January 18, 2022 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music] gonna kick us off and then hand it over yes I well I my understanding was that I was going to do the regular agenda Parts like the open comment and such and then I would hand it over to you for the discussion of the retreat sounds perfect is that right n that is right thank you Aaron veryy good so sit tight for a few minutes Heather and we'll we'll get you in before too long probably more than a few minutes yeah like at least an hour we have eight people signed up for open comment so actually not an hour probably maybe more like 30 45 and Heather if you prefer we can tag you or text you um so you're not waiting but whatever your pleasure is I will probably go off camera while you're doing that work but listen along so that I'm ready to go when you're ready to go appreciate you

[1:01] okay well juny uh texted me earlier to say that uh she would need to have her camera off tonight but I do see that she is at the meeting so I think that gets us to all of our Council memb so he City 00 so can we get started let's go ahead and confirm Channel 8 Emily or Ryan I just confirmed Channel 8 is good to go okay and then I'll begin recording okay I see juny has messaged us that she is here so good evening everyone and welcome to the January 18th 2022 meeting of the Boulder City Council we're going to start off with a couple of announcements and then get into the agenda so first covid-19 vaccinations uh if you have not yet gotten your vaccinations or need a booster shot for more local information on on how to do

[2:00] that and sign up for notifications go to the address here on the screen which is www.bouldercounty.org families disease-9 vaccines and our next announcement is about board um actually I think this one is not relevant anymore uh the DAT is expired so let's move on to the next there we go uh if you're looking for a wonderful opportunity great way to get involved with our local community the 2022 boards and commissions recruitment period is now open uh runs through February 21st and you can find all of the descriptions of our various boards and commissions and the vacancies that each of them have online at www. bouldercolorado.gov board- commissions if you have any questions or need assistance please contact the city clerk's office at city clerk's office bouldercolorado.gov

[3:03] so that's it for our announcements so um if we can apologies my video was off inadvertently now it's back on um and so if we can now do um a roll call and get the meeting started please Alicia all right s good evening everyone council member Benjamin present mayor Brocket present council member farts here mayor protim friend here council member Joseph present spear present here wallik

[4:02] Wier here and Yates happy to be here mayor we have our cor wonderful thank you Alicia okay so now we have a couple of amendments to our agenda so one of those is uh to add item 1A which is a declaration declaring January 18 2022 as the national day of racial healing and to remove item 3H which is the joint terrorism task force cost reimbursement agreement memorandum of understanding uh that is being moved to February 1st we're going to get a little more information about that before that meeting so if I could get a motion to amend the agenda please so move second right I think that was a Yates Motion in a friend second and uh any objections to that motion right seeing none that motion passes and the agenda is amended uh so we will launch right in to that new item

[5:03] 1A the Declaration which is going to be read by council member friend thank you mayor Brockett um and it is my honor to read this declaration so today January 18th 2022 the city of Boulder is committed to racial equity and acknowledges that we must all work earnestly to create courageous and supportive environments that address the traumatic past promote healing of wounds created by racial ethnic and religious bias and build an equitable and just Society so that people can Thrive as city leaders it is our duty to provide and protect the opportunity to learn grow and thrive in nurturing environments that do not violate safety dignity and Humanity furthermore every person can exhibit an act of kindness or make a simple change within their s that can have a profound effect on our entire Society racism and race-based stress are unjust burdens that present physical and

[6:01] psychological barriers to the health and success of people of color racial healing is a vital and crucial commitment to the education social mental and overall well-being of all community members if we all dedicate ourselves to the principles of Truth racial healing relationship building solidarity and transformative action we can all bring about the necessary changes in thinking and behavior that will Propel that will Propel our community and the nation forward as a unified Force where racial biases can be recognized and unlearned we the city of Council of the city of Boulder Colorado join the nation in declaring January 18th 2022 as national day of racial healing and urge all citizens and community members to promote truth racial healing and transformation in the ways that are best suited for them individually to work together to raise our Collective Consciousness around the need to reconcile the the inequitable

[7:00] pain caused by historical and current systems of Oppression thank you thanks very much for that Rachel so Alicia should we go to open comment then yes sir and you should have your list I do indeed so Ryan do you want to start us off with the guidelines for participation please absolutely thank you thank you Emily for pulling up those slides and as we move to open comment um thank you for joining here to share your voice and your perspectives know that the city has engaged with commun members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful inclusive Civic conversations and support physical and emotional safety for community members staff and Council as well as democracy for people of all ages identities lived experience and political perspectives next slide please

[8:04] and we want to share a few examples of of rules of deorum found in the boulder Vias code and other guidelines that also support this Vision that will be upheld during this meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no participants shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against another person obscenities racial epops and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited and participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they are commonly known by videos individuals must display their whole name and only audio testimony is permitted online thank you and back to you Aon thanks for that Ryan okay let me just pull up my open comment speaker list here

[9:00] right our first three speakers are Kaye Nicole Forster Dell jolly and Ramsey Abita and I think we may have a presentation I am not seeing that Kaye is here in the meeting um why don't we move to D doy and then we can look um for kayy towards the end of our open comment very good uh so D J you're up next hello can you hear me yes thank you guys so much for your time today my name is Dell Jolly I am a uh uh Boulder County resident and I wanted to speak today about the decriminalization of enens and the um resolution that decm Natures presented to some council members I was uh part of the decriminalized Denver team that passed the historic initiative in May 7th 2019 I have a psychedelic research nonprofit that is working with John's

[10:02] Hopkins it's called unlimited sciences and we are better trying to understand how the community is utilizing psilocybin and so this initiative to decriminalize what we've seen in Denver and what we are hoping to see in Boulder is uh seemingly a net positive for the community members I'm going to share just some very preliminary data so you guys could better understand uh what we're seeing on our end um and the way that our study works with John's Hopkins is it's a series of surveys that people who intend to use psilocybin U mushrooms can um enter into our study it's five surveys uh one survey two weeks before their initial use one the day of one the day after one two days after and then three months later so it's longitudinal prospective observational research uh the you know just to kind of paint the picture of the type of folks who are

[11:00] entering into this and uh utilizing these um medicines uh you know the average age is 36.9 at on this preliminary data and it kind of shows a more responsible um older demographic 77% have a college uh education 18 are of U have master's degrees only 6% are uh reporting this as recreational use and so I mean the the the opportunity to take our health in our own hands is being presented to you guys and we're looking for a sponsor for this so um thank you for the time wish I had more yeah time's up but thank you for that and I understand that Kaye Nicole Forster is here now under the name Nicole so if we can get her presentation up please hi everyone um thank you thank you for getting that fixed um I'm the

[12:01] director of decriminalized nature Boulder County I think I can just hit next on the slide I'm not sure how to make it go okay cool um we are a local nonprofit and we are here today to urge you to sponsor our resolution to decriminalize Natural medicines in Boulder Colorado Dell just hit on kind of what is going on there um and what that means we are passionate about restoring the right to possess use and cultivate plant and fungi medicines without the risk of criminal penalty um this is uh sorry it's not clicking through the slides um this is just a quick list of uh nonprofit support that we have locally of people doing great research and education work um next is a map of um plant medicine policy reform all over the nation um 13 cities have passed similar uh policies in their city and 10 of those have come through a council resolution uh process like we're proposing to you today um this next map

[13:02] shows all across Colorado where there's support and where there's people who are organizing um and so it is a movement all over the state we are showing um now my slides are not clicking I'm sorry um yeah uh I got a lot of questions when I reached out to you all individually about what happens after local DCM um we see Education and Research opportunities no significant threat to Public Health or safety equitable policy change County State and Nationwide and increased opportunities for citizens to drive these policy efforts at the Grassroots level so that's why we're advocating for this locally um uh why prioritize it now increased opportunity for Education and Research uh to keep Boulder at the Forefront of progressive drug policy reform there are efforts to legalize these medicines in our state um and coming from the FDA and so we're urging that um all people who are using for all reasons are protected from from Criminal penalty by a local DM

[14:01] measure um these legalization models will only allow a select few people to use these medicines uh so we are advocating for um full decrim so that nobody goes to prison for their use of these medicines and scy I'm afraid your time is up all right thank you good next we have Ramsey AB Nathan bloodsworth and Patrick Murphy okay um yeah can you guys hear me yes all right excellent hello my name is Ramsey abua I live in Boulder um I was uh previously on the decriminalized nature team in an arbor um so I have a lot of uh Insight on how that unfolded when uh this uh initiative uh this resolution was passed in an arbor um I have a degree in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan and I work in the clinical research industry and I'm here to speak in favor of the resolution to decriminalize Nature in Boulder so just to give a bit of background to this

[15:00] whole thing as someone trained in neuroscience and plugged into the Neuroscience academic Community we're experiencing a Renaissance in the field of Neuroscience regarding psychedelics you know when it comes to their mechanism of action on the brain and their neurogenic properties and there's even a broader psychedelic Renaissance in general beyond the field of Neuroscience when it comes to things like health and wellness public education mainstream normaly destigmatization and recogn of Community Based healing and the protection of ceremony based practice for most of the thousands of years of history of humans on this land the normal was that people had access to entheogenic plants and fungi including psilocybin mushrooms DT containing plants like iasa and mescalin containing cacti like San Pedro these medicines were revered for their abilities to bring profound healing and catalyze spiritual experiences what John's Hopkins university has called mystical type experiences among other effects modern science is

[16:01] catching up to what indigenous societies have known and practiced for Centuries with John Hopkins University running numerous studies on Sil cybin and private clinical trials for Sil cybin are already in phase three for the use of Sil cyon to treat depression these substances are not only non-addictive they're anti-addictive and they are the safest drugs known to Humanity Society is at its alltime distrust of the pharmaceutical industry and our medical system and we believe it is human right for people to have the right to have Equitable access to these natural medicines on their own terms and we get there by decriminalizing the use possession and cultivation of these entheogenic plants and fungi by time is up but thank you for your testimony you uh now Nathan bloodsworth Patrick Murphy and ly seagull um can you hear me yes okay yeah my name is Nathan bloodsworth I'm a longstanding b residence since childhood

[17:00] and I am with also with the boulder DM team with Nicole and Ramsey and I'm also a board member for the Noak society which is a Statewide 501c3 nonprofit uh I know the statements I say might be repeated based on what we've heard or not heard yet but that is really only meant to amplify the importance of such measures that the DB nature team is presenting uh I can name my own experiences but more powerful than that I think are the experiences I've gotten to see in my work with the Noak Society in that experience work I can attest to seeing ulous advancements in PTSD and addiction healing cancer treatment for pain um in that work I've really seen no threats to Public Safety that I've seen that do not far outweigh the benefits to not only physical pain management but Mental Health Management for a variety of patients um these statements I make are proven in the 13 US cities that have already passed Sim similar policies and decriminalization which have led to less arrest which from what you say is a large part of keeping a Justice society in which racial bias

[18:00] is a general concern the connection to the drug war the prison system and racial bias has been proven time and time again to be directly connected to racial bias in this country um these new decriminalized areas also show an increase in education on the healing factors of many of these natural substances and medicines it is powerful to note uh that many resolutions have passed in other cities and that in itself shows that this kind of resolution has been sponsored in other areas so we're not Reinventing the wheel um I know there isn't a lot of time here and in fact I'm going to kill it early and just say there's a lot to reflect on and I would really uh respect anyone's sponsorship and I'm here to answer any questions as well as anyone on the team so thank you for your time thanks very much Nathan now we have H Patrick Murphy and ly seagull and Evan rabitz and I believe Patrick has a presentation my name is Patrick Murphy I've lived in Boulder 52 years this presentation is about using the boulder

[19:00] occupation tax a carbon tax in an equitable way my previous presentations prove that it is a carbon tax and that over time Boulder has collected over $88.2 million in carbon taxes and more than half of that was never used for real carbon reduction and the $4 million of carbon tax that is collected each year and not used for carbon reduction could enable all Boulder residences and businesses to be % Renewables today using windsource incentives slide two this presentation describes using the 4 million for just solar incentives this would be a one-time payment to incentivize rooftop solar installation this could average about $2,000 with a lease program from a company like Sunrun this would allow 120 plus per Renewables for a home with a monthly payment slightly less than the average monthly bill it's Renewables on the grid with minimal

[20:00] transmission lost and minimal environmental impact $4 million from the occupation tax would allow onetime solar incentives for 2,000 homes each year with Benefits lasting over 20 years slide three note that almost all taxes are zero cap taxes zero and occupation tax is almost reduced to zero I installed solar as a lease in 2011 I save a few bucks each month thanks to my Sunny roof slide four combining solar incentives with wind incentives we could get to 100% Renewables either today or very soon next time I'll discuss renewable energy certificates also known as Rex Slide Five the planet Burns floods and dies while Boulder fiddles with climate change thank you

[21:01] thanks Patrick next we have Lyn seagull Evan rabbits and Aaron Gabriel ner first of all what about alalas gone now there goes the neighborhood center what about um at Baseline there Lynn you're you're very quiet it's hard to hear you oh thank you can you hear now now not any better not any better now that's a little better okay um all yell I don't know what's going on um alalas and the Baseline shopping grocery store are no longer where is everyone supposed to go to shop well they get in their cars because their students on the hill largely they haven't got any place to shop close in I thought we're supposed

[22:00] to having um neighborhood centers 15minute walkable neighborhoods we're going the opposite direction and now with the development at falam and pearl even more I have to ride my bike or take my car out to 55th in arapo to get work on it I was taking it just a few blocks from Central Boulder um so where the 15minute neighborhoods huh I'm asking you you know this is not a one-way Street this is not me coming down here and griping about stuff and you never doing anything and then and never responding back seldomly and and then doing the opposite we're losing our grocery stores we're losing our services we're talking about going more dense you know you're not seeing me in my hat and my down coat and for 45° in my house because you don't do

[23:00] video Windows you don't want to see me well you know I don't want to see you turn off all your video Windows how dare you how dare you not want to see me your own public how could you think of such a thing as to refuse my video window half the zooms I go to beg for me to put up my video window this Marshall fire is a big deal I went down to Marshall checked it out you know we've got to do something much better than Excel for climate change or we're going to have it right in downtown Boulder those winds were shifting there's vortices in in in that 110 M hour wind then I'm afraid your time is up but thank you now we have Evan rabitz and Aaron Gabriel nyer good evening a big reason we have direct as well as representative democracy is that when voters make

[24:02] mistakes we have an incentive to fix them whereas many politicians see an incentive to cover up their mistakes to protect their careers and donors council member Bob Yates is a case in point in his January Boulder bulletin he States quote over the course of the 2010s Excel voluntarily agreed to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels actually citizen ballot initiative 37 in 2004 forced Excel to reduce fossil fuels by requiring 10% Renewables by 2015 it was not voluntary and it wasn't in the 2010s and it was done by direct democracy not by Excel I asked Bob first privately and then and an emailed a counsel to issue a correction and he

[25:03] refused he's using his office to polish excel's image while it's now raising rates again and before we vote on whether to take the off ramps from the franchise that Bob negotiated Bob may also own stock or have other interests in Excel Bob we pay you to represent us not to deceive and manipulate us for others if you won't tell the truth and can't correct your errors resign to quote Bob Dylan so let us not stop so let us stop talking falsely now the hour is getting late Bob gave himself Away by starting his newsletter with a quote from Hemingway about trust thank you uh thanks Evan uh we're going to end

[26:01] with Aaron Gabriel ner Aaron we can't hear you it does look like your mic is open Aon Gabrielle ner looks like you're unmuted we try to mute and unmute again give one more second here Aon any luck um well I apologize but looks like we got technical difficulties please do

[27:01] email us with your testimony or come back at another meeting or both and with that we will close open comment and um staff do you have any responses to anything we heard tonight seeing shaking heads council members anything all right looks like nothing so um Alicia can you take us into our consent agenda please yes sir thank you item three on tonight's agenda is our consent agenda and that will include excuse me that will include items a through G and for the record item H again was removed great do folks have any questions or comments about the consent agenda got one from Rachel thanks Aaron um just one on what uh I have a 3D on the landmarking of uh

[28:02] 2130 22nd Street and I know it's just a first reading so I just want to ask if I have a couple questions um that I'm going to want to ask staff to have prepared to answer should I ask those tonight or email them I know with quasi judicial there are some um constraints well I'll say if I see James popped up but I I think it can be helpful if you get the questions out and then staff can answer them at the public hearing James is that a good approach yes that's that that's perfect thanks all right well I'll just ask a couple quick ones then um if I read it right it looked like the owner of the property currently had plans to scrape it and then switched to requesting a landmark and I just was wondering how that happened or um what caused that change and would they have been able to scrape with issue if that's what they had wanted to do um so just that

[29:00] background piece and then um under item number four uh in the packet in this agenda item it talks about historical significance um and it mentions uh recognition by authorities and it looked to me like it was just saying that as part of a survey it was found to be in you know X Y and Z okay condition um so I just wanted to understand what is what is Authority mean and recognition by authorities is it just any standard surveyor or is there some different definition for that um and then third when we're looking at it it looks like it's right up on the sidewalk and just wanted to make sure I understood is that like or people walking by the house looking into the windows of the house like is that the public sidewalk and right away so those are the questions that I will have um when it comes back for the public hearing thank you I I'll add those those to the memo and address those in the presentation um during the second

[30:01] reading awesome thanks so much thank you I see a couple other hands popped up if you don't mind I'm G to ask James a question while he's uh up here um James I'm going to have a first reading question for you on the atrium building uh I noticed that the landmark boundary uh that's proposed includes uh parts of the adjacent parking lots uh to the north and to the east if I if I read that correctly and just wanted to get a sense at the hearing what including a parking lot in a landmark boundary means like if people wanted to add electric Chargers later on would that require or or replace it with Landscaping would that require an alteration to The Landmark so just wondering what constraints it would involved to include the parking lot in the landmark boundary if you wouldn't mind okay thanks thanks very much great and I've got uh Mark now and then Nicole yeah I want to follow up on on Rachel's question questions U if I uh read the

[31:00] memo correctly um this is a house that has a new roof new sighting uh new windows so my question is precisely what are we landmarking um what is it that remains that's worthy of of landmark consideration um and I hope we can address that in the uh in the second reading thanks thanks Mark Nicole thank you um yeah I just had a few questions about the right of wh leas um just because it's the first time I've seen it so I apologize if these are um questions that I'll know more about in a couple of months um one question was around uh who's paying for the sidewalk to be moved um does that go to the homeowner or does that go to the city um and then I was really curious about that uh $100 a year um lease rate uh just was sort of wondering if it could be explained a little bit more where that um came from I was it was surprising to read that you could rent 80 square feet

[32:00] of anything in the city for $100 a year so I was curious about that um and then I was just um wondering also about um kind of the the difference between purchasing versus leasing like why why would we do one or the other thank you if those are I mean if they're appropriate questions to include in the the next reading well and I might say I think those May relate directly to the motion that's on the consent agenda tonight for the right of way lease for that property so I wonder if maybe staff could address those questions as much as possible right now since we're about to vote on that that lease yeah I can I can take a crack at it and um thanks for the question this is kind of an unusual circumstance and it's come up quite often in the past where a a building that's very old and this is a pretty old house especially

[33:00] for this area of what was old East Boulder is encroaching into the right of way and I think that has to do a lot has to do with the fact that when these buildings were um constructed they they weren't really drawing very um clear or um the property lines were were a bit vague and certainly with 22nd Street I think that house actually predate the street being laid out as a proper Street I think it was more of a path um prior to then but where we've seen this before um if a building's encroaching and people want to you know improve the house to the point where um you know it's a major project the requirement is that the building has to actually meet the um current zoning and so this is kind of a compromise in which the building wouldn't have to be moved um it

[34:00] wouldn't need to be demolished and actually could be kept in place and the revocable the the lease is a way to do that so it basically gives the uh property owner the ability to lease that area and essentially care for it but also I think um accept some of the liability in the case where somebody might hurt themselves or something but the path or or the sidewalk has been reoriented so it's out of that right of way um creating a little bit of a buffer in front of the property so it's kind of a a win-win solution in terms of I think the property owner being able to keep a very non-standard lot to add to it and um landmarking a house that you know is very early very simple um and it does actually have some of the original features features and under the um the siding is the original brick which will

[35:02] be revealed or stucked and actually the windows are in place um to just address that question as well so I don't think there really were a lot of architectural features but it is um a pretty well preserved example of work um Workforce housing of which you know there isn't that much left in Boulder from that period and I'll address those in the in the uh in the revised memo as well for the second reading is it possible to understand the rate where that kind of came from yeah well I don't know if I can actually um address that off the top of my head unless somebody else knows a little bit more about where that came up um you know how that rate was you know arrived at but I think it was intended to be a relative L low amount you know

