occurs to me is we're working on bus rapid transit on highway 119 too long, all right you've got that bus way that's that's implementing that.

[224:03] and the next one is the state highway seven at least arapahoe we have that steady there eventually we're going to be working on those better bus facilities on those. Both of those would then need to feed West into downtown and at some point we got a we got to implement some better bus connections from from those emerging brt quarters into downtown so you know something like this i'd like I get I agree that we should start on it soon, but. This kind of thing stuff takes quite a while to finish it's going to be fairly long term so to get all of it done so, think about maybe, adding that in. And then check in with staff if maybe they have ideas on a couple of other if there any others that might be really good to add into this this network that you're talking about. And then, just one I thought your ideas on saving staff time and some money we're generally good ones I just put in a plug for the to not completely derailed the neighborhood green streets.

[225:06] Because while those those green streets are not areas generally where a lot of crashes happen is like the idea behind them is that is you give people a real clear route to go on. for cyclists and pedestrians that are off the main arterial is where the accidents do happen and so to the extent that you're able to. To make way finding easier and the infrastructure little easier on the screen streets, it does get people out of some of the conflict zones, all these major materials with accidents do happen, so I think that's that's worth. Keeping that on trap in the initiative so that's it thanks again thanks. mark. Now, I think this is a terrific presentation and that addresses both what you want to do and what the trade offs are for what you want to do, and I think that's that's really important.

[226:00] I would like staff to weigh in to say you know all the things we're not going to do or put aside, will they. be satisfactory to permit full attention to this, but I think this is a great proposal. i'm assuming these bike lanes will also be eligible for whatever funds we receive under the infrastructure bill, the Federal infrastructure bill. And so, this is, this is really well thought out and would be useful for this Community, and I think we should do it, I am happy to accommodate our request for green streets if we can, but this to me is is to be a very high priority and. I look forward to seeing and implemented fantastic thanks mark. Maria love to hear a staff perspective on this there's some very specific timelines here some very specific suggestions for trade offs. plus a rather thoughtful proposal any considerations, this time.

[227:04] I will, and I wonder to counsel if you'd like us to bring down the slide so we can see each other or do you still need it out. I have one more in a minute. got it well at some point i'll um i'll let Eric I think it's also very thoughtful and appreciate the information brought forth but i'll let Erica brandon brand sort of directly speak to it. Thanks Erica. Thank you very much, and so I guess a couple things to say, first of all I. Also, as you have wanted very much thank Alex wine hammer for putting this together, and in terms of the graph and so forth, and also thank you counsel for your thoughtful reflective miss on this. It provides focus the provides definition and it offers can to the Community, and so I appreciate all those things and I definitely appreciate the you know acronym.

[228:00] I think the most important thing for me to say about this is that, in order to accomplish all the things that you've identified every here. It is a question of trade offs as the slides have I have indicated as you've indicated in your slides. And in order for us to do this, all on, we would need to make the kinds of trade offs that you have identified for us to maintain the green streets, we would either need to. Take something off of this or add additional staff to be able to accommodate that and so just wanted to give you, you know that heads up but beyond that I just want to say thank you, I think that this is a wonderful conversation that you're having. Rachel. yeah thanks for that Erica and I just wanted to add that i'm matt and I did check out my staff, I spoke with Eric yesterday and and with a lot of tag members and. And there was pretty universal support for this notion, both from what we picked up from staff and from tab so.

[229:01] I understand that the trade offs are nobody wants to to leitner or loosen anything but from the staff perspective, it sounds like. What we're doing right now with the neighborhood streets is very staff intensive and it sounds like maybe this is a welcome direction so if I misunderstood that Erica, please let me know, but that was that was also a part that was exciting for me to hear you. Thank you very much for that, I think that it's the truth, we are passionate about that also but you know, again, it is very stuff intensive and resource intensive in that way. Okay, thank you. So Rachel before you move on to the next one just want to make sure i've captured this right in my idea sheet here is it Okay, if I have launched the core arterial network planning process for protected bike lanes as the thing. I hope you're going to put can in quotes because we're really trying to sell an African you can really you know think into for decades to come. Through and and, yes, we can will, I have no marketing experts, so I hope whoever's in charge of marketing at the city and stuff can run with this, I think it's awesome, but I also yeah i'm a little biased but anyway.