[36:00] over the course of the life of the house um you know to make it not onest but it but for it to be something but I I can check on that just to see exactly what goes into the equation to come up with that figure Nicole that good enough for now um yeah I just had the the one other um if I don't know if somebody could just speak to the distinction between um the uh homeowner purchasing that Land from the city versus I noticed that was one of our three options on actions and I was just wondering Pros cons where how does that usually work and I can't answer that question U the lease versus the purchasing and what the implications of that um the difference might be but but we can have that for um for February 1 unless David looks like David has just come popped up so you may be able to answer it yeah we have typical processes in

[37:02] place for dealing with encroachments and right of way and typically we like to maintain the corridor if at all possible which is why we do leases um but there's also a vacation process that we use to dispose of R of way um when it's no longer needed for the public for for our public use can I ask one follow-up question to that does landmarking the building then sort of affect the viability of sort of the city using it in the future um um well it puts another restraint on the property or regulatory constraint but I mean I think the building itself um is what is preventing the city from using it and um and this is not uncommon in the older parts of the city where we have buildings that encroach into um alleys and streets and we try to figure out a way to accommodate them

[38:02] okay thank you sure great um well and I'll just make the point that tonight on our consent agenda um you know what's being considered is approving this lease uh but just to be clear that does not presuppose the outcome of the landmarking hearing on the building on that lot so um they're disconnected even though they're about the same property so tonight we're just to proven release if we decide to do so Matt well to say you know Mark raised an interesting question and I I it sort of speaks to an old philosophical debate that Plato put out about the ship of Theus and so it's uh you know at what point is the thing no longer the original thing and becomes something new or are they both still the same original thing depending on how much you replace it so you bring up a very interesting philosophical question to which there really is no answer perhaps they are both uh historic regardless of what you replace so um just an interesting

[39:00] context that he brings up a very classic U thought dilemma by Plato that was exactly what I was thinking about yeah a much lower culture I just thought about the the axe with the replace the half and the the head twice but anyway go very good I'll just make one more comment um just on the um issuing Water and Sewer Revenue bonds I appreciated staff answers to my question from last time about fund balance and I did see that in the packet and so that helped me understand that that looks great so if there are no more comments or questions perhaps a motion to approve the consent agenda I move the consent agenda second very good I don't believe we need to do a roll call so we just say uh are there any objections to the motion I do believe we do need to do roll call show because we have the lease my apologies I missed that note all

[40:01] right and the resolution no worries yes and that's because again of the lease in the resolution all right we'll start with council member Joseph yes spear yes and I was wondering if I should exempt myself as I did last time from the minutes um which are items let me pull it up really fast apologies I just had it uh f and g thank you um given that I didn't attend those meetings all right thank you council member wallet hi Wier yes Yates yes Benjamin uh yes but with the exception because I'll recuse myself from voting on e f and g as I wasn't present for the meetings thank you sir mayor Brockett

[41:03] yes council member fuls Yes except for the items EF and G which I would like to recuse myself from as I also was not present thank you and mayor Pro Tim friend yes the consent agenda passed sir unanimously with the noted exceptions from Benjamin Spear and fuler on items e f and g okay so now we have our two callup check-ins or so Lua can you walk us through those please of course sir thank you we have item under item four 4A is the callup consider consideration for the landmark alteration certificate to

[42:00] restore the ball Aerospace control sales building at 501 arapo Avenue a pending individual Landmark any interested in calling this up I'm not seeing any I don't I will just uh thank all Aerospace for the flexibility it seems like they've been working hard with City staff to find a the right approach for this property so appreciate that all right next we have item 4B which is also a callup check-in for a callup consideration Landmark alteration certificate to construct deck and railings at the rear elevation of main house with compost composite comp excuse me composite product at 84514 Street a contributing property in the University Place historic

[43:01] district any interested in calling this up not seeing any very good so I think that moves us to our U matter first matter from the city manager yes sir that is item 6A on tonight's agenda and it is the staff initial scoping of council work plan proposals all right and ner I'll hand it off to you to hand off to Heather I was just saying and like magic she'll appear and there she is here she is good evening Council um what we have for you tonight is a continuation of the conversation that we started last week as a precursor to the conversation that you'll have on Friday and Saturday at The Retreat um so as you uh I'm sure recall last week we heard um of you sharing um your respective priorities um with uh one

[44:00] another and with the community and with staff and tonight what we've asked staff to do is um gather some preliminary thoughts about the the level of work the scoping um of what you proposed as they understood it at that time um these are preliminary thoughts um again and part of the conversation that we will have during the retreat is um based on the information that you hear tonight maybe some additional reflection that you might do before the retreat um what are the right things the right priorities um for the city going forward um we might want to rethink reframe reconsider re-evaluate some of these ideas and that's the conversation for us to have at the retreat so tonight the focus is on just hearing from staff on their preliminary thoughts um again on on your ideas and we sort of have it for you in two ways um Nuri and staff are going to run through the PowerPoint um that is very linear and very clear and then we added the scoping

[45:00] information to the idea flip that we talked about that we did last time the visual with all the sticky notes and it is really different um so gonna let you have the linear approach first and then we'll give you a look see at the other one um which has things organized a little bit differently but tries to convey the same information um so n what I'm thinking now is you and staff will'll sort of work through the PowerPoint we'll go by topic cluster starting with those housing items and then maybe we'll take a break um for questions after we get through all the housing items because some of them are are kind of similar so we'll let you get through all that bunch and then we'll stop and take clarifying questions from Council does that sound all right sounds good on my end all right um Council any questions concerns about the plan for this evening before we get after it all right n take it away well thanks Heather I'm not quite sure anyone's ever accused me of linear thinking so I'm GNA take it um so I appreciate in advance the

[46:02] dialogue we're going to have regarding your priorities council members and um we listened to what you had shared last week and we really tried to work hard to do this sort of preliminary scoping understanding that as we progress into the retreat the scoping can change and that as we narrow the 45 items to something more manageable I believe there were 13 last year and we're hoping to land on uh 10 12 15 as we move forward for some items the request still F pretty open-ended and or large in scope so we're hoping this dialogue will help sort of continue to narrow that down uh and that with Heather's help we can help to um sort of get to that focus better and land on how best to move forward and I know we're going to do some of that at the retreat I also just want to recognize up front right as you see this that there are many of our responses that have a starting work in Q2 or Beyond many are deemed High there are um there are some

[47:03] that are medium but many are deemed high in part we're hoping to be honest about the immediate capacity constraints as we hopefully start to come out of covid and start to rehire people and I think we've been pretty open about where we are and our capacity constraints but we also want to say that we recognize that you all want to accomplish big things for our community as well and so as we continue to look at this just know that this is our best guesstimate if you will as we look at the broad priority some set forward and hope that we'll continue to talk more about that as we um present each one of the items and I'm going to uh turn it over to staff as we go through them because they really are the subject matter experts as we move this forward we hope too that you'll see some of the work that's already happening in the areas and that that's helpful and so hopefully as we continue to narrow and window those priorities you'll be able to do so knowing that some of your additional interests that you have

[48:00] mentioned are already underway or already planned as well so with that I'll ask staff to maybe pull up that PowerPoint and we'll get started with some of those housing items next slide so we're going to try to get through this and I'll just uh sort of go through them they were put in no particular particular order as we U move forward but we try to take your priority area and glean kind of the main things um that we're trying to accomplish we've put lead departments and also other supporting departments as we move forward we've tried to figure out right now where that level is high and if we're narrowing some of that we will obviously be refining some of that size of effort as we move forward but to my earlier point we put in what's happening already and perhaps what of if we go in this direction to give you a sense of

[49:00] what potential trade-offs will be as we talk in the retreat so we're hoping this is a prep document uh knowing that we'll have additional conversations um on uh Friday so I believe I'll ask Kurt to get us started and and Kurt and David are going to be on tap for a few slides here uh thank you Nara and uh good evening city council I'm Kurt fover director of Housing and Human Services and um so a lot of these things which you've requested are sort of combinations between uh uh the planning department and HHS um a lot of the land use um items um really go through both of our departments um so the attainable middle income house housing um so some of you if you were if you were around in in

[50:00] 2015 um 2016 there was um there was a housing study that was done um back then a middle-income housing strategy um was put in place uh in 2016 and it's really about um home ownership and we haven't made the progress that we would like to um around home ownership um and I think many of the things that you're requesting here um address those challenges that we've also seen um it's also worth noting since um since that was put in place um since 2015 um over 1100 units of affordable housing have been created in the city and um I believe it's 423 units um have been created since since um covid began um in our city so we're making very good progress on

[51:00] affordable housing generally um but not in the area of um uh home ownership so things that we're currently working on um is um we we started a program that we wanted to start um about a year and a half ago but it was sidetracked by covid and staff uh shortages but that's purchasing existing um affordable units and um uh bringing them up to standard and reselling them we started with our first unit um last month we anticipate doing about um uh 10 to 12 units uh per year and that's what we've um set aside funds for um there's also um things that we're doing to look at annexations where um we often get um affordable housing I was looking at our data today we're getting um about 10 units

[52:00] um uh per year um out of annexations and small um uh um projects that have home ownership so um the the um the next one is a a review of inclusionary Housing and um the inclusion or housing ordinance um and um this was brought up by a couple of council members I think that that's something that we would also like to address we think um since the ordinance was updated three and a half years ago we've noticed things that working as well as we would like particularly around creating home ownership units so in both of these things we think that a a we could prepare for a study session probably in quarter three um to uh um to go through some of these um areas with Council and understand um more depth um some of the

[53:02] shortfalls that we're seeing um as well as some of the ideas that you're you're seeing and sort of um build from that we don't really have staff capacity to expand this work um currently um we hope to hire um a couple of positions that have become vacant um in this um of work um over the next few months though maybe I'll say one more thing and then pass it over to David um and so there's some some things about the community benefit there as well um as it relates to to density that's something that really goes through both of our work and I'll pass it over to David with that it's a perfect segue Kurt thank you um just a couple of things that I would add on to what Kurt said um a lot of so first of all um I have been kind of

[54:00] looking at the year of 2022 as nura had mentioned earlier as a year of restoration and you know I would just like to Echo what Kurt and nura have already said about staff capacity and um I will say that um in terms of the covid-19 cuts and uh the 1920 or the 2021 budget um one of the areas that really took a big hit was our comprehensive planning division um which is frankly a big part of the policymaking arm of planning and development services so we will be building back um and we will we hope to be hiring a lot of people in in the coming four or five months with regard to the density issues that Kurt raised I think that this is going to go to how we scope out um some of these projects one of the main things that um our zoning um and and planning has been very

[55:01] focused on for probably the last 50 plus years is having our regulatory realm be consistent with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan um and there are some of the ideas just depending on how they get scoped or implemented may have implications where we would want to kind of take a look at the underlying policy um rationale and the comprehensive plan as part of of as part of a project like that which For Better or Worse complicates it a little bit and that's all I have to say uh so Kurt and David do you think you've addressed all three of this in in one uh way or another or your understanding of what that could look like and some of the work that's ongoing I think so you know for the most part it's you know it's a lot of um reanalysis of existing regulatory structures and then whether or not it's

[56:01] appropriate to change course on some of those great so let's move on to the second slide and I know we're g a stop every time we end a category to make sure or Heather's going to make a stop uh to make sure that we're um getting some dialogue with you all but uh it continues to be the Kurt and David show as we move forward on the next three oh hey juny I see that you have a question um if it's okay I'd love for them to get through all the housing things because there some crossover and then we can Circle back to questions later thankk you yes okay thanks so I wonder if David could cons continue for the next one and then I can take over at the uh the down payment assistance one which is the one after that okay can somebody Advance the

[57:01] slide it is oh David it is Advance on our end it's the ordinance changes around duplex and triplexes in RL one and two y great thank you um so um the first line about um ordinance changes I I would just Echo the same comments about um whether or not in terms of scoping this project out whether it would have implications for also needing to amend the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and I think that that's a scoping issue that we can subsequently um address as we kind of move forward you know once the council starts to set priorities and we start to kind of put meat on the bones um the Kurt Kurt is uh uniquely qualified to discuss the second one the attainable middle income affordable housing program um so I would I would just pass it back to you Kurt I can tell you my but

[58:00] um it would probably be better coming from you sure yeah if we were in real life we could have a baton going back and forth yeah um so the the middle inome affordable housing um is um some of you um who who are newer to council that was that was passed um in in the previous year um by um the residents of Boulder and it's it uh is is a program where we would um borrow funds in order to assist residents with um uh creating a down payment um program um we um this is a I would call it a a very uni new unique and um potentially um Innovative approach um to to a down payment assistance program one that we haven't done before um in the

[59:00] city um as Bob Yates would know it it's taken a lot of um head scratching to figure out um we H to we would have gotten this going um probably a year and a half ago if if Co hadn't have come and we hadn't hadn't have lost staff and had other um priorities um this is something that I think we could um look at moving forward um and my advice around this one would probably be to get a consultant to assist with this um for two reasons one is simply a capacity reason but the other is I think we need to bring in um um additional expertise um to set this up and structure it correctly and we did a lot of work in um uh with with uh with bankers and that sort of thing in designing the program um as it went to the the voters um but

[60:03] actually implementing the program will require um sort of another level of of expertise um I would recommend that we look at this probably in the second half of the year and shoot for that um and hopefully we'll have staff capacity there to actually hire and work with a consult consultant to to do this work um the other thing that I'll add though is that we've we've had a a a different down payment assistance program um in place for several years and through this process we actually took a look at that um it was it basically gave $50,000 of down payment assistance and it was set up where um it it was a shared appreciation with with the owners so their house would appreciate sh at market value um and at resale um the city would receive back

[61:01] its its um appreciated value of the $50,000 down payment we've recently increased that um to $100,000 and um we believe that it will because the the the housing market has gone up so much the 50,000 wasn't really enough to to make a difference for the program to work so we're also sort of testing this out um it's it's no additional um work for us really because it's it's an existing program we're just increasing the amount and um we're we're anxious to see how this um adds to um the middle income work as well the um uh the next one um uh where it talks about uh decreasing the average size of um Market units um looking at inclusionary housing

[62:01] that's probably both David and I um and I mentioned um in the previous slide um we also agree that there's probably some tweaks that can be made to our inclusionary housing ordinance I think this is what um uh is is um referred to in this one um and as I mentioned earlier um we're we're actually um creating a great deal of affordable housing right now um we've got about a th units in the pipeline um and we're we're likely to hit um 9% um of affordable units in the city uh in the next probably two or three years and um so we're pretty excited about that um but I do believe that um this request was to uh make changes that would would increase home ownership as well um any changes that we do for this

[63:03] that would require financial analysis we would um probably hire a consultant for that as well um so I don't know if if David if you have anything that you wanted to add um to this one um yeah I I I would just go back to kind of how we scope out the um decreasing the average size of New Market units um we did go through an exercise where we looked at this issue with regard for the most part to single family zones um it was quite um a quite a spirited Community conversation that took an awful lot of time in terms of Engagement and staff resources um so you have that on one end of the spectrum and I think when we were listening to you um last Tuesday there were other ideas that I interpreted as well you know don't maybe in higher

[64:01] density zones you don't um use counting dwelling units as a regulatory tool you create a size of a box and let it be split up as the market would dictate um potentially in smaller units but I think that in terms of how that how that idea would get scoped would have a great impact on the amount of resources it would take um to to to work through the policy issues and come up with changes well D the other thing I would add um is that for for many of these topics um depending on how we approach them and depending on how they are scoped they often require a lot of community engagement before they get to councel um doing projects like this where the engagement is simply completed through um you know Council Council sessions usually doesn't go very well um

[65:01] and um I think we' on each one of these we'd want to consider the amount of community engagement and we often put together a community engagement plan that will often bring to council and say do you agree to this plan um for this particular um item and um for these types of projects in the past um like the inclusionary housing update we did a community engagement around that I think that was about a um a one-year process um from start to finish of in in completion of the ordinance um which I was told was record time um back then um but I think that's just to give you a kind of a um an understanding of what we've experienced with um having successful Community engagement prior to

[66:00] getting it to to council thanks curtain David and we go on to the last slide for attainable M middle income and affordable housing um and appreciate your uh perspective and I hope Council you're getting the sense that as we're looking at these initially we're trying to take into account all the sort of ancillary things that go into this which doesn't involve communication um some researching maybe hiring that consultants and that's why you're seeing some of those size of efforts but again as we continue to either add capacity to our work or um sort of narrow the actual scope then I I think that we'll be able to better refine some of these estimates but for now we have the last two on um on housing and I'd probably invite David to take the lead on these sure um again this would go to scoping like I think that there are some ideas in terms of um scoping adus that

[67:00] could be rather simple to implement with the Cooperative housing um that could be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be and I guess another kind of thing to think about as we're figuring out how to go forward on this idea is you know is is the is the answer um creating co-ops or is the answer looking at our occupancy regulations and addressing the issue from from that perspective but that those are the kind of policy car calls that you'll need to provide us Guidance with um as we move forward and then in terms of I think that you know the the uh changing zoning regulations to incentivize smaller units well that's great um and I think that that's that's probably something that um um well the regulatory part of piece of it could be as complicated as you want it to be um it's it's probably an easier cell in the community to incentivize these types of

[68:01] things as opposed to regulate them which is uh the latter half of what the um the the program is is do you actually regulate for smaller houses and I think we talked a little bit about this on the last slide um but that is something that um um you know we'll need to have a good robust Community conversations and just over the years one of the things that I have found brings out the passion in our community is anytime you do something that affects the ability to enjoy a person's home so we just need to keep that in mind so David the other thing I would add on to that as far as the U updates um so that was done um I think it was 3 and a half years ago and the previous time that that the ad ordinance had been touched was more than 20 years

[69:01] prior to that um I'm encouraged that Council wants to look at it again in such a short period of time I think there are tweaks that could um improve that and some of those tweaks are things that were recommended when it was updated three and a half years ago but Council decided to take a a slower approach um however the the uh the staff person who worked on that is also um overseeing sort of the the development of the housing um components at Alpine Balsam um over this year and next year um as well as a Manufacturing Housing facility that we're working on as well um so the um and and every year I know that it's a priority for him to want to do adus um and the last couple years it's it's been pushed off um for other projects um I think the motivation is

[70:01] there to do it I think we have ideas on how that could be done um but and I think that's why we put 2023 um as a potential time to to start that project okay uh n anything to add before we go to council for questions nope I think we can go straight too okay Erin go ahead and then I think you had one as well well I'll just start with a comment um first of all thanks Kurt and David that it's really helpful to hear your analysis on those things and I think David I think the to your point that a lot of the uh the complexity level and the investment level energy level depends on how we scope these right and so if we if we throw like let's say with adus if we said you know what let's start from scratch let's look at every example of an Adu program in the entire country country and then revise every single one of our bet you know that could take two years right but um if instead we we said hey you know what

[71:01] there are two or three variables in the existing Adu ordinance that could use changing you know let's have a little bit of public Outreach and then come forward with a proposed ordinance you know that that feels like a much more manageable lift so I think this it'll be an important conversation to have during the retreat about how we scope these to get targeted changes made and so appreciate appreciate that teeing up that analysis the my question um David is you mentioned a couple of things that might require changes to the comprehensive plan and I I wasn't sure what would require that do you mind saying a little bit more about that well I think that the main thing is when you start adding dwelling units in existing neighborhoods um you start to get the density that is anticipated by the comprehensive plan um out of whack with what the underlying land use classification actually is so I think that we would want to think about that and I don't

[72:00] know just in terms of like Adu history when you kind of look at adus and you say well if you were to say to me well you we add adus all over the place well the thing about adus that we've done to make that consistent with the comprehensive plan is that we have the the entire Pro the our occupancy rules in terms of what constitute constitutes a household apply to the property so it's still while there's two units on it um it's still going to function and have the in theory the same impacts as a single family home got it okay well I guess we we'll have to keep that in mind I just really quickly looked up the the comp plan item on the mixture of housing types and it it does call out adus Cottage courts and building multiple small units rather than one large house on a lot so it seems like we have some flexibility within the comprehensive plan but to tackle some of these initiatives but

[73:00] it's a great point that we have to keep in mind that balance as we as we yeah and I think it you know like I said it goes to scoping and it's you know in some zoning districts they're like perfectly set up already to to implement that policies some not so well appreciate that that's all I have thank you thanks Ain juny you had a question earlier did you want to jump in thank you I just I think mine is more of a process question and I was listening to Kurt early on in my understanding he's saying that um for the middle income housing that right now he doesn't have the Ben with or the staff to undertake that particular process right now but I'm wondering whether an item can be added to the work plan pending that capacity building

[74:00] [Music] Staffing yeah I think Kurt if you give me just a moment and then I'll let you actually ask the specific one but I'll say in general that perhaps is a common theme you'll see as we work through some of these right that the quicker we build up capacity there is potential to either accelerate that work or we still approve that as a prior prity and just know that it will that there will be a time delay while we continue to add so I think that's you're going to see that throughout because we are sort of banking on building our capacity back um and then Kurt I apologize for interrupting you because um I want to let you respond to that particular one um well n I'm just I'm glad that we're aligned on the answer um that would be embarrassing if we weren't award yeah I think I think that's exactly correct juny and um um I within

[75:00] the retreat um as David said it'd be helpful for us to understand um sort of the goals of these projects for for Council Members um and that will help in understanding the scoping as well and then that's why on on some of these I recommended a study session um in the third quarter that gives us time to reflect on what we heard in the Retreats um and um it I mean realistically it takes two or three months to prepare for that type of study session um so we would um what we hear from from The Retreat we would take that information when we have the staff capacity we would work towards um implementing um a study session to actually dive in in much more depth with with with Council um um to look at different options um for the things that we heard in the

[76:02] retreat thanks Kurt um and just I'm sure you already did this but also if you Circle back to that Google sheet that we had Council fill out um we asked them to describe the problem as they understand it and that might also help sort of hone in on how they understand the purpose of some of those ideas if um um if you have a minute but I suspect you already did all that Matt Matt question comment yeah I have a couple items along this front and you know one and I appreciate Kurt seeing that yeah you know middle- income housing and that missing middle is an area that that we uh you know need to do better on and we have an opportunity to do so and and so I'm sort of thinking that even if we're looking at resource allocation in the sort of auster times that we are in that we think about where we're putting our eggs in the affordable housing workload and maybe thinking about how do we maybe pull some of that just so we can start making some meaningful progress on the middle income I know these are hard decisions but otherwise that that that

[77:02] that uh that issue of that middle income stuff only becomes a larger and more complex and in many ways a more insurmountable Hill clim the longer we go without chipping away at that and so you know that's something I I I would just sort of hope that we can maybe look at a little bit and and to sort of David's point about scoping for some of these you know in particular you know with duplexes and triplexes you know I it I'm not an expert in the comp plan by any means but in just looking at sort of the land use designations it does kind of give an intensity setting of two to six units per acre and many units that are single family are in that quarter acre range a quarter of an acre per lot so you do we do have some capacity if those are the only limitations to try to accommodate that in terms of scoping so I hope we can sort of achieve that um but really largely I think for me it's it's really an issue of you know this is an area that's been neglected a little bit for reasons we we've discussed and I think I think we need to try to migrate some resources over there um given the great work that we've already been doing in affordable housing I think it might be able to spare a little bit of

[78:01] capacity try to do it over there and then lastly really you know Consultants I I appreciate uh pointing out the use of consultants and I think there's a few areas where we could do that even some more you know this this town is has no shortage of very high qualified and experienced land use attorneys and other folks that would be great um in a way to help to sort of ease some of the burden and still allow prog progress while we build back capacity in pdns and HHS and other departments across the city thanks Matt Bob oh sorry Kurt did you want to respond to that sure if I can thank you and thanks for that input Matt um so I I when I when I first joined the city it was about the time um that the middle income strategy was um adopted that was one of our first projects um and I I after it was done I observed that um Council just um approved this great strategy um but no resources were uh committed to it um and then I noticed

[79:01] there was a sort of a a sustainability um initiative that was passed um and it also you know didn't always have um resources attached to it um and I've observed that sometimes the initiatives are separate from the from the budgeting process um and so um uh that's why um last year we actually started to make that distinction and tried to start setting aside resources for for the middle income um work because it just it wasn't moving forward at the pace it needed to um and so we have started allocating um I think about $1.2 million per year um and um uh it's it will help us um understand the success of those approaches as well somewhat of a pilot um but I think what's been holding

[80:00] us back is that um middle- income housing costs about twice as much to create than than rental housing um and you it's always that dilemma of do you create two units for lower income families or you do you spend twice as much for a middle inome family and so I think that's um um uh a unique challenge for Boulder and that's why it's going to take some creative ideas to to Really address that Bob go ahead thanks I I have just a kind of a general question um because I think this is going to be a common theme tonight I think we've heard the the word staff capacity a dozen times tonight and I suspect we'll hear it a few dozen more times before the end of the evening and and Matt kind of alluded to this in his his suggestion of use of Consultants so I want to understand this is probably a question Uria um and and I'm sure the answer to this question is going to be all the above but I'm really trying to understand which one is the bigger one

[81:00] um is is our staff capacity problem because there's been a bunch of resignations that we didn't expect is our staff capacity problem because um we don't have the budget to hire people or is our staff capacity problem because we have plenty of money but we there's simply just nobody out there to hire we just can't find anybody who's qualified I I know it's all of the above but I'd really like to understand which of those is the bigger problem because I think Council might be able to help so for example if it was a budget problem just let us know yeah um we can't obviously solve the labor market but I I just like to understand what is the cause yeah of the staff capacity constraint I think to your point it's mixed Bob but frankly it's um you know it's not like we're flush or anything but our budget is building back and I would say that we have monies that have been allocated for vacancies that are ongoing so I would say right now it's less of a financial issue although we'll certainly be continuing to move forward and make sure

[82:01] that we're attracting people and that will be uh sort of figuring out are we are we competitive with our other cities as we move forward because the pandemic has now made all our neighboring cities kind of throw money and incentives and additional benefits to staff so we're always going to be looking at that portion of it is the financial compens ation um piece and we are actively looking at that now I would say and and certainly it it varies by department but it it in part is we were in such a I don't want to say hole but with the pandemic we let a lot of folks go and we have to rebuild some of that we've also put some uh where we are and there have been some turnovers right like the pandemic has shown that people actually want to live closer to where they or want to work closer to where they live they are actually in some cases we have heard from the exit interviews that they actually have reconsidered some of their

[83:02] um work life balance and the pandemic has made them reconsider how much um of uh sort of a hectic nature of a city like Boulder that is so active um and and many of us myself included enjoy that aspect of of working in cities right um but they perhaps want a different Pace as we move forward uh and so as we've put out and we've been interviewing we sometimes get great success and there are a lot of people coming in and sometimes for the same position that we used to have 20 applicants for we now get one and it's the same exact position right so part of it is just a moment in time and trying to get that out and moving forward and now we're in the ability to actually hire up whereas we weren't for a while so we're now competing with every other city that is is also hiring up and looking to do so in many ways so I would say that the cause the root of the problem

[84:00] is is manyfold and we will be doing all that we can to sort of address all of them certainly looking at compensation we're revising um some of those job descriptions to make them more enticing or to really live up to what the route is but we're also battling sort of um the competitive market place as other people are trying to do that and the fact that we've got issues with affordability as we're talking about here where much of our staff is not going to live in Boulder and so then we're also competing with places where they live closer to okay well I am I'm sure we'll probably be talking more about this at the retreat but thank you for that that answer so so Bob could I give since we're talking about um these issues uh as it relates to our department I could just give a little input on that as well um this was not a worry of mine until probably a couple months ago we've had a number of uh resignations in uh

[85:02] HHS and I think the the common theme at least for our department is um the workload is higher because we lost some staff through um through the furlows but the the amount of work increased because of things like covid um even things like a fire um you know probably you know half my staff have been working every day since the fire um and um they're they're they're all many of them are doing multiple jobs now or they're doing jobs on top of jobs um they're applying for positions where they're only applying for one job um and um they're not only they getting paid higher but they're they're they're being recruited um to surrounding cities um and uh so that's that's been a real Challenge and as staff work as as staff leave um more you know the staff behind

[86:00] have to do more of that work um that's been left behind so it's it's um it's challenging to get um to the other side of that um but I think in even the King Super shooting you know staff was involved in that um with the recovery center and support center for that um and um I think you'll during covid you would have often seen um either policies or programs that we had to change along the way or grow um every month it seems like um there's a community issue that um we're having to address and um that's um generally increased the workload of um a number of individuals thanks Kur great Nicole go ahead yeah I just had a question um a on those similar lines and I'm just wondering uh Nia Kurt David if you could just give us some sense um I've been involved in a lot of hiring um both you

[87:02] know within my position as well as in other groups at the University and you know one of the things that um I think people don't often consider is how much time it takes to do a hire especially for a director level position um and how many different people are involved in that process um you needing to meet with them arranging schedules all that kind of stuff so I'm just wondering if you could kind of give us a ballpark you know for the folks who are out there positions meaning to be hired you have your regular work that you're trying to do under staffed how much time you know do you does ballpark figure is it gonna take to hire because like I'm looking at these numbers right and I'm seeing you know a lot of work you know wouldn't be able to start until quarter 3 or quarter 4 my assumption is that's because you're all scrambling to hire and be a part of this um process and anyway I think that was like five questions in one but you get the idea

[88:01] where I'm trying to go I do and I'll say that I'll start and maybe I'll invite Chris too because he's closer to uh as he oversees HR to talk about some of the hiring process that we've got going on but I'll say that it kind of depends right like HR is also under some constraint but we're working hard to move that forward my hope had been to really focus on q1 as hiring and we had sort of had a lofty goal of trying to hire 200 people in q1 well we didn't expect the fire and didn't expect to have to Halt and shift to supporting that as we move forward and to your point Nicole hiring takes a lot of people the Departments have to look at the job specs they have to be ready for it HR is involved on some we are hiring um we do have an external consultant for example our uh search for a new planning director director has an external consultant we are happy to say we've got over 20 résumés and we're hoping to continue to move forward with that as quickly as we can um but we're that is

[89:02] our initial and that is my certainly initial goal um for the very first part of this year as we move forward Chris do you have anything additional you can share in terms of what we're doing or what strategies or that thoughtfulness about hiring in the future sure I'm happy to chime in a little bit and um Nicole it's a it's a really good question just to kind of help daylight a little bit of of that and as nura said I think there's there's kind of different there's different levels or different levels of complexity uh and as nuura mentioned um with the the budget that Council approved for 2022 it restored funding or or included funding for uh a lot of positions and so recognizing that come January 1st that money is available a lot of a lot of positions are going want to go to posting so we started building the the the talent acquisition and recruitment team uh in the HR

[90:00] department last fall uh and it didn't go as fast as we wanted it to because we found the same challenges in the labor market that that many are of um filling those positions with with qualified candidates was a little challenging but we've been successful in that and so part of it is supporting departments in um the job posting process and so we've got some some folks in place to help support that work and there are certain positions that it's you know the lift of a department is the hiring manager whoever the supervisor is for that position as well as some of the the colleagues and team members that are going to help participate in the interview process and it can go pretty quick um on the other end of the spectrum as Nua mentioned for say a director level position we're using an outside recruiter to assist us in in that Talent acquisition and and um being out in in the market talking to people um sourcing candidates uh and then there's uh pretty extensive levels of

[91:02] interviews um with the way the job market is now we're accelerating those as much as possible while also maintaining the Integrity of the process to make sure we're getting the the best candidates that we can uh and so you see lots of very kind of varying um complexities the other last piece that I'll add is is um especially in open space and Mountain parks and in Parks and Recreation there is um a massive seasonal hiring that we do every year and so come the April May time frame um there is uh there is sometimes a you know 600 people that are hired as seasonal employees for the summer that that we ramp up for and so there's a Cadence that we plan for for that and departments literally have to create space to to kind of go all in to do the seasonal hiring process that's something that we do every year um as we saw last year and I think we'll see this year um

[92:00] I think the seasonal Market uh looks looks different than it has in the past as well um but that's something that we're planning for as well so um hopefully that gives a little bit more of an in-depth view of of uh kind of what that process looks like yeah thank you I appreciate that and um I don't know if it's possible just to uh kind of maybe at the retreat um have a little bit of this information but just like a ballpark number of hours that it takes to hire you know a position and and I say this not not because I feel like I personally need that information I just feel like it would be incredibly valuable for the community to recognize um the the effort that is involved in just getting staff on board um because I know there's you know they're raring to go um as new council member I am raring to go and this initial period is so critical that if we push on the system too much it's going to completely fall apart and then we're kind of hosed right so I I'm just

[93:00] I'm wondering if having some of those hours might help us um just get an understanding of the magnitude of what y'all are trying to do right now got it yeah let me see what can pull together and as we're doing that we'll also say that it's different for every department so for example fire and police they have different training periods so they hire and then they have an entire training period before they can um put folks to their actual duy so we'll try to um provide some examples of what that looks like because for some it's weeks and for others it's months right as we as we um look into that so thank you thank you big old is Nicole the other thing that I would add is that um for for almost any of these positions takes months before those individuals are proficient lead projects and that sort of thing um I I think we're we're always trying to be as optimistic as possible but we need to understand that and it's not one person that hires people it's as you've mentioned it's several people that are

[94:01] involved I think the city does a really good job of trying to include the right staff in hiring to it's it's it's harder to hire the right people but um it's important to hire the right people and and then the last thing I'll add is there there's a real emphasis about you know bringing in more diversity um and we've we've been able to increase that in HHS significantly over the last couple of years unfortunately we've lost some of those people as well um but hiring people of color and people that have different backgrounds and different perspectives on the work is really important and it it takes more time effort to do that well thanks Kurt Mark last question before we move on to homelessness yeah um I mean by by rough count of the 42 requests for priorities 30 of them are either constrained by lack of personnel

[95:00] uh or need to uh shift work burdens or cut work projects elsewhere in order to address them so further to Matt's comments and I'm frankly shamelessly ripping off some comments previously made to me by uh mayor protm friend a while ago um we're we're looking at a recovering uh economic uh period um with increased revenues is it not possible to identify for all of these where Consultants might be profitably used um and and we're not U but and uh in some of these it would appear to me that that um a consultant can either jump start or addressing a priority um or even push it over the the Finish Line if it's appropriate to do so and and I would sort of ask for um some understanding of where a

[96:02] consultant can profitably be used I'm not in favor of Consultants generally but we are in a a different period of time and we are staff constrained and yeah staff is you know working two or three roles at a time and I would be reluctant to say that we we can't address any of these things purely on that basis at least in some of them a consultant might be of use so Mark I appreciate that and I I actually I agree with you in many respects I think there are times and ways in which Consultants can be used I think both Kurt and David mentioned some of that as they were talking through some of the points it depends a little bit on the scoping and for some and I you know to staff that's listening although I know they know this where that is possible feel free to sort of share that because I think as we continue to narrow the scope there could be some easy things that we can Kickstart with with a consultant we

[97:00] still have to scope it and search for a consultant and manage the consultant but to your point we can certainly um leverage that time and that research on discrete things and move that forward and we certainly have that in mind there are other times where that consultant has to be so uh in tune with staff that it just doesn't make a lot of sense but I think that your your ask really is let's remove those from the equation and let's look for those opportunities we're really a consultancy is an ad a value add to staff as we're looking through them and I think we're going to continue to do that more and more as we as we move forward um the boulder airport for example as you'll see is one of those where we think oh we can get someone to start with that um on that level and continue to move forward in the future on that thank you I appr appreciate it ccel I wanted to give you space to get those questions answered because as SE several of you have noted this will be an ongoing theme um through the rest

[98:00] of our um conversation tonight and probably well into the retreat um but given I don't see any more questions ner I'd love to move on and hear some thoughts from staff on scoping on the homelessness items if you would great and I know that we've got three priorities that deal with staff Recruitment and Retention and I feel like we've almost addressed some of those in theseal conversations so for the next slide please and again it's uh Kurt's going to be on with us for a while there were a lot of measures on um addressing and supporting our unhoused and our unsheltered community and we'll start with the first one Kurt yeah just trying to find my mute button there we go um so the um um this first one is really focused on on um the arpa resources and I think um um the arpa resources is a great opportunity for many communities including ours and

[99:03] um the the question here is really are we are we coordinated around that and so we've been working with the county process as well um and I'm now I was selected um a couple weeks ago to be on um there's three three subcommittees that are set up at the county and um one of them is around affordable housing other one is around mental health um I'm on the um on the housing one that's a commitment of between a half a day and one day a week um over the next couple so it's pretty significant commitment but um working with them um to um help allocate the resources the county um is looking at and it's really a coordination we'll be bringing some ideas to council uh very soon around arpa ideas for this for this

[100:00] city um and so we'll be trying to coordinate closely with the county as well to make sure um we're we're leveraging those those dollars correctly so there's two um proposals that we'll be bringing forward as it relates to um homeless services and I'll um briefly touch on those um with with the idea that you'll be getting a more comprehensive um presentation um in the near future in this quarter um in in February but um so so the two programs the one is um really responding to um um what we believe um needs to be strengthened and that's that we've as you know we've we've now um helped over you know 1,00 individuals exit homelessness um since the strategy was started four years ago we've housed several hundred

[101:01] individuals um uh locally and um many of those have been housed throughout the city and um in existing affordable housing uh projects and um depending on the need of the individual they they receive um Supportive Services well our our services haven't been able to keep up with the number of individuals that have been hous um but also we've seen that those Services need to be strengthened so that the two areas that we're looking at one is a um a peer navigation program that we'll be bringing forward to you where we will be hiring or or an organization will be hiring individuals um that have been have made a success transition into housing to help support those who are in the housing queue and those who get into housing for the first couple of years we

[102:00] know that um individuals that move into housing are often going through isolation and um creating constructive ways to uh build community for those individuals is really important and um I I think those that work in homelessness know that the lack of Community is significant um as as a cause to homelessness and we need to address that and really support that as they become housed um the other is um would also be run by a a nonprofit organization in the community that would provide um uh uh Day Day classes and day services for individuals who are getting prepared for housing or are in housing um it would be classes like um um you know around job training or um you know how to be how to be a good tenants um health and wellness

[103:02] classes even things like you know pottery and that sort of thing where you're bringing people together on a regular basis um to um create Community um and then also support type um programs as well and we're also looking ATS um potentially having some um some clinical aspects to that as well um and then um it's not on here but I'll also mention that we're working with um uh The covid Recovery Center which is a partnership primarily with the county and then also with Longmont um that facility um will be um uh being turned into affordable housing we have it I think until the end of May so we'll be looking at sort of seeing if we can identify a smaller facility um to um continue to

[104:01] support uh covid individuals um it doesn't seem like this is going to be over um anytime soon and something we should plan for in the future um also um uh support for um uh individuals who have recently gotten out of the hospital hospital um it's not appropriate for them to be at a shelter and um providing respit care so we're looking at a a smaller um facility that could provide those um um type of U uh shelter and services as we have in the CRC um one of the things I've I've been encouraged about recently is that we've gotten calls from many communities um uh who are um often call to consult us around um various approaches the the CRC um approach that we started um at the very beginning within a week of of

[105:00] covid starting our community um is now um occurring in in other communities um um up and down the Front Range and throughout the country as well so I'm really encouraged with that um they've sort of gotten away from hotels where they can and gone to something similar to like we've set up um I'll I'll then uh get on to the uh the the homeless tax that was um that was put forward by council member Joseph um so there was um we were in discussions with um with the Boulder County Commissioners um over the last couple years through the Regional Housing Partnership and that has shifted probably over the last year to look at both an affordable housing tax and a any Mental Health tax um and in those two areas um we're really seen as um areas that are a high priority for the

[106:01] community members and also needing more resources um so um we've been looking in that direction we haven't really looked at a a city um tax because we really feel that all of these challenges um should be looked at from a regional perspective um so um just a bit of um of Staff capacity um you said that um we you'd continue to hear that I'll continue to say it um so these things that I described that we're working on as well as some others um that we'll talk about on I believe on the next slide are things that we would um potentially need to put a stop to or put a significant um delay to um with adding on additional items and I will stop there there's one more on the next slide would you mind

[107:00] covering that one before we take absolutely can we move that side thanks um so this is talking about um uh creating um additional programs um outside of um in first um and also um a Citywide uh um stakeholder group um so what what I've described here on the middle column is some of the things that we're working on which are are simil similar to this um and what would be helpful in the retreat um when council members talk about um additional services that they want it would would be helpful to First have a goal then second um understand um for us to understand better what those um other services are so about three

[108:01] weeks ago I sent to council a video a training video that we did uh internally where we had um many service providers it was a two and a half hour training video on all the or or the majority of the services that are um available to individual experiencing homelessness in our community and um um I just looked at our our sheet that we give out um to individuals experiencing homelessness um when we engage with them there's there's there's actually 40 different services that are available to individuals experiencing homelessness and so I think first understanding what those services are and then um help us um in the retreat understanding what those those shortfalls are um I'll mention that the be there program that started um uh a few months after covid started and somewhat as a result of covid um we're sort of

[109:02] reenvisioning that right now and um trying to strengthen what that can be um we've had problems uh Staffing that as well um particularly the mental health component of that um so we're we're um actually working on a agement right now to um get that um sort of re-envisioned and restarted um in the next couple of months um there's a lot of um uh data work that we're doing as well um through HSBC that's always um increasing um an area that that I believe would be um very helpful which were um we'd like to um increase as our diversion uh services and that that's particularly focused on individuals um that aren't necessarily from our community and getting them connected um um with their