[230:06] And then. Maybe. Give us a shout out and say hey you're ripping my thought here. matt and I did not come up with the acronym we just like it so credit I probably back to Alex or Ryan shoe hard or somebody from tab for that well. agree all right side, unless you said you had one more map. Yes, we did. Oh. Oh i'll do this one, I think it's my turn, but I also want to invite lauren lauren folks this is your idea so happy to have you pitch it if you'd like otherwise I will do so. hearing nothing i'm just going to start and then. Great. Right. Sure yeah thanks for making a slide you guys. and giving me great bullet points so um. You know I think every.

[231:02] during election cycles often this sort of free bus pass or like city wide free bus comes up every year. I think. You know, not only does that make. Bus writing a lot more accessible easier faster, because you don't know you know, and you don't have to deal with finding the change dealing with you know everyone paying. But we also have a lot of local you know ego past programs in the neighborhood he feel past programs that are. require a lot of time and energy from our Community. and have some various issues, so I would really love to implement a citywide free bus, you know there's this past study that was done, and so I think the first portion of that would be looking at this existing study to see if it's.

[232:06] If it's easy to update or could reasonably be updated to reflect current conditions. At that time, I think there was an estimate of about $10 million for be for the cost that the city would have to pay our TV to implement that kind of service. So it would be great to have to you know, have a city review that and look at. What it would take to update that and then have sort of a study session on how we can improve the bus service in boulder and ask our TD, to be present. In order to pay for it i'd also like to request. A study on city wide parking management to.

[233:01] To pay for the program I think that. That has a lot of benefits beyond. Beyond the bus service there's also the ability to that as we increase look at increasing density throughout the city on reducing parking requirements that we would have the ability to manage parking in our Community and therefore take away some of the. concerns that often pop up around sort of that increase density so. yeah I know that Rachel and matt you guys also like thought about this a little bit more i'm not sure if i'm missing anything, or if you'd like to add anything to sort of what you came up with, as you guys thought about this to. Rachel mad at you know I mean I learned, it was just you know I, it is part of the you know the conversation try to digest and place those thoughts back on paper as best as we can in order to capture your thoughts in your brilliance on this particular issue.

[234:07] So yeah so that that's what we got there, so I hope we did you justice. on putting that out there that that's our hope, but it is a game of telephone so i'm white chicken can turn into three legged stool pretty easily. Hope you like this slide I think you knocked it out of the park with your description, so I will not try and add to your genius. Council members any clarifying questions or thoughts on this proposal. OK, I see no shaking heads Erica did you want to share some thoughts. I thank you very much, I just had to very brief thoughts, first in terms of in terms of the actual study that was done before, to be able to look at this. You know, in a little bit more in depth, we would need to refine and change some of the. I guess look at re analyze some things that are in that study, and the reason why is that our transit landscape has changed significantly since when it's done so.

[235:06] coven brought about significant reductions in our transit service to our Community, and the current proposal that already has out right now five years from now on, would only bring back 85% of the 2019 levels of service and of that. That doesn't mean that boulder would receive 85% of what it formerly had some significantly less than that so that's one thing in order for a. Free ECO pass to work for everyone, we actually need to help the transit service so that's one of the challenges. And I think you know with regard to you know other things I, we would also need to have some additional staff support because we've been running. very strong, to be able to get the hop service, you know, to make sure that that's operating effectively and efficiently in the in the city, as well as using the electric buses for that so just want to let you know that, but we are here to.

[236:10] help. Erica you muted yourself right in the middle of your last thought there. And thank you. Maria just real quick thoughts from you on this and then i'll go to mark. I think Erica spoke to most of that slide and appreciate. her expertise and looking at that I will note on that last note about transferring one division of a city to another division that I will certainly take that into stride we are looking at CV in different ways, right now, but. Certainly, as we look to that and look at some of the information on the Tipton report we will be again we hear you we will take that into consideration, but that is certainly something that will live with us on the operational side excellent. thanks for that area and mark question or comment.

[237:01] yeah I was going to express a little concern with the transfer responsibility away from Community vitality. In one of their obligations is to understand and promote. The needs of small businesses, and I would not want to see that focus last. Through what a transfer doesn't mean I couldn't couldn't do it, but I want to look at that pretty closely before we didn't do it. So matt love to hear the thinking behind this if you if you have some to share. yeah you know with regards to you know that that sort of transference from Community vitality to transportation it comes from a few notes one that's that's That was a previous recommendation from tab. At a previous retreat, so this isn't a new idea it's been noodles been thought of.