[110:00] Community um and we also have um HSBC started last year um Regular um Outreach sessions to the community to hear um uh sort of stakeholder feedback um and Community feedback that was put on hold I think it was last summer um when when Co started to increase again um there's an expectation that we'll get that started again um uh in in the next few months if if that improves we um also recently you would have heard um uh a few months ago at one of the updates um that there is a seven member um sort of panel that was implemented um seven members who um have lived The Experience who give uh input to the criminal justice work um under judge cook and I think that's that's been very helpful um so there's been a number of activities um under HSBC and

[111:04] also in under the city initiatives to um increase the feedback particularly of those with with lived experience um and I would say overall um I um there there's so many things that are that are happening right now so many new Services Andes that have been started over the last couple of years under HSBC um my goal is that we we fi we are able to find and maintain the staff capacity to keep those going and I will stop there I think there's still one more on the last slide oh darn okay very popular man you got lots of things your stuff is important go ahead yeah so this one um we may have to understand a little bit more the the this is um the County coroner's office um colle this information um we can possibly work with

[112:01] them to make that information um a little more visible um to council members um we do not have Insight or collect any kind of um hospitalization uh information um but we could see what um if uh bll Community Health might have some sort of reports or something that they would give out but we are not really um privy to any of that information great thanks Kurt all right Council questions comments Nicole go ahead thanks yeah this is just really um a comment I just wanted to kind of Kurt you you were asking I think earlier for like what's the problem statement and so I kind of wanted to get at that with my first one um I really appre appreciate all the work you know that that you're doing to think about how to help people who've made that transition into housing or you know are getting there um I think that you know from from what I hear from folks um who are living in the housing

[113:02] that um seems like it's heading in in a good direction um the the thing that I was really trying to get at with the the priority that I laid out um was what can we do about unsheltered homelessness um you know and how can we um this I think ties into to um forgetting Matt Aon either your one of one of your um points about a day shelter right um that the services Curt that you're working on with these initial uff funds they sound like they're for folks who are already housed have just been housed or on the verge of getting housing and I'm really talking about folks who are living on the creek because the problem as I see it is we've got people living in our public spaces and you know what how how can we address this um strong need that I think everybody in our community is feeling to get at this issue because nobody seems to think it's okay right so so I think that's what I'm trying to think of and and especially with um some of the new arpa funding that's going to

[114:02] be coming through the state these hundreds of millions of dollars for homelessness for housing for things like that that's what I'm wondering about how can we capture some of that like can we use it to buy a building can we use it to um you know renovate a building that we have to serve as a day shelter facility um those kind of things how can we use this onetime money um to create a space that will pull people from um from hanging out by the creek or in our public spaces so I don't know if that helps kind of clarify I just wanted to point out that um I think what I'm hoping to get at really is the issue of unsheltered um homelessness and how can we give how can we create spaces where people can be throughout the day um and sometimes at night if needed um that are not in our public spaces and how can we make use of this one-time giant amounts of money that that are potentially going to be available um you know this may be a place where we can support some of the

[115:02] you know service providers or something you know Consultants others who can um help out with this but um trying to get some of that money to address this issue of people in our public spaces and how we can improve those public spaces feels really important and Timely Kurt do you have a thought on that briefly and maybe it's gonna something you're going to put to that study session coming up yeah I'm I'm sure we'll we'll deal we'll address I I can't see us not addressing this at the the um at the council Retreat um I I will say Nicole and you and I have spoken about this a great deal that's it's one of the the great frustrations of our work um that we've made more progress than we ever thought we would over the last last four years um but it doesn't really feel um any different when you walk through the city um and that's that's extremely frustrating um what what we have seen um

[116:02] and I um showed this to to council members um I think two or three weeks ago is that we have significantly reduced the number of capacity um turnaways um over the last three years and um last year they were almost you non-existent even though our um you know we had the challenges with covid um our the the strategy of um of council four years ago and that which created HSBC Homeless Solutions for Boulder County was really to focus resources on Solutions um uh um out of homelessness and um when when when the city looked at a day shelter um at about that time when the strategy was being developed um at that time I believe the cost that was being quoted was around 700 or

[117:00] $750,000 a year um to to for the operating cost of of that service um I don't what it may look the same today or more I'm not sure um but at the time because of the the the strategy that was place it was really looking at how many individuals could be housed with $750,000 a year um and it's it's a good number of people um and so that's why that that decision was made in that direction so those are some of the things Council would need to consider and think about as far as arpa funds um uh congregate Sheltering is not um um something that arpa funds um supports um in fact it's you can't get HUD funding really for congregate Sheltering anymore there's really been a shift um in in um federal and state and um many

[118:02] local um uh funding resources um on simply things that that um help get people out of homelessness so I think um any initiative I mean my my thought would be is you know what's the what's to that thanks Kurt Matt question um yeah thank you I and uh thank you Nicole for for bringing up the day Sheltering and covering that I appreciate that that's what I was going to largely ask and Kurt thanks for covering some of that but I I wanted to maybe hone in a little bit on you know the opportunity cost that we have in our community related to potential day shelter and certainly you know when we and I appreciate these two programs you're speaking of peer navigation but also day services classes support medical that needs a place to live and so to me it seems like there's a lot of synergies especially given that our current deao day shelter is the library and so I want to make sure that we can

[119:01] siphon that audience and that the folks that are seeking shelter there away into a place that actually has many of the services that they need so I see a lot of inherent almost intrinsic Synergy between a place for them to congregate during the day could also be multi-purposed into overflow Sheltering and support the VAR services classes and support medical that you want to speak of and staff are currently working on and so I see them very much interwined in a meaningful way where the monies and the the array of pots that we have and so I'm kind of wondering you know do you see those synergies as well and is there opportunity for us to hit a bunch of different pots that speak to those needs in order to achieve our outcomes thank you for that Matt um so we um I I think it was uh I don't know a month and a half or so ago um we po we put an out an RFI for these two programs to get feedback from

[120:01] organizations that may do this kind of work to get ideas from them um um about how we would Implement these two arper programs that I described and um we got some very helpful feedback which I was pleased with um but um we're not sure that we can find um a shelter that can um handle um the capacity of you know a 100 people a day with classes and and then if they want to you know um and and provide um nighttime Sheltering as well I'm not aware of such a facility so the approach that we're suggesting at least at this time um is that um it could actually these could be in multiple locations a lot of our affordable housing uh um projects now actually include you know Community rooms and that sort of thing so taking advantage of those spaces

[121:00] where someone can um um take advantage of some of these sort of classes you know where they live or close to where they live instead of all coming to one central location um in the city um and that's sort of the approach we've been using to try to um use facilities that are already in place um and may even have a different function um and so it it may just be two days a week in a particular location um so that's um at least that's how we're we're thinking about it now lots of Juicy stuff for us to pursue at The Retreat further conversations um in the meantime Juni question or comment please thank you heather I do have a comment and a question concerning the homelessness tax and I think what I heard tonight

[122:02] from Kurt and I wanted a clarification it appears to me based on the statements that you made that well this is not something that we're looking into because we don't think it's the right idea and I don't think we should spend resources on that am I correct yeah you're you're nicer than I am juny um um I think that was what I was saying um um doesn't mean that city council shouldn't explore it um I'm just saying that that's my um perspective in relation to the work that we've been doing with um the County Commissioners but I'll also say we have new County Commissioners now as well um those those conversations were started with with the previous County Commissioners yeah I understand your perspective on that but I think many times when you come before Council a lot of times you put forward this idea that you don't

[123:00] have all the resources that you need and I really believe that you know some type of attacks will help in that process I really doubt that we can really care and put homelessness programming at the Forefront if we don't know where the money is coming from and we're considering our I understand that as well but I just think that if we really want real solutions Council ought to take this into account and really consider this homelessness taxs thank you thanks juny and and I do see on that table on that item that Kurt noted that if Council wanted to prioritize this then other other HHS work would need to be reprioritized it wasn't a no but it was a would require a reshuffling of the deck Rachel question I just wanted to follow up on jun's point that um I guess I see tonight as as just scoping and what staff think resources are and um I don't feel like uh it's really up to staff what we decide to move forward

[124:00] with basically it's you know I appreciate the information but um you know I will personally be considering uh jun's proposal on its own merits and if it's good for the city so I just want to at least from where I'm sitting I'm looking if this is scoping and then Friday Saturday I will be considering the merits and and appreciate J's point that's right thanks for that clarification Rachel Lauren question yeah so I just um on this last sort of this in injury prevention um priority I just wanted to point out that you know one of the things that I'm interested in is collecting data on injury um and so I think that you know specifically related to exposure and so I think I would be more interested in hearing what the size of the effort would be for staff to do that because I don't believe the coroner is looking at um injury related issues I could be wrong

[125:00] but Kurt do you have thought on that right now or do you need to do some additional thinking about it yeah so that that would primarily come from uh Clinica and uh Boulder Community Health um and I don't know um what they're what what information they're collecting or how they're reporting it um we would have to this is an information that we could collect we would have to um understand what they could report to us so do you have time before the retreat to look into that and get a just general sense of the level of lift for you to do that research yeah I think we already started reaching out um when we heard it from from Lauren um uh last week I don't know that we've um either had a respond respons so had time to follow up on that but I I know there we did reach out uh uh to to both of them it could take some time I'm not sure that we'll be able to I I don't

[126:01] know that we'll be able to get that before the retreat all right all right Council I'd love to finish out this one slide and let you um get the down low on occupancy and Rental housing items and then take a break let you stretch your legs um David is this you this is me is but before David starts let me just add to just for staff because I know a we knew that housing and homelessness right would would take a lot and I appreciate the thought that today really we wanted to just share with you our thoughts and to save some of these deep rich conversations for the retreat right as we move forward I think um the notion of our capacity constraints and what we're doing for hiring and whether we can use Consultants we've uh mentioned so unless un there's a particular point you want to add on that I would say let's just um for all of the staff that's coming afterwards let's try to focus really on feedback on on the lift and the sort of

[127:00] thought of what work is happening already that may have synergies um just for the sake of time so I just appreciate it and know that the first two priorities were heavy and it was good to have that conversation thanks that areia David take it away all right so um I think that um in terms of occupancy looking at our occupancy standards I know that there has been some talk of that there may be some quick easy wins um I hope that that can be the case and I and again I would go to how the council Scopes the issue at the retreat but I have you know as we have learned from the previous election um people have both passionate views about the topic as well as has um um perhaps many opposed um perspectives on the topic and and whatever solution comes out of it I think will require a big um Community

[128:01] engagement lift um s uh with the rental the occupancy and Rental housing I um I think I would go to Kurt's question is like to really um have a good I'd like to learn from the council um kind of what the expectations would be in terms of what these types of changes might look like and again um on the one hand just things that I've been hearing quite quite a bit since I've been back is both that we regulate too much and we don't regulate enough um and so I guess any help that the council could provide us in The Retreat on how we begin to balance those two um proc perspectives okay anything else you want to say on that David that that would that would be my final remarks David one um one

[129:02] clarifier perhaps uh before your time when we were talking about occupancy Jacob had mentioned um before your time in this role I should say because Lord knows uh you have been with us for a while um but Jacob and mentioned that staff had initiated sort of a peer City revieww and was planning on bringing that forward to Council in this quarter um and I haven't touched base again with the team to see if that is accurate so maybe that's something for you to think about for the retreat um if if we can at least get started with some of that conversation because we may get some great policy Direction on that front as well great thank you Council any questions on this item go ahead Matt yeah David you know uh one thing I I would just in terms of scoping that I think is helpful is this community has been going back and forth on occupancy for two years now

[130:02] and that's a lot of community engagement in fact more so than most issues we deal with um in terms of uh ordinance public hearing some emails second reading and boom we pass it move on and so I think you know I hope we can see those comments pros and cons as a huge foundation and Scaffolding from which to um perhaps find ways to expedite the process not to bypass process but to leverage those conversations for last two years to really inform us to move forward in other parts of process that we otherwise probably don't need to do based on having two years of really really large and sometimes contentious public conversation around occupancy well I I appreciate that Matt um but but I will say say that just in terms of watching public process in Boulder um for the last 30 plus years one of the things that I have found is that when you have an issue like this

[131:02] where the perspectives are so diam diametrically opposed that it's really not a place where well well something I learned in construction you want it done do it once you want it nice do it twice um and I think a lot of times those types of issues we find ourselves um picking up the pieces and starting it starting it again so those would be my concerns that I would ask you guys to consider thanks David kenil I don't see any other questions um would love to give you a chance to take a break but I just wanted to pick up on this thread real quick um in advance of their treat thing one is um for those of you who um have been on on Council for some time or have been watching Council for for some time you might recall previous Council conversations at a retreat um where a certain topic was identified as an easy win that if I recall then took over

[132:02] Council and the community conversation for some number of um months if not more than a year um so it this is perhaps a cautionary Tale part of it was just to David's point on on how how Council tackled and understood the level of whiff with the community so as we go into the retreat when you when you're thinking about reframing resc scoping reconsidering revising some of these ideas based on the information you're receiving today one of the things um that you might want to consider is is how do you envision and understand the community of conversation around those things um because that probably also does influence um not just the lift for Council and for staff but also for the community um who you know also have things to do with their time so I might just give some thought to that when you um bring ideas back on Thursday or on Friday and Saturday um so with that it is 8812 someone asked me when we when I first joined do you get 15 minutes tonight and you don't but because I still want to always be more popular

[133:00] than Aaron I think 10 should do it suck it Erin um so what do you say you go 22 and we will jump in um we're clicking along those were our big ticket items that had multiple council members on them so I'm glad we invested the time there um but I think we can um move through the rest of them a little bit more efficiently H22 go forth do the things see you [Music] then [Music]

[138:58] [Music]

[142:36] there's there they are hello hello hello one two three four five six seven there's Lauren and Mr Mayor are you with us you so a customer taken five he's like and I'm out all right well we're waiting um for

[143:02] Aaron just if you're tracking um uh we are actually making rather significant progress a bunch of you had priorities in those um early categories um and so now we have more items that just have one or at most two of you um and uh I suspect these will move along more quickly um and so I'll add Heather too while you're finding some time right I have I have asked staff to um help with our time management and and those two we knew were sort of big issues so I appreciate that to sort of focus on what the feedback is and um what questions if any they have in terms of like it how we need to scope or if that scope were more narrow this is what that timeline could be so hopefully we should be able to move forward uh a little bit quicker in

[144:01] the next segment excellent thank you and there's aarin and away we can go um so starting uh picking up where we left off with nuis nuisance abatement and Hill revitalization is that David is that you that would be Nua oh Nua gets those all right because this is nura's thing go ahead girl well I'll say this that we have been there are two here that are really about sort of increasing what we're doing with um with uh nuisance abatement and quality of life issues certainly we have talked about that um in the hill revitalization group that work is ongoing and uh I believe it is uh Q3 if I'm not mistaken that Cao was hoping to bring some ordinances uh in for in front of council I'll say too though that we've had continued thoughts on this issue about even expanding that and that's why to David's earlier point

[145:00] about sorry your soup's ready uh there's something there's something uh beeping at me in my kitchen and I don't know what it is um as we were thinking about um what that looks like in terms of the occupancy issues and um I think some of those the conversations we're going to have here in nuisance abatement um about land and some of the renter supports that Nicole had mentioned earlier uh we're going to be touching upon as we look at this work um with whether it's landlord education um thinking about how to strengthen some of those uh conversations with landlords and holding what is not the majority of our landlords accountable for some of those nuisance issues we've been working with it with some great uh data on what does that look like in terms of who are those calls that we're getting where are the properties that we're getting the most calls from and are using the most resources and really honing in on those because again it is that kind of to

[146:02] maris's point the 8020 principal or in my estimation it's usually about 10% of landlords that are perhap or property managers that are perhaps not paying the right attention so that work will be ongoing uh in uh Tara's um request regarding nuisance abatement I'll add that there were some additional um conversations to be had about that including uh moving from or shifting to a patrol based model instead of the complaint-based model and that work is not ongoing but certainly if that is a priority that Council wants to move forward that's another one given where police capacity is right now that we would have to have additional conversations on if that is the choice but we're also hoping as we continue this work that some of the data informed strategies will help us pinpoint and strategize better to that work so more on that as we move forward okay I'm I'm worried about your

[147:00] house n your kitchen is the holler at you um it is Council any um clarifying questions or thoughts on um those two items all right what's next now it is David um so as all of you know that we're moving towards um the adoption of the East Boulder sub community plan and hope that that will happen towards the end of the first quarter early second quarter so our thought is is that we will be moving directly into implementation after that or at least at a minimum implementation planning um when the plan is adopted and that's just you know figuring out how you're going to fund public improvements regulatory structures a lot of those types of things so that um will will continue um and I think that we um at least in that area are probably pretty well staffed to continue that

[148:01] work um the community benefits issue that um um council member wallik brought up I think that that's something that we could probably fold into um the some of the existing code change projects that we're doing right now in terms of you know I think that I think that the point that uh um council member wallik was making is that I think that sometimes um developers make promises that are outside of the regular regulatory processes um and what approaches we can use that when that occurs that we can actually get um some type of implementation approach that's binding so we can add that in and is you know that that can probably be folded into existing work projects as well okay so where those say high in terms of level of effort that's because they would be fold they could be folded

[149:01] into those things that you're already doing that are already high levels of effort is that right David it it is and I think probably one of the components of you know really a lot of the high is uh it's a lot of this work um is just part of the building back of the department in 20 in in the year 2022 okay thanks Tara question yeah David um sorry I'm not sure if this is appropriate or not but I'm once again talking about middle income housing in regards to the east Boulder sub community plan implementation is there any way that you can the popular word scope that out for possibly happening since uh I believe the council feels like it's it's one of our priorities well typically what we would do is you know once the plan is adopted then um that implementation planning starts and that's like putting together your list your to-do list of how you're going to

[150:00] make the vision happen and um to the extent that middle income housing is a a big focus of the plan that would be our first one of our first steps would be actually scoping out so you know is that could it be an incentive based approach um a public invest approach or a regulatory approach or maybe all of the above but but yeah we would we would be jumping right into that thanks terara Mark go ahead just a quick question David and thank you you expressed my intent perfectly um by folding it into ongoing uh projects will that change the start date from 20123 to something earlier or or not um I I think it could probably start earlier you know I think that the thing that the issue that we would have to look at as a department really is kind of um which which project that's going forward that we could hang this on thank you

[151:01] yeah s is your hand up again or still okay cool thanks Council any other questions for David on these planning items okay all right next slide who's up next niia uh up next is I think Dan NOP yep Dan we're g to give David a break for a moment Dan Burke danber evening Council here I am could find my buttons um this uh mayor Brockett brought this item forward in terms of initiating a Land Management plan for osp's uh Fort Chambers property that we acquired in 2018 and uh uh the intent of that Land Management plan is to provide us with a long-term guidance for how best to manage the plan and uh as part of that

[152:02] uh we have already identified the the need to have meaningful participation in that planning process with the three tribal government Nations that were impacted by the San Creek Massacre and uh in fact those efforts are underway right now in order to uh identify and have uh the tribal Representatives uh that each tribe would would like to have in this planning uh process identified uh there's uh still I believe uh one of the tribes we're still looking to get that official representation from they are definitely interested in participating but we have yet to get that rep representation uh of who will be their official reps on it so this is is sort of a long-winded way of saying that we are in line with mayor brockett's um identified priority it is something that uh uh we uh intend to once we get the tribal Nations on board with their represent representatives to

[153:00] begin moving forward more in Earnest uh and we expect that this plan uh could be uh completed by the end of uh 2023 uh there is one caveat in terms of of the unknowns or what what might uh delay this project and that is uh uh in working with tribal governments they have a lot of efforts that they're asked to participate in and uh so one of the unknowns is is uh uh we feel like moving forward without robust and meaningful participation for the tribes would be something we don't want to sacrifice so the time uh the timeline that we put in place uh will need to be somewhat flexible and adjustable in order to meet the uh uh the Capac capacity challenges that tribal Representatives will be under uh for the time that they're able to commit to the project but if all goes well we're uh hopefully we will be able to have this wrapped up by the end of 2023 excellent thanks Dan Markus your

[154:02] hand up for a question for Dan nope all good okay does anyone have a question for Dan say thanks for that Dan appreciate it absolutely all right up next to David yeah sorry David break's over I know break's over but I think after this one I get to drop the mic so um there's been a lot of interest expressed over um the last few years about um it being time to take a look at the planning Reserve um just in terms of you know the topic has come up in terms of the needs for housing in our community as well as you know many people people have raised it in the context of um the CU South annexation so we anticipate that this work will need to be done um as we move into the next major update to the comprehensive plan

[155:02] so our our our plan is to start that work in 23 of course assuming it is all authorized by the council and there's a quite a detailed process laid out in the comp plan about how about how we would go about doing this project it's never been done before so it'll be interesting for everyone um but yeah so so we'll just be bringing I anticipate based on how I assume the council will um react to this project that we'll be bringing this forward in 23 and this is uh given that there's a lot of uh technical capacity type issues associated with the public infrastructure that would be required to um serve the planning Reserve that this actually would be um in addition to a staff intensive project also um a consultant intensive project as

[156:02] well lots of questions for you on this one David Bob go ahead thanks David uh David just a question on timing um when Council first approved this um back in the beginning of 2020 and then it was I think a sidelined by covid I think we were told by staff at the time that that the based on Urban Services study would take two to three years to complete and that's why I think Council felt comfortable starting it in 2020 because the completion would be about 2023 and then we going roll into the comp plan Revision in 2024 if we don't start this until 2023 are you still confident that this can get done in time for the 2025 comp plan is it going to take less time than we originally forecasted or are we pushing out the the beginning of the comp plan revision um I guess there's the potential that I could push out the beginning of the comp plan revisions I see okay but but you know I mean I think that that will all be those will all be project management issues and resource frankly resource issues if

[157:00] we can uh run both of them concurrently um you know a a lot of the beginning of the compreh you know a major update to the comp plan um probably the you know the first year frankly of our major update tend to be more in the realm of community engagement as opposed to kind of substantive policy work yeah I remember that from from when we updated the comp plan in 2015 and 16 and 17 it was a lot of community engagement so I get that there's an overlap but um is the reason why we're not starting to 2023 is that staff capacity because as you mentioned this is one area that we probably are going to have a fair amount of outsourced uh consultant support is are we backing into a 2025 comp plan or are we not starting until 2023 because we don't have the capacity to start till then well I think both I think that our intent is is to try to uh get the work done um pretty much when we're starting

[158:00] the next uh major update um or at least that there would be minimal um overlap between the two but yeah I think that um with everything else and the rebuilding of the rebuilding um postco of the STA uh I think that we have we have um you know thought that this would be given the major the major nature of this project that it would be good to to start it from a place of strength okay thanks Bob Mark is this not a project where the use of Consultants might accelerate the start day and the completion day um I anticipate it will be a a consultant heavy process there's a I think that you know there's two two major components of the Baseline Urban Services study um one one part is what

[159:00] do you need as a community and that's really kind of that's Community engagement and that's the kind of stuff that our staff generally does quite well and then the other part is do you have the capacity to provide services um necessary to um serve the development that you would participate um and and what we've talked about as a staff is that that would those would be great types of projects where we would um Outsource the consultants and have them do that um you know utilities Transportation police all all of the urban services that we would need to be able to provide if that came if if that property is going to be our next major expansion as a city thank you and Rachel just wanted to clarify one thing hi David G nice to see you back again um you said those magic words to You South and I just wanted to understand did that um is that because the council members

[160:00] who lifted this up tied it to see you South because I don't necessarily see planning Reserve study as linked to see you South so wanted to just clarify for the public because those words were said like yeah I apolog my apologize or apologies for that I didn't mean to um um insinuate that this this was a council directive it's just it's been part of the community conversation as we went through um the uh South Campus annexation and you know there was a lot of correspondence from members of the community that they thought it was an area the land swap ideas an idea that would bear further con consideration but I you know I really have no opinion one way or another as to one whether it's a good idea or two kind of given how the University of Colorado has um spaced its various

[161:00] facilities um around the city how how how how or if it would be something that they would even be interested in entertaining I not had any of those conversations okay and and I guess I just wanted to clarify like I I don't think if this is is part of retreater is lifted up that it's that it's actually Tethered to see you South it's it's an independent project so I don't know if um juny or Mark or Bob wants to win because they they I see Bob's hand up yeah thanks great Point Rachel thank you certainly I don't want to speak for marker or juny but um certainly is not my intention this is something the council actually approved and directed staff to do in January of 2022 and then staff I think came back to us a year later a few months later and said we can't do it because of covid uh there was no talk about CU South then from my perspective there's no talk about CU South now this is this is a Thing Worth doing in and of itself from my perspective okay that's my memory too thanks Mark that point or another one no

[162:00] further to Bob's coming I see this is entirely untethered from CU South this is about providing housing and and uh the manner in which we do it okay juny no no thank you I just wanted to reiterate exactly what bab said you know The Preserve or area three has nothing to do with C South and we don't intend to correlate the two okay great all right anything else oh David you want to jump in oh I would just thank you oh okay appreciate the comments and uh Point well taken awesome thanks Nia who's next next slide is going to be the Erica show we're going to move a little bit and shift to Transportation I'll say the first two were sort of closely related so maybe uh Erica we can take those at once and then uh defer to you on how you want to address the rest excellent that is

[163:00] exactly what I was going to say about the first two they're very um you know well linked together uh I guess two things with regard to this one is that um we had anticipated or in the process of doing a transportation Master Plan update we've spread it out over 3 years um and the reason for that is that the current Transportation master plan is largely a um it's kind of like having a menu but it's not particularly strategic and so one of the things that we are striving to do was to help position on um the city to be in a more strategic Place both for um choices for implementation of projects as well as funding them um quite simply the process of going through doing you know in uh analyzing this we scoped out what the proposal that you um had offered and then we to looked at our budget that we had available we took off the capital budget side because um we can't tap into

[164:00] that for operational or staff or needs and so what was left was um essentially the staff and um operations budget and whenever you know looking at that um we looked at what the staff who would who have skill set to be able to work on these particular projects and identified what they would have to not do in order to do that so that's um pretty straightforward and I think that you know in the context of other things that are going on there's um rle making happening at the state level around um greenhouse gases and um transportation's role in it so with that I will stop there and ask if you have any questions or if there's anything else I can assist with Rachel go ahead I think that um I was one of the the two that you're answering here and the specific action steps that i' suggested were things like more protected bike Lanes parking changes meaning you know maybe uh eliminating

[165:02] parking minimums things like that free uh public transit for community members eliminating slip rate or permissive left turn Lanes um you know sort of as advised by Tab and the you know what the suggest for what we might have to stop to make it happen is basically the things that I'm suggesting implementing so I um my first question is is this not something that we can uh in include consultants for uh in Le of Staff time because if if the the block here staff time who then can't work on the low stress bike and walk Network implementation and ecopest program can we then um have Consultants work on that for us um because I I my my broader concern as we talk about about the the new Transportation um master plan is it feels like the other one is still fairly fresh and not implemented fully like we haven't we haven't achieved what was in that master plan so if we're looking at like taking the next two years to create

[166:00] another one without implementing the previous one and and you know these are the the sorts of goals we had in it I just am concerned that we're losing years and and and time towards Vision zero so I guess the main question is consultancy there are consultants in there too um we don't have a lot of extra budget but the budget that we had identified for consultant assistance were directed toward the things that we had identified would have to um essentially be traded I mean this is a zero sum game and so and it's not a game but basically it's like there's a tradeoff so if we um we'd have to either give up staff in order to have more consultant resource or um I'm not sure exactly what I mean you know the only places that we could go into further um which we've identified below is to scale back on operations like potholes um and snow removal and so forth

[167:01] because there's not a lot of extra budget around and and this may be a question then for nerri I appreciate the answer um but if our goal is to move forward and we as a council decided we wanted to commit more funding to and so it's not then a you know you can have either or because nobody's going to want to not fill in the potholes or keep the the roads cleared or keep moving forward with the things that are already kind of moving in the direction that we're talking about but if we say we have X more dollars then can those extra dollars go to Consultants to sort of try and achieve some of these goals I think the the quick answer is we can do a lot of things so it's whether or not that becomes the priority for us to do together right and so as we moved into the retreat if this is one of the items that um Council as a body wants to lift up then it is up to us to further scope that and think about all right this is what it's going to take and have that discussion to your point about how do we need to make that happen right and so um I I think there's more to come as we think about that um but certainly we

[168:01] can then shift and share with you uh we have this policy Direction This Is How We propose to address it um and have further conversations about that okay thanks both of you thanks Rachel Erin go ahead yeah Rachel got to most of my point but I just just to reiterate just slightly that um yeah I think a uh those first two items that were suggested Erica that you addressed I think they're about furthering the measures like implementing the low stress bike and walk Network program and Ecco passes and so I think there's there's probably not not would not be any desire to to sacrifice those to do this because it's essentially the same thing so I appreciate n your point about discussing um this this is a budgetary priorities if we decide to raise this one up because I think it's probably more the direction we'd want to be looking so thanks for that and I and I say that truly um to help uh Erica out as well right like er Erica is trying to stay within her own budget it is not like we

[169:01] have extra money floating around so I just want to that share that if this is something that is a policy priority moving forward then we will all work together to figure out what does that look like um and that may mean that in other areas of our surprise that we may have to make other harder decisions as well thanks niia right Erica you want to talk about a couple more things okay um so the next one you know essentially is trying to you know create um free or subsidized um Citywide bus service and um we in The Proposal here we essentially look at scoping that out and trying to put a plan together in policies but we um this would definitely have um require substantially millions of dollars of resource to actually put additional um best service on um you know on the roadways to do that and quite honestly it is infeasible to do that within a two-year period but

[170:02] having a plan to do that and a strategic way of doing it um is possible and you to the earlier points what we'd have to give up in order to get um to have the resources in order to um imp you know to develop a plan like that have we tried to identify those there okay Rachel is your hand up nope okay Lauren go ahead yeah so um if you're it's obviously an expensive and large program um but doing a Fe ibility study on what that would look you know like what sort of your overall cost is and what you know I talked about like a potential way to um pay for that and so I guess my ask in the work plan is just for the

[171:00] feasibility study um and that's essentially what we've scoped out because you know as I said it would take millions of dollars to actually implement it right and that that's sort of in the hidden category I guess what it would take to actually do okay any other questions on that one Bob yeah just on on Lauren's point on scoping um eron help me remember here I think there was some scoping of this done well four or five years ago I remember Mary young was on a committee with some colleagues around the region and in a committee with RTD and I don't know how far they got but I thought there was some scoping and actually some dollars actually put on the this thing so if the question is is what would it cost I I thought that that question was kind of answered and I wonder if we could dust that off am I remember that correctly Erin well I I think something like that was done um in about that time

[172:00] frame that you're describing I do think that the landscape has changed really significantly with um the covid and and the pandemic and rtd's Workforce challenges and all these kinds of things so um You probably would need to relook at it at least somewhat okay thanks sir question ER real quick is that ringing a bell well since I was wasn't here then um no it's not ringing any bells but I guess there's what a 20 and I want to say a 2012 um Transit plan um was put together but that's what I can recall off the top of my head so we need to look into that further yeah it was more recent than that ERC it was probably around 200 I'm going to guess 17 I might be off by year but around 2017 and and there was a multi-city um work group uh that Mary Young from city council was on and and one of the questions I was asked was what would it take from a expense standpoint um to to have a a ubiquitous

[173:01] bus Ser free ubiquitous bus service in Boulder and I think dollars were put on that um as Aon says it that may be still work by now but um it was done at one point in time all right all right Erica you got one more one more here and essentially that um you know asking for increased um protected bike lane um bike Lanes to be put in place so we have an existing um plan with which is our low stress bike and walk network but it is largely unfunded and so um what we had anticipated um doing was trying to go back and um take a look at that as part of the transportation Master Plan update in order for us to accelerate that work and actually get things um implemented um it um we had identify what would need to be you know the resources that we have allocated um that's roughly equivalent amount to get

[174:02] us um started on there okay mat thank you Erica I um my my question kind of circles to kind of opportunity cost which is the cost of not doing it with regards to our climate goals specifically VMT um you know Co showed us pretty clearly that people were quickly flocking to bikes when they didn't need to drive and so harnessing and holding on to that uh desire to participate in a more multimodal facet in our community is necessary to kind of if you will the Field of Dreams model of if you build it they will come and I think that's where this is and so I appreciate that there's the low stress Network that's available I'm just kind of curious that you know with the current TMP I mean we we there are really clear goals in that and and and how do we if we've already got this

[175:00] plan for the low stress Network I'm wondering why I'm trying to understand where that lift is and resources to just do it just kind of start to say this is what it takes to do it and then get us a sense of what that number looks like so we can think about resource allocation to try to achieve some of those outcomes in an incremental fashion and how many miles or or half miles per year and trying to build a Cadence because again coming back to those climate goals of ours which are are are sacrosanct for our community the cost of not doing it is is in many ways greater and so in terms of scoping I'm hoping we can kind of look at that that holistic uh sense of goals and and opportunity cost very much appreciate that and um I think that's where a staff we want to get to also and acknowledging what you said we've got great goals in the plan but we don't have is a strategic Pathway to prioritize things or um an identification of the funding that it actually takes to implement the various

[176:01] aspects and so um that's what we're striving to do okay all right anything else for Erica all right niia who's next uh we're going to have Chris M Che on Deck because I think it's a quick one hopefully because we have talked a little bit about this uh and uh I think you're tired of hearing about staff retention and capacity issues and so forth and we're hoping to actually address that really quickly um in the beginning of the year Chris yeah I think Nu is right I think we've we've touched on most of these already two quick things that I might mention that I didn't say before um the first is just more honestly maybe a little editorial on my part but this is the first time I think I've ever recalled seeing in uh Council priorities staff retention in Recruitment and uh I think that does really speak to the the moment that we're in coming out of covid and I know

[177:00] the staff have appreciated it and and recognized that this is a a piece of the critical path for us to be able to to move forward uh on a lot of work plan items and then the second is just to the uh the specific point around any budget adjustments we do anticipate in the first adjustment to the base 20122 budget uh there'll be some some changes to uh um work on some uh some salary areas and benefit areas that we need to adjust uh um coming out of the end of last year so um we do expect that you'll see that in the first uh ATV so that's it happy to answer questions if there are any fantastic any questions for Chris hot diggity all right who's coming up next all right we've got two living wage issues and some election issues that we've uh compressed on the next

[178:00] slide um and so we'll start uh with a living wage issue for residents um as we thought about it and I know that um juny you had mentioned this in the last meeting that perhaps this was more of an awareness as you're working on this with um other folks other leaders across the state um but I know uh Kurt had an exploration of a pilot project that seemed um to touch upon this issue and wanted to bring that up so I'll ask Kurt to come up and just sort of share the pilot program he's been thinking about there we go there we go um yes so we're um um another project that will be bringing forward to Council in in February relates to um sort of a um um a basic

[179:00] sort of cost of living and um several have started such programs um over the last couple of years and what we'll be putting forward is actually um a bit of cost to actually study this to understand how it would work in the city and if this is a good proposal do commun engagement around it and also get some expertise from other communities that have tried this um and um uh so you you'll hear more about that in February it's something that we're currently working on um so you'll um you'll be hearing about that shortly and um we're excited to explore this with you all right Aaron question on that one so uh juny I wonder if uh if you on this item might clarify I I think you were as I understood it you were envisioning

[180:02] this to be working on raising the city minimum wage in in collaboration with some of our potentially our neighboring cities and and counties is that the is that correct yes Ain actually you put it right yes thank you great thanks for that because I think that I think maybe staff maybe saw heard this is something a little different so well I I I do think we understood it that way Erin um you mentioning this as it's sort of associated with um that type of work but we we understand it's not the same thing got it okay thanks for that card okay all right anything else on that one all right naria uh and then I'll ask I now forget if it's um I think it's Chris who's going to try to talk about the ballot measure um on this living wage item is that right Chris sure I can jump in on this one uh

[181:02] this this one was from council member spear around both uh Council pay and board and commission members on the board and commission member front um there has been a boards and commission subcommittee engagement committee that's been looking at kind of boards and commissions AB broadly I think this is one that could be uh in that uh and and then um on the the council pay piece the council has had that conversation and I think that's uh that's one that primarily lives with uh with Council and then any any necessary co- changes uh as a part of drafting that ballot measure so uh that's the the short and narrow on that one all right questions Council Matt I appreciate that Chris you know I given that there certainly is a lot of interest on on Council here for um some election reform or at least some election Integrity not to mention this is a national issue as we are all very

[182:02] aware of um you know and it's nice to see David on here because he and I worked on the campaign finance and election reform working group together some years ago so it's good that that he's around and could offer some insight from how that worked out um but you know with with regards to commission it seems like that would be a very helpful thing to be a part of something like both of these proposed ballot measures so I see a lot of synergy in what council's proposing here as priority work but also what the community Also may want and I think that's an important thing for us to also consider in sort of how we scope that is not just where it fits into the council priority but where it fits into having the community input uh with regards to this and many other synergies that we see going forward and ongoing election reform stuff so um I understand that there's some staff time on it and and I know David and I worked on that together but it was really fulfilling from a community perspective and so the opportunity cost again I come to there is by not having that we're reacting to democratic issues rather than maybe proactively looking to solve or or uh

[183:02] Rectify issues okay and Matt I'm sorry just for my clarity are you talking about the living Wade ballot measures in synergy to the elections or the two elections ones did you jump us down well Chris was mentioning the election was El was was talking about boards and commissions with regards to this and maybe I misunderstood but I seemed like he was kind of tying that in and maybe he was indirectly or I I misheard so maybe I did jump ahead on one Matt maybe I can clarify I was specifically speaking to uh uh the the second row there which was um from Nicole talking about potentially exploring paying bord and commission members so all of the Cities boards and commissions and whether they should receive some sort of uh monetary compensation and uh and we see that that could very very smoothly kind of roll into that board and commission work that's already underway gotcha no that was that was my mistake on jumping the

[184:01] gun on that one but uh I appreciate roll that right into the next ones possibly you may answer my questions all right so who's on elections Pam dve hey good evening everyone I'm fam Davis um thanks for the great segue so um the elections items the the first one there related to a specific Charter amendment that would um be placed on the ballot to move elections to even number years we've identified that as a medium lift we have a a pretty good process in place for how we take those ideas um and work them through Council through our Charter committee um in partnership with the clerk's office and the city attorney's office that committee meets um in the springtime and really looks at what should be on consideration to go on the ballot um so as far as process-wise no major concerns that said we have a lot happening in the election space um that is sort of Midstream and so we would

[185:02] just want to take a look at how Shifting the timing of our cycle would interface with existing initiatives that we have to implement like rank Choice voting um direct election of the mayor which is slated to be implemented 2023 so for example if we shifted the timing to even number years just looking at how that Cadence would have to adjust um in relation to other processes that we have um in regards to sort of the second request we had two different mentions around establishing an election commission um or task force I think this is one area that we'd really like to explore further with Council to understand what exactly are the um issues with either the charter or code or current practice that we're trying to solve um so that we could start from a place of understanding what the kind of questions at hand are and then from there have a conversation around whether a working group of some kind would be

[186:01] the best way to address those challenges or if there are other opportunities um so a little hard to answer without uh more specific Direction um again we'll just share between the um ongoing improvements to the boulder director direct democracy online system that are already underway for this year the implementation of direct election of the mayor by rank Choice voting um we are onboarding our new elections um specialist this year in the clerk's office so that that piece of the puzzle um we have an Elections office of one with support from our wonderful City Clerk and so we would just really want to have a conversation with with Council around what's already been mandated by the voters how what that timeline looks like and what sort of timing expectations there would be for any additional changes so we can take some thoughts on this again some of this work we might it might be conversation for the retreat

[187:00] but um Rachel go ahead what I'm wondering actually is if it can be conversation before the retreat like in the next couple days this has been mentioned a couple times in a couple of contexts by staff tonight like we will need more information and we hope to have a discussion on whatever at The Retreat and for us to be able to make decisions at The Retreat it would be really helpful if we all came in with the same understanding and can kind of hit the ground running because really it's just what six or eight hours and we decide what we're going to do for two whole years um around these conversations so if we spend a lot of the time explaining you know as the person like if this is Matt's sft here maybe he and Pam can talk and and everybody you know whatever mad's going to pitch at The Retreat Pam can be prepared to you know say the resources involved so I don't know this is probably T Nuria like we each had five ideas is there a way that that somebody could check in with us on all of our five and make sure that we are we are being understood you know kind of both directions and and that when we get to the retreat there's no um you know sort

[188:01] of further presc scoping or understanding that needs to happen at the staff level I think so I don't I wouldn't go with the five ideas for every single person because there's some that are that are clear but for those that um could benefit additional from from additional conversation on what exactly do you want from that certainly we could try to do that I mean part of that is up to the time council members may have in addition to the time that staff may have but certainly encourage those further conversations as we move forward because I I would agree that we want to have those solid conversations at The Retreat um to the best that we can as we move forward so welcome staff continuing to reach out um to council members directly and hope that council members have time within their schedules as well to try to accommodate that between now and the retreat and and I I guess I'll just say from my perspective like I I felt like most of mine were not quite articulated the way I intended them on this um sheet and so you know might it might be helpful though if there was just a quick checkin with somebody if