[238:00] And, and so so there's that so this isn't just just coming out of out of left field and the other facet here is is thinking about what are the larger, more comprehensive goals. And when you think about climate really driving so much of what we do and transit being such a fundamental part of our greenhouse gas emissions. With vm vehicle miles traveled and our clean air, it seems a little disconnected that transportation. Is is make as many ways overseeing the entire movement of a vehicle up until it goes into park and so much of our parking is intrinsically. interfering with a lot of our abilities to think forward on climate to reduce our dependency on vehicles and find some of those more creative solutions to vehicle miles traveled. I mean it's almost like we've institutionalized high viscosity with regards to where the car ends up. And so I think it's important for us to maybe think about that holistically and allowing one department to see the entire movement of a vehicle from beginning to end, and then and then out again.

[239:04] And if I can come up with a question, I understand, this is a recommendation by tab is it supported by Community vitality. These are the questions so i'm happy to hear from Nicole by Council I just encourage you to maybe let this one lie, this is awfully operational. understanding how it doesn't influence and impact goal setting and priority setting, which is certainly the governance role of Council it does, it might be a little bit odd for us to spend a whole lot of time debating it here, Nicole. Thank you, I just wanted to make a point you know I know we talked about public safety in different contexts in various ways. What I just want to bring up from kind of my neuroscience background, there is a lot of research that starting to happen and emerge about the negative effects of air pollution on brain development. And the ways that leaves children especially. and adolescents vulnerable to cognitive deficits other neurocognitive issues.

[240:05] In you know so me as i'm thinking about this plan to expand our bike system and also thinking just about the potential reductions and emissions and things like that that add to the collective safety of our Community so anyway, thank you for lifting up this this proposal. Thanks Nicole. So matt and and Rachel and lauren just the way that I captured this item broadly on my sheet is just implement citywide bus pass is that a fair little snapshot on or do you want me to have different words there it doesn't have a sexy acronym. that's lacking and i'm sorry for that it seems like the word parking should be in there, too, but I defer to lauren on that aspect it's more years, but I think that city by buses doesn't quite captured a party. yeah Thank you Rachel I agree. Okay, and i'm adding an party all right now.

[241:03] I do think we need to take a minute and give this team a shout out because a. That was awful work, but more importantly. Rachel picked up the challenge that Bob laid down and got it done like that was pretty amazing so wow a team of late team of ladies and matt Well done, thank you very much, Bob are you going to about the about the toxins back right here. No i'll take it offline with Rachel but before we move off of transportation, this is the seventh retreat that Aaron and I have attended and I would be remiss if I didn't say for the seventh year in a row, something that intimately related to transportation and that's the word gondola. Oh, I knew was going somewhere. That could have been a long game drinking game. i'd say the whole Community just took a shot. On their board. I want to know in Twitter who just one Bingo by by that one who just one bigger.

[242:05] I heard the odds were for too long. and counsel. Thank you so much for a. really great conversation with really focused thoughtful ideas, I can tell that you did I just absolute bunch of bunch of work after I sent you my little email assignment and I just could not be more impressed with where we got tonight, thank you, thank you. So, tomorrow we start promptly at 8am with Bob gates who's got some ideas on occupancy and then away we go with the rest of our list and. Again we don't have teams on all the things so we'll get through the items where we have teams and then we will get after the rest of our ideas. But again, if you're going to pitch on some of those other topics really hope that you'll take the lessons from these teams focus ideas really clear, concise items, with a with a definitive end point.

[243:04] Because that is helping us understand what the ask is, and it will help you all prioritize the things against each other when we get to that tomorrow, so I am prepared to adjourn and less first Doria you have anything for a Council before we break. asleep just to thank you, we know that staff certainly is really invested in trying to get some of these ideas moving forward, and I hope you really hear us when we say that. And I just so appreciate y'all taking the time to chat amongst yourselves and really sort of help us lift in phases, what we can move forward in these. Really, unique and challenging time so just thank you. Excellent thanks Donna and Aaron Mr Mayor anything Africans before we let them go go to bed. No, no, not at all thanks, except to heather thanks to you for yet another excellently run retreat segment. My pleasure Aaron and Stephen did you have a thing before we set them loose.

[244:01] Because you had one up. he's like oh no I didn't mean to do that that was fine okay great. well. yep can do what I realized no there's another extremely important, thank you, which is to all of our amazing staff members who are spent Friday evening with us tonight. and have had such great responses and just i'm just incredibly grateful for the collaboration that we have and so thank you from the bottom my heart and i'll see you again tomorrow. Excellent Thank you Aaron staff same. And you got a shout out, also in the chat. wonderful conversation tonight friends go do whatever needs to do, and we will see you probably at 8am and with coffee tea whatever is your jam in your hand we're going to get after it right away, no lead up 8am it starts there'll be like. good night.