[189:00] there's any staff time for that on all of them you know just one person check in with each council member like did we you know did we get this right because otherwise we' this conversation would continue for 10 more hours thanks yeah and I'll say we we tried to lift that up directly from the um items that were submitted to us but certainly we can try to sort of with those that we're already noting that require a little bit more um help or some additional conversation we'll try to figure that out but I'll also say that I I just want to make sure that I'm honoring two staff that has things on their plate and has meeting have meetings already scheduled through the week so we'll try to figure out as best we can to get to as many of those conversations as possible and N is it also helpful just to ask counsel if you if you have the impression that that staff did not quite understand one of your items um that they might proactively just identify that for for you all yeah that'd be great too if

[190:01] there's one you're like oh no that's what I want meant um maybe take just reach out on your end and the other piece that I would ask is if you're going to provide any additional information um to in response to one Council memb priority for some additional offline scoping if you'd be sure that we get that to everyone so that we all have the same information going into the retreat and I'll offer myself if you want to share with me if there are areas that aren't quite right and you really this is where you want to really want to go then I'm happy to take that directly and just tag staff cool thanks Nia Matt what do you got well I I'll I'll try again on the one where it actually matters is time for those comments Pam thank you for your comments on that and um I I certainly and Rachel I appreciate what you just said and I also just want to make sure juny gets credit because because she's an equal part on on raising uh the establishment of the election commission task force and has some really great thoughts on this so you know where I I certainly would trust her her feedback on this as well but I

[191:01] do want to just you know speak for myself I I I I open myself up to help clarify that Pam so however and whenever your your schedule accommodates would love to have that dialogue um I will just say you know in sort of building off a little bit of I said I don't want to be totally redundant that that this has so much Synergy with a lot of the work including the mayor and RCB stuff um that that we're doing um and I Know It intimately well because I helped create that that measure um and so I understand that there's a lot of building blocks to that and then there's other things that the community's been talking about um we've gotten a letter from from a a Consortium a coalition of people that are looking and very interested in proportional representation and so so we have a long Runway of election reform work that the community is very interested in and working groups are tend to be finite and reactionary in their scope and so I want to sort of think about lifting our heads up for the Horizon um certainly some of those more proactive things are coming and so that's just maybe a little preview of why a commission or board might be a little more applicable than a working group um but certainly would

[192:00] love to talk with you on some of those greater details and hopefully if we can R rou uh juny into that conversation as well hopefully we can give you the context necessary for the retreat thanks for that Matt and I can reach out to the two of you to see if we have some time to align yep and you you got an actual thumbs up from juny don't know if you saw that it wasn't an e thumbs up it was a legit thumb all right fantastic um Nua next slide who we got the next two slides actually are all about resilience so we will start with resiliency against disasters and I'll call upon um Chief calderazzo to kick us off thanks Nara uh good evening mayor counsel Mike cazzo fire department um this is a very big um uh item and topic there are lots of different moving parts to this the good news and I'll I'll save us a lot of time here by saying that many of these things are already in process um to varying

[193:03] degrees I'll just give a couple of examples and we can save more in-depth conversation certainly if Council wants to go in a particular direction um but around uh three big areas prevention response um and even even on the recovery side um we have to update our community Wildfire protection plan for instance osmp has a forest ecosystem management plan we work every year with that the limiting factors on mitigation for instance are going to be in any given year it's going to be the weather or some other issues um but we're we're constantly working on um different parts of different plans and working to revise those of course the Marshall fire did um have us uh rethink or or start to rethink our own risk assessment so that's something that's going to need a refresh um and um we're making a concerted push out there for interface homes um and even beyond that um for

[194:00] home safety assessments and I can't tell you right now what the um what the demand will be on our services so it's a little difficult to say well we'll trade this for that activity but I can tell you that you know we're long overdue for a community Wildfire protection plan refresh as well as our structure uh protection plan and so those are items that we'll be looking to move forward so the good news is much of this is already being worked on um the building code piece is something I'm I'm actually not prepared to speak to um tonight but I do know we we usually skip around um what I mean by that is every three years the IFC updates the codes we do have we've adopted already the community Wildfire protection uh the the wildine interface code as part of the international fire code so so we already have that from the 2018 version of course there's a 2021 version and there'll be one in 2024 and that's a that's a multi-department effort um and not something likely we'll be able to um pivot to without some some

[195:03] conversation about what that might uh switch um in terms of workloads but um beyond that a lot of the the good work is being done and um really it's about our risk assessment now and some of the assumptions we make about how we're going to notify folks and get them evacuated to the appropriate places or give them places to go to so that's my quick and and dirty approach to this one so I can save us some time but I'm certainly available to answer your questions here and certainly more if the retreat obviously and before we move off of this because I think um and I appreciate that Mike that you were talking both to this slide and to the next one but I want to stay on this one for a moment because this one also involves a lot of work that open space and Mountain Parks is doing so I just wanted to invite Dan to weigh in as well before we move into the next one yeah thanks Nia and and thanks Chief and and and and chief Colorado is absolutely right there's a lot of collaboration

[196:00] that uh has been ongoing uh uh between the fire department and Open Space Mountain parks and the one thing I think I might add uh that wasn't brought up already uh is the fact that there's uh we Depend and we need Partnerships Beyond just the city so we have a Wildland system that extends quite quite a far uh west of the city boundary and so we start getting into Boulder County lands we start getting into uh US Forest Service lands and so the collaboration and the Partnerships that uh uh need to continue to be nurtured strengthened enhanced uh go beyond just depart uh inter departmental uh collaborations within the city uh but also involve Boulder County us fish and uh Wildlife service our wild Wildland uh rural fire districts um so a lot of uh sort of a lot of agencies need to be brought to

[197:00] bear uh and we use these Partnerships to help uh uh make our grant um applications more more appealing and uh the more collaboration and Partnerships we could show that are being brought to the table the more success we'll have with bringing additional capacity in in the form of Grants and we can leverage that to do a more on the ground work so and the other point that I think I'll make is that uh Beyond sort of traditional Land Management work such as thinning and prescribed Burns and prescribed grazing all of those things which is used really heavily on open space uh climate change is also having us bring in other areas of Land Management that we weren't considering very heavily in the past such as soil health and so we have a uh with better soil Health we're able to uh hold more water uh in our in our soils uh which uh increases Health which increases resilience it's all tied together so I think that's what I'll add to what uh

[198:01] the chief already stated thanks Dan thanks Mike Tara question so Mike are you saying we don't need to have this UT plan it's already on our plan or you going to tell us at The Retreat which one the simple answer is it's already in the plan um it'll just be that we might need to ship some resources depending on demand around home safety assessments and the like but it's already in the plan all right excellent any other questions for Mike or Dan on this item okay can we just switch the slide since Mike touched on the next one a little bit um Mike did you need to say anything more about about this one or have you already said what need to saying I could I I will jump in just on the um notification system I know there's some some conversation CommunityWide about how folks get notified um the city excuse me the city has slightly different um notification systems than those that are available

[199:01] generally in the county um we do have um you know for instance Sirens but uh we expect Wildfire um in our community and so we have special um notification that way we use the reverse 911 system and we do plan it's already on the work plan um to implement the wiia system which um the simple version is the Amber Alert style system um we got that slated to begin testing in the beginning of March so so those are all in process and I just wanted to to point that out um because I know that's been a conversation piece at least in our in general Community okay thanks Mike Rachel just a real quick question on that point um so will that system um work as well for things like floods like not just for fires yes that that's generally for all the hazards that um the city will potentially face okay thanks all right anything else for

[200:03] Mike all right nura moving to community resilience yep I'll invite uh AET or Chris to share their thoughts on on um this ordinance priority suggestion thanks N I see yeah uh good evening council members Evette Bowen CMO and Community Vitality um the issue of the head tax is not currently within the work plan for 2022 If This Were to I just want to point to things that are already in the work plan which is the inclusive economic recovery initiative some of which Kurt has previously discussed some of which you'll learn more about um on February 8th in the arpa conversation on a more long-term basis um we generally address this and I think the last time this came up was in 2019 as part of the budget review process so Council would have an opportunity to um influence

[201:00] whether that's included in the analysis as part of the council finance committee um and it would it could involve additional requests for resources for Consultants um as part of that process to look at applicability um whether or not it would include public employers um whether or not it applies to employees and employers perhaps made more complicated by the fact that who works where anymore in terms of remote considerations um proposed funding use enforcement and broader impacts to the local economy um so while no projects um would have to necessarily stop there there are capacity issues as many of the administrative functions you're aware of um including HR and um our finance committee and city attorney's office are quite stretched in those um Baseline services that we talked about um including our payroll system and and other systems work so we look forward to

[202:02] getting back to you on all of that and discussing it further during Retreat finally um I did want to mention that there are a couple things listed here that I know you will be hearing about on February 8th as part of the ongoing work and that includes a possibility uh around doing some work in child care um and Kurt has already addressed the issues of Housing and I'm happy to take any questions thanks Vette Council questions Nicole thanks EV that's helpful um to know all this and and just to understand a little bit more about the budget review process and and where things might align um one question I had is you know what for the retreat um to what degree would things change if it were sort of more restricted right when I was kind of conceptualizing this was we really need a general General source of Revenue right but you know I wonder about thinking about some sort of pilot where um you know maybe it's something

[203:00] around um parking for you know companies that you know if you've got over a certain number of um folks coming in commu in single occupancy Fe Vehicles then you know you get hit with a a vehicle tax or something like that that would then go specifically to transportation to find some of the work that you know Erica was saying needs more funding so I'm just wondering if it um helps in thinking about the scope at all if we think about maybe just while we're in this recovery phase um having something smaller something more specific like that so and I don't need an answer right now I just a question I just want to pose for as we head into our Retreat thank you I think scope is exactly it I look forward to hearing from you all uh during retreat in a little board refinement here I know that we've looked at this in 2015 uh 2017 and I think 2019 and each time it's been a little bit different in the analysis but we'd certainly want to

[204:01] update this in this new world that we're all in to better appreciate options thank you just EV that real quick just related um to the lift is it is it accurate to say that that if Nicole or someone else on Council wanted to pick out one component of this that that does change theoretically the amount of lift from high to less high or does are some of these things still high even if it's just one piece of it well I think it would certainly require more resources and they might be Consultants U but I'd like to coordinate that response with the um Finance Central Finance function to better understand what they could also take on and looking at the current level of funding many of the uh recurring council members will recall that every year you kind of get a an overview on the taxes that are already in existence those are up for Renewal we would want to kind of reinforce that work with potential um implications um or intended or

[205:00] unintended consequences of some of the things around the scope um and I I look forward to hearing from you all about that but yes it could impact that super thanks Evette sure all right next we have covid things and who's on that one we have Pam Davis for covid planning we have Erica for Boulder airport and we have uh a vet um I believe on small business support or uh David so I'll let them duke it out while we think about the other two thanks for having me back Council um and council member friend I understand this one came from you you I believe that it's going to be fairly straightforward and a medium lift for the team we have our covid recovery team in place that's doing a lot of great um ongoing work what I can share is that um from a pure sort of data threshold perspective I do believe that we'll be fairly tied to um sort of what the going

[206:02] triggers are um as defined through the CDC um which is what the county is now relying on in terms of major thresholds so there it's likely that the data piece will still be reliant on the availability of our partner jurisdictions um that said I think from a city perspective we can certainly work to establish some um clearer parameters about when we would make operational changes just for City operations themselves um that work is doable we actually just this week upcoming have several meetings with our kind of public facing and operational departments to discuss the pros and cons of vaccine verified city services and Facilities um and things like that and then there was kind of a lot buried within this under the co umbrella but I also you know we have uh my colleague ofet on the the line as well who is already actively working on outdoor dining and some

[207:00] things like that um finally sort of in in terms of preserving uh I think you called them Silver Linings in one of the comments or or Lessons Learned or or practices we'd like to keep we do have an ongoing process within the covid recovery team where we're updating kind of the long-term playbook for how we respond to um crises of this nature we hadn't faced a pandemic yet and so that has changed the Playbook so to speak um and then I think also again those internal process improvements um codifying some of those for the long term is is possible so um short answer is doable we have the infrastructure in place and I think this is one we'd love to get just ongoing more feedback to make sure we meet your expectation on this one Rachel um thanks for that Pam uh and and you all have done great work and yeah going into the unknown on this pandemic response so um I appreciate that for two

[208:00] years running now so there there were a couple like you said tucked in aspects of this so I just want to make sure that all of them were um addressed or or scoped I guess um one like I didn't see anything on passports for restaurants and gyms and public spaces so I wasn't aware that that's ongoing if it is I think we heard from the county that they're not going to touch that and so um I think it's going to be up to cities if they want to do it and we've gotten some um some feedback that that restaurants would welcome that and it seems like there would be you know some engagement and also if it's not done fairly quickly it's not going to be relevant so there was that one and then in terms of like the street dining and and you know sort of pedestrian expansion areas and um yeah the restaurants in the streets it seems to me and I understand it's ongoing but that that would be something that we would that would be a large enough project that it would probably need to be a new work plan item you know if we were going to sort of revamp West Pearl long term and maybe the hill long term

[209:02] and it seems like we don't talk about the hill quite as much as as West Pearl um but that that would have to come to council you know fairly routinely and have some votes probably so just want to make sure all that was looked at because the na was surprising to me on this one got it so the the vaccine passport question um and and just sort of more broadly whether that would be through sort of existing mechanisms of vaccine verified facilities or other things from from the standpoint of really it's both for public and City spaces but starting with City spaces for us the discussion really centers around kind of the the tradeoffs and ability to enforce um that's really where the Crux of kind of our um challenge will be from the perspective of the lift required to sort of write and implement the policy um it's it's not a huge lift from the perspective of once that policy is in

[210:00] place what is our ability to respond to questions complaints check up on businesses that's really where the um the challenge is so that's the conversation that we are going to having with specific departments this week from a public facing standpoint we'd really be leaning on our economic recovery team um which is sort of part of that umbrella to do some additional Outreach with the specific businesses that would be impacted right here in Boulder I think we've gotten some general feedback through the chamber and other Coalition mechanisms um but we would need to do a deeper dive leveraging that team but to Rachel's point if I can add it is something that we're thinking of and that's why I think we put the na because we're already talking about vaccine passports and talking with the county on what that would look like if the city were to me moving forward um it really for us is a public safety issue and is this the right time to do it so that's where that was happening uh as well and so some of that analysis was

[211:00] already underway and that is one of the reasons that we um as we're trying to think about perhaps narrowing the work plan priorities indicating where staff is already thinking about those and perhaps other additional learnings that we've had um in the pandemic uh that include some of the remote working that we're doing and um hiring and so forth but and I'm I'm delighted to have it stay in Na and not impact any you know and na be increase in nothing it just just seems like most places like if we're doing something new such as we would probably be doing with the West Pearl expansion like that that would be a larger undertaking and that's really the one that I'm thinking is that is that really an NA um it just surprised me but if that if that's it then great I think mostly that was because it was already work that we had been asked to do and that we were were coming to you in February to talk a little bit more about it um and I believe that's that was part of that underlying reasoning but certainly um

[212:00] I'll defer if staff had other thoughts on that but it's great and I'll withdraw the question it was just in you know there were other things above that we're already working on and and that you know you did have have to specify more so yeah withdrawn all right Bob or Rachel fully withdraws that I I just want to make a comment react something that Pam said um with respect to proof of vaccination at at restaurants and bars um you know obviously dozens of cities around the country have done this and and I I want to make sure that if we're if if we if we're considering this it's not something we overthink cities that have done this I know we're not to have any substantive discussions here but this is a little bit a process Point cities that have done this found that they don't have to spend a whole lot of time on enforcement they just pass a rule and say hey you need to check status of vaccination at the door and they just do it and and so it's it's it's I don't want to oversimplify this but this is literally as simple as passing a rule and and and I think cities have found that restaurants and bars are highly compliant so probably not a whole lot of

[213:01] Staff work after the rule gets passed and and let me just clarify I'm not withdrawing my my request I'm just withdrawing my questioning of why the na is there so stay with the na that's great but I still I'm going to advocate for it to be on a work plan I was tracking you Pam did you want to add anything in response to um Bob's comment no I don't think so I think Bob to your point we suspect that and we've seen similar Behavior with the community being really great and compliant when it comes to mask mandates and other things um I part of it is just my my I can't help but think about the strains currently on our Public Safety departments code enforcement that that that sort of thing thing as well as the lack of capacity in the county to assist with these so it's one of those not a deal breaker simply something we don't want to not think through before we would move forward okay and and it does sound like the na in this particular case means we're already on

[214:00] it okay cool all right thanks for that clarification all right airport I'll call Erica back up okay um thank you very much and um first of all thank you very much for the specificity of the request it's pretty straightforward um we don't have this we don't have the um expertise in house either in um the Coo's office or at the airport um to for this particular research but we have identified consultant resources to be able to provide the information you requested and we estimate that it would cost about $75,000 okay any questions mark um yeah I I I would um similar to what we just heard about um uh covid planning I would not overthink this one either um I would start with a series of questions that mayor proem and I had sent to the city

[215:01] manager and and see where that goes um you know there's no predetermined answer to this um let's uh pick the hanging fruit first uh where we do have expertise uh or where we can gain expertise with a couple of phone calls such as to the San Jose planning board not you know Council which did a similar thing and just just you know uh analyze feasibility I think that's that's really what we're getting at initial stage that's my Erica did you have a thought on that or it looks like David also rejoined us I think he's joining us for the small business okay great I guess you know in terms of the thought the you know the request had been you know Associated cost estimates and so forth this is very specialized research and um in talking with our

[216:03] folks in the CIO there's a legal component to this and then in reaching out and talking with potential um Consultants the process involved is actually pretty extensive so to try and get um a good estimate of the costs you know that are identified there that's what this is trying to respond to that's fine I withdraw the prior comment that okay thanks Mark all right anything else on Airport things in that case David talk to us about small business things um so I this was a another one that I would put in the class of pretty straightforward requests um I think that staff you know with appropriate resourcing would be able to do this in 23 the the primary focus of this work as I understand it would be really to try to understand um barriers and disincentives uh that the

[217:02] city puts in place through some of its regulatory programs and attempt to rectify those um so so yeah this is something that um it seems like it would fit well either as a standard project or as a project that could be um integrated with other code work okay Council any questions on that one all right fairly straightforward as you said thanks David thank you all right we're coming to our last two slides ah um the next set have to do with uh Public Safety and the last one with broadband um so I'll invite uh Teresa our City attorney to talk about the first um one on assault weapons good evening mayor members of council Teresa Taylor t City attorney um we received a not of five at

[218:01] the January 4th meeting with respect to moving forward with um both an ordinance that would bring us into compliance with state law with respect to assault um weapons and high capacity magazines um in addition to that work a desire was expressed for perhaps a multi-jurisdictional um coordinated effort uh but certainly an effort on the part of Boulder to pass a suite of gun violence prevention measures um these measures would be um focused around the gford every town model legislation um and um those the timing would be dependent upon neighboring jurisdictions and whether we decide that we are going to move forward with a coordinated effort or whether Boulder would like to move with a a different pace or different

[219:00] speed um this is a a medium amount of work and work that we have are already undertaking okay questions or comments Mark uh ju just a question Teresa is is is what you're working on a suite of uh potential ordinances to basically get at a number of gun control issues or is it essentially the uh the assault weapons ban um we're working on both okay yeah we're working on both um and then um you will be receiving a confidential memo with respect to timing we'll be looking to council for some decisions on that thank you appreciate it Teresa just so I understand are you are you saying that this item is already on your work plan and Council does not need to prioritize it um well it's it is still

[220:00] it's a 2022 work plan it just it sort of jumped the line on January 4th and so um in my mind it would need to be included in the council work plan um because it certainly is work that if if we prioritize this we deprioritize something else thank you for that clarification Nicole question on this one um yeah this is sort of a general question that's coming out of this discussion It's Just Happening may I ask it here is that okay why you ask it here and I'll see if we want to punt it to answer later but go ahead okay perfect um so my question is just around like I'm having this thought about when you know you're overwhelmed by things and you're making a list of things to do and sometimes you just put things on your list that you know you're going to do anyway just so that you have the satisfaction of being like yes checking them off right yeah exactly and and I'm just you know I'm I'm wondering here you know heading into the retreat is there kind of a balance right between those things I hear Teresa saying that with this particular item right there's separate there is some work that would be pushed away um but I'm just anyway

[221:02] this again maybe a bigger question for actually at the retreat um just wanted to pose that now because I just um anyway sounds good while you're posing that Nicole I'll say that that that is part of of this hope right like I know that we've been talking a lot about a variety of issues but what we hope to also share is um as you're thinking about your priorities this is what staff already has moving forward that touches upon those and maybe that helps scope then the actual action item that will come from the priorities in different ways because you may not have to worry about these issues but this one doesn't seem to be caught and that would be a really good way to move that forward yep Rachel same point well just that I think in previous years we cobbled things together so we had a carryover list and that did land on our work plan item so it wasn't like here's the new work plan items it was here's the current work plan and it encompasses

[222:00] both what I think Nicole's talking about which is we don't want to forget about these things like we already know that they're on the list and getting done and we have these new things and so I think it would be helpful for the retreat and and and I've talked about this to have a list of like here's what's already on the list or like does any want any of those to go off the list and you know here's the things that are definitively checked off and like accomplished in rear viiew mirror but other than that for Friday night I'm hoping that we will have the equivalent of a whiteboard with you know here's what's already on the list and here's what you're you continue to work on and I would think that gun violence prevention is one of those so we're going to talk here as soon as um we run through these priorities about remember I told you there was another way that we've gathered this information um on that Flipboard and it does have some of the items that are already underway within within these same categories it's not a list of all the other things that that that staff is is doing but certainly within some of these priority topic categories so let's have a look at that um when we get through these and then um if there's something else that you're needing let us know all right uh three more left and

[223:02] hopefully getting through them soon because I know that we have other items on the agenda before um Council ends um but I believe it's uh heard if I'm wrong in this but uh you were going to maybe try to take a first stb at the new mental health EMT program um that's correct and um I believe I'll be uh joined by um marrison Michael as well the three of us have really been working closely together um on this initiative this is something that um the the previous counil had also brought up as as uh ideas that they were thinking about so we we started work on this a few months ago and it's really um building upon um the C program which is now a year old it's partnership between um housing Human Services and um and PD um you would have noticed the article in the in the camera a couple days ago

[224:01] which highlighted um that important program and that important work um and um uh so we've we've met with uh with anuts and CU um that both um help fund types of programs like this as well as do research which goes side by side with it and um I'll let maybe uh might go next but it's um we're looking at expanding what C was doing and um covering some other areas that uh police and fire might show up to which are um um areas where um their full presence may not be needed um uh in the same way or sometimes at all um so maybe Mike I'll pass it on to you next to maybe talk about um uh how that might work and what kind of calls and I know Maris has been

[225:02] working quite closely with the folks at an shoots as well that could give input thanks Kurt I I'll be real brief it for this kind of program we want to be clear about the the objectives and what success actually looks like um we do know that with this co-responder program we usually end up there anyway so one of the success measures has always been getting some of these calls out of the 911 system that can't be the final um success factor for these folks there has to be more to it than that so that's what we're trying to explore how these other programs have worked how they truly helped people gotten them out of the 911 system but actually connected them with the right resources and uh we're involved partly because of the medical piece of it um there's usually um you know some sort of of comorbidity whe we want to call that um physical related to some of their other challenges so so uh being a part of this multi-disciplinary approach we think it it makes perfect sense um but then we

[226:02] want to make sure that we are we're actually we're not Shadow Boxing but we're actually you know hitting targets that need to be hit for folks and I don't know if Maris wanted to comment on the research piece of it or if she had anything to add to it but that was my thought on that yeah I'll just add a couple pieces and thanks Chief and thanks Kurt uh good evening Council mayor saral police chief um I'm excited um because I think that we have a really awesome opportunity to conduct uh separate evaluations one on the co-response and one on a new model and to see where we end up after setting really good outcome measur measurements so I'm very excited about that and then yeah the research component to me um means everything uh preliminarily um I just got done um talking with the doctor um that did our workload analysis and um Staffing analysis um it's a very thorough report and I have a really good idea of how many calls for service that we could actually look at to give um a

[227:02] casew worker EMT type of response so I think we're in good shape uh moving forward and I'm excited about the opportunity to actually have evaluations on both these programs um which puts us ahead of uh most of the places that have these uh type of responses so I'll take any questions cancel any questions um for any of those folks eron go ahead this was yours yeah well I just wanted to thank you all for their responsiveness and uh interest in exploring this and and also congratulations on the uh success of this C team in the last year it was a phenomenal updating report so appreciate you talking about I look forward to talking about this more thanks Aaron right see we seem to have lost our PowerPoint but I can move to the next one while we get that back up there it is oh we want to go one up one more former yep we're so

[228:00] close there we we go so the last one uh comes from Tara thank you so much uh we had a variety of crime under the big bucket of crime reduction you had some uh initial thoughts from lighting uh on bike underpasses and I mean uh yeah Lighting on bike underpasses more security cameras mandatory bike registration I'll invite Erica and um Maris to talk a little bit about what's happening here so just in brief many of the things that um you had identified are actually underway So currently um we do light every um City underpass it may be um some of the the older ones may be a bit lighter than what some might want when it's compared to the new ones but as we come through and um do upgrades in the future that is a possibility um I think that you know in terms of street lights we have an activity going um underway to look to come to council and talk about

[229:00] acquiring the remaining street lights from Excel and what that would potentially mean in terms of upgrades and then we also have Grant funds which we're going to be using this year to um enhance our um traffic camera system so much of this work is already underway um as part of the you know City's fiber background that also supports that that it is leading then I guess lastly in terms of um bicycle and bicycle registration and crime prevention we have currently a voluntary program and and speaking with Maris um part of the crime prevention strategies um you know is more research needs to be done to see whether or not if and how um a mandatory program might work and um how that might align with the um crime prevention strategy and with regard to adding additional um lighting it would require more resources and so we try to identify

[230:00] that because it would need more resources both to provide that Capital as well as um staff to support that which that any questions do have meis address any of that before we take questions yeah I'll just I'll quickly say that um that obviously all of these uh components are evidence-based I support more lighting I support cameras when they're in tandem when they're working together um the bike registration is a very interesting question we are getting a lot of cooperation from our bike shop owners right now on this issue but I think there's more work to be done and more scoping on that um and obviously um addressing repeat uh offending is part of uh you know uh what I strongly agree with is that we have a very small number of offenders in our community um causing the most havoc in our community so these issues are are being explored but I support I support this work and we'll figure out a way to um to get some of

[231:01] this at least moving in the right direction and I'll take any questions thanks Maris thanks Erica you got a thumbs up from Tara any other questions or comments um from Council all right thanks G all right noria home stretch one last one and we're gonna let Chris mesek um take on the notion of broadband yeah I'm GNA uh pinch hit a little here for uh Jennifer Douglas our Innovation and Technology director but uh uh I'm a little dangerous in the topic too and that's on broadband and council member Yates uh uh brought this one forward and as he uh recognized in in his notes were um kind of 2015 to 2018 there was significant work done and a uh Council made the decision to um do the first phase of a fiber deployment in the city what we call fiber phase one which is a 60 mile backbone uh we're now

[232:00] uh in the construction of that uh and it's scheduled to conclude late this year um and uh now we need to move into the next phase we've already engaged actually consy surveillance hey Maris we need to do that hey Maris will you mute real quick for me appreciate it um uh and so we've engaged with a consultant uh they're known as fhu um and they're going to be with us for about the next eight months uh and um part of what will come to Council on this is is uh to be able to um have some policy conversations about what our vision is for both wired and kind of Wireless connectivity in the community especially around I think closing accessibility and uh affordability gaps um and then looking at what are the various models uh uh or Partnerships that are potentially out there to uh to

[233:02] achieve those and what investments the city might need to make uh and then uh uh kind of as a part of this will also be benchmarking against other cities and how the landscape of uh of Municipal Broadband deployments has changed over time um and what it looks like today and then the last is there's going to be a lot of work around kind of smart cities deployment and as Erica just mentioned um the ways that we can now leverage this fiber Network for uh Municipal operations so things like traffic signals traffic cameras that sort of thing so uh We've identified this this one is a medium lift uh but the work is underway uh with items that'll come forward to councel Super thanks Chris Bob question uh thanks Chris um and that was very helpful um my my request was a little different I mean I was happy to hear all that stuff and that's all sounds great and I look forward to that my request is a little different than that which is as you as you correctly pointed out we

[234:00] decided a few we as Council and staff decided a few years ago to to phase our fiber build and we we're in the middle as you say of of building a fiber Network now backbone Network now it's kind of like the artery but not capillaries right and so um and we can have interesting conversations about what we do with that backbone my question is actually different my question is will we do phase two which is to build the other 500 Miles fiber to the premises fiber to the home fiber to the businesses which is something we talked about but we couldn't do because we had limited bonding capacity which has now changed in light of the fact that we're not doing municipalization so that's that's really it's really it's kind of a little bit like Lauren's question about scoping are RTD in in buses it's it's really scoping what a a ubiquitous fiber build Beyond phase one would look like everything you said is great but my question is a little different than that yeah and Bob I appreciate you flagging that and and maybe apologies that I wasn't clear uh that what we really need to answer as a part of this is exactly what you just

[235:00] raised which is when we when we came to the decision to build the backbone we didn't make a decision as a community whether we were actually going to get into the municipal Broadband business or not are we going to get into the internet business we need to still make that decision um a lot has changed out there in the market since then um and so it's really important that we step back look at where the landscape is now update all of the the information that we have as you mentioned updating those cost estimates uh and then we can make that decision about um what is it that we want to move forward with uh and then how um that's part of what we'll come forward and as a part of this discussion yeah that's perfect and I'm not necessarily advocating for us to do that I just want us to make an intentional decision that that we are or are not going to do that so I just want to make sure that's separate from the use of the fiber that we that we're building now this is a a different discussion about whether we want to build more and what we do with that so great thanks Chris y

[236:01] Council any other questions all right Nia coming back to you oh wait got a question ha okay well so I apologize in advance for this I'm going to I'm going to try to cheat um there was there was one there was one thing that I think ended up as like number six on like five people's lists which was the transit Village area plan phase two um I know we we've already exhausted all our options but I just wonder I know you've heard this from a few different council members um if it's something that we could still consider picking and choosing from at the retreat and if you you can just slap slap my wrist and tell me I have to stop if you need to but I I just I couldn't resist because I've heard this about this from too many people Rachel are you on the same point I was just gonna speak to Erin's question okay as a as one of the members of The Retreat subc commmittee uhuh I mean we picked five as sort of a

[237:02] a way to focus the numbers and try and keep it manageable but I don't think that um as council member we we lack the power to say everybody can join in on the sixth because I too have heard from a lot of colleagues that shoot they thought that it was going to be brought up by someone else basically um and so I I guess I don't I don't see it as set in stone if if we collectively wanted to add one Matt same thought I saw yeah it is and I think just from what I've sort of just heard tonight and where we seem to be discussing this and and what was already a part of tvap 2 phase a or phase one was a consultant heavy process from what I gather and so since we've been talking about leveraging that it may seem like this has an opportunity to to to to aon's point sneak or or or cheat its way in given that type of work that we've been at least deliberating

[238:01] here tonight okay Bob two things first of all I agree with Rachel that there there was false precision around picking five now we we don't want to go down the slippery slope and have everyone add two or three more um but I I think because there is um broad support for tvap 2 as eron suggested it's worth adding as somebody's fifth or sixth because I think there's gon to be broad support around that one thing I would say from a staffing and scoping standpoint we all well those of us on Council might remember that there there is actually kind of a tvap 2A and a tvap 2B so it's it's not a binary like are we doing tvap 2 or not because I think staff came back to us about a year a year and a half ago Jean would remember this and and actually said we're going to do some stuff kind of on the west side of the street and in certain parts of tvap 2 so I think it' be helpful to understand what is it that we're already doing because I think we're doing some stuff in tvap 2 and then what is yet to be done NAD I appreciate you didn't you

[239:01] didn't think about this one what are your thoughts off the cuff there so I'm going to take counsil at their word and say that they should not open up the ability to have six or seven or eight from each council members because as you can see staff's working hard already on existing work plus this work but what I was going to say is certainly um I have heard this as well I've alerted Erica to think about scoping and I think on this singular issue we can be prepared next week to talk through it a little bit more um because at the end of the day it is less to me about this initial this is good to have where are we and to learn your priorities but we've got some hard work ahead as a group about how do we narrow those down because we we can't do 30 priorities as we move forward and I just welcome uh certainly can add this to the mix but welcome the conversation um at The Retreat to think about how do we actually mobilize that and make that smaller and what I will say at the at the end of this meeting and I see some

[240:00] folks have hands up too is I I just wna I want to thank you and I wanna I know that sort of receiving this um this packet of where our feedback is looks daunting and it looks like there's just so much going on and we can't take on more work but I really want to speak um on behalf of all of us that that is not our intent our intent is really to be as candid with you and partnership as we can and talk through help us think through and understand better what the actual outcome or what that action item will be because as we talk about big broad topics that is really hard and and we're not going to be able to do all the big uh juicy things that you all want to do right so I'm hoping that this is a good conversation to get us start to think about what are maybe not the whole bucket but what are those things that we can start in a direction that starts to shift us so please hear from us that we understand um your policy PR prerogative

[241:00] and want to work with you as we move forward on just making sure we're aligned and both meeting your expectations but also meeting all the other work that we've got to do moving forward um as we do core Services thanks naria Matt and and I I so I appreciate that context and I will maybe just say um there maybe just being candid there's a sense of of discouragement for myself looking at this I don't know if my Council colleagues share that um I'm excited to have the conversation continue at the retreat but seeing the uh we need to hire more people and it's a heavy lift for me seems like a lot of the priorities certainly centered around pdns are maybe perhaps off the table and so I appreciate Aaron bringing this up because if so many end up getting scuttled by the sake of circumstance or inability to work it does beg the question if a sixth or seventh on a list

[242:01] can fill in a gap where it might maybe a medium lift and we go okay well at least we can get something done so so I I know we don't want the slippery slope but when we do look at this it might mean that if we can't do all the heavy lifts maybe there's some mediums that are waiting in the wings that maybe can um and that's and and so I just want us to maybe be open to that possibility and I'll add and I hope this I mean I'm I'm sorry you feel discouraged by it we actually uh feel that it's it's a good conversation as we move forward and helps inform our work as we move forward right um and I hope that as we continue speaking that maybe those that seem like a high lift currently if we scope them out appropriately become medium or become lower lifts right and we're able to do more it's just that at the outset it's a lot of let's let's fix all the things and then as we continue to talk which is normal in this process right as we continue to talk and say well what really do we want to get out of this in two years what can we do then I think

[243:00] that starts to reduce the lift a little bit and as we double down and try to hire more staff and get more capacity that will also lighten the load and allow us to accelerate as well thanks Nia and again when we get to my little board here you might have some additional um thoughts or hopeful signs but Aaron go ahead yeah well thanks for that that framing NRI I appreciate it and um also thanks for the flexibility and letting me sneak that that one additional thing in for consideration but under one just one just one um but but with the big work on the retreat will be then you know narrowing all this St down right and I and I think part of it I think a big takeaway from me from this discussion tonight is about how do we take some of these items that were uh bigger and more diffuse and and and narrow them in and say okay um let's not make it some huge potential thing here's the one or two specific things we want to get out of this initiative and then maybe we can turn some of those High

[244:00] effort things into medium effort things or maybe even if we make it simple enough a low effort thing you know so I think that'll be a big part of the discussion we have in the next few days y thanks Aaron um n do you have anything else and if not I'll transition to our board here as another way for Council to reflect on um this information and prepare for the deeper conversations at The Retreat we're good all right so n is gonna help me a little bit here but um so you recall last week um we created this board don't freak out it's going to be fine I'm going to explain it tell you don't freak out I'm I see you Bob don't freak out all right so what we've what staff has done is take your original ideas which we had put into these categories and added a substantial amount of information for you to reflect on the first thing I will say is this is still a work in progress for example Transit Village not on there because it

[245:00] just came up and a couple of places where um staff has said tonight that some things are already underway those are not indicated but let me tell you what we got over here on the left what you see is the legend and the legend is important because the colors here relate to the colors over here so the primary so this item here the middle- income housing program similar similar to affordable housing but targeting higher income levels um from Lauren so this is this sort of salmony color that means it's a the primary lift is by is from HHS and it's got this little pnds tag here because there's also a significant com component of work um from that other department but the primary lift is in the primary color that's thing one um what you'll notice over here is we've also indicated capacity for those departments by the color current capacity until we hire back right thank you current capacity

[246:00] until we hire back which means there's no zeros here so even without hiring noria is it is it fair to to interpret this to say even without hiring some things can be added yep okay so that's fantastic news um so the other thing that you should observe here is in each box there's this little line somewhere some places it's higher and some places it's lower the items below the line are items that staff has identified that are somewhat similar or related to your priority proposals that are already underway I I let me clarify that that was part of the work plan that we presented to council because there's a lot of other work underway yes yes that we did not include yep yep thank you um so that's thing one so there's for all these categories and staff did do some um helpful recategorization from some of the um I'm going to call it half-ass um and ill-informed clumping and splitting that I did for your last conversation um so there's a lot of

[247:02] these and what you'll start to notice as you move around through it is some work items require a lot of cross- departmental work we also talked earlier um about uh public engagement and and where you how you understand and anticipate that lift so just some Flags to know if you're going to do that thing there there is likely to be a communication and engagement effort there um no indication particularly on the size of that lift but just letting it's just flagging it for you literally with these little Flags to let you know that's something for you to be thinking about um um and then let me see if I can find one there are a couple places and again this effort is definitely not complete um where we have these check marks noria can you just give us a sense of what the check marks mean and how far into that effort you are the yeah the check marks for us mean that that work has already sort of started um and we have that the percent completion is in

[248:02] the packet I think it's attachment D that we had last time that we went through some of that that talked about what stage of completion but in our estimation this is work as we went through some of the nuisance of bait stuff that's already starting that is ongoing um and that we have planned as we move forward okay thank you um so and this sort of gets maybe to what Matt you you hinted at earlier right is there's a lot of um planning stuff on the list and you can zoom out and sort of see all the places where the pink things are those are all the things we got to have in our minds when we think think about what what shall we add um that encumbers time and um bandwidth for for planning um again it doesn't mean we can't do it but just need to be aware that that it's not just these oneandone things that there's some cross implication from other items and then again you can come over here oh no don't do that this is why I'm going to lock it before you play with it because it's

[249:00] really easy to ja it up right we come over here and say okay current capacity with no new hires there's one you know capacity of one basically um in planning so the other thing we can be thinking about going into the retreat is what do you all think about as the highest and best use of the current staff capacity Within These topics and then we might want to think about and then what's the next tier down of super important as soon as staff Staffing capacity is increased through those hiring efforts that Nia talked about so thinking as we're going into the retreat what are the priorities for now and what are the prior priorities for as soon as there's more staff and the other thing Matt earlier you talked about um highest impact effort I think it was specifically related to housing or homelessness but part of why we did this is so that you can look at that and go wow there are a lot of things there if we only have near-term capacity to add

[250:00] one what is the highest and best lift there um and then maybe again you compare that to what's already on the staff work plan as was discussed so this is hopefully a different way of providing the same information um that it's a little bit more integrative so you can do some more of the Cross thinking among these items in an individual box um and nor is going to let us know here in a gif um how much additional work staff needs to make this reflect all the information that you that you heard tonight um and then I can lock it and then you can I can send you the link and then you can zoom around on it however you like um but before I go to ner on that Bob you have a question or a comment yeah it's just a kind of a Personnel question um um I've always understood that staff is not fungible in other words there are people within a particular Department that are our subject matter experts and so we could have six things on our list from planning and development services and we we could say well we only have

[251:01] opportunity to do one thing so let's do that one thing subject to Future hiring that doesn't mean that we have the right staff to do that one thing right because because different staff members have different skills and it's my understanding unless n is going to correct me here that we can't just say like well we have we have the capacity to do one thing in planning you guys pick because it kind of depends on who that person is that's available is that right n yeah I think that's right I mean it depends on what the item is right I think Kurt had a really great example um as he was talking about one of the priorities that the main person in PDS is the person who is also working on Alpine Balsam and so we have to think about if that's the one that we want to pick that impacts that particular staff member then we're going to have to think as staff is there an alternative or not so you're right I mean uh staff have all unique qualities but it is I hope a a good opportunity to sort of hear from you all what I used to use in another city or a consultant used to use in the other

[252:00] City what are your critical items that will move the needle on your topic furthest because they all are good which is the one that's going to get us to further our mutual um Collective needs and then we can match that to who's the staff or what do we need to do by that right and so on that question noria would you um tell Council don't stress about the specific Specialties and unique skills of staff at this time they should just again focus on roughly staff we have now versus future staff yeah I I would say that would be the easier part really just to know and hone in on the priorities because then we can really focus if it's liberating existing staff from some of those stuff and seeing if we can shift people around which sometimes can work and sometimes doesn't if it's maybe we actually have to hire a particular person with that particular skill because that is the priority chosen then we can laser focus hiring on

[253:00] that versus um sort of hiring um equally across the board if we need something that is very specific so for us at least our priorities uh as staff for the retreat would really be to come out with those main priorities because that kicks off a all right now let's really dig in and see what are the things that we can do okay couple more clarifying questions um for you uh when these over here we have capacity one then two and one and a half um is that capacity for new projects or is that that is so that is capacity for new projects if you look at your previous packet again the departments in brief we asked departments to just share where they are but I also think I mentioned at the last meeting that this is a moment in time right this is not the capacity they have for the next two years this is as we continue to add resources finish up projects um scale out what we're

[254:01] doing then I think we will continue to flex with that um and certainly be open to thinking about um what the next priority is whether for existing work or work plan items right cool and then CMO it HR finance and Facilities has the same information on three different stickies does that mean they have the capacity for six or all in together they have the capacity for two no it means that there are not enough colors to share out across the thing there are limitations on the Flipboard yeah so we're we triy to do uh we' put them all in green colors because they come up perhaps less often than uh HHS and CAO and so we tried where possible on the tags to actually write if it was Finance or HR or CMO okay cool thank you and then um you indicated that um there's some additional information we want to add to this not just the the transit Village stuff that came up tonight but some other sort of tweaks um that staff is still working on when do you think we might have a pretty good

[255:00] version of this so I can lock it and send the link to council and they can fiddle with it oh I think tomor by tomorrow what what's missing from this is not the big level high priorities except for the new one it's matching and making sure that all the little tags of other people's work are reflected in the priority because some because they're not finished and then we had talked about perhaps marking with a check those items that we think are currently already underway and or are part of the work plan right as we move that forward and then if you the only other thing I'll add about this thing is that there's on the right hand side a whole bucket of items in these stickies to the very far right yep uh those are work items that we submitted as part of our 22 work plan that we're working on this year that perhaps didn't touch upon all the other things that were included in your priorities so we just wanted to honor staff's work plan work as well and say that that's on there and and and show

[256:01] that and those are things that are happening anyway that Council does not need to prioritize okay well those are things that we proposed for the 2022 work plan but frankly depending on the conversation those may be some of those conversations to have trade-off conversations on although for some for example we are you know we're moving forward on the library district and our racial Equity plan work moves forward as we do so um I I think that this these are conversations that we're having we're doing budgeting for resilience in figuring out arpa and ccrs funds that we're coming to council with a lot of those aren't things they're just on our work plan but I can't imagine that you'd have a lot of trade-off conversations about them but note that they're there excellent all right Council that was a lot it's really a lot if you look at it like that um but this is meant to inform you not to discourage you again I duplicated the the The Legend This is the same information here just so if

[257:00] you're zoomed in you don't have to zoom all the way up to the corner so that's the same information there um want to know if you have any questions at this time um based on this information it's a lot we'll let you sit with it for a bit all right I'm gonna unshare this now um cool okay so we have a retreat here coming up I heard a couple of action items happening in the near term thing one staff will continue to work on this and noria will let me know the minute it's done and then I will lock it so you can't accidentally do what I always do which is mess it up and then I'll send you the link and then you can zoom in and zoom out and gather your own thoughts about um all the things um I did also hear um that uh for members of counil who felt like uh staff's summary or response to one of your priority items was a little off the mark based on what you thought you had said if you heard that um you

[258:01] should feel free to take the initiative and reach out uh to Nua to share that um and staff where you specifically said boy we'd sure like more information about this we'd encourage you to reach out to those respective council members so that you can get those questions answered and provide us the best information that we can possibly have going into the retreat um and then Council you know Friday night first thing is your introductions of one another I'm really looking forward to that that's my favorite part um and then other than that your homework is just sort of to to think about some of these trade-off questions highest and best use and impact um and come prepared uh to to to dig into these my vision is we will start with some of these harder um items where you have lots of ideas and we'll we'll start with those so um come prepared right on homelessness and housing things uh first and foremost because I think we're going to need a fair amount of time on those um and then

[259:02] we'll just carry on and get the work done as things go along any questions all right I'm around all day tomorrow if anybody needs anything give me a shout um other than that nura if I can't do anything else for you I'll hand this meeting over to the mayor we're good hey Aon tag you're it all right thanks hether thanks for having me it was a good discussion although I have to say you did not keep us on on track on time but uh but it was a great discussion so thank you I did not have a Time allocation I was just told to get the work done so I were we 15 because if 30 actually so you're really way over schedule thanks so much hether we'll see you on Friday take care okay we've got um a couple of other items uh to cover before we wrap up for the night um I think the first one is about meeting nights and when that might

[260:02] change and I will uh tag Pam Davis who's been working on this with a variety of staff good evening again Council and we do have a few slides uh to support this presentation thank you Emily so my name is Pam Davis assistant city manager my pronouns are she her and I am coming back to you with a description of our implementation plan for shifting Council meetings from Tuesday nights to Thursday nights as requested during the uh I believe it was the November 16th council meeting was one of your first discussions um at that time if you'll recall we just discussed um that you did in fact unanimously want to make this shift but acknowledge that it would require some um process changes and some rearranging of some various other meetings and priorities and so um we have uh kind of gathered the impacted staff team members together and talked

[261:01] through what we think it will take to do this um and as you see on this slide tonight our hope is to kind of share what our initial uh research has overturned and then establish um the recommended date that this change take place which would be July 14th 2022 this would be your first meeting following the scheduled Council Break um so that is about six months away and I just want to take a few slides to explain kind of why that is um and emphasize that part of us wanting to take our time with this is it it really is a significant um public change um and so we want to ensure that we do it well that we do it right and that no one is surprised when it goes into effect um really briefly I'll just thank all of our city departments who weighed in on some level as we talked through this um particularly our city clerk's office planning and development services um and our Communications and engagement

[262:00] team members um who were able to help inform this implementation schedule um next slide please Emily so this next slide here on implementation priorities it's not all inclusive of the impacts of the schedule shift but it really addresses sort of the key um implementation priorities that are going to require uh staff to um do some work to ensure that things go smoothly um certainly this we are an organization that generally uh builds all of our work around the Cadence of Council meetings so all of us on some level are probably going to uh be making adjustments but these five priorities preparing and improving and approving the necessary code changes that will be required to hold meetings on Thursdays regularly uh rescheduling boards and addressing secondary impacts and excuse me let me just mute my there we go that will stop now uh

[263:01] rescheduling the boards and addressing the impacts of that rescheduling that uh currently meet on Thursday days um we will need to do some just Public Communication and change management both um amongst different portions of the community as well as um internally we have some process changes and then we did just investigate some of our legal notice requirements to make sure that we can still comply with those um so I'll quickly describe those and share a timeline with you and then uh and then we'll take questions so next slide please Emily um so on the code code change front um we have one certain code change which is uh the BRC 2-1-2 um it specifically States the the first and third Tuesdays of the month shall be when regular meetings uh occur that we anticipate being a pretty straightforward um code change that the city's attorney's office has agreed to

[264:00] uh make sure that we can accomplish we'll also um and I'll address some of the scheduled conflicts in a minute but one of them really deals with the timing of um planning board um the board of zoning adjustment and building appeals as well as then the impacts that schedule changes might have on landmarks um approval timing and So within that once the the planning board and and Boza are rescheduled we'll need to do some additional investigation based on the days of the week that they meet to ensure that within our land use code all timing related to call-ups and approval uh deadlines things like that that come to council um that we still meet the the uh time limits within our code to give you one brief example um landmarks in particular um there's that 14-day um period for call-ups now when um Landmark board meets on Wednesdays

[265:02] and we shift Council meetings to Thursdays given the Cadence of regular meetings and study sessions we end up with this sort of slightly awkward timeline where we end up with basically 15 days between um the the two required meetings and we currently have a 14-day time period so that's just one example where we might need to adjust the code by a day or two in either direction uh to ensure that we are capable of meeting um our own deadlines and so that we're not putting ourselves in a position of having to sort of apply for extensions uh perpetually um so that work can um planning and and uh the city attorney's office will certainly work with us to check those out um so the third impact related to scheduling the two direct impacts we have are just planning board and Boza um that will have a significant um effect

[266:00] and so we have uh connected with both of those boards they're aware that this change will be in the works and will be um discussing during their February meetings their desired shift um I will say just based on some preliminary back and forth the sort of obvious conclusion is for those boards to shift to Tuesday nights with Council shifting to Thursday nights we anticipate that's what'll happen and I think it's preferred from our perspective so that we don't sort of trigger a a waterfall or domino effect of uh having to now push multiple meetings um so that's what we anticipate we hope that'll be um that commit we'll have that commitment from those boards like I said next month um once those scheduled changes are in place um we will certainly then get right to work again on researching any of those additional code impacts as well as uh looking at the sort of communication needs around making sure that the public

[267:01] and the key stakeholders are well aware well in advance of these changes next slide please so the next one in in some ways I think this is the broadest and biggest that really following tonight we'll want to start working on right away which is just Public Communication and change management more broadly um certainly we'll want to make sure that um through all of our channels we are um regularly spreading the message about this change and the data which it will go go into effect we want to ensure that folks keeping an eye on uh the council agenda looking ahead to the summer are well aware that you know public comment opportunities public hearings things of that nature will now be on Thursday nights um we depending on exactly what impacts we discover to any of the timelines related to um the passage of

[268:00] of various Planning and Development items we'll just want to make sure again that Community has ample notice so that applicants and others aren't adversely affected by this shift um and then finally you know things like our Communications and engagement Department um certainly is is responsible for helping to provide support for these meetings and ensuring that channel 8 programming and um Bolder news and things like that um happen on a weekly basis and so they'll be doing some shifts to ensure that that can take effect of course we will also do a comp kind of a comprehensive audit of our website and and hope to anywhere there's a mention of of board and commission schedules of council meeting schedules um our guidance for how to participate in Council meetings all of that will need to um be edited in advance next slide

[269:01] please one more slide I think I might have skipped a slide change sorry about that Emily okay so internal process changes um we do recommend um one area That Remains the Same which is from kind of the city clerk's office publication schedule that we continue to release city council meeting packets at the current timing that it is now um I think as you're aware we generally now doe release packets on Thursdays even with Shifting the council meeting two days later um we we've heard from several of you the importance of having your weekends to review materials and so we want to preserve that um in addition you know staff has recognized I think some benefit to the fact that we would still have the council agenda committee meet on Mondays and then not have that regular meeting until a Thursday um so the impact of some of those um sort of last minute agenda additions or those um

[270:02] you know when additional questions come up at CAC it gives us a little bit more time to develop responses for those Thursday meetings so there are um parts of this that we will certainly appreciate once once we all adjust to the new timing um so we'd ask to keep those the same and continue to publish packets on Thursday um in terms of process changes that will need to occur um you know I think just internally staff members who are directly impacted by preparing materials for either Council meetings or the impacted boards you know their own processes will need to adjust um for how that that gets done as well as processes around meeting participation sign up um internal staff meeting timing for when we you know do practice runs of presentations things like that we'll be working through all of that um and then we believe there may be uh some I think it's Boza specifically there may be an application form or two that will just need to be

[271:00] altered based on this timing finally the great news is we were pretty concerned about the timing of legal notices we have a 10-day notice requirement in between first readings and second readings and based on The Daily Camera sort of schedule for legal notices but we we did reach out to the camera and they will be able to accommodate it'll be a tight turnaround but we think that it will be manageable that the clerk's office will be able to submit legal not notices the the morning after a Thursday meeting and those will be in time to make it in the weekend legal notice um so that that would still allow us to do first and second readings at a two-e Cadence now we may find occasionally depending on the complexity of um certain items that it would be possible that there would be a need to either pass things by emergency and or um simply allow for a month in between first and second reading to accommodate

[272:00] that legal requirement um again we we think that'll be uh no or very minimal impact um so last slide please Emily this is the kind of the implementation plan at a glance and Alexa just heard part of my presentation so I apologize for that she's getting in on this um say that again sorry don't worry about it the joys of working from home I apologize everyone uh this last Slide the anticipated timeline um tonight assuming you uh accept accept our update and want to continue moving forward um as I mentioned the planning board and Boza will identify uh new their new meeting times based on that new schedule um we'll finalize that research needed um for any further code changes um by late may we hope to complete the final passage of all ordinance changes so that um the the change has become official um

[273:03] with some ample time before Council break to ensure the message continues to get out um I'll also add just we hope to do anything that needs to be codified directly by Council we hope to pass all of those items in a package simultaneously um so that would include any and all code changes as well as we would go ahead and bring forth an amended 2022 council meeting calendar for you all to approve again eliminating the need to do peace Meal special meeting um approval throughout the remainder of the year um and again July 14th we would hope to be meeting that Thursday when you come back and everyone will have a summer break that is two days longer than before so that is the end of my presentation and I welcome any questions guess I will call on myself I

[274:02] can't rely on Heather to call on me here can I um so so uh thanks very much for that Pam appreciate the detailed uh analysis and layout of it um and this was my my request so really do appreciate that I get some complexities around it I it's a little ways away but uh I know everybody is very busy and uh there are a lot of parts and pieces to make this happen so say thank you and I don't oh there's Rachel I'm just G to ask a question does staff need us to give any indication like do you need to reaffirm our it said like a check-in an affirmation that confirmation something like that do we need to do a straw poll or anything is my question we don't need any formal action tonight we did get that back in November um so this was really the confirmation that it is possible and when it could be possible

[275:00] for you all so no action from us just confirmation your way towards us all right thanks that's great and I I actually I will just throw in one one other thing which is uh I appreciate the we still get the packets on Thursday and understand staff would still like to have CAC on Monday which is fine do we I'll just put out there for consideration the possibility of a later in the day like end of day CAC rather than beginning of day uh just I I do worry sometimes about us sending stuff over the weekend for CAC and people have 00 p.m. or 30 a.m. or something like that so if it would make for a more manageable schedule for for staff maybe a later in the day CAC just something to think about thanks Aaron and I I saw a couple colleagues giving their thumbs up so um we'd be happy to kind of roll that into our process change work that we'll be doing um and come back I think it would

[276:00] just be shifting some Council rules so I don't think that would be a heavy lift um and then just Ensure in all of council's in agreement when the time comes okay yeah if you can think that over and we can talk about it when the time comes all right anything else on this item okay seeing none um we'll go to our last item and um n I'll just turn to you to introduce this one great I appreciate that mayor um you know the last item we have today stems from a tragedy uh that we had in our community uh with the passing of Jessica Alama and her child um as you know the boulder the Boulder County coroners office released the report of the tragic death at the end of November and you've asked us to come back and share what interactions the city may have had with Miss Alama in the months before her death since we were not able to necessarily share that until after the coroner's report was released I'll turn this over to our City

[277:01] attorney in a moment who surveyed our departments in order to share out what we' learned so far and what we can legally share as we are still Bound by some of those um considerations Boulder County shared forward on medical services and whatnot but really thinking about all the other interactions that we've had we're able to share with that here but I wanted to note too that we just recently this week received a request from some of Miss alama's family members to continue as I know you have been to be thoughtful and sensitive as we discuss events surrounding missal d death and so I just wanted to pass that along here and voice that so that we honor um those requests as we move forward so with that I'll um ask Teresa to take us forward thank you naria um so what I'm going to walk through is

[278:00] just uh a chronological list of the city's contacts with Miss Alama um and the first Contact that that the city had with her was on September 9th of 2021 and uh that contact was by the Boulder Police Department and it was occasioned by a complaint of camping in the greenway um and so officers contacted Miss Alama um they did at that time issue her a citation um that citation was for camping and possession of prohibited items specifically a tent um they also requested that American Medical Response AMR who is our emergency um paramedic provider uh respond to assess her

[279:00] condition um after that assessment one of the officers transported Jessica to the People's Clinic so that she could receive um so that she could receive some care there uh that citation had a summons date of September 21st or excuse me September 23rd of 2021 8:30 in the morning and so um at that date and time Miss Alama was uh expected to appear at the boulder Municipal Court um she did not appear for that court appearance the Municipal Court did check with the homeless Navigators to see whether they'd had any contact with Miss Alama um out and about in the community and at that time um they said the Navigator said that they had not encountered her and had not had any contact with her um on the 23rd though which is the same

[280:00] date she was supposed to appear um a couple of off officers from our hot team our homeless Outreach team um we're out in the field of Deacon's closet and there was a street medicine event happening um that's where doctors and nurses from The People's Clinic provide medical care to members of our unhoused community and Miss Alama was present at that event um later that day The People's Clinic staff contacted the officers um about Miss aldama um and and her followup care uh since that time the officers had been keeping an eye out for Miss Alama um as they conducted their their hot rounds but they were unable to find her uh sadly the next contact was on October 11th 2021 where officers were called to a tent um in the northwest

[281:02] corner at an undeveloped property uh at 5847 arapo um that temp was back in a wooded densely wooded area it was adjacent to a small body of water um they weren't visible from the street or the bike path um but the officers did investigate and inside that tent they found um Miss Alama deceased uh they um they obviously didn't know who she was at first but they they did identify her uh and then unfortunately while processing the scene they also identified her premature um baby who was also deceased there were no other persons inside the tent um and canvasing did not turn up um any any information so uh those are all of the contacts that we have listed for Miss Alama um other other departments were

[282:02] consulted and said that they did not have contact with her and so we wanted to just run through give you an idea of what those contacts were um I have I have omitted personal uh medical information um as that would be beyond the scope of what we could share in a public meeting um so that's that's what I have to share with you tonight on this matter thank you for that uh Teresa for for for sharing that um information about about this tragedy does anyone have uh questions for Teresa or anyone else Rachel yeah thanks for that um information Teresa a couple things um when the coroner's report came out and I don't know if the city has or can share additional information on this but I found it confusing in reading it that it

[283:01] sort of attributed the cause of death to both the the to Jessica and the baby as still birth and usually there's something that causes a still birth that's not the cause of death that's the you know I would be saying like cancer causes cancer like cancer caused the death not so it it's just a it was a an odd um report to read and I just wanted to know was there something that that was the cause of the still birth that then um it sounds like that is the event that caused Jessica's death but that was a a confusing coroner report so wonder will there be more information or did we get more information on that aspect no I'm afraid not and you know as as you recognize that's outside of our scope it's within the the coroner scope um but we don't have any other information bearing on that beyond the the coroner's report okay um and then I guess second is you

[284:04] mentioned that the People's Clinic called the hot team is there more information you can share that like if they were worried about somebody that's that's who they would ordinarily call it's it's my understanding that the People's Clinic um and the hot team work pretty closely together and um try to share information that they're able to share um unfortunately I'm not able to share more with you at this time because of medical privacy concerns okay well I mean I think all of us are probably looking at this as sort of a root cause analysis and trying to figure out how to make sure that this doesn't happen to anyone else so um I guess I'm just trying to understand why is our system that if a health care provider has concerns about someone they're um reaching out to the police

[285:01] department um that that has recently um ticketed her so I I'm just trying to understand like what is was it a sounds like you can't share information but I guess I you know as we're talking about with the retreat like having an alternative to 911 is there is that the right place for us to be connecting if we're worried about someone someone's well-being um that is not criminal in nature but that that's just how it is it sounds like uh you know I I wouldn't pretend to be expert on the hot team um and I wonder if there's somebody else who knows more about that team than I who might like to respond um it is my understanding that it's not uncommon for the hot team to try to help locate unhoused individuals um for for a variety of different um reasons um but

[286:00] really looking um to contact with individuals in that community and provide resources and services and and um navigate and so I I do um my impression is that the homeless Outreach team um is not typically acting in an enforcement capacity that they're much more um in a coordinated resources capacity thanks Teresa and I'll add uh Rachel thank you for your question um uh obviously the hot team is um at the these medical events um and I think that they needed uh and and Teresa is right the the hot team has no enforcement uh capacity um they are strictly service-driven uh officers um that are well trusted by uh Community um uh events such as such as the medical providers and I think that they they

[287:00] would probably be the best resource to go to find uh Jessica and that's probably what they thought um I wasn't there that day but uh talking to Ross and Jenny um they're trusted to actually go out and boots on the ground and and find Jessica Unfortunately they did not if that's helpful okay thanks I think those are all my questions right now thanks for that Rachel and I'll just um just bring up that we heard this at a previous meeting but just to since we're talking about it again just to confirm that that those uh medical providers and the our our departments and such who do have the the all the details about exactly what happened including the stuff we can't share publicly that everyone is talking and working together um to to figure out you know were were there any gaps you know are is are there any Lessons Learned for somewhat similar

[288:02] situations in the future can you just confirm that we are working on that kind of analysis yeah I believe and and mayis certainly you probably are closer to it than the rest of us but I know that that's what we heard when Boulder County was speaking um to us uh late last year as well um as they convene their own uh work and that we're also talking about what are those um Lessons Learned as we move forward um to the extent they can be shared with us in terms of those gaps because I presume there are some that we're not still privy to um because of the medical privacy issues but yes thanks for that I I know we all um share the desire to to not see a tragedy like this happen again in the future so I I appreciate that does anyone else have anything else to say on this topic uh seeing none I think um we can

[289:01] close this item all right which I believe then closes the meeting Alicia is that correct that is correct sir okay well um thank you everyone uh for the meeting tonight um and we will see each other on Friday afternoon at 4 to do our Retreat and so I will go ahead and gavel our meeting closed here at 10:49 p.m. good night everyone [Music]